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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Slayer Of souls, by Robert Chambers
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: The Slayer Of souls
+
+Author: Robert Chambers
+
+Release Date: May 30, 2011 [eBook #36281]
+[Most recently updated: June 1, 2021]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: Chris Curnow, Michael, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SLAYER OF SOULS ***
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+THE SLAYER OF SOULS
+
+ROBERT W. CHAMBERS
+
+AUTHOR OF “IN SECRET,” “THE COMMON LAW,” “THE RECKONING,” “LORRAINE,”
+ETC.
+
+
+NEW YORK
+GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
+
+_Copyright, 1920,
+By Robert W. Chambers_
+
+_Copyright, 1919, 1920, by International Magazine Company_
+
+_Printed in the United States of America_
+
+
+TO
+MY FRIEND
+GEORGE ARMSBY
+
+
+
+I
+
+Mirror of Fashion,
+Admiral of Finance,
+Don’t, in a passion,
+Denounce this poor Romance;
+For, while I dare not hope it might
+Enthuse you,
+Perhaps it will, some rainy night,
+Amuse you.
+
+II
+
+So, your attention,
+In poetry polite,
+To my invention
+I bashfully invite.
+Don’t hurl the book at Eddie’s head
+Deep laden,
+Or Messmore’s; you might hit instead
+Will Braden.
+
+III
+
+Kahn among Canners,
+And Grand Vizier of style,
+Emir of Manners,
+Accept—and place on file—
+This tribute, which I proffer while
+I grovel,
+And honor with thy matchless Smile
+My novel.
+
+R. W. C.
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+CHAPTER I. THE YEZIDEE
+CHAPTER II. THE YELLOW SNAKE
+CHAPTER III. GREY MAGIC
+CHAPTER IV. BODY AND SOUL
+CHAPTER V. THE ASSASSINS
+CHAPTER VI. IN BATTLE
+CHAPTER VII. THE BRIDAL
+CHAPTER VIII. THE MAN IN WHITE
+CHAPTER IX. THE WEST WIND
+CHAPTER X. AT THE RITZ
+CHAPTER XI. YULUN THE BELOVED
+CHAPTER XII. HIS EXCELLENCY
+CHAPTER XIII. SA-N’SA
+CHAPTER XIV. A DEATH-TRAIL
+CHAPTER XV. IN THE FIRELIGHT
+CHAPTER XVI. THE PLACE OF PRAYER
+CHAPTER XVII. THE SLAYER OF SOULS
+
+
+THE SLAYER OF SOULS
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+THE YEZIDEE
+
+
+Only when the _Nan-yang Maru_ sailed from Yuen-San did her terrible
+sense of foreboding begin to subside.
+
+For four years, waking or sleeping, the awful subconsciousness of
+supreme evil had never left her.
+
+But now, as the Korean shore, receding into darkness, grew dimmer and
+dimmer, fear subsided and grew vague as the half-forgotten memory of
+horror in a dream.
+
+She stood near the steamer’s stern apart from other passengers, a
+slender, lonely figure in her silver-fox furs, her ulster and smart
+little hat, watching the lights of Yuen-San grow paler and smaller
+along the horizon until they looked like a level row of stars.
+
+Under her haunted eyes Asia was slowly dissolving to a streak of vapour
+in the misty lustre of the moon.
+
+Suddenly the ancient continent disappeared, washed out by a wave
+against the sky; and with it vanished the last shreds of that accursed
+nightmare which had possessed her for four endless years. But whether
+during those unreal years her soul had only been held in bondage, or
+whether, as she had been taught, it had been irrevocably destroyed, she
+still remained uncertain, knowing nothing about the death of souls or
+how it was accomplished.
+
+As she stood there, her sad eyes fixed on the misty East, a passenger
+passing—an Englishwoman—paused to say something kind to the young
+American; and added, “if there is anything my husband and I can do it
+would give us much pleasure.” The girl had turned her head as though
+not comprehending. The other woman hesitated.
+
+“This is Doctor Norne’s daughter, is it not?” she inquired in a
+pleasant voice.
+
+“Yes, I am Tressa Norne.... I ask your pardon.... Thank you, madam:—I
+am—I seem to be—a trifle dazed——”
+
+“What wonder, you poor child! Come to us if you feel need of
+companionship.”
+
+“You are very kind.... I seem to wish to be alone, somehow.”
+
+“I understand.... Good-night, my dear.”
+
+Late the next morning Tressa Norne awoke, conscious for the first time
+in four years that it was at last her own familiar self stretched out
+there on the pillows where sunshine streamed through the porthole. All
+that day she lay in her bamboo steamer chair on deck. Sun and wind
+conspired to dry every tear that wet her closed lashes. Her dark,
+glossy hair blew about her face; scarlet tinted her full lips again;
+the tense hands relaxed. Peace came at sundown.
+
+That evening she took her Yu-kin from her cabin and found a chair on
+the deserted hurricane deck.
+
+And here, in the brilliant moonlight of the China Sea, she curled up
+cross-legged on the deck, all alone, and sounded the four futile
+strings of her moon-lute, and hummed to herself, in a still voice, old
+songs she had sung in Yian before the tragedy. She sang the tent-song
+called _Tchinguiz_. She sang _Camel Bells_ and _The Blue
+Bazaar_,—children’s songs of the Yiort. She sang the ancient Khiounnou
+song called “The Saghalien”:
+
+_I_
+
+_In the month of Saffar_
+_Among the river-reeds_
+_I saw two horsemen_
+_Sitting on their steeds._
+_Tulugum!_
+_Heitulum!_
+_By the river-reeds_
+
+
+_II_
+
+_In the month of Saffar_
+_A demon guards the ford._
+_Tokhta, my Lover!_
+_Draw your shining sword!_
+_Tulugum!_
+_Heitulum!_
+_Slay him with your sword!_
+
+
+_III_
+
+_In the month of Saffar_
+_Among the water-weeds_
+_I saw two horsemen_
+_Fighting on their steeds._
+_Tulugum!_
+_Heitulum!_
+_How my lover bleeds!_
+
+
+_IV_
+
+_In the month of Saffar,_
+_The Year I should have wed—_
+_The Year of The Panther—_
+_My lover lay dead,—_
+_Tulugum!_
+_Heitulum!_
+_Dead without a head._
+
+And songs like these—the one called “Keuke Mongol,” and an ancient air
+of the Tchortchas called “The Thirty Thousand Calamities,” and some
+Chinese boatmen’s songs which she had heard in Yian before the tragedy;
+these she hummed to herself there in the moonlight playing on her
+round-faced, short-necked lute of four strings.
+
+Terror indeed seemed ended for her, and in her heart a great
+overwhelming joy was welling up which seemed to overflow across the
+entire moonlit world.
+
+
+She had no longer any fear; no premonition of further evil. Among the
+few Americans and English aboard, something of her story was already
+known. People were kind; and they were also considerate enough to
+subdue their sympathetic curiosity when they discovered that this young
+American girl shrank from any mention of what had happened to her
+during the last four years of the Great World War.
+
+It was evident, also, that she preferred to remain aloof; and this
+inclination, when finally understood, was respected by her fellow
+passengers. The clever, efficient and polite Japanese officers and crew
+of the _Nan-yang Maru_ were invariably considerate and courteous to
+her, and they remained nicely reticent, although they also knew the
+main outline of her story and very much desired to know more. And so,
+surrounded now by the friendly security of civilised humanity, Tressa
+Norne, reborn to light out of hell’s own shadows, awoke from four years
+of nightmare which, after all, perhaps, never had seemed entirely
+actual.
+
+And now God’s real sun warmed her by day; His real moon bathed her in
+creamy coolness by night; sky and wind and wave thrilled her with their
+blessed assurance that this was once more the real world which
+stretched illimitably on every side from horizon to horizon; and the
+fair faces and pleasant voices of her own countrymen made the past seem
+only a ghastly dream that never again could enmesh her soul with its
+web of sorcery.
+
+
+And now the days at sea fled very swiftly; and when at last the Golden
+Gate was not far away she had finally managed to persuade herself that
+nothing really can harm the human soul; that the monstrous devil-years
+were ended, never again to return; that in this vast, clean Western
+Continent there could be no occult threat to dread, no gigantic menace
+to destroy her body, no secret power that could consign her soul to the
+dreadful abysm of spiritual annihilation.
+
+
+Very early that morning she came on deck. The November day was
+delightfully warm, the air clear save for a belt of mist low on the
+water to the southward.
+
+She had been told that land would not be sighted for twenty-four hours,
+but she went forward and stood beside the starboard rail, searching the
+horizon with the enchanted eyes of hope.
+
+As she stood there a Japanese ship’s officer crossing the deck,
+forward, halted abruptly and stood staring at something to the
+southward.
+
+At the same moment, above the belt of mist on the water, and perfectly
+clear against the blue sky above, the girl saw a fountain of gold fire
+rise from the fog, drift upward in the daylight, slowly assume the
+incandescent outline of a serpentine creature which leisurely uncoiled
+and hung there floating, its lizard-tail undulating, its feet with
+their five stumpy claws closing, relaxing, like those of a living
+reptile. For a full minute this amazing shape of fire floated there in
+the sky, brilliant in the morning light, then the reptilian form faded,
+died out, and the last spark vanished in the sunshine.
+
+When the Japanese officer at last turned to resume his promenade, he
+noticed a white-faced girl gripping a stanchion behind him as though
+she were on the point of swooning. He crossed the deck quickly. Tressa
+Norne’s eyes opened.
+
+“Are you ill, Miss Norne?” he asked.
+
+“The—the Dragon,” she whispered.
+
+The officer laughed. “Why, that was nothing but Chinese day-fireworks,”
+he explained. “The crew of some fishing boat yonder in the fog is
+amusing itself.” He looked at her narrowly, then with a nice little bow
+and smile he offered his arm: “If you are indisposed, perhaps you might
+wish to go below to your stateroom, Miss Norne?”
+
+She thanked him, managed to pull herself together and force a ghost of
+a smile.
+
+He lingered a moment, said something cheerful about being nearly home,
+then made her a punctilious salute and went his way.
+
+Tressa Norne leaned back against the stanchion and closed her eyes. Her
+pallor became deathly. She bent over and laid her white face in her
+folded arms.
+
+After a while she lifted her head, and, turning very slowly, stared at
+the fog-belt out of frightened eyes.
+
+And saw, rising out of the fog, a pearl-tinted sphere which gradually
+mounted into the clear daylight above like the full moon’s phantom in
+the sky.
+
+Higher, higher rose the spectral moon until at last it swam in the very
+zenith. Then it slowly evaporated in the blue vault above.
+
+A great wave of despair swept her; she clung to the stanchion, staring
+with half-blinded eyes at the flat fog-bank in the south.
+
+But no more “Chinese day-fireworks” rose out of it. And at length she
+summoned sufficient strength to go below to her cabin and lie there,
+half senseless, huddled on her bed.
+
+
+When land was sighted, the following morning, Tressa Norne had lived a
+century in twenty-four hours. And in that space of time her agonised
+soul had touched all depths.
+
+But now as the Golden Gate loomed up in the morning light, rage,
+terror, despair had burned themselves out. From their ashes within her
+mind arose the cool wrath of desperation armed for anything, wary,
+alert, passionately determined to survive at whatever cost, recklessly
+ready to fight for bodily existence.
+
+That was her sole instinct now, to go on living, to survive, no matter
+at what price. And if it were indeed true that her soul had been slain,
+she defied its murderers to slay her body also.
+
+
+That night, at her hotel in San Francisco, she double-locked her door
+and lay down without undressing, leaving all lights burning and an
+automatic pistol underneath her pillow.
+
+Toward morning she fell asleep, slept for an hour, started up in awful
+fear. And saw the double-locked door opposite the foot of her bed
+slowly opening of its own accord.
+
+Into the brightly illuminated room stepped a graceful young man in full
+evening dress carrying over his left arm an overcoat, and in his other
+hand a top hat and silver tipped walking-stick.
+
+With one bound the girl swung herself from the bed to the carpet and
+clutched at the pistol under her pillow.
+
+“Sanang!” she cried in a terrible voice.
+
+“Keuke Mongol!” he said, smilingly.
+
+For a moment they confronted each other in the brightly lighted
+bedroom, then, partly turning, he cast a calm glance at the open door
+behind him; and, as though moved by a wind, the door slowly closed. And
+she heard the key turn of itself in the lock, and saw the bolt slide
+smoothly into place again.
+
+Her power of speech came back to her presently—only a broken whisper at
+first: “Do you think I am afraid of your accursed magic?” she managed
+to gasp. “Do you think I am afraid of you, Sanang?”
+
+“You are afraid,” he said serenely.
+
+“You lie!”
+
+“No, I do not lie. To one another the Yezidees never lie.”
+
+“You lie again, assassin! I am no Yezidee!”
+
+He smiled gently. His features were pleasing, smooth, and regular; his
+cheek-bones high, his skin fine and of a pale and delicate ivory
+colour. Once his black, beautifully shaped eyes wandered to the
+levelled pistol which she now held clutched desperately close to her
+right hip, and a slightly ironical expression veiled his gaze for an
+instant.
+
+“Bullets?” he murmured. “But you and I are of the Hassanis.”
+
+“The third lie, Sanang!” Her voice had regained its strength. Tense,
+alert, blue eyes ablaze, every faculty concentrated on the terrible
+business before her, the girl now seemed like some supple leopardess
+poised on the swift verge of murder.
+
+“Tokhta!”[1] She spat the word. “Any movement toward a hidden weapon,
+any gesture suggesting recourse to magic—and I kill you, Sanang,
+exactly where you stand!”
+
+“With a pistol?” He laughed. Then his smooth features altered subtly.
+He said: “Keuke Mongol, who call yourself Tressa Norne,—Keuke—heavenly
+azure-blue,—named so in the temple because of the colour of your
+eyes—listen attentively, for this is the Yarlig which I bring to you by
+word of mouth from Yian, as from Yezidee to Yezidee:
+
+“Here, in this land called the United States of America, the Temple
+girl, Keuke Mongol, who has witnessed the mysteries of Erlik and who
+understands the magic of the Sheiks-el-Djebel, and who has seen Mount
+Alamout and the eight castles and the fifty thousand Hassanis in white
+turbans and in robes of white;—_you_—Azure-blue eyes—heed the
+Yarlig!—or may thirty thousand calamities overtake you!”
+
+There was a dead silence; then he went on seriously: “It is decreed:
+You shall cease to remember that you are a Yezidee, that you are of the
+Hassanis, that you ever have laid eyes on Yian the Beautiful, that you
+ever set naked foot upon Mount Alamout. It is decreed that you remember
+nothing of what you have seen and heard, of what has been told and
+taught during the last four years reckoned as the Christians reckon
+from our Year of the Bull. Otherwise—my Master sends you this for
+your—_convenience_.”
+
+Leisurely, from under his folded overcoat, the young man produced a
+roll of white cloth and dropped it at her feet and the girl shrank
+aside, shuddering, knowing that the roll of white cloth was meant for
+her winding-sheet.
+
+Then the colour came back to lip and cheek; and, glancing up from the
+soft white shroud, she smiled at the young man: “Have you ended your
+Oriental mummery?” she asked calmly. “Listen very seriously in your
+turn, Sanang, Sheik-el-Djebel, Prince of the Hassanis who, God knows
+when and how, have come out into the sunshine of this clean and decent
+country, out of a filthy darkness where devils and sorcerers make earth
+a hell.
+
+“If you, or yours, threaten me, annoy me, interfere with me, I shall go
+to our civilised police and tell all I know concerning the Yezidees. I
+mean to live. Do you understand? You know what you have done to me and
+mine. I come back to my own country alone, without any living kin,
+poor, homeless, friendless,—and, perhaps, damned. I intend,
+nevertheless, to survive. I shall not relax my clutch on bodily
+existence whatever the Yezidees may pretend to have done to my soul. I
+am determined to live in the body, anyway.”
+
+He nodded gravely.
+
+She said: “Out at sea, over the fog, I saw the sign of Yu-lao in fire
+floating in the day-sky. I saw his spectral moon rise and vanish in
+mid-heaven. I understood. But——” And here she suddenly showed an edge
+of teeth under the full scarlet upper lip: “Keep your signs and your
+shrouds to yourself, dog of a Yezidee!—toad!—tortoise-egg!—he-goat with
+three legs! Keep your threats and your messages to yourself! Keep your
+accursed magic to yourself! Do you think to frighten me with your
+sorcery by showing me the Moons of Yu-lao?—by opening a bolted door? I
+know more of such magic than do you, Sanang—Death Adder of Alamout!”
+
+Suddenly she laughed aloud at him—laughed insultingly in his
+expressionless face:
+
+“I saw you and Gutchlug Khan and your cowardly Tchortchas in
+red-lacquered jackets slink out of the Temple of Erlik where the bronze
+gong thundered and a cloud settled down raining little yellow snakes
+all over the marble steps—all over you, Prince Sanang! You were
+_afraid_, my Tougtchi!—you and Gutchlug and your red Tchortchas with
+their halberds all dripping with human entrails! And I saw you mount
+and gallop off into the woods while in the depths of the magic cloud
+which rained little yellow snakes all around you, we temple girls
+laughed and mocked at you—at you and your cowardly Tchortcha horsemen.”
+
+A slight tinge of pink came into the young man’s pale face. Tressa
+Norne stepped nearer, her levelled pistol resting on her hip.
+
+“Why did you not complain of us to your Master, the Old Man of the
+Mountain?” she asked jeeringly. “And where, also, was your Yezidee
+magic when it rained little snakes?—What frightened you away—who had
+boldly come to seize a temple girl—you who had screwed up your courage
+sufficiently to defy Erlik in his very shrine and snatch from his
+temple a young thing whose naked body wrapped in gold was worth the
+chance of death to you?”
+
+The young man’s top-hat dropped to the floor. He bent over to pick it
+up. His face was quite expressionless, quite colourless, now.
+
+“I went on no such errand,” he said with an effort. “I went with a
+thousand prayers on scarlet paper made in——”
+
+“A lie, Yezidee! You came to seize _me_!”
+
+He turned still paler. “By Abu, Omar, Otman, and Ali, it is not true!”
+
+“You lie!—by the Lion of God, Hassini!”
+
+She stepped closer. “And I’ll tell you another thing you fear—you
+Yezidee of Alamout—you robber of Yian—you sorcerer of Sabbah Khan, and
+chief of his sect of Assassins! You fear this native land of mine,
+America; and its laws and customs, and its clear, clean sunshine; and
+its cities and people; and its police! Take that message back. We
+Americans fear nobody save the true God!—nobody—neither Yezidee nor
+Hassani nor Russ nor German nor that sexless monster born of hell and
+called the Bolshevik!”
+
+“Tokhta!” he cried sharply.
+
+“Damn you!” retorted the girl; “get out of my room! Get out of my
+sight! Get out of my path! Get out of my life! Take that to your Master
+of Mount Alamout! I do what I please; I go where I please; I live as I
+please. And if I please, _I turn against him_!”
+
+“In that event,” he said hoarsely, “there lies your winding-sheet on
+the floor at your feet! Take up your shroud; and make Erlik seize you!”
+
+“Sanang,” she said very seriously.
+
+“I hear you, Keuke-Mongol.”
+
+“Listen attentively. I wish to live. I have had enough of death in
+life. I desire to remain a living, breathing thing—even if it be
+true—as you Yezidees tell me, that you have caught my soul in a net and
+that your sorcerers really control its destiny.
+
+“But damned or not, I passionately desire to live. And I am coward
+enough to hold my peace for the sake of living. So—I remain silent. I
+have no stomach to defy the Yezidees; because, if I do, sooner or later
+I shall be killed. I know it. I have no desire to die for others—to
+perish for the sake of the common good. I am young. I have suffered too
+much; I am determined to live—and let my soul take its chances between
+God and Erlik.”
+
+She came close to him, looked curiously into his pale face.
+
+“I laughed at you out of the temple cloud,” she said. “I know how to
+open bolted doors as well as you do. And I know _other things_. And if
+you ever again come to me in this life I shall first torture you, then
+slay you. Then I shall tell all!... and unroll my shroud.”
+
+“I keep your word of promise until you break it,” he interrupted
+hastily. “Yarlig! It is decreed!” And then he slowly turned as though
+to glance over his shoulder at the locked and bolted door.
+
+“Permit me to open it for you, Prince Sanang,” said the girl
+scornfully. And she gazed steadily at the door.
+
+Presently, all by itself, the key turned in the lock, the bolt slid
+back, the door gently opened.
+
+Toward it, white as a corpse, his overcoat on his left arm, his stick
+and top-hat in the other hand, crept the young man in his faultless
+evening garb.
+
+Then, as he reached the threshold, he suddenly sprang aside. A small
+yellow snake lay coiled there on the door sill. For a full throbbing
+minute the young man stared at the yellow reptile in unfeigned horror.
+Then, very cautiously, he moved his fascinated eyes sideways and gazed
+in silence at Tressa Norne.
+
+The girl laughed.
+
+“Sorceress!” he burst out hoarsely. “Take that accursed thing from my
+path!”
+
+“What thing, Sanang?” At that his dark, frightened eyes stole toward
+the threshold again, seeking the little snake. But there was no snake
+there. And when he was certain of this he went, twitching and trembling
+all over.
+
+Behind him the door closed softly, locking and bolting itself.
+
+And behind the bolted door in the brightly lighted bedroom Tressa Norne
+fell on both knees, her pistol still clutched in her right hand,
+calling passionately upon Christ to forgive her for the dreadful
+ability she had dared to use, and begging Him to save her body from
+death and her soul from the snare of the Yezidee.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+THE YELLOW SNAKE
+
+
+When the young man named Sanang left the bed-chamber of Tressa Norne he
+turned to the right in the carpeted corridor outside and hurried toward
+the hotel elevator. But he did not ring for the lift; instead he took
+the spiral iron stairway which circled it, and mounted hastily to the
+floor above.
+
+Here was his own apartment and he entered it with a key bearing the
+hotel tag. A dusky-skinned powerful old man wearing a grizzled beard
+and a greasy broadcloth coat of old-fashioned cut known to provincials
+as a “Prince Albert” looked up from where he was seated cross-legged
+upon the sofa, sharpening a curved knife on a whetstone.
+
+“Gutchlug,” stammered Sanang, “I am afraid of her! What happened two
+years ago at the temple happened again a moment since, there in her
+very bedroom! She made a yellow death-adder out of nothing and placed
+it upon the threshold, and mocked me with laughter. May Thirty Thousand
+Calamities overtake her! May Erlik seize her! May her eyes rot out and
+her limbs fester! May the seven score and three principal devils——”
+
+“You chatter like a temple ape,” said Gutchlug tranquilly. “Does Keuke
+Mongol die or live? That alone interests me.”
+
+“Gutchlug,” faltered the young man, “thou knowest that m-my heart is
+inclined to mercy toward this young Yezidee——”
+
+“I know that it is inclined to lust,” said the other bluntly.
+
+Sanang’s pale face flamed.
+
+“Listen,” he said. “If I had not loved her better than life had I dared
+go that day to the temple to take her for my own?”
+
+“You loved life better,” said Gutchlug. “You fled when it rained snakes
+on the temple steps—you and your Tchortcha horsemen! Kai! I also ran.
+But I gave every soldier thirty blows with a stick before I slept that
+night. And you should have had your thirty, also, conforming to the
+Yarlig, my Tougtchi.”
+
+Sanang, still holding his hat and cane and carrying his overcoat over
+his left arm, looked down at the heavy, brutal features of Gutchlug
+Khan—at the cruel mouth with its crooked smile under the grizzled
+beard; at the huge hands—the powerful hands of a murderer—now deftly
+honing to a razor-edge the Kalmuck knife held so firmly yet lightly in
+his great blunt fingers.
+
+“Listen attentively, Prince Sanang,” growled Gutchlug, pausing in his
+monotonous task to test the blade’s edge on his thumb—“Does the Yezidee
+Keuke Mongol live? Yes or no?”
+
+Sanang hesitated, moistened his pallid lips. “She dares not betray us.”
+
+“By what pledge?”
+
+“Fear.”
+
+“That is no pledge. You also were afraid, yet you went to the temple!”
+
+“She has listened to the Yarlig. She has looked upon her shroud. She
+has admitted that she desires to live. Therein lies her pledge to us.”
+
+“And she placed a yellow snake at your feet!” sneered Gutchlug. “Prince
+Sanang, tell me, what man or what devil in all the chronicles of the
+past has ever tamed a Snow-Leopard?” And he continued to hone his
+yataghan.
+
+“Gutchlug——”
+
+“No, she dies,” said the other tranquilly.
+
+“Not yet!”
+
+“When, then?”
+
+“Gutchlug, thou knowest me. Hear my pledge! At her first gesture toward
+treachery—her first thought of betrayal—I myself will end it all.”
+
+“You promise to slay this young snow-leopardess?”
+
+“By the four companions, I swear to kill her with my own hands!”
+
+Gutchlug sneered. “Kill her—yes—with the kiss that has burned thy lips
+to ashes for all these months. I know thee, Sanang. Leave her to me.
+Dead she will no longer trouble thee.”
+
+“Gutchlug!”
+
+“I hear, Prince Sanang.”
+
+“Strike when I nod. Not until then.”
+
+“I hear, Tougtchi. I understand thee, my Banneret. I whet my knife.
+Kai!”
+
+Sanang looked at him, put on his top-hat and overcoat, pulled on a pair
+of white evening gloves.
+
+“I go forth,” he said more pleasantly.
+
+“I remain here to talk to my seven ancestors and sharpen my knife,”
+remarked Gutchlug.
+
+“When the white world and the yellow world and the brown world and the
+black world finally fall before the Hassanis,” said Sanang with a quick
+smile, “I shall bring thee to her. Gutchlug—once—before she is veiled,
+thou shalt behold what is lovelier than Eve.”
+
+The other stolidly whetted his knife.
+
+Sanang pulled out a gold cigarette case, lighted a cigarette with an
+air.
+
+“I go among Germans,” he volunteered amiably. “The huns swam across two
+oceans, but, like the unclean swine, it is their own throats they cut
+when they swim! Well, there is only one God. And not very many angels.
+Erlik is greater. And there are many million devils to do his bidding.
+Adieu. There is rice and there is koumiss in the frozen closet. When I
+return you shall have been asleep for hours.”
+
+When Sanang left the hotel one of two young men seated in the hotel
+lobby got up and strolled out after him.
+
+A few minutes later the other man went to the elevator, ascended to the
+fourth floor, and entered an apartment next to the one occupied by
+Sanang.
+
+There was another man there, lying on the lounge and smoking a cigar.
+Without a word, they both went leisurely about the matter of disrobing
+for the night.
+
+When the shorter man who had been in the apartment when the other
+entered, and who was dark and curly-headed, had attired himself in
+pyjamas, he sat down on one of the twin beds to enjoy his cigar to the
+bitter end.
+
+“Has Sanang gone out?” he inquired in a low voice.
+
+“Yes. Benton went after him.”
+
+The other man nodded. “Cleves,” he said, “I guess it looks as though
+this Norne girl is in it, too.”
+
+“What happened?”
+
+“As soon as she arrived, Sanang made straight for her apartment. He
+remained inside for half an hour. Then he came out in a hurry and went
+to his own rooms, where that surly servant of his squats all day,
+shining up his arsenal, and drinking koumiss.”
+
+“Did you get their conversation?”
+
+“I’ve got a record of the gibberish. It requires an interpreter, of
+course.”
+
+“I suppose so. I’ll take the records east with me to-morrow, and by the
+same token I’d better notify New York that I’m leaving.”
+
+He went, half-undressed, to the telephone, got the telegraph office,
+and sent the following message:
+
+“Recklow, _New York_:
+
+“Leaving to-morrow for N. Y. with samples. Retain expert in Oriental
+fabrics.
+
+“Victor Cleves.”
+
+“Report for me, too,” said the dark young man, who was still enjoying
+his cigar on his pillows.
+
+So Cleves sent another telegram, directed also to
+
+“Recklow, _New York_:
+
+“Benton and I are watching the market. Chinese importations fluctuate.
+Recent consignment per _Nan-yang Maru_ will be carefully inspected and
+details forwarded.
+
+“Alek Selden.”
+
+In the next room Gutchlug could hear the voice of Cleves at the
+telephone, but he merely shrugged his heavy shoulders in contempt. For
+he had other things to do beside eavesdropping.
+
+Also, for the last hour—in fact, ever since Sanang’s
+departure—something had been happening to him—something that happens to
+a Hassani only once in a lifetime. And now this unique thing had
+happened to him—to him, Gutchlug Khan—to him before whose Khiounnou
+ancestors eighty-one thousand nations had bowed the knee.
+
+It had come to him at last, this dread thing, unheralded, totally
+unexpected, a few minutes after Sanang had departed.
+
+And he suddenly knew he was going to die.
+
+And, when, presently, he comprehended it, he bent his grizzled head and
+listened seriously. And, after a little silence, he heard his soul
+bidding him farewell.
+
+So the chatter of white men at a telephone in the next apartment had no
+longer any significance for him. Whether or not they had been spying on
+him; whether they were plotting, made no difference to him now.
+
+He tested his knife’s edge with his thumb and listened gravely to his
+soul bidding him farewell.
+
+But, for a Yezidee, there was still a little detail to attend to before
+his soul departed;—two matters to regulate. One was to select his
+shroud. The other was to cut the white throat of this young
+snow-leopardess called Keuke Mongol, the Yezidee temple girl.
+
+And he could steal down to her bedroom and finish that matter in five
+minutes.
+
+But first he must choose his shroud, as is the custom of the Yezidee.
+
+That office, however, was quickly accomplished in a country where fine
+white sheets of linen are to be found on every hotel bed.
+
+So, on his way to the door, his naked knife in his right hand, he
+paused to fumble under the bed-covers and draw out a white linen sheet.
+
+Something hurt his hand like a needle. He moved it, felt the thing
+squirm under his fingers and pierce his palm again and again. With a
+shriek, he tore the bedclothes from the bed.
+
+A little yellow snake lay coiled there.
+
+He got as far as the telephone, but could not use it. And there he fell
+heavily, shaking the room and dragging the instrument down with him.
+
+
+There was some excitement. Cleves and Selden in their bathrobes went in
+to look at the body. The hotel physician diagnosed it as heart-trouble.
+Or, possibly, poison. Some gazed significantly at the naked knife still
+clutched in the dead man’s hands.
+
+Around the wrist of the other hand was twisted a pliable gold bracelet
+representing a little snake. It had real emeralds for eyes.
+
+It had not been there when Gutchlug died.
+
+But nobody except Sanang could know that. And later when Sanang came
+back and found Gutchlug very dead on the bed and a policeman sitting
+outside, he offered no information concerning the new bracelet shaped
+like a snake with real emeralds for eyes, which adorned the dead man’s
+left wrist.
+
+Toward evening, however, after an autopsy had confirmed the house
+physician’s diagnosis that heart-disease had finished Gutchlug, Sanang
+mustered enough courage to go to the desk in the lobby and send up his
+card to Miss Norne.
+
+
+It appeared, however, that Miss Norne had left for Chicago about noon.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+GREY MAGIC
+
+
+To Victor Cleves came the following telegram in code:
+
+“_Washington_
+“April 14th, 1919.”
+
+“_Investigation ordered by the State Department as the result of
+frequent mention in despatches of Chinese troops operating with the
+Russian Bolsheviki forces has disclosed that the Bolsheviki are
+actually raising a Chinese division of 30,000 men recruited in Central
+Asia. This division has been guilty of the greatest cruelties. A
+strange rumour prevails among the Allied forces at Archangel that this
+Chinese division is led by Yezidee and Hassani officers belonging to
+the sect of devil-worshipers and that they employ black arts and magic
+in battle._
+
+“_From information so far gathered by the several branches of the
+United States Secret Service operating throughout the world, it appears
+possible that the various revolutionary forces of disorder, in Europe
+and Asia, which now are violently threatening the peace and security,
+of all established civilisation on earth, may have had a common origin.
+This origin, it is now suspected, may date back to a very remote epoch;
+the wide-spread forces of violence and merciless destruction may have
+had their beginning among some ancient and predatory race whose
+existence was maintained solely by robbery and murder._
+
+“_Anarchists, terrorists, Bolshevists, Reds of all shades and degrees,
+are now believed to represent in modern times what perhaps once was a
+tribe of Assassins—a sect whose religion was founded upon a common
+predilection for crimes of violence._
+
+“_On this theory then, for the present, the United States Government
+will proceed with this investigation of Bolshevism; and the Secret
+Service will continue to pay particular attention to all Orientals in
+the United States and other countries. You personally are formally
+instructed to keep in touch with XLY-371 (Alek Selden) and ZB-303
+(James Benton), and to employ every possible means to become friendly
+with the girl Tressa Norne, win her confidence, and, if possible,
+enlist her actively in the Government Service as your particular aid
+and comrade._
+
+“_It is equally important that the movements of the Oriental, called
+Sanang, be carefully observed in order to discover the identity and
+whereabouts of his companions. However, until further instructions he
+is not to be taken into custody. M. H. 2479._
+
+“_(Signed)_
+“(John Recklow.)”
+
+The long despatch from John Recklow made Cleves’s duty plain enough.
+
+For months, now, Selden and Benton had been watching Tressa Norne. And
+they had learned practically nothing about her.
+
+And now the girl had come within Cleves’s sphere of operation. She had
+been in New York for two weeks. Telegrams from Benton in Chicago, and
+from Selden in Buffalo, had prepared him for her arrival.
+
+He had his men watching her boarding-house on West Twenty-eighth
+Street, men to follow her, men to keep their eyes on her at the
+theatre, where every evening, at 10:45, her _entr’ acte_ was staged. He
+knew where to get her. But he, himself, had been on the watch for the
+man Sanang; and had failed to find the slightest trace of him in New
+York, although warned that he had arrived.
+
+So, for that evening, he left the hunt for Sanang to others, put on his
+evening clothes, and dined with fashionable friends at the Patroons’
+Club, who never for an instant suspected that young Victor Cleves was
+in the Service of the United States Government. About half-past nine he
+strolled around to the theatre, desiring to miss as much as possible of
+the popular show without being too late to see the curious little
+_entr’ acte_ in which this girl, Tressa Norne, appeared alone.
+
+He had secured an aisle seat near the stage at an outrageous price; the
+main show was still thundering and fizzing and glittering as he entered
+the theatre; so he stood in the rear behind the orchestra until the
+descending curtain extinguished the outrageous glare and din.
+
+Then he went down the aisle, and as he seated himself Tressa Norne
+stepped from the wings and stood before the lowered curtain facing an
+expectant but oddly undemonstrative audience.
+
+The girl worked rapidly, seriously, and in silence. She seemed a mere
+child there behind the footlights, not more than sixteen anyway—her
+winsome eyes and wistful lips unspoiled by the world’s wisdom.
+
+Yet once or twice the mouth drooped for a second and the winning eyes
+darkened to a remoter blue—the brooding iris hue of far horizons.
+
+She wore the characteristic tabard of stiff golden tissue and the gold
+pagoda-shaped headpiece of a Yezidee temple girl. Her flat,
+slipper-shaped foot-gear was of stiff gold, too, and curled upward at
+the toes.
+
+All this accentuated her apparent youth. For in face and throat no
+firmer contours had as yet modified the soft fullness of immaturity;
+her limbs were boyish and frail, and her bosom more undecided still, so
+that the embroidered breadth of gold fell flat and straight from her
+chest to a few inches above the ankles.
+
+She seemed to have no stock of paraphernalia with which to aid the
+performance; no assistant, no orchestral diversion, nor did she serve
+herself with any magician’s patter. She did her work close to the
+footlights.
+
+Behind her loomed a black curtain; the strip of stage in front was bare
+even of carpet; the orchestra remained mute.
+
+But when she needed anything—a little table, for example—well, it was
+suddenly there where she required it—a tripod, for instance, evidently
+fitted to hold the big iridescent bubble of glass in which swarmed
+little tropical fishes—and which arrived neatly from nowhere. She
+merely placed her hands before her as though ready to support something
+weighty which she expected and—suddenly, the huge crystal bubble was
+visible, resting between her hands. And when she tired of holding it,
+she set it upon the empty air and let go of it; and instead of crashing
+to the stage with its finny rainbow swarm of swimmers, out of thin air
+appeared a tripod to support it.
+
+Applause followed, not very enthusiastic, for the sort of audience
+which sustains the shows of which her performance was merely an _entr’
+acte_ is an audience responsive only to the obvious.
+
+Nobody ever before had seen that sort of magic in America. People
+scarcely knew whether or not they quite liked it. The lightning of
+innovation stupefies the dull; ignorance is always suspicious of
+innovation—always afraid to put itself on record until its mind is made
+up by somebody else.
+
+So in this typical New York audience approbation was cautious, but
+every fascinated eye remained focused on this young girl who continued
+to do incredible things, which seemed to resemble “putting something
+over” on them; a thing which no uneducated American conglomeration ever
+quite forgives.
+
+The girl’s silence, too, perplexed them; they were accustomed to
+gabble, to noise, to jazz, vocal and instrumental, to that incessant
+metropolitan clamour which fills every second with sound in a city
+whose only distinction is its din. Stage, press, art, letters, social
+existence unless noisy mean nothing in Gotham; reticence, leisure,
+repose are the three lost arts. The megaphone is the city’s symbol; its
+chiefest crime, silence.
+
+The girl having finished with the big glass bubble full of tiny fish,
+picked it up and tossed it aside. For a moment it apparently floated
+there in space like a soap-bubble. Changing rainbow tints waxed and
+waned on the surface, growing deeper and more gorgeous until the
+floating globe glowed scarlet, then suddenly burst into flame and
+vanished. And only a strange, sweet perfume lingered in the air.
+
+But she gave her perplexed audience no time to wonder; she had seated
+herself on the stage and was already swiftly busy unfolding a white
+veil with which she presently covered herself, draping it over her like
+a tent.
+
+The veil seemed to be translucent; she was apparently visible seated
+beneath it. But the veil turned into smoke, rising into the air in a
+thin white cloud; and there, where she had been seated, was a statue of
+white stone the image of herself!—in all the frail springtide of early
+adolescence—a white statue, cold, opaque, exquisite in its sculptured
+immobility.
+
+There came, the next moment, a sound of distant thunder; flashes
+lighted the blank curtain; and suddenly a vein of lightning and a
+sharper peal shattered the statue to fragments.
+
+There they lay, broken bits of her own sculptured body, glistening in a
+heap behind the footlights. Then each fragment began to shimmer with a
+rosy internal light of its own, until the pile of broken marble glowed
+like living coals under thickening and reddening vapours. And,
+presently, dimly perceptible, there she was in the flesh again, seated
+in the fiery centre of the conflagration, stretching her arms
+luxuriously, yawning, seemingly awakening from refreshing slumber, her
+eyes unclosing to rest with a sort of confused apology upon her
+astounded audience.
+
+As she rose to her feet nothing except herself remained on the stage—no
+débris, not a shred of smoke, not a spark.
+
+She came down, then, across an inclined plank into the orchestra among
+the audience.
+
+In the aisle seat nearest her sat Victor Cleves. His business was to be
+there that evening. But she didn’t know that, knew nothing about
+him—had never before set eyes on him.
+
+At her gesture of invitation he made a cup of both his hands. Into
+these she poured a double handful of unset diamonds—or what appeared to
+be diamonds—pressed her own hands above his for a second—and the
+diamonds in his palms had become pearls.
+
+These were passed around to people in the vicinity, and finally
+returned to Mr. Cleves, who, at her request, covered the heap of pearls
+with both his hands, hiding them entirely from view.
+
+At her nod he uncovered them. The pearls had become emeralds. Again,
+while he held them, and without even touching him, she changed them
+into rubies. Then she turned away from him, apparently forgetting that
+he still held the gems, and he sat very still, one cupped hand over the
+other, while she poured silver coins into a woman’s gloved hands,
+turned them into gold coins, then flung each coin into the air, where
+it changed to a living, fragrant rose and fell among the audience.
+
+Presently she seemed to remember Cleve, came back down the aisle, and
+under his close and intent gaze drew from his cupped hands, one by one,
+a score of brilliant little living birds, which continually flew about
+her and finally perched, twittering, on her golden headdress—a
+rainbow-crest of living jewels.
+
+As she drew the last warm, breathing little feathered miracle from
+Cleves’s hands and released it, he said rapidly under his breath: “I
+want a word with you later. Where?”
+
+She let her clear eyes rest on him for a moment, then with a shrug so
+slight that it was perceptible, perhaps, only to him, she moved on
+along the inclined way, stepped daintily over the footlights, caught
+fire, apparently, nodded to a badly rattled audience, and sauntered
+off, burning from head to foot.
+
+What applause there was became merged in a dissonant instrumental
+outburst from the orchestra; the great god Jazz resumed direction, the
+mindless audience breathed freely again as the curtain rose upon a
+familiar, yelling turbulence, including all that Gotham really
+understands and cares for—legs and noise.
+
+Victor Cleves glanced up at the stage, then continued to study the name
+of the girl on the programme. It was featured in rather pathetic
+solitude under “_Entr’ acte_.” And he read further: “During the _entr’
+acte_ Miss Tressa Norne will entertain you with several phases of Black
+Magic. This strange knowledge was acquired by Miss Norne from the
+Yezidees, among which almost unknown people still remain descendants of
+that notorious and formidable historic personage known in the twelfth
+century as The Old Man of the Mountain—or The Old Man of Mount Alamout.
+
+“The pleasant profession of this historic individual was assassination;
+and some historians now believe that genuine occult power played a part
+in his dreadful record—a record which terminated only when the infantry
+of Genghis Khan took Mount Alamout by storm and hanged the Old Man of
+the Mountain and burned his body under a boulder of You-Stone.
+
+“For Miss Norne’s performance there appears to be no plausible,
+practical or scientific explanation.
+
+“During her performance the curtain will remain lowered for fifteen
+minutes and will then rise on the last act of ‘You Betcha Life.’”
+
+The noisy show continued while Cleves, paying it scant attention,
+brooded over the programme. And ever his keen, grey eyes reverted to
+her name, Tressa Norne.
+
+Then, for a little while, he settled back and let his absent gaze
+wander over the galloping battalions of painted girls and the slapstick
+principals whose perpetual motion evoked screams of approbation from
+the audience amid the din of the great god Jazz.
+
+He had an aisle seat; he disturbed nobody when he went out and around
+to the stage door.
+
+The aged man on duty took his card, called a boy and sent it off. The
+boy returned with the card, saying that Miss Norne had already dressed
+and departed.
+
+Cleves tipped him and then tipped the doorman heavily.
+
+“Where does she live?” he asked.
+
+“Say,” said the old man, “I dunno, and that’s straight. But them ladies
+mostly goes up to the roof for a look in at the ‘Moonlight Masque’ and
+a dance afterward. Was you ever up there?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Seen the new show?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Well, g’wan up while you can get a table. And I bet the little girl
+will be somewheres around.”
