The Slayer of Souls

"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 in a flash she had straightened, was on her feet in one bound and so swiftly that he scarcely followed her movement – was unaware that she had risen until he saw her standing there with a pistol glittering in her hand, her eyes fixed on the portières that hung across the corridor leading to his bedroom.

"What on earth," he began, but she interrupted him, keeping her gaze focused on the curtains, and the pistol resting level on her hip.

"I'll answer you if I die for it!" she cried. "I'll tell you everything I know! You wish to learn what is this monstrous evil that threatens the world with destruction – what you call anarchy and Bolshevism? It is an Evil that was born before Christ came! It is an Evil which not only destroys cities and empires and men but which is more terrible still for it obtains control of the human mind, and uses it at will; and it obtains sovereignty over the soul, and makes it prisoner. Its aim is to dominate first, then to destroy. It was conceived in the beginning by Erlik and by Sorcerers and devils… Always, from the first, there have been sorcerers and living devils.

"And when human history began to be remembered and chronicled, devils were living who worshiped Erlik and practised sorcery.

"They have been called by many names. A thousand years before Christ Hassan Sabbah founded his sect called Hassanis or Assassins. The Yezidees are of them. Their Chief is still called Sabbah; their creed is the annihilation of civilisation!"

Cleves had risen. The girl spoke in a clear, accentless monotone, not looking at him, her eyes and pistol centred on the motionless curtains.

"Look out!" she cried sharply.

"What is the matter?" he demanded. "Do you suppose anybody is hidden behind that curtain in the passageway?"

"If there is," she replied in her excited but distinct voice, "here is a tale to entertain him:

"The Hassanis are a sect of assassins which has spread out of Asia all over the world, and they are determined upon the annihilation of everything and everybody in it except themselves!

"In Germany is a branch of the sect. The hun is the lineal descendant of the ancient Yezidee; the gods of the hun are the old demons under other names; the desire and object of the hun is the same desire – to rule the minds and bodies and souls of men and use them to their own purposes!"

She lifted her pistol a little, came a pace forward:

"Anarchist, Yezidee, Hassani, Boche, Bolshevik – all are the same – all are secretly swarming in the hidden places for the same purpose!"

The girl's blue eyes were aflame, now, and the pistol was lifting slowly in her hand to a deadly level.

"Sanang!" she cried in a terrible voice.

"Sanang!" she cried again in her terrifying young voice – "Toad! Tortoise egg! Spittle of Erlik! May the Thirty Thousand Calamities overtake you! Sheik-el-Djebel! – cowardly Khan whom I laughed at from the temple when it rained yellow snakes on the marble steps when all the gongs in Yian sounded in your frightened ears!"

She waited.

"What! You won't step out? Tokhta!" she exclaimed in a ringing tone, and made a swift motion with her left hand. Apparently out of her empty open palm, like a missile hurled, a thin, blinding beam of light struck the curtains, making them suddenly transparent.

A man stood there.

He came out, moving very slowly as though partly stupefied. He wore evening dress under his overcoat, and had a long knife in his right hand.

Nobody spoke.

"So – I really was to die then, if I came here," said the girl in a wondering way.

Sanang's stealthy gaze rested on her, stole toward Cleves. He moistened his lips with his tongue. "You deliver me to this government agent?" he asked hoarsely.

"I deliver nobody by treachery. You may go, Sanang."

He hesitated, a graceful, faultless, metropolitan figure in top-hat and evening attire. Then, as he started to move, Cleves covered him with his weapon.

"I can't let that man go free!" cried Cleves angrily.

"Very well!" she retorted in a passionate voice – "then take him if you are able! Tokhta! Look out for yourself!"