The Slayer of Souls

by Robert W. Chambers

  CHAPTER IV

  BODY AND SOUL

  The girl's direct gaze met his with that merciless searching intentnesshe 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 saidvery simply.

  He waited.

  "I--I don't know what I might do--being afraid," she added in a troubledvoice. "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 honourto-night."

  She blushed brightly: "I didn't think I was taking a very great chancewith you."

  He said: "You have found life too hard. And when you faced failure inNew York you began to let go of life--real life, I mean. And you came uphere to-night wondering whether you had courage to let yourself go. WhenI spoke to you it scared you. You found you hadn't the courage. Butperhaps to-morrow you might find it--or next week--if sufficientlyscared by hunger--you might venture to take the first step along thepath that you say others usually take sooner or later."

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

  He said: "You told me an untruth. You _have_ been tempted to betray yourcountry. You have resisted. You _have_ been threatened with death. You_have_ had courage to defy threats and temptations where your country'shonour was concerned!"

  "How do you know?" she demanded.

  He continued, ignoring the question: "From the time you landed in SanFrancisco you have been threatened. You tried to earn a living by yourmagician's tricks, but in city after city, as you came East, youruneasiness grew into fear, and your fear into terror, because every daymore terribly confirmed your belief that people were following youdetermined 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 gotthe nerve to do Government work," he said, "and you've got theintelligence, and the knowledge, and something else--I don't knowexactly what to call it--Skill? Dexterity? Sorcery?" he smiled--"I meanyour professional ability. That's what I want--that bewilderingdexterity 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?"

  "Yes.... 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 thatshe 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 quitecandidly that she'd made up her mind to live at any cost, and that ifshe 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 hadcalled 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, "butcircumstances alter things."

  "Not such things."

  "Oh, yes, they do. If one is already damned, what difference doesanything 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 ofevil. 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 madeup my mind to one thing; even if my soul has perished, my body shall notdie for a long, long time. I mean to live," she added. "I shall not letmy body be slain! They shall not steal life from me, whatever they havedone to my soul----"

  "What in heaven's name are you talking about?" he exclaimed. "Do youactually believe in soul-snatchers and life-stealers?"

  She seemed sullen, her profile turned to him, her eyes on thebrilliantly lighted avenue up which they were speeding. After a while:"I'd rather live decently and respectably if I can," she said. "That isthe natural desire of any girl, I suppose. But if I can't, neverthelessI shall beat off death at any cost. And whatever the price of life is, Ishall pay it. Because I am absolutely determined to go on living. And ifI 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.

  "I hope so," she said. "Even in the beginning I didn't really believeyou meant to be impertinent"--a tragic smile touched her lips--"and Iwas almost sorry----"

  "Are you quite crazy?" he demanded.

  "No, my mind is untouched. It's my soul that's gone.... Do you know Iwas very hungry when you spoke to me? The management wouldn't advanceanything, and my last money went for my room.... Last Monday I had threedollars to face the future--and no job. I spent the last of it to-nighton violets, orange juice and cakes. My furs and my gold bag remain. Ican go two months more on them. Then it's a job or----." She shruggedand buried her nose in her violets.

  "Suppose I advance you a month's salary?" he said.

  "What am I to do for it?"

  The taxi stopped at a florist's on the corner of Madison Avenue and 58thStreet. Overhead were apartments. There was no elevator--merely thestreet door to unlock and four dim flights of stairs rising steeply tothe top.

  He lived on the top floor. As they paused before his door in the dimcorridor:

  "Are you afraid?" he asked.

  She came nearer, laid a hand on his arm:

  "Are _you_ afraid?"

  He stood silent, the latch-key in his hand.

  "I'm not afraid of myself--if that is what you mean," he said.

  "That is partly what I mean ... you'll have to mount guard over yoursoul."

  "I'll look out for my soul," he retorted dryly.

  "Do so. I lost mine. I--I would not wish any harm to yours through ourcompanionship."

