swiftly that he scarcely followed her movement – was unaware that she had risen until he saw her standing there with a pistol glittering in her hand, her eyes fixed on the portières that hung across the corridor leading to his bedroom.
"What on earth," he began, but she interrupted him, keeping her gaze focused on the curtains, and the pistol resting level on her hip.
"I'll answer you if I die for it!" she cried. "I'll tell you everything I know! You wish to learn what is this monstrous evil that threatens the world with destruction – what you call anarchy and Bolshevism? It is an Evil that was born before Christ came! It is an Evil which not only destroys cities and empires and men but which is more terrible still for it obtains control of the human mind, and uses it at will; and it obtains sovereignty over the soul, and makes it prisoner. Its aim is to dominate first, then to destroy. It was conceived in the beginning by Erlik and by Sorcerers and devils… Always, from the first, there have been sorcerers and living devils.
"And when human history began to be remembered and chronicled, devils were living who worshiped Erlik and practised sorcery.
"They have been called by many names. A thousand years before Christ Hassan Sabbah founded his sect called Hassanis or Assassins. The Yezidees are of them. Their Chief is still called Sabbah; their creed is the annihilation of civilisation!"
Cleves had risen. The girl spoke in a clear, accentless monotone, not looking at him, her eyes and pistol centred on the motionless curtains.
"Look out!" she cried sharply.
"What is the matter?" he demanded. "Do you suppose anybody is hidden behind that curtain in the passageway?"
"If there is," she replied in her excited but distinct voice, "here is a tale to entertain him:
"The Hassanis are a sect of assassins which has spread out of Asia all over the world, and they are determined upon the annihilation of everything and everybody in it except themselves!
"In Germany is a branch of the sect. The hun is the lineal descendant of the ancient Yezidee; the gods of the hun are the old demons under other names; the desire and object of the hun is the same desire – to rule the minds and bodies and souls of men and use them to their own purposes!"
She lifted her pistol a little, came a pace forward:
"Anarchist, Yezidee, Hassani, Boche, Bolshevik – all are the same – all are secretly swarming in the hidden places for the same purpose!"
The girl's blue eyes were aflame, now, and the pistol was lifting slowly in her hand to a deadly level.
"Sanang!" she cried in a terrible voice.
"Sanang!" she cried again in her terrifying young voice – "Toad! Tortoise egg! Spittle of Erlik! May the Thirty Thousand Calamities overtake you! Sheik-el-Djebel! – cowardly Khan whom I laughed at from the temple when it rained yellow snakes on the marble steps when all the gongs in Yian sounded in your frightened ears!"
She waited.
"What! You won't step out? Tokhta!" she exclaimed in a ringing tone, and made a swift motion with her left hand. Apparently out of her empty open palm, like a missile hurled, a thin, blinding beam of light struck the curtains, making them suddenly transparent.
A man stood there.
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.
Nobody 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 hoarsely.
"I deliver nobody 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 passionate 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 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