+
+“The little girl” _was_ “somewheres around.” He secured a table, turned
+and looked about at the vast cabaret into which only a few people had
+yet filtered, and saw her at a distance in the carpeted corridor buying
+violets from one of the flower-girls.
+
+A waiter placed a reserve card on his table; he continued on around the
+outer edge of the auditorium.
+
+Miss Norne had already seated herself at a small table in the rear, and
+a waiter was serving her with iced orange juice and little French
+cakes.
+
+When the waiter returned Cleves went up and took off his hat.
+
+“May I talk with you for a moment, Miss Norne?” he said.
+
+The girl looked up, the wheat-straw still between her scarlet lips.
+Then, apparently recognising in him the young man in the audience who
+had spoken to her, she resumed her business of imbibing orange juice.
+
+The girl seemed even frailer and younger in her hat and street gown. A
+silver-fox stole hung from her shoulders; a gold bag lay on the table
+under the bunch of violets.
+
+She paid no attention whatever to him. Presently her wheat-straw
+buckled, and she selected a better one.
+
+He said: “There’s something rather serious I’d like to speak to you
+about if you’ll let me. I’m not the sort you evidently suppose. I’m not
+trying to annoy you.”
+
+At that she looked around and upward once more.
+
+Very, very young, but already spoiled, he thought, for the dark-blue
+eyes were coolly appraising him, and the droop of the mouth had become
+almost sullen. Besides, traces of paint still remained to incarnadine
+lip and cheek and there was a hint of hardness in the youthful
+plumpness of the features.
+
+“Are you a professional?” she asked without curiosity.
+
+“A theatrical man? No.”
+
+“Then if you haven’t anything to offer me, what is it you wish?”
+
+“I have a job to offer if you care for it and if you are up to it,” he
+said.
+
+Her eyes became slightly hostile:
+
+“What kind of job do you mean?”
+
+“I want to learn something about you first. Will you come over to my
+table and talk it over?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“What sort do you suppose me to be?” he inquired, amused.
+
+“The usual sort, I suppose.”
+
+“You mean a Johnny?”
+
+“Yes—of sorts.”
+
+She let her insolent eyes sweep him once more, from head to foot.
+
+He was a well-built young man and in his evening dress he had that
+something about him which placed him very definitely where he really
+belonged.
+
+“Would you mind looking at my card?” he asked.
+
+He drew it out and laid it beside her, and without stirring she scanned
+it sideways.
+
+“That’s my name and address,” he continued. “I’m not contemplating
+mischief. I’ve enough excitement in life without seeking adventure.
+Besides, I’m not the sort who goes about annoying women.”
+
+She glanced up at him again:
+
+“You are annoying me!”
+
+“I’m sorry. I was quite honest. Good-night.”
+
+He took his _congé_ with unhurried amiability; had already turned away
+when she said:
+
+“Please ... what do you desire to say to me?” He came back to her
+table:
+
+“I couldn’t tell you until I know a little more about you.”
+
+“What—do you wish to know?”
+
+“Several things. I could scarcely ask you—go over such matters with
+you—standing here.”
+
+There was a pause; the girl juggled with the straw on the table for a
+few moments, then, partly turning, she summoned a waiter, paid him,
+adjusted her stole, picked up her gold bag and her violets and stood
+up. Then she turned to Cleves and gave him a direct look, which had in
+it the impersonal and searching gaze of a child.
+
+When they were seated at the table reserved for him the place already
+was filling rapidly—backwash from the theatres slopped through every
+aisle—people not yet surfeited with noise, not yet sufficiently sodden
+by their worship of the great god Jazz.
+
+“Jazz,” said Cleves, glancing across his dinner-card at Tressa
+Norne—“what’s the meaning of the word? Do you happen to know?”
+
+“Doesn’t it come from the French ‘_jaser_’?”
+
+He smiled. “Possibly. I’m rather hungry. Are you?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Will you indicate your preferences?”
+
+She studied her card, and presently he gave the order.
+
+“I’d like some champagne,” she said, “unless you think it’s too
+expensive.”
+
+He smiled at that, too, and gave the order.
+
+“I didn’t suggest any wine because you seem so young,” he said.
+
+“How old do I seem?”
+
+“Sixteen perhaps.”
+
+“I am twenty-one.”
+
+“Then you’ve had no troubles.”
+
+“I don’t know what you call trouble,” she remarked, indifferently,
+watching the arriving throngs.
+
+The orchestra, too, had taken its place.
+
+“Well,” she said, “now that you’ve picked me up, what do you really
+want of me?” There was no mitigating smile to soften what she said. She
+dropped her elbows on the table, rested her chin between her palms and
+looked at him with the same searching, undisturbed expression that is
+so disconcerting in children. As he made no reply: “May I have a
+cocktail?” she inquired.
+
+He gave the order. And his mind registered pessimism. “There is nothing
+doing with this girl,” he thought. “She’s already on the toboggan.” But
+he said aloud: “That was beautiful work you did down in the theatre,
+Miss Norne.”
+
+“Did you think so?”
+
+“Of course. It was astounding work.”
+
+“Thank you. But managers and audiences differ with you.”
+
+“Then they are very stupid,” he said.
+
+“Possibly. But that does not help me pay my board.”
+
+“Do you mean you have trouble in securing theatrical engagements?”
+
+“Yes, I am through here to-night, and there’s nothing else in view, so
+far.”
+
+“That’s incredible!” he exclaimed.
+
+She lifted her glass, slowly drained it.
+
+For a few moments she caressed the stem of the empty glass, her gaze
+remote.
+
+“Yes, it’s that way,” she said. “From the beginning I felt that my
+audiences were not in sympathy with me. Sometimes it even amounts to
+hostility. Americans do not like what I do, even if it holds their
+attention. I don’t quite understand why they don’t like it, but I’m
+always conscious they don’t. And of course that settles it—to-night has
+settled the whole thing, once and for all.”
+
+“What are you going to do?”
+
+“What others do, I presume.”
+
+“What do others do?” he inquired, watching the lovely sullen eyes.
+
+“Oh, they do what I’m doing now, don’t they?—let some man pick them up
+and feed them.” She lifted her indifferent eyes. “I’m not criticising
+you. I meant to do it some day—when I had courage. That’s why I just
+asked you if I might have some champagne—finding myself a little scared
+at my first step.... But you _did_ say you might have a job for me.
+Didn’t you?”
+
+“Suppose I haven’t. What are you going to do?”
+
+The curtain was rising. She nodded toward the bespangled chorus.
+“Probably that sort of thing. They’ve asked me.”
+
+Supper was served. They both were hungry and thirsty; the music made
+conversation difficult, so they supped in silence and watched the
+imbecile show conceived by vulgarians, produced by vulgarians and
+served up to mental degenerates of the same species—the average
+metropolitan audience.
+
+For ten minutes a pair of comedians fell up and down a flight of steps,
+and the audience shrieked approval.
+
+“Miss Norne?”
+
+The girl who had been watching the show turned in her chair and looked
+back at him.
+
+“Your magic is by far the most wonderful I have ever seen or heard of.
+Even in India such things are not done.”
+
+“No, not in India,” she said, indifferently.
+
+“Where then?”
+
+“In China.”
+
+“You learned to do such things there?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Where, in China, did you learn such amazing magic?”
+
+“In Yian.”
+
+“I never heard of it. Is it a province?”
+
+“A city.”
+
+“And you lived there?”
+
+“Fourteen years.”
+
+“When?”
+
+“From 1904 to 1918.”
+
+“During the great war,” he remarked, “you were in China?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Then you arrived here very recently.”
+
+“In November, from the Coast.”
+
+“I see. You played the theatres from the Coast eastward.”
+
+“And went to pieces in New York,” she added calmly, finishing her glass
+of champagne.
+
+“Have you any family?” he asked.
+
+“No.”
+
+“Do you care to say anything further?” he inquired, pleasantly.
+
+“About my family? Yes, if you wish. My father was in the spice trade in
+Yian. The Yezidees took Yian in 1910, threw him into a well in his own
+compound and filled it up with dead imperial troops. I was thirteen
+years old.... The Hassani did that. They held Yian nearly eight years,
+and I lived with my mother, in a garden pagoda, until 1914. In January
+of that year Germans got through from Kiaou-Chou. They had been six
+months on the way. I think they were Hassanis. Anyway, they persuaded
+the Hassanis to massacre every English-speaking prisoner. And so—my
+mother died in the garden pagoda of Yian.... I was not told for four
+years.”
+
+“Why did they spare you?” he asked, astonished at her story so quietly
+told, so utterly destitute of emotion.
+
+“I was seventeen. A certain person had placed me among the temple girls
+in the temple of Erlik. It pleased this person to make of me a Mongol
+temple girl as a mockery at Christ. They gave me the name Keuke Mongol.
+I asked to serve the shrine of Kwann-an—she being like to our Madonna.
+But this person gave me the choice between the halberds of the
+Tchortchas and the sorcery of Erlik.”
+
+She lifted her sombre eyes. “So I learned how to do the things you saw.
+But—what I did there on the stage is not—respectable.”
+
+An odd shiver passed over him. For a second he took her literally,
+suddenly convinced that her magic was not white but black as the demon
+at whose shrine she had learned it. Then he smiled and asked her
+pleasantly, whether indeed she employed hypnosis in her miraculous
+exhibitions.
+
+But her eyes became more sombre still, and, “I don’t care to talk about
+it,” she said. “I have already said too much.”
+
+“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry into professional secrets——”
+
+“I can’t talk about it,” she repeated. “... Please—my glass is quite
+empty.”
+
+When he had refilled it:
+
+“How did you get away from Yian?” he asked.
+
+“The Japanese.”
+
+“What luck!”
+
+“Yes. One battle was fought at Buldak. The Hassanis and Blue Flags were
+terribly cut up. Then, outside the walls of Yian, Prince Sanang’s
+Tchortcha infantry made a stand. He was there with his Yezidee
+horsemen, all in leather and silk armour with casques and corselets of
+black Indian steel.
+
+“I could see them from the temple—saw the Japanese gunners open fire.
+The Tchortchas were blown to shreds in the blast of the Japanese
+guns.... Sanang got away with some of his Yezidee horsemen.”
+
+“Where was that battle?”
+
+“I told you, outside the walls of Yian.”
+
+“The newspapers never mentioned any such trouble in China,” he said,
+suspiciously.
+
+“Nobody knows about it except the Germans and the Japanese.”
+
+“Who is this Sanang?” he demanded.
+
+“A Yezidee-Mongol. He is one of the Sheiks-el-Djebel—a servant of The
+Old Man of Mount Alamout.”
+
+“What is _he_?”
+
+“A sorcerer—assassin.”
+
+“What!” exclaimed Cleves incredulously.
+
+“Why, yes,” she said, calmly. “Have you never heard of The Old Man of
+Mount Alamout?”
+
+“Well, yes——”
+
+“The succession has been unbroken since 1090 B.C.A Hassan Sabbah is
+still the present Old Man of the Mountain. His Yezidees worship Erlik.
+They are sorcerers. But you would not believe that.”
+
+Cleves said with a smile, “Who is Erlik?”
+
+“The Mongols’ Satan.”
+
+“Oh! So these Yezidees are devil-worshipers!”
+
+“They are more. They _are_ actually devils.”
+
+“You don’t really believe that even in unexplored China there exists
+such a creature as a real sorcerer, do you?” he inquired, smilingly.
+
+“I don’t wish to talk of it.”
+
+To his surprise her face had flushed, and he thought her sensitive
+mouth quivered a little.
+
+He watched her in silence for a moment; then, leaning a little way
+across the table:
+
+“Where are you going when the show here closes?”
+
+“To my boarding-house.”
+
+“And then?”
+
+“To bed,” she said, sullenly.
+
+“And to-morrow what do you mean to do?”
+
+“Go out to the agencies and ask for work.”
+
+“And if there is none?”
+
+“The chorus,” she said, indifferently.
+
+“What salary have you been getting?”
+
+She told him.
+
+“Will you take three times that amount and work with me?”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+BODY AND SOUL
+
+
+The girl’s direct gaze met his with that merciless searching intentness
+he already knew.
+
+“What do you wish me to do?”
+
+“Enter the service of the United States.”
+
+“Wh-what?”
+
+“Work for the Government.”
+
+She was too taken aback to answer.
+
+“Where were you born?” he demanded abruptly.
+
+“In Albany, New York,” she replied in a dazed way.
+
+“You are loyal to your country?”
+
+“Yes—certainly.”
+
+“You would not betray her?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“I don’t mean for money; I mean from fear.”
+
+After a moment, and, avoiding his gaze: “I am afraid of death,” she
+said very simply.
+
+He waited.
+
+“I—I don’t know what I might do—being afraid,” she added in a troubled
+voice. “I desire to—live.”
+
+He still waited.
+
+She lifted her eyes: “I’d try not to betray my country,” she murmured.
+
+“Try to face death for your country’s honour?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“And for your own?”
+
+“Yes; and for my own.”
+
+He leaned nearer: “Yet you’re taking a chance on your own honour
+to-night.”
+
+She blushed brightly: “I didn’t think I was taking a very great chance
+with you.”
+
+He said: “You have found life too hard. And when you faced failure in
+New York you began to let go of life—real life, I mean. And you came up
+here to-night wondering whether you had courage to let yourself go.
+When I spoke to you it scared you. You found you hadn’t the courage.
+But perhaps to-morrow you might find it—or next week—if sufficiently
+scared by hunger—you might venture to take the first step along the
+path that you say others usually take sooner or later.”
+
+The girl flushed scarlet, sat looking at him out of eyes grown dark
+with anger.
+
+He said: “You told me an untruth. You _have_ been tempted to betray
+your country. You have resisted. You _have_ been threatened with death.
+You _have_ had courage to defy threats and temptations where your
+country’s honour was concerned!”
+
+“How do you know?” she demanded.
+
+He continued, ignoring the question: “From the time you landed in San
+Francisco you have been threatened. You tried to earn a living by your
+magician’s tricks, but in city after city, as you came East, your
+uneasiness grew into fear, and your fear into terror, because every day
+more terribly confirmed your belief that people were following you
+determined either to use you to their own purposes or to murder you——”
+
+The girl turned quite white and half rose in her chair, then sank back,
+staring at him out of dilated eyes. Then Cleves smiled: “So you’ve got
+the nerve to do Government work,” he said, “and you’ve got the
+intelligence, and the knowledge, and something else—I don’t know
+exactly what to call it—Skill? Dexterity? Sorcery?” he smiled—“I mean
+your professional ability. That’s what I want—that bewildering
+dexterity of yours, to help your own country in the fight of its life.
+Will you enlist for service?”
+
+“W-what fight?” she asked faintly.
+
+“The fight with the Red Spectre.”
+
+“Anarchy?”
+
+“Yes.... Are you ready to leave this place? I want to talk to you.”
+
+“Where?”
+
+“In my own rooms.”
+
+After a moment she rose.
+
+“I’ll go to your rooms with you,” she said. She added very calmly that
+she was glad it was to be his rooms and not some other man’s.
+
+Out of countenance, he demanded what she meant, and she said quite
+candidly that she’d made up her mind to live at any cost, and that if
+she couldn’t make an honest living she’d make a living anyway.
+
+He offered no reply to this until they had reached the street and he
+had called a taxi.
+
+On their way to his apartment he re-opened the subject rather bluntly,
+remarking that life was not worth living at the price she had
+mentioned.
+
+“That is the accepted Christian theory,” she replied coolly, “but
+circumstances alter things.”
+
+“Not such things.”
+
+“Oh, yes, they do. If one is already damned, what difference does
+anything else make?”
+
+He asked, sarcastically, whether she considered herself already damned.
+
+She did not reply for a few moments, then she said, in a quick,
+breathless way, that souls have been entrapped through ignorance of
+evil. And asked him if he did not believe it.
+
+“No,” he said, “I don’t.”
+
+She shook her head. “You couldn’t understand,” she said. “But I’ve made
+up my mind to one thing; even if my soul has perished, my body shall
+not die for a long, long time. I mean to live,” she added. “I shall not
+let my body be slain! They shall not steal life from me, whatever they
+have done to my soul——”
+
+“What in heaven’s name are you talking about?” he exclaimed. “Do you
+actually believe in soul-snatchers and life-stealers?”
+
+She seemed sullen, her profile turned to him, her eyes on the
+brilliantly lighted avenue up which they were speeding. After a while:
+“I’d rather live decently and respectably if I can,” she said. “That is
+the natural desire of any girl, I suppose. But if I can’t, nevertheless
+I shall beat off death at any cost. And whatever the price of life is,
+I shall pay it. Because I am absolutely determined to go on living. And
+if I can’t provide the means I’ll have to let some man do it, I
+suppose.”
+
+“It’s a good thing it was I who found you when you were out of a job,”
+he remarked coldly.
+
+“I hope so,” she said. “Even in the beginning I didn’t really believe
+you meant to be impertinent”—a tragic smile touched her lips—“and I was
+almost sorry——”
+
+“Are you quite crazy?” he demanded.
+
+“No, my mind is untouched. It’s my soul that’s gone.... Do you know I
+was very hungry when you spoke to me? The management wouldn’t advance
+anything, and my last money went for my room.... Last Monday I had
+three dollars to face the future—and no job. I spent the last of it
+to-night on violets, orange juice and cakes. My furs and my gold bag
+remain. I can go two months more on them. Then it’s a job or——.” She
+shrugged and buried her nose in her violets.
+
+“Suppose I advance you a month’s salary?” he said.
+
+“What am I to do for it?”
+
+The taxi stopped at a florist’s on the corner of Madison Avenue and
+58th Street. Overhead were apartments. There was no elevator—merely the
+street door to unlock and four dim flights of stairs rising steeply to
+the top.
+
+He lived on the top floor. As they paused before his door in the dim
+corridor:
+
+“Are you afraid?” he asked.
+
+She came nearer, laid a hand on his arm:
+
+“Are _you_ afraid?”
+
+He stood silent, the latch-key in his hand.
+
+“I’m not afraid of myself—if that is what you mean,” he said.
+
+“That is partly what I mean ... you’ll have to mount guard over your
+soul.”
+
+“I’ll look out for my soul,” he retorted dryly.
+
+“Do so. I lost mine. I—I would not wish any harm to yours through our
+companionship.”
+
+“Don’t you worry about my soul,” he remarked, fitting the key to the
+lock. But again her hand fell on his wrist:
+
+“Wait. I can’t—can’t help warning you. Neither your soul nor your body
+are safe if—if you ever do make of me a companion. I’ve _got_ to tell
+you this!”
+
+“What are you talking about?” he demanded bluntly.
+
+“Because you have been courteous—considerate—and you _don’t_ know—oh,
+you don’t realise what spiritual peril is!—What your soul and body have
+to fear if you—if you win me over—if you ever manage to make of me a
+friend!”
+
+He said: “People follow and threaten you. We know that. I understand
+also that association with you involves me, and that I shall no doubt
+be menaced with bodily harm.”
+
+He laid his hand on hers where it still rested on his sleeves:
+
+“But that’s my business, Miss Norne,” he added with a smile. “So,
+otherwise, it being merely a plain business affair between you and me,
+I think I may also venture my immortal soul alone with you in my room.”
+
+The girl flushed darkly.
+
+“You have misunderstood,” she said.
+
+He looked at her coolly, intently; and arrived at no conclusion. Young,
+very lovely, confessedly without moral principle, he still could not
+believe her actually depraved. “What did you mean?” he said bluntly.
+
+“In companionship with the lost, one might lose one’s way—unawares....
+Do you know that there is an Evil loose in the world which is bent upon
+conquest by _obtaining control of men’s minds_?”
+
+“No,” he replied, amused.
+
+“And that, through the capture of men’s minds and souls the destruction
+of civilisation is being planned?”
+
+“Is that what you learned in your captivity, Miss Norne?”
+
+“You do not believe me.”
+
+“I believe your terrible experiences in China have shaken you to your
+tragic little soul. Horror and grief and loneliness have left scars on
+tender, impressionable youth. They would have slain maturity—broken it,
+crushed it. But youth is flexible, pliable, and bends—gives way under
+pressure. Scars become slowly effaced. It shall be so with you. You
+will learn to understand that nothing really can harm the soul.”
+
+For a few moments’ silence they stood facing each other on the dim
+landing outside his locked door.
+
+“Nothing can slay our souls,” he repeated in a grave voice. “I do not
+believe you really ever have done anything to wound even your
+self-respect. I do not believe you are capable of it, or ever have
+been, or ever will be. But somebody has deeply wounded you,
+spiritually, and has wounded your mind to persuade you that your soul
+is no longer in God’s keeping. For that is a lie!”
+
+He saw her features working with poignant emotions as though struggling
+to believe him.
+
+“Souls are never lost,” he said. “Ungoverned passions of every sort
+merely cripple them for a space. God always heals them in the end.”
+
+He laid his hand on the door-knob once more and lifted the latch-key.
+
+“Don’t!” she whispered, catching his hand again, “if there should be
+somebody in there waiting for us!”
+
+“There is not a soul in my rooms. My servant sleeps out.”
+
+“There _is_ somebody there!” she said, trembling.
+
+“Nobody, Miss Norne. Will you come in with me?”
+
+“I don’t dare——”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“You and I alone together—no! oh, please—please! I am afraid!”
+
+“Of what?”
+
+“Of—giving you—my c-confidence—and trust—and—and f-friendship.”
+
+“I want you to.”
+
+“I must not! It would destroy us both, soul and body!”
+
+“I tell you,” he said, impatiently, “that there is no destruction of
+the soul—and it’s a clean comradeship anyway—a fighting friendship I
+ask of you—_all_ I ask; all I offer! Wherein, then, lies this peril in
+being alone together?”
+
+“Because I am finding it in my heart to believe in you, trust you, hold
+fast to your strength and protection. And if I give way—yield—and if I
+make you a promise—and _if there is anybody in that room to see us and
+hear us—then_ we shall be destroyed, both of us, soul and body——”
+
+He took her hands, held them until their trembling ceased.
+
+“I’ll answer for our bodies. Let God look after the rest. Will you
+trust Him?”
+
+She nodded.
+
+“And me?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+But her face blanched as he turned the latch-key, switched on the
+electric light, and preceded her into the room beyond.
+
+The place was one of those accentless, typical bachelor apartments made
+comfortable for anything masculine, but quite unlivable otherwise.
+
+Live coals still glowed in the hob grate; he placed a lump of cannel
+coal on the embers, used a bellows vigorously and the flame caught with
+a greasy crackle.
+
+The girl stood motionless until he pulled up an easy chair for her,
+then he found another for himself. She let slip her furs, folded her
+hands around the bunch of violets and waited.
+
+“Now,” he said, “I’ll come to the point. In 1916 I was at Plattsburg,
+expecting a commission. The Department of Justice sent for me. I went
+to Washington where I was made to understand that I had been selected
+to serve my country in what is vaguely known as the Secret Service—and
+which includes government agents attached to several departments.
+
+“The great war is over; but I am still retained in the service. Because
+something more sinister than a hun victory over civilisation threatens
+this Republic. And threatens the civilised world.”
+
+“Anarchy,” she said.
+
+“Bolshevism.”
+
+She did not stir in her chair.
+
+She had become very white. She said nothing. He looked at her with his
+quiet, reassuring smile.
+
+“That’s what I want of you,” he repeated.
+
+“I want your help,” he went on, “I want your valuable knowledge of the
+Orient. I want whatever secret information you possess. I want your
+rather amazing gifts, your unprecedented experience among almost
+unknown people, your familiarity with occult things, your astounding
+powers—whatever they are—hypnotic, psychic, material.
+
+“Because, to-day, civilisation is engaged in a secret battle for
+existence against gathering powers of violence, the force and limit of
+which are still unguessed.
+
+“It is a battle between righteousness and evil, between sanity and
+insanity, light and darkness, God and Satan! And if civilisation does
+not win, then the world perishes.”
+
+She raised her still eyes to his, but made no other movement.
+
+“Miss Norne,” he said, “we in the International Service know enough
+about you to desire to know more.
+
+“We already knew the story you have told to me. Agents in the
+International Secret Service kept in touch with you from the time that
+the Japanese escorted you out of China.
+
+“From the day you landed, and all across the Continent to New York, you
+have been kept in view by agents of this government.
+
+“Here, in New York, my men have kept in touch with you. And now,
+to-night, the moment has come for a personal understanding between you
+and me.”
+
+The girl’s pale lips moved—became stiffly articulate: “I—I wish to
+live,” she stammered, “I fear death.”
+
+“I know it. I know what I ask when I ask your help.”
+
+She said in the ghost of a voice: “If I turn against _them_—they will
+kill me.”
+
+“They’ll try,” he said quietly.
+
+“They will not fail, Mr. Cleves.”
+
+“That is in God’s hands.”
+
+She became deathly white at that.
+
+“No,” she burst out in an agonised voice, “it is not in God’s hands! If
+it were, I should not be afraid! It is in the hands of those who stole
+my soul!”
+
+She covered her face with both arms, fairly writhing on her chair.
+
+“If the Yezidees have actually made you believe any such nonsense”—he
+began; but she dropped her arms and stared at him out of terrible blue
+eyes:
+
+“I don’t want to die, I tell you! I am afraid!—_afraid_! If I reveal to
+you what I know they’ll kill me. If I turn against them and aid you,
+they’ll slay my body, and send it after my soul!”
+
+She was trembling so violently that he sprang up and went to her. After
+a moment he passed one arm around her shoulders and held her firmly,
+close to him.
+
+“Come,” he said, “do your duty. Those who enlist under the banner of
+Christ have nothing to dread in this world or the next.”
+
+“If—if I could believe I were safe there.”
+
+“I tell you that you are. So is every human soul! What mad nonsense
+have the Yezidees made you believe? Is there any surer salvation for
+the soul than to die in Christ’s service?”
+
+He slipped his arm from her quivering shoulders and grasped both her
+hands, crushing them as though to steady every fibre in her tortured
+body.
+
+“I want you to live. I want to live, too. But I tell you it’s in God’s
+hands, and we soldiers of civilisation have nothing to fear except
+failure to do our duty. Now, then, are we comrades under the United
+States Government?”
+
+“O God—I—dare not!”
+
+“_Are_ we?”
+
+Perhaps she felt the physical pain of his crushing grip for she turned
+and looked him in the eyes.
+
+“I don’t want to die,” she whispered. “Don’t make me!”
+
+“Will you help your country?”
+
+The terrible directness of her child’s gaze became almost unendurable
+to him.
+
+“Will you offer your country your soul and body?” he insisted in a low,
+tense voice.
+
+Her stiff lips formed a word.
+
+“Yes!” he exclaimed.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+For a moment she rested against his shoulder, deathly white, then in a
+flash she had straightened, was on her feet in one bound and so swiftly
+that he scarcely followed her movement—was unaware that she had risen
+until he saw her standing there with a pistol glittering in her hand,
+her eyes fixed on the portières that hung across the corridor leading
+to his bedroom.
+
+“What on earth,” he began, but she interrupted him, keeping her gaze
+focused on the curtains, and the pistol resting level on her hip.
+
+“I’ll answer you if I die for it!” she cried. “I’ll tell you everything
+I know! You wish to learn what is this monstrous evil that threatens
+the world with destruction—what you call anarchy and Bolshevism? It is
+an Evil that was born before Christ came! It is an Evil which not only
+destroys cities and empires and men but which is more terrible still
+for it obtains control of the human mind, and uses it at will; and it
+obtains sovereignty over the soul, and makes it prisoner. Its aim is to
+dominate first, then to destroy. It was conceived in the beginning by
+Erlik and by Sorcerers and devils.... Always, from the first, there
+have been sorcerers and living devils.
+
+“And when human history began to be remembered and chronicled, devils
+were living who worshiped Erlik and practised sorcery.
+
+“They have been called by many names. A thousand years before Christ
+Hassan Sabbah founded his sect called Hassanis or Assassins. The
+Yezidees are of them. Their Chief is still called Sabbah; their creed
+is the annihilation of civilisation!”
+
+Cleves had risen. The girl spoke in a clear, accentless monotone, not
+looking at him, her eyes and pistol centred on the motionless curtains.
+
+“Look out!” she cried sharply.
+
+“What is the matter?” he demanded. “Do you suppose anybody is hidden
+behind that curtain in the passageway?”
+
+“If there is,” she replied in her excited but distinct voice, “here is
+a tale to entertain him:
+
+“The Hassanis are a sect of assassins which has spread out of Asia all
+over the world, and they are determined upon the annihilation of
+everything and everybody in it except themselves!
+
+“In Germany is a branch of the sect. The hun is the lineal descendant
+of the ancient Yezidee; the gods of the hun are the old demons under
+other names; the desire and object of the hun is the same desire—to
+rule the minds and bodies and souls of men and use them to their own
+purposes!”
+
+She lifted her pistol a little, came a pace forward:
+
+“Anarchist, Yezidee, Hassani, Boche, Bolshevik—all are the same—all are
+secretly swarming in the hidden places for the same purpose!”
+
+The girl’s blue eyes were aflame, now, and the pistol was lifting
+slowly in her hand to a deadly level.
+
+“Sanang!” she cried in a terrible voice.
+
+“Sanang!” she cried again in her terrifying young voice—“Toad! Tortoise
+egg! Spittle of Erlik! May the Thirty Thousand Calamities overtake you!
+Sheik-el-Djebel!—cowardly Khan whom I laughed at from the temple when
+it rained yellow snakes on the marble steps when all the gongs in Yian
+sounded in your frightened ears!”
+
+She waited.
+
+“What! You won’t step out? _Tokhta!_” she exclaimed in a ringing tone,
+and made a swift motion with her left hand. Apparently out of her empty
+open palm, like a missile hurled, a thin, blinding beam of light struck
+the curtains, making them suddenly transparent.
+
+_A man stood there._
+
+He came out, moving very slowly as though partly stupefied. He wore
+evening dress under his overcoat, and had a long knife in his right
+hand.
+
+Nobody spoke.
+
+“So—I really was to die then, if I came here,” said the girl in a
+wondering way.
+
+Sanang’s stealthy gaze rested on her, stole toward Cleves. He moistened
+his lips with his tongue. “You deliver me to this government agent?” he
+asked hoarsely.
+
+“I deliver nobody by treachery. You may go, Sanang.”
+
+He hesitated, a graceful, faultless, metropolitan figure in top-hat and
+evening attire. Then, as he started to move, Cleves covered him with
+his weapon.
+
+“I can’t let that man go free!” cried Cleves angrily.
+
+“Very well!” she retorted in a passionate voice—“then take him if you
+are able! _Tokhta!_ Look out for yourself!”
+
+Something swift as lightning struck the pistol from his grasp,—blinded
+him, half stunned him, set him reeling in a drenching blaze of light
+that blotted out all else.
+
+He heard the door slam; he stumbled, caught at the back of a chair
+while his senses and sight were clearing.
+
+“By heavens!” he whispered with ashen lips, “you—you _are_ a
+sorceress—or something. What—what, are you doing to me?”
+
+There was no answer. And when his vision cleared a little more he saw
+her crouched on the floor, her head against the locked door, listening,
+perhaps—or sobbing—he scarcely understood which until the quiver of her
+shoulders made it plainer.
+
+When at last Cleves went to her and bent over and touched her she
+looked up at him out of wet eyes, and her grief-drawn mouth quivered.
+
+“I—I don’t know,” she sobbed, “if he truly stole away my
+soul—there—there in the temple dusk of Yian. But he—he stole my
+heart—for all his wickedness—Sanang, Prince of the Yezidees—and I have
+been fighting him for it all these years—all these long years—fighting
+for what he stole in the temple dusk!... And now—now I have it back—my
+heart—all broken to pieces—here on the floor behind your—your bolted
+door.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+THE ASSASSINS
+
+
+On the wall hung a map of Mongolia, that indefinite region a million
+and a half square miles in area, vast sections of which have never been
+explored.
+
+Turkestan and China border it on the south, and Tibet almost touches
+it, not quite.
+
+Even in the twelfth century, when the wild Mongols broke loose and
+nearly overran the world, the Tibet infantry under Genghis, the
+Tchortcha horsemen drafted out of Black China, and a great cloud of
+Mongol cavalry under the Prince of the Vanguard commanding half a
+hundred Hezars, never penetrated that grisly and unknown waste. The
+“Eight Towers of the Assassins” guarded it—still guard it, possibly.
+
+The vice-regent of Erlik, Prince of Darkness, dwelt within this unknown
+land. And dwells there still, perhaps.
+
+In front of this wall-map stood Tressa Norne.
+
+Behind her, facing the map, four men were seated—three of them under
+thirty.
+
+These three were volunteers in the service of the United States
+Government—men of independent means, of position, who had volunteered
+for military duty at the outbreak of the great war. However, they had
+been assigned by the Government to a very different sort of duty no
+less exciting than service on the fighting line, but far less
+conspicuous, for they had been drafted into the United States
+Department of Justice.
+
+The names of these three were Victor Cleves, a professor of ornithology
+at Harvard University before the war; Alexander Selden, junior partner
+in the banking firm of Milwyn, Selden, and Co., and James Benton, a New
+York architect.
+
+The fourth man’s name was John Recklow. He might have been over fifty,
+or under. He was well-built, in a square, athletic way, clear-skinned
+and ruddy, grey-eyed, quiet in voice and manner. His hair and moustache
+had turned silvery. He had been employed by the Government for many
+years. He seemed to be enormously interested in what Miss Norne was
+saying.
+
+Also he was the only man who interrupted her narrative to ask
+questions. And his questions revealed a knowledge which was making the
+girl more sensitive and uneasy every moment.
+
+Finally, when she spoke of the Scarlet Desert, he asked if the Scarlet
+Lake were there and if the Xin was still supposed to inhabit its
+vermilion depths. And at that she turned and looked at him, her
+forefinger still resting on the map.
+
+“Where have you ever heard of the Scarlet Lake and the Xin?” she asked
+as though frightened.
+
+Recklow said quietly that as a boy he had served under Gordon and Sir
+Robert.
+
+“If, as a boy, you served under Chinese Gordon, you already know much
+of what I have told you, Mr. Recklow. Is it not true?” she demanded
+nervously.
+
+“That makes no difference,” he replied with a smile. “It is all very
+new to these three young gentlemen. And as for myself, I am checking up
+what you say and comparing it with what I heard many, many years ago
+when my comrade Barres and I were in Yian.”
+
+“Did you really know Sir Robert Hart?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Then why do you not explain to these gentlemen?”
+
+“Dear child,” he interrupted gently, “what did Chinese Gordon or Sir
+Robert Hart, or even my comrade Barres, or I myself know about occult
+Asia in comparison to what you know?—a girl who has actually served the
+mysteries of Erlik for four amazing years!”
+
+She paled a trifle, came slowly across the room to where Recklow was
+seated, laid a timid hand on his sleeve.
+
+“Do you believe there are sorcerers in Asia?” she asked with that
+child-like directness which her wonderful blue eyes corroborated.
+
+Recklow remained silent.
+
+“Because,” she went on, “if, in your heart, you do not believe this to
+be an accursed fact, then what I have to say will mean nothing to any
+of you.”
+
+Recklow touched his short, silvery moustache, hesitating. Then:
+
+“The worship of Erlik is devil worship,” he said. “Also I am entirely
+prepared to believe that there are, among the Yezidees, adepts who
+employ scientific weapons against civilisation—who have probably
+obtained a rather terrifying knowledge of psychic laws which they use
+scientifically, and which to ordinary, God-fearing folk appear to be
+the black magic of sorcerers.”
+
+Cleves said: “The employment by the huns of poison gases and long-range
+cannon is a parallel case. Before the war we could not believe in the
+possibility of a cannon that threw shells a distance of seventy miles.”
+
+The girl still addressed herself to Recklow: “Then you do not believe
+there are real sorcerers in Asia, Mr. Recklow?”
+
+“Not sorcerers with supernatural powers for evil. Only degenerate human
+beings who, somehow, have managed to tap invisible psychic currents,
+and have learned how to use terrific forces about which, so far, we
+know practically nothing.”
+
+She spoke again in the same uneasy voice: “Then you do not believe that
+either God or Satan is involved?”
+
+“No,” he replied smilingly, “and you must not so believe.”
+
+“Nor the—the destruction of human souls,” she persisted; “you do not
+believe it is being accomplished to-day?”
+
+“Not in the slightest, dear young lady,” he said cheerfully.
+
+“Do you not believe that to have been instructed in such unlawful
+knowledge is damning? Do you not believe that ability to employ unknown
+forces is forbidden of God, and that to disobey His law means death to
+the soul?”
+
+“No!”
+
+“That it is the price one pays to Satan for occult power over people’s
+minds?” she insisted.
+
+“Hypnotic suggestion is not one of the cardinal sins,” explained
+Recklow, still smiling—“unless wickedly employed. The Yezidee
+priesthood is a band of so-called sorcerers only because of their
+wicked employment of whatever hypnotic and psychic knowledge they may
+have obtained.
+
+“There was nothing intrinsically wicked in the huns’ discovery of
+phosgene. But the use they made of it made devils out of them. My
+ability to manufacture phosgene gas is no crime. But if I manufacture
+it and use it to poison innocent human beings, then, in that sense, I
+am, perhaps, a sort of modern sorcerer.”
+
+Tressa Norne turned paler:
+
+“I had better tell you that I _have_ used—forbidden knowledge—which the
+Yezidees taught me in the temple of Erlik.”
+
+“Used it how?” demanded Cleves.
+
+“To—to earn a living.... And once or twice to defend myself.”
+
+There was the slightest scepticism in Recklow’s bland smile. “You did
+quite right, Miss Norne.”
+
+She had become very white now. She stood beside Recklow, her back
+toward the suspended map, and looked in a scared sort of way from one
+to the other of the men seated before her, turning finally to Cleves,
+and coming toward him.
+
+“I—I once killed a man,” she said with a catch in her breath.
+
+Cleves reddened with astonishment. “Why did you do that?” he asked.
+
+“He was already on his way to kill me in bed.”
+
+“You were perfectly right,” remarked Recklow coolly.
+
+“I don’t know ... I was in bed.... And then, on the edge of sleep, I
+felt his mind groping to get hold of mine—feeling about in the darkness
+to get hold of my brain and seize it and paralyse it.”
+
+All colour had left her face. Cleves gripped the arm of his chair and
+watched her intently.
+
+“I—I had only a moment’s mental freedom,” she went on in a ghost of a
+voice. “I was just able to rouse myself, fight off those murderous
+brain-fingers—let loose a clear mental ray.... And then, O God! I saw
+him in his room with his Kalmuck knife—saw him already on his way to
+murder me—Gutchlug Khan, the Yezidee—looking about in his bedroom for a
+shroud.... And when—when he reached for the bed to draw forth a fine,
+white sheet for the shroud without which no Yezidee dares journey
+deathward—then—_then_ I became frightened.... And I killed him—I slew
+him there in his hotel bedroom on the floor above mine!”
+
+Selden moistened his lips: “That Oriental, Gutchlug, died from
+heart-failure in a San Francisco hotel,” he said. “I was there at the
+time.”
+
+“He died by the fangs of a little yellow snake,” whispered the girl.
+
+“There was no snake in his room,” retorted Cleves.
+
+“And no wound on his body,” added Selden. “I attended the autopsy.”
+
+She said, faintly: “There was no snake, and no wound, as you say....
+Yet Gutchlug died of both there in his bedroom.... And before he died
+he heard his soul bidding him farewell; and he saw the death-adder
+coiled in the sheet he clutched—saw the thing strike him again and
+again—saw and felt the tiny wounds on his left hand; felt the fangs
+pricking deep, deep into the veins; died of it there within the
+minute—died of the swiftest poison known. And yet——”
+
+She turned her dead-white face to Cleves—“And yet _there was no snake
+there_!... And never had been.... And so I—I ask you, gentlemen, if
+souls do not die when minds learn to fight death with death—and deal it
+so swiftly, so silently, while one’s body lies, unstirring on a bed—in
+a locked room on the floor below——”
+
+She swayed a little, put out one hand rather blindly.
+
+Recklow rose and passed a muscular arm around her; Cleves, beside her,
+held her left hand, crushing it, without intention, until she opened
+her eyes with a cry of pain.
+
+“Are you all right?” asked Recklow bluntly.
+
+“Yes.” She turned and looked at Cleves and he caressed her bruised hand
+as though dazed.
+
+“Tell me,” she said to Cleves—“you who know—know more about my mind
+than anybody living——” a painful colour surged into her face—but she
+went on steadily, forcing herself to meet his gaze: “tell me, Mr.
+Cleves—do you still believe that nothing can really destroy my soul?
+And that it shall yet win through to safety?”
+
+He said: “Your soul is in God’s keeping, and always shall be.... And if
+the Yezidees have made you believe otherwise, they lie.”
+
+Recklow added in a slow, perplexed way: “I have no personal knowledge
+of psychic power. I am not psychic, not susceptible. But if you
+actually possess such ability, Miss Norne, and if you have employed
+such knowledge to defend your life, then you have done absolutely
+right.”
+
+“No guilt touches you,” added Selden with an involuntary shiver, “if by
+hypnosis or psychic ability you really did put an end to that would-be
+murderer, Gutchlug.”
+
+Selden said: “If Gutchlug died by the fangs of a yellow death-adder
+which existed only in his own mind, and if you actually had anything to
+do with it you acted purely in self-defence.”
+
+“You did your full duty,” added Benton—“but—good God!—it seems
+incredible to me, that such power can actually be available in the
+world!”
+
+Recklow spoke again in his pleasant, undisturbed voice: “Go back to the
+map, Miss Norne, and tell us a little more about this rather terrifying
+thing which you believe menaces the civilised world with destruction.”
+
+Tressa Norne laid a slim finger on the map. Her voice had become
+steady. She said:
+
+“The devil-worship, of which one of the modern developments is
+Bolshevism, and another the terrorism of the hun, began in Asia long
+before Christ’s advent: At least so it was taught us in the temple of
+Erlik.
+
+“It has always existed, its aim always has been the annihilation of
+good and the elevation of evil; the subjection of right by might, and
+the worldwide triumph of wrong.
+
+“Perhaps it is as old as the first battle between God and Satan. I have
+wondered about it, sometimes. There in the dusk of the temple when the
+Eight Assassins came—the eight Sheiks-el-Djebel, all in white—chanting
+the Yakase of Sabbah—always that dirge when they came and spread their
+eight white shrouds on the temple steps——”
+
+Her voice caught; she waited to recover her composure. Then went on:
+
+“The ambition of Genghis was to conquer the world by force of arms. It
+was merely of physical subjection that he dreamed. But the Slayer of
+Souls——”
+
+“Who?” asked Recklow sharply.
+
+“The Slayer of Souls—Erlik’s vice-regent on earth—Hassan Sabbah. The
+Old Man of the Mountain. It is of him I am speaking,” exclaimed Tressa
+Norne—with quiet resolution. “Genghis sought only physical conquest of
+man; the Yezidee’s ambition is more awful, _for he is attempting to
+surprise and seize the very minds of men_!”
