"Do you not believe that to have been instructed in such unlawful knowledge is d.a.m.ning? Do you not believe that ability to employ unknown forces is forbidden of G.o.d, 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 G.o.d! 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 p.r.i.c.king 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 pa.s.sed 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.
"Are you all right?" asked Recklow bluntly.
"Yes." She turned and looked at Cleves and he caressed her bruised hand as though dazed.
"Tell me," she said to Cleves--"you who know--know more about my mind than anybody living----" a painful colour surged into her face--but she went on steadily, forcing herself to meet his gaze: "tell me, Mr.
Cleves--do you still believe that nothing can really destroy my soul?
And that it shall yet win through to safety?"
He said: "Your soul is in G.o.d"s keeping, and always shall be.... And if the Yezidees have made you believe otherwise, they lie."
Recklow added in a slow, perplexed way: "I have no personal knowledge of psychic power. I am not psychic, not susceptible. But if you actually possess such ability, Miss Norne, and if you have employed such knowledge to defend your life, then you have done absolutely right."
"No guilt touches you," added Selden with an involuntary shiver, "if by hypnosis or psychic ability you really did put an end to that would-be murderer, Gutchlug."
Selden said: "If Gutchlug died by the fangs of a yellow death-adder which existed only in his own mind, and if you actually had anything to do with it you acted purely in self-defence."
"You did your full duty," added Benton--"but--good G.o.d!--it seems incredible to me, that such power can actually be available in the world!"
Recklow spoke again in his pleasant, undisturbed voice: "Go back to the map, Miss Norne, and tell us a little more about this rather terrifying thing which you believe menaces the civilised world with destruction."
Tressa Norne laid a slim finger on the map. Her voice had become steady.
She said:
"The devil-worship, of which one of the modern developments is Bolshevism, and another the terrorism of the hun, began in Asia long before Christ"s advent: At least so it was taught us in the temple of Erlik.
"It has always existed, its aim always has been the annihilation of good and the elevation of evil; the subjection of right by might, and the worldwide triumph of wrong.
"Perhaps it is as old as the first battle between G.o.d and Satan. I have wondered about it, sometimes. There in the dusk of the temple when the Eight a.s.sa.s.sins came--the eight Sheiks-el-Djebel, all in white--chanting the Yakase of Sabbah--always that dirge when they came and spread their eight white shrouds on the temple steps----"
Her voice caught; she waited to recover her composure. Then went on:
"The ambition of Genghis was to conquer the world by force of arms. It was merely of physical subjection that he dreamed. But the Slayer of Souls----"
"Who?" asked Recklow sharply.
"The Slayer of Souls--Erlik"s vice-regent on earth--Ha.s.san Sabbah. The Old Man of the Mountain. It is of him I am speaking," exclaimed Tressa Norne--with quiet resolution. "Genghis sought only physical conquest of man; the Yezidee"s ambition is more awful, _for he is attempting to surprise and seize the very minds of men_!"
There was a dead silence. Tressa looked palely upon the four.
"The Yezidees--who you tell me are not sorcerers--are using power--which you tell me is not magic accursed by G.o.d--to waylay, capture, enslave, and destroy _the minds and souls of mankind_.
"It may be that what they employ is hypnotic ability and psychic power and can be, some day, explained on a scientific basis when we learn more about the occult laws which govern these phenomena.
"But could anything render the threat less awful? For there have existed for centuries--perhaps always--a sect of Satanists determined upon the destruction of everything that is pure and holy and good on earth; and they are resolved to subst.i.tute for righteousness the dreadful reign of h.e.l.l.
"In the beginning there were comparatively few of these human demons.
Gradually, through the eras, they have increased. In the twelfth century there were fifty thousand of the Sect of a.s.sa.s.sins.