Part 38 (2/2)

”He tried to tell me the same thing,” she resumed doubtfully.

”But--oh--I know what I know! I have felt the death thought--and he knows it!”

”What do you mean?” inquired Kennedy, leaning forward keenly.

”The death thought,” she repeated, ”a malicious psychic attack. Some one is driving me to death by it. I thought I could fight it off. I went away to escape it. Now I have come back--and I have not escaped.

There is always that disturbing influence--always--directed against me.

I know it will--kill me!”

I listened, startled. The death thought! What did it mean? What terrible power was it? Was it hypnotism? What was this fearsome, cruel belief, this modern witchcraft that could unnerve a rich and educated woman? Surely, after all, I felt that this was not a case for a doctor alone; it called for a detective.

”You see,” she went on, heroically trying to control herself, ”I have always been interested in the mysterious, the strange, the occult. In fact my father and my husband's father met through their common interest. So, you see, I come naturally by it.

”Not long ago I heard of Professor and Madame Rapport and their new Temple of the Occult. I went to it, and later Seward became interested, too. We have been taken into a sort of inner circle,” she continued fearfully, as though there were some evil power in the very words themselves, ”the Red Lodge.”

”You have told Dr. Vaughn?” shot out Kennedy suddenly, his eyes fixed on her face to see what it would betray.

Veda leaned forward, as if to tell a secret, then whispered in a low voice, ”He knows. Like us--he--he is a--Devil Wors.h.i.+per!”

”What?” exclaimed Kennedy in wide-eyed astonishment.

”A Devil Wors.h.i.+per,” she repeated. ”You haven't heard of the Red Lodge?”

Kennedy nodded negatively. ”Could you get us--initiated?” he hazarded.

”P--perhaps,” she hesitated, in a half-frightened tone. ”I--I'll try to get you in to-night.”

She had risen, half dazed, as if her own temerity overwhelmed her.

”You--poor girl,” blurted out Kennedy, his sympathies getting the upper hand for the moment as he took the hand she extended mutely. ”Trust me.

I will do all in my power, all in the power of modern science to help you fight off this--influence.”

There must have been something magnetic, hypnotic in his eye.

”I will stop here for you,” she murmured, as she almost fled from the room.

Personally, I cannot say that I liked the idea of spying. It is not usually clean and wholesome. But I realized that occasionally it was necessary.

”We are in for it now,” remarked Kennedy half humorously, half seriously, ”to see the Devil in the twentieth century.”

”And I,” I added, ”I am, I suppose, to be the reporter to Satan.”

We said nothing more about it, but I thought much about it, and the more I thought, the more incomprehensible the thing seemed. I had heard of Devil Wors.h.i.+p, but had always a.s.sociated it with far-off Indian and other heathen lands--in fact never among Caucasians in modern times, except possibly in Paris. Was there such a cult here in my own city? I felt skeptical.

That night, however, promptly at the appointed time, a cab called for us, and in it was Veda Blair, nervous but determined.

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