+
+There was a dead silence. Tressa looked palely upon the four.
+
+“The Yezidees—who you tell me are not sorcerers—are using power—which
+you tell me is not magic accursed by God—to waylay, capture, enslave,
+and destroy _the minds and souls of mankind_.
+
+“It may be that what they employ is hypnotic ability and psychic power
+and can be, some day, explained on a scientific basis when we learn
+more about the occult laws which govern these phenomena.
+
+“But could anything render the threat less awful? For there have
+existed for centuries—perhaps always—a sect of Satanists determined
+upon the destruction of everything that is pure and holy and good on
+earth; and they are resolved to substitute for righteousness the
+dreadful reign of hell.
+
+“In the beginning there were comparatively few of these human demons.
+Gradually, through the eras, they have increased. In the twelfth
+century there were fifty thousand of the Sect of Assassins.
+
+“Beside the castle of the Slayer of Souls on Mount Alamout——” she laid
+her finger on the map—“eight other towers were erected for the Eight
+Chief Assassins, called Sheiks-el-Djebel.
+
+“In the temple we were taught where these eight towers stood.” She
+picked up a pencil, and on eight blank spaces of unexplored and
+unmapped Mongolia she made eight crosses. Then she turned to the men
+behind her.
+
+“It was taught to us in the temple that from these eight _foci_ of
+infection the disease of evil has been spreading throughout the world;
+from these eight towers have gone forth every year the emissaries of
+evil—perverted missionaries—to spread the poisonous propaganda, to
+teach it, to tamper stealthily with the minds of men, dominate them,
+pervert them, instruct them in the creed of the Assassin of Souls.
+
+“All over the world are people, already contaminated, whose minds are
+already enslaved and poisoned, and who are infecting the still healthy
+brains of others—stealthily possessing themselves of the minds of
+mankind—teaching them evil, inviting them to mock the precepts of
+Christ.
+
+“Of such lost minds are the degraded brains of the Germans—the pastors
+and philosophers who teach that might is right.
+
+“Of such crippled minds are the Bolsheviki, poisoned long, long ago by
+close contact with Asia which, before that, had infected and enslaved
+the minds of the ruling classes with ferocious philosophy.
+
+“Of such minds are all anarchists of every shade and stripe—all
+terrorists, all disciples of violence,—the murderously envious, the
+slothful slinking brotherhood which prowls through the world taking
+every opportunity to set it afire; those mentally dulled by reason of
+excesses; those weak intellects become unsound through futile
+gabble,—parlour socialists, amateur revolutionists, theoretical
+incapables excited by discussion fit only for healthy minds.”
+
+She left the map and came over to where the four men were seated
+terribly intent upon her every word.
+
+“In the temple of Erlik, where my girlhood was passed after the murder
+of my parents, I learned what I am repeating to you,” she said.
+
+“I learned this, also, that the Eight Towers still exist—still stand
+to-day,—at least theoretically—and that from the Eight Towers pours
+forth across the world a stream of poison.
+
+“I was told that, to every country, eight Yezidees were allotted—eight
+sorcerers—or adepts in scientific psychology if you prefer it—whose
+mission is to teach the gospel of hell and gradually but surely to win
+the minds of men to the service of the Slayer of Souls.
+
+“That is what was taught us in the temple. We were educated in the
+development of occult powers—for it seems all human beings possess this
+psychic power latent within them—only few, even when instructed,
+acquire any ability to control and use this force....
+
+“I—I learned—rapidly. I even thought, sometimes, that the Yezidees were
+beginning to be a little afraid of me,—even the Hassani priests.... And
+the Sheiks-el-Djebel, spreading their shrouds on the temple steps,
+looked at me with unquiet eyes, where I stood like a corpse amid the
+incense clouds——”
+
+She passed her fingers over her eyelids, then framed her face between
+both hands for a moment’s thought lost in tragic retrospection.
+
+“Kai!” she whispered dreamily as though to herself—“what Erlik awoke
+within my body that was asleep, God knows, but it was as though a twin
+comrade arose within me and looked out through my eyes upon a world
+which never before had been visible.”
+
+Utter silence reigned in the room: Cleves’s breathing seemed almost
+painful to him so intently was he listening and watching this girl;
+Benton’s hands whitened with his grip on the chair-arms; Selden, tense,
+absorbed, kept his keen gaze of a business man fastened on her face.
+Recklow slowly caressed the cold bowl of his pipe with both thumbs.
+
+Tressa Norne’s strange and remote eyes subtly altered, and she lifted
+her head and looked calmly at the men before her.
+
+“I think that there is nothing more for me to add,” she said. “The Red
+Spectre of Anarchy, called Bolshevism at present, threatens our
+country. Our Government is now awake to this menace and the Secret
+Service is moving everywhere.
+
+“Great damage already has been done to the minds of many people in this
+Republic; poison has spread; is spreading. The Eight Towers still
+stand. The Eight Assassins are in America.
+
+“But these eight Assassins know me to be their enemy.... They will
+surely attempt to kill me.... I don’t believe I can avoid—death—very
+long.... But I want to serve my country and—and mankind.”
+
+“They’ll have to get me first,” said Cleves, bluntly. “I shall not
+permit you out of my sight.”
+
+Recklow said in a musing voice: “And these eight gentlemen, who are
+very likely to hurt us, also, are the first people we ought to hunt.”
+
+“To get them,” added Selden, “we ought to choke the stream at its
+source.”
+
+“To find out who they are is what is going to worry us,” added Benton.
+Cleves had stood holding a chair for Tressa Norne. Finally she noticed
+it and seated herself as though tired.
+
+“Is Sanang one of these eight?” he asked her. The girl turned and
+looked up at him, and he saw the flush mounting in her face.
+
+“Sometimes,” she said steadily, “I have almost believed he was Erlik’s
+own vice-regent on earth—the Slayer of Souls himself.”
+
+
+Benton and Selden had gone. Recklow left a little later. Cleves
+accompanied him out to the landing.
+
+“Are you going to keep Miss Norne here with you for the present?”
+inquired the older man.
+
+“Yes. I dare not let her out of my sight, Recklow. What else can I do?”
+
+“I don’t know. Is she prepared for the consequences?”
+
+“Gossip? Slander?”
+
+“Of course.”
+
+“I can get a housekeeper.”
+
+“That only makes it look worse.”
+
+Cleves reddened. “Well, do you want to find her in some hotel or
+apartment with her throat cut?”
+
+“No,” replied Recklow, gently, “I do not.”
+
+“Then what else is there to do but keep her here in my own apartment
+and never let her out of my sight until we can find and lock up the
+eight gentlemen who are undoubtedly bent on murdering her?”
+
+“Isn’t there some woman in the Service who could help out? I could
+mention several.”
+
+“I tell you I can’t trust Tressa Norne to anybody except myself,”
+insisted Cleves. “I got her into this; I am responsible if she is
+murdered; I dare not entrust her safety to anybody else. And, Recklow,
+it’s a ghastly responsibility for a man to induce a young girl to face
+death, even in the service of her country.”
+
+“If she remains here alone with you she’ll face social destruction,”
+remarked Recklow.
+
+Cleves was silent for a moment, then he burst out: “Well, what am I to
+do? What is there left for me to do except to watch over her and see
+her through this devilish business? What other way have I to protect
+her, Recklow?”
+
+“You could offer her the protection of your name,” suggested the other,
+carelessly.
+
+“What? You mean—marry her?”
+
+“Well, nobody else would be inclined to, Cleves, if it ever becomes
+known she has lived here quite alone with you.”
+
+Cleves stared at the elder man.
+
+“This is nonsense,” he said in a harsh voice. “That young girl doesn’t
+want to marry anybody. Neither do I. She doesn’t wish to have her
+throat cut, that’s all. And I’m determined she shan’t.”
+
+“There are stealthier assassins, Cleves,—the slayers of reputations. It
+goes badly with their victim. It does indeed.”
+
+“Well, hang it, what do you think I ought to do?”
+
+“I think you ought to marry her if you’re going to keep her here.”
+
+“Suppose she doesn’t mind the unconventionality of it?”
+
+“All women mind. No woman, at heart, is unconventional, Cleves.”
+
+“She—she seems to agree with me that she ought to stay here....
+Besides, she has no money, no relatives, no friends in America——”
+
+“All the more tragic. If you really believe it to be your duty to keep
+her here where you can look after her bodily safety, then the other
+obligation is still heavier. And there may come a day when Miss Norne
+will wish that you had been less conscientious concerning the safety of
+her pretty throat.... For the knife of the Yezidee is swifter and less
+cruel than the tongue that slays with a smile.... And this young girl
+has many years to live, after this business of Bolshevism is dead and
+forgotten in our Republic.”
+
+“Recklow!”
+
+“Yes?”
+
+“You think I might dare try to find a room somewhere else for her and
+let her take her chances? _Do_ you?”
+
+“It’s your affair.”
+
+“I know—hang it! I know it’s my affair. I’ve unintentionally made it
+so. But can’t you tell me what I ought to do?”
+
+“I can’t.”
+
+“What would _you_ do?”
+
+“Don’t ask me,” returned Recklow, sharply. “If you’re not man enough to
+come to a decision you may turn her over to me.”
+
+Cleves flushed brightly. “Do you think _you_ are old enough to take my
+job and avoid scandal?”
+
+Recklow’s cold eyes rested on him: “If you like,” he said, “I’ll assume
+your various kinds of personal responsibility toward Miss Norne.”
+
+Cleve’s visage burned. “I’ll shoulder my own burdens,” he retorted.
+
+“Sure. I knew you would.” And Recklow smiled and held out his hand.
+Cleves took it without cordiality. Standing so, Recklow, still smiling,
+said: “What a rotten deal that child has had—is having. Her father and
+mother were fine people. Did you ever hear of Dr. Norne?”
+
+“She mentioned him once.”
+
+“They were up-State people of most excellent antecedents and no money.
+
+“Dr. Norne was our Vice-Consul at Yarkand in the province of Sin Kiang.
+All he had was his salary, and he lost that and his post when the
+administration changed. Then he went into the spice trade.
+
+“Some Jew syndicate here sent him up the Yarkand River to see what
+could be done about jade and gold concessions. He was on that business
+when the tragedy happened. The Kalmuks and Khirghiz were responsible,
+under Yezidee instigation. And there you are:—and here is his child,
+Cleves—back, by some miracle, from that flowering hell called Yian,
+believing in her heart that she really lost her soul there in the
+temple. And now, here in her own native land, she is exposed to actual
+and hourly danger of assassination.... Poor kid!... Did you ever hear
+of a rottener deal, Cleves?”
+
+Their hands had remained clasped while Recklow was speaking. He spoke
+again, clearly, amiably:
+
+“To lay down one’s life for a friend is fine. I’m not sure that it’s
+finer to offer one’s honour in behalf of a girl whose honour is at
+stake.”
+
+After a moment Cleves’s grip tightened.
+
+“All right,” he said.
+
+Recklow went downstairs.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+IN BATTLE
+
+
+Cleves went back into the apartment; he noticed that Miss Norne’s door
+was ajar.
+
+To get to his own room he had to pass that way; and he saw her, seated
+before the mirror, partly undressed, her dark, lustrous hair being
+combed out and twisted up for the night.
+
+Whether this carelessness was born of innocence or of indifference
+mattered little; he suddenly realised that these conditions wouldn’t
+do. And his first feeling was of anger.
+
+“If you’ll put on your robe and slippers,” he said in an unpleasant
+voice, “I’d like to talk to you for a few moments.”
+
+She turned her head on its charming neck and looked around and up at
+him over one naked shoulder.
+
+“Shall I come into your room?” she inquired.
+
+“No!... when you’ve got some clothes on, call me.”
+
+“I’m quite ready now,” she said calmly, and drew the Chinese slippers
+over her bare feet and passed a silken loop over the silver bell
+buttons on her right shoulder. Then, undisturbed, she continued to
+twist up her hair, following his movements in the mirror with
+unconcerned blue eyes.
+
+He entered and seated himself, the impatient expression still creasing
+his forehead and altering his rather agreeable features.
+
+“Miss Norne,” he said, “you’re absolutely convinced that these people
+mean to do you harm. Isn’t that true?”
+
+“Of course,” she said simply.
+
+“Then, until we get them, you’re running a serious risk. In fact, you
+live in hourly peril. That is your belief, isn’t it?”
+
+She put the last peg into her thick, curly hair, lowered her arms,
+turned, dropped one knee over the other, and let her candid gaze rest
+on him in silence.
+
+“What I mean to explain,” he said coldly, “is that as long as I induced
+you to go into this affair I’m responsible for you. If I let you out of
+my sight here in New York and if anything happens to you, I’ll be as
+guilty as the dirty beast who takes your life. What is your opinion?
+It’s up to me to stand by you now, isn’t it?”
+
+“I had rather be near you—for a while,” she said timidly.
+
+“Certainly. But, Miss Norne, our living here together, in my
+apartment—or living together anywhere else—is never going to be
+understood by other people. You know that, don’t you?”
+
+After a silence, still looking at him out of clear unembarrassed eyes:
+
+“I know.... But ... I don’t want to die.”
+
+“I told you,” he said sharply, “they’ll have to kill me first. So
+that’s all right. But how about what I am doing to your reputation?”
+
+“I understand.”
+
+“I suppose you do. You’re very young. Once out of this blooming mess,
+you will have all your life before you. But if I kill your reputation
+for you while saving your body from death, you’ll find no happiness in
+living. Do you realise that?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Well, then? Have you any solution for this problem that confronts
+you?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Haven’t you any idea to suggest?”
+
+“I don’t—don’t want to die,” she repeated in an unsteady voice.
+
+He bit his lip; and after a moment’s scowling silence under the
+merciless scrutiny of her eyes: “Then you had better marry me,” he
+said.
+
+It was some time before she spoke. For a second or two he sustained the
+searching quality of her gaze, but it became unendurable.
+
+Presently she said: “I don’t ask it of you. I can shoulder my own
+burdens.” And he remembered what he had just said to Recklow.
+
+“You’ve shouldered more than your share,” he blurted out. “You are
+deliberately risking death to serve your country. I enlisted you. The
+least I can do is to say my affections are not engaged; so naturally
+the idea of—of marrying anybody never entered my head.”
+
+“Then you do not care for anybody else?”
+
+Her candour amazed and disconcerted him.
+
+“No.” He looked at her, curiously. “Do you care for anybody in that
+way?”
+
+A light blush tinted her face. She said gravely: “If we really are
+going to marry each other I had better tell you that I did care for
+Prince Sanang.”
+
+“What!” he cried, astounded.
+
+“It seems incredible, doesn’t it? Yet it is quite true. I fought him; I
+fought myself; I stood guard over my mind and senses there in the
+temple; I knew what he was and I detested him and I mocked him there in
+the temple.... And I loved him.”
+
+“Sanang!” he repeated, not only amazed but also oddly incensed at the
+naïve confession.
+
+“Yes, Sanang.... If we are to marry, I thought I ought to tell you.
+Don’t you think so?”
+
+“Certainly,” he replied in an absent-minded way, his mind still
+grasping at the thing. Then, looking up: “Do you still care for this
+fellow?”
+
+She shook her head.
+
+“Are you perfectly sure, Miss Norne?”
+
+“As sure as that I am alive when I awake from a nightmare. My hatred
+for Sanang is very bitter,” she added frankly, “and yet somehow it is
+not my wish to see him harmed.”
+
+“You still care for him a little?”
+
+“Oh, no. But—can’t you understand that it is not in me to wish him
+harm?... No girl feels that way—once having cared. To become
+indifferent to a familiar thing is perhaps natural; but to desire to
+harm it is not in my character.”
+
+“You have plenty of character,” he said, staring; at her.
+
+“You don’t think so. Do you?”
+
+“Why not?”
+
+“Because of what I said to you on the roof-garden that night. It was
+shameful, wasn’t it?”
+
+“You behaved like many a thoroughbred,” he returned bluntly; “you were
+scared, bewildered, ready to bolt to any shelter offered.”
+
+“It’s quite true I didn’t know what to do to keep alive. And that was
+all that interested me—to keep on living—having lost my soul and being
+afraid to die and find myself in hell with Erlik.”
+
+He said: “Isn’t that absurd notion out of your head yet?”
+
+“I don’t know ... I can’t suddenly believe myself safe after all those
+years. It is not easy to root out what was planted in childhood and
+what grew to be part of one during the tender and formative period....
+You can’t understand, Mr. Cleves—you can’t ever feel or visualise what
+became my daily life in a region which was half paradise and half
+hell——”
+
+She bent her head and took her face between her fingers, and sat so,
+brooding.
+
+After a little while: “Well,” he said, “there’s only one way to manage
+this affair—if you are willing, Miss Norne.”
+
+She merely lifted her eyes.
+
+“I think,” he said, “there’s only that one way out of it. But you
+understand”—he turned pink—“it will be quite all right—your
+liberty—privacy—I shan’t bother you—annoy——”
+
+She merely looked at him.
+
+“After this Bolshevistic flurry is settled—in a year or two—or
+three—then you can very easily get your freedom; and you’ll have all
+life before you” ... he rose: “—and a jolly good friend in me—a good
+comrade, Miss Norne. And that means you can count on me when you go
+into business—or whatever you decide to do.”
+
+She also had risen, standing slim and calm in her exquisite Chinese
+robe, the sleeves of which covered her finger tips.
+
+“Are you going to marry me?” she asked.
+
+“If you’ll let me.”
+
+“Yes—I will ... it’s so generous and considerate of you. I—I don’t ask
+it; I really don’t——”
+
+“But _I_ do.”
+
+“—And I never dreamed of such a thing.”
+
+He forced a smile. “Nor I. It’s rather a crazy thing to do. But I know
+of no saner alternative.... So we had better get our license
+to-morrow.... And that settles it.”
+
+He turned to go; and, on her threshold, his feet caught in something on
+the floor and he stumbled, trying to free his feet from a roll of soft
+white cloth lying there on the carpet. And when he picked it up, it
+unrolled, and a knife fell out of the folds of cloth and struck his
+foot.
+
+Still perplexed, not comprehending, he stooped to recover the knife.
+Then, straightening up, he found himself looking into the colourless
+face of Tressa Norne.
+
+“What’s all this?” he asked—“this sheet and knife here on the floor
+outside your door?”
+
+She answered with difficulty: “They have sent you your shroud, I
+think.”
+
+“Are not those things yours? Were they not already here in your
+baggage?” he demanded incredulously. Then, realising that they had not
+been there on the door-sill when he entered her room a few moments
+since, a rough chill passed over him—the icy caress of fear.
+
+“Where did that thing come from?” he said hoarsely. “How could it get
+here when my door is locked and bolted? Unless there’s somebody hidden
+here!”
+
+Hot anger suddenly flooded him; he drew his pistol and sprang into the
+passageway.
+
+“What the devil is all this!” he repeated furiously, flinging open his
+bedroom door and switching on the light.
+
+He searched his room in a rage, went on and searched the dining-room,
+smoking-room, and kitchen, and every clothes-press and closet, always
+aware of Tressa’s presence close behind him. And when there remained no
+tiniest nook or cranny in the place unsearched, he stood in the centre
+of the carpet glaring at the locked and bolted door.
+
+He heard her say under her breath: “This is going to be a sleepless
+night. And a dangerous one.” And, turning to stare at her, saw no fear
+in her face, only excitement.
+
+He still held clutched in his left hand the sheet and the knife. Now he
+thrust these toward her.
+
+“What’s this damned foolery, anyway?” he demanded harshly. She took the
+knife with a slight shudder. “There is something engraved on the silver
+hilt,” she said.
+
+He bent over her shoulder.
+
+“Eighur,” she added calmly, “not Arabic. The Mongols had no written
+characters of their own.”
+
+She bent closer, studying the inscription. After a moment, still
+studying the Eighur characters, she rested her left hand on his
+shoulder—an impulsive, unstudied movement that might have meant either
+confidence or protection.
+
+“Look,” she said, “it is not addressed to you after all, but to a
+symbol—a series of numbers, 53-6-26.”
+
+“That is my designation in the Federal Service,” he said, sharply.
+
+“Oh!” she nodded slowly. “Then this is what is written in the
+Mongol-Yezidee dialect, traced out in Eighur characters: ‘To 53-6-26!
+By one of the Eight Assassins the Slayer of Souls sends this shroud and
+this knife from Mount Alamout. Such a blade shall divide your heart.
+This sheet is for your corpse.’”
+
+After a grim silence he flung the soft white cloth on the floor.
+
+“There’s no use my pretending I’m not surprised and worried,” he said;
+“I don’t know how that cloth got here. Do you?”
+
+“It was sent.”
+
+“How?”
+
+She shook her head and gave him a grave, confused look.
+
+“There are ways. You could not understand.... This is going to be a
+sleepless night for us.”
+
+“You can go to bed, Tressa. I’ll sit up and read and keep an eye on
+that door.”
+
+“I can’t let you remain alone here. I’m afraid to do that.”
+
+He gave a laugh, not quite pleasant, as he suddenly comprehended that
+the girl now considered their _rôles_ to be reversed.
+
+“Are _you_ planning to sit up in order to protect _me_?” he asked,
+grimly amused.
+
+“Do you mind?”
+
+“Why, you blessed little thing, I can take care of myself. How funny of
+you, when I am trying to plan how best to look out for _you_!”
+
+But her face remained pale and concerned, and she rested her left hand
+more firmly on his shoulder.
+
+“I wish to remain awake with you,” she said. “Because I myself don’t
+fully understand this”—she looked at the knife in her palm, then down
+at the shroud. “It is going to be a strange night for us,” she sighed.
+“Let us sit together here on the lounge where I can face _that bolted
+door_. And if you are willing, I am going to turn out the lights——” She
+suddenly bent forward and switched them off—“because I must keep my
+mind on guard.”
+
+“Why do you do that?” he asked, “you can’t see the door, now.”
+
+“Let me help you in my own way,” she whispered. “I—I am very deeply
+disturbed, and very, very angry. I do not understand this new menace.
+Yezidee that I am, I do not understand what kind of danger threatens
+you through your loyalty to me.”
+
+She drew him forward, and he opened his mouth to remonstrate, to laugh;
+but as he turned, his foot touched the shroud, and an uncontrollable
+shiver passed over him.
+
+They went close together, across the dim room to the lounge, and seated
+themselves. Enough light from Madison Avenue made objects in the room
+barely discernible.
+
+
+Sounds from the street below became rarer as the hours wore away. The
+iron jar of trams, the rattle of vehicles, the harsh warning of
+taxicabs broke the stillness at longer and longer intervals, until,
+save only for that immense and ceaseless vibration of the monstrous
+iron city under the foggy stars, scarcely a sound stirred the silence.
+
+The half-hour had struck long ago on the bell of the little clock. Now
+the clear bell sounded three times.
+
+Cleves stirred on the lounge beside Tressa. Again and again he had
+thought that she was asleep for her head had fallen back against the
+cushions, and she lay very still. But always, when he leaned nearer to
+peer down at her, he saw her eyes open, and fixed intently upon the
+bolted door.
+
+His pistol, which still rested on his knee, was pointed across the
+room, toward the door. Once he reminded her in a whisper that she was
+unarmed and that it might be as well for her to go and get her pistol.
+But she murmured that she was sufficiently equipped; and, in spite of
+himself, he shivered as he glanced down at her frail and empty hands.
+
+It was some time between three and half-past, he judged, when a sudden
+movement of the girl brought him upright on his seat, quivering with
+excitement.
+
+“Mr. Cleves!”
+
+“Yes?”
+
+“The Sorcerers!”
+
+“Where? Outside the door?”
+
+“Oh, my God,” she murmured, “_they are after my mind again_! Their
+fingers are groping to seize my brain and get possession of it!”
+
+“What!” he stammered, horrified.
+
+“Here—in the dark,” she whispered—“and I feel their fingers caressing
+me—searching—moving stealthily to surprise and grasp my thoughts.... I
+know what they are doing.... I am resisting.... I am
+fighting—fighting!”
+
+She sat bolt upright with clenched hands at her breast, her face palely
+aglow in the dimness as though illumined by some vivid inward light—or,
+as he thought—from the azure blaze in her wide-open eyes.
+
+“Is—is this what you call—what you believe to be magic?” he asked
+unsteadily. “Is there some hostile psychic influence threatening you?”
+
+“Yes. I’m resisting. I’m fighting—fighting. They shall not trap me.
+They shall not harm you!... I know how to defend myself and you!... And
+_you_!”
+
+Suddenly she flung her left arm around his neck and the delicate
+clenched hand brushed his cheek.
+
+“They shall not have you,” she breathed. “I am fighting. I am holding
+my own. There are eight of them—eight Assassins! My mind is in battle
+with theirs—fiercely in battle.... I hold my own! I am armed and
+waiting!”
+
+With a convulsive movement she drew his head closer to her shoulder.
+“Eight of them!” she whispered,—“trying to entrap and seize my brain.
+But my thoughts are free! My mind is defending you—you, here in my
+arms!”
+
+After a breathless silence: “Look out!” she whispered with terrible
+energy; “they are after _your_ mind at last. Fix your thoughts on me!
+Keep your mind clear of their net! Don’t let their ghostly fingers
+touch it. Look at me!” She drew him closer. “Look at _me_! Believe in
+_me_! I can resist. I can defend you. Does your head feel confused?”
+
+“Yes—numb.”
+
+“_Don’t sleep!_ Don’t close your eyes! Keep them open and look at me!”
+
+“I can scarcely see you——”
+
+“You _must_ see me!”
+
+“My eyes are heavy,” he said drowsily. “I can’t see you, Tressa——”
+
+“Wake! Look at me! Keep your mind clear. Oh, I beg you—I beg you!
+They’re after our minds and souls, I tell you! Oh, believe in me,” she
+beseeched him in an agonised whisper—“Can’t you believe in me for a
+moment,—as if you loved me!”
+
+His heavy lids lifted and he tried to look at her.
+
+“Can you see me? _Can_ you?”
+
+He muttered something in a confused voice.
+
+“Victor!”
+
+At the sound of his own name, he opened his eyes again and tried to
+straighten up, but his pistol fell to the carpet.
+
+“Victor!” she gasped, “clear your mind in the name of God!”
+
+“I can not——”
+
+“I tell you hell is opening beyond that door!—outside your bolted door,
+there! Can’t you believe me! Can’t you hear me! Oh, what will hold you
+if the love of God can not!” she burst out. “I’d crucify myself for you
+if you’d look at me—if you’d only fight hard enough to believe in me—as
+though you loved me!”
+
+His eyes unclosed but he sank back against her shoulder.
+
+“Victor!” she cried in a terrible voice.
+
+There was no answer.
+
+“If the love of God could only hold you for a moment more!”—she
+stammered with her mouth against his ear, “just for a moment, Victor!
+Can’t you hear me?”
+
+“Yes—very far away.”
+
+“Fight for me! Try to care for me! Don’t let Sanang have me!”
+
+He shuddered in her arms, reached out and resting heavily on her
+shoulder, staggered to his feet and stood swaying like a drunken man.
+
+“No, by God,” he said thickly, “Sanang shall not touch you.”
+
+The girl was on her feet now, holding him upright with an arm around
+his shoulders.
+
+“They can’t—can’t harm us together,” she stammered. “Hark! Listen! Can
+you hear? Oh, can you hear?”
+
+“Give me my pistol,” he tried to say, but his tongue seemed twisted.
+“No—by God—Sanang shall not touch you.”
+
+She stooped lithely and recovered the weapon. “Hush,” she said close to
+his burning face. “Listen. Our minds are safe! I can hear somebody’s
+soul bidding its body farewell!”
+
+White-lipped she burst out laughing, kicked the shroud out of the way,
+thrust the pistol into his right hand, went forward, forcing him along
+beside her, and drew the bolts from the door.
+
+Suddenly he spoke distinctly:
+
+“Is there anything outside that door on the landing?”
+
+“Yes.... I don’t know what. Are you ready?” She laid her hand on lock
+and knob.
+
+He nodded. At the same instant she jerked open the door; and a
+hunchback who had been picking at the lock fell headlong into the room,
+his pistol exploding on the carpet in a streak of fire.
+
+It was a horrible struggle to secure the powerful misshapen creature,
+for he clawed and squealed and bounced about on the floor, striking
+blindly with ape-like arms. But at last Cleves held him down, throttled
+and twitching, and Tressa ripped strips from the shroud to truss up the
+writhing thing.
+
+Then Cleves switched on the light.
+
+“Why—why—you rat!” he exclaimed in hysterical relief at seeing a living
+man whom he recognised there at his feet. “What are you doing here?”
+
+The hunchback’s red eyes blazed up at him from the floor.
+
+“Who—who is he?” faltered the girl.
+
+“He’s a German tailor named Albert Feke—one of the Chicago
+Bolsheviki—the most dangerous sort we harbour—one of their vile leaders
+who preaches that might is right and tells his disciples to go ahead
+and take what they want.”
+
+He looked down at the malignant cripple.
+
+“You’re wanted for the I. W. W. bomb murder, Albert. Did you know it?”
+
+The hunchback licked his bloody lips. Then he kicked himself to a
+sitting position, squatted there like a toad and looked steadily at
+Tressa Norne out of small red-rimmed eyes. Blood dripped on his beard;
+his huge hairy fists, tied and crossed behind his back, made odd,
+spasmodic movements.
+
+Cleves went to the telephone. Presently Tressa heard his voice, calm
+and distinct as usual:
+
+“We’ve caught Albert Feke. He’s here at my rooms. I’d like to have you
+come over, Recklow.... Oh, yes, he kicked and scuffled and scratched
+like a cat.... What?... No, I hadn’t heard that he’d been in China....
+Who?... Albert Feke? You say he was one of the Germans who escaped from
+Shantung four years ago?... You think he’s a Yezidee! You mean one of
+the Eight Assassins?”
+
+The hunchback, staring at Tressa out of red-rimmed eyes, suddenly
+snarled and lurched his misshapen body at her.
+
+“Teufelstuck!” he screamed, “ain’t I tell efferybody in Yian already it
+iss safer if we cut your throat! Devil-slut of
+Erlik—snow-leopardess!—cat of the Yezidees who has made of Sanang a
+fool!—it iss I who haf said always, always, that you know too damn
+much!... Kai!... I hear my soul bidding me farewell. Gif me my shroud!”
+
+Cleves came back from the telephone. With the toe of his left foot he
+lifted the shroud and kicked it across the hunchback’s knees.
+
+“So you were one of the huns who instigated the massacre in Yian,” he
+said, curiously. At that Tressa turned very white and a cry escaped
+her.
+
+But the hunchback’s features were all twisted into ferocious laughter,
+and he beat on the carpet with the heels of his great splay feet.
+
+“Ja! Ja!” he shrieked, “in Yian it vas a goot hunting! English and
+Yankee men und vimmens ve haff dropped into dose deep wells down. Py
+Gott in Himmel, how dey schream up out of dose deep wells in Yian!” He
+began to cackle and shriek in his frenzy. “Ach Gott ja! It iss not you
+either—you there, Keuke Mongol, who shall escape from the
+Sheiks-el-Djebel! It iss dot Old Man of the Mountain who shall tell
+your soul it iss time to say farewell! Ja! Ja! Ach Gott!—it iss my only
+regret that I shall not see the world when it is all afire! Ja! Ja!—all
+on fire like hell! But you shall see it, slut-leopard of the snows! You
+shall see it und you shall burn! Kai! Kai! My soul it iss bidding my
+body farewell. Kai! May Erlik curse you, Keuke Mongol—Heavenly
+Azure—Sorceress of the temple!—”
+
+He spat at her and rolled over in his shroud.
+
+The girl looking down on him closed her eyes for a moment, and Cleves
+saw her bloodless lips move, and bent nearer, listening. And he heard
+her whispering to herself:
+
+“Preserve us all, O God, from the wrath of Satan who was stoned.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+THE BRIDAL
+
+
+Over the United States stretched an unseen network of secret intrigue
+woven tirelessly night and day by the busy enemies of
+civilisation—Reds, parlour-socialists, enemy-aliens, terrorists,
+Bolsheviki, pseudo-intellectuals, I. W. W.’s, social faddists, and
+amateur meddlers of every nuance—all the various varieties of the
+vicious, witless, and mentally unhinged—brought together through the
+“cohesive power of plunder” and the degeneration of cranial tissue.
+
+All over the United States the various departmental divisions of the
+Secret Service were busily following up these threads of intrigue
+leading everywhere through the obscurity of this vast and secret maze.
+
+To meet the constantly increasing danger of physical violence and to
+uncover secret plots threatening sabotage and revolution, there were
+capable agents in every branch of the Secret Service, both Federal and
+State.
+
+But in the first months of 1919 something more terrifying than physical
+violence suddenly threatened civilised America,—a wild, grotesque,
+incredible threat of a _war on human minds_!
+
+And, little by little, the United States Government became convinced
+that this ghastly menace was no dream of a disordered imagination, but
+that it was real: that among the enemies of civilisation there actually
+existed a few powerful but perverted minds capable of wielding psychic
+forces as terrific weapons: that by the sinister use of psychic
+knowledge controlling these mighty forces the very minds of mankind
+could be stealthily approached, seized, controlled and turned upon
+civilisation to aid in the world’s destruction.
+
+In terrible alarm the Government turned to England for advice. But Sir
+William Crookes was dead.
+
+However, in England, Sir Conan Doyle immediately took up the matter,
+and in America Professor Hyslop was called into consultation.
+
+And then, when the Government was beginning to realise what this awful
+menace meant, and that there were actually in the United States
+possibly half a dozen people who already had begun to carry on a
+diabolical warfare by means of psychic power, for the purpose of
+enslaving and controlling the very minds of men,—then, in the terrible
+moment of discovery, a young girl landed in America after fourteen
+years’ absence in Asia.
+
+And this was the amazing girl that Victor Cleves had just married, at
+Recklow’s suggestion, and in the line of professional duty,—and moral
+duty, perhaps.
+
+It had been a brief, matter-of-fact ceremony. John Recklow, of the
+Secret Service, was there; also Benton and Selden of the same service.
+
+The bride’s lips were unresponsive; cold as the touch of the groom’s
+unsteady hand.
+
+She looked down at her new ring in a blank sort of way, gave her hand
+listlessly to Recklow and to the others in turn, whispered a timidly
+comprehensive “Thank you,” and walked away beside Cleves as though
+dazed.
+
+There was a taxicab waiting. Tressa entered. Recklow came out and spoke
+to Cleves in a low voice.
+
+“Don’t worry,” replied Cleves dryly. “That’s why I married her.”
+
+“Where are you going now?” inquired Recklow.
+
+“Back to my apartment.”
+
+“Why don’t you take her away for a month?”
+
+Cleves flushed with annoyance: “This is no occasion for a wedding trip.
+You understand that, Recklow.”
+
+“I understand. But we ought to give her a breathing space. She’s had
+nothing but trouble. She’s worn out.”
+
+Cleves hesitated: “I can guard her better in the apartment. Isn’t it
+safer to go back there, where your people are always watching the
+street and house day and night?”
+
+“In a way it might be safer, perhaps. But that girl is nearly
+exhausted. And her value to us is unlimited. She may be the vital
+factor in this fight with anarchy. Her weapon is her mind. And it’s got
+to have a chance to rest.”
+
+Cleves, with one hand on the cab door, looked around impatiently.
+
+“Do _you_, also, conclude that the psychic factor is actually part of
+this damned problem of Bolshevism?”
+
+Recklow’s cool eyes measured him: “Do _you_?”
+
+“My God, Recklow, I don’t know—after what my own eyes have seen.”
+
+“I don’t know either,” said the other calmly, “but I am taking no
+chances. I don’t attempt to explain certain things that have occurred.
+But if it be true that a misuse of psychic ability by
+foreigners—Asiatics—among the anarchists is responsible for some of the
+devilish things being done in the United States, then your wife’s
+unparalleled knowledge of the occult East is absolutely vital to us.
+And so I say, better take her away somewhere and give her mind a chance
+to recover from the incessant strain of these tragic years.”
+
+The two men stood silent for a moment, then Recklow went to the window
+of the taxicab.
+
+“I have been suggesting a trip into the country, Mrs. Cleves,” he said
+pleasantly, “—into the real country, somewhere,—a month’s quiet in the
+woods, perhaps. Wouldn’t it appeal to you?”
+
+Cleves turned to catch her low-voiced answer.
+
+“I should like it very much,” she said in that odd, hushed way of
+speaking, which seemed to have altered her own voice and manner since
+the ceremony a little while before.
+
+Driving back to his apartment beside her, he strove to realise that
+this girl was his wife.
+
+One of her gloves lay across her lap, and on it rested a slender hand.
+And on one finger was his ring.
+
+But Victor Cleves could not bring himself to believe that this
+brand-new ring really signified anything to him,—that it had altered
+his own life in any way. But always his incredulous eyes returned to
+that slim finger resting there, unstirring, banded with a narrow
+circlet of virgin gold.
+
+In the apartment they did not seem to know exactly what to do or
+say—what attitude to assume—what effort to make.
+
+Tressa went into her own room, removed her hat and furs, and came
+slowly back into the living-room, where Cleves still stood gazing
+absently out of the window.
+
+A fine rain was falling.
+
+They seated themselves. There seemed nothing better to do.
+
+He said, politely: “In regard to going away for a rest, you wouldn’t
+care for the North Woods, I fancy, unless you like winter sports. Do
+you?”
+
+“I like sunlight and green leaves,” she said in that odd, still voice.
+
+“Then, if it would please you to go South for a few weeks’ rest——”
+
+“Would it inconvenience you?”
+
+Her manner touched him.
+
+“My dear Miss Norne,” he began, and checked himself, flushing
+painfully. The girl blushed, too; then, when he began to laugh, her
+lovely, bashful smile glimmered for the first time.
+
+“I really can’t bring myself to realise that you and I are married,” he
+explained, still embarrassed, though smiling.
+
+Her smile became an endeavour. “I can’t believe it either, Mr. Cleves,”
+she said. “I feel rather stunned.”
+
+“Hadn’t you better call me Victor—under the circumstances?” he
+suggested, striving to speak lightly.
+
+“Yes.... It will not be very easy to say it—not for some time, I
+think.”
+
+“Tressa?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Yes—_what_?”
+
+“Yes—Victor.”
+
+“That’s the idea,” he insisted with forced gaiety.
+
+“The thing to do is to face this rather funny situation and take it
+amiably and with good humour. You’ll have your freedom some day, you
+know.”
+
+“Yes—I—know.”
+
+“And we’re already on very good terms. We find each other interesting,
+don’t we?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“It even seems to me,” he ventured, “it certainly seems to me, at
+times, as though we are approaching a common basis of—of
+mutual—er—esteem.”
+
+“Yes. I—I do esteem you, Mr. Cleves.”
+
+“In point of fact,” he concluded, surprised, “we _are_ friends—in a
+way. Wouldn’t you call it—friendship?”
+
+“I think so, I think I’d call it that,” she admitted.
+
+“I think so, too. And that is lucky for us. That makes this crazy
+situation more comfortable—less—well, perhaps less ponderous.”
+
+The girl assented with a vague smile, but her eyes remained lowered.
+
+“You see,” he went on, “when two people are as oddly situated as we
+are, they’re likely to be afraid of being in each other’s way. But they
+ought to get on without being unhappy as long as they are quite
+confident of each other’s friendly consideration. Don’t you think so,
+Tressa?”
+
+Her lowered eyes rested steadily on her ring-finger. “Yes,” she said.
+“And I am not—unhappy, or—afraid.”
+
+She lifted her blue gaze to his; and, somehow, he thought of her
+barbaric name, Keuke,—and its Yezidee significance, “heavenly—azure.”
+
+“Are we really going away together?” she asked timidly.
+
+“Certainly, if you wish.”
+
+“If you, also, wish it, Mr. Cleves.”
+
+He found himself saying with emphasis that he always wished to do what
+she desired. And he added, more gently:
+
+“You _are_ tired, Tressa—tired and lonely and unhappy.”
+
+“Tired, but not the—others.”
+
+“Not unhappy?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Aren’t you lonely?”
+
+“Not with you.”
+
+The answer came so naturally, so calmly, that the slight sensation of
+pleasure it gave him arrived only as an agreeable afterglow.
+
+“We’ll go South,” he said.... “I’m so glad that you don’t feel lonely
+with me.”
+
+“Will it be warmer where we are going, Mr. Cleves?”
+
+“Yes—you poor child! You need warmth and sunshine, don’t you? Was it
+warm in Yian, where you lived so many years?”
+
+“It was always June in Yian,” she said under her breath.
+
+She seemed to have fallen into a revery; he watched the sensitive face.
+Almost imperceptibly it changed; became altered, younger, strangely
+lovely.
+
+Presently she looked up—and it seemed to him that it was not Tressa
+Norne at all he saw, but little Keuke—Heavenly Azure—of the Yezidee
+temple, as she dropped one slim knee over the other and crossed her
+hands above it.
+
+“It was very beautiful in Yian,” she said, “—Yian of the thousand
+bridges and scented gardens so full of lilies. Even after they took me
+to the temple, and I thought the world was ending, God’s skies still
+remained soft overhead, and His weather fair and golden.... And when,
+in the month of the Snake, the Eight Sheiks-el-Djebel came to the
+temple to spread their shrouds on the rose-marble steps, then, after
+they had departed, chanting the Prayers for the Dead, each to his Tower
+of Silence, we temple girls were free for a week.... And once I went
+with Tchagane—a girl—and with Yulun—another girl—and we took our
+keutch, which is our luggage, and we went to the yaïlak, or summer
+pavilion on the Lake of the Ghost. Oh, wonderful,—a silvery world of
+pale-gilt suns and of moons so frail that the cloud-fleece at high-noon
+has more substance!”
+
+Her voice died out; she sat gazing down at her spread fingers, on one
+of which gleamed her wedding-ring.
+
+After a little, she went on dreamily:
+
+“On that week, each three months, we were free.... If a young man
+should please us....”
+
+“Free?” he repeated.
+
+“To love,” she explained coolly.
+
+“Oh.” He nodded, but his face became rather grim.
+
+“There came to me at the yaïlak,” she went on carelessly, “one Khassar
+Noïane—Noïane means Prince—all in a surcoat of gold tissue with green
+vines embroidered, and wearing a green cap trimmed with dormouse, and
+green boots inlaid with stiff gold....
+
+“He was so young ... a boy. I laughed. I said: ‘Is this a Yaçaoul? An
+Urdu-envoy of Prince Erlik?’—mocking him as young and thoughtless girls
+mock—not in unfriendly manner—though I would not endure the touch of
+any man at all.
+
+“And when I laughed at him, this Eighur boy flew into such a rage! Kai!
+I was amazed.
+
+“‘Sou-sou! Squirrel!’ he cried angrily at me. ‘Learn the Yacaz, little
+chatterer! Little mocker of men, it is ten blows with a stick you
+require, not kisses!’
+
+“At that I whistled my two dogs, Bars and Alaga, for I did not think
+what he said was funny.
