THE YEZIDEE
Only when the Nan-yang Maru
sailed from Yuen-San did her terrible sense of foreboding
begin to subside.
For four years, waking or sleeping, the awful
subconsciousness of supreme evil had never left her.
But now, as the Korean shore, receding into darkness, grew
dimmer and dimmer, fear subsided and grew vague as the
half-forgotten memory of horror in a dream.
She stood near the steamer's stern apart from other
passengers, a slender, lonely figure in her silver-fox furs, her
ulster and smart little hat, watching the lights of Yuen-San grow
paler and smaller along the horizon until they looked like a level
row of stars.
Under her haunted eyes Asia was slowly dissolving to a streak
of vapour in the misty lustre of the moon.
Suddenly the ancient continent disappeared, washed out by a
wave against the sky; and with it vanished the last shreds of that
accursed nightmare which had possessed her for four endless years.
But whether during those unreal years her soul had only been held
in bondage, or whether, as she had been taught, it had been
irrevocably destroyed, she still remained uncertain, knowing
nothing about the death of souls or how it was
accomplished.
As she stood there, her sad eyes fixed on the misty East, a
passenger passing—an Englishwoman—paused to say something kind to
the young American; and added, "if there is anything my husband and
I can do it would give us much pleasure." The girl had turned her
head as though not comprehending. The other woman
hesitated.
"This is Doctor Norne's daughter, is it not?" she inquired in
a pleasant voice.
"Yes, I am Tressa Norne.... I ask your pardon.... Thank you,
madam:—I am—I seem to be—a trifle dazed——"
"What wonder, you poor child! Come to us if you feel need of
companionship."
"You are very kind.... I seem to wish to be alone,
somehow."
"I understand.... Good-night, my dear."
Late the next morning Tressa Norne awoke, conscious for the
first time in four years that it was at last her own familiar self
stretched out there on the pillows where sunshine streamed through
the porthole. All that day she lay in her bamboo steamer chair on
deck. Sun and wind conspired to dry every tear that wet her closed
lashes. Her dark, glossy hair blew about her face; scarlet tinted
her full lips again; the tense hands relaxed. Peace came at
sundown.
That evening she took her Yu-kin from her cabin and found a
chair on the deserted hurricane deck.
And here, in the brilliant moonlight of the China Sea, she
curled up cross-legged on the deck, all alone, and sounded the four
futile strings of her moon-lute, and hummed to herself, in a still
voice, old songs she had sung in Yian before the tragedy. She sang
the tent-song called Tchinguiz .
She sang Camel Bells and
The Blue Bazaar ,—children's songs of
the Yiort. She sang the ancient Khiounnou song called "The
Saghalien":
I
In the month of Saffar
Among the river-reeds
I saw two horsemen
Sitting on their steeds.
Tulugum!
Heitulum!
By the river-reeds
II
In the month of Saffar
A demon guards the ford.
Tokhta, my Lover!
Draw your shining sword!
Tulugum!
Heitulum!
Slay him with your sword!
III
In the month of Saffar
Among the water-weeds
I saw two horsemen
Fighting on their steeds.
Tulugum!
Heitulum!
How my lover bleeds!
IV
In the month of Saffar,
The Year I should have wed—
The Year of The Panther—
My lover lay dead,—
Tulugum!
Heitulum!
Dead without a head.
And songs like these—the one called "Keuke Mongol," and an
ancient air of the Tchortchas called "The Thirty Thousand
Calamities," and some Chinese boatmen's songs which she had heard
in Yian before the tragedy; these she hummed to herself there in
the moonlight playing on her round-faced, short-necked lute of four
strings.
Terror indeed seemed ended for her, and in her heart a great
overwhelming joy was welling up which seemed to overflow across the
entire moonlit world.
She had no longer any fear; no premonition of further evil.
Among the few Americans and English aboard, something of her story
was already known. People were kind; and they were also considerate
enough to subdue their sympathetic curiosity when they discovered
that this young American girl shrank from any mention of what had
happened to her during the last four years of the Great World
War.
It was evident, also, that she preferred to remain aloof; and
this inclination, when finally understood, was respected by her
fellow passengers. The clever, efficient and polite Japanese
officers and crew of the Nan-yang Maru
were invariably considerate and courteous to her, and they
remained nicely reticent, although they also knew the main outline
of her story and very much desired to know more. And so, surrounded
now by the friendly security of civilised humanity, Tressa Norne,
reborn to light out of hell's own shadows, awoke from four years of
nightmare which, after all, perhaps, never had seemed entirely
actual.
