Cleves hesitated: “I can guard her better in the apartment. Isn’t it safer to go back there, where your people are always watching the street and house day and night?”
“In a way it might be safer, perhaps. But that girl is nearly exhausted. And her value to us is unlimited. She may be the vital factor in this fight with anarchy. Her weapon is her mind. And it’s got to have a chance to rest.”
Cleves, with one hand on the cab door, looked around impatiently.
“Do you, also, conclude that the psychic factor is actually part of this damned problem of Bolshevism?”
Recklow’s cool eyes measured him: “Do you?”
“My God, Recklow, I don’t know—after what my own eyes have seen.”
“I don’t know either,” said the other calmly, “but I am taking no chances. I don’t attempt to explain certain things that have occurred. But if it be true that a misuse of psychic ability by foreigners—Asiatics—among the anarchists is responsible for some of the devilish things being done in the United States, then your wife’s unparalleled knowledge of the occult East is absolutely vital to us. And so I say, better take her away somewhere and give her mind a chance to recover from the incessant strain of these tragic years.”
The two men stood silent for a moment, then Recklow went to the window of the taxicab.
“I have been suggesting a trip into the country, Mrs. Cleves,” he said pleasantly, “—into the real country, somewhere,—a month’s quiet in the woods, perhaps. Wouldn’t it appeal to you?”
Cleves turned to catch her low-voiced answer.