The Slayer of Souls

"Sanang!" he repeated, not only amazed but also oddly incensed at the naïve confession.

"Yes, Sanang… If we are to marry, I thought I ought to tell you. Don't you think so?"

"Certainly," he replied in an absent-minded way, his mind still grasping at the thing. Then, looking up: "Do you still care for this fellow?"

She shook her head.

"Are you perfectly sure, Miss Norne?"

"As sure as that I am alive when I awake from a nightmare. My hatred for Sanang is very bitter," she added frankly, "and yet somehow it is not my wish to see him harmed."

"You still care for him a little?"

"Oh, no. But – can't you understand that it is not in me to wish him harm?.. No girl feels that way – once having cared. To become indifferent to a familiar thing is perhaps natural; but to desire to harm it is not in my character."

"You have plenty of character," he said, staring; at her.

"You don't think so. Do you?"

"Why not?"

"Because of what I said to you on the roof-garden that night. It was shameful, wasn't it?"

"You behaved like many a thoroughbred," he returned bluntly; "you were scared, bewildered, ready to bolt to any shelter offered."

"It's quite true I didn't know what to do to keep alive. And that was all that interested me – to keep on living – having lost my soul and being afraid to die and find myself in hell with Erlik."

He said: "Isn't that absurd notion out of your head yet?"

"I don't know … I can't suddenly believe myself safe after all those years. It is not easy to root out what was planted in childhood and what grew to be part of one during the tender and formative period… You can't understand, Mr. Cleves – you can't ever feel or visualise what became my daily life in a region which was half paradise and half hell – "

She bent her head and took her face between her fingers, and sat so, brooding.

After a little while: "Well," he said, "there's only one way to manage this affair – if you are willing, Miss Norne."

She merely lifted her eyes.

"I think," he said, "there's only that one way out of it. But you understand" – he turned pink – "it will be quite all right – your liberty – privacy – I shan't bother you – annoy – "

She merely looked at him.

"After this Bolshevistic flurry is settled – in a year or two – or three – then you can very easily get your freedom; and you'll have all life before you" … he rose: " – and a jolly good friend in me – a good comrade, Miss Norne. And that means you can count on me when you go into business – or whatever you decide to do."

She also had risen, standing slim and calm in her exquisite Chinese robe, the sleeves of which covered her finger tips.

"Are you going to marry me?" she asked.

"If you'll let me."

"Yes – I will … it's so generous and considerate of you. I – I don't ask it; I really don't – "

"But I do."

" – And I never dreamed of such a thing."

He forced a smile. "Nor I. It's rather a crazy thing to do. But I know of no saner alternative… So we had better get our license to-morrow… And that settles it."

He turned to go; and, on her threshold, his feet caught in something on the floor and he stumbled, trying to free his feet from a roll of soft white cloth lying there on the carpet. And when he picked it up, it unrolled, and a knife fell out of the folds of cloth and struck his foot.

Still perplexed, not comprehending, he stooped to recover the knife. Then, straightening up, he found himself looking into the colourless face of Tressa Norne.

"What's all this?" he asked – "this sheet and knife here on the floor outside your door?"

She answered with difficulty: "They have sent you your shroud, I think."

"Are not those things yours? Were they not already here in your baggage?" he demanded incredulously. Then, realising that they had not been there on the door-sill when he entered her room a few moments since, a rough chill passed over him – the icy caress of fear.

"Where did that thing come from?" he said hoarsely. "How could it get here when my door is locked and bolted? Unless there's somebody hidden here!"

Hot anger suddenly flooded him; he drew his pistol and sprang into the passageway.

"What the devil is all this!" he repeated furiously, flinging open his bedroom door and switching on the light.

He searched his room in a rage, went on and searched the dining-room, smoking-room, and kitchen, and every clothes-press and closet, always aware of Tressa's presence close behind him. And when there remained no tiniest nook or cranny in the place unsearched, he stood in the centre of the carpet glaring at the locked and bolted door.

He heard her say under her breath: "This is going to be a sleepless night. And a dangerous one." And, turning to stare at her, saw no fear in her face, only excitement.

He still held clutched in his left hand the sheet and the knife. Now he thrust these toward her.

"What's this damned foolery, anyway?" he demanded harshly. She took the knife with a slight shudder. "There is something engraved on the silver hilt," she said.

He bent over her shoulder.

"Eighur," she added calmly, "not Arabic. The Mongols had no written characters of their own."

She bent closer, studying the inscription. After a moment, still studying the Eighur characters, she rested her left hand on his shoulder – an impulsive, unstudied movement that might have meant either confidence or protection.

"Look," she said, "it is not addressed to you after all, but to a symbol – a series of numbers, 53-6-26."

"That is my designation in the Federal Service," he said, sharply.

"Oh!" she nodded slowly. "Then this is what is written in the Mongol-Yezidee dialect, traced out in Eighur characters: 'To 53-6-26! By one of the Eight Assassins the Slayer of Souls sends this shroud and this knife from Mount Alamout. Such a blade shall divide your heart. This sheet is for your corpse.'"

After a grim silence he flung the soft white cloth on the floor.

"There's no use my pretending I'm not surprised and worried," he said; "I don't know how that cloth got here. Do you?"

"It was sent."