And now God's real sun warmed her by day; His real moon
bathed her in creamy coolness by night; sky and wind and wave
thrilled her with their blessed assurance that this was once more
the real world which stretched illimitably on every side from
horizon to horizon; and the fair faces and pleasant voices of her
own countrymen made the past seem only a ghastly dream that never
again could enmesh her soul with its web of sorcery.
And now the days at sea fled very swiftly; and when at last
the Golden Gate was not far away she had finally managed to
persuade herself that nothing really can harm the human soul; that
the monstrous devil-years were ended, never again to return; that
in this vast, clean Western Continent there could be no occult
threat to dread, no gigantic menace to destroy her body, no secret
power that could consign her soul to the dreadful abysm of
spiritual annihilation.
Very early that morning she came on deck. The November day
was delightfully warm, the air clear save for a belt of mist low on
the water to the southward.
She had been told that land would not be sighted for
twenty-four hours, but she went forward and stood beside the
starboard rail, searching the horizon with the enchanted eyes of
hope.
As she stood there a Japanese ship's officer crossing the
deck, forward, halted abruptly and stood staring at something to
the southward.
At the same moment, above the belt of mist on the water, and
perfectly clear against the blue sky above, the girl saw a fountain
of gold fire rise from the fog, drift upward in the daylight,
slowly assume the incandescent outline of a serpentine creature
which leisurely uncoiled and hung there floating, its lizard-tail
undulating, its feet with their five stumpy claws closing,
relaxing, like those of a living reptile. For a full minute this
amazing shape of fire floated there in the sky, brilliant in the
morning light, then the reptilian form faded, died out, and the
last spark vanished in the sunshine.
When the Japanese officer at last turned to resume his
promenade, he noticed a white-faced girl gripping a stanchion
behind him as though she were on the point of swooning. He crossed
the deck quickly. Tressa Norne's eyes opened.
"Are you ill, Miss Norne?" he asked.
"The—the Dragon," she whispered.
The officer laughed. "Why, that was nothing but Chinese
day-fireworks," he explained. "The crew of some fishing boat yonder
in the fog is amusing itself." He looked at her narrowly, then with
a nice little bow and smile he offered his arm: "If you are
indisposed, perhaps you might wish to go below to your stateroom,
Miss Norne?"
She thanked him, managed to pull herself together and force a
ghost of a smile.
He lingered a moment, said something cheerful about being
nearly home, then made her a punctilious salute and went his
way.
Tressa Norne leaned back against the stanchion and closed her
eyes. Her pallor became deathly. She bent over and laid her white
face in her folded arms.
After a while she lifted her head, and, turning very slowly,
stared at the fog-belt out of frightened eyes.
And saw, rising out of the fog, a pearl-tinted sphere which
gradually mounted into the clear daylight above like the full
moon's phantom in the sky.
Higher, higher rose the spectral moon until at last it swam
in the very zenith. Then it slowly evaporated in the blue vault
above.
A great wave of despair swept her; she clung to the
stanchion, staring with half-blinded eyes at the flat fog-bank in
the south.
But no more "Chinese day-fireworks" rose out of it. And at
length she summoned sufficient strength to go below to her cabin
and lie there, half senseless, huddled on her bed.
When land was sighted, the following morning, Tressa Norne
had lived a century in twenty-four hours. And in that space of time
her agonised soul had touched all depths.
But now as the Golden Gate loomed up in the morning light,
rage, terror, despair had burned themselves out. From their ashes
within her mind arose the cool wrath of desperation armed for
anything, wary, alert, passionately determined to survive at
whatever cost, recklessly ready to fight for bodily
existence.
That was her sole instinct now, to go on living, to survive,
no matter at what price. And if it were indeed true that her soul
had been slain, she defied its murderers to slay her body
also.
That night, at her hotel in San Francisco, she double-locked
her door and lay down without undressing, leaving all lights
burning and an automatic pistol underneath her pillow.
Toward morning she fell asleep, slept for an hour, started up
in awful fear. And saw the double-locked door opposite the foot of
her bed slowly opening of its own accord.
Into the brightly illuminated room stepped a graceful young
man in full evening dress carrying over his left arm an overcoat,
and in his other hand a top hat and silver tipped
walking-stick.
With one bound the girl swung herself from the bed to the
carpet and clutched at the pistol under her pillow.
"Sanang!" she cried in a terrible voice.
"Keuke Mongol!" he said, smilingly.
For a moment they confronted each other in the brightly
lighted bedroom, then, partly turning, he cast a calm glance at the
open door behind him; and, as though moved by a wind, the door
slowly closed. And she heard the key turn of itself in the lock,
and saw the bolt slide smoothly into place again.
