The Slayer of Souls

by Robert W. Chambers

  CHAPTER II

  THE YELLOW SNAKE

  When the young man named Sanang left the bed-chamber of Tressa Norne heturned to the right in the carpeted corridor outside and hurried towardthe hotel elevator. But he did not ring for the lift; instead he tookthe spiral iron stairway which circled it, and mounted hastily to thefloor above.

  Here was his own apartment and he entered it with a key bearing thehotel tag. A dusky-skinned powerful old man wearing a grizzled beard anda greasy broadcloth coat of old-fashioned cut known to provincials as a"Prince Albert" looked up from where he was seated cross-legged upon thesofa, sharpening a curved knife on a whetstone.

  "Gutchlug," stammered Sanang, "I am afraid of her! What happened twoyears ago at the temple happened again a moment since, there in her verybedroom! She made a yellow death-adder out of nothing and placed it uponthe threshold, and mocked me with laughter. May Thirty ThousandCalamities overtake her! May Erlik seize her! May her eyes rot out andher limbs fester! May the seven score and three principal devils----"

  "You chatter like a temple ape," said Gutchlug tranquilly. "Does KeukeMongol die or live? That alone interests me."

  "Gutchlug," faltered the young man, "thou knowest that m-my heart isinclined to mercy toward this young Yezidee----"

  "I know that it is inclined to lust," said the other bluntly.

  Sanang's pale face flamed.

  "Listen," he said. "If I had not loved her better than life had I daredgo that day to the temple to take her for my own?"

  "You loved life better," said Gutchlug. "You fled when it rained snakeson the temple steps--you and your Tchortcha horsemen! Kai! I also ran.But I gave every soldier thirty blows with a stick before I slept thatnight. And you should have had your thirty, also, conforming to theYarlig, my Tougtchi."

  Sanang, still holding his hat and cane and carrying his overcoat overhis left arm, looked down at the heavy, brutal features of GutchlugKhan--at the cruel mouth with its crooked smile under the grizzledbeard; at the huge hands--the powerful hands of a murderer--now deftlyhoning to a razor-edge the Kalmuck knife held so firmly yet lightly inhis great blunt fingers.

  "Listen attentively, Prince Sanang," growled Gutchlug, pausing in hismonotonous task to test the blade's edge on his thumb--"Does the YezideeKeuke Mongol live? Yes or no?"

  Sanang hesitated, moistened his pallid lips. "She dares not betray us."

  "By what pledge?"

  "Fear."

  "That is no pledge. You also were afraid, yet you went to the temple!"

  "She has listened to the Yarlig. She has looked upon her shroud. She hasadmitted that she desires to live. Therein lies her pledge to us."

  "And she placed a yellow snake at your feet!" sneered Gutchlug. "PrinceSanang, tell me, what man or what devil in all the chronicles of thepast has ever tamed a Snow-Leopard?" And he continued to hone hisyataghan.

  "Gutchlug----"

  "No, she dies," said the other tranquilly.

  "Not yet!"

  "When, then?"

  "Gutchlug, thou knowest me. Hear my pledge! At her first gesture towardtreachery--her first thought of betrayal--I myself will end it all."

  "You promise to slay this young snow-leopardess?"

  "By the four companions, I swear to kill her with my own hands!"

  Gutchlug sneered. "Kill her--yes--with the kiss that has burned thy lipsto ashes for all these months. I know thee, Sanang. Leave her to me.Dead she will no longer trouble thee."

  "Gutchlug!"

  "I hear, Prince Sanang."

  "Strike when I nod. Not until then."

  "I hear, Tougtchi. I understand thee, my Banneret. I whet my knife.Kai!"

  Sanang looked at him, put on his top-hat and overcoat, pulled on a pairof white evening gloves.

  "I go forth," he said more pleasantly.

  "I remain here to talk to my seven ancestors and sharpen my knife,"remarked Gutchlug.

  "When the white world and the yellow world and the brown world and theblack world finally fall before the Hassanis," said Sanang with a quicksmile, "I shall bring thee to her. Gutchlug--once--before she is veiled,thou shalt behold what is lovelier than Eve."

  The other stolidly whetted his knife.

  Sanang pulled out a gold cigarette case, lighted a cigarette with anair.

  "I go among Germans," he volunteered amiably. "The huns swam across twooceans, but, like the unclean swine, it is their own throats they cutwhen they swim! Well, there is only one God. And not very many angels.Erlik is greater. And there are many million devils to do his bidding.Adieu. There is rice and there is koumiss in the frozen closet. When Ireturn you shall have been asleep for hours."

  When Sanang left the hotel one of two young men seated in the hotellobby got up and strolled out after him.

