Chapter 6: In Battle

Cleves went back into the apartment; he noticed that Miss Norne’s door was ajar.

To get to his own room he had to pass that way; and he saw her, seated before the mirror, partly undressed, her dark, lustrous hair being combed out and twisted up for the night.

Whether this carelessness was born of innocence or of indifference mattered little; he suddenly realised that these conditions wouldn’t do. And his first feeling was of anger.

“If you’ll put on your robe and slippers,” he said in an unpleasant voice, “I’d like to talk to you for a few moments.”

She turned her head on its charming neck and looked around and up at him over one naked shoulder.

“Shall I come into your room?” she inquired.

“No! ... when you’ve got some clothes on, call me.”

“I’m quite ready now,” she said calmly, and drew the Chinese slippers over her bare feet and passed a silken loop over the silver bell buttons on her right shoulder. Then, undisturbed, she continued to twist up her hair, following his movements in the mirror with unconcerned blue eyes.

He entered and seated himself, the impatient expression still creasing his forehead and altering his rather agreeable features.

“Miss Norne,” he said, “you’re absolutely convinced that these people mean to do you harm. Isn’t that true?”

“Of course,” she said simply.

“Then, until we get them, you’re running a serious risk. In fact, you live in hourly peril. That is your belief, isn’t it?”

She put the last peg into her thick, curly hair, lowered her arms, turned, dropped one knee over the other, and let her candid gaze rest on him in silence.

“What I mean to explain,” he said coldly, “is that as long as I induced you to go into this affair I’m responsible for you. If I let you out of my sight here in New York and if anything happens to you, I’ll be as guilty as the dirty beast who takes your life. What is your opinion? It’s up to me to stand by you now, isn’t it?”

“I had rather be near you--for a while,” she said timidly.

“Certainly. But, Miss Norne, our living here together, in my apartment--or living together anywhere else--is never going to be understood by other people. You know that, don’t you?”

After a silence, still looking at him out of clear unembarrassed eyes:

“I know ... But ... I don’t want to die.”

“I told you,” he said sharply, “they’ll have to kill me first. So that’s all right. But how about what I am doing to your reputation?”

“I understand.”

“I suppose you do. You’re very young. Once out of this blooming mess, you will have all your life before you. But if I kill your reputation for you while saving your body from death, you’ll find no happiness in living. Do you realise that?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then? Have you any solution for this problem that confronts you?”

“No.”

“Haven’t you any idea to suggest?”

“I don’t--don’t want to die,” she repeated in an unsteady voice.

He bit his lip; and after a moment’s scowling silence under the merciless scrutiny of her eyes: “Then you had better marry me,” he said.

It was some time before she spoke. For a second or two he sustained the searching quality of her gaze, but it became unendurable.

Presently she said: “I don’t ask it of you. I can shoulder my own burdens.” And he remembered what he had just said to Recklow.

“You’ve shouldered more than your share,” he blurted out. “You are deliberately risking death to serve your country. I enlisted you. The least I can do is to say my affections are not engaged; so naturally the idea of--of marrying anybody never entered my head.”

“Then you do not care for anybody else?”

Her candour amazed and disconcerted him.

“No.” He looked at her, curiously. “Do you care for anybody in that way?”

A light blush tinted her face. She said gravely: “If we really are going to marry each other I had better tell you that I did care for Prince Sanang.”

“What!” he cried, astounded.

“It seems incredible, doesn’t it? Yet it is quite true. I fought him; I fought myself; I stood guard over my mind and senses there in the temple; I knew what he was and I detested him and I mocked him there in the temple ... And I loved him.”

“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.”

“How?”

She shook her head and gave him a grave, confused look.

“There are ways. You could not understand ... This is going to be a sleepless night for us.”

“You can go to bed, Tressa. I’ll sit up and read and keep an eye on that door.”

“I can’t let you remain alone here. I’m afraid to do that.”

He gave a laugh, not quite pleasant, as he suddenly comprehended that the girl now considered their rôles to be reversed.

“Are you planning to sit up in order to protect me?” he asked, grimly amused.