But they never found Sanang Noïane; only the ghastly marks of his poisoned claws on the body of the sickened nation—only minds diseased by the Red Plague and bodies dying of the Black Death—civil and social centres disorganized, disrupted, depraved, dying.
When the blizzard burst upon New York, struggling in the throes of the plague, and paralysed the metropolis for a week, John Recklow sent out a special alarm, and New York swarmed with Secret Service men searching the snow-buried city for a graceful, slender, dark young man whose eyes slanted a trifle in his amber-tinted face; who dressed fashionably, lived fastidiously, and spoke English perfectly in a delightfully modulated voice.
And to New York, thrice stricken by anarchy, by plague, and now by God, hurried, from all parts of the nation, thousands of secret agents who had been hunting Sanang in distant cities or who had been raiding the traitorous and secret gatherings of his mental dupes.
Agent ZB-303, who was volunteer agent James Benton, came from Boston with his new bride who had just arrived by way of England—a young girl named Yulun who landed swathed in sables, and stretched out both lovely little hands to Benton the instant she caught sight of him on the pier. Whereupon he took the slim figure in furs into his arms, which was interesting because they had never before met in the flesh.
So,—their honeymoon scarce begun, Benton and Yulun came from Boston in answer to Recklow’s emergency call.
And all the way across from San Francisco came volunteer agent XLY-371, otherwise Alek Selden, bringing with him a girl named Sansa whom he had gone to the coast to meet, and whom he had immediately married after she had landed from the Japanese steamer Nan-yang Maru. Which, also, was remarkable, because, although they recognised each other instantly, and their hands and lips clung as they met, neither had ever before beheld the living body of the other.
The third man who came to New York at Recklow’s summons was volunteer agent 53-6-26, otherwise Victor Cleves.
His young wife, suffering from nervous shock after the deaths of Togrul Khan and of the Baroulass girl, Aoula, had been convalescing in a private sanitarium in Westchester.
Until the summons came to her husband from Recklow, she had seen him only for a few moments every day. But the call to duty seemed to have effected a miraculous cure in the slender, blue-eyed girl who had lain all day long, day after day, in her still, sunny room scarcely unclosing her eyes at all save only when her husband was permitted to enter for the few minutes allowed them every day.
The physician had just left, after admitting that Mrs. Cleves seemed to be well enough to travel if she insisted; and she and her maid had already begun to pack when her husband came into her room.