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.”