The Slayer of Souls | Page 5

let my soul take its chances between God
and Erlik."
She came close to him, looked curiously into his pale face.
"I laughed at you out of the temple cloud," she said. "I know how to
open bolted doors as well as you do. And I know other things. And if
you ever come to me in this life I shall first torture you, then slay you.
Then I shall tell all! ... and unroll my shroud."
"I keep your word of promise until you break it," he interrupted hastily.
"Yarlig! It is decreed!" And then he slowly turned as though to glance
over his shoulder at the locked and bolted door.
"Permit me to open it for you, Prince Sanang," said the girl scornfully.
And she gazed steadily at the door.
Presently, all by itself, the key turned in the lock, the bolt slid back, the
door gently opened.
Toward it, white as a corpse, his overcoat on his left arm, his stick and
top-hat in the other hand, crept the young man in his faultless evening
garb.
Then, as he reached the threshold, he suddenly sprang aside. A small
yellow snake lay coiled there on the door sill. For a full throbbing
minute the young man stared at the yellow reptile in unfeigned horror.
Then, very cautiously, he moved his fascinated eyes sideways and
gazed at Tressa Norne.
The girl laughed.
"Sorceress!' he burst out hoarsely. "Take that accursed thing from my
path!"

"What thing, Sanang?" At that his dark, frightened eyes stole toward
the threshold again, seeking the little snake. But there was no snake
there. And when he was certain of this he went, twitching and
trembling all over.
Behind him the door closed softly, locking and bolting itself.
And behind the bolted door in the brightly lighted bedroom Tressa
Norne fell on both knees, her pistol still clutched in her right hand,
calling passionately upon Christ to forgive her for the dreadful ability
she had dared to use, and begged Him to save her body from death and
her soul from the snare of the Yezidee.

CHAPTER II.
THE YELLOW SNAKE
When the young man named Sanang left the bed-chamber of Tressa
Norne he turned to the right in the carpeted corridor outside and hurried
toward the hotel elevator. But he did not ring for the lift; instead he
took the spiral iron stairway which circled it, and mounted hastily to
the floor above.
Here was his own apartment and he entered it with a key bearing the
hotel tag. A dusky-skinned powerful old man wearing a grizzled beard
and a greasy broadcloth coat of old-fashioned cut known to provincials
as a "Prince Albert" looked up from where he was seated cross-legged
upon the sofa, sharpening a curved knife on a whetstone.
"Gutchlug," stammered Sanang, "I am afraid of her! What happened
two years ago at the temple happened again a moment since, there in
her very bedroom! She made a yellow death-adder out of nothing and
placed it upon the threshold, and mocked me with laughter. May Thirty
Thousand Calamities overtake her! May Erlik seize her! May her eyes
rot out and her limbs fester! May the seven score and three principal
devils--"

"You chatter like a temple ape," said Gutchlug tranquilly. "Does Keuke
Mongol die or live? That alone interests me."
"Gutchlug," faltered the young man, "thou knowest that m-my heart is
inclined to mercy toward this young Yezidee--"
"I know that it is inclined to lust," said the other bluntly.
Sanang's pale face flamed.
"Listen," he said. "If I had not loved her better than life had I dared go
that day to the temple to take her for my own?"
"You love life better," said Gutchlug. "You fled when it rained snakes
on the temple steps--you and your Tchortcha horsemen! Kai! I also ran.
But I gave every soldier thirty blows with a stick before I slept that
night. And you should have had your thirty, also, conforming to the
Yarlig, my Tougtchi."
Sanang, still holding his hat and cane and carrying his overcoat over his
left arm, looked down at the heavy, brutal features of Gutchlug
Khan--at the cruel mouth with its crooked smile under the grizzled
beard; at the huge hands--the powerful hands of a murderer--now deftly
honing to a razor-edge the Kalmuck knife held so firmly yet lightly in
his great blunt fingers.
"Listen attentively, Prince Sanang," growled Gutchlug, pausing in his
monotonous task to test the blade's edge on his thumb--"Does the
Yezidee Keuke Mongol live? Yes or no?"
Sanang hesitated, moistened his pallid lips. "She dares not betray us."
"By what pledge?"
"Fear."
"That is no pledge. You also were afraid, yet you went to the temple!"
"She has listened to the Yarlig. She has looked upon