“I tell you I can’t trust Tressa Norne to anybody except myself,” insisted Cleves. “I got her into this; I am responsible if she is murdered; I dare not entrust her safety to anybody else. And, Recklow, it’s a ghastly responsibility for a man to induce a young girl to face death, even in the service of her country.”
“If she remains here alone with you she’ll face social destruction,” remarked Recklow.
Cleves was silent for a moment, then he burst out: “Well, what am I to do? What is there left for me to do except to watch over her and see her through this devilish business? What other way have I to protect her, Recklow?”
“You could offer her the protection of your name,” suggested the other, carelessly.
“What? You mean — marry her?”
“Well, nobody else would be inclined to, Cleves, if it ever becomes known she has lived here quite alone with you.”
Cleves stared at the elder man.
“This is nonsense,” he said in a harsh voice. “That young girl doesn’t want to marry anybody. Neither do I. She doesn’t wish to have her throat cut, that’s all. And I’m determined she shan’t.”
“There are stealthier assassins, Cleves, — the slayers of reputations. It goes badly with their victim. It does indeed.”
“Well, hang it, what do you think I ought to do?”
“I think you ought to marry her if you’re going to keep her here.”
“Suppose she doesn’t mind the unconventionality of it?”
“All women mind. No woman, at heart, is unconventional, Cleves.”
“She — she seems to agree with me that she ought to stay here.... Besides, she has no money, no relatives, no friends in America — —”
“All the more tragic. If you really believe it to be your duty to keep her here where you can look after her bodily safety, then the other obligation is still heavier. And there may come a day when Miss Norne will wish that you had been less conscientious concerning the safety of her pretty throat.... For the knife of the Yezidee is swifter and less cruel than the tongue that slays with a smile.... And this young girl has many years to live, after this business of Bolshevism is dead and forgotten in our Republic.”
“Recklow!”
“Yes?”
“You think I might dare try to find a room somewhere else for her and let her take her chances? Do you?”
“It’s your affair.”
“I know — hang it! I know it’s my affair. I’ve unintentionally made it so. But can’t you tell me what I ought to do?”
“I can’t.”
“What would you do?”
“Don’t ask me,” returned Recklow, sharply. “If you’re not man enough to come to a decision you may turn her over to me.”
Cleves flushed brightly. “Do you think you are old enough to take my job and avoid scandal?”
Recklow’s cold eyes rested on him: “If you like,” he said, “I’ll assume your various kinds of personal responsibility toward Miss Norne.”
Cleve’s visage burned. “I’ll shoulder my own burdens,” he retorted.
“Sure. I knew you would.” And Recklow smiled and held out his hand. Cleves took it without cordiality. Standing so, Recklow, still smiling, said: “What a rotten deal that child has had — is having. Her father and mother were fine people. Did you ever hear of Dr. Norne?”
“She mentioned him once.”
“They were up-State people of most excellent antecedents and no money.
“Dr. Norne was our Vice-Consul at Yarkand in the province of Sin Kiang. All he had was his salary, and he lost that and his post when the administration changed. Then he went into the spice trade.
“Some Jew syndicate here sent him up the Yarkand River to see what could be done about jade and gold concessions. He was on that business when the tragedy happened. The Kalmuks and Khirghiz were responsible, under Yezidee instigation. And there you are: — and here is his child, Cleves — back, by some miracle, from that flowering hell called Yian, believing in her heart that she really lost her soul there in the temple. And now, here in her own native land, she is exposed to actual and hourly danger of assassination.... Poor kid!... Did you ever hear of a rottener deal, Cleves?”
Their hands had remained clasped while Recklow was speaking. He spoke again, clearly, amiably:
“To lay down one’s life for a friend is fine. I’m not sure that it’s finer to offer one’s honour in behalf of a girl whose honour is at stake.”
After a moment Cleves’s grip tightened.
“All right,” he said.
Recklow went downstairs.
CHAPTER VI
IN BATTLE
Cleves went back into the apartment; he noticed that Miss Norne’s door was ajar.
To get to his own room he had to pass that way; and he saw her, seated before the mirror, partly undressed, her dark, lustrous hair being combed out and twisted up for the night.
Whether this carelessness was born of innocence or of indifference mattered little; he suddenly realised that these conditions wouldn’t do. And his first feeling was of anger.
“If you’ll put on your robe and slippers,” he said in an unpleasant voice, “I’d like to talk to you for a few moments.”
She turned her head on its charming neck and looked around and up at him over one naked shoulder.
“Shall I come into your room?” she inquired.
“No!... when you’ve got some clothes on, call me.”
“I’m quite ready now,” she said calmly, and drew the Chinese slippers over her bare feet and passed a silken loop over the silver bell buttons on her right shoulder. Then, undisturbed, she continued to twist up her hair, following his movements in the mirror with unconcerned blue eyes.
He entered and seated himself, the impatient expression still creasing his forehead and altering his rather agreeable features.
“Miss Norne,” he said, “you’re absolutely convinced that these people mean to do you harm. Isn’t that true?”
“Of course,” she said simply.
“Then, until we get them, you’re running a serious risk. In fact, you live in hourly peril. That is your belief, isn’t it?”