  A few minutes later the other man went to the elevator, ascended to thefourth floor, and entered an apartment next to the one occupied bySanang.

  There was another man there, lying on the lounge and smoking a cigar.Without a word, they both went leisurely about the matter of disrobingfor the night.

  When the shorter man who had been in the apartment when the otherentered, and who was dark and curly-headed, had attired himself inpyjamas, he sat down on one of the twin beds to enjoy his cigar to thebitter end.

  "Has Sanang gone out?" he inquired in a low voice.

  "Yes. Benton went after him."

  The other man nodded. "Cleves," he said, "I guess it looks as thoughthis Norne girl is in it, too."

  "What happened?"

  "As soon as she arrived, Sanang made straight for her apartment. Heremained inside for half an hour. Then he came out in a hurry and wentto his own rooms, where that surly servant of his squats all day,shining up his arsenal, and drinking koumiss."

  "Did you get their conversation?"

  "I've got a record of the gibberish. It requires an interpreter, ofcourse."

  "I suppose so. I'll take the records east with me to-morrow, and by thesame token I'd better notify New York that I'm leaving."

  He went, half-undressed, to the telephone, got the telegraph office, andsent the following message:

  "RECKLOW, _New York_:

  "Leaving to-morrow for N. Y. with samples. Retain expert in Oriental fabrics.

  "VICTOR CLEVES."

  "Report for me, too," said the dark young man, who was still enjoyinghis cigar on his pillows.

  So Cleves sent another telegram, directed also to

  "RECKLOW, _New York_:

  "Benton and I are watching the market. Chinese importations fluctuate. Recent consignment per _Nan-yang Maru_ will be carefully inspected and details forwarded.

  "ALEK SELDEN."

  In the next room Gutchlug could hear the voice of Cleves at thetelephone, but he merely shrugged his heavy shoulders in contempt. Forhe had other things to do beside eavesdropping.

  Also, for the last hour--in fact, ever since Sanang'sdeparture--something had been happening to him--something that happensto a Hassani only once in a lifetime. And now this unique thing hadhappened to him--to him, Gutchlug Khan--to him before whose Khiounnouancestors eighty-one thousand nations had bowed the knee.

  It had come to him at last, this dread thing, unheralded, totallyunexpected, a few minutes after Sanang had departed.

  And he suddenly knew he was going to die.

  And, when, presently, he comprehended it, he bent his grizzled head andlistened seriously. And, after a little silence, he heard his soulbidding him farewell.

  So the chatter of white men at a telephone in the next apartment had nolonger any significance for him. Whether or not they had been spying onhim; whether they were plotting, made no difference to him now.

  He tested his knife's edge with his thumb and listened gravely to hissoul bidding him farewell.

  But, for a Yezidee, there was still a little detail to attend to beforehis soul departed;--two matters to regulate. One was to select hisshroud. The other was to cut the white th
roat of this youngsnow-leopardess called Keuke Mongol, the Yezidee temple girl.

  And he could steal down to her bedroom and finish that matter in fiveminutes.

  But first he must choose his shroud, as is the custom of the Yezidee.

  That office, however, was quickly accomplished in a country where finewhite sheets of linen are to be found on every hotel bed.

  So, on his way to the door, his naked knife in his right hand, he pausedto fumble under the bed-covers and draw out a white linen sheet.

  Something hurt his hand like a needle. He moved it, felt the thingsquirm under his fingers and pierce his palm again and again. With ashriek, he tore the bedclothes from the bed.

  A little yellow snake lay coiled there.

  He got as far as the telephone, but could not use it. And there he fellheavily, shaking the room and dragging the instrument down with him.

  * * * * *

  There was some excitement. Cleves and Selden in their bathrobes went into look at the body. The hotel physician diagnosed it as heart-trouble.Or, possibly, poison. Some gazed significantly at the naked knife stillclutched in the dead man's hands.

  Around the wrist of the other hand was twisted a pliable gold braceletrepresenting a little snake. It had real emeralds for eyes.

  It had not been there when Gutchlug died.

  But nobody except Sanang could know that. And later when Sanang cameback and found Gutchlug very dead on the bed and a policeman sittingoutside, he offered no information concerning the new bracelet shapedlike a snake with real emeralds for eyes, which adorned the dead man'sleft wrist.

  Toward evening, however, after an autopsy had confirmed the housephysician's diagnosis that heart-disease had finished Gutchlug, Sanangmustered enough courage to go to the desk in the lobby and send up hiscard to Miss Norne.

  * * * * *

  It appeared, however, that Miss Norne had left for Chicago about noon.