Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  It was some time between three and half-past, he judged, when a sudden movement of the girl brought him upright on his seat, quivering with excitement.

  “Mr. Cleves!”

  “Yes?”

  “The Sorcerers!”

  “Where? Outside the door?”

  “Oh, my God,” she murmured, “they are after my mind again! Their fingers are groping to seize my brain and get possession of it!”

  “What!” he stammered, horrified.

  “Here — in the dark,” she whispered— “and I feel their fingers caressing me — searching — moving stealthily to surprise and grasp my thoughts.... I know what they are doing.... I am resisting.... I am fighting — fighting!”

  She sat bolt upright with clenched hands at her breast, her face palely aglow in the dimness as though illumined by some vivid inward light — or, as he thought — from the azure blaze in her wide-open eyes.

  “Is — is this what you call — what you believe to be magic?” he asked unsteadily. “Is there some hostile psychic influence threatening you?”

  “Yes. I’m resisting. I’m fighting — fighting. They shall not trap me. They shall not harm you!... I know how to defend myself and you!... And you!”

  Suddenly she flung her left arm around his neck and the delicate clenched hand brushed his cheek.

  “They shall not have you,” she breathed. “I am fighting. I am holding my own. There are eight of them — eight Assassins! My mind is in battle with theirs — fiercely in battle.... I hold my own! I am armed and waiting!”

  With a convulsive movement she drew his head closer to her shoulder. “Eight of them!” she whispered,— “trying to entrap and seize my brain. But my thoughts are free! My mind is defending you — you, here in my arms!”

  After a breathless silence: “Look out!” she whispered with terrible energy; “they are after your mind at last. Fix your thoughts on me! Keep your mind clear of their net! Don’t let their ghostly fingers touch it. Look at me!” She drew him closer. “Look at me! Believe in me! I can resist. I can defend you. Does your head feel confused?”

  “Yes — numb.”

  “Don’t sleep! Don’t close your eyes! Keep them open and look at me!”

  “I can scarcely see you — —”

  “You must see me!”

  “My eyes are heavy,” he said drowsily. “I can’t see you, Tressa — —”

  “Wake! Look at me! Keep your mind clear. Oh, I beg you — I beg you! They’re after our minds and souls, I tell you! Oh, believe in me,” she beseeched him in an agonised whisper— “Can’t you believe in me for a moment, — as if you loved me!”

  His heavy lids lifted and he tried to look at her.

  “Can you see me? Can you?”

  He muttered something in a confused voice.

  “Victor!”

  At the sound of his own name, he opened his eyes again and tried to straighten up, but his pistol fell to the carpet.

  “Victor!” she gasped, “clear your mind in the name of God!”

  “I can not — —”

  “I tell you hell is opening beyond that door! — outside your bolted door, there! Can’t you believe me! Can’t you hear me! Oh, what will hold you if the love of God can not!” she burst out. “I’d crucify myself for you if you’d look at me — if you’d only fight hard enough to believe in me — as though you loved me!”

  His eyes unclosed but he sank back against her shoulder.

  “Victor!” she cried in a terrible voice.

  There was no answer.

  “If the love of God could only hold you for a moment more!” — she stammered with her mouth against his ear, “just for a moment, Victor! Can’t you hear me?”

  “Yes — very far away.”

  “Fight for me! Try to care for me! Don’t let Sanang have me!”

  He shuddered in her arms, reached out and resting heavily on her shoulder, staggered to his feet and stood swaying like a drunken man.

  “No, by God,” he said thickly, “Sanang shall not touch you.”

  The girl was on her feet now, holding him upright with an arm around his shoulders.

  “They can’t — can’t harm us together,” she stammered. “Hark! Listen! Can you hear? Oh, can you hear?”

  “Give me my pistol,” he tried to say, but his tongue seemed twisted. “No — by God — Sanang shall not touch you.”

  She stooped lithely and recovered the weapon. “Hush,” she said close to his burning face. “Listen. Our minds are safe! I can hear somebody’s soul bidding its body farewell!”

