The Slayer of Souls

Recklow was awaiting them. He took Tressa's hands in his and gazed earnestly into her face.

"Have you come to show us how to conclude this murderous business?" he asked grimly.

"I shall try," she said calmly. "Where have you cornered Sanang?"

"Could you and Victor come at once?"

"Yes." She turned and looked at her husband, who had become quite pale.

Recklow saw the look they exchanged. There could be no misunderstanding what had happened to these two. Their tragedy had ended. They were united at last. He understood it instantly, – realised how terrible was this new and tragic situation for them both.

Yet, he knew also that the salvation of civilisation itself now depended upon this girl. She must face Sanang. There was nothing else possible.

"The streets are choked with snow," he said, "but I have a coupé and two strong horses waiting."

He nodded to one of his men standing near. Cleves gave him the hand luggage and checks.

"All right," he said in a low voice to Recklow; and passed one arm through Tressa's.

The coupé was waiting on Forty-second Street, guarded by a policeman. When they had entered and were seated, two mounted policemen rode ahead of the lurching vehicle, picking a way amid the monstrous snow-drifts, and headed for the East River.

"We've got him somewhere in a wretched row of empty houses not far from East River Park. I'm taking you there. I've drawn a cordon of my men around the entire block. He can't get away. But I dared take no chances with this Yezidee sorcerer – dared not let one of my men go in to look for him – go anywhere near him, – until I could lay the situation before you, Mrs. Cleves."

"Yes," she said calmly, "it was the only way, Mr. Recklow. There would have been no use shooting him – no use taking him prisoner. A prisoner, he remains as deadly as ever; dead, his mind still lives and breeds evil. You are quite right; it is for me to deal with Sanang."

Recklow shuddered in spite of himself. "Can you tear his claws from the vitals of the world, and free the sick brains of a million people from the slavery of this monster's mind?"

The girl said seriously:

"Even Satan was stoned. It is so written. And was cast out. And dwells forever and ever in Abaddon. No star lights that Pit. None lights the Black Planet, Yrimid. It is where evil dwells. And there Sanang Noïane belongs."

And now, beyond the dirty edges of the snow-smothered city, under an icy mist they caught sight of the river where ships lay blockaded by frozen floes.

Gulls circled over it; ghostly factory chimneys on the further shore loomed up gigantic, ranged like minarettes.

The coupé, jolting along behind the mounted policemen, struggled up toward the sidewalk and stopped. The two horses stood steaming, knee deep in snow. Recklow sprang out; Tressa gave him one hand and stepped lithely to the sidewalk. Then Cleves got out and came and took hold of his wife's arm again.

"Well," he said harshly to Recklow, "where is this damned Yezidee hidden?"

Recklow pointed in silence, but he and Tressa had already lifted their gaze to the stark, shabby row of abandoned three-story houses where every dirty blind was closed.

"They're to be demolished and model tenements built," he said briefly.

A man muffled in a fur overcoat came up and took Tressa's hand and kissed it.

She smiled palely at Benton, spoke of Yulun, wished him happiness. While she was yet speaking Selden approached and bent over her gloved hand. She spoke to him very sweetly of Sansa, expressing pleasure at the prospect of seeing her again in the body.

"The Seldens and ourselves have adjoining apartments at the Ritz," said Benton. "We have reserved a third suite for you and Victor."

She inclined her lovely head, gravely, then turned to Recklow, saying that she was ready.

"It makes no difference which front door I unlock," he said. "All these tenements are connected by human rat-holes and hidden runways leading from one house to another… How many men do you want?"

"I want you four men, – nobody else."

Recklow led the way up a snow-covered stoop, drew a key from his pocket, fitted it, and pulled open the door.

A musty chill struck their faces as they entered the darkened and empty hallway. Involuntarily every man drew his pistol.

"I must ask you to do exactly what I tell you to do," she said calmly.

"Certainly," said Recklow, caressing his white moustache and striving to pierce the gloom with his keen eyes.

Then Tressa took her husband's hand. "Come," she said. They mounted the stairway together; and the three others followed with pistols lifted.

There was a vague grey light on the second floor; the broken rear shutters let it in.

As though she seemed to know her way, the girl led them forward, opened a door in the wall, and disclosed a bare, dusty room in the next house.