  "Don't you worry about my soul," he remarked, fitting the key to thelock. But again her hand fell on his wrist:

  "Wait. I can't--can't help warning you. Neither your soul nor your bodyare safe if--if you ever do make of me a companion. I've _got_ to tellyou this!"

  "What are you talking about?" he demanded bluntly.

  "Because you have been courteous--considerate--and you _don't_ know--oh,you don't realise what spiritual peril is!--What your soul and body haveto fear if you--if you win me over--if you ever manage to make of me afriend!"

  He said: "People follow and threaten you. We know that. I understandalso that association with you involves me, and that I shall no doubt bemenaced with bodily harm."

  He laid his hand on hers where it still rested on his sleeves:

  "But that's my business, Miss Norne," he added with a smile. "So,otherwise, it being merely a plain business affair between you and me, Ithink I may also venture my immortal soul alone with you in my room."

  The girl flushed darkly.

  "You have misunderstood," she said.

  He looked at her coolly, intently; and arrived at no concl
usion. Young,very lovely, confessedly without moral principle, he still could notbelieve her actually depraved. "What did you mean?" he said bluntly.

  "In companionship with the lost, one might lose one's way--unawares....Do you know that there is an Evil loose in the world which is bent uponconquest by _obtaining control of men's minds_?"

  "No," he replied, amused.

  "And that, through the capture of men's minds and souls the destructionof civilisation is being planned?"

  "Is that what you learned in your captivity, Miss Norne?"

  "You do not believe me."

  "I believe your terrible experiences in China have shaken you to yourtragic little soul. Horror and grief and loneliness have left scars ontender, impressionable youth. They would have slain maturity--broken it,crushed it. But youth is flexible, pliable, and bends--gives way underpressure. Scars become slowly effaced. It shall be so with you. You willlearn to understand that nothing really can harm the soul."

  For a few moments' silence they stood facing each other on the dimlanding outside his locked door.

  "Nothing can slay our souls," he repeated in a grave voice. "I do notbelieve you really ever have done anything to wound even yourself-respect. I do not believe you are capable of it, or ever have been,or ever will be. But somebody has deeply wounded you, spiritually, andhas wounded your mind to persuade you that your soul is no longer inGod's keeping. For that is a lie!"

  He saw her features working with poignant emotions as though strugglingto believe him.

  "Souls are never lost," he said. "Ungoverned passions of every sortmerely cripple them for a space. God always heals them in the end."

  He laid his hand on the door-knob once more and lifted the latch-key.

  "Don't!" she whispered, catching his hand again, "if there should besomebody in there waiting for us!"

  "There is not a soul in my rooms. My servant sleeps out."

  "There _is_ somebody there!" she said, trembling.

  "Nobody, Miss Norne. Will you come in with me?"

  "I don't dare----"

  "Why?"

  "You and I alone together--no! oh, please--please! I am afraid!"

  "Of what?"

  "Of--giving you--my c-confidence--and trust--and--and f-friendship."

  "I want you to."

  "I must not! It would destroy us both, soul and body!"

  "I tell you," he said, impatiently, "that there is no destruction of thesoul--and it's a clean comradeship anyway--a fighting friendship I askof you--_all_ I ask; all I offer! Wherein, then, lies this peril inbeing alone together?"

  "Because I am finding it in my heart to believe in you, trust you, holdfast to your strength and protection. And if I give way--yield--and if Imake you a promise--and _if there is anybody in that room to see us andhear us--then_ we shall be destroyed, both of us, soul and body----"

  He took her hands, held them until their trembling ceased.

  "I'll answer for our bodies. Let God look after the rest. Will you trustHim?"

  She nodded.

  "And me?"

  "Yes."

  But her face blanched as he turned the latch-key, switched on theelectric light, and preceded her into the room beyond.

  The place was one of those accentless, typical bachelor apartments madecomfortable for anything masculine, but quite unlivable otherwise.

  Live coals still glowed in the hob grate; he placed a lump of cannelcoal on the embers, used a bellows vigorously and the flame caught witha greasy crackle.

  The girl stood motionless until he pulled up an easy chair for her, thenhe found another for himself. She let slip her furs, folded her handsaround the bunch of violets and waited.

