Chapter 9: The West Wind

The night grew sweet with the scent of orange bloom, and all the perfumed darkness was vibrant with the feathery whirr of hawk-moths’ wings.

Tressa had taken her moon-lute to the hammock, but her fingers rested motionless on the strings.

Cleves and Recklow, shoulder to shoulder, paced the moonlit path along the hedges of oleander and hibiscus which divided garden from jungle.

And they moved cautiously on the white-shell road, not too near the shadow line. For in the cypress swamp the bloated grey death was awake and watching under the moon; and in the scrub palmetto the diamond-dotted death moved lithely.

And somewhere within the dark evil of the jungle a man in white might be watching.

So Recklow’s pistol swung lightly in his right hand and Cleves’ weapon lay in his side-pocket, and they strolled leisurely around the drive and up and down the white-shell walks, passing Tressa at regular intervals, where she sat in her hammock with the moon-lute across her knees.

Once Cleves paused to place two pink hibiscus blossoms in her hair above her ears; and the girl smiled gravely at him in the light.

Again, pausing beside her hammock on one of their tours of the garden, Recklow said in a low voice: “If the beast would only show himself, Mrs. Cleves, we’d not miss him. Have you caught a glimpse of anything white in the woods?”

“Only the night mist rising from the branch and a white ibis stealing through it.”

Cleves came nearer: “Do you think the Yezidee is in the woods watching us, Tressa?”

“Yes, he is there,” she said calmly.

“You know it?”

“Yes.”

Recklow stared at the woods. “We can’t go in to hunt for him,” he said. “That fellow would get us with his Lewisite gas before we could discover and destroy him.”

“Suppose he waits for a west wind and squirts his gas in this direction?” whispered Cleves.

“There is no wind,” said Tressa tranquilly. “He has been waiting for it, I think. The Yezidee is very patient. And he is a Shaman sorcerer.”

“My God!” breathed Recklow. “What sort of hellish things has the Old World been dumping into America for the last fifty years? An ordinary anarchist is bad enough, but this new breed of devil--these Yezidees--this sect of Assassins--”

“Hush!” whispered Tressa.

All three listened to the great cat-owl howling from the jungle. But Tressa had heard another sound--the vague stir of leaves in the live-oaks. Was it a passing breeze? Was a night wind rising? She listened. But heard no brittle clatter from the palm-fronds.

“Victor,” she said.

“Yes, Tressa.”

“If a wind comes, we must hunt him. That will be necessary.”

“Either we hunt him and get him, or he kills us here with his gas,” said Recklow quietly.

“If the night wind comes,” said Tressa, “we must hunt the darkness for the Yezidee.” She spoke coolly.

“If he’d only show himself,” muttered Recklow, staring into the darkness.

The girl picked up her lute, caught Cleves’ worried eyes fixed on her, suddenly comprehended that his anxiety was on her account, and blushed brightly in the moonlight. And he saw her teeth catch at her underlip; saw her look up again at him, confused.

“If I dared leave you,” he said, “I’d go into the hammock and start that reptile. This won’t do--this standing pat while he comes to some deadly decision in the woods there.”

“What else is there to do?” growled Recklow.

“Watch,” said the girl. “Out-watch the Yezidee. If there is no night-wind he may tire of waiting. Then you must shoot fast--very, very fast and straight. But if the night-wind comes, then we must hunt him in darkness.”

Recklow, pistol in hand, stood straight and sturdy in the moonlight, gazing fixedly at the forest. Cleves sat down at his wife’s feet.

She touched her moon-lute tranquilly and sang in her childish voice:

“_Ring, ring, Buddha bells,

Gilded gods are listening.

Swing, swing, lily bells,

In my garden glistening.

Now I hear the Shaman drum;

Now the scarlet horsemen come;

Ding-dong!

Ding-dong!

Through the chanting of the throng

Thunders now the temple gong.

Boom-boom!

Ding-dong!_

“_Let the gold gods listen!

