The Slayer of Souls. Chambers Robert William

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      "Alek Selden."

      In the next room Gutchlug could hear the voice of Cleves at the telephone, but he merely shrugged his heavy shoulders in contempt. For he had other things to do beside eavesdropping.

      Also, for the last hour – in fact, ever since Sanang's departure – something had been happening to him – something that happens to a Hassani only once in a lifetime. And now this unique thing had happened to him – to him, Gutchlug Khan – to him before whose Khiounnou ancestors eighty-one thousand nations had bowed the knee.

      It had come to him at last, this dread thing, unheralded, totally unexpected, a few minutes after Sanang had departed.

      And he suddenly knew he was going to die.

      And, when, presently, he comprehended it, he bent his grizzled head and listened seriously. And, after a little silence, he heard his soul bidding him farewell.

      So the chatter of white men at a telephone in the next apartment had no longer any significance for him. Whether or not they had been spying on him; whether they were plotting, made no difference to him now.

      He tested his knife's edge with his thumb and listened gravely to his soul bidding him farewell.

      But, for a Yezidee, there was still a little detail to attend to before his soul departed; – two matters to regulate. One was to select his shroud. The other was to cut the white throat of this young snow-leopardess called Keuke Mongol, the Yezidee temple girl.

      And he could steal down to her bedroom and finish that matter in five minutes.

      But first he must choose his shroud, as is the custom of the Yezidee.

      That office, however, was quickly accomplished in a country where fine white sheets of linen are to be found on every hotel bed.

      So, on his way to the door, his naked knife in his right hand, he paused to fumble under the bed-covers and draw out a white linen sheet.

      Something hurt his hand like a needle. He moved it, felt the thing squirm under his fingers and pierce his palm again and again. With a shriek, he tore the bedclothes from the bed.

      A little yellow snake lay coiled there.

      He got as far as the telephone, but could not use it. And there he fell heavily, shaking the room and dragging the instrument down with him.

      There was some excitement. Cleves and Selden in their bathrobes went in to look at the body. The hotel physician diagnosed it as heart-trouble. Or, possibly, poison. Some gazed significantly at the naked knife still clutched in the dead man's hands.

      Around the wrist of the other hand was twisted a pliable gold bracelet representing a little snake. It had real emeralds for eyes.

      It had not been there when Gutchlug died.

      But nobody except Sanang could know that. And later when Sanang came back and found Gutchlug very dead on the bed and a policeman sitting outside, he offered no information concerning the new bracelet shaped like a snake with real emeralds for eyes, which adorned the dead man's left wrist.

      Toward evening, however, after an autopsy had confirmed the house physician's diagnosis that heart-disease had finished Gutchlug, Sanang mustered enough courage to go to the desk in the lobby and send up his card to Miss Norne.

      It appeared, however, that Miss Norne had left for Chicago about noon.

      CHAPTER III

      GREY MAGIC

      To Victor Cleves came the following telegram in code:

      "Washington

      "April 14th, 1919."

      "Investigation ordered by the State Department as the result of frequent mention in despatches of Chinese troops operating with the Russian Bolsheviki forces has disclosed that the Bolsheviki are actually raising a Chinese division of 30,000 men recruited in Central Asia. This division has been guilty of the greatest cruelties. A strange rumour prevails among the Allied forces at Archangel that this Chinese division is led by Yezidee and Hassani officers belonging to the sect of devil-worshipers and that they employ black arts and magic in battle.

      "From information so far gathered by the several branches of the United States Secret Service operating throughout the world, it appears possible that the various revolutionary forces of disorder, in Europe and Asia, which now are violently threatening the peace and security, of all established civilisation on earth, may have had a common origin. This origin, it is now suspected, may date back to a very remote epoch; the wide-spread forces of violence and merciless destruction may have had their beginning among some ancient and predatory race whose existence was maintained solely by robbery and murder.

      "Anarchists, terrorists, Bolshevists, Reds of all shades and degrees, are now believed to represent in modern times what perhaps once was a tribe of Assassins – a sect whose religion was founded upon a common predilection for crimes of violence.

      "On this theory then, for the present, the United States Government will proceed with this investigation of Bolshevism; and the Secret Service will continue to pay particular attention to all Orientals in the United States and other countries. You personally are formally instructed to keep in touch with XLY-371 (Alek Selden) and ZB-303 (James Benton), and to employ every possible means to become friendly with the girl Tressa Norne, win her confidence, and, if possible, enlist her actively in the Government Service as your particular aid and comrade.

      "It is equally important that the movements of the Oriental, called Sanang, be carefully observed in order to discover the identity and whereabouts of his companions. However, until further instructions he is not to be taken into custody. M. H. 2479.

      "(Signed)

      "(John Recklow.)"

      The long despatch from John Recklow made Cleves's duty plain enough.

      For months, now, Selden and Benton had been watching Tressa Norne. And they had learned practically nothing about her.

      And now the girl had come within Cleves's sphere of operation. She had been in New York for two weeks. Telegrams from Benton in Chicago, and from Selden in Buffalo, had prepared him for her arrival.

      He had his men watching her boarding-house on West Twenty-eighth Street, men to follow her, men to keep their eyes on her at the theatre, where every evening, at 10:45, her entr' acte was staged. He knew where to get her. But he, himself, had been on the watch for the man Sanang; and had failed to find the slightest trace of him in New York, although warned that he had arrived.

      So, for that evening, he left the hunt for Sanang to others, put on his evening clothes, and dined with fashionable friends at the Patroons' Club, who never for an instant suspected that young Victor Cleves was in the Service of the United States Government. About half-past nine he strolled around to the theatre, desiring to miss as much as possible of the popular show without being too late to see the curious little entr' acte in which this girl, Tressa Norne, appeared alone.

      He had secured an aisle seat near the stage at an outrageous price; the main show was still thundering and fizzing and glittering as he entered the theatre; so he stood in the rear behind the orchestra until the descending curtain extinguished the outrageous glare and din.

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