Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  The girl seemed even frailer and younger in her hat and street gown. A silver-fox stole hung from her shoulders; a gold bag lay on the table under the bunch of violets.

  She paid no attention whatever to him. Presently her wheat-straw buckled, and she selected a better one.

  He said: “There’s something rather serious I’d like to speak to you about if you’ll let me. I’m not the sort you evidently suppose. I’m not trying to annoy you.”

  At that she looked around and upward once more.

  Very, very young, but already spoiled, he thought, for the dark-blue eyes were coolly appraising him, and the droop of the mouth had become almost sullen. Besides, traces of paint still remained to incarnadine lip and cheek and there was a hint of hardness in the youthful plumpness of the features.

  “Are you a professional?” she asked without curiosity.

  “A theatrical man? No.”

  “Then if you haven’t anything to offer me, what is it you wish?”

  “I have a job to offer if you care for it and if you are up to it,” he said.

  Her eyes became slightly hostile:

  “What kind of job do you mean?”

  “I want to learn something about you first. Will you come over to my table and talk it over?”

  “No.”

  “What sort do you suppose me to be?” he inquired, amused.

  “The usual sort, I suppose.”

  “You mean a Johnny?”

  “Yes — of sorts.”

  She let her insolent eyes sweep him once more, from head to foot.

  He was a well-built young man and in his evening dress he had that something about him which placed him very definitely where he really belonged.

  “Would you mind looking at my card?” he asked.

  He drew it out and laid it beside her, and without stirring she scanned it sideways.

  “That’s my name and address,” he continued. “I’m not contemplating mischief. I’ve enough excitement in life without seeking adventure. Besides, I’m not the sort who goes about annoying women.”

  She glanced up at him again:

  “You are annoying me!”

  “I’m sorry. I was quite honest. Good-night.”

  He took his congé with unhurried amiability; had already turned away when she said:

  “Please ... what do you desire to say to me?” He came back to her table:

  “I couldn’t tell you until I know a little more about you.”

  “What — do you wish to know?”

  “Several things. I could scarcely ask you — go over such matters with you — standing here.”

  There was a pause; the girl juggled with the straw on the table for a few moments, then, partly turning, she summoned a waiter, paid him, adjusted her stole, picked up her gold bag and her violets and stood up. Then she turned to Cleves and gave him a direct look, which had in it the impersonal and searching gaze of a child.

  When they were seated at the table reserved for him the place already was filling rapidly — backwash from the theatres slopped through every aisle — people not yet surfeited with noise, not yet sufficiently sodden by their worship of the great god Jazz.

  “Jazz,” said Cleves, glancing across his dinner-card at Tressa Norne— “what’s the meaning of the word? Do you happen to know?”

  “Doesn’t it come from the French ‘jaser’?”

  He smiled. “Possibly. I’m rather hungry. Are you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Will you indicate your preferences?”

  She studied her card, and presently he gave the order.

  “I’d like some champagne,” she said, “unless you think it’s too expensive.”

  He smiled at that, too, and gave the order.

  “I didn’t suggest any wine because you seem so young,” he said.

  “How old do I seem?”

  “Sixteen perhaps.”

  “I am twenty-one.”

  “Then you’ve had no troubles.”

  “I don’t know what you call trouble,” she remarked, indifferently, watching the arriving throngs.

  The orchestra, too, had taken its place.

  “Well,” she said, “now that you’ve picked me up, what do you really want of me?” There was no mitigating smile to soften what she said. She dropped her elbows on the table, rested her chin between her palms and looked at him with the same searching, undisturbed expression that is so disconcerting in children. As he made no reply: “May I have a cocktail?” she inquired.

  He gave the order. And his mind registered pessimism. “There is nothing doing with this girl,” he thought. “She’s already on the toboggan.” But he said aloud: “That was beautiful work you did down in the theatre, Miss Norne.”

  “Did you think so?”

  “Of course. It was astounding work.”

  “Thank you. But managers and audiences differ with you.”

  “Then they are very stupid,” he said.

  “Possibly. But that does not help me pay my board.”

  “Do you mean you have trouble in securing theatrical engagements?”

  “Yes, I am through here to-night, and there’s nothing else in view, so far.”

  “That’s incredible!” he exclaimed.

  She lifted her glass, slowly drained it.

  For a few moments she caressed the stem of the empty glass, her gaze remote.

  “Yes, it’s that way,” she said. “From the beginning I felt that my audiences were not in sympathy with me. Sometimes it even amounts to hostility. Americans do not like what I do, even if it holds their attention. I don’t quite understand why they don’t like it, but I’m always conscious they don’t. And of course that settles it — to-night has settled the whole thing, once and for all.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “What others do, I presume.”

  “What do others do?” he inquired, watching the lovely sullen eyes.

  “Oh, they do what I’m doing now, don’t they? — let some man pick them up and feed them.” She lifted her indifferent eyes. “I’m not criticising you. I meant to do it some day — when I had courage. That’s why I just asked you if I might have some champagne — finding myself a little scared at my first step.... But you did say you might have a job for me. Didn’t you?”