+
+“I said to him: ‘You had better go home, Khassar Noïane, for if no man
+has ever pleased me where I am at liberty to please myself, here on the
+Lake of the Ghost, then be very certain that no boy can please
+Keuke-Mongol here or anywhere!’
+
+“And at that—kai! What did he say—that monkey?” She looked at her
+husband, her splendid eyes ablaze with wrathful laughter, and made a
+gesture full of angry grace:
+
+“‘Squirrel!’ he cries—‘little malignant sorceress of Yian! May
+everything high about you become a sandstorm, and everything long a
+serpent, and everything broad a toad, and everything——’
+
+“But I had had enough, Victor,” she added excitedly, “and I made a wild
+bee bite him on the lip! What do you think of such a courtship?” she
+cried, laughing. But Cleves’s face was a study in emotions.
+
+And then, suddenly, the laughing mask seemed to slip from the
+bewitching features of Keuke Mongol; and there was Tressa Norne—Tressa
+Cleves—disconcerted, paling a little as the memory of her impulsive
+confidence in this man beside her began to dawn on her more clearly.
+
+“I—I’m sorry——” she faltered.... “You’ll think me silly—think evil of
+me, perhaps——”
+
+She looked into his troubled eyes, then suddenly she took her face into
+both hands and covered it, sitting very still.
+
+“We’ll go South together,” he said in an uncertain voice.... “I hope
+you will try to think of me as a friend.... I’m just troubled because I
+am so anxious to understand you. That is all.... I’m—I’m troubled, too,
+because I am anxious that you should think well of me. Will you try,
+always?”
+
+She nodded.
+
+“I want to be your friend, always,” he said.
+
+“Thank you, Mr. Cleves.”
+
+
+It was a strange spot he chose for Tressa—strange but lovely in its own
+unreal and rather spectral fashion—where a pearl-tinted mist veiled the
+St. Johns, and made exquisite ghosts of the palmettos, and softened the
+sun to a silver-gilt wafer pasted on a nacre sky.
+
+It was a still country, where giant water-oaks towered, fantastic under
+their misty camouflage of moss, and swarming with small birds.
+
+Among the trees the wood-ibis stole; without on the placid glass of the
+stream the eared grebe floated. There was no wind, no stirring of
+leaves, no sound save the muffled splash of silver mullet, the
+breathless whirr of a humming-bird, or the hushed rustle of lizards in
+the woods.
+
+For Tressa this was the blessed balm that heals,—the balm of silence.
+And, for the first week, she slept most of the time, or lay in her
+hammock watching the swarms of small birds creeping and flitting amid
+the moss-draped labyrinths of the live-oaks at her very door.
+
+It had been a little club house before the war, this bungalow on the
+St. Johns at Orchid Hammock. Its members had been few and wealthy; but
+some were dead in France and Flanders, and some still remained
+overseas, and others continued busy in the North.
+
+And these two young people were quite alone there, save for a negro
+cook and a maid, and an aged negro kennel-master who wore a scarlet
+waistcoat and cords too large for his shrunken body, and who pottered,
+pottered through the fields all day, with his whip clasped behind his
+bent back and the pointers ranging wide, or plodding in at heel with
+red tongues lolling.
+
+Twice Cleves went a little way for quail, using Benton’s dogs; but even
+here in this remote spot he dared not move out of view of the little
+house where Tressa lay asleep.
+
+So he picked up only a few brace of birds, and confined his sport to
+impaling too-familiar scorpions on the blade of his knife.
+
+And all the while life remained unreal for him; his marriage seemed
+utterly unbelievable; he could not realise it, could not reconcile
+himself to conditions so incomprehensible.
+
+Also, ever latent in his mind, was knowledge that made him restless—the
+knowledge that the young girl he had married had been in love with
+another man: Sanang.
+
+And there were other thoughts—thoughts which had scarcely even taken
+the shape of questions.
+
+One morning he came from his room and found Tressa on the veranda in
+her hammock. She had her moon-lute in her lap.
+
+“You feel better—much better!” he said gaily, saluting her extended
+hand.
+
+“Yes. Isn’t this heavenly? I begin to believe it is life to me, this
+pearl-tinted world, and the scent of orange bloom and the stillness of
+paradise itself.”
+
+She gazed out over the ghostly river. Not a wing stirred its glassy
+surface.
+
+“Is this dull for you?” she asked in a low voice.
+
+“Not if you are contented, Tressa.”
+
+“You’re so nice about it. Don’t you think you might venture a day’s
+real shooting?”
+
+“No, I think I won’t,” he replied.
+
+“On my account?”
+
+“Well—yes.”
+
+“I’m so sorry.”
+
+“It’s all right as long as you’re getting rested. What is that
+instrument?”
+
+“My moon-lute.”
+
+“Oh, is that what it’s called?”
+
+She nodded, touched the strings. He watched her exquisite hands.
+
+“Shall I?” she inquired a little shyly.
+
+“Go ahead. I’d like to hear it!”
+
+“I haven’t touched it in months—not since I was on the steamer.” She
+sat up in her hammock and began to swing there; and played and sang
+while swinging in the flecked shadow of the orange bloom:
+
+“_Little Isle of Cispangou,_
+_Isle of iris, isle of cherry,_
+_Tell your tiny maidens merry_
+_Clouds are looming over you!_
+_La-ē-la!_
+_La-ē-la!_
+_All your ocean’s but a ferry;_
+_Ships are bringing death to you!_
+_La-ē-lou!_
+_La-ē-lou!_
+
+“_Little Isle of Cispangou,_
+_Half a thousand ships are sailing;_
+_Captain Death commands each crew;_
+_Lo! the ruddy moon is paling!_
+_La-ē-la!_
+_La-ē-la!_
+_Clouds the dying moon are veiling,_
+_Every cloud a shroud for you!_
+_La-ē-lou!_
+_La-ē-lou!_”
+
+“Cispangou,” she explained, “is the very, very ancient name, among the
+Mongols, for Japan.”
+
+“It’s not exactly a gay song,” he said. “What’s it about?”
+
+“Oh, it’s a very ancient song about the Mongol invasion of Japan. I
+know scores and scores of such songs.”
+
+She sang some other songs. Afterward she descended from the hammock and
+came and sat down beside him on the veranda steps.
+
+“I wish I could amuse you,” she said wistfully.
+
+“Why do you think I’m bored, Tressa? I’m not at all.”
+
+But she only sighed, lightly, and gathered her knees in both arms.
+
+“I don’t know how young men in the Western world are entertained,” she
+remarked presently.
+
+“You don’t have to entertain me,” he said, smiling.
+
+“I should be happy to, if I knew how.”
+
+“How are young men entertained in the Orient?”
+
+“Oh, they like songs and stories. But I don’t think you do.”
+
+He laughed in spite of himself.
+
+“Do you really wish to entertain me?”
+
+“I do,” she said seriously.
+
+“Then please perform some of those tricks of magic which you can do so
+amazingly well.”
+
+Her dawning smile faded a trifle. “I don’t—I haven’t——” She hesitated.
+
+“You haven’t your professional paraphernalia with you,” he suggested.
+
+“Oh—as for that——”
+
+“Don’t you need it?”
+
+“For some things—some kinds of things.... I _could_ do—other things——”
+
+He waited. She seemed disconcerted. “Don’t do anything you don’t wish
+to do, Tressa,” he said.
+
+“I was only—only afraid—that if I should do some little things to amuse
+you, I might stir—stir up—interfere—encounter some sinister current—and
+betray myself—betray my whereabouts——”
+
+“Well, for heaven’s sake don’t venture then!” he said with emphasis.
+“Don’t do anything to stir up any other wireless—any Yezidee——”
+
+“I am wondering,” she reflected, “just what I dare venture to do to
+amuse you.”
+
+“Don’t bother about me. I wouldn’t have you try any psychic stunt down
+here, and run the chance of stirring up some Asiatic devil somewhere!”
+
+She nodded absently, occupied with her own thoughts, sitting there,
+chin on hand, her musing eyes intensely blue.
+
+“I think I can amuse you,” she concluded, “without bringing any harm to
+myself.”
+
+“Don’t try it, Tressa!—--”
+
+“I’ll be very careful. Now, sit quite still—closer to me, please.”
+
+He edged closer; and became conscious of an indefinable freshness in
+the air that enveloped him, like the scent of something young and
+growing. But it was no magic odour,—merely the virginal scent of her
+hair and skin that even clung to her summer gown.
+
+He heard her singing under her breath to herself:
+
+“La-ē-la!
+La-ē-la!”
+
+and murmuring caressingly in an unknown tongue.
+
+Then, suddenly in the pale sunshine, scores of little birds came
+hovering around them, alighting all over them. And he saw them swarming
+out of the mossy festoons of the water-oaks—scores and scores of tiny
+birds—Parula warblers, mostly—all flitting fearlessly down to alight
+upon his shoulders and knees, all keeping up their sweet, dreamy little
+twittering sound.
+
+“This is wonderful,” he whispered.
+
+The girl laughed, took several birds on her forefinger.
+
+“This is nothing,” she said. “If I only dared—wait a moment!—--” And,
+to the Parula warblers:
+
+“Go home, little friends of God!”
+
+The air was filled with the musical whisper of wings. She passed her
+right arm around her husband’s neck.
+
+“Look at the river,” she said.
+
+“Good God!” he blurted out. And sat dumb.
+
+For, over the St. John’s misty surface, there was the span of a
+bridge—a strange, marble bridge humped up high in the centre.
+
+And over it were passing thousands of people—he could make them out
+vaguely—see them passing in two never-ending streams—tinted shapes on
+the marble bridge.
+
+And now, on the farther shore of the river, he was aware of a city—a
+vast one, with spectral pagoda shapes against the sky——
+
+Her arm tightened around his neck.
+
+He saw boats on the river—like the grotesque shapes that decorate
+ancient lacquer.
+
+She rested her face lightly against his cheek.
+
+In his ears was a far confusion of voices—the stir and movement of
+multitudes—noises on ships, boatmen’s cries, the creak of oars.
+
+Then, far and sonorous, quavering across the water from the city, the
+din of a temple gong.
+
+There were bells, too—very sweet and silvery—camel bells, bells from
+the Buddhist temples.
+
+He strained his eyes, and thought, amid the pagodas, that there were
+minarets, also.
+
+Suddenly, clear and ringing came the distant muezzin’s cry: “There is
+no other god but God!... It is noon. Mussulmans, pray!”
+
+The girl’s arm slipped from his neck and she shuddered and pushed him
+from her.
+
+There was nothing, now, on the river or beyond it but the curtain of
+hanging mist; no sound except the cry of a gull, sharp and querulous in
+the vapours overhead.
+
+“Have—have you been amused?” she asked.
+
+“What did you do to me!” he demanded harshly.
+
+She smiled and drew a light breath like a sigh.
+
+“God knows what we living do to one another,—or to ourselves,” she
+said. “I only tried to amuse you—after taking counsel with the birds.”
+
+“What was that bridge I saw!”
+
+“The Bridge of Ten Thousand Felicities.”
+
+“And the city?”
+
+“Yian.”
+
+“You lived there?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+He moistened his dry lips and stole another glance at this very
+commonplace Florida river. Sky and water were blank and still, and the
+ghostly trees stood tall, reflected palely in the translucent tide.
+
+“You merely made me visualise what you were thinking about,” he
+concluded in a voice which still remained unsteady.
+
+“Did you _hear_ nothing?”
+
+He was silent, remembering the bells and the enormous murmur of a
+living multitude.
+
+“And—there were the birds, too.” She added, with an uncertain smile: “I
+do not mean to worry you.... And you did ask me to amuse you.”
+
+“I don’t know how you did it,” he said harshly. “And the details—those
+thousands and thousands of people on the bridge!... And there was one,
+quite near this end of the bridge, who looked back.... A young girl who
+turned and laughed at us—”
+
+“That was Yulun.”
+
+“Who?”
+
+“Yulun. I taught her English.”
+
+“A temple girl?”
+
+“Yes. From Black China.”
+
+“How could you make _me_ see _her_!” he demanded.
+
+“Why do you ask such things? I do not know how to tell you how I do
+it.”
+
+“It’s a dangerous, uncanny knowledge!” he blurted out; and suddenly
+checked himself, for the girl’s face went white.
+
+“I don’t mean uncanny,” he hastened to add. “Because it seems to me
+that what you did by juggling with invisible currents to which, when
+attuned, our five senses respond, is on the same lines as the wireless
+telegraph and telephone.”
+
+She said nothing, but her colour slowly returned.
+
+“You mustn’t be so sensitive,” he added. “I’ve no doubt that it’s all
+quite normal—quite explicable on a perfectly scientific basis. Probably
+it’s no more mysterious than a man in an airplane over midocean
+conversing with people ashore on two continents.”
+
+
+For the remainder of the day and evening Tressa seemed subdued—not
+restless, not nervous, but so quiet that, sometimes, glancing at her
+askance, Cleves involuntarily was reminded of some lithe young creature
+of the wilds, intensely alert and still, immersed in fixed and
+dangerous meditation.
+
+About five in the afternoon they took their golf sticks, went down to
+the river, and embarked in the canoe.
+
+The water was glassy and still. There was not a ripple ahead, save when
+a sleeping gull awoke and leisurely steered out of their way.
+
+Tressa’s arms and throat were bare and she wore no hat. She sat
+forward, wielding the bow paddle and singing to herself in a low voice.
+
+“You feel all right, don’t you?” he asked.
+
+“Oh, I am so well, physically, now! It’s really wonderful, Victor—like
+being a child again,” she replied happily.
+
+“You’re not much more,” he muttered.
+
+She heard him: “Not very much more—in years,” she said.... “Does
+Scripture tell us how old Our Lord was when He descended into Hell?”
+
+“I don’t know,” he replied, startled.
+
+After a little while Tressa tranquilly resumed her paddling and
+singing:
+
+“_—And eight tall towers_
+_Guard the route_
+_Of human life,_
+_Where at all hours_
+_Death looks out,_
+_Holding a knife_
+_Rolled in a shroud._
+
+_For every man,_
+_Humble or proud,_
+_Mighty or bowed,_
+_Death has a shroud;—for every man,—_
+_Even for Tchingniz Khan!_
+_Behold them pass!—lancer._
+_Baroulass,_
+_Temple dancer_
+_In tissue gold,_
+_Khiounnou,_
+_Karlik bold,_
+
+_Christian, Jew,—_
+_Nations swarm to the great Urdu._
+_Yaçaoul, with your kettledrum,_
+_Warn your Khan that his hour is come!_
+_Shroud and knife at his spurred feet throw,_
+_And bid him stretch his neck for the blow!—_”
+
+“You know,” remarked Cleves, “that some of those songs you sing are
+devilish creepy.”
+
+Tressa looked around at him over her shoulder, saw he was smiling,
+smiled faintly in return.
+
+They were off Orchid Cove now. The hotel and cottages loomed dimly in
+the silver mist. Voices came distinctly across the water. There were
+people on the golf course paralleling the river; laughter sounded from
+the club-house veranda.
+
+They went ashore.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+THE MAN IN WHITE
+
+
+It was at the sixth hole that they passed the man ahead who was playing
+all alone—a courteous young fellow in white flannels, who smiled and
+bowed them “through” in silence.
+
+They thanked him, drove from the tee, and left the polite and reticent
+young man still apparently hunting for a lost ball.
+
+Like other things which depended upon dexterity and precision, Tressa
+had taken most naturally to golf. Her supple muscles helped.
+
+At the ninth hole they looked back but did not see the young man in
+white flannels.
+
+Hammock, set with pine and palmetto, and intervals of evil-looking
+swamp, flanked the course. Rank wire-grass, bayberry and scrub palmetto
+bounded the fairgreen.
+
+On every blossoming bush hung butterflies—Palomedes
+swallowtails—drugged with sparkle-berry honey, their gold and black
+velvet wings conspicuous in the sunny mist.
+
+“Like the ceremonial vestments of a Yezidee executioner,” murmured the
+girl. “The Tchortchas wear red when they robe to do a man to death.”
+
+“I wish you could forget those things,” said Cleves.
+
+“I am trying.... I wonder where that young man in white went.”
+
+Cleves searched the links. “I don’t see him. Perhaps he had to go back
+for another ball.”
+
+“I wonder who he was,” she mused.
+
+“I don’t remember seeing him before,” said Cleves.... “Shall we start
+back?”
+
+They walked slowly across the course toward the tenth hole.
+
+Tressa teed up, drove low and straight. Cleves sliced, and they walked
+together into the scrub and towards the woods, where his ball had
+bounded into a bunch of palm trees.
+
+Far in among the trees something white moved and vanished.
+
+“Probably a white egret,” he remarked, knocking about in the scrub with
+his midiron.
+
+“It was that young man in white flannels,” said Tressa in a low voice.
+
+“What would he be doing in there?” he asked incredulously. “That’s
+merely a jungle, Tressa—swamp and cypress, thorn and creeper,—and no
+man would go into that mess if he could. There is no bottom to those
+swamps.”
+
+“But I saw him in there,” she said in a troubled voice.
+
+“But when I tell you that only a wild animal or a snake or a bird could
+move in that jungle! The bog is one vast black quicksand. There’s death
+in those depths.”
+
+“Victor.”
+
+“Yes?” He looked around at her. She was pale. He came up and took her
+hand inquiringly.
+
+“I don’t feel—well,” she murmured. “I’m not ill, you understand——”
+
+“What’s the matter, Tressa?”
+
+She shook her head drearily: “I don’t know.... I wonder whether I
+should have tried to amuse you this morning——”
+
+“You don’t think you’ve stirred up any of those Yezidee beasts, do
+you?” he asked sharply.
+
+And as she did not answer, he asked again whether she was afraid that
+what she had done that morning might have had any occult consequences.
+And he reminded her that she had hesitated to venture anything on that
+account.
+
+His voice, in spite of him, betrayed great nervousness now, and he saw
+apprehension in her eyes, also.
+
+“Why should that man in white have followed us, keeping out of sight in
+the woods?” he went on. “Did you notice about him anything to disturb
+you, Tressa?”
+
+“Not at the time. But—it’s odd—I can’t put him out of my mind. Since we
+passed him and left him apparently hunting a lost ball, I have not been
+able to put him out of my mind.”
+
+“He seemed civil and well bred. He was perfectly good-humoured—all
+courtesy and smiles.”
+
+“I think—perhaps—it was the way he smiled at us,” murmured the girl.
+“Everybody in the East smiles when they draw a knife....”
+
+He placed his arm through hers. “Aren’t you a trifle morbid?” he said
+pleasantly.
+
+She stooped for her golf ball, retaining a hold on his arm. He picked
+up his ball, too, put away her clubs and his, and they started back
+together in silence, evidently with no desire to make it eighteen
+holes.
+
+“It’s a confounded shame,” he muttered, “just as you were becoming so
+rested and so delightfully well, to have anything—any unpleasant flash
+of memory cut in to upset you——”
+
+“I brought it on myself. I should not have risked stirring up the
+sinister minds that were asleep.”
+
+“Hang it all!—and I asked you to amuse me.”
+
+“It was not wise in me,” she said under her breath. “It is easy to
+disturb the unknown currents which enmesh the globe. I ought not to
+have shown you Yian. I ought not to have shown you Yulun. It was my
+fault for doing that. I was a little lonely, and I wanted to see
+Yulun.”
+
+They came down the river back to the canoe, threw in their golf bags,
+and embarked on the glassy stream.
+
+Over the calm flood, stained deep with crimson, the canoe glided in the
+sanguine evening light. But Tressa sang no more and her head was bent
+sideways as though listening—always listening—to something inaudible to
+Cleves—something very, very far away which she seemed to hear through
+the still drip of the paddles.
+
+They were not yet in sight of their landing when she spoke to him,
+partly turning:
+
+“I think some of your men have arrived.”
+
+“Where?” he asked, astonished.
+
+“At the house.”
+
+“Why do you think so?”
+
+“I think so.”
+
+They paddled a little faster. In a few minutes their dock came into
+view.
+
+“It’s funny,” he said, “that you should think some of our men have
+arrived from the North. I don’t see anybody on the dock.”
+
+“It’s Mr. Recklow,” she said in a low voice. “He is seated on our
+veranda.”
+
+As it was impossible to see the house, let alone the veranda, Cleves
+made no reply. He beached the canoe; Tressa stepped out; he followed,
+carrying the golf bags.
+
+A mousy light lingered in the shrubbery; bats were flying against a
+salmon-tinted sky as they took the path homeward.
+
+With an impulse quite involuntary, Cleves encircled his young wife’s
+shoulders with his left arm.
+
+“Girl-comrade,” he said lightly, “I’d kill any man who even looked as
+though he’d harm you.”
+
+He smiled, but she had not missed the ugly undertone in his words.
+
+They walked slowly, his arm around her shoulders. Suddenly he felt her
+start. They halted.
+
+“What was it?” he whispered.
+
+“I thought there was something white in the woods.”
+
+“Where, dear?” he asked coolly.
+
+“Over there beyond the lawn.”
+
+What she called the “lawn” was only a vast sheet of pink and white
+phlox, now all misty with the whirring wings of sphinx-moths and
+Noctuidæ.
+
+The oak grove beyond was dusky. Cleves could see nothing among the
+trees.
+
+After a moment they went forward. His arm had fallen away from her
+shoulders.
+
+There were no lights except in the kitchen when they came in sight of
+the house. At first nobody was visible on the screened veranda under
+the orange trees. But when he opened the swing door for her a shadowy
+figure arose from a chair.
+
+It was John Recklow. He came forward, bent his strong white head, and
+kissed Tressa’s hand.
+
+“Is all well with you, Mrs. Cleves?”
+
+“Yes. I am glad you came.”
+
+Cleves clasped the elder man’s firm hand.
+
+“I’m glad too, Recklow. You’ll stop with us, of course.”
+
+“Do you really want me?”
+
+“Of course,” said Cleves.
+
+“All right. I’ve a coon and a surrey behind your house.”
+
+So Cleves went around in the dusk and sent the outfit back to the
+hotel, and he himself carried in Recklow’s suitcase.
+
+Then Tressa went away to give instructions, and the two men were left
+together on the dusky veranda.
+
+“Well?” said Recklow quietly.
+
+Cleves went to him and rested both hands on his shoulders:
+
+“I’m playing absolutely square. She’s a perfectly fine girl and she’ll
+have her chance some day, God willing.”
+
+“Her chance?” repeated Recklow.
+
+“To marry whatever man she will some day care for.”
+
+“I see,” said Recklow drily.
+
+There was a silence, then:
+
+“She’s simply a splendid specimen of womanhood,” said Cleves earnestly.
+“And intensely interesting to me. Why, Recklow, I haven’t known a dull
+moment—though I fear she has known many——”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“Why? Well, being married to a—a sort of temporary figurehead—shut up
+here all day alone with a man of no particular interest to her——”
+
+“Don’t you interest her?”
+
+“Well, how could I? She didn’t choose me because she liked me
+particularly.”
+
+“Didn’t she?” asked Recklow, still more drily. “Well, that does make it
+a trifle dull for you both.”
+
+“Not for me,” said the younger man naïvely. “She is one of the most
+interesting women I ever met. And good heavens!—what psychic knowledge
+that child possesses! She did a thing to-day—merely to amuse me——” He
+checked himself and looked at Recklow out of sombre eyes.
+
+“What did she do?” inquired the older man.
+
+“I think I’ll let her tell you—if she wishes.... And that reminds me.
+Why did you come down here, Recklow?”
+
+“I want to show you something, Cleves. May we step into the house?”
+
+They went into a little lamplit living-room. Recklow handed a newspaper
+clipping to Cleves: the latter read it, standing:
+
+“Had Deadliest Gas Ready for Germans
+
+“_‘Lewisite’ Might Have Killed Millions_
+
+“Washington, April 24.—Guarded night and day and far out of human reach
+on a pedestal at the Interior Department Exposition here is a tiny
+vial. It contains a specimen of the deadliest poison ever known,
+‘Lewisite,’ the product of an American scientist.
+
+“Germany escaped this poison by signing the armistice before all the
+resources of the United States were turned upon her.
+
+“Ten airplanes carrying ‘Lewisite’ would have wiped out, it is said,
+every vestige of life—animal and vegetable—in Berlin. A single day’s
+output would snuff out the millions of lives on Manhattan Island. A
+drop poured in the palm of the hand would penetrate to the blood, reach
+the heart and kill the victim in agony.
+
+“What was coming to Germany may be imagined by the fact that when the
+armistice was signed ‘Lewisite’ was being manufactured at the rate of
+ten tons a day. Three thousand tons of this most terrible instrument
+ever conceived for killing would have been ready for business on the
+American front in France on November 1.
+
+“‘Lewisite’ is another of the big secrets of the war just leaking out.
+It was developed in the Bureau of Mines by Professor W. Lee Lewis, of
+Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill., who took a commission as a
+captain in the army.
+
+“The poison was manufactured in a specially built plant near Cleveland,
+called the ‘Mouse Trap,’ because every workman who entered the stockade
+went under an agreement not to leave the eleven-acre space until the
+war was won. The object of this, of course, was to protect the secret.
+
+“Work on the plant was started eighteen days after the Bureau of Mines
+had completed its experiments.
+
+“Experts are certain that no one will want to steal the sample.
+Everybody at the Exposition, which shows what Secretary Lane’s
+department is doing, keeps as far away from it as possible.”
+
+When Cleves had finished reading, he raised his eyes in silence.
+
+“That vial was stolen a week ago,” said Recklow gravely, “by a young
+man who killed one guard and fatally wounded the other.”
+
+“Was there any ante-mortem statement?”
+
+“Yes. I’ve followed the man. I lost all trace of him at Palm Beach, but
+I picked it up again at Ormond. _And now I’m here_, Cleves.”
+
+“You don’t mean you’ve traced him here!” exclaimed Cleves under his
+breath.
+
+“He’s here on the St. Johns River, somewhere. He came up in a
+motor-boat, but left it east of Orchard Cove. Benton knows this
+country. He’s covering the motor-boat. And I—came here to see how you
+are getting on.”
+
+“And to warn us,” added Cleves quietly.
+
+“Well—yes. He’s got that stuff. It’s deadlier than the newspaper
+suspects. And I guess—I guess, Cleves, he’s one of those damned Yezidee
+witch-doctors—or sorcerers, as they call them;—one of that sect of
+Assassins sent over here to work havoc on feeble minds and do murder on
+the side.”
+
+“Why do you think so?”
+
+“Because the dirty beast lugs his shroud around with him—a bed-sheet
+stolen from the New Willard in Washington.
+
+“We were so close to him in Jacksonville that we got it, and his
+luggage. But we didn’t get him, the rat! God knows how he knew we were
+waiting for him in his room. He never came back to get his luggage.
+
+“But he stole a bed-sheet from his hotel in St. Augustine, and that is
+how we picked him up again. Then, at Palm Beach, we lost the beggar,
+but somehow or other I felt it in my bones that he was after you—you
+and your wife. So I sent Benton to Ormond and I went to Palatka. Benton
+picked up his trail. It led toward you—toward the St. Johns. And the
+reptile has been here forty-eight hours, trying to nose you out, I
+suppose——”
+
+Tressa came into the room. Both men looked at her.
+
+Cleves said in a guarded voice:
+
+“To-day, on the golf links at Orchard Cove, there was a young man in
+white flannels—very polite and courteous to us—but—Tressa thought she
+saw him slinking through the woods as though following and watching
+us.”
+
+“My man, probably,” said Recklow. He turned quietly to Tressa and
+sketched for her the substance of what he had just told Cleves.
+
+“The man in white flannels on the golf links,” said Cleves, “was well
+built and rather handsome, and not more than twenty-five. I thought he
+was a Jew.”
+
+“I thought so too,” said Tressa, calmly, “until I saw him in the woods.
+And then—and then—suddenly it came to me that his smile was the smile
+of a treacherous Shaman sorcerer.
+
+“... And the idea haunts me—the memory of those smooth-faced, smiling
+men in white—men who smile only when they slay—when they slay body and
+soul under the iris skies of Yian!—O God, merciful, long suffering,”
+she whispered, staring into the East, “deliver our souls from Satan who
+was stoned, and our bodies from the snare of the Yezidee!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+THE WEST WIND
+
+
+The night grew sweet with the scent of orange bloom, and all the
+perfumed darkness was vibrant with the feathery whirr of hawk-moths’
+wings.
+
+Tressa had taken her moon-lute to the hammock, but her fingers rested
+motionless on the strings.
+
+Cleves and Recklow, shoulder to shoulder, paced the moonlit path along
+the hedges of oleander and hibiscus which divided garden from jungle.
+
+And they moved cautiously on the white-shell road, not too near the
+shadow line. For in the cypress swamp the bloated grey death was awake
+and watching under the moon; and in the scrub palmetto the
+diamond-dotted death moved lithely.
+
+And somewhere within the dark evil of the jungle a man in white might
+be watching.
+
+So Recklow’s pistol swung lightly in his right hand and Cleves’ weapon
+lay in his side-pocket, and they strolled leisurely around the drive
+and up and down the white-shell walks, passing Tressa at regular
+intervals, where she sat in her hammock with the moon-lute across her
+knees.
+
+Once Cleves paused to place two pink hibiscus blossoms in her hair
+above her ears; and the girl smiled gravely at him in the light.
+
+Again, pausing beside her hammock on one of their tours of the garden,
+Recklow said in a low voice: “If the beast would only show himself,
+Mrs. Cleves, we’d not miss him. Have you caught a glimpse of anything
+white in the woods?”
+
+“Only the night mist rising from the branch and a white ibis stealing
+through it.”
+
+Cleves came nearer: “Do you think the Yezidee is in the woods watching
+us, Tressa?”
+
+“Yes, he is there,” she said calmly.
+
+“You _know_ it?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+Recklow stared at the woods. “We can’t go in to hunt for him,” he said.
+“That fellow would get us with his Lewisite gas before we could
+discover and destroy him.”
+
+“Suppose he waits for a west wind and squirts his gas in this
+direction?” whispered Cleves.
+
+“There is no wind,” said Tressa tranquilly. “He has been waiting for
+it, I think. The Yezidee is very patient. And he is a Shaman sorcerer.”
+
+“My God!” breathed Recklow. “What sort of hellish things has the Old
+World been dumping into America for the last fifty years? An ordinary
+anarchist is bad enough, but this new breed of devil—these
+Yezidees—this sect of Assassins——”
+
+“Hush!” whispered Tressa.
+
+All three listened to the great cat-owl howling from the jungle. But
+Tressa had heard another sound—the vague stir of leaves in the
+live-oaks. Was it a passing breeze? Was a night wind rising? She
+listened. But heard no brittle clatter from the palm-fronds.
+
+“Victor,” she said.
+
+“Yes, Tressa.”
+
+“If a wind comes, we must hunt him. That will be necessary.”
+
+“Either we hunt him and get him, or he kills us here with his gas,”
+said Recklow quietly.
+
+“If the night wind comes,” said Tressa, “we must hunt the darkness for
+the Yezidee.” She spoke coolly.
+
+“If he’d only show himself,” muttered Recklow, staring into the
+darkness.
+
+The girl picked up her lute, caught Cleves’ worried eyes fixed on her,
+suddenly comprehended that his anxiety was on her account, and blushed
+brightly in the moonlight. And he saw her teeth catch at her underlip;
+saw her look up again at him, confused.
+
+“If I dared leave you,” he said, “I’d go into the hammock and start
+that reptile. This won’t do—this standing pat while he comes to some
+deadly decision in the woods there.”
+
+“What else is there to do?” growled Recklow.
+
+“Watch,” said the girl. “Out-watch the Yezidee. If there is no
+night-wind he may tire of waiting. Then you must shoot fast—very, very
+fast and straight. But if the night-wind comes, then we must hunt him
+in darkness.”
+
+Recklow, pistol in hand, stood straight and sturdy in the moonlight,
+gazing fixedly at the forest. Cleves sat down at his wife’s feet.
+
+She touched her moon-lute tranquilly and sang in her childish voice:
+
+“_Ring, ring, Buddha bells,_
+_Gilded gods are listening._
+_Swing, swing, lily bells,_
+_In my garden glistening._
+_Now I hear the Shaman drum;_
+_Now the scarlet horsemen come;_
+_Ding-dong!_
+_Ding-dong!_
+_Through the chanting of the throng_
+_Thunders now the temple gong._
+_Boom-boom!_
+_Ding-dong!_
+
+“_Let the gold gods listen!_
+_In my garden; what care I_
+_Where my lily bells hang mute!_
+_Snowy-sweet they glisten_
+_Where I’m singing to my lute._
+_In my garden; what care I_
+_Who is dead and who shall die?_
+_Let the gold gods save or slay_
+_Scented lilies bloom in May._
+_Boom, boom, temple gong!_
+_Ding-dong!_
+_Ding-dong!_”
+
+“What are you singing?” whispered Cleves.
+
+“‘The Bells of Yian.’”
+
+“Is it old?”
+
+“Of the 13th century. There were few Buddhist bells in Yian then. It is
+Lamaism that has destroyed the Mongols and that has permitted the creed
+of the Assassins to spread—the devil worship of Erlik.”
+
+He looked at her, not understanding. And she, pale, slim prophetess, in
+the moonlight, gazed at him out of lost eyes—eyes which saw, perhaps,
+the bloody age of men when mankind took the devil by the throat and all
+Mount Alamout went up in smoking ruin; and the Eight Towers were dark
+as death and as silent before the blast of the silver clarions of
+Ghenghis Khan.
+
+“Something is stirring in the forest,” whispered Tressa, her fingers on
+her lips.
+
+“Damnation,” muttered Recklow, “it’s the wind!”
+
+They listened. Far in the forest they heard the clatter of palm-fronds.
+They waited. The ominous warning grew faint, then rose again,—a long,
+low rattle of palm-fronds which became a steady monotone.
+
+“We hunt,” said Recklow bluntly. “Come on!”
+
+But the girl sprang from the hammock and caught her husband’s arm and
+drew Recklow back from the hibiscus hedge.
+
+“Use me,” she said. “You could never find the Yezidee. Let me do the
+hunting; and then shoot very, very fast.”
+
+“We’ve got to take her,” said Recklow. “We dare not leave her.”
+
+“I can’t let her lead the way into those black woods,” muttered Cleves.
+
+“The wind is blowing in my face,” insisted Recklow. “We’d better
+hurry.”
+
+Tressa laid one hand on her husband’s arm.
+
+“I can find the Yezidee, I think. You never could find him before he
+finds you! Victor, let me use my own _knowledge_! Let me find the way.
+Please let me lead! Please, Victor. Because, if you don’t, I’m afraid
+we’ll all die here in the garden where we stand.”
+
+Cleves cast a haggard glance at Recklow, then looked at his wife.
+
+“All right,” he said.
+
+The girl opened the hedge gate. Both men followed with pistols lifted.
+
+The moon silvered the forest. There was no mist, but a night-wind blew
+mournfully through palm and cypress, carrying with it the strange,
+disturbing pungency of the jungle—wild, unfamiliar perfumes,—the acrid
+aroma of swamp and rotting mould.
+
+“What about snakes?” muttered Recklow, knee deep in wild phlox.
+
+But there was a deadlier snake to find and destroy, somewhere in the
+blotched shadows of the forest.
+
+The first sentinel trees were very near, now; and Tressa was running
+across a ghostly tangle, where once had been an orange grove, and where
+aged and dying citrus stumps rose stark amid the riot of encroaching
+jungle.
+
+“She’s circling to get the wind at our backs,” breathed Recklow,
+running forward beside Cleves. “That’s our only chance to kill the
+dirty rat—catch him with the wind at our backs!”
+
+Once, traversing a dry hammock where streaks of moonlight alternated
+with velvet-black shadow a rattlesnake sprang his goblin alarm.
+
+They could not locate the reptile. They shrank together and moved
+warily, chilled with fear.
+
+Once, too, clear in the moonlight, the Grey Death reared up from
+bloated folds and stood swaying rhythmically in a horrible shadow dance
+before them. And Cleves threw one arm around his wife and crept past,
+giving death a wide berth there in the checkered moonlight.
+
+Now, under foot, the dry hammock lay everywhere and the night wind blew
+on their backs.
+
+Then Tressa turned and halted the two men with a gesture. And went to
+her husband where he stood in the palm forest, and laid her hands on
+his shoulders, looking him very wistfully in the eyes.
+
+Under her searching gaze he seemed oddly to comprehend her appeal.
+
+“You are going to use—to use your _knowledge_,” he said mechanically.
+“You are going to find the man in white.”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“You are going to find him in a way we don’t understand,” he continued,
+dully.
+
+“Yes.... You will not hold me in—in horror—will you?”
+
+Recklow came up, making no sound on the spongy palm litter underfoot.
+
+“Can you find this devil?” he whispered.
+
+“I—think so.”
+
+“Does your super-instinct—finer sense—knowledge—whatever it is—give you
+any inkling as to his whereabouts, Mrs. Cleves?”
+
+“I think he is here in this hammock. Only——” she turned again, with
+swift impulse, to her husband, “—only if you—if _you_ do not hold me
+in—in horror—because of what I do——”
+
+There was a silence; then:
+
+“What are you about to do?” he asked hoarsely.
+
+“Slay this man.”
+
+“We’ll do that,” said Cleves with a shudder. “Only show him to us and
+we’ll shoot the dirty reptile to slivers——”
+
+“Suppose we hit the jar of gas,” said Recklow.
+
+After a silence, Tressa said:
+
+“I have got to give him back to Satan. There is no other way. I
+understood that from the first. He can not die by your pistols, though
+you shoot very fast and straight. No!”
+
+After another silence, Recklow said:
+
+“You had better find him before the wind changes. We hunt down wind
+or—we die here together.”
+
+She looked at her husband.
+
+“Show him to us in your own way,” he said, “and deal with him as he
+must be dealt with.”
+
+A gleam passed across her pale face and she tried to smile at her
+husband.
+
+Then, turning down the hammock to the east, she walked noiselessly
+forward over the fibrous litter, the men on either side of her, their
+pistols poised.
+
+They had halted on the edge of an open glade, ringed with young pines
+in fullest plumage.
+
+Tressa was standing very straight and still in a strange, supple,
+agonised attitude, her left forearm across her eyes, her right hand
+clenched, her slender body slightly twisted to the left.
+
+The men gazed pallidly at her with tense, set faces, knowing that the
+girl was in terrible mental conflict against another mind—a powerful,
+sinister mind which was seeking to grasp her thoughts and control them.
+
+Minute after minute sped: the girl never moved, locked in her psychic
+duel with this other brutal mind,—beating back its terrible
+thought-waves which were attacking her, fighting for mental supremacy,
+struggling in silence with an unseen adversary whose mental dominance
+meant death.
+
+Suddenly her cry rang out sharply in the moonlight, and then, all at
+once, a man in white stood there in the lustre of the moon—a young,
+graceful man dressed in white flannels and carrying on his right arm
+what seemed to be a long white cloak.
+
+Instantly the girl was transformed from a living statue into a lithe,
+supple, lightly moving thing that passed swiftly to the west of the
+glade, keeping the young man in white facing the wind, which was
+blowing and tossing the plumy young pines.
+
+“So it is _you_, young man, with whom I have been wrestling here under
+the moon of the only God!” she said in a strange little voice, all
+vibrant and metallic with menacing laughter.
+
+“It is I, Keuke Mongol,” replied the young man in white, tranquilly;
+yet his words came as though he were tired and out of breath, and the
+hand he raised to touch his small black moustache trembled as if from
+physical exhaustion.
+
+“Yarghouz!” she exclaimed. “Why did I not know you there on the golf
+links, Assassin of the Seventh Tower? And why do you come here with
+your shroud over your arm and hidden under it, in your right hand, a
+flask full of death?”
+
+He said, smiling:
+
+“I come because you are to die, Heavenly-Azure Eyes. I bring you your
+shroud.” And he moved warily westward around the open circle of young
+pines.
+
+Instantly the girl flung her right arm straight upward.
+
+“Yarghouz!”
+
+“I hear thee, Heavenly Azure.”
+
+“Another step to the west and I shatter thy flask of gas.”
+
+“With what?” he demanded; but stood discreetly motionless.
+
+“With what I grasp in an empty palm. Thou knowest, Yarghouz.”
+
+“I have heard,” he said with smiling uncertainty, “but to hear of force
+that can be hurled out of an empty palm is one thing, and to see it and
+feel it is another. I think you lie, Heavenly Azure.”
+
+“So thought Gutchlug. And died of a yellow snake.”
+
+The young man seemed to reflect. Then he looked up at her in his frank,
+smiling way.
+
+“Wilt thou listen, Heavenly Eyes?”
+
+“I hear thee, Yarghouz.”
+
+“Listen then, Keuke Mongol. Take life from us as we offer it. Life is
+sweet. Erlik, like a spider, waits in darkness for lost souls that
+flutter to his net.”
+
+“You think my soul was lost there in the temple, Yarghouz?”
+
+“Unutterably lost, little temple girl of Yian. Therefore, live. Take
+life as a gift!”
+
+“Whose gift?”
+
+“Sanang’s.”
+
+“It is written,” she said gravely, “that we belong to God and we return
+to him. Now then, Yezidee, do your duty as I do mine! Kai!”
+
+At the sound of the formula always uttered by the sect of Assassins
+when about to do murder, the young man started and shrank back. The
+west wind blew fresh in his startled eyes.
+
+“Sorceress,” he said less firmly, “you leave your Yiort to come all
+alone into this forest and seek me. Why then have you come, if not to
+submit!—if not to take the gift of life—if not to turn away from your
+seducers who are hunting me, and who have corrupted you?”
+
+“Yarghouz, I come to slay you,” she said quietly.
+
+Suddenly the man snarled at her, flung the shroud at her feet, and
+crept deliberately to the left.
+
+“Be careful!” she cried sharply; “look what you’re about! Stand still,
+son of a dog! May your mother bewail your death!”
+
+Yarghouz edged toward the west, clasping in his right hand the flask of
+gas.
+
+“Sorceress,” he laughed, “a witch of Thibet prophesied with a drum that
+the three purities, the nine perfections, and the nine times nine
+felicities shall be lodged in him who slays the treacherous temple
+girl, Keuke Mongol! There is more magic in this bottle which I grasp
+than in thy mind and body. Heavenly Eyes! I pray God to be merciful to
+this soul I send to Erlik!”
+
+All the time he was advancing, edging cautiously around the circle of
+little plumy pines; and already the wind struck his left cheek.
+
+“Yarghouz Khan!” cried the girl in her clear voice. “Take up your
+shroud and repeat the fatha!”
+
+“Backward!” laughed the young man, “—as do you, Keuke Mongol!”
+
+“Heretic!” she retorted. “Do you also refuse to name the ten Imaums in
+your prayers? Dog! Toad! Spittle of Erlik! May all your cattle die and
+all your horses take the glanders and all your dogs the mange!”
+
+“Silence, sorceress!” he shouted, pale with fear and fury. “Witch! Mud
+worm! May Erlik seize you! May your skin be covered with putrefying
+sores! May all the demons torment you! May God remember you in hell!”