  White-lipped she burst out laughing, kicked the shroud out of the way, thrust the pistol into his right hand, went forward, forcing him along beside her, and drew the bolts from the door.

  Suddenly he spoke distinctly:

  “Is there anything outside that door on the landing?”

  “Yes.... I don’t know what. Are you ready?” She laid her hand on lock and knob.

  He nodded. At the same instant she jerked open the door; and a hunchback who had been picking at the lock fell headlong into the room, his pistol exploding on the carpet in a streak of fire.

  It was a horrible struggle to secure the powerful misshapen creature, for he clawed and squealed and bounced about on the floor, striking blindly with ape-like arms. But at last Cleves held him down, throttled and twitching, and Tressa ripped strips from the shroud to truss up the writhing thing.

  Then Cleves switched on the light.

  “Why — why — you rat!” he exclaimed in hysterical relief at seeing a living man whom he recognised there at his feet. “What are you doing here?”

  The hunchback’s red eyes blazed up at him from the floor.

  “Who — who is he?” faltered the girl.

  “He’s a German tailor named Albert Feke — one of the Chicago Bolsheviki — the most dangerous sort we harbour — one of their vile leaders who preaches that might is right and tells his disciples to go ahead and take what they want.”

  He looked down at the malignant cripple.

  “You’re wanted for the I. W. W. bomb murder, Albert. Did you know it?”

  The hunchback licked his bloody lips. Then he kicked himself to a sitting position, squatted there like a toad and looked steadily at Tressa Norne out of small red-rimmed eyes. Blood dripped on his beard; his huge hairy fists, tied and crossed behind his back, made odd, spasmodic movements.

  Cleves went to the telephone. Presently Tressa heard his voice, calm and distinct as usual:

  “We’ve caught Albert Feke. He’s here at my rooms. I’d like to have you come over, Recklow.... Oh, yes, he kicked and scuffled and scratched like a cat.... What?... No, I hadn’t heard that he’d been in China.... Who?... Albert Feke? You say he was one of the Germans who escaped from Shantung four years ago?... You think he’s a Yezidee! You mean one of the Eight Assassins?”

  The hunchback, staring at Tressa out of red-rimmed eyes, suddenly snarled and lurched his misshapen body at her.

  “Teufelstuck!” he screamed, “ain’t I tell efferybody in Yian already it iss safer if we cut your throat! Devil-slut of Erlik — snow-leopardess! — cat of the Yezidees who has made of Sanang a fool! — it iss I who haf said always, always, that you know too damn much!... Kai!... I hear my soul bidding me farewell. Gif me my shroud!”

  Cleves came back from the telephone. With the toe of his left foot he lifted the shroud and kicked it across the hunchback’s knees.

  “So you were one of the huns who instigated the massacre in Yian,” he said, curiously. At that Tressa turned very white and a cry escaped her.

  But the hunchback’s features were all twisted into ferocious laughter, and he beat on the carpet with the heels of his great splay feet.

  “Ja! Ja!” he shrieked, “in Yian it vas a goot hunting! English and Yankee men und vimmens ve haff dropped into dose deep wells down. Py Gott in Himmel, how dey schream up out of dose deep wells in Yian!” He began to cackle and shriek in his frenzy. “Ach Gott ja!
It iss not you either — you there, Keuke Mongol, who shall escape from the Sheiks-el-Djebel! It iss dot Old Man of the Mountain who shall tell your soul it iss time to say farewell! Ja! Ja! Ach Gott! — it iss my only regret that I shall not see the world when it is all afire! Ja! Ja! — all on fire like hell! But you shall see it, slut-leopard of the snows! You shall see it und you shall burn! Kai! Kai! My soul it iss bidding my body farewell. Kai! May Erlik curse you, Keuke Mongol — Heavenly Azure — Sorceress of the temple!—”

  He spat at her and rolled over in his shroud.