  “Suppose I haven’t. What are you going to do?”

  The curtain was rising. She nodded toward the bespangled chorus. “Probably that sort of thing. They’ve asked me.”

  Supper was served. They both were hungry and thirsty; the music made conversation difficult, so they supped in silence and watched the imbecile show conceived by vulgarians, produced by vulgarians and served up to mental degenerates of the same species — the average metropolitan audience.

  For ten minutes a pair of comedians fell up and down a flight of steps, and the audience shrieked approval.

  “Miss Norne?”

  The girl who had been watching the show turned in her chair and looked back at him.

  “Your magic is by far the most wonderful I have ever seen or heard of. Even in India such things are not done.”

  “No, not in India,” she said, indifferently.

  “Where then?”

  “In China.”

  “You learned to do such things there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where, in China, did you learn such amazing magic?”

  “In Yian.”

  “I never heard of it. Is it a province?”

  “A city.”

  “And you lived there?”

  “Fourteen years.”

  “When?”

  “From 1904 to 1918.”

  “During the great war,” he remarked, “you were in China?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you arrived here very recently.”

  “In November, from the Coast.”

  “I see. You played the theatres from the Coast eastward.”

  “And went to pieces in New York,” she add
ed calmly, finishing her glass of champagne.

  “Have you any family?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Do you care to say anything further?” he inquired, pleasantly.

  “About my family? Yes, if you wish. My father was in the spice trade in Yian. The Yezidees took Yian in 1910, threw him into a well in his own compound and filled it up with dead imperial troops. I was thirteen years old.... The Hassani did that. They held Yian nearly eight years, and I lived with my mother, in a garden pagoda, until 1914. In January of that year Germans got through from Kiaou-Chou. They had been six months on the way. I think they were Hassanis. Anyway, they persuaded the Hassanis to massacre every English-speaking prisoner. And so — my mother died in the garden pagoda of Yian.... I was not told for four years.”

  “Why did they spare you?” he asked, astonished at her story so quietly told, so utterly destitute of emotion.

  “I was seventeen. A certain person had placed me among the temple girls in the temple of Erlik. It pleased this person to make of me a Mongol temple girl as a mockery at Christ. They gave me the name Keuke Mongol. I asked to serve the shrine of Kwann-an — she being like to our Madonna. But this person gave me the choice between the halberds of the Tchortchas and the sorcery of Erlik.”

  She lifted her sombre eyes. “So I learned how to do the things you saw. But — what I did there on the stage is not — respectable.”

  An odd shiver passed over him. For a second he took her literally, suddenly convinced that her magic was not white but black as the demon at whose shrine she had learned it. Then he smiled and asked her pleasantly, whether indeed she employed hypnosis in her miraculous exhibitions.

  But her eyes became more sombre still, and, “I don’t care to talk about it,” she said. “I have already said too much.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry into professional secrets — —”

  “I can’t talk about it,” she repeated. “... Please — my glass is quite empty.”

  When he had refilled it:

  “How did you get away from Yian?” he asked.

  “The Japanese.”

  “What luck!”

  “Yes. One battle was fought at Buldak. The Hassanis and Blue Flags were terribly cut up. Then, outside the walls of Yian, Prince Sanang’s Tchortcha infantry made a stand. He was there with his Yezidee horsemen, all in leather and silk armour with casques and corselets of black Indian steel.

  “I could see them from the temple — saw the Japanese gunners open fire. The Tchortchas were blown to shreds in the blast of the Japanese guns.... Sanang got away with some of his Yezidee horsemen.”

  “Where was that battle?”

  “I told you, outside the walls of Yian.”

  “The newspapers never mentioned any such trouble in China,” he said, suspiciously.

  “Nobody knows about it except the Germans and the Japanese.”

  “Who is this Sanang?” he demanded.

  “A Yezidee-Mongol. He is one of the Sheiks-el-Djebel — a servant of The Old Man of Mount Alamout.”

  “What is he?”

  “A sorcerer — assassin.”

  “What!” exclaimed Cleves incredulously.

  “Why, yes,” she said, calmly. “Have you never heard of The Old Man of Mount Alamout?”

  “Well, yes — —”

  “The succession has been unbroken since 1090 B.C.A Hassan Sabbah is still the present Old Man of the Mountain. His Yezidees worship Erlik. They are sorcerers. But you would not believe that.”

  Cleves said with a smile, “Who is Erlik?”

  “The Mongols’ Satan.”

  “Oh! So these Yezidees are devil-worshipers!”

  “They are more. They are actually devils.”

  “You don’t really believe that even in unexplored China there exists such a creature as a real sorcerer, do you?” he inquired, smilingly.

  “I don’t wish to talk of it.”

  To his surprise her face had flushed, and he thought her sensitive mouth quivered a little.