Her power of speech came back to her presently—only a broken
whisper at first: "Do you think I am afraid of your accursed
magic?" she managed to gasp. "Do you think I am afraid of you,
Sanang?"
"You are afraid," he said serenely.
"You lie!"
"No, I do not lie. To one another the Yezidees never
lie."
"You lie again, assassin! I am no Yezidee!"
He smiled gently. His features were pleasing, smooth, and
regular; his cheek-bones high, his skin fine and of a pale and
delicate ivory colour. Once his black, beautifully shaped eyes
wandered to the levelled pistol which she now held clutched
desperately close to her right hip, and a slightly ironical
expression veiled his gaze for an instant.
"Bullets?" he murmured. "But you and I are of the
Hassanis."
"The third lie, Sanang!" Her voice had regained its strength.
Tense, alert, blue eyes ablaze, every faculty concentrated on the
terrible business before her, the girl now seemed like some supple
leopardess poised on the swift verge of murder.
"Tokhta!" [1] She spat
the word. "Any movement toward a hidden weapon, any gesture
suggesting recourse to magic—and I kill you, Sanang, exactly where
you stand!"
"With a pistol?" He laughed. Then his smooth features altered
subtly. He said: "Keuke Mongol, who call yourself Tressa
Norne,—Keuke—heavenly azure-blue,—named so in the temple because of
the colour of your eyes—listen attentively, for this is the Yarlig
which I bring to you by word of mouth from Yian, as from Yezidee to
Yezidee:
"Here, in this land called the United States of America, the
Temple girl, Keuke Mongol, who has witnessed the mysteries of Erlik
and who understands the magic of the Sheiks-el-Djebel, and who has
seen Mount Alamout and the eight castles and the fifty thousand
Hassanis in white turbans and in robes of white;—
you —Azure-blue eyes—heed the
Yarlig!—or may thirty thousand calamities overtake
you!"
There was a dead silence; then he went on seriously: "It is
decreed: You shall cease to remember that you are a Yezidee, that
you are of the Hassanis, that you ever have laid eyes on Yian the
Beautiful, that you ever set naked foot upon Mount Alamout. It is
decreed that you remember nothing of what you have seen and heard,
of what has been told and taught during the last four years
reckoned as the Christians reckon from our Year of the Bull.
Otherwise—my Master sends you this for your—
convenience ."
Leisurely, from under his folded overcoat, the young man
produced a roll of white cloth and dropped it at her feet and the
girl shrank aside, shuddering, knowing that the roll of white cloth
was meant for her winding-sheet.
Then the colour came back to lip and cheek; and, glancing up
from the soft white shroud, she smiled at the young man: "Have you
ended your Oriental mummery?" she asked calmly. "Listen very
seriously in your turn, Sanang, Sheik-el-Djebel, Prince of the
Hassanis who, God knows when and how, have come out into the
sunshine of this clean and decent country, out of a filthy darkness
where devils and sorcerers make earth a hell.
"If you, or yours, threaten me, annoy me, interfere with me,
I shall go to our civilised police and tell all I know concerning
the Yezidees. I mean to live. Do you understand? You know what you
have done to me and mine. I come back to my own country alone,
without any living kin, poor, homeless, friendless,—and, perhaps,
damned. I intend, nevertheless, to survive. I shall not relax my
clutch on bodily existence whatever the Yezidees may pretend to
have done to my soul. I am determined to live in the body,
anyway."
He nodded gravely.
She said: "Out at sea, over the fog, I saw the sign of Yu-lao
in fire floating in the day-sky. I saw his spectral moon rise and
vanish in mid-heaven. I understood. But——" And here she suddenly
showed an edge of teeth under the full scarlet upper lip: "Keep
your signs and your shrouds to yourself, dog of a
Yezidee!—toad!—tortoise-egg!—he-goat with three legs! Keep your
threats and your messages to yourself! Keep your accursed magic to
yourself! Do you think to frighten me with your sorcery by showing
me the Moons of Yu-lao?—by opening a bolted door? I know more of
such magic than do you, Sanang—Death Adder of
Alamout!"
Suddenly she laughed aloud at him—laughed insultingly in his
expressionless face:
"I saw you and Gutchlug Khan and your cowardly Tchortchas in
red-lacquered jackets slink out of the Temple of Erlik where the
bronze gong thundered and a cloud settled down raining little
yellow snakes all over the marble steps—all over you, Prince
Sanang! You were afraid , my
Tougtchi!—you and Gutchlug and your red Tchortchas with their
halberds all dripping with human entrails! And I saw you mount and
gallop off into the woods while in the depths of the magic cloud
which rained little yellow snakes all around you, we temple girls
laughed and mocked at you—at you and your cowardly Tchortcha
horsemen."