  The girl looking down on him closed her eyes for a moment, and Cleves saw her bloodless lips move, and bent nearer, listening. And he heard her whispering to herself:

  “Preserve us all, O God, from the wrath of Satan who was stoned.”

  CHAPTER VII

  THE BRIDAL

  Over the United States stretched an unseen network of secret intrigue woven tirelessly night and day by the busy enemies of civilisation — Reds, parlour-socialists, enemy-aliens, terrorists, Bolsheviki, pseudo-intellectuals, I. W. W.’s, social faddists, and amateur meddlers of every nuance — all the various varieties of the vicious, witless, and mentally unhinged — brought together through the “cohesive power of plunder” and the degeneration of cranial tissue.

  All over the United States the various departmental divisions of the Secret Service were busily following up these threads of intrigue leading everywhere through the obscurity of this vast and secret maze.

  To meet the constantly increasing danger of physical violence and to uncover secret plots threatening sabotage and revolution, there were capable agents in every branch of the Secret Service, both Federal and State.

  But in the first months of 1919 something more terrifying than physical violence suddenly threatened civilised America, — a wild, grotesque, incredible threat of a war on human minds!

  And, little by little, the United States Government became convinced that this ghastly menace was no dream of a disordered imagination, but that it was real: that among the enemies of civilisation there actually existed a few powerful but perverted minds capable of wielding psychic forces as terrific weapons: that by the sinister use of psychic knowledge controlling these mighty forces the very minds of mankind could be stealthily approached, seized, controlled and turned upon civilisation to aid in the world’s destruction.

  In terrible alarm the Government turned to England for advice. But Sir William Crookes was dead.

  However, in England, Sir Conan Doyle immediately took up the matter, and in America Professor Hyslop was called into consultation.

  And then, when the Government was beginning to realise what this awful menace meant, and that there were actually in the United States possibly half a dozen people who already had begun to carry on a diabolical warfare by means of psychic power, for the purpose of enslaving and controlling the very minds of men, — then, in the terrible moment of discovery, a young girl landed in America after fourteen years’ absence in Asia.

  And this was the amazing girl that Victor Cleves had just married, at Recklow’s suggestion, and in the line of professional duty, — and moral duty, perhaps.

  It had been a brief, matter-of-fact ceremony. John Recklow, of the Secret Service, was there; also Benton and Selden of the same service.

  The bride’s lips were unresponsive; cold as the touch of the groom’s unsteady hand.

  She looked down at her new ring in a blank sort of way, gave her hand listlessly to Recklow and to the others in turn, whispered a timidly comprehensive “Thank you,” and walked away beside Cleves as though dazed.

  There was a taxicab waiting. Tressa entered. Recklow came out and spoke to Cleves in a low voice.

  “Don’t worry,” replied Cleves dryly. “That’s why I married her.”

  “Where are you going now?” inquired Recklow.

  “Back to my apartment.”

  “Why don’t you take her away for a month?”

  Cleves flushed with annoyance: “This is no occasion for a wedding trip. You understand that, Recklow.”

  “I understand. But we ought to give her a breathing space. She’s had nothing but trouble. She’s worn out.”

  Cleves hesitated: “I can guard her better in the apartment. Isn’t it safer to go back there, where your people are always watching the street and house day and night?”

  “In a way it might be safer, perhaps. But that girl is nearly exhausted. And her value to us is unlimited. She may be the vital factor in this fight with anarchy. Her weapon is her mind. And it’s got to have a chance to rest.”

  Cleves, with one hand on the cab door, looked around impatiently.

  “Do you, also, conclude that the psychic factor is actually part of this damned problem of Bolshevism?”

  Recklow’s cool eyes measured him: “Do you?”

  “My God, Recklow, I don’t know — after what my own eyes have seen.”

  “I don’t know either,” said the other calmly, “but I am taking no chances. I don’t attempt to explain certain things that have occurred. But if it be true that a misuse of psychic ability by foreigners — Asiatics — among the anarchists is responsible for some of the devilish things being done in the United States, then your wife’s unparalleled knowledge of the occult East is absolutely vital to us. And so I say, better take her away somewhere and give her mind a chance to recover from the incessant strain of these tragic years.”