  He watched her in silence for a moment; then, leaning a little way across the table:

  “Where are you going when the show here closes?”

  “To my boarding-house.”

  “And then?”

  “To bed,” she said, sullenly.

  “And to-morrow what do you mean to do?”

  “Go out to the agencies and ask for work.”

  “And if there is none?”

  “The chorus,” she said, indifferently.

  “What salary have you been getting?”

  She told him.

  “Will you take three times that amount and work with me?”

  CHAPTER IV

  BODY AND SOUL

  The girl’s direct gaze met his with that merciless searching intentness he already knew.

  “What do you wish me to do?”

  “Enter the service of the United States.”

  “Wh-what?”

  “Work for the Government.”

  She was too taken aback to answer.

  “Where were you born?” he demanded abruptly.

  “In Albany, New York,” she replied in a dazed way.

  “You are loyal to your country?”

  “Yes — certainly.”

  “You would not betray her?”

  “No.”

  “I don’t mean for money; I mean from fear.”

  After a moment, and, avoiding his gaze: “I am afraid of death,” she said very simply.

  He waited.

  “I — I don’t know what I might do — being afraid,” she added in a troubled voice. “I desire to — live.”

  He still waited.

  She lifted her eyes: “I’d try not to betray my country,” she murmured.

  “Try to face death for your country’s honour?”

  “Yes.”

  “And for your own?”

  “Yes; and for my own.”

  He leaned nearer: “Yet you’re taking a chance on your own honour to-night.”

  She blushed brightly: “I didn’t think I was taking a very great chance with you.”

  He said: “You have found life too hard. And when you faced failure in New York you began to let go of life — real life, I mean. And you came up here to-night wondering whether you had courage to let yourself go. When I spoke to you it scared you. You found you hadn’t the courage. But perhaps to-morrow you might find it — or next week — if sufficiently scared by hunger — you might venture to take the first step along the path that you say others usually take sooner or later.”

  The girl flushed scarlet, sat looking at him out of eyes grown dark with anger.

  He said: “You told me an untruth. You have been tempted to betray your country. You have resisted. You have been threatened with death. You have had courage to defy threats and temptations where your country’s honour was concerned!”

  “How do you know?” she demanded.

  He continued, ignoring the question: “From the time you landed in San Francisco you have been threatened. You tried to earn a living by your magician’s tricks, but in city after city, as you came East, your uneasiness grew into fear, and your fear into terror, because every day more terribly confirmed your belief that people were following you determined either to use you to their own purposes or to murder you — —”

  The girl turned quite white and half rose in her chair, then sank back, staring at him out of dilated eyes. Then Cleves smiled: “So you’ve got the nerve to do Government work,” he said, “and you’ve got the intelligence, and the knowledge, and something else — I don’t know exactly what to call it — Skill? Dexterity? Sorcery?” he smiled— “I mean your professional ability. That’s what I want — that bewildering dexterity of yours, to help your own country in the fight of its life. Will you enlist for service?”

  “W-what fight?” she asked faintly.

  “The fight with the Red Spectre.”

  “Anarchy?”

  “Y
es.... Are you ready to leave this place? I want to talk to you.”

  “Where?”

  “In my own rooms.”

  After a moment she rose.

  “I’ll go to your rooms with you,” she said. She added very calmly that she was glad it was to be his rooms and not some other man’s.

  Out of countenance, he demanded what she meant, and she said quite candidly that she’d made up her mind to live at any cost, and that if she couldn’t make an honest living she’d make a living anyway.

  He offered no reply to this until they had reached the street and he had called a taxi.

  On their way to his apartment he re-opened the subject rather bluntly, remarking that life was not worth living at the price she had mentioned.

  “That is the accepted Christian theory,” she replied coolly, “but circumstances alter things.”

  “Not such things.”

  “Oh, yes, they do. If one is already damned, what difference does anything else make?”

  He asked, sarcastically, whether she considered herself already damned.

  She did not reply for a few moments, then she said, in a quick, breathless way, that souls have been entrapped through ignorance of evil. And asked him if he did not believe it.

  “No,” he said, “I don’t.”

  She shook her head. “You couldn’t understand,” she said. “But I’ve made up my mind to one thing; even if my soul has perished, my body shall not die for a long, long time. I mean to live,” she added. “I shall not let my body be slain! They shall not steal life from me, whatever they have done to my soul — —”

  “What in heaven’s name are you talking about?” he exclaimed. “Do you actually believe in soul-snatchers and life-stealers?”

  She seemed sullen, her profile turned to him, her eyes on the brilliantly lighted avenue up which they were speeding. After a while: “I’d rather live decently and respectably if I can,” she said. “That is the natural desire of any girl, I suppose. But if I can’t, nevertheless I shall beat off death at any cost. And whatever the price of life is, I shall pay it. Because I am absolutely determined to go on living. And if I can’t provide the means I’ll have to let some man do it, I suppose.”

  “It’s a good thing it was I who found you when you were out of a job,” he remarked coldly.