Chapter 5: The Assassins

On the wall hung a map of Mongolia, that indefinite region a million and a half square miles in area, vast sections of which have never been explored.

Turkestan and China border it on the south, and Tibet almost touches it, not quite.

Even in the twelfth century, when the wild Mongols broke loose and nearly overran the world, the Tibet infantry under Genghis, the Tchortcha horsemen drafted out of Black China, and a great cloud of Mongol cavalry under the Prince of the Vanguard commanding half a hundred Hezars, never penetrated that grisly and unknown waste. The “Eight Towers of the Assassins” guarded it--still guard it, possibly.

The vice-regent of Erlik, Prince of Darkness, dwelt within this unknown land. And dwells there still, perhaps.

In front of this wall-map stood Tressa Norne.

Behind her, facing the map, four men were seated--three of them under thirty.

These three were volunteers in the service of the United States Government--men of independent means, of position, who had volunteered for military duty at the outbreak of the great war. However, they had been assigned by the Government to a very different sort of duty no less exciting than service on the fighting line, but far less conspicuous, for they had been drafted into the United States Department of Justice.

The names of these three were Victor Cleves, a professor of ornithology at Harvard University before the war; Alexander Selden, junior partner in the banking firm of Milwyn, Selden, and Co., and James Benton, a New York architect.

The fourth man’s name was John Recklow. He might have been over fifty, or under. He was well-built, in a square, athletic way, clear-skinned and ruddy, grey-eyed, quiet in voice and manner. His hair and moustache had turned silvery. He had been employed by the Government for many years. He seemed to be enormously interested in what Miss Norne was saying.

Also he was the only man who interrupted her narrative to ask questions. And his questions revealed a knowledge which was making the girl more sensitive and uneasy every moment.

Finally, when she spoke of the Scarlet Desert, he asked if the Scarlet Lake were there and if the Xin was still supposed to inhabit its vermilion depths. And at that she turned and looked at him, her forefinger still resting on the map.

“Where have you ever heard of the Scarlet Lake and the Xin?” she asked as though frightened.

Recklow said quietly that as a boy he had served under Gordon and Sir Robert.

“If, as a boy, you served under Chinese Gordon, you already know much of what I have told you, Mr. Recklow. Is it not true?” she demanded nervously.

“That makes no difference,” he replied with a smile. “It is all very new to these three young gentlemen. And as for myself, I am checking up what you say and comparing it with what I heard many, many years ago when my comrade Barres and I were in Yian.”

“Did you really know Sir Robert Hart?”

“Yes.”

“Then why do you not explain to these gentlemen?”

“Dear child,” he interrupted gently, “what did Chinese Gordon or Sir Robert Hart, or even my comrade Barres, or I myself know about occult Asia in comparison to what you know?--a girl who has actually served the mysteries of Erlik for four amazing years!”

She paled a trifle, came slowly across the room to where Recklow was seated, laid a timid hand on his sleeve.

“Do you believe there are sorcerers in Asia?” she asked with that child-like directness which her wonderful blue eyes corroborated.

Recklow remained silent.

“Because,” she went on, “if, in your heart, you do not believe this to be an accursed fact, then what I have to say will mean nothing to any of you.”

Recklow touched his short, silvery moustache, hesitating. Then:

“The worship of Erlik is devil worship,” he said. “Also I am entirely prepared to believe that there are, among the Yezidees, adepts who employ scientific weapons against civilisation--who have probably obtained a rather terrifying knowledge of psychic laws which they use scientifically, and which to ordinary, God-fearing folk appear to be the black magic of sorcerers.”

Cleves said: “The employment by the huns of poison gases and long-range cannon is a parallel case. Before the war we could not believe in the possibility of a cannon that threw shells a distance of seventy miles.”

The girl still addressed herself to Recklow: “Then you do not believe there are real sorcerers in Asia, Mr. Recklow?”

“Not sorcerers with supernatural powers for evil. Only degenerate human beings who, somehow, have managed to tap invisible psychic currents, and have learned how to use terrific forces about which, so far, we know practically nothing.”

She spoke again in the same uneasy voice: “Then you do not believe that either God or Satan is involved?”

“No,” he replied smilingly, “and you must not so believe.”

“Nor the--the destruction of human souls,” she persisted; “you do not believe it is being accomplished to-day?”

“Not in the slightest, dear young lady,” he said cheerfully.

“Do you not believe that to have been instructed in such unlawful knowledge is damning? Do you not believe that ability to employ unknown forces is forbidden of God, and that to disobey His law means death to the soul?”

“No!”

“That it is the price one pays to Satan for occult power over people’s minds?” she insisted.

“Hypnotic suggestion is not one of the cardinal sins,” explained Recklow, still smiling--”unless wickedly employed. The Yezidee priesthood is a band of so-called sorcerers only because of their wicked employment of whatever hypnotic and psychic knowledge they may have obtained.

“There was nothing intrinsically wicked in the huns’ discovery of phosgene. But the use they made of it made devils out of them. My ability to manufacture phosgene gas is no crime. But if I manufacture it and use it to poison innocent human beings, then, in that sense, I am, perhaps, a sort of modern sorcerer.”

Tressa Norne turned paler:

“I had better tell you that I have used--forbidden knowledge--which the Yezidees taught me in the temple of Erlik.”