+
+“Yarghouz! Stand still!”
+
+“Is your word then the Rampart of Gog and Magog, you young witch of
+Yian, that a Khan of the Seventh Tower need fear you!” he sneered,
+stealing stealthily westward through the feathery pines.
+
+“I give thee thy last chance, Yarghouz Khan,” she said in an excited
+voice that trembled. “Recite thy prayer naming the ten, because with
+their holy names upon thy lips thou mayest escape damnation. For I am
+here to slay thee, Yarghouz! Take up thy shroud and pray!”
+
+The young man felt the west wind at the back of his left ear. Then he
+began to laugh.
+
+“Heavenly Eyes,” he said, “thy end is come—together with the two police
+who hide in the pines yonder behind thee! Behold the bottle magic of
+Yarghouz Khan!”
+
+And he lifted the glass flask in the moonlight as though he were about
+to smash it at her feet.
+
+Then a terrible thing occurred. The entire flask glowed red hot in his
+grasp; and the man screamed and strove convulsively to fling the
+bottle; but it stuck to his hand, melted into the smoking flesh.
+
+Then he screamed again—or tried to—but his entire lower jaw came off
+and he stood there with the awful orifice gaping in the
+moonlight—stood, reeled a moment—and then—and _then_—his whole face
+slid off, leaving nothing but a bony mask out of which burst shriek
+after shriek——
+
+Keuke Mongol had fainted dead away. Cleves took her into his arms.
+
+Recklow, trembling and deathly white, went over to the thing that lay
+among the young pines and forced himself to bend over it.
+
+The glass flask still stuck to one charred hand, but it was no longer
+hot. And Recklow rolled the unspeakable thing into the white shroud and
+pushed it into the swamp.
+
+An evil ooze took it, slowly sucked it under and engulfed it. A few
+stinking bubbles broke.
+
+Recklow went back to the little glade among the pines.
+
+A young girl lay sobbing convulsively in her husband’s arms, asking
+God’s pardon and his for the justice she had done upon an enemy of all
+mankind.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+AT THE RITZ
+
+
+When Victor Cleves telegraphed from St. Augustine to Washington that he
+and his wife were on their way North, and that they desired to see John
+Recklow as soon as they arrived, John Recklow remarked that he knew of
+no place as private as a public one. And he came on to New York and
+established himself at the Ritz, rather regally.
+
+To dine with him that evening were two volunteer agents of the United
+States Secret Service, _ZB-303_, otherwise James Benton, a fashionable
+architect; and _XYL-371_, Alexander Selden, sometime junior partner in
+the house of Milwin, Selden & Co.
+
+A single lamp was burning in the white-and-rose rococo room. Under its
+veiled glow these three men sat conversing in guarded voices over
+coffee and cigars, awaiting the advent of _53-6-26_, otherwise Victor
+Cleves, recently Professor of Ornithology at Cambridge; and his young
+wife, Tressa, known officially as _V-69_.
+
+“Did the trip South do Mrs. Cleves any good?” inquired Benton.
+
+“Some,” said Recklow. “When Selden and I saw her she was getting
+better.”
+
+“I suppose that affair of Yarghouz upset her pretty thoroughly.”
+
+“Yes.” Recklow tossed his cigar into the fireplace and produced a pipe.
+“Victor Cleves upsets her more,” he remarked.
+
+“Why?” asked Benton, astonished.
+
+“She’s beginning to fall in love with him and doesn’t know what’s the
+matter with her,” replied the elder man drily. “Selden noticed it,
+too.”
+
+Benton looked immensely surprised. “I supposed,” he said, “that she and
+Cleves considered the marriage to be merely a temporary necessity. I
+didn’t imagine that they cared for each other.”
+
+“I don’t suppose they did at first,” said Selden. “But I think she’s
+interested in Victor. And I don’t see how he can help falling in love
+with her, because she’s a very beautiful thing to gaze on, and a most
+engaging one to talk to.”
+
+“She’s about the prettiest girl I ever saw,” admitted Benton, “and
+about the cleverest. All the same——”
+
+“All the same—_what_?”
+
+“Well, Mrs. Cleves has her drawbacks, you know—as a real wife, I mean.”
+
+Recklow said: “There is a fixed idea in Cleves’s head that Tressa Norne
+married him as a last resort, which is true. But he’ll never believe
+she’s changed her ideas in regard to him unless she herself enlightens
+him. And the girl is too shy to do that. Besides, she believes the same
+thing of him. There’s a mess for you!”
+
+Recklow filled his pipe carefully.
+
+“In addition,” he went on, “Mrs. Cleves has another and very terrible
+fixed idea in her charming head, and that is that she really did lose
+her soul among those damned Yezidees. She believes that Cleves, though
+kind to her, considers her merely as something uncanny—something to
+endure until this Yezidee campaign is ended and she is safe from
+assassination.”
+
+Benton said: “After all, and in spite of all her loveliness, I myself
+should not feel entirely comfortable with such a girl for a real wife.”
+
+“Why?” demanded Recklow.
+
+“Well—good heavens, John!—those uncanny things she does—her rather
+terrifying psychic knowledge and ability—make a man more or less
+uneasy.” He laughed without mirth.
+
+“For example,” he added, “I never was nervous in any physical crisis;
+but since I’ve met Tressa Norne—to be frank—I’m not any too comfortable
+in my mind when I remember Gutchlug and Sanang and Albert Feke and that
+dirty reptile Yarghouz—and when I recollect _how that girl dealt with
+them_! Good God, John, I’m not a coward, I hope, but that sort of thing
+worries me!”
+
+Recklow lighted his pipe. He said: “In the Government’s campaign
+against these eight foreigners who have begun a psychic campaign
+against the unsuspicious people of this decent Republic, with the
+purpose of surprising, overpowering and enslaving the minds of mankind
+by a misuse of psychic power, we agents of the Secret Service are
+slowly gaining the upper hand.
+
+“In this battle of minds we are gaining a victory. But we are winning
+solely and alone through the psychic ability and the loyalty and
+courage of a young girl who, through tragedy of circumstances, spent
+the years of her girlhood in the infamous Yezidee temple at Yian, and
+who learned from the devil-worshipers themselves not only this
+so-called magic of the Mongol sorcerers, but also how to meet its
+psychic menace and defeat it.”
+
+He looked at Benton, shrugged:
+
+“If you and if Cleves really feel the slightest repugnance toward the
+strange psychic ability of this brave and generous girl, I for one do
+not share it.”
+
+Benton reddened: “It isn’t exactly repugnance——” But Recklow
+interrupted sharply:
+
+“Do you realise, Benton, what she’s already accomplished for us in our
+secret battle against Bolshevism?—against the very powers of hell
+itself, led by these Mongol sorcerers?
+
+“Of the Eight Assassins—or Sheiks-el-Djebel—who came to the United
+States to wield the dreadful weapon of psychic power against the minds
+of our people, and to pervert them and destroy all civilisation,—of the
+Eight Chief Assassins of the Eight Towers, this girl already has
+discovered and identified four,—Sanang, Gutchlug, Albert Feke, and
+Yarghouz; and she has destroyed the last three.”
+
+He sat calmly enjoying his pipe for a few moments’ silence, then:
+
+“Five of this sect of Assassins remain—five sly, murderous, psychic
+adepts who call themselves sorcerers. Except for Prince Sanang, I do
+not know who these other four men may be. I haven’t a notion. Nor have
+you. Nor do I believe that with all the resources of the United States
+Secret Service we ever should be able to discover these four
+Sheiks-el-Djebel except for the astounding spiritual courage and
+psychic experience of the young wife of Victor Cleves.”
+
+After a moment Selden nodded. “That is quite true,” he said simply. “We
+are utterly helpless against unknown psychic forces. And I, for one,
+feel no repugnance toward what Mrs. Cleves has done for all mankind and
+in the name of God.”
+
+“She’s a brave girl,” muttered Benton, “but it’s terrible to possess
+such knowledge and horrible to use it.”
+
+Recklow said: “The horror of it nearly killed the girl herself. Have
+you any idea how she must suffer by being forced to employ such
+terrific knowledge? by being driven to use it to combat this menace of
+hell? Can you imagine what this charming, sensitive, tragic young
+creature must feel when, with powers natural to her but unfamiliar to
+us, she destroys with her own mind and will-power demons in human shape
+who are about to destroy her?
+
+“Talk of nerve! Talk of abnegation! Talk of perfect loyalty and
+courage! There is more than these in Tressa Cleves. There is that
+dauntless bravery which faces worse than physical death. Because the
+child still believes that her soul is damned for whatever happened to
+her in the Yezidee temple; and that when these Yezidees succeed in
+killing her body, Erlik will surely seize the soul that leaves it.”
+
+There was a knocking at the door. Benton got up and opened it. Victor
+Cleves came in with his young wife.
+
+
+Tressa Cleves seemed to have grown since she had been away. Taller, a
+trifle paler, yet without even the subtlest hint of that charming
+maturity which the young and happily married woman invariably wears,
+her virginal allure now verged vaguely on the delicate edges of
+austerity.
+
+Cleves, sunburnt and vigorous, looked older, somehow—far less
+boyish—and he seemed more silent than when, nearly seven months before,
+he had been assigned to the case of Tressa Norne.
+
+Recklow, Selden and Benton greeted them warmly; to each in turn Tressa
+gave her narrow, sun-tanned hand. Recklow led her to a seat. A servant
+came with iced fruit juice and little cakes and cigarettes.
+
+Conversation, aimless and general, fulfilling formalities, gradually
+ceased.
+
+A full June moon stared through the open windows—searching for the
+traditional bride, perhaps—and its light silvered a pale and lovely
+figure that might possibly have passed for the pretty ghost of a bride,
+but not for any girl who had married because she was loved.
+
+Recklow broke the momentary silence, bluntly:
+
+“Have you anything to report, Cleves?”
+
+The young fellow hesitated:
+
+“My wife has, I believe.”
+
+The others turned to her. She seemed, for a moment, to shrink back in
+her chair, and, as her eyes involuntarily sought her husband, there was
+in them a vague and troubled appeal.
+
+Cleves said in a sombre voice: “I need scarcely remind you how deeply
+distasteful this entire and accursed business is to my wife. But she is
+going to see it through, whatever the cost. And we four men understand
+something of what it has cost her—is costing her—in violence to her
+every instinct.”
+
+“We honour her the more,” said Recklow quietly.
+
+“We couldn’t honour her too much,” said Cleves.
+
+A slight colour came into Tressa’s face; she bent her head, but Recklow
+saw her eyes steal sideways toward her husband.
+
+Still bowed a little in her chair, she seemed to reflect for a while
+concerning what she had to say; then, looking up at John Recklow:
+
+“I saw Sanang.”
+
+“Good heavens! Where?” he demanded.
+
+“I—don’t—know.”
+
+Cleves, flushing with embarrassment, explained: “She saw him
+clairvoyantly. She was lying in the hammock. You remember I had a
+trained nurse for her after—what happened in Orchid Lodge.”
+
+Tressa looked miserably at Recklow,—dumbly, for a moment. Then her lips
+unclosed.
+
+“I saw Prince Sanang,” she repeated. “He was near the sea. There were
+rocks—cottages on cliffs—and very brilliant flowers in tiny,
+pocket-like gardens.
+
+“Sanang was walking on the cliffs with another man. There were forests,
+inland.”
+
+“Do you know who the other man was?” asked Recklow gently.
+
+“Yes. He was one of the Eight. I recognised him. When I was a girl he
+came once to the Temple of Yian, all alone, and spread his shroud on
+the pink marble steps. And we temple girls mocked him and threw
+stemless roses on the shroud, telling him they were human heads with
+which to grease his toug.”
+
+She became excited and sat up straighter in her chair, and her strange
+little laughter rippled like a rill among pebbles.
+
+“I threw a big rose without a stem upon the shroud,” she exclaimed,
+“and I cried out, ‘Niaz!’ which means, ‘Courage,’ and I mocked him,
+saying, ‘Djamouk Khagan,’ when he was only a Khan, of course; and I
+laughed and rubbed one finger against the other, crying out, ‘Toug ia
+glachakho!’ which means, ‘The toug is anointed.’ And which was very
+impudent of me, because Djamouk was a Sheik-el-Djebel and Khan of the
+Fifth Tower, and entitled to a toug and to eight men and a Toughtchi.
+And it is a grave offence to mock at the anointing of a toug.”
+
+She paused, breathless, her splendid azure eyes sparkling with the
+memory of that girlish mischief. Then their brilliancy faded; she bit
+her lip and stole an uncertain glance at her husband.
+
+And after a pause she explained in a very subdued voice that the “Iagla
+michi,” or action of “greasing the toug,” or standard, was done when a
+severed human head taken in battle was cast at the foot of the lance
+shaft stuck upright in the ground.
+
+“You see,” she said sadly, “we temple girls, being already damned,
+cared little what we said, even to such a terrible man as Djamouk Khan.
+And even had the ghost of old Tchinguiz Khagan himself come to the
+temple and looked at us out of his tawny eyes, I think we might have
+done something saucy.”
+
+Tressa’s pretty face was spiritless, now; she leaned back in her
+armchair and they heard an unconscious sigh escape her.
+
+“Ai-ya! Ai-ya!” she murmured to herself, “what crazy things we did on
+the rose-marble steps, Yulun and I, so long—so long ago.”
+
+Cleves got up and went over to stand beside his wife’s chair.
+
+“What happened is this,” he said heavily. “During my wife’s
+convalescence after that Yarghouz affair, she found herself, at a
+certain moment, clairvoyant. And she thought she saw—she _did_
+see—Sanang, and an Asiatic she recognised as being one of the chiefs of
+the Assassins sect, whose name is Djamouk.
+
+“But, except that it was somewhere near the sea—some summer colony
+probably on the Atlantic coast—she does not know where this pair of
+jailbirds roost. And this is what we have come here to report.”
+
+Benton, politely appalled, tried not to look incredulous. But it was
+evident that Selden and Recklow had no doubts.
+
+“Of course,” said Recklow calmly, “the thing to do is for you and your
+wife to try to find this place she saw.”
+
+“Make a tour of all such ocean-side resorts until Mrs. Cleves
+recognises the place she saw,” added Selden. And to Recklow he added:
+“I believe there are several perfectly genuine cases on record where
+clairvoyants have aided the police.”
+
+“Several authentic cases,” said Recklow quietly. But Benton’s face was
+a study.
+
+Tressa looked up at her husband. He dropped his hand reassuringly on
+her shoulder and nodded with a slight smile.
+
+“There—there was something else,” she said with considerable
+hesitation—“something not quite in line of duty—perhaps——”
+
+“It seems to concern Benton,” added Cleves, smiling.
+
+“What is it?” inquired Selden, smiling also as Benton’s features froze
+to a mask.
+
+“Let me tell you, first,” interrupted Cleves, “that my wife’s psychic
+ability and skill can make me visualise and actually see scenes and
+people which, God knows, I never before laid eyes upon, but which she
+has both seen and known.
+
+“And one morning, in Florida, I asked her to do something
+strange—something of that sort to amuse me—and we were sitting on the
+steps of our cottage—you know, the old club-house at Orchid!—and the
+first I knew I saw, in the mist on the St. Johns, a Chinese bridge
+humped up over that very commonplace stream, and thousands of people
+passing over it,—and a city beyond—the town of Yian, Tressa tells
+me,—and I heard the Buddhist bells and the big temple gong and the
+noises in streets and on the water——”
+
+He was becoming considerably excited at the memory, and his lean face
+reddened and he gesticulated as he spoke:
+
+“It was astounding, Recklow! There was that bridge, and all those
+people moving over it; and the city beyond, and the boats and shipping,
+and the vast murmur of multitudes.... And then, there on the bridge
+crossing toward Yian, I saw a young girl, who turned and looked back at
+my wife and laughed.”
+
+“And I told him it was Yulun,” said Tressa, simply.
+
+“A playfellow of my wife’s in Yian,” explained Cleves. “But if she were
+really Chinese she didn’t look like what are my own notions of a
+Chinese girl.”
+
+“Yulun came from Black China,” said Mrs. Cleves. “I taught her English.
+I loved her dearly. I was her most intimate friend in Yian.”
+
+There ensued a silence, broken presently by Benton; and:
+
+“Where do I appear in this?” he asked stiffly.
+
+Tressa’s smile was odd; she looked at Selden and said:
+
+“When I was convalescent I was lonely.... I made _the effort_ one
+evening. And I found Yulun. And again she was on a bridge. But she was
+dressed as I am. And the bridge was one of those great, horrible steel
+monsters that sprawl across the East River. And I was astonished, and I
+said, ‘Yulun, darling, are you really here in America and in New York,
+or has a demon tangled the threads of thought to mock my mind in
+illness?’
+
+“Then Yulun looked very sorrowfully at me and wrote in Arabic
+characters, in the air, the name of our enemy who once came to the Lake
+of Ghosts for love of her—Yaddin-ed-Din, Tougtchi to Djamouk the
+Fox.... And who went his way again amid our scornful laughter.... He is
+a demon. And he was tangling my thread of thought!”
+
+Tressa became exceedingly animated once more. She rose and came swiftly
+to where Benton was standing.
+
+“And what do you think!” she said eagerly. “I said to her, ‘Yulun!
+Yulun! Will you _make the effort_ and come to me if I _make the
+effort_? Will you come to me, beloved?’ And Yulun made ‘Yes,’ with her
+lips.”
+
+After a silence: “But—where do I come in?” inquired Benton, stiffly
+fearful of such matters.
+
+“You _came_ in.”
+
+“I don’t understand.”
+
+“You came in the door while Yulun and I were talking.”
+
+“When?”
+
+“When you came to see me after I was better, and you and Mr. Selden
+were going North with Mr. Recklow. Don’t you remember; I was lying in
+the hammock in the moonlight, and Victor told you I was asleep?”
+
+“Yes, of course——”
+
+“I was not asleep. I had _made the effort_ and I was with Yulun.... I
+did not know you were standing beside my hammock in the moonlight until
+Yulun told me.... And _that_ is what I am to tell you; Yulun saw
+you.... And Yulun has written it in Chinese, in Eighur characters and
+in Arabic,—tracing them with her forefinger in the air—that Yulun,
+loveliest in Yian, flame-slender and very white, has seen her heart,
+like a pink pearl afire, burning between your august hands.”
+
+“My hands!” exclaimed Benton, very red.
+
+There fell an odd silence. Nobody laughed.
+
+Tressa came nearer to Benton, wistful, uncertain, shy.
+
+“Would you care to see Yulun?” she asked.
+
+“Well—no,” he said, startled. “I—I shall not deny that such things
+worry me a lot, Mrs. Cleves. I’m a—an Episcopalian.”
+
+The tension released, Selden was the first to laugh.
+
+“There’s no use blinking the truth,” he said; “we’re up against
+something absolutely new. Of course, it isn’t magic. It can, of course,
+be explained by natural laws about which we happen to know nothing at
+present.”
+
+Recklow nodded. “What do we know about the human mind? It has been
+proven that no thought can originate within that mass of convoluted
+physical matter called the brain. It has been proven that _something
+outside_ the brain originates thought and uses the brain as a vehicle
+to incubate it. What do we know about thought?”
+
+Selden, much interested, sat cogitating and looking at Mrs. Cleves. But
+Benton, still flushed and evidently nervous, sat staring out of the
+window at the full moon, and twisting an unlighted cigarette to shreds.
+
+“Why didn’t you tell Benton when the thing occurred down there at
+Orchid Lodge, the night we called to say good-bye?” asked Selden,
+curiously.
+
+Tressa gave him a distressed smile: “I was afraid he wouldn’t believe
+me. And I was afraid that you and Mr. Recklow, even if you believed it,
+might not like—like me any the better for—for being clairvoyant.”
+
+Recklow came over, bent his handsome grey head, and kissed her hand.
+
+“I never liked any woman better, nor respected any woman as deeply,” he
+said. And, lifting his head, he saw tears sparkling in her eyes.
+
+“My dear,” he said in a low voice, and his firm hand closed over the
+slim fingers he had kissed.
+
+Benton got up from his chair, went to the window, turned shortly and
+came over to Tressa.
+
+“You’re braver than I ever could learn to be,” he said shortly. “I ask
+your pardon if I seem sceptical. I’m more worried than incredulous.
+There’s something born in me—part of me—that shrinks from anything that
+upsets my orthodox belief in the future life. But—if you wish me to see
+this—this girl—Yulun—it’s quite all right.”
+
+She said softly, and with gentle wonder: “I know of nothing that could
+upset your belief, Mr. Benton. There is only one God. And if Mahomet be
+His prophet, or if he be Lord Buddha, or if your Lord Christ be
+vice-regent to the Most High, I do not know. All I know is that God is
+God, and that He prevailed over Satan who was stoned. And that in
+Paradise is eternal life, and in hell demons hide where dwells Erlik,
+Prince of Darkness.”
+
+Benton, silent and secretly aghast at her theology, said nothing.
+Recklow pleasantly but seriously denied that Satan and his demons were
+actual and concrete creatures.
+
+Again Cleves’s hand fell lightly on his wife’s shoulder, in a careless
+gesture of reassurance. And, to Benton, “No soul is ever lost,” he
+said, calmly. “I don’t exactly know how that agrees with your
+orthodoxy, Benton. But it is surely so.”
+
+“I don’t know myself,” said Benton. “I hope it’s so.” He looked at
+Tressa a moment and then blurted out: “Anyway, if ever there was a soul
+in God’s keeping and guarded by His angels, it’s your wife’s!”
+
+“That also is true,” said Cleves quietly.
+
+“By the way,” remarked Recklow carelessly, “I’ve arranged to have you
+stop at the Ritz while you’re in town, Mrs. Cleves. You and your
+husband are to occupy the apartment adjoining this. Where is your
+luggage, Victor?”
+
+“In our apartment.”
+
+“That won’t do,” said Recklow decisively. “Telephone for it.”
+
+Cleves went to the telephone, but Recklow took the instrument out of
+his hand and called the number. The voice of one of his own agents
+answered.
+
+Cleves was standing alone by the open window when Recklow hung up the
+telephone. Tressa, on the sofa, had been whispering with Benton.
+Selden, looking over the evening paper by the rose-shaded lamp, glanced
+up as Recklow went over to Cleves.
+
+“Victor,” he said, “your man has been murdered. His throat was cut; his
+head was severed completely. Your luggage has been ransacked and so has
+your apartment. Three of my men are in possession, and the local police
+seem to comprehend the necessity of keeping the matter out of the
+newspapers. What was in your baggage?”
+
+“Nothing,” said Cleves, ghastly pale.
+
+“All right. We’ll have your effects packed up again and brought over
+here. Are you going to tell your wife?”
+
+Cleves, still deathly pale, cast a swift glance toward her. She sat on
+the sofa in animated conversation with Benton. She laughed once, and
+Benton smiled at what she was saying.
+
+“Is there any need to tell her, Recklow?”
+
+“Not for a while, anyway.”
+
+“All right. I suppose the Yezidees are responsible for this horrible
+business.”
+
+“Certainly. Your poor servant’s head lay at the foot of a curtain-pole
+which had been placed upright between two chairs. On the pole were tied
+three tufts of hair from the dead man’s head. The pole had been rubbed
+with blood.”
+
+“That’s Mongol custom,” muttered Cleves. “They made a toug and
+‘greased’ it!—the murderous devils!”
+
+“They did more. They left at the foot of your bed and at the foot of
+your wife’s bed two white sheets. And a knife lay in the centre of each
+sheet. That, of course, is the symbol of the Sect of Assassins.”
+
+Cleves nodded. His body, as he leaned there on the window sill in the
+moonlight, trembled. But his face had grown dark with rage.
+
+“If I could—could only get my hands on one of them,” he whispered
+hoarsely.
+
+“Be careful. Don’t wear a face like that. Your wife is looking at us,”
+murmured Recklow.
+
+With an effort Cleves raised his head and smiled across the room at his
+wife.
+
+“Our luggage will be sent over shortly,” he said. “If you’re tired,
+we’ll say good-night.”
+
+So she rose and the three men came to make their adieux and pay their
+compliments and devoirs. Then, with a smile that seemed almost happy,
+she went into her own apartment on her husband’s arm.
+
+Cleves and his wife had connecting bedrooms and a sitting-room between.
+Here they paused for a moment before the always formal ceremony of
+leave-taking at night. There were roses on the centre table. Tressa
+dropped one hand on the table and bent over the flowers.
+
+“They seem so friendly,” she said under her breath.
+
+He thought she meant that she found even in flowers a refuge from the
+solitude of a loveless marriage.
+
+He said quietly: “I think you will find the world very friendly, if you
+wish.” But she shook her head, looking at the roses.
+
+Finally he said good-night and she extended her hand, and he took it
+formally.
+
+Then their hands fell away. Tressa turned and went toward her bedroom.
+At the door she stopped, turned slowly.
+
+“What shall I do about Yulun?” she asked.
+
+“What is there to do? Yulun is in China.”
+
+“Yes, her body is.”
+
+“Do you mean that the rest of her—whatever it is—could come here?”
+
+“Why, of course.”
+
+“So that Benton could see her?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Could he see her just as she is? Her face and figure—clothes and
+everything?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Would she seem real or like a ghost—spirit—whatever you choose to call
+such things?”
+
+Tressa smiled. “She’d be exactly as real as you or I, Victor. She’d
+seem like anybody else.”
+
+“That’s astonishing,” he muttered. “Could Benton hear her speak?”
+
+“Certainly.”
+
+“Talk to her?”
+
+Tressa laughed: “Of course. If Yulun should _make the effort_ she could
+leave her body as easily as she undresses herself. It is no more
+difficult to divest one’s self of one’s body than it is to put off one
+garment and put on another.... And, somehow, I think Yulun will do it
+to-night.”
+
+“Come _here_?”
+
+“It would be like her.” Tressa laughed. “Isn’t it odd that she should
+have become so enamoured of Mr. Benton—just seeing him there in the
+moonlight that night at Orchid Lodge?”
+
+For a moment the smile curved her lips, then the shadow fell again
+across her eyes, veiling them in that strange and lovely way which
+Cleves knew so well; and he looked into her impenetrable eyes in
+troubled silence.
+
+“Victor,” she said in a low voice, “were you afraid to tell me that
+your man had been murdered?”
+
+After a moment: “You always know everything,” he said unsteadily. “When
+did you learn it?”
+
+“Just before Mr. Recklow told you.”
+
+“How did you learn it, Tressa?”
+
+“I looked into our apartment.”
+
+“When?”
+
+“While you were telephoning.”
+
+“You mean you looked into our rooms from _here_?”
+
+“Yes, clairvoyantly.”
+
+“What did you see?”
+
+“The Iaglamichi!” she said with a shudder. “Kai! The Toug of Djamouk is
+anointed at last!”
+
+“Is that the beast of a Mongol who did this murder?”
+
+“Djamouk and Prince Sanang planned it,” she said, trembling a little.
+“But that butchery was Yaddin’s work, I think. Kai! The work of
+Yaddined-Din, Tougtchi to Djamouk the Fox!”
+
+They stood confronting each other, the length of the sitting-room
+between them. And after the silence had lasted a full minute Cleves
+reddened and said: “I am going to sleep on the couch at the foot of
+your bed, Tressa.”
+
+His young wife reddened too.
+
+He said: “This affair has thoroughly scared me. I can’t let you sleep
+out of my sight.”
+
+“I am quite safe. And you would have an uncomfortable night,” she
+murmured.
+
+“Do you mind if I sleep on the couch, Tressa?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Will you call me when you are ready?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+She went into her bedroom and closed the door.
+
+When he was ready he slipped a pistol into the pocket of his
+dressing-gown, belted it over his pyjamas, and walked into the
+sitting-room. His wife called him presently, and he went in. Her
+night-lamp was burning and she extended her hand to extinguish it.
+
+“Could you sleep if it burns?” he asked bluntly.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Then let it burn. This business has got on my nerves,” he muttered.
+
+They looked at each other in an expressionless way. Both really
+understood how useless was this symbol of protection—this man the girl
+called husband;—how utterly useless his physical strength, and the
+pistol sagging in the pocket of his dressing-gown. Both understood that
+the only real protection to be looked for must come from her—from the
+gifted and guardian mind of this young girl who lay there looking at
+him from the pillows.
+
+“Good-night,” he said, flushing; “I’ll do my best. But only one of
+God’s envoys, like you, knows how to do battle with things that come
+out of hell.”
+
+After a moment’s silence she said in a colourless voice: “I wish you’d
+lie down on the bed.”
+
+“Had you rather I did?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+So he went slowly to the bed, placed his pistol under the pillow, drew
+his dressing-gown around him, and lay down.
+
+After he had lain unstirring for half an hour: “Try to sleep, Tressa,”
+he said, without turning his head.
+
+“Can’t you seem to sleep, Victor?” she asked. And he heard her turn her
+head.
+
+“No.”
+
+“Shall I help you?”
+
+“Do you mean use hypnosis—the power of suggestion—on me?”
+
+“No. I can help you to sleep very gently. I can make you very
+drowsy.... You are drowsy now.... You are very close to the edge of
+sleep.... Sleep, dear.... Sleep, easily, naturally, confidently as a
+tired boy.... You are sleeping, ... deeply ... sweetly ... my dear ...
+my dear, dear husband.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+YULUN THE BELOVED
+
+
+Cleves opened his eyes. He was lying on his left side. In the pink glow
+of the night-lamp he saw his wife in her night-dress, seated sideways
+on the farther edge of the bed, talking to a young girl.
+
+The strange girl wore what appeared to be a chamber-robe of frail gold
+tissue that clung to her body and glittered as she moved. He had never
+before seen such a dress; but he had seen the girl; he recognised her
+instantly as the girl he had seen turn to look back at Tressa as she
+crossed the phantom bridge over that misty Florida river. And Cleves
+comprehended that he was looking at Yulun.
+
+But this charming young thing was no ghost, no astral projection. This
+girl was warm, living, breathing flesh. The delicate scent of her
+strange garments and of her hair, her very breath, was in the air of
+the room. Her half-hushed but laughing voice was deliciously human; her
+delicate little hands, caressing Tressa’s, were too eagerly real to
+doubt.
+
+Both talked at the same time, their animated voices mingling in the
+breathless delight of the reunion. Their exclamations, enchanting
+laughter, bubbling chatter, filled his ears. But not one word of what
+they were saying to each other could he understand.
+
+Suddenly Tressa looked over her shoulder and met his astonished eyes.
+
+“Tokhta!” she exclaimed. “Yulun! My lord is awake!”
+
+Yulun swung around swiftly on the edge of the bed and looked laughingly
+at Cleves. But when her red lips unclosed she spoke to Tressa: and,
+“Darling,” she said in English, “I think your dear lord remembers that
+he saw me on the Bridge of Dreams. And heard the bells of Yian across
+the mist.”
+
+Tressa said, laughing at her husband: “This is Yulun, flame-slender,
+very white, loveliest in Yian. On the rose-marble steps of the Yezidee
+Temple she flung a stemless rose upon Djamouk’s shroud, where he had
+spread it like a patch of snow in the sun.
+
+“And at the Lake of the Ghosts, where there is freedom to love, for
+those who desire love, came Yaddin, Tougtchi to Djamouk the Fox, in
+search of love—and Yulun, flame-slim, and flower-white.... Tell my dear
+lord, Yulun!”
+
+Yulun laughed at Cleves out of her dark eyes that slanted charmingly at
+the corners.
+
+“Kai!” she cried softly, clapping her palms. “I took his roses and tore
+them with my hands till their petals rained on him and their golden
+hearts were a powdery cloud floating across the water.
+
+“I said: ‘Even the damned do not mate with demons, my Tougtchi! So go
+to the devil, my Banneret, and may Erlik seize you!’”
+
+Cleves, his ears ringing with the sweet confusion of their girlish
+laughter, rose from his pillow, supporting himself on one arm.
+
+“You are Yulun. You are alive and real——” He looked at Tressa: “She is
+real, isn’t she?” And, to Yulun: “Where do you come from?”
+
+The girl replied seriously: “I come from Yian.” She turned to Tressa
+with a dazzling smile: “Thou knowest, my heart’s gold, how it was I
+came. Tell thy dear lord in thine own way, so that it shall be simple
+for his understanding.... And now—because my visit is ending—I think
+thy dear lord should sleep. Bid him sleep, my heart’s gold!”
+
+At that calm suggestion Cleves sat upright on the bed,—or attempted to.
+But sank back gently on his pillow and met there a dark, delicious rush
+of drowsiness.
+
+He made an effort—or tried to: the smooth, sweet tide of sleep swept
+over him to the eyelids, leaving him still and breathing evenly on his
+pillow.
+
+The two girls leaned over and looked down at him.
+
+“Thy dear lord,” murmured Yulun. “Does he love thee, rose-bud of Yian?”
+
+“No,” said Tressa, under her breath.
+
+“Does he know thou art damned, heart of gold?”
+
+“He says no soul is ever really harmed,” whispered Tressa.
+
+“Kai! Has he never heard of the Slayer of Souls?” exclaimed Yulun
+incredulously.
+
+“My lord maintains that neither the Assassin of Khorassan nor the
+Sheiks-el-Djebel of the Eight Towers, nor their dark prince Erlik, can
+have power over God to slay the human soul.”
+
+“Tokhta, Rose of Yian! Our souls were slain there in the Yezidee
+temple.”
+
+Tressa looked down at Cleves:
+
+“My dear lord says no,” she said under her breath.
+
+“And—Sanang?”
+
+Tressa paled: “His mind and mine did battle. I tore my heart from his
+grasp. I have laid it, bleeding, at my dear lord’s feet. Let God judge
+between us, Yulun.”
+
+“There was a day,” whispered Yulun, “when Prince Sanang went to the
+Lake of the Ghosts.”
+
+Tressa, very pallid, looked down at her sleeping husband. She said:
+
+“Prince Sanang came to the Lake of the Ghosts. The snow of the
+cherry-trees covered the young world.
+
+“The water was clear as sunlight; and the lake was afire with scarlet
+carp.... Yulun—beloved—the nightingale sang all night long—all night
+long.... Then I saw Sanang shining, all gold, in the moonlight.... May
+God remember him in hell!”
+
+“May God remember him.”
+
+“Sanang Noïane. May he be accursed in the Namaz Ga!”
+
+“May he be tormented in Jehaunum!—Sanang, Slayer of Souls.”
+
+Tressa leaned forward on the bed, stretched herself out, and laid her
+face gently across her husband’s feet, touching them with her lips.
+
+Then she straightened herself and sat up, supported by one hand, and
+looking silently down at the sleeping man.
+
+“No soul shall die,” she said. “Niaz!”
+
+“Is it written?” asked Yulun, surprised.
+
+“My lord has said it.”
+
+“Allahou Ekber,” murmured Yulun; “thy lord is only a man.”
+
+Tressa said: “Neither the Tekbir nor the fatha, nor the warning of
+Khidr, nor the Yacaz of the Khagan, nor even the prayers of the Ten
+Imaums are of any value to me unless my dear lord confirms the truth of
+them with his own lips.”
+
+“And Erlik? Is he nothing, then?”
+
+“Erlik!” repeated Tressa insolently. “Who is Erlik but the servant of
+Satan who was stoned?”
+
+Her beautiful, angry lips were suddenly distorted; her blue eyes
+blazed. Then she spat, her mouth still tremulous with hatred. She said
+in a voice shaking with rage:
+
+“Yulun, beloved! Listen attentively. I have slain two of the Slayers of
+the Eight Towers. With God’s help I shall slay them all—all!—Djamouk,
+Yaddin, Arrak Sou-Sou—all!—every one!—Tiyang Khan, Togrul,—all shall I
+slay, even to the last one among them!”
+
+“_Sanang, also?_”
+
+“I leave him to God. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of
+the living God!”
+
+Yulun calmly paraphrased the cant phrase of the Assassins: “For it is
+written that we belong to God and we return to Him. Heart of gold, I
+shall execute my duty!”
+
+Then Yulun slipped from the edge of the bed to the floor, and stood
+there looking oddly at Tressa, her eyes rain-bright as though choking
+back tears—or laughter.
+
+“Heart of a rose,” she said in a suppressed voice, “my time is nearly
+ended.... So.... I go to the chamber of this strange young man who
+holds my soul like a pearl afire between his hands.... I think it it
+written that I shall love him.”
+
+Tressa rose also and placed her lips close to Yulun’s ear: “His name,
+beloved, is Benton. His room is on this floor. Shall we _make the
+effort_ together?”
+
+“Yes,” said Yulun. “Lay your body down upon the bed beside your lord
+who sleeps so deeply.... And now stretch out.... And fold both
+hands.... And now put off thy body like a silken garment.... So! And
+leave it there beside thy lord, asleep.”
+
+They stood together for a moment, shining like dewy shapes of tall
+flowers, whispering and laughing together in the soft glow of the night
+lamp.
+
+Cleves slept on, unstirring. There was the white and sleeping figure of
+his wife lying on the bed beside him.
+
+But Tressa and Yulun were already melting away between the wall and the
+confused rosy radiance of the lamp.
+
+Benton, in night attire and chamber-robe belted in, fresh from his bath
+and still drying his curly hair on a rough towel, wandered back into
+his bedroom.
+
+When his short, bright hair was dry, he lighted a cigarette, took the
+automatic from his dresser, examined the clip, and shoved it under his
+pillow.
+
+Then he picked up the little leather-bound Testament, seated himself,
+and opened it. And read tranquilly while his cigarette burned.
+
+When he was ready he turned out the ceiling light, leaving only the
+night lamp lighted. Then he knelt beside his bed,—a custom surviving
+the nursery period,—and rested his forehead against his folded hands.
+
+Then, as he prayed, something snapped the thread of prayer as though
+somebody had spoken aloud in the still room; and, like one who has been
+suddenly interrupted, he opened his eyes and looked around and upward.
+
+The silent shock of her presence passed presently. He got up from his
+knees, looking at her all the while.
+
+“You are Yulun,” he said very calmly.
+
+The girl flushed brightly and rested one hand on the foot of the bed.
+
+“Do you remember in the moonlight where you walked along the hedge of
+white hibiscus and oleander—that night you said good-bye to Tressa in
+the South?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Twice,” she said, laughing, “you stopped to peer at the blossoms in
+the moonlight.”
+
+“I thought I saw a face among them.”
+
+“You were not sure whether it was flowers or a girl’s face looking at
+you from the blossoming hedge of white hibiscus,” said Yulun.
+
+“I know now,” he said in an odd, still voice, unlike his own.
+
+“Yes, it was I,” she murmured. And of a sudden the girl dropped to her
+knees without a sound and laid her head on the velvet carpet at his
+feet.
+
+So swiftly, noiselessly was it done that he had not comprehended—had
+not moved—when she sat upright, resting on her knees, and grasped the
+collar of her tunic with both gemmed hands.
+
+“Have pity on me, lord of my lost soul!” she cried softly.
+
+Benton stooped in a dazed way to lift the girl; but found himself knee
+deep in a snowy drift of white hibiscus blossoms—touched nothing but
+silken petals—waded in them as he stepped forward. And saw her standing
+before him still grasping the collar of her golden tunic.
+
+A great white drift of bloom lay almost waist deep between them; the
+fragrance of oleander, too, was heavy in the room.
+
+“There are years of life before the flaming gates of Jehaunum open. And
+I am very young,” said Yulun wistfully.
+
+Somebody else laughed in the room. Turning his head, he saw Tressa
+standing by the empty fireplace.
+
+“What you see and hear need not disturb you,” she said, looking at
+Benton out of brilliant eyes. “There is no god but God; and His prophet
+has been called by many names.” And to Yulun: “Have I not told you that
+nothing can harm our souls?”
+
+Yulun’s expression altered and she turned to Benton: “Say it to me!”
+she pleaded.
+
+As in a dream he heard his own words: “Nothing can ever really harm the
+soul.”
+
+Yulun’s hands fell from her tunic collar. Very slowly she lifted her
+head, looking at him out of lovely, proud young eyes.
+
+She said, evenly, her still gaze on him: “I am Yulun of the Temple. My
+heart is like a blazing pearl which you hold between your hands. May
+the four Blessed Companions witness the truth of what I say.”
+
+Then a delicate veil of colour wrapped her white skin from throat to
+temple; she looked at Benton with sudden and exquisite distress,
+frightened and ashamed at his silence.
+
+In the intense stillness Benton moved toward her. Into his outstretched
+hands her two hands fell; but, bending above them, his lips touched
+only two white hibiscus flowers that lay fresh and dewy in his palms.
+
+Bewildered, he straightened up; and saw the girl standing by the mantel
+beside Tressa, who had caught her by the left hand.
+
+“Tokhta! Look out!” she said distinctly.
+
+Suddenly he saw two men in the room, close to him—their broad faces,
+slanting eyes, and sparse beards thrust almost against his shoulder.
+
+“Djamouk! Yaddin-ed-Din!” cried Tressa in a terrible voice. But quick
+as a flash Yulun tore a white sheet from the bed, flung it on the
+floor, and, whipping a tiny, jewelled knife from her sleeve, threw it
+glittering upon the sheet at the feet of the two men.
+
+“One shroud for two souls!” she said breathlessly, “—and a knife like
+that to sever them from their bodies!”
+
+The two men sprang backward as the sheet touched their feet, and now
+they stood there as though confounded.
+
+“Djamouk, Kahn of the Fifth Tower!” cried Tressa in a clear voice, “you
+have put off your body like a threadbare cloak, and your form that
+stands there is only your mind! And it is only the evil will of Yaddin
+in the shape of his body that confronts us in this room of a man you
+have doomed!”
+
+Yulun, intent as a young leopardess on her prey, moved soundlessly
+toward Yaddin.
+
+“Tougtchi!” she said coldly, “you did murder this day, my Banneret, and
+the Toug of Djamouk has been greased. Now look out for yourself!”
+
+“Don’t stir!” came Tressa’s warning voice, as Benton snatched his
+pistol from the pillow. “Don’t fire! Those men have no real substance!
+For God’s sake don’t fire! I tell you they have no bodies!”
+
+Suddenly something—some force—flung Benton on the bed. The two men did
+not seem to touch him at all, but he lay there struggling, crushed,
+held by something that was strangling him.
+
+Through his swimming eyes he saw Yaddin trying to drive a long nail
+into his skull with a hammer,—felt the piercing agony of the first
+crashing blow,—struggled upright, drenched in blood, his ears ringing
+with the screaming of Yaddin.
+
+Then, there in the little rococo bedroom of the Ritz-Carlton, began a
+strange and horrible struggle—the more dreadful because the struggle
+was not physical and the combatants never touched each other—scarcely
+moved at all.
+
+Yaddin, still screaming, confronted Yulun. The girl’s eyes were ablaze,
+her lips parted with the violence of her breathing. And Yaddin writhed
+and screamed under the terrible concentration of her gaze, his inferior
+but ferocious mind locked with her mind in deadly battle.