  "Now," he said, "I'll come to the point. In 1916 I was at Plattsburg,expecting a commission. The Department of Justice sent for me. I went toWashington where I was made to understand that I had been selected toserve my country in what is vaguely known as the Secret Service--andwhich includes government agents attached to several departments.

  "The great war is over; but I am still retained in the service. Becausesomething more sinister than a hun victory over civilisation threatensthis Republic. And threatens the civilised world."

  "Anarchy," she said.

  "Bolshevism."

  She did not stir in her chair.

  She had become very white. She said nothing. He looked at her with hisquiet, reassuring smile.

  "That's what I want of you," he repeated.

  "I want your help," he went on, "I want your valuable knowledge of theOrient. I want whatever secret information you possess. I want yourrather amazing gifts, your unprecedented experience among almost unknownpeople, your familiarity with occult things, your astoundingpowers--whatever they are--hypnotic, psychic, material.

  "Because, to-day, civilisation is engaged in a secret battle forexistence against gathering powers of violence, the force and limit ofwhich are still unguessed.

  "It is a battle between righteousness and evil, between sanity andinsanity, light and darkness, God and Satan! And if civilisation doesnot win, then the world perishes."

  She raised her still eyes to his, but made no other movement.

  "Miss Norne," he said, "we in the International Service know enoughabout you to desire to know more.

  "We already knew the story you have told to me. Agents in theInternational Secret Service kept in touch with you from the time thatthe Japanese escorted you out of China.

  "From the day you landed, and all across the Continent to New York, youhave been kept in view by agents of this government.

  "Here, in New York, my men have kept in touch with you. And now,to-night, the moment has come for a personal understanding between youand me."

  The girl's pale lips moved--became stiffly articulate: "I--I wish tolive," she stammered, "I fear death."

  "I know it. I know what I ask when I ask your help."

  She said in the ghost of a voice: "If I turn against _them_--they willkill me."

  "They'll try," he said quietly.

  "They will not fail, Mr. Cleves."

  "That is in God's hands."

  She became deathly white at that.

  "No," she burst out in an agonised voice, "it is not in God's hands! Ifit were, I should not be afraid! It is in the hands of those who stolemy soul!"

  She covered her face with both arms, fairly writhing on her chair.

  "If the Yezidees have actually made you believe any such nonsense"--hebegan; but she dropped her arms and stared at him out of terrible blueeyes:

  "I don't want to die, I tell you! I am afraid!--_afraid_! If I reveal toyou what I know they'll kill me. If I turn against them and aid you,they'll slay my body, and send it after my soul!"

  She was trembling so violently that he sprang up and went to her. Aftera moment he passed one arm around her shoulders and held her firmly,close to him.

  "Come," he said, "do your duty. Those who enlist under the banner ofChrist have nothing to dread in this world or the next."

  "If--if I could believe I were safe there."

  "I tell you that you are. So is every human soul! What mad nonsense havethe Yezidees made you believe? Is there any surer salvation for the soulthan to die in Christ's service?"

  He slipped his arm from her quivering shoulders and grasped both herhands, crushing them as though to steady every fibre in her torturedbody.

  "I want you to live. I want to live, too. But I tell you it's in God'shands, and we soldiers of civilisation have nothing to fear exceptfailure to do our duty. Now, then, are we comrades under the UnitedStates Government?"

  "O God--I--dare not!"

  "_Are_ we?"

  Perhaps she felt the physical pain of his crushing grip for she turnedand looked him in the eyes.

  "I don't want to die," she whispered. "Don't make me!"

  "Will you help your country?"

  The terrible directness of her child's gaze became almost unendurable tohim.

  "Will you offer your country your soul and b
ody?" he insisted in a low,tense voice.

  Her stiff lips formed a word.

  "Yes!" he exclaimed.

  "Yes."

  For a moment she rested against his shoulder, deathly white, then in aflash she had straightened, was on her feet in one bound and so swiftlythat he scarcely followed her movement--was unaware that she had risenuntil he saw her standing there with a pistol glittering in her hand,her eyes fixed on the portieres that hung across the corridor leading tohis bedroom.

