“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?”
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. Youhavebeen tempted to betray your country. You have resisted. Youhavebeen threatened with death. Youhavehad 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:
“Areyouafraid?”
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’vegotto tell you this!”
“What are you talking about?” he demanded bluntly.
“Because you have been courteous—considerate—and youdon’tknow—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 byobtaining 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.”
“Thereissomebody 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—allI 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—andif there is anybody in that room to see us and hear us—thenwe 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 againstthem—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!”
“Arewe?”
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—youarea 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.”
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 Ihaveused—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—thenI 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 yetthere 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 destroythe 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 eightfociof 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?Doyou?”
“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 wouldyoudo?”
“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 thinkyouare 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.
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——”
“ButIdo.”
“—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 theirrôlesto be reversed.
“Areyouplanning to sit up in order to protectme?” 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 foryou!”
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 facethat 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!... Andyou!”
Suddenly she flung her left arm around his neck and the delicate clenched hand brushed his cheek.