The Slayer of Souls. Chambers Robert William

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      "You and I alone together – no! oh, please – please! I am afraid!"

      "Of what?"

      "Of – giving you – my c-confidence – and trust – and – and f-friendship."

      "I want you to."

      "I must not! It would destroy us both, soul and body!"

      "I tell you," he said, impatiently, "that there is no destruction of the soul – and it's a clean comradeship anyway – a fighting friendship I ask of you —all I ask; all I offer! Wherein, then, lies this peril in being alone together?"

      "Because I am finding it in my heart to believe in you, trust you, hold fast to your strength and protection. And if I give way – yield – and if I make you a promise – and if there is anybody in that room to see us and hear us – then we shall be destroyed, both of us, soul and body – "

      He took her hands, held them until their trembling ceased.

      "I'll answer for our bodies. Let God look after the rest. Will you trust Him?"

      She nodded.

      "And me?"

      "Yes."

      But her face blanched as he turned the latch-key, switched on the electric light, and preceded her into the room beyond.

      The place was one of those accentless, typical bachelor apartments made comfortable for anything masculine, but quite unlivable otherwise.

      Live coals still glowed in the hob grate; he placed a lump of cannel coal on the embers, used a bellows vigorously and the flame caught with a greasy crackle.

      The girl stood motionless until he pulled up an easy chair for her, then he found another for himself. She let slip her furs, folded her hands around the bunch of violets and waited.

      "Now," he said, "I'll come to the point. In 1916 I was at Plattsburg, expecting a commission. The Department of Justice sent for me. I went to Washington where I was made to understand that I had been selected to serve my country in what is vaguely known as the Secret Service – and which includes government agents attached to several departments.

      "The great war is over; but I am still retained in the service. Because something more sinister than a hun victory over civilisation threatens this Republic. And threatens the civilised world."

      "Anarchy," she said.

      "Bolshevism."

      She did not stir in her chair.

      She had become very white. She said nothing. He looked at her with his quiet, reassuring smile.

      "That's what I want of you," he repeated.

      "I want your help," he went on, "I want your valuable knowledge of the Orient. I want whatever secret information you possess. I want your rather amazing gifts, your unprecedented experience among almost unknown people, your familiarity with occult things, your astounding powers – whatever they are – hypnotic, psychic, material.

      "Because, to-day, civilisation is engaged in a secret battle for existence against gathering powers of violence, the force and limit of which are still unguessed.

      "It is a battle between righteousness and evil, between sanity and insanity, light and darkness, God and Satan! And if civilisation does not win, then the world perishes."

      She raised her still eyes to his, but made no other movement.

      "Miss Norne," he said, "we in the International Service know enough about you to desire to know more.

      "We already knew the story you have told to me. Agents in the International Secret Service kept in touch with you from the time that the Japanese escorted you out of China.

      "From the day you landed, and all across the Continent to New York, you have been kept in view by agents of this government.

      "Here, in New York, my men have kept in touch with you. And now, to-night, the moment has come for a personal understanding between you and me."

      The girl's pale lips moved – became stiffly articulate: "I – I wish to live," she stammered, "I fear death."

      "I know it. I know what I ask when I ask your help."

      She said in the ghost of a voice: "If I turn against them– they will kill me."

      "They'll try," he said quietly.

      "They will not fail, Mr. Cleves."

      "That is in God's hands."

      She became deathly white at that.

      "No," she burst out in an agonised voice, "it is not in God's hands! If it were, I should not be afraid! It is in the hands of those who stole my soul!"

      She covered her face with both arms, fairly writhing on her chair.

      "If the Yezidees have actually made you believe any such nonsense" – he began; but she dropped her arms and stared at him out of terrible blue eyes:

      "I don't want to die, I tell you! I am afraid! —afraid! If I reveal to you what I know they'll kill me. If I turn against them and aid you, they'll slay my body, and send it after my soul!"

      She was trembling so violently that he sprang up and went to her. After a moment he passed one arm around her shoulders and held her firmly, close to him.

      "Come," he said, "do your duty. Those who enlist under the banner of Christ have nothing to dread in this world or the next."

      "If – if I could believe I were safe there."

      "I tell you that you are. So is every human soul! What mad nonsense have the Yezidees made you believe? Is there any surer salvation for the soul than to die in Christ's service?"

      He slipped his arm from her quivering shoulders and grasped both her hands, crushing them as though to steady every fibre in her tortured body.

      "I want you to live. I want to live, too. But I tell you it's in God's hands, and we soldiers of civilisation have nothing to fear except failure to do our duty. Now, then, are we comrades under the United States Government?"

      "O God – I – dare not!"

      "Are we?"

      Perhaps she felt the physical pain of his crushing grip for she turned and looked him in the eyes.

      "I don't want to die," she whispered. "Don't make me!"

      "Will you help your country?"

      The terrible directness of her child's gaze became almost unendurable to him.

      "Will you offer your country your soul and body?" he insisted in a low, tense voice.

      Her stiff lips formed a word.

      "Yes!" he exclaimed.

      "Yes."

      For a moment she rested against his shoulder, deathly white, then СКАЧАТЬ