She put the last peg into her thick, curly hair, lowered her arms, turned, dropped one knee over the other, and let her candid gaze rest on him in silence.
“What I mean to explain,” he said coldly, “is that as long as I induced you to go into this affair I’m responsible for you. If I let you out of my sight here in New York and if anything happens to you, I’ll be as guilty as the dirty beast who takes your life. What is your opinion? It’s up to me to stand by you now, isn’t it?”
“I had rather be near you — for a while,” she said timidly.
“Certainly. But, Miss Norne, our living here together, in my apartment — or living together anywhere else — is never going to be understood by other people. You know that, don’t you?”
After a silence, still looking at him out of clear unembarrassed eyes:
“I know.... But ... I don’t want to die.”
“I told you,” he said sharply, “they’ll have to kill me first. So that’s all right. But how about what I am doing to your reputation?”
“I understand.”
“I suppose you do. You’re very young. Once out of this blooming mess, you will have all your life before you. But if I kill your reputation for you while saving your body from death, you’ll find no happiness in living. Do you realise that?”
“Yes.”
“Well, then? Have you any solution for this problem that confronts you?”
“No.”
“Haven’t you any idea to suggest?”
“I don’t — don’t want to die,” she repeated in an unsteady voice.
He bit his lip; and after a moment’s scowling silence under the merciless scrutiny of her eyes: “Then you had better marry me,” he said.
It was some time before she spoke. For a second or two he sustained the searching quali
ty of her gaze, but it became unendurable.
Presently she said: “I don’t ask it of you. I can shoulder my own burdens.” And he remembered what he had just said to Recklow.
“You’ve shouldered more than your share,” he blurted out. “You are deliberately risking death to serve your country. I enlisted you. The least I can do is to say my affections are not engaged; so naturally the idea of — of marrying anybody never entered my head.”
“Then you do not care for anybody else?”
Her candour amazed and disconcerted him.
“No.” He looked at her, curiously. “Do you care for anybody in that way?”
A light blush tinted her face. She said gravely: “If we really are going to marry each other I had better tell you that I did care for Prince Sanang.”
“What!” he cried, astounded.
“It seems incredible, doesn’t it? Yet it is quite true. I fought him; I fought myself; I stood guard over my mind and senses there in the temple; I knew what he was and I detested him and I mocked him there in the temple.... And I loved him.”
“Sanang!” he repeated, not only amazed but also oddly incensed at the naïve confession.
“Yes, Sanang.... If we are to marry, I thought I ought to tell you. Don’t you think so?”
“Certainly,” he replied in an absent-minded way, his mind still grasping at the thing. Then, looking up: “Do you still care for this fellow?”
She shook her head.
“Are you perfectly sure, Miss Norne?”
“As sure as that I am alive when I awake from a nightmare. My hatred for Sanang is very bitter,” she added frankly, “and yet somehow it is not my wish to see him harmed.”
“You still care for him a little?”
“Oh, no. But — can’t you understand that it is not in me to wish him harm?... No girl feels that way — once having cared. To become indifferent to a familiar thing is perhaps natural; but to desire to harm it is not in my character.”
“You have plenty of character,” he said, staring; at her.
“You don’t think so. Do you?”
“Why not?”
“Because of what I said to you on the roof-garden that night. It was shameful, wasn’t it?”
“You behaved like many a thoroughbred,” he returned bluntly; “you were scared, bewildered, ready to bolt to any shelter offered.”
“It’s quite true I didn’t know what to do to keep alive. And that was all that interested me — to keep on living — having lost my soul and being afraid to die and find myself in hell with Erlik.”
He said: “Isn’t that absurd notion out of your head yet?”
“I don’t know ... I can’t suddenly believe myself safe after all those years. It is not easy to root out what was planted in childhood and what grew to be part of one during the tender and formative period.... You can’t understand, Mr. Cleves — you can’t ever feel or visualise what became my daily life in a region which was half paradise and half hell — —”
She bent her head and took her face between her fingers, and sat so, brooding.
After a little while: “Well,” he said, “there’s only one way to manage this affair — if you are willing, Miss Norne.”
She merely lifted her eyes.
“I think,” he said, “there’s only that one way out of it. But you understand” — he turned pink— “it will be quite all right — your liberty — privacy — I shan’t bother you — annoy — —”
She merely looked at him.
“After this Bolshevistic flurry is settled — in a year or two — or three — then you can very easily get your freedom; and you’ll have all life before you” ... he rose: “ — and a jolly good friend in me — a good comrade, Miss Norne. And that means you can count on me when you go into business — or whatever you decide to do.”
She also had risen, standing slim and calm in her exquisite Chinese robe, the sleeves of which covered her finger tips.
“Are you going to marry me?” she asked.
“If you’ll let me.”
“Yes — I will ... it’s so generous and considerate of you. I — I don’t ask it; I really don’t — —”
“But I do.”
“ — And I never dreamed of such a thing.”
He forced a smile. “Nor I. It’s rather a crazy thing to do. But I know of no saner alternative.... So we had better get our license to-morrow.... And that settles it.”