+
+The girl said slowly, showing a glimmer of white teeth: “Your will to
+do evil to my young lord is breaking, Yaddin-ed-Din.... I am breaking
+it. The nail and hammer were but symbols. It was your brain that
+brooded murder—that willed he should die as though shattered by
+lightning when that blood-vessel burst in his brain!”
+
+“Sorceress!” shrieked Yaddin, “what are you doing to my heart, where my
+body lies asleep in a berth on the Montreal Express!”
+
+“Your heart is weak, Yaddin. Soon the valves shall fail. A negro porter
+shall discover you dead in your berth, my Banneret!”
+
+The man’s swarthy face became livid with the terrific mental battle.
+
+“Let me go back to my body!” he panted. “What are you doing to me that
+I can not go back? I will go back! I wish it!—I——”
+
+“Let us go back and rejoin our bodies!” cried Djamouk in an agonised
+voice. “There are teeth in my throat, deep in my throat, biting and
+tearing out the cords.”
+
+“Cancer,” said Tressa calmly. “Your body shall die of it while your
+soul stumbles on through darkness.”
+
+“My Tougtchi!” shouted Djamouk, “I hear my soul bidding my body
+farewell! I must go before my mind expires in the terrible gaze of this
+young sorceress!”
+
+He turned, drifted like something misty to the solid wall.
+
+“My soul be ransom for yours!” cried Yulun to Tressa. “Bar that man’s
+path to life!”
+
+Tressa flung out her right hand and, with her forefinger, drew a
+barrier through space, bar above bar.
+
+And Benton, half swooning on his bed, saw a cage of terrible and living
+light penning in Djamouk, who beat upon the incandescent bars and
+grasped them and clawed his way about, squealing like a tortured rat in
+a red-hot cage.
+
+Through the deafening tumult Yulun’s voice cut like a sword:
+
+“Their bodies are dying, Heart of a Rose!... Listen! I hear their souls
+bidding their minds farewell!”
+
+And, after a dreadful silence: “The train speeding north carries two
+dead men! God is God. Niaz!”
+
+The bars of living fire faded. Two cinder-like and shapeless shadows
+floated and eddied like whitened ashes stirred by a wind on the hearth;
+then drifted through the lamp-light, fading, dissolving, lost gradually
+in thin air.
+
+Tressa, leaning back against the mantel, covered her face with both
+hands.
+
+Yulun crept to the bed where Benton lay, breathing evenly in deepest
+sleep.
+
+With the sheer sleeve of her tunic she wiped the blood from his face.
+And, at her touch, the wound in the temple closed and the short, bright
+hair dried and curled over a forehead as clean and fresh as a boy’s.
+
+Then Yulun laid her lips against his, rested so a moment.
+
+“Seek me, dear lord,” she whispered. “Or send me a sign and I shall
+come.”
+
+And, after a pause, she said, her lips scarcely stirring: “Love me. My
+heart is a flaming pearl burning between your hands.”
+
+Then she lifted her head.
+
+But Tressa had rejoined her body, where it lay asleep beside her deeply
+sleeping husband.
+
+So Yulun stood a moment, her eyes remote. Then, after a while, the
+little rococo bedroom in the Ritz-Carlton was empty save for a young
+man asleep on the bed, holding in his clenched hand a white hibiscus
+blossom.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+HIS EXCELLENCY
+
+
+His Excellency President Tintinto, Chief Executive of one of the newer
+and cruder republics, visiting New York incognito with his Secretaries
+of War and of the Navy, had sent for John Recklow. And now the
+reception was in full operation.
+
+Recklow was explaining. “In the beginning,” he said, “the Bolsheviks’
+aim was to destroy everything and everybody except themselves, and then
+to reorganise for their own benefit what was left of a wrecked world.
+That was their programme——”
+
+“Quite a programme,” interrupted the Secretary of War, with something
+that almost resembled a giggle. But his prominent eyes continued to
+stare at Recklow untouched by the mirth which stretched his large,
+silly mouth.
+
+The face of the Secretary of the Navy resembled the countenance of a
+benevolent manatee. The visage of the President was a study in tinted
+chalks.
+
+Recklow said: “To combat that sort of Bolshevism was a business that we
+of the United States Secret Service understood—or supposed we
+understood.
+
+“Then, suddenly, out of unknown Mongolia and into the civilised world
+stepped eight men.”
+
+“Yezidees,” said the President mechanically. “Your Government has sent
+me a very full report.”
+
+“Yezidees of the Sect of the Assassins,” continued Recklow; “—the most
+ancient sect in the world surviving from ancient times—the Sorcerers of
+Asia. And, as it was in ancient times, so it is now: the Yezidees are
+devil worshipers; their god is Satan; _his_ prophet is Erlik, Prince of
+Darkness; _his_ regent on earth is the old man of Mount Alamout; and to
+this ancient and sinister title a Yezidee sorcerer called Prince
+Sanang, or Sanang Noïane, has succeeded.
+
+“His murderous deputies were the Eight Khans of the Eight Towers. Four
+of these assassins are dead—Gutchlug, Yarghouz, Djamouk the Fox, and
+Yaddin-ed-Din. One is in prison charged with murder,—Albert Feke.
+
+“Four of the sorcerers remain alive: Tiyang Khan, Togrul, Arrak,
+Sou-Sou, called The Squirrel, and the Old Man of the Mountain himself,
+Saï-Sanang, Prince of the Yezidees.”
+
+Recklow paused; the pop-eyes of the War Secretary were upon him; the
+benevolent manatee gazed mildly at him; the countenance of the
+President seemed more like a Rocky Mountain goat than ever—chiselled
+out of a block of tinted chalk.
+
+Recklow said: “To the menace of Bolshevism, which endangers this
+Republic and yours, has been added a more terrible threat—the threat of
+powerful and evil minds made formidable by psychic knowledge.
+
+“For these Yezidee Sorcerers are determined to conquer, seize, and
+subdue the minds of mankind. They are here for that frightful purpose.
+Powerfully, terrifically equipped to surprise and capture the unarmed
+minds of our people, enslave their very thoughts and use them to their
+own purposes, these Sorcerers of the Yezidees assumed control of the
+Bolsheviki, who were merely envious and ferocious bandits, but whose
+crippled minds are now utterly enslaved by these Assassins from Asia.
+
+“And this is what the United States Secret Service has to combat. And
+its weapons are not warrants, not pistols. For in this awful battle
+between decency and evil, it is mind against mind in an occult death
+grapple. And our only weapon against these minds made powerful by
+psychic knowledge and made terrible by an esoteric ability akin to what
+is called black magic,—our only weapon is the mind of a young girl.”
+
+“I understand,” said the President, “that she became an adept in occult
+practices while imprisoned in the Yezidee Temple of Erlik at Yian.”
+
+Recklow looked into the President’s face, which had grown very pale.
+
+“Yes, sir,” he said. “God alone knows what this child learned in the
+Yezidee Temple. All I know is that with this knowledge she has met the
+Yezidees in a battle of minds, has halted them, confounded them, fought
+them with their own occult knowledge, and has slain four of them.”
+
+The intense silence was broken by the frivolous titter of the Secretary
+of War:
+
+“Of course I don’t believe any of this supernatural stuff,” he said
+with the split grin which did not modify his protruding stare. “This
+girl is merely a clever detective, that is the gist of the matter. And
+I don’t believe anything else.”
+
+“Perhaps, sir, you will believe this, then,” said John Recklow quietly.
+“I cut it from the _Times_ this morning.” And he handed the clipping to
+the Secretary of War.
+
+NEW PLOT IN EAST
+
+Moslem and Hindu Conspirators
+Have Formed Secret
+Organisation
+
+Have World Revolution in View
+
+Think to Rouse Asia, America, and Africa
+to Outbreaks by Their
+Propaganda.
+
+
+
+
+Copyright, 1919, by _The New York Times_ Company.
+Special Cable to _The New York Times_.
+
+July 1.—A significant event has recently taken place. Under the name of
+the Oriental League has recently been established a central
+organisation uniting all the various secret societies of Moslem and
+Hindu nationalists. The aim of the new association is to prepare for
+joint revolutionary action in Asia, America, and Africa.
+
+The effects of this vast conspiracy may already be traced in recent
+events in Egypt, India, and Afghanistan. For the first time, through
+the creation of this league, the racial and religious differences which
+have divided Eastern conspirators have been overcome. The Ottoman
+League, founded by Mahmud Muktar Pasha, Munir Pasha, and Ahmed Rechid
+Bey, has adhered to the new organisation. So have the extreme Egyptian
+nationalists and the Hindu revolutionary group, “Pro India,” emissaries
+of which were recently sentenced for bringing bombs into Switzerland
+during the war at the instigation of the German General Staff.
+
+At a “Constituent Assembly” of the league, which took place in Yian,
+there were present, besides Young Turks, Egyptians and Hindus,
+delegates representing Persia, Afghanistan, Algeria, Morocco, and
+Mongolia.
+
+The league is of Mongolian origin. Its leading spirit is a certain
+Prince Sanang, of whom little is known.
+
+Associated with this mischievous and rather mysterious Mongolian
+personage are three better known criminals, now fugitives from
+justice—Talaat, Enver, and Djemal. It is to Enver Pasha’s talent for
+intrigue that the union between Moslems and Hindus, the most striking
+and dangerous feature of the movement, is chiefly due.
+
+Considerable funds are at the disposal of the league. These are partly
+supplied from Germany. Besides enjoying the support of the Germans, the
+league is also in close touch with Lenine, who very soon after his
+advent to power organised an Oriental Department in Moscow.
+
+The alliance between the league and the Russian Bolsheviki was brought
+about by the notorious German Socialist agent, “Parvus,” who is now in
+Switzerland. Many weeks ago he conferred with the Soviet rulers in
+Moscow, whence he went to Afghanistan, hoping to reorganise the new
+Amir’s army and establish lines of communication for propaganda in
+India.
+
+Evidence exists that the recent insurrection in Egypt, the sudden
+attack of the Afghans, and the rising in India, remarkable for
+co-operation between Moslems and Hindus, were connected with the
+activities of the league.
+
+The Secretary looked up after he finished the reading.
+
+“I don’t see anything about Black Magic in this?” he remarked
+flippantly.
+
+Recklow’s features became very grave.
+
+“I think,” he said, “that everybody—myself included—and, with all
+respect, even yourself, sir,—and your honourable colleague,—and perhaps
+even his Excellency your President,—should be on perpetual guard over
+their minds, and the thoughts that range there, lest, surreptitiously,
+stealthily, some taint of Yezidee infection lodge there and take
+root—and spread—perhaps—throughout your new Republic.”
+
+The Secretary of War grinned. “They say I’m something of a socialist
+already,” he chuckled. “Do you think your magic Yezidees are
+responsible?”
+
+The President, troubled and pallid, gazed steadily at Recklow.
+
+“Mine is a single-track mind,” he remarked as though to himself.
+
+Recklow said nothing. It is one kind of mind, after all. However,
+single-track roads are now obsolete.
+
+“A single-track mind,” repeated the President. “And—I should not like
+anything to happen to the switch. It would mean ditching—or a rusty
+siding at best.... Please do all that is possible to get those four
+Yezidees, Mr. Recklow.”
+
+Recklow said calmly: “Our only hope is in this young girl, Tressa
+Norne, who is now Mrs. Cleves.”
+
+“My conscience!” piped the Secretary of the Navy. “What would happen to
+us if these Yezidees should murder her?”
+
+“God knows,” replied John Recklow, unsmiling.
+
+“Why not put her aboard our new dreadnought?” suggested the Secretary,
+“and keep her cruising until you United States Secret Service fellows
+get the rest of these infernal Yezidees and clap ’em into jail?”
+
+“We can do nothing without her,” said Recklow sombrely.
+
+There was a painful silence. The President joined his finger tips and
+stared palely into space.
+
+“May I not say,” he suggested, “that I think it a vital necessity that
+these Yezidees be caught and destroyed before they do any damage to the
+minds of myself and my cabinet?”
+
+“God grant it, sir,” said Recklow grimly.
+
+“Mine,” murmured the President, “is a single-track mind. I should be
+very much annoyed if anybody tampered with the rails—very much annoyed
+indeed, Mr. Recklow.”
+
+“They mustn’t murder that girl,” said the Secretary of the Navy. “Do
+you need any Marines, Mr. Recklow? Why not ask your Government for a
+few?”
+
+Recklow rose: “Mr. President,” he said, “I shall not deny that my
+Government is very deeply disturbed by this situation. In the
+beginning, these eight Assassins, and Sanang, came here for the purpose
+of attacking, overpowering, and enslaving the minds of the people of
+the United States and of the South American Republics.
+
+“But now, after four of their infamous colleagues have been destroyed,
+the ferocious survivors, thoroughly alarmed, have turned their every
+energy toward accomplishing the death of Mrs. Cleves! Why, sir,
+scarcely a day passes but that some attempt upon her life is made by
+these Yezidees.
+
+“Scarcely a day passes that this young girl is not suddenly summoned to
+defend her mind as well as her body against the occult attacks of these
+Mongol Sorcerers. Yes, sir, Sorcerers!” repeated Recklow, his calm
+voice deep with controlled passion, “—whatever your honourable
+Secretary of War may think about it!”
+
+His cold, grey eyes measured the President as he stood there.
+
+“Mr. President, I am at my wits’ end to protect her from assassination!
+Her husband is always with her—Victor Cleves, sir, of our Secret
+Service. But wherever he takes her these devils follow and send their
+emissaries to watch her, to follow, to attempt her mental destruction
+or her physical death.
+
+“There is no end to their stealthy cunning, to their devilish devices,
+to their hellish ingenuity!
+
+“And all we can do is to guard her person from the approach of
+strangers, and stand ready, physically, to aid her.
+
+“She is our only barrier—_your_ only defence—between civilisation and
+horrors worse than Bolshevism.
+
+“I believe, Mr. President, that civilisation in North and South
+America—in your own Republic as well as in ours—depends, literally,
+upon the safety of Tressa Cleves. For, if the Yezidees kill her, then I
+do not see what is to save civilisation from utter disintegration and
+total destruction.”
+
+There was a silence. Recklow was not certain that the President had
+been listening.
+
+His Excellency sat with finger tips joined, gazing pallidly into space;
+and Recklow heard him murmuring under his breath and all to himself, as
+though to fix the deathless thought forever in his brain:
+
+“May I not say that mine is a single-track mind? May I not say it? May
+I not,—may I not,—not, not, not——”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+SA-N’SA
+
+
+June sunshine poured through the window of his bedroom in the Ritz; and
+Cleves had just finished dressing when he heard his wife’s voice in the
+adjoining sitting-room.
+
+He had not supposed that Tressa was awake. He hastened to tie his tie
+and pull on a smoking jacket, listening all the while to his wife’s
+modulated but gay young voice.
+
+Then he opened the sitting-room door and went in. And found his wife
+entirely alone.
+
+She looked up at him, her lips still parted as though checked in what
+she had been saying, the smile still visible in her blue eyes.
+
+“Who on earth are you talking to?” he asked, his bewildered glance
+sweeping the sunny room again.
+
+She did not reply; her smile faded as a spot of sunlight wanes, veiled
+by a cloud—yet a glimmer of it remained in her gaze as he came over to
+her.
+
+“I thought they’d brought our breakfast,” he said, “—hearing your
+voice.... Did you sleep well?”
+
+“Yes, Victor.”
+
+He seated himself, and his perplexed scrutiny included her frail
+morning robe of China silk, her lovely bare arms, and her splendid hair
+twisted up and pegged down with a jade dagger. Around her bare throat
+and shoulders, too, was a magnificent necklace of imperial jade which
+he had never before seen; and on one slim, white finger a superb jade
+ring.
+
+“By Jove!” he said, “you’re very exotic this morning, Tressa. I never
+before saw that negligee effect.”
+
+The girl laughed, glanced at her ring, lifted a frail silken fold and
+examined the amazing embroidery.
+
+“I wore it at the Lake of the Ghosts,” she said.
+
+The name of that place always chilled him. He had begun to hate it,
+perhaps because of all that he did not know about it—about his wife’s
+strange girlhood—about Yian and the devil’s Temple there—and about
+Sanang.
+
+He said coldly but politely that the robe was unusual and the jade very
+wonderful.
+
+The alteration in his voice and expression did not escape her. It meant
+merely masculine jealousy, but Tressa never dreamed he cared in that
+way.
+
+Breakfast was brought, served; and presently these two young people
+were busy with their melons, coffee, and toast in the sunny room high
+above the softened racket of traffic echoing through avenue and street
+below.
+
+“Recklow telephoned me this morning,” he remarked.
+
+She looked up, her face serious.
+
+“Recklow says that Yezidee mischief is taking visible shape. The
+Socialist Party is going to be split into bits and a new party,
+impudently and publicly announcing itself as the Communist Party of
+America, is being organised. Did you ever hear of anything as
+shameless—as outrageous—in this Republic?”
+
+She said very quietly: “Sanang has taken prisoner the minds of these
+wretched people. He and his remaining Yezidees are giving battle to the
+unarmed minds of our American people.”
+
+“Gutchlug is dead,” said Cleves, “—and Yarghouz and Djamouk, and
+Yaddin.”
+
+“But Tiyang Khan is alive, and Togrul, and that cunning demon Arrak
+Sou-Sou, called The Squirrel,” she said. She bent her head, considering
+the jade ring on her finger. “—And Prince Sanang,” she added in a low
+voice.
+
+“Why didn’t you let me shoot him when I had the chance?” said Cleves
+harshly.
+
+So abrupt was his question, so rough his sudden manner, that the girl
+looked up in dismayed surprise. Then a deep colour stained her face.
+
+“Once,” she said, “Prince Sanang held my heart prisoner—as Erlik held
+my soul.... I told you that.”
+
+“Is that the reason you gave the fellow a chance?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Oh.... And possibly you gave Sanang a chance because he still holds
+your—affections!”
+
+She said, crimson with the pain of the accusation: “I tore my heart out
+of his keeping.... I told you that.... And, believing—trying to believe
+what you say to me, I have tried to tear my soul out of the claws of
+Erlik.... Why are you angry?”
+
+“I don’t know.... I’m not angry.... The whole horrible situation is
+breaking my nerve, I guess.... With whom were you talking before I came
+in?”
+
+After a silence the girl’s smile glimmered.
+
+“I’m afraid you won’t like it if I tell you.”
+
+“Why not?”
+
+“You—such things perplex and worry you.... I am afraid you won’t like
+me any the better if I tell you who it was I had been talking with.”
+
+His intent gaze never left her. “I want you to tell me,” he repeated.
+
+“I—I was talking with Sa-n’sa,” she faltered.
+
+“With whom?”
+
+“With Sa-n’sa.... We called her Sansa.”
+
+“Who the dickens is Sansa?”
+
+“We were three comrades at the Temple,” she said timidly, “—Yulun,
+Sansa, and myself. We loved each other. We always went to the Lake of
+the Ghosts together—for protection——”
+
+“Go on!”
+
+“Sansa was a girl of the Aroulads, born at Buldak—as was Temujin. The
+night she was born three moon-rainbows made circles around her Yaïlak.
+The Baroulass horsemen saw this and prayed loudly in their saddles.
+Then they galloped to Yian and came crawling on their bellies to Sanang
+Noïane with the news of the miracle. And Sanang came with a thousand
+riders in leather armour. And, ‘What is this child’s name?’ he shouted,
+riding into the Yaïlak with his black banners flapping around him like
+devil’s wings.
+
+“A poor Manggoud came out of the tent of skins, carrying the new born
+infant, and touched his head to Sanang’s stirrup. ‘This babe is called
+Tchagane,’ he said, trembling all over. ‘No!’ cries Sanang, ‘she is
+called Sansa. Give her to me and may Erlik seize you!’
+
+“And he took the baby on his saddle in front of him and struck his
+spurs deep; and so came Sansa to Yian under a roaring rustle of black
+silk banners.... It is so written in the Book of Iron.... Allahou
+Ekber.”
+
+
+Cleves had leaned his elbow on the table, his forehead rested in his
+palm.
+
+Perhaps he was striving in a bewildered way to reconcile such occult
+and amazing things with the year 1920—with the commonplace and noisy
+city of New York—with this pretty, modern, sunlit sitting-room in the
+Ritz-Carlton on Madison Avenue—with this girl in her morning negligee
+opposite, her coffee and melon fragrant at her elbow, her wonderful
+blue eyes resting on him.
+
+“Sansa,” he repeated slowly, as though striving to grasp even a single
+word from the confusion of names and phrases that were sounding still
+in his ears like the vibration of distant and unfamiliar seas.
+
+“Is this the girl you were talking with just now? In—in _this_ room?”
+he added, striving to understand.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“She wasn’t here, of course.”
+
+“Her body was not.”
+
+“Oh!”
+
+Tressa said in her sweet, humorous way: “You must try to accustom
+yourself to such things, Victor. You know that Yulun talks to me.... I
+wanted to talk to Sansa. The longing awakened me. So—_I made the
+effort_.”
+
+“And she came—I mean the part of her which is not her body.”
+
+“Yes, she came. We talked very happily while I was bathing and
+dressing. Then we came in here. She is such a darling!”
+
+“Where is she?”
+
+“In Yian, feeding her silk-worms and making a garden. You see, Sansa is
+quite wealthy now, because when the Japanese came she filled a bullock
+cart with great lumps of spongy gold from the Temple and filled another
+cart with Yu-stone, and took the Hezar of Baroulass horsemen on guard
+at the Lake of the Ghosts. And with this Keutch, riding a Soubz horse,
+and dressed like an Urieng lancer, my pretty little comrade Tchagane,
+who is called Sansa, marched north preceded by two kettle-drums and a
+toug with two tails——”
+
+Tressa’s clear laughter checked her; she clapped her hands, breathless
+with mirth at the picture she evoked.
+
+“Kai!” she laughed; “what adorable impudence has Sansa! Neither
+Tchortcha nor Khiounnou dared ask her who were her seven ancestors! No!
+And when her caravan came to the lovely Yliang river, my darling Sansa
+rode out and grasped the lance from her Tougtchi and drove the point
+deep into the fertile soil, crying in a clear voice: ‘A place for
+Tchagane and her people! Make room for the toug!’
+
+“Then her Manggoud, who carried the spare steel tip for her lance, got
+out of his saddle and, gathering a handful of mulberry leaves, rubbed
+the shaft of the lance till it was all pale green.
+
+“‘Toug iaglachakho!’ cries my adorable Sansa! ‘Build me here my
+Urdu![2]—my Mocalla![3] And upon it pitch my tent of skins!”
+
+Again Tressa’s laughter checked her, and she strove to control it with
+the jade ring pressed to her lips.
+
+“Oh, Victor,” she added in a stifled voice, looking at him out of eyes
+full of mischief, “you don’t realise how funny it was—Sansa and her
+toug and her Urdu—Oh, Allah!—the bones of Tchinguiz must have rattled
+in his tomb!”
+
+Her infectious laughter evoked a responsive but perplexed smile from
+Cleves; but it was the smile of a bewildered man who has comprehended
+very little of an involved jest; and he looked around at the modern
+room as though to find his bearings.
+
+Suddenly Tressa leaned forward swiftly and laid one hand on his.
+
+“You don’t think all this is very funny. You don’t like it,” she said
+in soft concern.
+
+“It isn’t that, Tressa. But this is New York City in the year 1920. And
+I can’t—I absolutely can not get into touch—hook up, mentally, with
+such things—with the unreal Oriental life that is so familiar to you.”
+
+She nodded sympathetically: “I know. You feel like a Mergued Pagan from
+Lake Baïkal when all the lamps are lighted in the Mosque;—like a camel
+driver with his jade and gold when he enters Yarkand at sunrise.”
+
+“Probably I feel like that,” said Cleves, laughing outright. “I take
+your word, dear, anyway.”
+
+But he took more; he picked up her soft hand where it still rested on
+his, pressed it, and instantly reddened because he had done it. And
+Tressa’s bright flush responded so quickly that neither of them
+understood, and both misunderstood.
+
+The girl rose with heightened colour, not knowing why she stood up or
+what she meant to do. And Cleves, misinterpreting her emotion as a
+silent rebuke to the invasion of that convention tacitly accepted
+between them, stood up, too, and began to speak carelessly of
+commonplace things.
+
+She made the effort to reply, scarcely knowing what she was saying, so
+violently had his caress disturbed her heart,—and she was still
+speaking when their telephone rang.
+
+Cleves went; listened, then, still listening, summoned Tressa to his
+side with a gesture.
+
+“It’s Selden,” he said in a low voice. “He says he has the Yezidee
+Arrak Sou-Sou under observation, and that he needs you desperately.
+Will you help us?”
+
+“I’ll go, of course,” she replied, turning quite pale.
+
+Cleves nodded, still listening. After a while: “All right. We’ll be
+there. Good-bye,” he said sharply; and hung up.
+
+Then he turned and looked at his wife.
+
+“I wish to God,” he muttered, “that this business were ended. I—I can’t
+bear to have you go.”
+
+“I am not afraid.... Where is it?”
+
+“I never heard of the place before. We’re to meet Selden at ‘Fool’s
+Acre.’”
+
+“Where is it, Victor?”
+
+“I don’t know. Selden says there are no roads,—not even a spotted
+trail. It’s a wilderness left practically blank by the Geological
+Survey. Only the contours are marked, and Selden tells me that the
+altitudes are erroneous and the unnamed lakes and water courses are all
+wrong. He says it is his absolute conviction that the Geological Survey
+never penetrated this wilderness at all, but merely skirted it and
+guessed at what lay inside, because the map he has from Washington is
+utterly misleading, and the entire region is left blank except for a
+few vague blue lines and spots indicating water, and a few heights
+marked ‘1800.’”
+
+He turned and began to pace the sitting-room, frowning, perplexed,
+undecided.
+
+“Selden tells me,” he said, “that the Yezidee, Arrak Sou-Sou, is in
+there and very busy doing something or other. He says that he can do
+nothing without you, and will explain why when we meet him.”
+
+“Yes, Victor.”
+
+Cleves turned on his heel and came over to where his wife stood beside
+the sunny window.
+
+“I hate to ask you to go. I know that was the understanding. But this
+incessant danger—your constant peril——”
+
+“That does not count when I think of my country’s peril,” she said in a
+quiet voice. “When are we to start? And what shall I pack in my trunk?”
+
+“Dear child,” he said with a brusque laugh, “it’s a wilderness and we
+carry what we need on our backs. Selden meets us at a place called
+Glenwild, on the edge of this wilderness, and we follow him in on our
+two legs.”
+
+He glanced across at the mantel clock.
+
+“If you’ll dress,” he said nervously, “we’ll go to some shop that
+outfits sportsmen for the North. Because, if we can, we ought to leave
+on the one o’clock train.”
+
+She smiled; came up to him. “Don’t worry about me,” she said. “Because
+I also am nervous and tired; and I mean to make an end of every Yezidee
+remaining in America.”
+
+“Sanang, too?”
+
+They both flushed deeply.
+
+She said in a steady voice: “Between God and Erlik there is a black
+gulf where a million million stars hang, lighting a million million
+other worlds.
+
+“Prince Sanang’s star glimmers there. It is a sun, called Yramid. And
+it lights the planet, Yu-tsung. Let him reign there between God and
+Erlik.”
+
+“You will slay this man?”
+
+“God forbid!” she said, shuddering. “But I shall send him to his own
+star. Let my soul be ransom for his! And may Allah judge between
+us—between this man and me.”
+
+Then, in the still, sunny room, the girl turned to face the East. And
+her husband saw her lips move as though speaking, but heard no sound.
+
+
+“What on earth are you saying there, all to yourself?” he demanded at
+last.
+
+She turned her head and looked at him across her left shoulder.
+
+“I asked Sansa to help me.... And she says she will.”
+
+Cleves nodded in a dazed way. Then he opened a window and leaned there
+in the sunshine, looking down into Madison Avenue. And the roar of
+traffic seemed to soothe his nerves.
+
+But “Good heavens!” he thought; “do such things really go on in New
+York in 1920! Is the entire world becoming a little crazy? Am I really
+in my right mind when I believe that the girl I married is talking,
+without wireless, to another girl in China!”
+
+He leaned there heavily, gazing down into the street with sombre eyes.
+
+“What a ghastly thing these Yezidees are trying to do to the
+world—these Assassins of men’s minds’!” he thought, turning away toward
+the door of his bedroom.
+
+As he crossed the threshold he stumbled, and looking down saw that he
+had tripped over a white sheet lying there. For a moment he thought it
+was a sheet from his own bed, and he started to pick it up. Then he saw
+the naked blade of a knife at his feet.
+
+With an uncontrollable shudder he stepped out of the shroud and stood
+staring at the knife as though it were a snake. It had a curved blade
+and a bone hilt coarsely inlaid with Arabic characters in brass.
+
+The shroud was a threadbare affair—perhaps a bed-sheet from some cheap
+lodging house. But its significance was so repulsive that he hesitated
+to touch it.
+
+However, he was ashamed to have it discovered in his room. He picked up
+the brutal-looking knife and kicked the shroud out into the corridor,
+where they could guess if they liked how such a rag got into the
+Ritz-Carlton.
+
+Then he searched his bedroom, and, of course, discovered nobody hiding.
+But chills crawled on his spine while he was about it, and he shivered
+still as he stood in the centre of the room examining the knife and
+testing edge and point.
+
+Then, close to his ear, a low voice whispered: “Be careful, my lord;
+the Yezidee knife is poisoned. But it is written that a poisoned heart
+is more dangerous still.”
+
+He had turned like a flash; and he saw, between him and the
+sitting-room door, a very young girl with slightly slanting eyes, and
+rose and ivory features as perfect as though moulded out of tinted
+bisque.
+
+She wore a loose blue linen robe, belted in, short at the elbows and
+skirt, showing two creamy-skinned arms and two bare feet in straw
+sandals. In one hand she had a spray of purple mulberries, and she
+looked coolly at Cleves and ate a berry or two.
+
+“Give me the knife,” she said calmly.
+
+He handed it to her; she wiped it with a mulberry leaf and slipped it
+through her girdle.
+
+“I am Sansa,” she said with a friendly glance at him, busy with her
+fruit.
+
+Cleves strove to speak naturally, but his voice trembled.
+
+“Is it you—I mean your real self—your own body?”
+
+“It’s my real self. Yes. But my body is asleep in my mulberry grove.”
+
+“In—in China?”
+
+“Yes,” she said calmly, detaching another mulberry and eating it. A few
+fresh leaves fell on the centre table.
+
+Sansa chose another berry. “You know,” she said, “that I came to Tressa
+this morning,—to my little Heart of Fire I came when she called me. And
+I was quite sleepy, too. But I heard her, though there was a night wind
+in the mulberry trees, and the river made a silvery roaring noise in
+the dark.... And now I must go. But I shall come again very soon.”
+
+She smiled shyly and held out her lovely little hand, “—As Tressa tells
+me is your custom in America,” she said, “I offer you a good-bye.”
+
+He took her hand and found it a warm, smooth thing of life and pulse.
+
+“Why,” he stammered in his astonishment, “you _are_ real! You are not a
+ghost!”
+
+“Yes, I am real,” she answered, surprised, “but I’m not in my body,—if
+you mean that.” Then she laughed and withdrew her hand, and, going,
+made him a friendly gesture.
+
+“Cherish, my lord, my darling Heart of Fire. Serpents twist and twine.
+So do rose vines. May their petals make your path of velvet and sweet
+scented. May everything that is round be a pomegranate for you two to
+share; may everything that sways be lilies bordering a path wide enough
+for two. In the name of the Most Merciful God, may the only cry you
+hear be the first sweet wail of your first-born. And when the tenth
+shall be born, may you and Heart of Fire bewail your fate because both
+of you desire more children!”
+
+She was laughing when she disappeared. Cleves thought she was still
+there, so radiant the sunshine, so sweet the scent in the room.
+
+But the golden shadow by the door was empty of her. If she had slipped
+through the doorway he had not noticed her departure. Yet she was no
+longer there. And, when he understood, he turned back into the empty
+room, quivering all over. Suddenly a terrible need of Tressa assailed
+him—an imperative necessity to speak to her—hear her voice.
+
+“Tressa!” he called, and rested his hand on the centre table, feeling
+weak and shaken to the knees. Then he looked down and saw the mulberry
+leaves lying scattered there, tender and green and still dewy with the
+dew of China.
+
+“Oh, my God!” he whispered, “such things _are_! It isn’t my mind that
+has gone wrong. There _are_ such things!”
+
+The conviction swept him like a tide till his senses swam. As though
+peering through a mist of gold he saw his wife enter and come to
+him;—felt her arm about him, sustaining him where he swayed slightly
+with one hand on the table among the mulberry leaves.
+
+“Ah,” murmured Tressa, noticing the green leaves, “she oughtn’t to have
+done that. That was thoughtless of her, to show herself to you.”
+
+Cleves looked at her in a dazed way. “The body is nothing,” he
+muttered. “The rest only is real. That is the truth, isn’t it?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“I seem to be beginning to believe it.... Sansa said things—I shall try
+to tell you—some day—dear.... I’m so glad to hear your voice.”
+
+“Are you?” she murmured.
+
+“And so glad to feel your touch.... I found a shroud on my threshold.
+And a knife.”
+
+“The Yezidees are becoming mountebanks.... Where is the knife?” she
+asked scornfully.
+
+“Sansa said it was poisoned. She took it. She—she said that a poisoned
+heart is more dangerous still.”
+
+Then Tressa threw up her head and called softly into space: “Sansa!
+Little Silk-Moth! What are these mischievous things you have told to my
+lord?”
+
+She stood silent, listening. And, in the answer which he could not
+hear, there seemed to be something that set his young wife’s cheeks
+aflame.
+
+“Sansa! Little devil!” she cried, exasperated. “May Erlik send his imps
+to pinch you if you have said to my lord these shameful things. It was
+impudent! It was mischievous! You cover me with shame and confusion,
+and I am humbled in the dust of my lord’s feet!”
+
+Cleves looked at her, but she could not sustain his gaze.
+
+“Did Sansa say to you what she said to me?” he demanded unsteadily.
+
+“Yes.... I ask your pardon.... And I had already _told_ her you did
+not—did not—were not—in—love—with me.... I ask your pardon.”
+
+“Ask more.... Ask your heart whether it would care to hear that I am in
+love. And with whom. Ask your heart if it could ever care to listen to
+what my heart could say to it.”
+
+“Y-yes—I’ll ask—my heart,” she faltered.... “I think I had better
+finish dressing——” She lifted her eyes, gave him a breathless smile as
+he caught her hand and kissed it.
+
+“It—it would be very wonderful,” she stammered, “—if our necessity
+should be-become our choice.”
+
+But that speech seemed to scare her and she fled, leaving her husband
+standing tense and upright in the middle of the room.
+
+
+Their train on the New York Central Railroad left the Grand Central
+Terminal at one in the afternoon.
+
+Cleves had made his arrangements by wire. They travelled lightly,
+carrying, except for the clothing they wore, only camping equipment for
+two.
+
+It was raining in the Hudson valley; they rushed through the outlying
+towns and Po’keepsie in a summer downpour.
+
+At Hudson the rain slackened. A golden mist enveloped Albany, through
+which the beautiful tower and façades along the river loomed, masking
+the huge and clumsy Capitol and the spires beyond.
+
+At Schenectady, rifts overhead revealed glimpses of blue. At Amsterdam,
+where they descended from the train, the flag on the arsenal across the
+Mohawk flickered brilliantly in the sunny wind.
+
+By telegraphic arrangement, behind the station waited a touring car
+driven by a trooper of State Constabulary, who, with his comrade,
+saluted smartly as Cleves and Tressa came up.
+
+There was a brief, low-voiced conversation. Their camping outfit was
+stowed aboard, Tressa sprang into the tonneau followed by Cleves, and
+the car started swiftly up the inclined roadway, turned to the right
+across the railroad bridge, across the trolley tracks, and straight on
+up the steep hill paved with blocks of granite.
+
+On the level road which traversed the ridge at last they speeded up,
+whizzed past the great hedged farm where racing horses are bred,
+rushing through the afternoon sunshine through the old-time Scotch
+settlements which once were outposts of the old New York frontier.
+
+Nine miles out the macadam road ended. They veered to the left over a
+dirt road, through two hamlets; then turned to the right.
+
+The landscape became rougher. To their left lay the long, low Maxon
+hills; behind them the Mayfield range stretched northward into the open
+jaws of the Adirondacks.
+
+All around them were woods, now. Once a Gate House appeared ahead; and
+beyond it they crossed four bridges over a foaming, tumbling creek
+where Cleves caught glimpses of shadowy forms in amber-tinted pools—big
+yellow trout that sank unhurriedly out of sight among huge submerged
+boulders wet with spray.
+
+The State trooper beside the chauffeur turned to Cleves, his purple tie
+whipping in the wind.
+
+“Yonder is Glenwild, sir,” he said.
+
+It was a single house on the flank of a heavily forested hill. Deep
+below to the left the creek leaped two cataracts and went flashing out
+through a belt of cleared territory ablaze with late sunshine.
+
+The car swung into the farm-yard, past the barn on the right, and
+continued on up a very rough trail.
+
+“This is the road to the Ireland Vlaie,” said the trooper. “It is
+possible for cars for another mile only.”
+
+Splendid spruce, pine, oak, maple, and hemlock fringed the swampy,
+uneven trail which was no more than a wide, rough vista cut through the
+forest.
+
+And, as the trooper had said, a little more than a mile farther the
+trail became a tangle of bushes and swale; the car slowed down and
+stopped; and a man rose from where he was seated on a mossy log and
+came forward, his rifle balanced across the hollow of his left arm.
+
+The man was Alek Selden.
+
+
+It was long after dark and they were still travelling through pathless
+woods by the aid of their electric torches.
+
+There was little underbrush; the forest of spruce and hemlock was first
+growth.
+
+Cleves shined the trees but could discover no blazing, no trodden path.
+
+In explanation, Selden said briefly that he had hunted the territory
+for years.
+
+“But I don’t begin to know it,” he added. “There are vast and ugly
+regions of bog and swale where a sea of alders stretches to the
+horizon. There are desolate wastes of cat-briers and witch-hopple under
+leprous tangles of grey birches, where stealthy little brooks darkle
+deep under matted débris. Only wild things can travel such country.
+
+“Then there are strange, slow-flowing creeks in the perpetual shadows
+of tamarack woods, where many a man has gone in never to come out.”
+
+“Why?” asked Tressa.
+
+“Under the tender carpet of green cresses are shining black bogs set
+with tussock; and under the bog stretches quicksand,—and death.”
+
+“Do you know these places?” asked Cleves.
+
+“No.”
+
+Cleves stepped forward to Tressa’s side.
+
+“Keep flashing the ground,” he said harshly. “I don’t want you to step
+into some hell-hole. I’m sorry I brought you, anyway.”
+
+“But I had to come,” she said in a low voice.
+
+Like the two men, she wore a grey flannel shirt, knickers, and spiral
+puttees.
+
+They, however, carried rifles as well as packs; and the girl’s pack was
+lighter.
+
+They had halted by a swift, icy rivulet to eat, without building a
+fire. After that they crossed the Ireland Vlaie and the main creek,
+where remains of a shanty stood on the bluff above the right bank—the
+last sign of man.
+
+Beyond lay the uncharted land, skimped and shirked entirely in certain
+regions by map-makers;—an unknown wilderness on the edges of which
+Selden had often camped when deer shooting.
+
+It was along this edge he was leading them, now, to a lean-to which he
+had erected, and from which he had travelled in to Glenwild to use the
+superintendent’s telephone to New York.
+
+There seemed to be no animal life stirring in this forest; their
+torches illuminated no fiery orbs of dazed wild things surprised at
+gaze in the wilderness; no leaping furry form crossed their
+flashlights’ fan-shaped radiance.
+
+There were no nocturnal birds to be seen or heard, either: no bittern
+squawked from hidden sloughs; no herons howled; not an owl-note, not a
+whispering cry of a whippoorwill, not the sudden uncanny twitter of
+those little birds that become abruptly vocal after dark, interrupted
+the dense stillness of the forest.
+
+And it was not until his electric torch glimmered repeatedly upon
+reaches of dusk-hidden bog that Cleves understood how Selden took his
+bearings—for the night was thick and there were no stars.
+
+“Yes,” said Selden tersely, “I’m trying to skirt the bog until I shine
+a peeled stick.”
+
+
+An hour later the peeled alder-stem glittered in the beam of the
+torches. In ten minutes something white caught the electric rays.
+
+It was Selden’s spare undershirt drying on a bush behind the lean-to.
+
+“Can we have a fire?” asked Cleves, relieving his wife of her pack and
+striding into the open-faced camp.
+
+“Yes, I’ll fix it,” replied Selden. “Are you all right, Mrs. Cleves?”
+
+Tressa said: “Delightfully tired, thank you.” And smiled faintly at her
+husband as he let go his own pack, knelt, and spread a blanket for his
+wife.
+
+He remained there, kneeling, as she seated herself.
+
+“Are you quite fit?” he asked bluntly. Yet, through his brusqueness her
+ear caught a vague undertone of something else—anxiety perhaps—perhaps
+tenderness. And her heart stirred deliciously in her breast.
+
+He inflated a pillow for her; the firelight glimmered, brightened,
+spread glowing across her feet. She lay back with a slight sigh,
+relaxed.
+
+Then, suddenly, the thrill of her husband’s touch flooded her face with
+colour; but she lay motionless, one arm flung across her eyes, while he
+unrolled her puttees and unlaced her muddy shoes.
+
+A heavenly warmth from the fire dried her stockinged feet. Later, on
+the edge of sleep, she opened her eyes and found herself propped
+upright on her husband’s shoulder.
+
+Drowsily, obediently she swallowed spoonfuls of the hot broth which he
+administered.
+
+“Are you really quite comfortable, dear?” he whispered.
+
+“Wonderfully.... And so very happy.... Thank you—dear.”
+
+She lay back, suffering him to bathe her face and hands with warm
+water.
+
+When the fire was only a heap of dying coals, she turned over on her
+right side and extended her hand a little way into the darkness.
+Searching, half asleep, she touched her husband, and her hand relaxed
+in his nervous clasp. And she fell into the most perfect sleep which
+she had known in years.
+
+
+She dreamed that somebody whispered to her, “Darling, darling, wake up.
+It is morning, beloved.”
+
+Suddenly she opened her eyes; and saw her husband set a tray, freshly
+plaited out of Indian willow, beside her blanket.
+
+“Here’s your breakfast, pretty lady,” he said, smilingly. “And over
+there is an exceedingly frigid pool of water. You’re to have the camp
+to yourself for the next hour or two.”
+
+“You dear fellow,” she murmured, still confused by sleep, and reached
+out to touch his hand. He caught hers and kissed it, back and palm, and
+got up hastily as though scared.
+
+“Selden and I will stand sentry,” he muttered. “There is no hurry, you
+know.”
+
+She heard him and his comrade walking away over dried leaves; their
+steps receded; a dry stick cracked distantly; then silence stealthily
+invaded the place like a cautious living thing, creeping unseen through
+the golden twilight of the woods.
