The Slayer of Souls. Chambers Robert William

in the slightest, dear young lady," he said cheerfully.

      "Do you not believe that to have been instructed in such unlawful knowledge is damning? Do you not believe that ability to employ unknown forces is forbidden of God, and that to disobey His law means death to the soul?"

      "No!"

      "That it is the price one pays to Satan for occult power over people's minds?" she insisted.

      "Hypnotic suggestion is not one of the cardinal sins," explained Recklow, still smiling – "unless wickedly employed. The Yezidee priesthood is a band of so-called sorcerers only because of their wicked employment of whatever hypnotic and psychic knowledge they may have obtained.

      "There was nothing intrinsically wicked in the huns' discovery of phosgene. But the use they made of it made devils out of them. My ability to manufacture phosgene gas is no crime. But if I manufacture it and use it to poison innocent human beings, then, in that sense, I am, perhaps, a sort of modern sorcerer."

      Tressa Norne turned paler:

      "I had better tell you that I have used – forbidden knowledge – which the Yezidees taught me in the temple of Erlik."

      "Used it how?" demanded Cleves.

      "To – to earn a living… And once or twice to defend myself."

      There was the slightest scepticism in Recklow's bland smile. "You did quite right, Miss Norne."

      She had become very white now. She stood beside Recklow, her back toward the suspended map, and looked in a scared sort of way from one to the other of the men seated before her, turning finally to Cleves, and coming toward him.

      "I – I once killed a man," she said with a catch in her breath.

      Cleves reddened with astonishment. "Why did you do that?" he asked.

      "He was already on his way to kill me in bed."

      "You were perfectly right," remarked Recklow coolly.

      "I don't know … I was in bed… And then, on the edge of sleep, I felt his mind groping to get hold of mine – feeling about in the darkness to get hold of my brain and seize it and paralyse it."

      All colour had left her face. Cleves gripped the arm of his chair and watched her intently.

      "I – I had only a moment's mental freedom," she went on in a ghost of a voice. "I was just able to rouse myself, fight off those murderous brain-fingers – let loose a clear mental ray… And then, O God! I saw him in his room with his Kalmuck knife – saw him already on his way to murder me – Gutchlug Khan, the Yezidee – looking about in his bedroom for a shroud… And when – when he reached for the bed to draw forth a fine, white sheet for the shroud without which no Yezidee dares journey deathward – then —then I became frightened… And I killed him – I slew him there in his hotel bedroom on the floor above mine!"

      Selden moistened his lips: "That Oriental, Gutchlug, died from heart-failure in a San Francisco hotel," he said. "I was there at the time."

      "He died by the fangs of a little yellow snake," whispered the girl.

      "There was no snake in his room," retorted Cleves.

      "And no wound on his body," added Selden. "I attended the autopsy."

      She said, faintly: "There was no snake, and no wound, as you say… Yet Gutchlug died of both there in his bedroom… And before he died he heard his soul bidding him farewell; and he saw the death-adder coiled in the sheet he clutched – saw the thing strike him again and again – saw and felt the tiny wounds on his left hand; felt the fangs pricking deep, deep into the veins; died of it there within the minute – died of the swiftest poison known. And yet – "

      She turned her dead-white face to Cleves – "And yet there was no snake there!.. And never had been… And so I – I ask you, gentlemen, if souls do not die when minds learn to fight death with death – and deal it so swiftly, so silently, while one's body lies, unstirring on a bed – in a locked room on the floor below – "

      She swayed a little, put out one hand rather blindly.

      Recklow rose and passed a muscular arm around her; Cleves, beside her, held her left hand, crushing it, without intention, until she opened her eyes with a cry of pain.