“Mr. President, I am at my wits’ end to protect her from assassination! Her husband is always with her—Victor Cleves, sir, of our Secret Service. But wherever he takes her these devils follow and send their emissaries to watch her, to follow, to attempt her mental destruction or her physical death.
“There is no end to their stealthy cunning, to their devilish devices, to their hellish ingenuity!
“And all we can do is to guard her person from the approach of strangers, and stand ready, physically, to aid her.
“She is our only barrier—your only defence—between civilisation and horrors worse than Bolshevism.
“I believe, Mr. President, that civilisation in North and South America—in your own Republic as well as in ours—depends, literally, upon the safety of Tressa Cleves. For, if the Yezidees kill her, then I do not see what is to save civilisation from utter disintegration and total destruction.”
There was a silence. Recklow was not certain that the President had been listening.
His Excellency sat with finger tips joined, gazing pallidly into space; and Recklow heard him murmuring under his breath and all to himself, as though to fix the deathless thought forever in his brain:
“May I not say that mine is a single-track mind? May I not say it? May I not,—may I not,—not, not, not——”