+
+Seated in her blanket, she drank the coffee; ate a little; then lay
+down again in the early sun, feeling the warmth of the heap of
+whitening coals at her feet, also.
+
+For an hour she dozed awake, drowsily opening her eyes now and then to
+look across the glade at the pool over which a single dragon-fly
+glittered on guard.
+
+Finally she rose resolutely, grasped a bit of soap, and went down to
+the edge of the pool.
+
+
+Tressa was in flannel shirt and knickers when her husband and Selden
+hailed the camp and presently appeared walking slowly toward the dead
+fire.
+
+Their grave faces checked her smile of greeting; her husband came up
+and laid one hand on her arm, looking at her out of thoughtful,
+preoccupied eyes.
+
+“What is the Tchordagh?” he said in a low voice.
+
+The girl’s quiet face went white.
+
+“The—the Tchordagh!” she stammered.
+
+“Yes, dear. What is it?”
+
+“I don’t—don’t know where you heard that term,” she whispered. “The
+Tchordagh is the—the power of Erlik. It is a term.... In it is
+comprehended all the evil, all the cunning, all the perverted spiritual
+intelligence of Evil,—its sinister might,—its menace. It is an
+Alouäd-Yezidee term, and it is written in brass in Eighur characters on
+the Eight Towers, and on the Rampart of Gog and Magog;—nowhere else in
+the world!”
+
+“It is written on a pine tree a few paces from this camp,” said Cleves
+absently.
+
+Selden said: “It has not been there more than an hour or two, Mrs.
+Cleves. A square of bark was cut out and on the white surface of the
+wood this word is written in English.”
+
+“Can you tell us what it signifies?” asked Cleves, quietly.
+
+Tressa’s studied effort at self-control was apparent to both men.
+
+She said: “When that word is written, then it is a death struggle
+between all the powers of Darkness and those who have read the written
+letters of that word.... For it is written in The Iron Book that no one
+but the Assassin of Khorassan—excepting the Eight Sheiks—shall read
+that written word and live to boast of having read it.”
+
+“Let us sit here and talk it over,” said Selden soberly.
+
+And when Tressa was seated on a fallen log, and Cleves settled down
+cross-legged at her feet, Selden spoke again, very soberly:
+
+“On the edges of these woods, to the northwest, lies a sea of briers,
+close growing, interwoven and matted, strong and murderous as barbed
+wire.
+
+“Miles out in this almost impenetrable region lies a patch of trees
+called Fool’s Acre.
+
+“At Wells I heard that the only man who had ever managed to reach
+Fool’s Acre was a trapper, and that he was still living.
+
+“I found him at Rainbow Lake—a very old man, who had a fairly clear
+recollection of Fool’s Acre and his exhausting journey there.
+
+“And he told me that man had been there before he had. For there was a
+roofless stone house there, and the remains of a walled garden. And a
+skull deep in the wild grasses.”
+
+Selden paused and looked down at the recently healed scars on his
+wrists and hands.
+
+“It was a rotten trip,” he said bluntly. “It took me three days to cut
+a tunnel through that accursed tangle of matted brier and grey
+birch.... Fool’s Acre is a grove of giant trees—first growth pine, oak,
+and maple. Great outcrops of limestone ledges bound it on the east. A
+brook runs through the woods.
+
+“There is a house there, _no longer roofless_, and built of slabs of
+fossil-pitted limestone. The glass in the windows is so old that it is
+iridescent.
+
+“A seven-foot wall encloses the house, built also of slabs blasted out
+of the rock outcrop, and all pitted with fossil shells.
+
+“Inside is a garden—not the _remains_ of one—a beautiful garden full of
+unfamiliar flowers. And in this garden I saw the Yezidee on his knees
+_making living things out of lumps of dead earth_!”
+
+“The Tchordagh!” whispered the girl.
+
+“What was the Yezidee doing?” demanded Cleves nervously.
+
+Involuntarily all three drew nearer each other there in the sunshine.
+
+“It was difficult for me to see,” said Selden in his quiet, serious
+voice. “It was nearly twilight: I lay flat on top of the wall under the
+curving branches of a huge syringa bush in full bloom. The Yezidees——”
+
+“Were there two!” exclaimed Cleves.
+
+“Two. They were squatting on the old stone path bordering one of the
+flower-beds.” He turned to Tressa: “They both wore white cloths twisted
+around their heads, and long soft garments of white. Under these their
+bare, brown legs showed, but they wore things on their naked feet which
+were shaped like what we call Turkish slippers—only different.”
+
+“Black and green,” nodded Tressa with the vague horror growing in her
+face.
+
+“Yes. The soles of their shoes were bright green.”
+
+“Green is the colour sacred to Islam,” said Tressa. “The priests of
+Satan defile it by staining with green the soles of their footwear.”
+
+After an interval: “Go on,” said Cleves nervously.
+
+Selden drew closer, and they bent their heads to listen:
+
+“I don’t, even now, know what the Yezidees were actually doing. In the
+twilight it was hard to see clearly. But I’ll tell you what it looked
+like to me. One of these squatting creatures would scoop out a handful
+of soil from the flower-bed, and mould it for a few moments between his
+lean, sinewy fingers, and then he’d open his hands and—and something
+_alive_—something small like a rat or a toad, or God knows what, would
+escape from between his palms and run out into the grass——”
+
+Selden’s voice failed and he looked at Cleves with sickened eyes.
+
+“I can’t—can’t make you understand how repulsive to me it was to see a
+wriggling live thing creep out between their fingers and—and go running
+or scrambling away—little loathsome things with humpy backs that hopped
+or scurried through the grass——”
+
+“What on earth _were_ these Yezidees doing, Tressa?” asked Cleves
+almost roughly.
+
+The girl’s white face was marred by the imprints of deepening horror.
+
+“It is the Tchor-Dagh,” she said mechanically. “They are using every
+resource of hell to destroy me—testing the gigantic power of Evil—as
+though it were some vast engine charged with thunderous
+destruction!—and they were testing it to discover its terrific capacity
+to annihilate——”
+
+Her voice died in her dry throat; she dropped her bloodless visage into
+both hands and remained seated so.
+
+Both men looked at her in silence, not daring to interfere. Finally the
+girl lifted her pallid face from her hands.
+
+“That is what they were doing,” she said in a dull voice. “Out of
+inanimate earth they were making things animate—living creatures—to—to
+test the hellish power which they are storing—concentrating—for my
+destruction.”
+
+“What is their purpose?” asked Cleves harshly. “What do these Mongol
+Sorcerers expect to gain by making little live things out of lumps of
+garden dirt?”
+
+“They are testing their power,” whispered the girl.
+
+“Like tuning up a huge machine?” muttered Selden.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“For what purpose?”
+
+“To make larger living creatures out of—of clay.”
+
+“They can’t—they can’t _create_!” exclaimed Cleves. “I don’t know
+how—by what filthy tricks—they make rats out of dirt. But they can’t
+make a—anything—like a—like a man!”
+
+Tressa’s body trembled slightly.
+
+“Once,” she said, “in the temple, Prince Sanang took dust which was
+brought in sacks of goat-skin, and fashioned the heap of dirt with his
+hands, so that it resembled the body of a man lying there on the marble
+floor under the shrine of Erlik.... And—and then, there in the shadows
+where only the Dark Star burned—that black lamp which is called the
+Dark Star—the long heap of dust lying there on the marble pavement
+began to—to _breathe_!—”
+
+She pressed both hands over her breast as though to control her
+trembling body: “I saw it; I saw the long shape of dust begin to
+breathe, to stir, move, and slowly lift itself——”
+
+“A Yezidee trick!” gasped Cleves; but he also was trembling now.
+
+“God!” whispered the girl. “Allah alone knows—the Merciful, the Long
+Suffering—He knows what it was that we temple girls saw there—that
+Yulun saw—that Sa-n’sa and I beheld there rising up like a man from the
+marble floor—and standing erect in the shadowy twilight of the Dark
+Star....”
+
+Her hands gripped at her breast; her face was deathly.
+
+“Then,” she said, “I saw Prince Sanang draw his sabre of Indian steel,
+and he struck ... once only.... And a dead man fell down where the
+_thing_ had stood. And all the marble was flooded with scarlet blood.”
+
+“A trick,” repeated Cleves, in the ghost of his own voice. But his gaze
+grew vacant.
+
+Presently Selden spoke in tones that sounded weakly querulous from
+emotional reaction:
+
+“There is a path—a tunnel under the matted briers. It took me more than
+a week to cut it out. It is possible to reach Fool’s Acre. We can
+try—with our rifles—if you say so, Mrs. Cleves.”
+
+The girl looked up. A little colour came into her cheeks. She shook her
+head.
+
+“Their bodies may not be there in the garden,” she said absently. “What
+you saw may not have been that part of them—the material which dies by
+knife or bullet.... And it is necessary that these Yezidees should
+die.”
+
+“Can you do anything?” asked Cleves, hoarsely.
+
+She looked at her husband; tried to smile:
+
+“I must try.... I think we had better not lose any time—if Mr. Selden
+will lead us.”
+
+“Now?”
+
+“Yes, we had better go, I think,” said the girl. Her smile still
+remained stamped on her lips, but her eyes seemed preoccupied as though
+following the movements of something remote that was passing across the
+far horizon.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+A DEATH TRAIL
+
+
+The way to Fool’s Acre was under a tangled canopy of thorns, under
+rotting windfalls of grey mirch, through tunnel after tunnel of fallen
+débris woven solidly by millions of strands of tough cat-briers which
+cut the flesh like barbed wire.
+
+There was blood on Tressa, where her flannel shirt had been pierced in
+a score of places. Cleves and Selden had been painfully slashed.
+
+Silent, thread-like streams flowed darkling under the tangled mass that
+roofed them. Sometimes they could move upright; more often they were
+bent double; and there were long stretches where they had to creep
+forward on hands and knees through sparse wild grasses, soft, rotten
+soil, or paths of sphagnum which cooled their feverish skin in velvety,
+icy depths.
+
+At noon they rested and ate, lying prone under the matted roof of their
+tunnel.
+
+Cleves and Selden had their rifles. Tressa lay like a slender boy, her
+brier-torn hands empty.
+
+And, as she lay there, her husband made a sponge of a handful of
+sphagnum moss, and bathed her face and her arms, cleansing the dried
+blood from the skin, while the girl looked up at him out of grave,
+inscrutable eyes.
+
+
+The sun hung low over the wilderness when they came to the woods of
+Fool’s Acre. They crept cautiously out of the briers, among ferns and
+open spots carpeted with pine needles and dead leaves which were
+beginning to burn ruddy gold under the level rays of the sun.
+
+Lying flat behind an enormous oak, they remained listening for a while.
+Selden pointed through the woods, eastward, whispering that the house
+stood there not far away.
+
+“Don’t you think we might risk the chance and use our rifles?” asked
+Cleves in a low voice.
+
+“No. It is the Tchor-Dagh that confronts us. I wish to talk to Sansa,”
+she murmured.
+
+A moment later Selden touched her arm.
+
+“My God,” he breathed, “who is that!”
+
+“It is Sansa,” said Tressa calmly, and sat up among the ferns. And the
+next instant Sansa stepped daintily out of the red sunlight and seated
+herself among them without a sound.
+
+Nobody spoke. The newcomer glanced at Selden, smiled slightly, blushed,
+then caught a glimpse of Cleves where he lay in the brake, and a
+mischievous glimmer came into her slanting eyes.
+
+“Did I not tell my lord truths?” she inquired in a demure whisper. “As
+surely as the sun is a dragon, and the flaming pearl burns between his
+claws, so surely burns the soul of Heart of Flame between thy guarding
+hands. There are as many words as there are demons, my lord, but it is
+written that _Niaz_ is the greatest of all words save only the name of
+God.”
+
+She laughed without any sound, sweetly malicious where she sat among
+the ferns.
+
+“Heart of Flame,” she said to Tressa, “you called me and I _made the
+effort_.”
+
+“Darling,” said Tressa in her thrilling voice, “the Yezidees are making
+living things out of dust,—as Sanang Noïane made that thing in the
+Temple.... And slew it before our eyes.”
+
+“The Tchor-Dagh,” said Sansa calmly.
+
+“The Tchor-Dagh,” whispered Tressa.
+
+Sansa’s smooth little hands crept up to the collar of her odd, blue
+tunic; grasped it.
+
+“In the name of God the Merciful,” she said without a tremor, “listen
+to me, Heart of Flame, and may my soul be ransom for yours!”
+
+“I hear you, Sansa.”
+
+Sansa said, her fingers still grasping the embroidered collar of her
+tunic:
+
+“Yonder, behind walls, two Tower Chiefs meddle with the Tchor-Dagh,
+making living things out of the senseless dust they scrape from the
+garden.”
+
+Selden moistened his dry lips. Sansa said:
+
+“The Yezidees who have come into this wilderness are Arrak Sou-Sou, the
+Squirrel; and Tiyang Khan.... May God remember them in Hell!”
+
+“May God remember them,” said Tressa mechanically.
+
+“And these two Yezidee Sorcerers,” continued Sansa coolly, “have
+advanced thus far in the Tchor-Dagh; for they now roam these woods,
+digging like demons, for the roots of Ginseng; and thou knowest, O
+Heart of Flame, what that indicates.”
+
+“Does Ginseng grow in these woods!” exclaimed Tressa with a new terror
+in her widening eyes.
+
+“Ginseng grows here, little Rose-Heart, and the roots are as perfect as
+human bodies. And Tiyang Khan squats in the walled garden moulding the
+Ginseng roots in his unclean hands, while Sou-Sou the Squirrel
+scratches among the dead leaves of the woods for roots as perfect as a
+naked human body.
+
+“All day long the Sou-Sou rummages among the trees; all day long Tiyang
+pats and rubs and moulds the Ginseng roots in his skinny fingers. It is
+the Tchor-Dagh, Heart of Flame. And these Sorcerers must be destroyed.”
+
+“Are their bodies here?”
+
+“Arrak is in the body. And thus it shall be accomplished: listen
+attentively, Rose Heart Afire!—I shall remain here with——” she looked
+at Selden and flushed a trifle, “—with you, my lord. And when the
+Squirrel comes a-digging, so shall my lord slay him with a bullet....
+And when I hear his soul bidding his body farewell, then I shall make
+prisoner his soul.... And send it to the Dark Star.... And the rest
+shall be in the hands of Allah.”
+
+She turned to Tressa and caught her hands in both of her own:
+
+“It is written on the Iron Pages,” she whispered, “that we belong to
+Erlik and we return to him. But in the Book of Gold it is written
+otherwise: ‘God preserve us from Satan who was stoned!’ ... Therefore,
+in the name of Allah! Now then, Heart of Flame, do your duty!”
+
+A burning flush leaped over Tressa’s features.
+
+“Is my soul, then, my own!”
+
+“It belongs to God,” said Sansa gravely.
+
+“And—Sanang?”
+
+“God is greatest.”
+
+“But—was God there—at the Lake of the Ghosts?”
+
+“God is everywhere. It is so written in the Book of Gold,” replied
+Sansa, pressing her hands tenderly.
+
+“Recite the Fatha, Heart of Flame. Thy lips shall not stiffen; God
+listens.”
+
+Tressa rose in the sunset glory and stood as though dazed, and all
+crimsoned in the last fiery bars of the declining sun.
+
+Cleves also rose.
+
+Sansa laughed noiselessly: “My lord would go whither thou goest, Heart
+of Fire!” she whispered. “And thy ways shall be his ways!”
+
+Tressa’s cheeks flamed and she turned and looked at Cleves.
+
+Then Sansa rose and laid a hand on Tressa’s arm and on her husband’s:
+
+“Listen attentively. Tiyang Khan must be destroyed. The signal sounds
+when my lord’s rifle-shot makes a loud noise here among these trees.”
+
+“Can I prevail against the Tchor-Dagh?” asked Tressa, steadily.
+
+“Is not that event already in God’s hands, darling?” said Sansa softly.
+She smiled and resumed her seat beside Selden, amid the drooping fern
+fronds.
+
+“Bid thy dear lord leave his rifle here,” she added quietly.
+
+Cleves laid down his weapon. Selden pointed eastward in silence.
+
+So they went together into the darkening woods.
+
+
+In the dusk of heavy foliage overhanging the garden, Tressa lay flat as
+a lizard on the top of the wall. Beside her lay her husband.
+
+In the garden below them flowers bloomed in scented thickets, bordered
+by walks of flat stone slabs split from boulders. A little lawn, very
+green, centred the garden.
+
+And on this lawn, in the clear twilight still tinged with the sombre
+fires of sundown, squatted a man dressed in a loose white garment.
+
+Save for a twisted breadth of white cloth, his shaven head was bare.
+His sinewy feet were naked, too, the lean, brown toes buried in the
+grass.
+
+Tressa’s lips touched her husband’s ear.
+
+“Tiyang Khan,” she breathed. “Watch what he does!”
+
+Shoulder to shoulder they lay there, scarcely daring to breathe. Their
+eyes were fastened on the Mongol Sorcerer, who, squatted below on his
+haunches, grave and deliberate as a great grey ape, continued busy with
+the obscure business which so intently preoccupied him.
+
+In a short semi-circle on the grass in front of him he had placed a
+dozen wild Ginseng roots. The roots were enormous, astoundingly shaped
+like the human body, almost repulsive in their weird symmetry.
+
+The Yezidee had taken one of these roots into his hands. Squatting
+there in the semi-dusk, he began to massage it between his long,
+muscular fingers, rubbing, moulding, pressing the root with caressing
+deliberation.
+
+His unhurried manipulation, for a few moments, seemed to produce no
+result. But presently the Ginseng root became lighter in colour and
+more supple, yielding to his fingers, growing ivory pale, sinuously
+limber in a newer and more delicate symmetry.
+
+“Look!” gasped Cleves, grasping his wife’s arm. “_What_ is that man
+doing?”
+
+“The Tchor-Dagh!” whispered Tressa. “Do you see what lies twisting
+there in his hands?”
+
+The Ginseng root had become the tiny naked body of a woman—a little
+ivory-white creature, struggling to escape between the hands that had
+created it—dark, powerful, masterly hands, opening leisurely now, and
+releasing the living being they had fashioned.
+
+The thing scrambled between the fingers of the Sorcerer, leaped into
+the grass, ran a little way and hid, crouched down, panting, almost
+hidden by the long grass. The shocked watchers on the wall could still
+see the creature. Tressa felt Cleves’ body trembling beside her. She
+rested a cool, steady hand on his.
+
+“It is the Tchor-Dagh,” she breathed close to his face. “The Mongol
+Sorcerer is becoming formidable.”
+
+“Oh, God!” murmured Cleves, “that thing he made is _alive_! I saw it. I
+can see it hiding there in the grass. It’s frightened—breathing! It’s
+alive!”
+
+His pistol, clutched in his right hand, quivered. His wife laid her
+hand on it and cautiously shook her head.
+
+“No,” she said, “that is of no use.”
+
+“But what that Yezidee is doing is—is blasphemous——”
+
+“Watch him! His mind is stealthily feeling its way among the laws and
+secrets of the Tchor-Dagh. He has found a thread. He is following it
+through the maze into hell’s own labyrinth! He has created a tiny thing
+in the image of the Creator. He will try to create a larger being now.
+Watch him with his Ginseng roots!”
+
+Tiyang, looming ape-like on his haunches in the deepening dusk, moulded
+and massaged the Ginseng roots, one after another. And one after
+another, tiny naked creatures wriggled out of his palms between his
+fingers and scuttled away into the herbage.
+
+Already the dim lawn was alive with them, crawling, scurrying through
+the grass, creeping in among the flower-beds, little, ghostly-white
+things that glimmered from shade into shadow like moonbeams.
+
+Tressa’s mouth touched her husband’s ear:
+
+“It is for the secret of Destruction that the Yezidee seeks. But first
+he must learn the secret of creation. He is learning.... And he must
+learn no more than he has already learned.”
+
+“That Yezidee is a living man. Shall I fire?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“I can kill him with the first shot.”
+
+“Hark!” she whispered excitedly, her hand closing convulsively on her
+husband’s arm.
+
+The whip-crack of a rifle-shot still crackled in their ears.
+
+Tiyang had leaped to his feet in the dusk, a Ginseng root, half-alive,
+hanging from one hand and beginning to squirm.
+
+Suddenly the first moonbeam fell across the wall. And in its lustre
+Tressa rose to her knees and flung up her right hand.
+
+Then it was as though her palm caught and reflected the moon’s ray, and
+hurled it in one blinding shaft straight into the dark visage of
+Tiyang-Khan.
+
+The Yezidee fell as though he had been pierced by a shaft of steel, and
+lay sprawling there on the grass in the ghastly glare.
+
+And where his features had been there gaped only a hole into the head.
+
+Then a dreadful thing occurred; for everywhere the grass swarmed with
+the little naked creatures he had made, running, scrambling, scuttling,
+darting into the black hole which had been the face of Tiyang-Khan.
+
+They poured into the awful orifice, crowding, jostling one another so
+violently that the head jerked from side to side on the grass, a
+wabbling, inert, soggy mass in the moonlight.
+
+And presently the body of Tiyang-Khan, Warden of the Rampart of Gog and
+Magog, and Lord of the Seventh Tower, began to burn with white fire—a
+low, glimmering combustion that seemed to clothe the limbs like an
+incandescent mist.
+
+On the wall knelt Tressa, the glare from her lifted hand streaming over
+the burning form below.
+
+Cleves stood tall and shadowy beside his wife, the useless pistol
+hanging in his grasp.
+
+Then, in the silence of the woods, and very near, they heard Sansa
+laughing. And Selden’s anxious voice:
+
+“Arrak is dead. The Sou-Sou hangs across a rock, head down, like a shot
+squirrel. Is all well with you?”
+
+“Tiyang is on his way to his star,” said Tressa calmly. “Somewhere in
+the world his body has bid its mind farewell.... And so his body may
+live for a little, blind, in mental darkness, fed by others, and locked
+in all day, all night, until the end.”
+
+Sansa, at the base of the wall, turned to Selden.
+
+“Shall I bring my body with me, one day, my lord?” she asked demurely.
+
+“Oh, Sansa——” he whispered, but she placed a fragrant hand across his
+lips and laughed at him in the moonlight.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+IN THE FIRELIGHT
+
+
+In 1920 the whole spiritual world was trembling under the thundering
+shock of the Red Surf pounding the frontiers of civilisation from pole
+to pole.
+
+Up out of the hell-pit of Asia had boiled the molten flood, submerging
+Russia, dashing in giant waves over Germany and Austria, drenching
+Italy, France, England with its bloody spindrift.
+
+And now the Red Rain was sprinkling the United States from coast to
+coast, and the mindless administration, scared out of its stupidity at
+last, began a frantic attempt to drain the country of the filthy flood
+and throw up barriers against the threatened deluge.
+
+In every state and city Federal agents made wholesale arrests—too late!
+
+A million minds had already been perverted and dominated by the
+terrible Sect of the Assassins. A million more were sickening under the
+awful psychic power of the Yezidee.
+
+Thousands of the disciples of the Yezidee devil-worshipers had already
+been arrested and held for deportation,—poor, wretched creatures whose
+minds were no longer their own, but had been stealthily surprised,
+seized and mastered by Mongol adepts and filled with ferocious hatred
+against their fellow men.
+
+Yet, of the Eight Yezidee Assassins only two now remained alive in
+America,—Togrul, and Sanang, the Slayer of Souls.
+
+Yarghouz was dead; Djamouk the Fox, Kahn of the Fifth Tower was dead;
+Yaddin-ed-Din, Arrak the Sou-Sou, Gutchlug, Tiyang Khan, all were dead.
+Six Towers had become dark and silent. From them the last evil thought,
+the last evil shape had sped; the last wicked prayer had been said to
+Erlik, Khagan of all Darkness.
+
+But his emissary on earth, Prince Sanang, still lived. And at Sanang’s
+heels stole Togrul, Tougtchi to Sanang Noïane, the Slayer of Souls.
+
+
+In the United States there had been a cessation of the active campaign
+of violence toward those in authority. Such unhappy dupes of the
+Yezidees as the I. W. W. and other radicals were, for the time,
+physically quiescent. Crude terrorism with its more brutal outrages
+against life and law ceased. But two million sullen eyes, in which all
+independent human thought had been extinguished, watched unblinking the
+wholesale arrests by the government—watched panic-stricken officials
+rushing hither and thither to execute the mandate of a miserable
+administration—watched and waited in dreadful silence.
+
+In that period of ominous quiet which possessed the land, the little
+group of Secret Service men that surrounded the young girl who alone
+stood between a trembling civilisation and the threat of hell’s own
+chaos, became convinced that Sanang was preparing a final and terrible
+effort to utterly overwhelm the last vestige of civilisation in the
+United States.
+
+What shape that plan would develop they could not guess.
+
+John Recklow sent Benton to Chicago to watch that centre of infection
+for the appearance there of the Yezidee Togrul.
+
+Selden went to Boston where a half-witted group of parlour-socialists
+at Cambridge were talking too loudly and loosely to please even the
+most tolerant at Harvard.
+
+But neither Togrul nor Sanang had, so far, materialised in either city;
+and John Recklow prowled the purlieus of New York, haunting strange
+byways and obscure quarters where the dull embers of revolution always
+smouldered, watching for the Yezidee who was the deep-bedded, vital
+root of this psychic evil which menaced the minds of all
+mankind,—Sanang, the Slayer of Souls.
+
+Recklow’s lodgings were tucked away in Westover Court—three bedrooms, a
+parlour and a kitchenette. Tressa Cleves occupied one bedroom; her
+husband another; Recklow the third.
+
+And in this tiny apartment, hidden away among a group of old buildings,
+the very existence of which was unknown to the millions who swarmed the
+streets of the greatest city in the world,—here in Westover Court, a
+dozen paces from the roar of Broadway, was now living a young girl upon
+whose psychic power the only hope of the world now rested.
+
+
+The afternoon had turned grey and bitter; ragged flakes still fell; a
+pallid twilight possessed the snowy city, through which lighted trains
+and taxis moved in the foggy gloom.
+
+By three o’clock in the afternoon all shops were illuminated; the south
+windows of the Hotel Astor across the street spread a sickly light over
+the old buildings of Westover Court as John Recklow entered the tiled
+hallway, took the stairs to the left, and went directly to his
+apartment.
+
+He unlocked the door and let himself in and stood a moment in the entry
+shaking the snow from his hat and overcoat.
+
+The sitting-room lamp was unlighted but he could see a fire in the
+grate, and Tressa Cleves seated near, her eyes fixed on the glowing
+coals.
+
+He bade her good evening in a low voice; she turned her charming head
+and nodded, and he drew a chair to the fender and stretched out his wet
+shoes to the warmth.
+
+“Is Victor still out?” he inquired.
+
+She said that her husband had not yet returned. Her eyes were on the
+fire, Recklow’s rested on her shadowy face.
+
+“Benton got his man in Chicago,” he said. “It was not Togrul Kahn.”
+
+“Who was it?”
+
+“Only a Swami fakir who’d been preaching sedition to a little group of
+greasy Bengalese from Seattle.... I’ve heard from Selden, too.”
+
+She nodded listlessly and lifted her eyes.
+
+“Neither Sanang nor Togrul have appeared in Boston,” he said. “I think
+they’re here in New York.”
+
+The girl said nothing.
+
+After a silence:
+
+“Are you worried about your husband?” he asked abruptly.
+
+“I am always uneasy when he is absent,” she said quietly.
+
+“Of course.... But I don’t suppose he knows that.”
+
+“I suppose not.”
+
+Recklow leaned over, took a coal in the tongs and lighted a cigar.
+Leaning back in his armchair, he said in a musing voice:
+
+“No, I suppose your husband does not realise that you are so deeply
+concerned over his welfare.”
+
+The girl remained silent.
+
+“I suppose,” said Recklow softly, “he doesn’t dream you are in love
+with him.”
+
+Tressa Cleves did not stir a muscle. After a long silence she said in
+her even voice:
+
+“Do you think I am in love with my husband, Mr. Recklow?”
+
+“I think you fell in love with him the first evening you met him.”
+
+“I did.”
+
+Neither of them spoke again for some minutes. Recklow’s cigar went
+wrong; he rose and found another and returned to the fire, but did not
+light it.
+
+“It’s a rotten day, isn’t it?” he said with a shiver, and dumped a
+scuttle of coal on the fire.
+
+They watched the blue flames playing over the grate.
+
+Tressa said: “I could no more help falling in love with him than I
+could stop my heart beating.... But I did not dream that anybody knew.”
+
+“Don’t you think he ought to know?”
+
+“Why? He is not in love with me.”
+
+“Are you sure, Mrs. Cleves?”
+
+“Yes. He is wonderfully sweet and kind. But he could not fall in love
+with a girl who has been what I have been.”
+
+Recklow smiled. “What have you been, Tressa Norne?”
+
+“You know.”
+
+“A temple-girl at Yian?”
+
+“And at the Lake of the Ghosts,” she said in a low voice.
+
+“What of it?”
+
+“I can not tell you, Mr. Recklow.... Only that I lost my soul in the
+Yezidee Temple——”
+
+“That is untrue!”
+
+“I wish it were untrue.... My husband tells me that nothing can really
+harm the soul. I try to believe him.... But Erlik lives. And when my
+soul at last shall escape my body, it shall not escape the Slayer of
+Souls.”
+
+“That is monstrously untrue——”
+
+“No. I tell you that Prince Sanang slew my soul. And my soul’s ghost
+belongs to Erlik. How can any man fall in love with such a girl?”
+
+“Why do you say that Sanang slew your soul?” asked Recklow, peering at
+her averted face through the reddening firelight.
+
+She lay still in her chair for a moment, then turned suddenly on him:
+
+“He _did_ slay it! He came to the Lake of the Ghosts as my lover; he
+meant to have done it there; but I would not have him—would not listen,
+nor suffer his touch!—I mocked at him and his passion. I laughed at his
+Tchortchas. They were afraid of me!—”
+
+She half rose from her chair, grasped the arms, then seated herself
+again, her eyes ablaze with the memory of wrongs.
+
+“How dare I show my dear lord that I am in love with him when Sanang’s
+soul caught my soul out of my body one day—surprised my soul while my
+body lay asleep in the Yezidee Temple!—and bore it in his arms to the
+very gates of hell!”
+
+“Good God,” whispered Recklow, “what do you mean? Such things can’t
+happen.”
+
+“Why not? They do happen. I was caught unawares.... It was one golden
+afternoon, and Yulan and Sansa and I were eating oranges by the
+fountain in the inner shrine. And I lay down by the pool and _made the
+effort_—you understand?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Very well. My soul left my body asleep and I went out over the tops of
+the flowers—idly, without aim or intent—as the winds blow in summer....
+It was in the Wood of the White Moth that I saw Sanang’s soul flash
+downward like a streak of fire and wrap my soul in flame!... And, in a
+flash, we were at the gates of hell before I could free myself from his
+embrace.... Then, by the Temple pool, among the oranges, I cried out
+asleep; and my terrified body sat up sobbing and trembling in Yulun’s
+arms. But the Slayer of Souls had slain mine in the Wood of the White
+Moth—slain it as he caught me in his flaming arms.... And now you know
+why such a woman as I dare not bend to kiss the dust from my dear
+Lord’s feet—Aie-a! Aie-a! I who have lost my girl’s soul to him who
+slew it in the Wood of the White Moth!”
+
+She sat rocking in her chair in the red firelight, her hands framing
+her lovely face, her eyes staring straight ahead as though they saw
+opening before them through the sombre shadows of that room all the
+dread magic of the East where the dancing flame of Sanang’s blazing
+soul lighted their path to hell through the enchanted forest.
+
+Recklow had grown pale, but his voice was steady.
+
+“I see no reason,” he said, “why your husband should not love you.”
+
+“I tell you my girl’s soul belonged to Sanang—was part of his, for an
+instant.”
+
+“It is burned pure of dross.”
+
+“It is _burned_.”
+
+Recklow remained silent. Tressa lay deep in her armchair, twisting her
+white fingers.
+
+“What makes him so late?” she said.... “I sent my soul out twice to
+look for him, and could not find him.”
+
+“Send it again,” said Recklow, fearfully.
+
+For ten minutes the girl lay as though asleep, then her eyes unclosed
+and she said drowsily: “I can not find him.”
+
+“Did—did you learn anything while—while you were—away?” asked Recklow
+cautiously.
+
+“Nothing. There is a thick darkness out there—I mean a darkness
+gathering over the whole land. It is like a black fog. When the damned
+pray to Erlik there is a darkness that gathers like a brown mist——”
+
+Her voice ceased; her hands tightened on the arms of her chair.
+
+“_That_ is what Sanang is doing!” she said in a breathless voice.
+
+“What?” demanded Recklow.
+
+“_Praying!_ That is what he is doing! A million perverted minds which
+he has seized and obsessed are being concentrated on blasphemous
+prayers to Erlik! Sanang is directing them. Do you understand the
+terrible power of a million minds all _willing_, in unison, the
+destruction of good and the triumph of evil? A million human minds!
+More! For that is what he is doing. That is the thick darkness that is
+gathering over the entire Western world. It is the terrific
+materialisation of evil power from evil minds, all focussed upon the
+single thought that evil must triumph and good die!”
+
+She sat, gripping the arms of her chair, pale, rigid, terribly alert,
+dreadfully enlightened, now, concerning the awful and new menace
+threatening the sanity of mankind.
+
+She said in her steady, emotionless voice: “When the Yezidee Sorcerers
+desire to overwhelm a nomad people—some yort perhaps that has resisted
+the Sheiks of the Eight Towers, then the Slayer of Souls rides with his
+Black Banners to the Namaz-Ga or Place of Prayer.
+
+“Two marble bridges lead to it. There are fourteen hundred mosques
+there. Then come the Eight, each with his shroud, chanting the prayers
+for those dead in hell. And there the Yezidees pray blasphemously, all
+their minds in ferocious unison.... And I have seen a little yort full
+of Broad Faces with their slanting eyes and sparse beards, sicken and
+die, and turn black in the sun as though the plague had breathed on
+them. And I have seen the Long Noses and bushy beards of walled towns
+wither and perish in the blast and blight from the Namaz-Ga where the
+Slayer of Souls sat his saddle and prayed to Erlik, and half a million
+Yezidees prayed in blasphemous unison.”
+
+Recklow’s head rested on his left hand. The other, unconsciously, had
+crept toward his pistol—the weapon which had become so useless in this
+awful struggle between this girl and the loosened forces of hell.
+
+“Is that what you think Sanang is about?” he asked heavily.
+
+“Yes. I know it. He has seized the minds of a million men in America.
+Every anarchist is to-day concentrating in one evil and supreme mental
+effort, under Sanang’s direction, to will the triumph of evil and the
+doom of civilisation.... I wish my husband would come home.”
+
+“Tressa?”
+
+She turned her pallid face in the firelight: “If Sanang has appointed a
+Place of Prayer,” she said, “he himself will pray on that spot. That
+will be the Namaz-Ga for the last two Yezidee Sorcerers still alive in
+the Western World.”
+
+“That’s what I wished to ask you,” said Recklow softly. “Will you try
+once more, Tressa?”
+
+“Yes. I will send out my soul again to look for the Namaz-Ga.”
+
+She lay back in her armchair and closed her eyes.
+
+“Only,” she added, as though to herself, “I wish my dear lord were safe
+in this room beside me.... May God’s warriors be his escort. And surely
+they are well armed, and can prevail over demons. Aie-a! I wish my lord
+would come home out of the darkness.... Mr. Recklow?”
+
+“Yes, Tressa.”
+
+“I thought I heard him on the stairs.”
+
+“Not yet.”
+
+“Aie-a!” she sighed and closed her eyes again.
+
+She lay like one dead. There was no sound in the room save the soft
+purr of the fire.
+
+Suddenly from the sleeping girl a frightened voice burst: “Yulun!
+Yulun! Where is that yellow maid of the Baroulass?... What is she
+doing? That sleek young thing belongs to Togrul Kahn? Yulun! I am
+afraid of her! Tell Sansa to watch that she does not stir from the Lake
+of the Ghosts!... Warn that young Baroulass Sorceress that if she stirs
+I slay her. And know how to do it in spite of Sanang and all the
+prayers from the Namaz-Ga! Yulun! Sansa! Watch her, follow her, hearts
+of flame! My soul be ransom for yours! Tokhta!”
+
+The girl’s eyes unclosed. Presently she stirred slightly, passed one
+hand across her forehead, turned her head toward Recklow.
+
+“I could not discover the Namaz-Ga,” she said wearily. “I wish my
+husband would return.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+THE PLACE OF PRAYER
+
+
+Her husband called her on the telephone a few minutes later:
+
+“Fifty-three, Six-twenty-six speaking! Who is this?”
+
+“V-sixty-nine,” replied his young wife happily. “Are you all right?”
+
+“Yes. Is M. H. 2479 there?”
+
+“He is here.”
+
+“Very well. An hour ago I saw Togrul Khan in a limousine and chased him
+in a taxi. His car got away in the fog but it was possible to make out
+the number. An empty Cadillac limousine bearing that number is now
+waiting outside the 44th Street entrance to the Hotel Astor. The
+doorman will hold it until I finish telephoning. Tell M. H. 2479 to
+send men to cover this matter——”
+
+“Victor!”
+
+“Be careful! Yes, what is it?”
+
+“I beg you not to stir in this affair until I can join you——”
+
+“Hurry then. It’s just across the street from Westover Court——” His
+voice ceased; she heard another voice, faintly, and an exclamation from
+her husband; then his hurried voice over the wire: “The doorman just
+sent word to hurry. The car number is N. Y. _015 F 0379_! I’ve got to
+run! Good-b——”
+
+
+He left the booth at the end of Peacock Alley, ran down the marble
+steps to the left and out to the snowy sidewalk, passing on his way a
+young girl swathed to the eyes in chinchilla who was hurrying into the
+hotel. As he came to where the limousine was standing, he saw that it
+was still empty although the door stood open and the engine was
+running. Around the chauffeur stood the gold laced doorman, the
+gorgeously uniformed carriage porter and a mounted policeman.
+
+“Hey!” said the latter when he saw Cleves,—“what’s the matter here?
+What are you holding up this car for?”
+
+Cleves beckoned him, whispered, then turned to the doorman.
+
+“Why did you send for me? Was the chauffeur trying to pull out?”
+
+“Yes, sir. A lady come hurrying out an’ she jumps in, and the shawfur
+he starts her humming——”
+
+“A lady! Where did she go?”
+
+“It was that young lady in chinchilla fur. The one you just met when
+you run out. Yessir! Why, as soon as I held up the car and called this
+here cop, she opens the door and out she jumps and beats it into the
+hotel again——”
+
+“Hold that car, Officer!” interrupted Cleves. “Keep it standing here
+and arrest anybody who gets into it! I’ll be back again——”
+
+He turned and hurried into the hotel, traversed Peacock Alley scanning
+every woman he passed, searching for a slim shape swathed in
+chinchilla. There were no chinchilla wraps in Peacock Alley; none in
+the dining-room where people already were beginning to gather and the
+orchestra was now playing; no young girl in chinchilla in the waiting
+room, or in the north dining-room.
+
+Then, suddenly, far across the crowded lobby, he saw a slender,
+bare-headed girl in a chinchilla cloak turn hurriedly away from the
+room-clerk’s desk, holding a key in her white gloved hand.
+
+Before he could take two steps in her direction she had disappeared in
+the crowd.
+
+He made his way through the packed lobby as best he could amid throngs
+of people dressed for dinner, theatre, or other gaiety awaiting them
+somewhere out there in the light-smeared winter fog; but when he
+arrived at the room clerk’s desk he looked for a chinchilla wrap in
+vain.
+
+Then he leaned over the desk and said to the clerk in a low voice: “I
+am a Federal agent from the Department of Justice. Here are my
+credentials. Now, who was that young woman in chinchilla furs to whom
+you gave her door key a moment ago?”
+
+The clerk leaned over his counter and, dropping his voice, answered
+that the lady in question had arrived only that morning from San
+Francisco; had registered as Madame Aoula Baroulass; and had been given
+a suite on the fourth floor numbered from 408 to 414.
+
+“Do you mean to arrest her?” added the clerk in a weird whisper.
+
+“I don’t know. Possibly. Have you the master-key?”
+
+The clerk handed it to him without a word; and Cleves hurried to the
+elevator.
+
+On the fourth floor the matron on duty halted him, but when he murmured
+an explanation she nodded and laid a finger on her lips.
+
+“Madame has gone to her apartment,” she whispered.
+
+“Has she a servant? Or friends with her?”
+
+“No, sir.... I did see her speak to two foreign looking gentlemen in
+the elevator when she arrived this morning.”
+
+Cleves nodded; the matron pointed out the direction in silence, and he
+went rapidly down the carpeted corridor, until he came to a door
+numbered 408.
+
+For a second only he hesitated, then swiftly fitted the master-key and
+opened the door.
+
+The room—a bedroom—was brightly lighted; but there was nobody there.
+The other rooms—dressing closet, bath-room and parlour, all were
+brilliantly lighted by ceiling fixtures and wall brackets; but there
+was not a person to be seen in any of the rooms—nor, save for the
+illumination, was there any visible sign that anybody inhabited the
+apartment.
+
+Swiftly he searched the apartment from end to end. There was no baggage
+to be seen, no garments, no toilet articles, no flowers in the vases,
+no magazines or books, not one article of feminine apparel or of
+personal bric-a-brac visible in the entire place.
+
+Nor had the bed even been turned down—nor any preparation for the
+night’s comfort been attempted. And, except for the blazing lights, it
+was as though the apartment had not been entered by anybody for a
+month.
+
+All the windows were closed, all shades lowered and curtains drawn. The
+air, though apparently pure enough, had that vague flatness which one
+associates with an unused guest-chamber when opened for an airing.
+
+Now, deliberately, Cleves began a more thorough search of the
+apartment, looking behind curtains, under beds, into clothes presses,
+behind sofas.
+
+Then he searched the bureau drawers, dressers, desks for any sign or
+clew of the girl in the chinchillas. There was no dust anywhere,—the
+hotel management evidently was particular—but there was not even a pin
+to be found.
+
+Presently he went out into the corridor and looked again at the number
+on the door. He had made no mistake.
+
+Then he turned and sped down the long corridor to where the matron was
+standing beside her desk preparing to go off duty as soon as the other
+matron arrived to relieve her.
+
+To his impatient question she replied positively that she had seen the
+girl in chinchillas unlock 408 and enter the apartment less than five
+minutes before he had arrived in pursuit.
+
+“And I saw her lights go on as soon as she went in,” added the matron,
+pointing to the distant illuminated transom.
+
+“Then she went out through into the next apartment,” insisted Cleves.
+
+“The fire-tower is on one side of her; the scullery closet on the
+other,” said the matron. “She could not have left that apartment
+without coming out into the corridor. And if she had come out I should
+have seen her.”
