And after a pause she explained in a very subdued voice that the “Iagla michi,” or action of “greasing the toug,” or standard, was done when a severed human head taken in battle was cast at the foot of the lance shaft stuck upright in the ground.
“You see,” she said sadly, “we temple girls, being already damned, cared little what we said, even to such a terrible man as Djamouk Khan. And even had the ghost of old Tchinguiz Khagan himself come to the temple and looked at us out of his tawny eyes, I think we might have done something saucy.”
Tressa’s pretty face was spiritless, now; she leaned back in her armchair and they heard an unconscious sigh escape her.
“Ai-ya! Ai-ya!” she murmured to herself, “what crazy things we did on the rose-marble steps, Yulun and I, so long—so long ago.”
Cleves got up and went over to stand beside his wife’s chair.
“What happened is this,” he said heavily. “During my wife’s convalescence after that Yarghouz affair, she found herself, at a certain moment, clairvoyant. And she thought she saw—she did see—Sanang, and an Asiatic she recognised as being one of the chiefs of the Assassins sect, whose name is Djamouk.
“But, except that it was somewhere near the sea—some summer colony probably on the Atlantic coast—she does not know where this pair of jailbirds roost. And this is what we have come here to report.”
Benton, politely appalled, tried not to look incredulous. But it was evident that Selden and Recklow had no doubts.
“Of course,” said Recklow calmly, “the thing to do is for you and your wife to try to find this place she saw.”
“Make a tour of all such ocean-side resorts until Mrs. Cleves recognises the place she saw,” added Selden. And to Recklow he added: “I believe there are several perfectly genuine cases on record where clairvoyants have aided the police.”