“Swaying slightly, with a free, graceful motion of the hips, she moved from her place. Her mouth parted in a pathetic little smile of melancholy, her dark eyes gazing not at me but at something at my side, in soulful yearning appeal, she glided toward us through a hushed silence where I could hear my own heart beat. Slowly she detached her arms from the simple robe which swathed her, stretched them out imploringly, with a wistful smile that seemed to beseech a difficult confidence, to the companion at my side, to Captain Strong. Once more I heard the gasp of his laboured breathing.
“She approached, and it seemed to me that she and I and the panting figure at my side whom I could not turn my head to see were the only things existing in a world that was otherwise dark. She was illumined from head to foot, clearly and definitely detached from her surroundings. I marked the soft, lithe roundness of her form. Did she speak? Her lips moved, but I heard nothing, although it seemed to me that a gently uttered name echoed far away in illimitable space, echoed endlessly as though ringing through the vast, incommensurable soul of things past, present, and to be.
“A name was breathed distinctly, as in awed answer, from the obscurity at my side. Héa-Nan!—Héa-Nan! The wistful smile on the beautiful face sweetened as in grateful recognition. The eyes softened in a tender fondness that had nevertheless a strange, remote dignity. Not now did she give herself up to the passionate abandonment of that moonlit garden. Love still yearned from her, but it was the eternal love of the soul that looks to the unimaginable realities beyond the body.
“Slowly, slowly, she approached until it seemed that the hands of her outstretched arms would brush my sleeve as they reached toward the man I felt recoil back into the darkness at my side. I looked up into the face of a living, breathing woman—saw the faint flush upon her Asiatic complexion—saw the dark eyes glowing, swimming in a bath of tears. Once more the lips moved silently—once more the answering name—Héa-Nan!—came in an emotionally exhaled whisper from the man who could draw back no farther.
“She smiled, a smile of radiant forgiveness, of understanding and—so it seemed—of pity, and then I saw her arms make a quick movement. From the shadow at my side she plucked something, held it aloft. The sacred jewel of the Buddha blazed in the mouth of the reddish-gold snake that seemed to curl alive about her arm. For one long moment, I looked up at her, her face glowing strangely in the glory of the recovered jewel, yet still a living, human woman with lips that parted as I watched—and then I found myself staring into a smother of smoke from which issued a ghastly mocking laughter.
“The red glow near the floor expired in one last flicker. There was a stab of flame, the simultaneous deafeningly violent detonation of a revolver fired close to my ear, a savage cry of furious menace, another gloating chuckle of laughter—and then darkness and silence.
“Brought suddenly to myself, I struggled to my feet in the choking fumes, and groped feverishly for the switch of the electric light. I found it and the lamp sprang into dull illumination of the smoke-filled cabin. The door was open. The conjurer had disappeared—I heard a splash in the river under the open ports and was left in no doubt that he was beyond our reach. Then, in sudden alarm at his silence, I turned to look for Captain Strong.
“He was stretched back unconscious upon the settee where we had sat together, his hand grasping the revolver which he had vainly fired with his last strength. He looked livid, pale as death, and for a moment I thought the native had murdered him. But I could find no mark on him, and presently he opened his eyes, began to murmur delirious phrases. I saw at a glance that he was very ill, with the illness that frightens you when you see it in a place like Saigon. With some difficulty, for he was a heavy man, I lifted him to his bunk and put him to bed. As I loosened the shirt from about his throat, I noticed, with a thrill of the uncanny which made me shudder, that round his neck was a circling line of blanched skin, and on his chest a similar, broader patch. But the amulet, whose long wearing had evidently caused these marks, had disappeared completely.
“Half an hour later I was being rowed in all haste to the black Messageries Maritimes boat and claiming the services of her doctor.
“It was hopeless from the first, and we both knew it. Captain Strong died before morning, raving native words in his delirium, and calling incessantly a native name—Héa-Nan! Héa-Nan!