+
+“I tell you she isn’t in those rooms!” protested Cleves.
+
+“She must be there, sir. I saw her go in a few seconds before you came
+up.”
+
+At that moment the other matron arrived. There was no use arguing. He
+left the explanation of the situation to the woman who was going off
+duty, and, hastening his steps, he returned to apartment 408.
+
+The door, which he had left open, had swung shut. Again he fitted the
+master-key, entered, paused on the threshold, looked around nervously,
+his nostrils suddenly filled with a puff of perfume.
+
+And there on the table by the bed he saw a glass bowl filled with a
+mass of Chinese orchids—great odorous clusters of orange and snow-white
+bloom that saturated all the room with their freshening scent.
+
+So astounded was he that he stood stock still, one hand still on the
+door-knob; then in a trice he had closed and locked the door from
+inside.
+
+_Somebody_ was in that apartment. There could be no doubt about it. He
+dropped his right hand into his overcoat pocket and took hold of his
+automatic pistol.
+
+For ten minutes he stood so, listening, peering about the room from bed
+to curtains, and out into the parlour. There was not a sound in the
+place. Nothing stirred.
+
+Now, grasping his pistol but not drawing it, he began another stealthy
+tour of the apartment, exploring every nook and cranny. And, at the
+end, had discovered nothing new.
+
+When at length he realised that, as far as he could discover, there was
+not a living thing in the place excepting himself, a very faint chill
+grew along his neck and shoulders, and he caught his breath suddenly,
+deeply.
+
+He had come back to the bedroom, now. The perfume of the orchids
+saturated the still air.
+
+And, as he stood staring at them, all of a sudden he saw, where their
+twisted stalks rested in the transparent bowl of water, something
+moving—something brilliant as a live ember gliding out from among the
+mass of submerged stems—a living fish glowing in scarlet hues and
+winnowing the water with grotesquely trailing fins as delicate as
+filaments of scarlet lace.
+
+To and fro swam the fish among the maze of orchid stalks. Even its eyes
+were hot and red as molten rubies; and as its crimson gills swelled and
+relaxed and swelled, tints of cherry-fire waxed and waned over its fat
+and glowing body.
+
+And vaguely, now, in the perfume saturated air, Cleves seemed to sense
+a subtle taint of evil,—something sinister in the intense stillness of
+the place—in the jewelled fish gliding so silently in and out among the
+pallid convolutions of the drowned stems.
+
+As he stood staring at the fish, the drugged odour of the orchids heavy
+in his throat and lungs, something stirred very lightly in the room.
+
+Chills crawling over every limb, he looked around across his shoulder.
+
+There was a figure seated cross-legged in the middle of the bed!
+
+Then, in the perfumed silence, the girl laughed.
+
+For a full minute neither of them moved. No sound had echoed her low
+laughter save the deadened pulsations of his own heart. But now there
+grew a faint ripple of water in the bowl where the scarlet fish,
+suddenly restless, was swimming hither and thither as though pursued by
+an invisible hand.
+
+With the slight noise of splashing water in his ears, Cleves stood
+staring at the figure on the bed. Under her chinchilla the girl seemed
+to be all a pale golden tint—hair, skin, eyes. The scant shred of an
+evening gown she wore, the jewels at her throat and breast, all were
+yellow and amber and saffron-gold.
+
+And now, looking him in the eyes, she leisurely disengaged the robe of
+silver fur from her naked shoulders and let it fall around her on the
+bed. For a second the lithe, willowy golden thing gathered there as
+gracefully as a coiled snake filled him with swift loathing. Then,
+almost instantly, the beauty of the lissome creature fascinated him.
+
+She leaned forward and set her elbows on her two knees, and rested her
+face between her hands—like a gold rose-bud between two ivory petals,
+he thought, dismayed by this young thing’s beauty, shaken by the dull
+confusion of his own heart battering his breast like the blows of a
+rising tide.
+
+“What do you wish?” she inquired in her soft young voice. “Why have you
+come secretly into my rooms to search—and clasping in your hand a
+loaded pistol deep within your pocket?”
+
+“Why have you hidden yourself until now?” he retorted in a dull and
+laboured voice.
+
+“I have been here.”
+
+“Where?”
+
+“Here!... Looking at you.... And watching my scarlet fish. His name is
+Dzelim. He is nearly a thousand years old and as wise as a magician.
+Look upon him, my lord! See how rapidly he darts around his tiny
+crystal world!—like a comet through outer star-dust, running the
+eternal race with Time.... And—yonder is a chair. Will my lord be
+seated—at his new servant’s feet?”
+
+A strange, physical weariness seemed to weight his limbs and shoulders.
+He seated himself near the bed, never taking his heavy gaze from the
+smiling, golden thing which squatted there watching him so intently.
+
+“Whose limousine was that which you entered and then left so abruptly?”
+he asked.
+
+“My own.”
+
+“What was the Yezidee Togrul Kahn doing in it?”
+
+“Did you see anybody in my car?” she asked, veiling her eyes a little
+with their tawny lashes.
+
+“I saw a man with a thick beard dyed red with henna, and the bony face
+and slant eyes of Togrul the Yezidee.”
+
+“May my soul be ransom for yours, my lord, but you lie!” she said
+softly. Her lips parted in a smile; but her half-veiled eyes were
+brilliant as two topazes.
+
+“Is that your answer?”
+
+She lifted one hand and with her forefinger made signs from right to
+left and then downward as though writing in Turkish and in Chinese
+characters.
+
+“It is written,” she said in a low voice, “that we belong to God and we
+return to him. Look out what you are about, my lord!”
+
+He drew his pistol from his overcoat and, holding it, rested his hand
+on his knee.
+
+“Now,” he said hoarsely, “while we await the coming of Togrul Kahn, you
+shall remain exactly where you are, and you shall tell me exactly who
+you are in order that I may decide whether to arrest you as an alien
+enemy inciting my countrymen to murder, or to let you go as a foreigner
+who is able to prove her honesty and innocence.”
+
+The girl laughed:
+
+“Be careful,” she said. “My danger lies in your youth and
+mine—somewhere between your lips and mine lies my only danger from you,
+my lord.”
+
+A dull flush mounted to his temples and burned there.
+
+“I am the golden comrade to Heavenly-Azure,” she said, still smiling.
+“I am the Third Immaum in the necklace Keuke wears where Yulun hangs as
+a rose-pearl, and Sansa as a pearl on fire.
+
+“Look upon me, my lord!”
+
+There was a golden light in his eyes which seemed to stiffen the
+muscles and confuse his vision. He heard her voice again as though very
+far away:
+
+“It is written that we shall love, my lord—thou and I—this night—this
+night. Listen attentively. I am thy slave. My lips shall touch thy
+feet. Look upon me, my lord!”
+
+There was a dazzling blindness in his eyes and in his brain. He swayed
+a little still striving to fix her with his failing gaze. His pistol
+hand slipped sideways from his knee, fell limply, and the weapon
+dropped to the thick carpet. He could still see the glimmering golden
+shape of her, still hear her distant voice:
+
+“It is written that we belong to God.... Tokhta!...”
+
+Over his knees was settling a snow-white sheet; on it, in his lap, lay
+a naked knife. There was not a sound in the room save the rushing and
+splashing of the scarlet fish in its crystal bowl.
+
+Bending nearer, the girl fixed her yellow eyes on the man who looked
+back at her with dying gaze, sitting upright and knee deep in his
+shroud.
+
+Then, noiselessly she uncoiled her supple golden body, extending her
+right arm toward the knife.
+
+“Throw back thy head, my lord, and stretch thy throat to the knife’s
+sweet edge,” she whispered caressingly. “No!—do not close your eyes.
+Look upon me. Look into my eyes. I am Aoula, temple girl of the
+Baroulass! I am mistress to the Slayer of Souls! I am a golden
+plaything to Sanang Noïane, Prince of the Yezidees. Look upon me
+attentively, my lord!”
+
+Her smooth little hand closed on the hilt; the scarlet fish splashed
+furiously in the bowl, dislodging a blossom or two which fell to the
+carpet and slowly faded into mist.
+
+Now she grasped the knife, and she slipped from the bed to the floor
+and stood before the dazed man.
+
+“This is the Namaz-Ga,” she said in her silky voice. “Behold, this is
+the appointed Place of Prayer. Gaze around you, my lord. These are the
+shadows of mighty men who come here to see you die in the Place of
+Prayer.”
+
+Cleves’s head had fallen back, but his eyes were open. The Baroulass
+girl took his head in both hands and turned it hither and thither. And
+his glazing eyes seemed to sweep a throng of shadowy white-robed men
+crowding the room. And he saw the bloodless, symmetrical visage of
+Sanang among them, and the great red beard of Togrul; and his
+stiffening lips parted in an uttered cry, and sagged open, flaccid and
+soundless.
+
+The Baroulass sorceress lifted the shroud from his knees and spread it
+on the carpet, moving with leisurely grace about her business and
+softly intoning the Prayers for the Dead.
+
+Then, having made her arrangements, she took her knife into her right
+hand again and came back to the half-conscious man, and stood close in
+front of him, bending near and looking curiously into his dimmed eyes.
+
+“Ayah!” she said smilingly. “This is the Place of Prayer. And you shall
+add your prayer to ours before I use my knife. So! I give you back your
+power of speech. Pronounce the name of Erlik!”
+
+Very slowly his dry lips moved and his dry tongue trembled. The word
+they formed was,
+
+“Tressa!”
+
+Instantly the girl’s yellow eyes grew incandescent and her lovely mouth
+became distorted. With her left hand she caught his chin, forced his
+head back, exposing his throat, and using all her strength drew the
+knife’s edge across it.
+
+But it was only her clenched fingers that swept the taut
+throat—clenched and empty fingers in which the knife had vanished.
+
+And when the Baroulass girl saw that her clenched hand was empty, felt
+her own pointed nails cutting into the tender flesh of her own palm,
+she stared at her blood-stained fingers in sudden terror—stared, spread
+them, shrieked where she stood, and writhed there trembling and
+screaming as though gripped in an invisible trap.
+
+But she fell silent when the door of the room opened noiselessly behind
+her;—and it was as though she dared not turn her head to face the end
+of all things which had entered the room and was drawing nearer in
+utter silence.
+
+Suddenly she saw its shadow on the wall; and her voice burst from her
+lips in a last shuddering scream.
+
+Then the end came slowly, without a sound, and she sank at the knees,
+gently, to a kneeling posture, then backward, extending her supple
+golden shape across the shroud; and lay there limp as a dead snake.
+
+Tressa went to the bowl of water and drew from it every blossom. The
+scarlet fish was now thrashing the water to an iridescent spume; and
+Tressa plunged in her hands and seized it and flung it out—squirming
+and wheezing crimson foam—on the shroud beside the golden girl of the
+Baroulass. Then, very slowly, she drew the shroud over the dying
+things; stepped back to the chair where her husband lay unconscious;
+knelt down beside him and took his head on her shoulder, gazing, all
+the while, at the outline of the dead girl under the snowy shroud.
+
+After a long while Cleves stirred and opened his eyes. Presently he
+turned his head sideways on her shoulder.
+
+“Tressa,” he whispered.
+
+“Hush,” she whispered, “all is well now.” But she did not move her eyes
+from the shroud, which now outlined the still shapes of _two_ human
+figures.
+
+“John Recklow!” she called in a low voice.
+
+Recklow entered noiselessly with drawn pistol. She motioned to him; he
+bent and lifted the edge of the shroud, cautiously. A bushy red beard
+protruded.
+
+“Togrul!” he exclaimed.... “But who is this young creature lying dead
+beside him?”
+
+Then Tressa caught the collar of her tunic in her left hand and flung
+back her lovely face looking upward out of eyes like sapphires wet with
+rain:
+
+“In the name of the one and only God,” she sobbed—“if there be no
+resurrection for dead souls, then I have slain this night in vain!
+
+“For what does it profit a girl if her soul be lost to a lover and her
+body be saved for her husband?”
+
+She rose from her knees, the tears still falling, and went and looked
+down at the outlined shapes beneath the shroud.
+
+Recklow had gone to the telephone to summon his own men and an
+ambulance. Now, turning toward Tressa from his chair:
+
+“God knows what we’d do without you, Mrs. Cleves. I believe this
+accounts for all the Yezidees except Sanang.”
+
+“Excepting Prince Sanang,” she said drearily. Then she went slowly to
+where her husband lay in his armchair, and sank down on the floor, and
+laid her cheek across his feet.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+THE SLAYER OF SOULS
+
+
+In that great blizzard which, on the 4th of February, struck the
+eastern coast of the United States from Georgia to Maine, John Recklow
+and his men hunted Sanang, the last of the Yezidees.
+
+And Sanang clung like a demon to the country which he had doomed to
+destruction, imbedding each claw again as it was torn loose, battling
+for the supremacy of evil with all his dreadful psychic power, striving
+still to seize, cripple, and slay the bodies and souls of a hundred
+million Americans.
+
+Again he scattered the uncounted myriads of germs of the Black Plague
+which he and his Yezidees had brought out of Mongolia a year before;
+and once more the plague swept over the country, and thousands on
+thousands died.
+
+But now the National, State and City governments were fighting, with
+physicians, nurses, and police, this gruesome epidemic which had come
+into the world from they knew not where. And National, State and City
+governments, aroused at last, were fighting the more terrible plague of
+anarchy.
+
+Nation-wide raids were made from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from
+the Gulf to the Lakes. Thousands of terrorists of all shades and
+stripes whose minds had been seized and poisoned by the Yezidees were
+being arrested. Deportations had begun; government agents were
+everywhere swarming to clean out the foulness that had struck deeper
+into the body of the Republic than any one had supposed.
+
+And it seemed, at last, as though the Red Plague, too, was about to be
+stamped out along with the Black Death called Influenza.
+
+But only a small group of Secret Service men knew that a resurgence of
+these horrors was inevitable unless Sanang, the Slayer of Souls, was
+destroyed. And they knew, too, that only one person in America could
+hope to destroy Sanang, the last of the Yezidees, and that was Tressa
+Cleves.
+
+Only by the sudden onset of the plague in various cities of the land
+had Recklow any clew concerning the whereabouts of Sanang.
+
+In Boston, then Washington, then Kansas City, and then New York the
+epidemic suddenly blazed up. And in these places of death the Secret
+Service men always found a clew, and there they hunted Sanang, the
+Yezidee, to kill him without mercy where they might find him.
+
+But they never found Sanang Noïane; only the ghastly marks of his
+poisoned claws on the body of the sickened nation—only minds diseased
+by the Red Plague and bodies dying of the Black Death—civil and social
+centres disorganized, disrupted, depraved, dying.
+
+When the blizzard burst upon New York, struggling in the throes of the
+plague, and paralysed the metropolis for a week, John Recklow sent out
+a special alarm, and New York swarmed with Secret Service men searching
+the snow-buried city for a graceful, slender, dark young man whose eyes
+slanted a trifle in his amber-tinted face; who dressed fashionably,
+lived fastidiously, and spoke English perfectly in a delightfully
+modulated voice.
+
+And to New York, thrice stricken by anarchy, by plague, and now by God,
+hurried, from all parts of the nation, thousands of secret agents who
+had been hunting Sanang in distant cities or who had been raiding the
+traitorous and secret gatherings of his mental dupes.
+
+Agent ZB-303, who was volunteer agent James Benton, came from Boston
+with his new bride who had just arrived by way of England—a young girl
+named Yulun who landed swathed in sables, and stretched out both lovely
+little hands to Benton the instant she caught sight of him on the pier.
+Whereupon he took the slim figure in furs into his arms, which was
+interesting because they had never before met in the flesh.
+
+So,—their honeymoon scarce begun, Benton and Yulun came from Boston in
+answer to Recklow’s emergency call.
+
+And all the way across from San Francisco came volunteer agent XLY-371,
+otherwise Alek Selden, bringing with him a girl named Sansa whom he had
+gone to the coast to meet, and whom he had immediately married after
+she had landed from the Japanese steamer _Nan-yang Maru_. Which, also,
+was remarkable, because, although they recognised each other instantly,
+and their hands and lips clung as they met, neither had ever before
+beheld the living body of the other.
+
+The third man who came to New York at Recklow’s summons was volunteer
+agent 53-6-26, otherwise Victor Cleves.
+
+His young wife, suffering from nervous shock after the deaths of Togrul
+Khan and of the Baroulass girl, Aoula, had been convalescing in a
+private sanitarium in Westchester.
+
+Until the summons came to her husband from Recklow, she had seen him
+only for a few moments every day. But the call to duty seemed to have
+effected a miraculous cure in the slender, blue-eyed girl who had lain
+all day long, day after day, in her still, sunny room scarcely
+unclosing her eyes at all save only when her husband was permitted to
+enter for the few minutes allowed them every day.
+
+The physician had just left, after admitting that Mrs. Cleves seemed to
+be well enough to travel if she insisted; and she and her maid had
+already begun to pack when her husband came into her room.
+
+She looked around over her shoulder, then rose from her knees, flung an
+armful of clothing into the trunk before which she had been kneeling,
+and came across the room to him. Then she dismissed her maid from the
+room. And when the girl had gone:
+
+“I am well, Victor,” she said in a low voice. “Why are you troubled?”
+
+“I can’t bear to have you drawn into this horrible affair once more.”
+
+“Who else is there to discover and overcome Sanang?” she asked calmly.
+
+He remained silent.
+
+So, for a few moments they stood confronting each other there in the
+still, sunny chamber—husband and wife who had never even exchanged the
+first kiss—two young creatures more vitally and intimately bound
+together than any two on earth—yet utterly separated body and soul from
+each other—two solitary spirits which had never merged; two bodies
+virginal and inviolate.
+
+Tressa spoke first: “I must go. That was our bargain.”
+
+The word made him wince as though it had been a sudden blow. Then his
+face flushed red.
+
+“Bargain or no bargain,” he said, “I don’t want you to go because I’m
+afraid you can not endure another shock like the last one.... And every
+time you have thrown your own mind and body between this Nation and
+destruction you have nearly died of it.”
+
+“And if I die?” she said in a low voice.
+
+What answer she awaited—perhaps hoped for—was not the one he made. He
+said: “If you die in what you believe to be your line of duty, then it
+will be I who have killed you.”
+
+“That would not be true. It is you who have saved me.”
+
+“I have not. I have done nothing except to lead you into danger of
+death since I first met you. If you mean spiritually, that also is
+untrue. You have saved yourself—if that indeed were necessary. You have
+redeemed yourself—if it is true you needed redemption—which I never
+believed——”
+
+“Oh,” she sighed swiftly, “Sanang surprised my soul when it was free of
+my body—followed my soul into the Wood of the White Moth—caught it
+there all alone—and—slew it!”
+
+His lips and throat had gone dry as he watched the pallid terror grow
+in her face.
+
+Presently he recovered his voice: “You call that Yezidee the Slayer of
+Souls,” he said, “but I tell you there is no such creature, no such
+power!
+
+“I suppose I—I know what you mean—having seen what we call souls
+dissociated from their physical bodies—but that this Yezidee could do
+you any spiritual damage I do not for one instant believe. The idea is
+monstrous, I tell you——”
+
+“I—I fought him—soul battling against soul——” she stammered, breathing
+faster and irregularly. “I struggled with Sanang there in the Wood of
+the White Moth. I called on God! I called on my two great dogs, Bars
+and Alaga! I recited the Fatha with all my strength—fighting
+convulsively whenever his soul seized mine; I cried out the name of
+Khidr, begging for wisdom! I called on the Ten Imaums, on Ali the Lion,
+on the Blessed Companions. Then I tore my spirit out of the grasp of
+his soul—but there was no escape!—no escape,” she wailed. “For on every
+side I saw the cloud-topped rampart of Gog and Magog, and the woods
+rang with Erlik’s laughter—the dissonant mirth of hell——”
+
+She began to shudder and sway a little, then with an effort she
+controlled herself in a measure.
+
+“There never has been,” she began again with lips that quivered in
+spite of her—“there never has been one moment in our married lives when
+my soul dared forget the Wood of the White Moth—dared seek yours....
+God lives. But so does Erlik. There are angels; but there are as many
+demons.... My soul is ashamed.... And very lonely ... very lonely ...
+but no fit companion—for yours——”
+
+Her hands dropped listlessly beside her and her chin sank.
+
+“So you believe that Yezidee devil caught your soul when it was
+wandering somewhere out of your body, and destroyed it,” he said.
+
+She did not answer, did not even lift her eyes until he had stepped
+close to her—closer than he had ever come. Then she looked up at him,
+but closed her eyes as he swept her into his arms and crushed her face
+and body against his own.
+
+Now her red lips were on his; now her face and heart and limbs and
+breast melted into his—her breath, her pulse, her strength flowed into
+his and became part of their single being and single pulse and breath.
+And she felt their two souls flame and fuse together, and burn together
+in one heavenly blaze—felt the swift conflagration mount, overwhelm,
+and sweep her clean of the last lingering taint; felt her soul,
+unafraid, clasp her husband’s spirit in its white embrace—clung to him,
+uplifted out of hell, rising into the blinding light of Paradise.
+
+Far—far away she heard her own voice in singing whispers—heard her lips
+pronounce _The Name_—“Ata—Ata! Allahou——”
+
+Her blue eyes unclosed; through a mist, in which she saw her husband’s
+face, grew a vast metallic clamour in her ears.
+
+Her husband kissed her, long, silently; then, retaining her hand, he
+turned and lifted the receiver from the clamouring telephone.
+
+“Yes! Yes, this is 53-6-26. Yes, V-69 is with me.... When?...
+To-day?... Very well.... Yes, we’ll come at once.... Yes, we can get a
+train in a few minutes.... All right. Good-bye.”
+
+He took his wife into his arms again.
+
+“Dearest of all in the world,” he said, “Sanang is cornered in a row of
+houses near the East River, and Recklow has flung a cordon around the
+entire block. Good God! I _can’t_ take you there!”
+
+Then Tressa smiled, drew his head down, looked into his face till the
+clear blue splendour of her gaze stilled the tumult in his brain.
+
+“I alone know how to deal with Prince Sanang,” she said quietly. “And
+if John Recklow, or you, or Mr. Benton or Mr. Selden should kill him
+with your pistols, it would be only his body you slay, not the evil
+thing that would escape you and return to Erlik.”
+
+“_Must_ you do this thing, Tressa?”
+
+“Yes, I must do it.”
+
+“But—if our pistols cannot kill this sorcerer, how are you going to
+deal with him?”
+
+“I know how.”
+
+“Have you the strength?”
+
+“Yes—the bodily and the spiritual. Don’t you know that I am already
+part of you?”
+
+“We shall be nearer still,” he murmured.
+
+She flushed but met his gaze.
+
+“Yes.... We shall be but one being.... Utterly.... For already our
+hearts and souls are one. And we shall become of one mind and one body.
+
+“I am no longer afraid of Sanang Noïane!”
+
+“No longer afraid to slay him?” he asked quietly.
+
+A blue light flashed in her eyes and her face grew still and white and
+terrible.
+
+“Death to the body? That is nothing, my lord!” she said, in a hard,
+sweet voice. “It is written that we belong to God and that we return to
+Him. All living things must die, Heart of the World! It is only the
+death of souls that matters. And it has arrived at a time in the
+history of mankind, I think, when the Slayer of Souls shall slay no
+more.”
+
+She looked at him, flushed, withdrew her hand and went slowly across
+the room to the big bay window where potted flowers were in bloom.
+
+From a window-box she took a pinch of dry soil and dropped it into the
+bosom of her gown.
+
+Then, facing the East, with lowered arms and palms turned outward:
+
+“There is no god but God,” she whispered—“the merciful, the
+long-suffering, the compassionate, the just.
+
+“For it is written that when the heavens are rolled together like a
+scroll, every soul shall know what it hath wrought.
+
+“And those souls that are dead in Jehannum shall arise from the dead,
+and shall have their day in court. Nor shall Erlik stay them till all
+has been said.
+
+“And on that day the soul of a girl that hath been put to death shall
+ask for what reason it was slain.
+
+“Thus it has been written.”
+
+Then Tressa dropped to her knees, touched the carpet with her forehead,
+straightened her lithe body and, looking over her shoulder, clapped her
+hands together sharply.
+
+Her maid opened the door. “Hasten with my lord’s luggage!” she cried
+happily; and, still kneeling, lifted her head to her husband and
+laughed up into his eyes.
+
+“You should call the porter for we are nearly ready. Shall we go to the
+station in a sleigh? Oh, wonderful!”
+
+She leaped to her feet, extended her hand and caught his.
+
+“Horses for the lord of the Yiort!” she cried, laughingly. “Kosh! Take
+me out into this new white world that has been born to-day of the ten
+purities and the ten thousand felicities! It has been made anew for you
+and me who also have been born this day!”
+
+He scarcely knew this sparkling, laughing girl with her quick grace and
+her thousand swift little moods and gaieties.
+
+Porters came to take his luggage from his own room; and then her trunk
+and bags were ready, and were taken away.
+
+The baggage sleigh drove off. Their own jingling sleigh followed; and
+Tressa, buried in furs, looked out upon a dazzling, unblemished world,
+lying silvery white under a sky as azure as her eyes.
+
+“Keuke Mongol—Heavenly Azure,” he whispered close to her crimsoned
+cheek, “do you know how I have loved you—always—always?”
+
+“No, I did not know that,” she said.
+
+“Nor I, in the beginning. Yet it happened, also, from the beginning
+when I first saw you.”
+
+“That is a delicious thing to be told. Within me a most heavenly glow
+is spreading.... Unglove your hand.”
+
+She slipped the glove from her own white fingers and felt for his under
+the furs.
+
+“Aie,” she sighed, “you are more beautiful than Ali; more wonderful
+than the Flaming Pearl. Out of ice and fire a new world has been made
+for us.”
+
+“Heavenly Azure—my darling!”
+
+“Oh-h,” she sighed, “your words are sweeter than the breeze in Yian! I
+shall be a bride to you such as there never has been since the days of
+the Blessed Companions—may their names be perfumed and
+sweet-scented!... Shall I truly be one with you, my lord?”
+
+“Mind, soul, and body, one being, you and I, little Heavenly Azure.”
+
+“Between your two hands you hold me like a burning rose, my lord.”
+
+“Your sweetness and fire penetrate my soul.”
+
+“We shall burn together then till the sky-carpet be rolled up. Kosh! We
+shall be one, and on that day I shall not be afraid.”
+
+The sleigh came to a clashing, jingling halt; the train plowed into the
+depot buried in vast clouds of snowy steam.
+
+But when they had taken the places reserved for them, and the train was
+moving swifter and more swiftly toward New York, fear suddenly
+overwhelmed Victor Cleves, and his face grew grey with the menacing
+tumult of his thoughts.
+
+The girl seemed to comprehend him, too, and her own features became
+still and serious as she leaned forward in her chair.
+
+“It is in God’s hands, Heart of the World,” she said in a low voice.
+“We are one, thou and I,—or nearly so. Nothing can harm my soul.”
+
+“No.... But the danger—to your life——”
+
+“I fear no Yezidee.”
+
+“The beast will surely try to kill you. And what can I do? You say my
+pistol is useless.”
+
+“Yes.... But I want you near me.”
+
+“Do you imagine I’d leave you for a second? Good God,” he added in a
+strangled voice, “isn’t there any way I can kill this wild beast? With
+my naked hands——?”
+
+“You must leave him to me, Victor.”
+
+“And you believe you can slay him? _Do_ you?”
+
+She remained silent for a long while, bent forward in her armchair, and
+her hands clasped tightly on her knees.
+
+“My husband,” she said at last, “what your astronomers have but just
+begun to suspect is true, and has long, long been known to the
+Sheiks-el-Djebel.
+
+“For, near to this world we live in, are other worlds—planets that do
+not reflect light. And there is a dark world called Yrimid, close to
+the earth—a planet wrapped in darkness—a black star.... And upon it
+Erlik dwells.... And it is peopled by demons.... And from it comes
+sickness and evil——”
+
+She moistened her lips; sat for a while gazing vaguely straight before
+her.
+
+“From this black planet comes all evil upon earth,” she resumed in a
+hushed voice. “For it is very near to the earth. It is not a hundred
+miles away. All strange phenomena for which our scientists can not
+account are due to this invisible planet,—all new and sudden
+pestilences; all convulsions of nature; the newly noticed radio
+disturbances; the new, so-called inter-planetary signals—all—all have
+their hidden causes within that black and demon-haunted planet long
+known to the Yezidees, and by them called Yrimid, or Erlik’s World.
+And—it is to this black planet that I shall send Sanang, Slayer of
+Souls. I shall tear him from this earth, though he cling to it with
+every claw; and I shall fling his soul into darkness—out across the
+gulf—drive his soul forth—hurl it toward Erlik like a swift rocket
+charred and falling from the sky into endless night.
+
+“So shall I strive to deal with Prince Sanang, Sorcerer of Mount
+Alamout, the last of the Assassins, Sheik-el-Djebel, and Slayer of
+Souls.... May God remember him in hell.”
+
+
+Already their train was rolling into the great terminal.
+
+Recklow was awaiting them. He took Tressa’s hands in his and gazed
+earnestly into her face.
+
+“Have you come to show us how to conclude this murderous business?” he
+asked grimly.
+
+“I shall try,” she said calmly. “Where have you cornered Sanang?”
+
+“Could you and Victor come at once?”
+
+“Yes.” She turned and looked at her husband, who had become quite pale.
+
+Recklow saw the look they exchanged. There could be no misunderstanding
+what had happened to these two. Their tragedy had ended. They were
+united at last. He understood it instantly,—realised how terrible was
+this new and tragic situation for them both.
+
+Yet, he knew also that the salvation of civilisation itself now
+depended upon this girl. She must face Sanang. There was nothing else
+possible.
+
+“The streets are choked with snow,” he said, “but I have a coupé and
+two strong horses waiting.”
+
+He nodded to one of his men standing near. Cleves gave him the hand
+luggage and checks.
+
+“All right,” he said in a low voice to Recklow; and passed one arm
+through Tressa’s.
+
+
+The coupé was waiting on Forty-second Street, guarded by a policeman.
+When they had entered and were seated, two mounted policemen rode ahead
+of the lurching vehicle, picking a way amid the monstrous snow-drifts,
+and headed for the East River.
+
+“We’ve got him somewhere in a wretched row of empty houses not far from
+East River Park. I’m taking you there. I’ve drawn a cordon of my men
+around the entire block. He can’t get away. But I dared take no chances
+with this Yezidee sorcerer—dared not let one of my men go in to look
+for him—go anywhere near him,—until I could lay the situation before
+you, Mrs. Cleves.”
+
+“Yes,” she said calmly, “it was the only way, Mr. Recklow. There would
+have been no use shooting him—no use taking him prisoner. A prisoner,
+he remains as deadly as ever; dead, his mind still lives and breeds
+evil. You are quite right; it is for me to deal with Sanang.”
+
+Recklow shuddered in spite of himself. “Can you tear his claws from the
+vitals of the world, and free the sick brains of a million people from
+the slavery of this monster’s mind?”
+
+The girl said seriously:
+
+“Even Satan was stoned. It is so written. And was cast out. And dwells
+forever and ever in Abaddon. No star lights that Pit. None lights the
+Black Planet, Yrimid. It is where evil dwells. And there Sanang Noïane
+belongs.”
+
+And now, beyond the dirty edges of the snow-smothered city, under an
+icy mist they caught sight of the river where ships lay blockaded by
+frozen floes.
+
+Gulls circled over it; ghostly factory chimneys on the further shore
+loomed up gigantic, ranged like minarettes.
+
+The coupé, jolting along behind the mounted policemen, struggled up
+toward the sidewalk and stopped. The two horses stood steaming, knee
+deep in snow. Recklow sprang out; Tressa gave him one hand and stepped
+lithely to the sidewalk. Then Cleves got out and came and took hold of
+his wife’s arm again.
+
+“Well,” he said harshly to Recklow, “where is this damned Yezidee
+hidden?”
+
+Recklow pointed in silence, but he and Tressa had already lifted their
+gaze to the stark, shabby row of abandoned three-story houses where
+every dirty blind was closed.
+
+“They’re to be demolished and model tenements built,” he said briefly.
+
+A man muffled in a fur overcoat came up and took Tressa’s hand and
+kissed it.
+
+She smiled palely at Benton, spoke of Yulun, wished him happiness.
+While she was yet speaking Selden approached and bent over her gloved
+hand. She spoke to him very sweetly of Sansa, expressing pleasure at
+the prospect of seeing her again in the body.
+
+“The Seldens and ourselves have adjoining apartments at the Ritz,” said
+Benton. “We have reserved a third suite for you and Victor.”
+
+She inclined her lovely head, gravely, then turned to Recklow, saying
+that she was ready.
+
+“It makes no difference which front door I unlock,” he said. “All these
+tenements are connected by human rat-holes and hidden runways leading
+from one house to another.... How many men do you want?”
+
+“I want you four men,—nobody else.”
+
+Recklow led the way up a snow-covered stoop, drew a key from his
+pocket, fitted it, and pulled open the door.
+
+A musty chill struck their faces as they entered the darkened and empty
+hallway. Involuntarily every man drew his pistol.
+
+“I must ask you to do exactly what I tell you to do,” she said calmly.
+
+“Certainly,” said Recklow, caressing his white moustache and striving
+to pierce the gloom with his keen eyes.
+
+Then Tressa took her husband’s hand. “Come,” she said. They mounted the
+stairway together; and the three others followed with pistols lifted.
+
+There was a vague grey light on the second floor; the broken rear
+shutters let it in.
+
+As though she seemed to know her way, the girl led them forward, opened
+a door in the wall, and disclosed a bare, dusty room in the next house.
+
+Through this she stepped; the others crept after her with weapons
+ready. She opened a second door, turned to the four men.
+
+“Wait here for me. Come only when I call,” she whispered.
+
+“For God’s sake take me with you,” burst out Cleves.
+
+“In God’s name stay where you are till you hear me call your name!” she
+said almost breathlessly.
+
+Then, suddenly she turned, swiftly retracing her steps; and they saw
+her pass through the first door and disappear into the first house they
+had entered.
+
+A terrible silence fell among them. The sound of her steps on the bare
+boards had died away. There was not a sound in the chilly dusk.
+
+Minute after minute dragged by. One by one the men peered fearfully at
+Cleves. His visage was ghastly and they could see his pistol-hand
+trembling.
+
+Twice Recklow looked at his wrist watch. The third time he said,
+unsteadily: “She has been gone three-quarters of an hour.”
+
+Then, far away, they heard a heavy tread on the stairs. Nearer and
+nearer came the footsteps. Every pistol was levelled at the first door
+as a man’s bulky form darkened it.
+
+“It’s one of my men,” said Recklow in a voice like a low groan. “Where
+on earth is Mrs. Cleves?”
+
+“I came to tell you,” said the agent, “Mrs. Cleves came out of the
+first house nearly an hour ago. She got into the coupé and told the
+driver to go to the Ritz.”
+
+“What!” gasped Recklow.
+
+“She’s gone to the Ritz,” repeated the agent. “No one else has come
+out. And I began to worry—hearing nothing of you, Mr. Recklow. So I
+stepped in to see——”
+
+“You say that Mrs. Cleves went out of the house we entered, got into
+the coupé, and told the driver to go to the Ritz?” demanded Cleves,
+astounded.
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“Where is that coupé? Did it return?”
+
+“It had not returned when I came in here.”
+
+“Go back and look for it. Look in the other street,” said Recklow
+sharply.
+
+The agent hurried away over the creaking boards. The four men gazed at
+one another.
+
+“The thing to do is to obey her and stay where we are,” said Recklow
+grimly. “Who knows what peril we may cause her if we move from——”
+
+His words froze on his lips as Tressa’s voice rang out from the
+darkness beyond the door they were guarding:
+
+“Victor I I—I need you! Come to me, my husband!”
+
+As Cleves sprang through the door into the darkness beyond, Benton
+smashed a window sash with all the force of his shoulder, and, reaching
+out through the shattered glass, tore the rotting blinds from their
+hinges, letting in a flood of sickly light.
+
+Against the bare wall stood Tressa, both arms extended, her hands flat
+against the plaster, and each hand transfixed and pinned to the wall by
+a knife.
+
+A white sheet lay at her feet. On it rested a third knife. And, bending
+on one knee to pick it up, they caught a glimpse of a slender young man
+in fashionable afternoon attire, who, as they entered with the crash of
+the shattered window in their ears, sprang to his nimble feet and stood
+confronting them, knife in hand.
+
+Instantly every man fired at him and the bullets whipped the plaster to
+a smoke behind him, but the slender, dark skinned young man stood
+motionless, looking at them out of brilliant eyes that slanted a
+trifle.
+
+Again the racket of the fusillade swept him and filled the room with
+plaster dust.
+
+Cleves, frantic with horror, laid hold of the knives that pinned his
+wife’s hands to the wall, and dragged them out.
+
+But there was no blood, no wound to be seen on her soft palms. She took
+the murderous looking blades from him, threw one terrible look at
+Sanang, kicked the shroud across the floor toward him, and flung both
+knives upon it.
+
+The place was still dim with plaster dust and pistol fumes as she
+stepped forward through the acrid mist, motioning the four men aside.
+
+“Sanang!” she cried in a clear voice, “may God remember you in hell,
+for my feet have spurned your shroud, and your knives, which could not
+scar my palms, shall never pierce my heart! Look out for yourself,
+Prince Sanang!”
+
+“Tokhta!” he said, calmly. “My soul be ransom for yours!”
+
+“That is a lie! My soul is already ransomed! My mind is the more
+powerful. It has already halted yours. It is conquering yours. It is
+seizing your mind and enslaving it. It is mastering your will, Sanang!
+Your mind bends before mine. You know it! You know it is bending. You
+feel it is breaking down!”
+
+Sanang’s eyes began to glitter but his pale brown face had grown almost
+white.
+
+“I slew you once—in the Wood of the White Moth,” he said huskily.
+“There is no resurrection from such a death, little Heavenly Azure.
+Look upon me! My soul and yours are one!”
+
+“You are looking upon my soul,” she said.
+
+“A lie! You are in your body!”
+
+The girl laughed. “My body lies asleep in the Ritz upon my husband’s
+bed,” she said. “My body is his, my mind belongs to him, my soul is
+already one with his. Do you not know it, dog of a Yezidee? Look upon
+me, Sanang Noïane! Look upon my unwounded hands! My shroud lies at your
+feet. And there lie the knives that could not pierce my heart! I am
+thrice clean! Listen to my words, Sanang! There is no other god but
+God!”
+
+The young man’s visage grew pasty and loose and horrible; his lips
+became flaccid like dewlaps; but out of these sagging folds of livid
+skin his voice burst whistling, screaming, as though wrenched from his
+very belly:
+
+“May Erlik strangle you! May you rot where you stand! May your face
+become a writhing mass of maggots and your body a corruption of living
+worms!
+
+“For what you are doing to me this day may every demon in hell torment
+you!
+
+“Have a care what you are about!” he screeched. “You are slaying my
+mind, you sorceress! You have seized my mind and are crushing it! You
+are putting out its light, you Yezidee witch!—you are quenching the
+last spark—of reason—in—me——”
+
+“Sanang!”
+
+His knife fell clattering to the floor. But he stood stock still, his
+hands clutching his head—stood motionless, while scream on scream tore
+through the loose and gaping lips, blowing them into ghastly, distorted
+folds.
+
+“Sanang Noïane!” she cried in her clear voice, “the Eight Towers are
+darkened! The Rampart of Gog and Magog is fallen! On Mount Alamout
+nothing is living. The minds of mankind are free again!”
+
+She stepped forward, slowly, and stood near him chanting in a low voice
+the Prayers for the Dead She bent down and unrolled the shroud, laid it
+on his shoulders and drew it up and across his face, covering his dying
+eyes, and swathed him so, slowly, from head to foot.
+
+Then she gathered up the three knives, cast them upward into the air.
+They did not fall again. They disappeared. And all the while, under her
+breath, the girl was chanting the Prayers for the Dead as she moved
+silently about her business.
+
+Shrouded to the forehead in its white cerements, the muffled figure of
+Sanang stood upright, motionless as a swathed and frozen corpse.
+
+Outside, the daylight had become greyer. It had begun to snow again,
+and a few flakes blew in through the shattered windows and clung to the
+winding sheet of Sanang.
+
+And now Tressa drew close to the shrouded shape and stood before it,
+gazing intently upon the outlined features of the last of the Yezidees.
+
+“Sanang,” she said very softly, “I hear your soul bidding your body
+farewell. Tokhta!”
+
+Then, under the strained gaze of the four men gathered there, the
+shroud fell to the floor in a loose heap of white folds. There was
+nobody under it; no trace of Sanang. The human shape of the Yezidee had
+disappeared; but a greyish mist had filled the room, wavering up like
+smoke from the shroud, and, like smoke, blowing in a long streamer
+toward the window where the draught drew it out through the falling
+snow and scattered the last shred of it against the greying sky.
+
+In the room the mist thinned swiftly; the four men could now see one
+another. But Tressa was no longer in the room. And in place of the
+white shroud a piece of filthy tattered carpet lay on the floor. And a
+dead rat, flattened out, dry and dusty, lay upon it.
+
+“For God’s sake,” whispered Recklow hoarsely, “let us get out of this!”
+
+Cleves, his pistol clutched convulsively, stared at him in terror. But
+Recklow took him by the arm and drew him away, muttering that Tressa
+was waiting for him, and might be ill, and that there was nothing
+further to expect in this ghastly spot.
+
+
+They went with Cleves to the Ritz. At the desk the clerk said that Mrs.
+Cleves had the keys and was in her apartment.
+
+The three men entered the corridor with him; watched him try the door;
+saw him open it; lingered a moment after it had closed; heard the key
+turn.
+
+At the sound of the door closing the maid came.
+
+“Madame is asleep in her room,” she whispered.
+
+“When did she come in?”
+
+“More than two hours ago, sir. I have drawn her bath, but when I opened
+the door a few moments ago, Madame was still asleep.”
+
+He nodded; he was trembling when he put off his overcoat and dropped
+hat and gloves on the carpet.
+
+From the little rose and ivory reception room he could see the closed
+door of his wife’s chamber. And for a while he stood staring at it.
+
+Then, slowly, he crossed this room, opened the door; entered.
+
+In her bedroom the tinted twilight was like ashes of roses. He went to
+the bed and looked down at her shadowy face; gazed intently; listened;
+then, in sudden terror, bent and laid his hand on her heart. It was
+beating as tranquilly as a child’s; but as she stirred, turned her
+head, and unclosed her eyes, under his hand her heart leaped like a
+wild thing caught unawares and the snowy skin glowed with an exquisite
+and deepening tint as she lifted her arms and clasped them around her
+husband’s, neck, drawing his quivering face against her own.
+
+THE END
+
+
+[1] “Look out!” Nomad-Mongol dialect.
+
+[2] Urdu = An imperial encampment.
+
+[3] Mocalla = A platform used as a Moslem pulpit.
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SLAYER OF SOULS ***
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