Through this she stepped; the others crept after her with weapons ready. She opened a second door, turned to the four men.

"Wait here for me. Come only when I call," she whispered.

"For God's sake take me with you," burst out Cleves.

"In God's name stay where you are till you hear me call your name!" she said almost breathlessly.

Then, suddenly she turned, swiftly retracing her steps; and they saw her pass through the first door and disappear into the first house they had entered.

A terrible silence fell among them. The sound of her steps on the bare boards had died away. There was not a sound in the chilly dusk.

Minute after minute dragged by. One by one the men peered fearfully at Cleves. His visage was ghastly and they could see his pistol-hand trembling.

Twice Recklow looked at his wrist watch. The third time he said, unsteadily: "She has been gone three-quarters of an hour."

Then, far away, they heard a heavy tread on the stairs. Nearer and nearer came the footsteps. Every pistol was levelled at the first door as a man's bulky form darkened it.

"It's one of my men," said Recklow in a voice like a low groan. "Where on earth is Mrs. Cleves?"

"I came to tell you," said the agent, "Mrs. Cleves came out of the first house nearly an hour ago. She got into the coupé and told the driver to go to the Ritz."

"What!" gasped Recklow.

"She's gone to the Ritz," repeated the agent. "No one else has come out. And I began to worry – hearing nothing of you, Mr. Recklow. So I stepped in to see – "

"You say that Mrs. Cleves went out of the house we entered, got into the coupé, and told the driver to go to the Ritz?" demanded Cleves, astounded.

"Yes, sir."

"Where is that coupé? Did it return?"

"It had not returned when I came in here."

"Go back and look for it. Look in the other street," said Recklow sharply.

The agent hurried away over the creaking boards. The four men gazed at one another.

"The thing to do is to obey her and stay where we are," said Recklow grimly. "Who knows what peril we may cause her if we move from – "

His words froze on his lips as Tressa's voice rang out from the darkness beyond the door they were guarding:

"Victor I I – I need you! Come to me, my husband!"

As Cleves sprang through the door into the darkness beyond, Benton smashed a window sash with all the force of his shoulder, and, reaching out through the shattered glass, tore the rotting blinds from their hinges, letting in a flood of sickly light.

Against the bare wall stood Tressa, both arms extended, her hands flat against the plaster, and each hand transfixed and pinned to the wall by a knife.

A white sheet lay at her feet. On it rested a third knife. And, bending on one knee to pick it up, they caught a glimpse of a slender young man in fashionable afternoon attire, who, as they entered with the crash of the shattered window in their ears, sprang to his nimble feet and stood confronting them, knife in hand.

Instantly every man fired at him and the bullets whipped the plaster to a smoke behind him, but the slender, dark skinned young man stood motionless, looking at them out of brilliant eyes that slanted a trifle.

Again the racket of the fusillade swept him and filled the room with plaster dust.

Cleves, frantic with horror, laid hold of the knives that pinned his wife's hands to the wall, and dragged them out.

But there was no blood, no wound to be seen on her soft palms. She took the murderous looking blades from him, threw one terrible look at Sanang, kicked the shroud across the floor toward him, and flung both knives upon it.

The place was still dim with plaster dust and pistol fumes as she stepped forward through the acrid mist, motioning the four men aside.

"Sanang!" she cried in a clear voice, "may God remember you in hell, for my feet have spurned your shroud, and your knives, which could not scar my palms, shall never pierce my heart! Look out for yourself, Prince Sanang!"

"Tokhta!" he said, calmly. "My soul be ransom for yours!"

"That is a lie! My soul is already ransomed! My mind is the more powerful. It has already halted yours. It is conquering yours. It is seizing your mind and enslaving it. It is mastering your will, Sanang! Your mind bends before mine. You know it! You know it is bending. You feel it is breaking down!"

Sanang's eyes began to glitter but his pale brown face had grown almost white.

"I slew you once – in the Wood of the White Moth," he said huskily. "There is no resurrection from such a death, little Heavenly Azure. Look upon me! My soul and yours are one!"

"You are looking upon my soul," she said.

"A lie! You are in your body!"