A slight tinge of pink came into the young man's pale face.
Tressa Norne stepped nearer, her levelled pistol resting on her
hip.
"Why did you not complain of us to your Master, the Old Man
of the Mountain?" she asked jeeringly. "And where, also, was your
Yezidee magic when it rained little snakes?—What frightened you
away—who had boldly come to seize a temple girl—you who had screwed
up your courage sufficiently to defy Erlik in his very shrine and
snatch from his temple a young thing whose naked body wrapped in
gold was worth the chance of death to you?"
The young man's top-hat dropped to the floor. He bent over to
pick it up. His face was quite expressionless, quite colourless,
now.
"I went on no such errand," he said with an effort. "I went
with a thousand prayers on scarlet paper made in——"
"A lie, Yezidee! You came to seize
me !"
He turned still paler. "By Abu, Omar, Otman, and Ali, it is
not true!"
"You lie!—by the Lion of God, Hassini!"
She stepped closer. "And I'll tell you another thing you
fear—you Yezidee of Alamout—you robber of Yian—you sorcerer of
Sabbah Khan, and chief of his sect of Assassins! You fear this
native land of mine, America; and its laws and customs, and its
clear, clean sunshine; and its cities and people; and its police!
Take that message back. We Americans fear nobody save the true
God!—nobody—neither Yezidee nor Hassani nor Russ nor German nor
that sexless monster born of hell and called the
Bolshevik!"
"Tokhta!" he cried sharply.
"Damn you!" retorted the girl; "get out of my room! Get out
of my sight! Get out of my path! Get out of my life! Take that to
your Master of Mount Alamout! I do what I please; I go where I
please; I live as I please. And if I please, I
turn against him !"
"In that event," he said hoarsely, "there lies your
winding-sheet on the floor at your feet! Take up your shroud; and
make Erlik seize you!"
"Sanang," she said very seriously.
"I hear you, Keuke-Mongol."
"Listen attentively. I wish to live. I have had enough of
death in life. I desire to remain a living, breathing thing—even if
it be true—as you Yezidees tell me, that you have caught my soul in
a net and that your sorcerers really control its
destiny.
"But damned or not, I passionately desire to live. And I am
coward enough to hold my peace for the sake of living. So—I remain
silent. I have no stomach to defy the Yezidees; because, if I do,
sooner or later I shall be killed. I know it. I have no desire to
die for others—to perish for the sake of the common good. I am
young. I have suffered too much; I am determined to live—and 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 again
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 in silence 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 begging Him to save her
body from death and her soul from the snare of the
Yezidee.
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 loved 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 her
shroud. She has admitted that she desires to live. Therein lies her
pledge to us."
"And she placed a yellow snake at your feet!" sneered
Gutchlug. "Prince Sanang, tell me, what man or what devil in all
the chronicles of the past has ever tamed a Snow-Leopard?" And he
continued to hone his yataghan.
"Gutchlug——"
"No, she dies," said the other tranquilly.
"Not yet!"
"When, then?"
"Gutchlug, thou knowest me. Hear my pledge! At her first
gesture toward treachery—her first thought of betrayal—I myself
will end it all."
"You promise to slay this young
snow-leopardess?"
"By the four companions, I swear to kill her with my own
hands!"
Gutchlug sneered. "Kill her—yes—with the kiss that has burned
thy lips to ashes for all these months. I know thee, Sanang. Leave
her to me. Dead she will no longer trouble thee."
"Gutchlug!"
"I hear, Prince Sanang."
"Strike when I nod. Not until then."
"I hear, Tougtchi. I understand thee, my Banneret. I whet my
knife. Kai!"
Sanang looked at him, put on his top-hat and overcoat, pulled
on a pair of white evening gloves.
"I go forth," he said more pleasantly.
"I remain here to talk to my seven ancestors and sharpen my
knife," remarked Gutchlug.
"When the white world and the yellow world and the brown
world and the black world finally fall before the Hassanis," said
Sanang with a quick smile, "I shall bring thee to her.
Gutchlug—once—before she is veiled, thou shalt behold what is
lovelier than Eve."
The other stolidly whetted his knife.
Sanang pulled out a gold cigarette case, lighted a cigarette
with an air.
"I go among Germans," he volunteered amiably. "The huns swam
across two oceans, but, like the unclean swine, it is their own
throats they cut when they swim! Well, there is only one God. And
not very many angels. Erlik is greater. And there are many million
devils to do his bidding. Adieu. There is rice and there is koumiss
in the frozen closet. When I return you shall have been asleep for
hours."