In my garden; what care I

Where my lily bells hang mute!

Snowy-sweet they glisten

Where I’m singing to my lute.

In my garden; what care I

Who is dead and who shall die?

Let the gold gods save or slay

Scented lilies bloom in May.

Boom, boom, temple gong!

Ding-dong!

Ding-dong!_”

“What are you singing?” whispered Cleves.

“‘The Bells of Yian.’”

“Is it old?”

“Of the 13th century. There were few Buddhist bells in Yian then. It is Lamaism that has destroyed the Mongols and that has permitted the creed of the Assassins to spread--the devil worship of Erlik.”

He looked at her, not understanding. And she, pale, slim prophetess, in the moonlight, gazed at him out of lost eyes--eyes which saw, perhaps, the bloody age of men when mankind took the devil by the throat and all Mount Alamout went up in smoking ruin; and the Eight Towers were dark as death and as silent before the blast of the silver clarions of Ghenghis Khan.

“Something is stirring in the forest,” whispered Tressa, her fingers on her lips.

“Damnation,” muttered Recklow, “it’s the wind!”

They listened. Far in the forest they heard the clatter of palm-fronds. They waited. The ominous warning grew faint, then rose again, --a long, low rattle of palm-fronds which became a steady monotone.

“We hunt,” said Recklow bluntly. “Come on!”

But the girl sprang from the hammock and caught her husband’s arm and drew Recklow back from the hibiscus hedge.

“Use me,” she said. “You could never find the Yezidee. Let me do the hunting; and then shoot very, very fast.”

“We’ve got to take her,” said Recklow. “We dare not leave her.”

“I can’t let her lead the way into those black woods,” muttered Cleves.

“The wind is blowing in my face,” insisted Recklow. “We’d better hurry.”

Tressa laid one hand on her husband’s arm.

“I can find the Yezidee, I think. You never could find him before he finds you! Victor, let me use my own knowledge! Let me find the way. Please let me lead! Please, Victor. Because, if you don’t, I’m afraid we’ll all die here in the garden where we stand.”

Cleves cast a haggard glance at Recklow, then looked at his wife.

“All right,” he said.

The girl opened the hedge gate. Both men followed with pistols lifted.

The moon silvered the forest. There was no mist, but a night-wind blew mournfully through palm and cypress, carrying with it the strange, disturbing pungency of the jungle--wild, unfamiliar perfumes, --the acrid aroma of swamp and rotting mould.

“What about snakes?” muttered Recklow, knee deep in wild phlox.

But there was a deadlier snake to find and destroy, somewhere in the blotched shadows of the forest.

The first sentinel trees were very near, now; and Tressa was running across a ghostly tangle, where once had been an orange grove, and where aged and dying citrus stumps rose stark amid the riot of encroaching jungle.

“She’s circling to get the wind at our backs,” breathed Recklow, running forward beside Cleves. “That’s our only chance to kill the dirty rat--catch him with the wind at our backs!”

Once, traversing a dry hammock where streaks of moonlight alternated with velvet-black shadow a rattlesnake sprang his goblin alarm.

They could not locate the reptile. They shrank together and moved warily, chilled with fear.

Once, too, clear in the moonlight, the Grey Death reared up from bloated folds and stood swaying rhythmically in a horrible shadow dance before them. And Cleves threw one arm around his wife and crept past, giving death a wide berth there in the checkered moonlight.

Now, under foot, the dry hammock lay everywhere and the night wind blew on their backs.

Then Tressa turned and halted the two men with a gesture. And went to her husband where he stood in the palm forest, and laid her hands on his shoulders, looking him very wistfully in the eyes.

Under her searching gaze he seemed oddly to comprehend her appeal.

“You are going to use--to use your knowledge,” he said mechanically. “You are going to find the man in white.”

“Yes.”

“You are going to find him in a way we don’t understand,” he continued, dully.

“Yes ... You will not hold me in--in horror--will you?”

Recklow came up, making no sound on the spongy palm litter underfoot.