“Used it how?” demanded Cleves.

“To--to earn a living ... And once or twice to defend myself.”

There was the slightest scepticism in Recklow’s bland smile. “You did quite right, Miss Norne.”

She had become very white now. She stood beside Recklow, her back toward the suspended map, and looked in a scared sort of way from one to the other of the men seated before her, turning finally to Cleves, and coming toward him.

“I--I once killed a man,” she said with a catch in her breath.

Cleves reddened with astonishment. “Why did you do that?” he asked.

“He was already on his way to kill me in bed.”

“You were perfectly right,” remarked Recklow coolly.

“I don’t know ... I was in bed ... And then, on the edge of sleep, I felt his mind groping to get hold of mine--feeling about in the darkness to get hold of my brain and seize it and paralyse it.”

All colour had left her face. Cleves gripped the arm of his chair and watched her intently.

“I--I had only a moment’s mental freedom,” she went on in a ghost of a voice. “I was just able to rouse myself, fight off those murderous brain-fingers--let loose a clear mental ray ... And then, O God! I saw him in his room with his Kalmuck knife--saw him already on his way to murder me--Gutchlug Khan, the Yezidee--looking about in his bedroom for a shroud ... And when--when he reached for the bed to draw forth a fine, white sheet for the shroud without which no Yezidee dares journey deathward--then--then I became frightened ... And I killed him--I slew him there in his hotel bedroom on the floor above mine!”

Selden moistened his lips: “That Oriental, Gutchlug, died from heart-failure in a San Francisco hotel,” he said. “I was there at the time.”

“He died by the fangs of a little yellow snake,” whispered the girl.

“There was no snake in his room,” retorted Cleves.

“And no wound on his body,” added Selden. “I attended the autopsy.”

She said, faintly: “There was no snake, and no wound, as you say ... Yet Gutchlug died of both there in his bedroom ... And before he died he heard his soul bidding him farewell; and he saw the death-adder coiled in the sheet he clutched--saw the thing strike him again and again--saw and felt the tiny wounds on his left hand; felt the fangs pricking deep, deep into the veins; died of it there within the minute--died of the swiftest poison known. And yet--”

She turned her dead-white face to Cleves--”And yet there was no snake there! ... And never had been ... And so I--I ask you, gentlemen, if souls do not die when minds learn to fight death with death--and deal it so swiftly, so silently, while one’s body lies, unstirring on a bed--in a locked room on the floor below--”

She swayed a little, put out one hand rather blindly.

Recklow rose and passed a muscular arm around her; Cleves, beside her, held her left hand, crushing it, without intention, until she opened her eyes with a cry of pain.

“Are you all right?” asked Recklow bluntly.

“Yes.” She turned and looked at Cleves and he caressed her bruised hand as though dazed.

“Tell me,” she said to Cleves--”you who know--know more about my mind than anybody living--” a painful colour surged into her face--but she went on steadily, forcing herself to meet his gaze: “tell me, Mr. Cleves--do you still believe that nothing can really destroy my soul? And that it shall yet win through to safety?”

He said: “Your soul is in God’s keeping, and always shall be ... And if the Yezidees have made you believe otherwise, they lie.”

Recklow added in a slow, perplexed way: “I have no personal knowledge of psychic power. I am not psychic, not susceptible. But if you actually possess such ability, Miss Norne, and if you have employed such knowledge to defend your life, then you have done absolutely right.”

“No guilt touches you,” added Selden with an involuntary shiver, “if by hypnosis or psychic ability you really did put an end to that would-be murderer, Gutchlug.”

Selden said: “If Gutchlug died by the fangs of a yellow death-adder which existed only in his own mind, and if you actually had anything to do with it you acted purely in self-defence.”

“You did your full duty,” added Benton--”but--good God!--it seems incredible to me, that such power can actually be available in the world!”

Recklow spoke again in his pleasant, undisturbed voice: “Go back to the map, Miss Norne, and tell us a little more about this rather terrifying thing which you believe menaces the civilised world with destruction.”

Tressa Norne laid a slim finger on the map. Her voice had become steady. She said:

“The devil-worship, of which one of the modern developments is Bolshevism, and another the terrorism of the hun, began in Asia long before Christ’s advent: At least so it was taught us in the temple of Erlik.

“It has always existed, its aim always has been the annihilation of good and the elevation of evil; the subjection of right by might, and the worldwide triumph of wrong.

“Perhaps it is as old as the first battle between God and Satan. I have wondered about it, sometimes. There in the dusk of the temple when the Eight Assassins came--the eight Sheiks-el-Djebel, all in white--chanting the Yakase of Sabbah--always that dirge when they came and spread their eight white shrouds on the temple steps--”

Her voice caught; she waited to recover her composure. Then went on:

“The ambition of Genghis was to conquer the world by force of arms. It was merely of physical subjection that he dreamed. But the Slayer of Souls--”

“Who?” asked Recklow sharply.

“The Slayer of Souls--Erlik’s vice-regent on earth--Hassan Sabbah. The Old Man of the Mountain. It is of him I am speaking,” exclaimed Tressa Norne--with quiet resolution. “Genghis sought only physical conquest of man; the Yezidee’s ambition is more awful, for he is attempting to surprise and seize the very minds of men!”