  "What on earth," he began, but she interrupted him, keeping her gazefocused 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 everythingI know! You wish to learn what is this monstrous evil that threatens theworld with destruction--what you call anarchy and Bolshevism? It is anEvil that was born before Christ came! It is an Evil which not onlydestroys cities and empires and men but which is more terrible still forit obtains control of the human mind, and uses it at will; and itobtains sovereignty over the soul, and makes it prisoner. Its aim is todominate first, then to destroy. It was conceived in the beginning byErlik and by Sorcerers and devils.... Always, from the first, there havebeen sorcerers and living devils.

  "And when human history began to be remembered and chronicled, devilswere living who worshiped Erlik and practised sorcery.

  "They have been called by many names. A thousand years before ChristHassan Sabbah founded his sect called Hassanis or Assassins. TheYezidees are of them. Their Chief is still called Sabbah; their creed isthe annihilation of civilisation!"

  Cleves had risen. The girl spoke in a clear, accentless monotone, notlooking 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 hiddenbehind that curtain in the passageway?"

  "If there is," she replied in her excited but distinct voice, "here is atale to entertain him:

  "The Hassanis are a sect of assassins which has spread out of Asia allover the world, and they are determined upon the annihilation ofeverything and everybody in it except themselves!

  "In Germany is a branch of the sect. The hun is the lineal descendant ofthe ancient Yezidee; the gods of the hun are the old demons under othernames; the desire and object of the hun is the same desire--to rule theminds 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--allare secretly swarming in the hidden places for the same purpose!"

  The girl's blue eyes were aflame, now, and the pistol was lifting slowlyin her hand to a deadly level.

  "Sanang!" she cried in a terrible voice.

  "Sanang!" she cried again in her terrifying young voice--"Toad! Tortoiseegg! Spittle of Erlik! May the Thirty Thousand Calamities overtake you!Sheik-el-Djebel!--cowardly Khan whom I laughed at from the temple whenit rained yellow snakes on the marble steps when all the gongs in Yiansounded 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 emptyopen palm, like a missile hurled, a thin, blinding beam of light struckthe curtains, making them suddenly transparent.

  _A man stood there._

  He came out, moving very slowly as though partly stupefied. He woreevening dress under his overcoat, and had a long knife in his righthand.

  Nobody spoke.

  "So--I really was to die then, if I came here," said the girl in awondering way.

  Sanang's stealthy gaze rested on her, stole toward Cleves. He moistenedhis lips with his tongue. "You deliver me to this government agent?" heasked hoarsely.

  "I deliver nobody by treachery. You may go, Sanang."

  He hesitated, a graceful, faultless, metropolitan figure in top-hat andevening attire. Then, as he started to move, Cleves covered him with hisweapon.

  "I can't let that man go free!" cried Cleves angrily.

  "Very well!" she retorted in a passionate voice--"then take him if youare able! _Tokhta!_ Look out for yourself!"

  Something swift as lightning struck the pistol from his grasp,--blindedhim, half stunned him, set him reeling in a drenching blaze of lightthat blotted out all else.

  He heard the door slam; he stumbled, caught at the back of a chair whilehis senses and sight were clearing.

  "By heavens!" he whispered with ashen lips, "you--you _are_ asorceress--or something. What--what, are you doing to me?"

  There was no answer. And when his vision cleared a little more he sawher crouched on the floor, her head against the locked door, listening,perhaps--or sobbing--he scarcely understood which until the quiver ofher shoulders made it plainer.

  When at last Cleves went to her and bent over and touched her she lookedup at him out of wet eyes, and her grief-drawn mouth quivered.

  "I--I don't know," she sobbed, "if he truly stole away mysoul--there--there in the temple dusk of Yian. But he--he stole myheart--for all his wickedness--Sanang, Prince of the Yezidees--and Ihave been fighting him for it all these years--all these longyears--fighting for what he stole in the temple dusk!... And now--now Ihave it back--my heart--all broken to pieces--here on the floor behindyour--your bolted door."