Part 12 (1/2)

He came out, moving very slowly as though partly stupefied. He wore evening dress under his overcoat, and had a long knife in his right hand.

n.o.body spoke.

”So--I really was to die then, if I came here,” said the girl in a wondering way.

Sanang's stealthy gaze rested on her, stole toward Cleves. He moistened his lips with his tongue. ”You deliver me to this government agent?” he asked hoa.r.s.ely.

”I deliver n.o.body by treachery. You may go, Sanang.”

He hesitated, a graceful, faultless, metropolitan figure in top-hat and evening attire. Then, as he started to move, Cleves covered him with his weapon.

”I can't let that man go free!” cried Cleves angrily.

”Very well!” she retorted in a pa.s.sionate voice--”then take him if you are able! _Tokhta!_ Look out for yourself!”

Something swift as lightning struck the pistol from his grasp,--blinded him, half stunned him, set him reeling in a drenching blaze of light that blotted out all else.

He heard the door slam; he stumbled, caught at the back of a chair while his senses and sight were clearing.

”By heavens!” he whispered with ashen lips, ”you--you _are_ a sorceress--or something. What--what, are you doing to me?”

There was no answer. And when his vision cleared a little more he saw her crouched on the floor, her head against the locked door, listening, perhaps--or sobbing--he scarcely understood which until the quiver of her shoulders made it plainer.

When at last Cleves went to her and bent over and touched her she looked up at him out of wet eyes, and her grief-drawn mouth quivered.

”I--I don't know,” she sobbed, ”if he truly stole away my soul--there--there in the temple dusk of Yian. But he--he stole my heart--for all his wickedness--Sanang, Prince of the Yezidees--and I have been fighting him for it all these years--all these long years--fighting for what he stole in the temple dusk!... And now--now I have it back--my heart--all broken to pieces--here on the floor behind your--your bolted door.”

CHAPTER V

THE a.s.sa.s.sINS

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 hors.e.m.e.n 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 a.s.sa.s.sins” 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 a.s.signed 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.