The Slayer of Souls

Nor had the bed even been turned down – nor any preparation for the night's comfort been attempted. And, except for the blazing lights, it was as though the apartment had not been entered by anybody for a month.

All the windows were closed, all shades lowered and curtains drawn. The air, though apparently pure enough, had that vague flatness which one associates with an unused guest-chamber when opened for an airing.

Now, deliberately, Cleves began a more thorough search of the apartment, looking behind curtains, under beds, into clothes presses, behind sofas.

Then he searched the bureau drawers, dressers, desks for any sign or clew of the girl in the chinchillas. There was no dust anywhere, – the hotel management evidently was particular – but there was not even a pin to be found.

Presently he went out into the corridor and looked again at the number on the door. He had made no mistake.

Then he turned and sped down the long corridor to where the matron was standing beside her desk preparing to go off duty as soon as the other matron arrived to relieve her.

To his impatient question she replied positively that she had seen the girl in chinchillas unlock 408 and enter the apartment less than five minutes before he had arrived in pursuit.

"And I saw her lights go on as soon as she went in," added the matron, pointing to the distant illuminated transom.

"Then she went out through into the next apartment," insisted Cleves.

"The fire-tower is on one side of her; the scullery closet on the other," said the matron. "She could not have left that apartment without coming out into the corridor. And if she had come out I should have seen her."

"I tell you she isn't in those rooms!" protested Cleves.

"She must be there, sir. I saw her go in a few seconds before you came up."

At that moment the other matron arrived. There was no use arguing. He left the explanation of the situation to the woman who was going off duty, and, hastening his steps, he returned to apartment 408.

The door, which he had left open, had swung shut. Again he fitted the master-key, entered, paused on the threshold, looked around nervously, his nostrils suddenly filled with a puff of perfume.

And there on the table by the bed he saw a glass bowl filled with a mass of Chinese orchids – great odorous clusters of orange and snow-white bloom that saturated all the room with their freshening scent.

So astounded was he that he stood stock still, one hand still on the door-knob; then in a trice he had closed and locked the door from inside.

Somebody was in that apartment. There could be no doubt about it. He dropped his right hand into his overcoat pocket and took hold of his automatic pistol.

For ten minutes he stood so, listening, peering about the room from bed to curtains, and out into the parlour. There was not a sound in the place. Nothing stirred.

Now, grasping his pistol but not drawing it, he began another stealthy tour of the apartment, exploring every nook and cranny. And, at the end, had discovered nothing new.

When at length he realised that, as far as he could discover, there was not a living thing in the place excepting himself, a very faint chill grew along his neck and shoulders, and he caught his breath suddenly, deeply.

He had come back to the bedroom, now. The perfume of the orchids saturated the still air.

And, as he stood staring at them, all of a sudden he saw, where their twisted stalks rested in the transparent bowl of water, something moving – something brilliant as a live ember gliding out from among the mass of submerged stems – a living fish glowing in scarlet hues and winnowing the water with grotesquely trailing fins as delicate as filaments of scarlet lace.

To and fro swam the fish among the maze of orchid stalks. Even its eyes were hot and red as molten rubies; and as its crimson gills swelled and relaxed and swelled, tints of cherry-fire waxed and waned over its fat and glowing body.

And vaguely, now, in the perfume saturated air, Cleves seemed to sense a subtle taint of evil, – something sinister in the intense stillness of the place – in the jewelled fish gliding so silently in and out among the pallid convolutions of the drowned stems.

As he stood staring at the fish, the drugged odour of the orchids heavy in his throat and lungs, something stirred very lightly in the room.

Chills crawling over every limb, he looked around across his shoulder.

There was a figure seated cross-legged in the middle of the bed!

Then, in the perfumed silence, the girl laughed.

For a full minute neither of them moved. No sound had echoed her low laughter save the deadened pulsations of his own heart. But now there grew a faint ripple of water in the bowl where the scarlet fish, suddenly restless, was swimming hither and thither as though pursued by an invisible hand.

With the slight noise of splashing water in his ears, Cleves stood staring at the figure on the bed. Under her chinchilla the girl seemed to be all a pale golden tint – hair, skin, eyes. The scant shred of an evening gown she wore, the jewels at her throat and breast, all were yellow and amber and saffron-gold.

And now, looking him in the eyes, she leisurely disengaged the robe of silver fur from her naked shoulders and let it fall around her on the bed. For a second the lithe, willowy golden thing gathered there as gracefully as a coiled snake filled him with swift loathing. Then, almost instantly, the beauty of the lissome creature fascinated him.

She leaned forward and set her elbows on her two knees, and rested her face between her hands – like a gold rose-bud between two ivory petals, he thought, dismayed by this young thing's beauty, shaken by the dull confusion of his own heart battering his breast like the blows of a rising tide.

"What do you wish?" she inquired in her soft young voice. "Why have you come secretly into my rooms to search – and clasping in your hand a loaded pistol deep within your pocket?"

"Why have you hidden yourself until now?" he retorted in a dull and laboured voice.

"I have been here."

"Where?"

"Here!.. Looking at you… And watching my scarlet fish. His name is Dzelim. He is nearly a thousand years old and as wise as a magician. Look upon him, my lord! See how rapidly he darts around his tiny crystal world! – like a comet through outer star-dust, running the eternal race with Time… And – yonder is a chair. Will my lord be seated – at his new servant's feet?"

A strange, physical weariness seemed to weight his limbs and shoulders. He seated himself near the bed, never taking his heavy gaze from the smiling, golden thing which squatted there watching him so intently.

"Whose limousine was that which you entered and then left so abruptly?" he asked.

"My own."

"What was the Yezidee Togrul Kahn doing in it?"

"Did you see anybody in my car?" she asked, veiling her eyes a little with their tawny lashes.

"I saw a man with a thick beard dyed red with henna, and the bony face and slant eyes of Togrul the Yezidee."

"May my soul be ransom for yours, my lord, but you lie!" she said softly. Her lips parted in a smile; but her half-veiled eyes were brilliant as two topazes.

"Is that your answer?"

She lifted one hand and with her forefinger made signs from right to left and then downward as though writing in Turkish and in Chinese characters.

"It is written," she said in a low voice, "that we belong to God and we return to him. Look out what you are about, my lord!"

He drew his pistol from his overcoat and, holding it, rested his hand on his knee.

"Now," he said hoarsely, "while we await the coming of Togrul Kahn, you shall remain exactly where you are, and you shall tell me exactly who you are in order that I may decide whether to arrest you as an alien enemy inciting my countrymen to murder, or to let you go as a foreigner who is able to prove her honesty and innocence."

The girl laughed: