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.
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——”