Chapter 15: In the Firelight

In 1920 the whole spiritual world was trembling under the thundering shock of the Red Surf pounding the frontiers of civilisation from pole to pole.

Up out of the hell-pit of Asia had boiled the molten flood, submerging Russia, dashing in giant waves over Germany and Austria, drenching Italy, France, England with its bloody spindrift.

And now the Red Rain was sprinkling the United States from coast to coast, and the mindless administration, scared out of its stupidity at last, began a frantic attempt to drain the country of the filthy flood and throw up barriers against the threatened deluge.

In every state and city Federal agents made wholesale arrests--too late!

A million minds had already been perverted and dominated by the terrible Sect of the Assassins. A million more were sickening under the awful psychic power of the Yezidee.

Thousands of the disciples of the Yezidee devil-worshipers had already been arrested and held for deportation, --poor, wretched creatures whose minds were no longer their own, but had been stealthily surprised, seized and mastered by Mongol adepts and filled with ferocious hatred against their fellow men.

Yet, of the Eight Yezidee Assassins only two now remained alive in America, --Togrul, and Sanang, the Slayer of Souls.

Yarghouz was dead; Djamouk the Fox, Kahn of the Fifth Tower was dead; Yaddin-ed-Din, Arrak the Sou-Sou, Gutchlug, Tiyang Khan, all were dead. Six Towers had become dark and silent. From them the last evil thought, the last evil shape had sped; the last wicked prayer had been said to Erlik, Khagan of all Darkness.

But his emissary on earth, Prince Sanang, still lived. And at Sanang’s heels stole Togrul, Tougtchi to Sanang Noïane, the Slayer of Souls.

In the United States there had been a cessation of the active campaign of violence toward those in authority. Such unhappy dupes of the Yezidees as the I. W. W. and other radicals were, for the time, physically quiescent. Crude terrorism with its more brutal outrages against life and law ceased. But two million sullen eyes, in which all independent human thought had been extinguished, watched unblinking the wholesale arrests by the government--watched panic-stricken officials rushing hither and thither to execute the mandate of a miserable administration--watched and waited in dreadful silence.

In that period of ominous quiet which possessed the land, the little group of Secret Service men that surrounded the young girl who alone stood between a trembling civilisation and the threat of hell’s own chaos, became convinced that Sanang was preparing a final and terrible effort to utterly overwhelm the last vestige of civilisation in the United States.

What shape that plan would develop they could not guess.

John Recklow sent Benton to Chicago to watch that centre of infection for the appearance there of the Yezidee Togrul.

Selden went to Boston where a half-witted group of parlour-socialists at Cambridge were talking too loudly and loosely to please even the most tolerant at Harvard.

But neither Togrul nor Sanang had, so far, materialised in either city; and John Recklow prowled the purlieus of New York, haunting strange byways and obscure quarters where the dull embers of revolution always smouldered, watching for the Yezidee who was the deep-bedded, vital root of this psychic evil which menaced the minds of all mankind, --Sanang, the Slayer of Souls.

Recklow’s lodgings were tucked away in Westover Court--three bedrooms, a parlour and a kitchenette. Tressa Cleves occupied one bedroom; her husband another; Recklow the third.

And in this tiny apartment, hidden away among a group of old buildings, the very existence of which was unknown to the millions who swarmed the streets of the greatest city in the world, --here in Westover Court, a dozen paces from the roar of Broadway, was now living a young girl upon whose psychic power the only hope of the world now rested.

The afternoon had turned grey and bitter; ragged flakes still fell; a pallid twilight possessed the snowy city, through which lighted trains and taxis moved in the foggy gloom.

By three o’clock in the afternoon all shops were illuminated; the south windows of the Hotel Astor across the street spread a sickly light over the old buildings of Westover Court as John Recklow entered the tiled hallway, took the stairs to the left, and went directly to his apartment.

He unlocked the door and let himself in and stood a moment in the entry shaking the snow from his hat and overcoat.

The sitting-room lamp was unlighted but he could see a fire in the grate, and Tressa Cleves seated near, her eyes fixed on the glowing coals.

He bade her good evening in a low voice; she turned her charming head and nodded, and he drew a chair to the fender and stretched out his wet shoes to the warmth.

“Is Victor still out?” he inquired.

She said that her husband had not yet returned. Her eyes were on the fire, Recklow’s rested on her shadowy face.

“Benton got his man in Chicago,” he said. “It was not Togrul Kahn.”

“Who was it?”

“Only a Swami fakir who’d been preaching sedition to a little group of greasy Bengalese from Seattle ... I’ve heard from Selden, too.”

She nodded listlessly and lifted her eyes.

“Neither Sanang nor Togrul have appeared in Boston,” he said. “I think they’re here in New York.”

The girl said nothing.

After a silence:

“Are you worried about your husband?” he asked abruptly.

“I am always uneasy when he is absent,” she said quietly.

“Of course ... But I don’t suppose he knows that.”

“I suppose not.”

Recklow leaned over, took a coal in the tongs and lighted a cigar. Leaning back in his armchair, he said in a musing voice:

“No, I suppose your husband does not realise that you are so deeply concerned over his welfare.”

The girl remained silent.

“I suppose,” said Recklow softly, “he doesn’t dream you are in love with him.”

Tressa Cleves did not stir a muscle. After a long silence she said in her even voice:

“Do you think I am in love with my husband, Mr. Recklow?”

“I think you fell in love with him the first evening you met him.”

“I did.”

Neither of them spoke again for some minutes. Recklow’s cigar went wrong; he rose and found another and returned to the fire, but did not light it.

“It’s a rotten day, isn’t it?” he said with a shiver, and dumped a scuttle of coal on the fire.

They watched the blue flames playing over the grate.

Tressa said: “I could no more help falling in love with him than I could stop my heart beating ... But I did not dream that anybody knew.”

“Don’t you think he ought to know?”

“Why? He is not in love with me.”

“Are you sure, Mrs. Cleves?”

“Yes. He is wonderfully sweet and kind. But he could not fall in love with a girl who has been what I have been.”

Recklow smiled. “What have you been, Tressa Norne?”

“You know.”

“A temple-girl at Yian?”

“And at the Lake of the Ghosts,” she said in a low voice.

“What of it?”

“I can not tell you, Mr. Recklow ... Only that I lost my soul in the Yezidee Temple--”

“That is untrue!”

“I wish it were untrue ... My husband tells me that nothing can really harm the soul. I try to believe him ... But Erlik lives. And when my soul at last shall escape my body, it shall not escape the Slayer of Souls.”

“That is monstrously untrue--”