THE BRIDAL
Over the United States stretched an unseen network of secret intrigue woven tirelessly night and day by the busy enemies of civilisation—Reds, parlour-socialists, enemy-aliens, terrorists, Bolsheviki, pseudo-intellectuals, I. W. W.’s, social faddists, and amateur meddlers of every nuance—all the various varieties of the vicious, witless, and mentally unhinged—brought together through the “cohesive power of plunder” and the degeneration of cranial tissue.
All over the United States the various departmental divisions of the Secret Service were busily following up these threads of intrigue leading everywhere through the obscurity of this vast and secret maze.
To meet the constantly increasing danger of physical violence and to uncover secret plots threatening sabotage and revolution, there were capable agents in every branch of the Secret Service, both Federal and State.
But in the first months of 1919 something more terrifying than physical violence suddenly threatened civilised America,—a wild, grotesque, incredible threat of a war on human minds!
And, little by little, the United States Government became convinced that this ghastly menace was no dream of a disordered imagination, but that it was real: that among the enemies of civilisation there actually existed a few powerful but perverted minds capable of wielding psychic forces as terrific weapons: that by the sinister use of psychic knowledge controlling these mighty forces the very minds of mankind could be stealthily approached, seized, controlled and turned upon civilisation to aid in the world’s destruction.
In terrible alarm the Government turned to England for advice. But Sir William Crookes was dead.
However, in England, Sir Conan Doyle immediately took up the matter, and in America Professor Hyslop was called into consultation.
And then, when the Government was beginning to realise what this awful menace meant, and that there were actually in the United States possibly half a dozen people who already had begun to carry on a diabolical warfare by means of psychic power, for the purpose of enslaving and controlling the very minds of men,—then, in the terrible moment of discovery, a young girl landed in America after fourteen years’ absence in Asia.
And this was the amazing girl that Victor Cleves had just married, at Recklow’s suggestion, and in the line of professional duty,—and moral duty, perhaps.