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.