The Slayer Of souls Part 26

"Her chance?" repeated Recklow.

"To marry whatever man she will some day care for."

"I see," said Recklow drily.

There was a silence, then:

"She's simply a splendid specimen of womanhood," said Cleves earnestly.

"And intensely interesting to me. Why, Recklow, I haven't known a dull moment--though I fear she has known many----"

"Why?"

"Why? Well, being married to a--a sort of temporary figurehead--shut up here all day alone with a man of no particular interest to her----"

"Don't you interest her?"

"Well, how could I? She didn't choose me because she liked me particularly."

"Didn't she?" asked Recklow, still more drily. "Well, that does make it a trifle dull for you both."

"Not for me," said the younger man navely. "She is one of the most interesting women I ever met. And good heavens!--what psychic knowledge that child possesses! She did a thing to-day--merely to amuse me----" He checked himself and looked at Recklow out of sombre eyes.

"What did she do?" inquired the older man.

"I think I'll let her tell you--if she wishes.... And that reminds me.

Why did you come down here, Recklow?"

"I want to show you something, Cleves. May we step into the house?"

They went into a little lamplit living-room. Recklow handed a newspaper clipping to Cleves: the latter read it, standing:

"HAD DEADLIEST GAS READY FOR GERMANS

"_'Lewisite' Might Have Killed Millions_

"WAs.h.i.+NGTON, APRIL 24.--Guarded night and day and far out of human reach on a pedestal at the Interior Department Exposition here is a tiny vial. It contains a specimen of the deadliest poison ever known, 'Lewisite,' the product of an American scientist.

"Germany escaped this poison by signing the armistice before all the resources of the United States were turned upon her.

"Ten airplanes carrying 'Lewisite' would have wiped out, it is said, every vestige of life--animal and vegetable--in Berlin. A single day's output would snuff out the millions of lives on Manhattan Island. A drop poured in the palm of the hand would penetrate to the blood, reach the heart and kill the victim in agony.

"What was coming to Germany may be imagined by the fact that when the armistice was signed 'Lewisite' was being manufactured at the rate of ten tons a day. Three thousand tons of this most terrible instrument ever conceived for killing would have been ready for business on the American front in France on November 1.

"'Lewisite' is another of the big secrets of the war just leaking out. It was developed in the Bureau of Mines by Professor W. Lee Lewis, of Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill., who took a commission as a captain in the army.

"The poison was manufactured in a specially built plant near Cleveland, called the 'Mouse Trap,' because every workman who entered the stockade went under an agreement not to leave the eleven-acre s.p.a.ce until the war was won. The object of this, of course, was to protect the secret.

"Work on the plant was started eighteen days after the Bureau of Mines had completed its experiments.

"Experts are certain that no one will want to steal the sample.

Everybody at the Exposition, which shows what Secretary Lane's department is doing, keeps as far away from it as possible."

When Cleves had finished reading, he raised his eyes in silence.

"That vial was stolen a week ago," said Recklow gravely, "by a young man who killed one guard and fatally wounded the other."

"Was there any ante-mortem statement?"

"Yes. I've followed the man. I lost all trace of him at Palm Beach, but I picked it up again at Ormond. _And now I'm here_, Cleves."

"You don't mean you've traced him here!" exclaimed Cleves under his breath.

"He's here on the St. Johns River, somewhere. He came up in a motor-boat, but left it east of Orchard Cove. Benton knows this country.

He's covering the motor-boat. And I--came here to see how you are getting on."

"And to warn us," added Cleves quietly.

"Well--yes. He's got that stuff. It's deadlier than the newspaper suspects. And I guess--I guess, Cleves, he's one of those d.a.m.ned Yezidee witch-doctors--or sorcerers, as they call them;--one of that sect of a.s.sa.s.sins sent over here to work havoc on feeble minds and do murder on the side."

"Why do you think so?"

"Because the dirty beast lugs his shroud around with him--a bed-sheet stolen from the New Willard in Was.h.i.+ngton.

"We were so close to him in Jacksonville that we got it, and his luggage. But we didn't get him, the rat! G.o.d knows how he knew we were waiting for him in his room. He never came back to get his luggage.

"But he stole a bed-sheet from his hotel in St. Augustine, and that is how we picked him up again. Then, at Palm Beach, we lost the beggar, but somehow or other I felt it in my bones that he was after you--you and your wife. So I sent Benton to Ormond and I went to Palatka. Benton picked up his trail. It led toward you--toward the St. Johns. And the reptile has been here forty-eight hours, trying to nose you out, I suppose----"

Tressa came into the room. Both men looked at her.

Cleves said in a guarded voice:

"To-day, on the golf links at Orchard Cove, there was a young man in white flannels--very polite and courteous to us--but--Tressa thought she saw him slinking through the woods as though following and watching us."

"My man, probably," said Recklow. He turned quietly to Tressa and sketched for her the substance of what he had just told Cleves.

"The man in white flannels on the golf links," said Cleves, "was well built and rather handsome, and not more than twenty-five. I thought he was a Jew."

"I thought so too," said Tressa, calmly, "until I saw him in the woods.

And then--and then--suddenly it came to me that his smile was the smile of a treacherous Shaman sorcerer.

"... And the idea haunts me--the memory of those smooth-faced, smiling men in white--men who smile only when they slay--when they slay body and soul under the iris skies of Yian!--O G.o.d, merciful, long suffering,"

she whispered, staring into the East, "deliver our souls from Satan who was stoned, and our bodies from the snare of the Yezidee!"

CHAPTER IX