When Sanang left the hotel one of two young men seated in the
hotel lobby got up and strolled out after him.
A few minutes later the other man went to the elevator,
ascended to the fourth floor, and entered an apartment next to the
one occupied by Sanang.
There was another man there, lying on the lounge and smoking
a cigar. Without a word, they both went leisurely about the matter
of disrobing for the night.
When the shorter man who had been in the apartment when the
other entered, and who was dark and curly-headed, had attired
himself in pyjamas, he sat down on one of the twin beds to enjoy
his cigar to the bitter end.
"Has Sanang gone out?" he inquired in a low
voice.
"Yes. Benton went after him."
The other man nodded. "Cleves," he said, "I guess it looks as
though this Norne girl is in it, too."
"What happened?"
"As soon as she arrived, Sanang made straight for her
apartment. He remained inside for half an hour. Then he came out in
a hurry and went to his own rooms, where that surly servant of his
squats all day, shining up his arsenal, and drinking
koumiss."
"Did you get their conversation?"
"I've got a record of the gibberish. It requires an
interpreter, of course."
"I suppose so. I'll take the records east with me to-morrow,
and by the same token I'd better notify New York that I'm
leaving."
He went, half-undressed, to the telephone, got the telegraph
office, and sent the following message:
"Recklow, New York
:
"Leaving to-morrow for N. Y. with samples. Retain expert in
Oriental fabrics.
"Victor Cleves."
"Report for me, too," said the dark young man, who was still
enjoying his cigar on his pillows.
So Cleves sent another telegram, directed also
to
"Recklow, New York
:
"Benton and I are watching the market. Chinese importations
fluctuate. Recent consignment per Nan-yang
Maru will be carefully inspected and details
forwarded.
"Alek Selden."
In the next room Gutchlug could hear the voice of Cleves at
the telephone, but he merely shrugged his heavy shoulders in
contempt. For he had other things to do beside
eavesdropping.
Also, for the last hour—in fact, ever since Sanang's
departure—something had been happening to him—something that
happens to a Hassani only once in a lifetime. And now this unique
thing had happened to him—to him, Gutchlug Khan—to him before whose
Khiounnou ancestors eighty-one thousand nations had bowed the
knee.
It had come to him at last, this dread thing, unheralded,
totally unexpected, a few minutes after Sanang had
departed.
And he suddenly knew he was going to die.
And, when, presently, he comprehended it, he bent his
grizzled head and listened seriously. And, after a little silence,
he heard his soul bidding him farewell.
So the chatter of white men at a telephone in the next
apartment had no longer any significance for him. Whether or not
they had been spying on him; whether they were plotting, made no
difference to him now.
He tested his knife's edge with his thumb and listened
gravely to his soul bidding him farewell.
But, for a Yezidee, there was still a little detail to attend
to before his soul departed;—two matters to regulate. One was to
select his shroud. The other was to cut the white throat of this
young snow-leopardess called Keuke Mongol, the Yezidee temple
girl.
And he could steal down to her bedroom and finish that matter
in five minutes.
But first he must choose his shroud, as is the custom of the
Yezidee.
That office, however, was quickly accomplished in a country
where fine white sheets of linen are to be found on every hotel
bed.
So, on his way to the door, his naked knife in his right
hand, he paused to fumble under the bed-covers and draw out a white
linen sheet.
Something hurt his hand like a needle. He moved it, felt the
thing squirm under his fingers and pierce his palm again and again.
With a shriek, he tore the bedclothes from the bed.
A little yellow snake lay coiled there.
He got as far as the telephone, but could not use it. And
there he fell heavily, shaking the room and dragging the instrument
down with him.
There was some excitement. Cleves and Selden in their
bathrobes went in to look at the body. The hotel physician
diagnosed it as heart-trouble. Or, possibly, poison. Some gazed
significantly at the naked knife still clutched in the dead man's
hands.
Around the wrist of the other hand was twisted a pliable gold
bracelet representing a little snake. It had real emeralds for
eyes.
It had not been there when Gutchlug died.
But nobody except Sanang could know that. And later when
Sanang came back and found Gutchlug very dead on the bed and a
policeman sitting outside, he offered no information concerning the
new bracelet shaped like a snake with real emeralds for eyes, which
adorned the dead man's left wrist.
Toward evening, however, after an autopsy had confirmed the
house physician's diagnosis that heart-disease had finished
Gutchlug, Sanang mustered enough courage to go to the desk in the
lobby and send up his card to Miss Norne.
It appeared, however, that Miss Norne had left for Chicago
about noon.