The girl laughed. "My body lies asleep in the Ritz upon my husband's bed," she said. "My body is his, my mind belongs to him, my soul is already one with his. Do you not know it, dog of a Yezidee? Look upon me, Sanang Noïane! Look upon my unwounded hands! My shroud lies at your feet. And there lie the knives that could not pierce my heart! I am thrice clean! Listen to my words, Sanang! There is no other god but God!"

The young man's visage grew pasty and loose and horrible; his lips became flaccid like dewlaps; but out of these sagging folds of livid skin his voice burst whistling, screaming, as though wrenched from his very belly:

"May Erlik strangle you! May you rot where you stand! May your face become a writhing mass of maggots and your body a corruption of living worms!

"For what you are doing to me this day may every demon in hell torment you!

"Have a care what you are about!" he screeched. "You are slaying my mind, you sorceress! You have seized my mind and are crushing it! You are putting out its light, you Yezidee witch! – you are quenching the last spark – of reason – in – me – "

"Sanang!"

His knife fell clattering to the floor. But he stood stock still, his hands clutching his head – stood motionless, while scream on scream tore through the loose and gaping lips, blowing them into ghastly, distorted folds.

"Sanang Noïane!" she cried in her clear voice, "the Eight Towers are darkened! The Rampart of Gog and Magog is fallen! On Mount Alamout nothing is living. The minds of mankind are free again!"

She stepped forward, slowly, and stood near him chanting in a low voice the Prayers for the Dead She bent down and unrolled the shroud, laid it on his shoulders and drew it up and across his face, covering his dying eyes, and swathed him so, slowly, from head to foot.

Then she gathered up the three knives, cast them upward into the air. They did not fall again. They disappeared. And all the while, under her breath, the girl was chanting the Prayers for the Dead as she moved silently about her business.

Shrouded to the forehead in its white cerements, the muffled figure of Sanang stood upright, motionless as a swathed and frozen corpse.

Outside, the daylight had become greyer. It had begun to snow again, and a few flakes blew in through the shattered windows and clung to the winding sheet of Sanang.

And now Tressa drew close to the shrouded shape and stood before it, gazing intently upon the outlined features of the last of the Yezidees.

"Sanang," she said very softly, "I hear your soul bidding your body farewell. Tokhta!"

Then, under the strained gaze of the four men gathered there, the shroud fell to the floor in a loose heap of white folds. There was nobody under it; no trace of Sanang. The human shape of the Yezidee had disappeared; but a greyish mist had filled the room, wavering up like smoke from the shroud, and, like smoke, blowing in a long streamer toward the window where the draught drew it out through the falling snow and scattered the last shred of it against the greying sky.

In the room the mist thinned swiftly; the four men could now see one another. But Tressa was no longer in the room. And in place of the white shroud a piece of filthy tattered carpet lay on the floor. And a dead rat, flattened out, dry and dusty, lay upon it.

"For God's sake," whispered Recklow hoarsely, "let us get out of this!"

Cleves, his pistol clutched convulsively, stared at him in terror. But Recklow took him by the arm and drew him away, muttering that Tressa was waiting for him, and might be ill, and that there was nothing further to expect in this ghastly spot.

They went with Cleves to the Ritz. At the desk the clerk said that Mrs. Cleves had the keys and was in her apartment.

The three men entered the corridor with him; watched him try the door; saw him open it; lingered a moment after it had closed; heard the key turn.

At the sound of the door closing the maid came.

"Madame is asleep in her room," she whispered.

"When did she come in?"

"More than two hours ago, sir. I have drawn her bath, but when I opened the door a few moments ago, Madame was still asleep."

He nodded; he was trembling when he put off his overcoat and dropped hat and gloves on the carpet.

From the little rose and ivory reception room he could see the closed door of his wife's chamber. And for a while he stood staring at it.

Then, slowly, he crossed this room, opened the door; entered.

In her bedroom the tinted twilight was like ashes of roses. He went to the bed and looked down at her shadowy face; gazed intently; listened; then, in sudden terror, bent and laid his hand on her heart. It was beating as tranquilly as a child's; but as she stirred, turned her head, and unclosed her eyes, under his hand her heart leaped like a wild thing caught unawares and the snowy skin glowed with an exquisite and deepening tint as she lifted her arms and clasped them around her husband's, neck, drawing his quivering face against her own.