  The two men stood silent for a moment, then Recklow went to the window of the taxicab.

  “I have been suggesting a trip into the country, Mrs. Cleves,” he said pleasantly, “ — into the real country, somewhere, — a month’s quiet in the woods, perhaps. Wouldn’t it appeal to you?”

  Cleves turned to catch her low-voiced answer.

  “I should like it very much,” she said in that odd, hushed way of speaking, which seemed to have altered her own voice and manner since the ceremony a little while before.

  Driving back to his apartment beside her, he strove to realise that this girl was his wife.

  One of her gloves lay across her lap, and on it rested a slender hand. And on one finger was his ring.

  But Victor Cleves could not bring himself to believe that this brand-new ring really signified anything to him, — that it had altered his own life in any way. But always his incredulous eyes returned to that slim finger resting there, unstirring, banded with a narrow circlet of virgin gold.

  In the apartment they did not seem to know exactly what to do or say — what attitude to assume — what effort to make.

  Tressa went into her own room, removed her hat and furs, and came slowly back into the living-room, where Cleves still stood gazing absently out of the window.

  A fine rain was falling.

  They seated themselves. There seemed nothing better to do.

  He said, politely: “In regard to going away for a rest, you wouldn’t care for the North Woods, I fancy, unless you like winter sports. Do you?”

  “I like sunlight and green leaves,” she said in that odd, still voice.

  “Then, if it would please you to go South for a few weeks’ rest — —”

  “Would it inconvenience you?”

  Her manner touched him.

  “My dear Miss Norne,” he began, and checked himself, flushing painfully. The girl blushed, too; then, when he began to laugh, her lovely, bashful smile glimmered for the first time.

  “I really can’t bring myself to realise that you and I are married,” he explained, still embarrassed, though smiling.

  Her smile became an endeavour. “I can’t believe it either, Mr. Cleves,” she said. “I feel rather stunned.”

  “Hadn’t you better call me Victor — under the circumstances?” he suggested, striving to speak lightly.

  “Yes.... It will not be very easy to say it — not for some time, I think.”

  “Tressa?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes — what?”

  “Yes — Victor.”<
br />
  “That’s the idea,” he insisted with forced gaiety.

  “The thing to do is to face this rather funny situation and take it amiably and with good humour. You’ll have your freedom some day, you know.”

  “Yes — I — know.”

  “And we’re already on very good terms. We find each other interesting, don’t we?”

  “Yes.”

  “It even seems to me,” he ventured, “it certainly seems to me, at times, as though we are approaching a common basis of — of mutual — er — esteem.”

  “Yes. I — I do esteem you, Mr. Cleves.”

  “In point of fact,” he concluded, surprised, “we are friends — in a way. Wouldn’t you call it — friendship?”

  “I think so, I think I’d call it that,” she admitted.

  “I think so, too. And that is lucky for us. That makes this crazy situation more comfortable — less — well, perhaps less ponderous.”

  The girl assented with a vague smile, but her eyes remained lowered.

  “You see,” he went on, “when two people are as oddly situated as we are, they’re likely to be afraid of being in each other’s way. But they ought to get on without being unhappy as long as they are quite confident of each other’s friendly consideration. Don’t you think so, Tressa?”

  Her lowered eyes rested steadily on her ring-finger. “Yes,” she said. “And I am not — unhappy, or — afraid.”

  She lifted her blue gaze to his; and, somehow, he thought of her barbaric name, Keuke, — and its Yezidee significance, “heavenly — azure.”

  “Are we really going away together?” she asked timidly.

  “Certainly, if you wish.”

  “If you, also, wish it, Mr. Cleves.”

  He found himself saying with emphasis that he always wished to do what she desired. And he added, more gently:

  “You are tired, Tressa — tired and lonely and unhappy.”

  “Tired, but not the — others.”