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.
“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.
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.