He turned to go; and, on her threshold, his feet caught in something on the floor and he stumbled, trying to free his feet from a roll of soft white cloth lying there on the carpet. And when he picked it up, it unrolled, and a knife fell out of the folds of cloth and struck his foot.
Still perplexed, not comprehending, he stooped to recover the knife. Then, straightening up, he found himself looking into the colourless face of Tressa Norne.
“What’s all this?” he asked— “this sheet and knife here on the floor outside your door?”
She answered with difficulty: “They have sent you your shroud, I think.”
“Are not those things yours? Were they not already here in your baggage?” he demanded incredulously. Then, realising that they had not been there on the door-sill when he entered her room a few moments since, a rough chill passed over him — the icy caress of fear.
“Where did that thing come from?” he said hoarsely. “How could it get here when my door is locked and bolted? Unless there’s somebody hidden here!”
Hot anger suddenly flooded him; he drew his pistol and sprang into the passageway.
“What the devil is all this!” he repeated furiously, flinging open his bedroom door and switching on the light.
He searched his room in a rage, went on and searched the dining-room, smoking-room, and kitchen, and every clothes-press and closet, always aware of Tressa’s presence close behind him. And when there remained no tiniest nook or cranny in the place unsearched, he stood in the centre of the carpet glaring at the locked and bolted door.
He heard her say under her breath: “This is going to be a sleepless night. And a dangerous one.” And, turning to stare at her, saw no fear in her face, only excitement.
He still held clutched in his left hand the sheet and the knife. Now he thrust these toward her.
“What’s this damned foolery, anyway?” he demanded harshly. She took the knife with a slight shudder. “There is something engraved on the silver hilt,” she said.
He bent over her shoulder.
“Eighur,” she added calmly, “not Arabic. The Mongols had no written characters of their own.”
She bent closer, studying the inscription. After a moment, still studying the Eighur characters, she rested her left hand on his shoulder — an impulsive, unstudied movement that might have meant either confidence or protection.
“Look,” she said, “it is not addressed to you after all, but to a symbol — a series of numbers, 53-6-26.”
“That is my designation in the Federal Service,” he said, sharply.
“Oh!” she nodded slowly. “Then this is what is written in the Mongol-Yezidee dialect, traced out in Eighur characters: ‘To 53-6-26! By one of the Eight Assassins the Slayer of Souls sends this shroud and this knife from Mount Alamout. Such a blade shall divide your heart. This sheet is for your corpse.’”
After a grim silence he flung the soft white cloth on the floor.
“There’s no use my pretending I’m not surprised and worried,” he said; “I don’t know how that cloth got here. Do you?”
“It was sent.”
“How?”
She shook her head and gave him a grave, confused look.
“There are ways. You could not understand.... This is going to be a sleepless night for us.”
“You can go to bed, Tressa. I’ll sit up and read and keep an eye on that door.”
“I can’t let you remain alone here. I’m afraid to do that.”
He gave a laugh, not quite pleasant, as he suddenly comprehended t
hat the girl now considered their rôles to be reversed.
“Are you planning to sit up in order to protect me?” he asked, grimly amused.
“Do you mind?”
“Why, you blessed little thing, I can take care of myself. How funny of you, when I am trying to plan how best to look out for you!”
But her face remained pale and concerned, and she rested her left hand more firmly on his shoulder.
“I wish to remain awake with you,” she said. “Because I myself don’t fully understand this” — she looked at the knife in her palm, then down at the shroud. “It is going to be a strange night for us,” she sighed. “Let us sit together here on the lounge where I can face that bolted door. And if you are willing, I am going to turn out the lights — —” She suddenly bent forward and switched them off— “because I must keep my mind on guard.”
“Why do you do that?” he asked, “you can’t see the door, now.”
“Let me help you in my own way,” she whispered. “I — I am very deeply disturbed, and very, very angry. I do not understand this new menace. Yezidee that I am, I do not understand what kind of danger threatens you through your loyalty to me.”
She drew him forward, and he opened his mouth to remonstrate, to laugh; but as he turned, his foot touched the shroud, and an uncontrollable shiver passed over him.
They went close together, across the dim room to the lounge, and seated themselves. Enough light from Madison Avenue made objects in the room barely discernible.
Sounds from the street below became rarer as the hours wore away. The iron jar of trams, the rattle of vehicles, the harsh warning of taxicabs broke the stillness at longer and longer intervals, until, save only for that immense and ceaseless vibration of the monstrous iron city under the foggy stars, scarcely a sound stirred the silence.
The half-hour had struck long ago on the bell of the little clock. Now the clear bell sounded three times.
Cleves stirred on the lounge beside Tressa. Again and again he had thought that she was asleep for her head had fallen back against the cushions, and she lay very still. But always, when he leaned nearer to peer down at her, he saw her eyes open, and fixed intently upon the bolted door.
His pistol, which still rested on his knee, was pointed across the room, toward the door. Once he reminded her in a whisper that she was unarmed and that it might be as well for her to go and get her pistol. But she murmured that she was sufficiently equipped; and, in spite of himself, he shivered as he glanced down at her frail and empty hands.
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 955
