Suddenly her cry rang out sharply in the moonlight, and then, all at once, a man in white stood there in the l.u.s.tre of the moon--a young, graceful man dressed in white flannels and carrying on his right arm what seemed to be a long white cloak.
Instantly the girl was transformed from a living statue into a lithe, supple, lightly moving thing that pa.s.sed swiftly to the west of the glade, keeping the young man in white facing the wind, which was blowing and tossing the plumy young pines.
"So it is _you_, young man, with whom I have been wrestling here under the moon of the only G.o.d!" she said in a strange little voice, all vibrant and metallic with menacing laughter.
"It is I, Keuke Mongol," replied the young man in white, tranquilly; yet his words came as though he were tired and out of breath, and the hand he raised to touch his small black moustache trembled as if from physical exhaustion.
"Yarghouz!" she exclaimed. "Why did I not know you there on the golf links, a.s.sa.s.sin of the Seventh Tower? And why do you come here with your shroud over your arm and hidden under it, in your right hand, a flask full of death?"
He said, smiling:
"I come because you are to die, Heavenly-Azure Eyes. I bring you your shroud." And he moved warily westward around the open circle of young pines.
Instantly the girl flung her right arm straight upward.
"Yarghouz!"
"I hear thee, Heavenly Azure."
"Another step to the west and I shatter thy flask of gas."
"With what?" he demanded; but stood discreetly motionless.
"With what I grasp in an empty palm. Thou knowest, Yarghouz."
"I have heard," he said with smiling uncertainty, "but to hear of force that can be hurled out of an empty palm is one thing, and to see it and feel it is another. I think you lie, Heavenly Azure."
"So thought Gutchlug. And died of a yellow snake."
The young man seemed to reflect. Then he looked up at her in his frank, smiling way.
"Wilt thou listen, Heavenly Eyes?"
"I hear thee, Yarghouz."
"Listen then, Keuke Mongol. Take life from us as we offer it. Life is sweet. Erlik, like a spider, waits in darkness for lost souls that flutter to his net."
"You think my soul was lost there in the temple, Yarghouz?"
"Unutterably lost, little temple girl of Yian. Therefore, live. Take life as a gift!"
"Whose gift?"
"Sanang"s."
"It is written," she said gravely, "that we belong to G.o.d and we return to him. Now then, Yezidee, do your duty as I do mine! Kai!"
At the sound of the formula always uttered by the sect of a.s.sa.s.sins when about to do murder, the young man started and shrank back. The west wind blew fresh in his startled eyes.
"Sorceress," he said less firmly, "you leave your Yiort to come all alone into this forest and seek me. Why then have you come, if not to submit!--if not to take the gift of life--if not to turn away from your seducers who are hunting me, and who have corrupted you?"
"Yarghouz, I come to slay you," she said quietly.
Suddenly the man snarled at her, flung the shroud at her feet, and crept deliberately to the left.
"Be careful!" she cried sharply; "look what you"re about! Stand still, son of a dog! May your mother bewail your death!"
Yarghouz edged toward the west, clasping in his right hand the flask of gas.
"Sorceress," he laughed, "a witch of Thibet prophesied with a drum that the three purities, the nine perfections, and the nine times nine felicities shall be lodged in him who slays the treacherous temple girl, Keuke Mongol! There is more magic in this bottle which I grasp than in thy mind and body. Heavenly Eyes! I pray G.o.d to be merciful to this soul I send to Erlik!"
All the time he was advancing, edging cautiously around the circle of little plumy pines; and already the wind struck his left cheek.
"Yarghouz Khan!" cried the girl in her clear voice. "Take up your shroud and repeat the fatha!"
"Backward!" laughed the young man, "--as do you, Keuke Mongol!"
"Heretic!" she retorted. "Do you also refuse to name the ten Imaums in your prayers? Dog! Toad! Spittle of Erlik! May all your cattle die and all your horses take the glanders and all your dogs the mange!"
"Silence, sorceress!" he shouted, pale with fear and fury. "Witch! Mud worm! May Erlik seize you! May your skin be covered with putrefying sores! May all the demons torment you! May G.o.d remember you in h.e.l.l!"
"Yarghouz! Stand still!"
"Is your word then the Rampart of Gog and Magog, you young witch of Yian, that a Khan of the Seventh Tower need fear you!" he sneered, stealing stealthily westward through the feathery pines.
"I give thee thy last chance, Yarghouz Khan," she said in an excited voice that trembled. "Recite thy prayer naming the ten, because with their holy names upon thy lips thou mayest escape d.a.m.nation. For I am here to slay thee, Yarghouz! Take up thy shroud and pray!"
The young man felt the west wind at the back of his left ear. Then he began to laugh.
"Heavenly Eyes," he said, "thy end is come--together with the two police who hide in the pines yonder behind thee! Behold the bottle magic of Yarghouz Khan!"
And he lifted the gla.s.s flask in the moonlight as though he were about to smash it at her feet.
Then a terrible thing occurred. The entire flask glowed red hot in his grasp; and the man screamed and strove convulsively to fling the bottle; but it stuck to his hand, melted into the smoking flesh.
Then he screamed again--or tried to--but his entire lower jaw came off and he stood there with the awful orifice gaping in the moonlight--stood, reeled a moment--and then--and _then_--his whole face slid off, leaving nothing but a bony mask out of which burst shriek after shriek----
Keuke Mongol had fainted dead away. Cleves took her into his arms.
Recklow, trembling and deathly white, went over to the thing that lay among the young pines and forced himself to bend over it.
The gla.s.s flask still stuck to one charred hand, but it was no longer hot. And Recklow rolled the unspeakable thing into the white shroud and pushed it into the swamp.
An evil ooze took it, slowly sucked it under and engulfed it. A few stinking bubbles broke.
Recklow went back to the little glade among the pines.
A young girl lay sobbing convulsively in her husband"s arms, asking G.o.d"s pardon and his for the justice she had done upon an enemy of all mankind.