The Slayer of Souls

"Heretic!" she retorted. "Do you also refuse to name the ten Imaums in your prayers? Dog! Toad! Spittle of Erlik! May all your cattle die and all your horses take the glanders and all your dogs the mange!"

"Silence, sorceress!" he shouted, pale with fear and fury. "Witch! Mud worm! May Erlik seize you! May your skin be covered with putrefying sores! May all the demons torment you! May God remember you in hell!"

"Yarghouz! Stand still!"

"Is your word then the Rampart of Gog and Magog, you young witch of Yian, that a Khan of the Seventh Tower need fear you!" he sneered, stealing stealthily westward through the feathery pines.

"I give thee thy last chance, Yarghouz Khan," she said in an excited voice that trembled. "Recite thy prayer naming the ten, because with their holy names upon thy lips thou mayest escape damnation. For I am here to slay thee, Yarghouz! Take up thy shroud and pray!"

The young man felt the west wind at the back of his left ear. Then he began to laugh.

"Heavenly Eyes," he said, "thy end is come – together with the two police who hide in the pines yonder behind thee! Behold the bottle magic of Yarghouz Khan!"

And he lifted the glass flask in the moonlight as though he were about to smash it at her feet.

Then a terrible thing occurred. The entire flask glowed red hot in his grasp; and the man screamed and strove convulsively to fling the bottle; but it stuck to his hand, melted into the smoking flesh.

Then he screamed again – or tried to – but his entire lower jaw came off and he stood there with the awful orifice gaping in the moonlight – stood, reeled a moment – and then – and then– his whole face slid off, leaving nothing but a bony mask out of which burst shriek after shriek —

Keuke Mongol had fainted dead away. Cleves took her into his arms.

Recklow, trembling and deathly white, went over to the thing that lay among the young pines and forced himself to bend over it.

The glass flask still stuck to one charred hand, but it was no longer hot. And Recklow rolled the unspeakable thing into the white shroud and pushed it into the swamp.

An evil ooze took it, slowly sucked it under and engulfed it. A few stinking bubbles broke.

Recklow went back to the little glade among the pines.

A young girl lay sobbing convulsively in her husband's arms, asking God's pardon and his for the justice she had done upon an enemy of all mankind.

CHAPTER X

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."