Page:Burton Stevenson--The marathon mystery.djvu/116

94 “I’ve seen a lot of them, but none ever affected me just as this one does.”

“What is it?” I asked, astonished by his pallor, by the trembling of his hand as he put away his handkerchief and reached for a cigarette. He lighted it before he answered, inviting me by a gesture to help myself.

“It’s a fer-de-lance,” he said, at last; “One of the deadliest serpents in the world—and this particular variety is said to be especially deadly—a sort of crème de la crème, as it were. Its bite kills a man in three minutes, if it happens to strike an artery—it does more than that—it turns him to a swollen, rotten piece of carrion—I’ve seen it,” and he leaned back to blow a ring toward the ceiling.

I sat, petrified, with my cigarette half-way to my mouth.

“A fer-de-lance!” I faltered, at last, with a horrified glance at the figure on the couch.

“Oh, it’s safe enough, I guess,” he added. “She’s had it for years and it has never attempted to harm her. Perhaps it has lost its poison.”

“Still,” I said, “it’s a risk. I shouldn’t think you’d permit it.”

“Permit it?” he repeated. “Oh!” and he shrugged his shoulders with a gesture of impotence impossible to describe.