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He was a well-built young man and in his evening dress he had that something about him which placed him very definitely where he really belonged.
"Would you mind looking at my card?" he asked.
He drew it out and laid it beside her, and without stirring she scanned it sideways.
"That's my name and address," he continued. "I'm not contemplating mischief. I've enough excitement in life without seeking adventure. Besides, I'm not the sort who goes about annoying women."
She glanced up at him again:
"You are annoying me!"
"I'm sorry. I was quite honest. Good-night."
He took his congé with unhurried amiability; had already turned away when she said:
"Please … what do you desire to say to me?" He came back to her table:
"I couldn't tell you until I know a little more about you."
"What – do you wish to know?"
"Several things. I could scarcely ask you – go over such matters with you – standing here."
There was a pause; the girl juggled with the straw on the table for a few moments, then, partly turning, she summoned a waiter, paid him, adjusted her stole, picked up her gold bag and her violets and stood up. Then she turned to Cleves and gave him a direct look, which had in it the impersonal and searching gaze of a child.
When they were seated at the table reserved for him the place already was filling rapidly – backwash from the theatres slopped through every aisle – people not yet surfeited with noise, not yet sufficiently sodden by their worship of the great god Jazz.
"Jazz," said Cleves, glancing across his dinner-card at Tressa Norne – "what's the meaning of the word? Do you happen to know?"
"Doesn't it come from the French 'jaser'?"
He smiled. "Possibly. I'm rather hungry. Are you?"
"Yes."
"Will you indicate your preferences?"
She studied her card, and presently he gave the order.
"I'd like some champagne," she said, "unless you think it's too expensive."
He smiled at that, too, and gave the order.
"I didn't suggest any wine because you seem so young," he said.
"How old do I seem?"
"Sixteen perhaps."
"I am twenty-one."
"Then you've had no troubles."
"I don't know what you call trouble," she remarked, indifferently, watching the arriving throngs.
The orchestra, too, had taken its place.
"Well," she said, "now that you've picked me up, what do you really want of me?" There was no mitigating smile to soften what she said. She dropped her elbows on the table, rested her chin between her palms and looked at him with the same searching, undisturbed expression that is so disconcerting in children. As he made no reply: "May I have a cocktail?" she inquired.
He gave the order. And his mind registered pessimism. "There is nothing doing with this girl," he thought. "She's already on the toboggan." But he said aloud: "That was beautiful work you did down in the theatre, Miss Norne."
"Did you think so?"
"Of course. It was astounding work."
"Thank you. But managers and audiences differ with you."
"Then they are very stupid," he said.
"Possibly. But that does not help me pay my board."
"Do you mean you have trouble in securing theatrical engagements?"
"Yes, I am through here to-night, and there's nothing else in view, so far."
"That's incredible!" he exclaimed.
She lifted her glass, slowly drained it.
For a few moments she caressed the stem of the empty glass, her gaze remote.
"Yes, it's that way," she said. "From the beginning I felt that my audiences were not in sympathy with me. Sometimes it even amounts to hostility. Americans do not like what I do, even if it holds their attention. I don't quite understand why they don't like it, but I'm always conscious they don't. And of course that settles it – to-night has settled the whole thing, once and for all."
"What are you going to do?"
"What others do, I presume."
"What do others do?" he inquired, watching the lovely sullen eyes.
"Oh, they do what I'm doing now, don't they? – let some man pick them up and feed them." She lifted her indifferent eyes. "I'm not criticising you. I meant to do it some day – when I had courage. That's why I just asked you if I might have some champagne – finding myself a little scared at my first step… But you did say you might have a job for me. Didn't you?"
"Suppose I haven't. What are you going to do?"
The curtain was rising. She nodded toward the bespangled chorus. "Probably that sort of thing. They've asked me."
Supper was served. They both were hungry and thirsty; the music made conversation difficult, so they supped in silence and watched the imbecile show conceived by vulgarians, produced by vulgarians and served up to mental degenerates of the same species – the average metropolitan audience.
For ten minutes a pair of comedians fell up and down a flight of steps, and the audience shrieked approval.
"Miss Norne?"
The girl who had been watching the show turned in her chair and looked back at him.
"Your magic is by far the most wonderful I have ever seen or heard of. Even in India such things are not done."
"No, not in India," she said, indifferently.
"Where then?"
"In China."
"You learned to do such things there?"
"Yes."
"Where, in China, did you learn such amazing magic?"
"In Yian."
"I never heard of it. Is it a province?"
"A city."
"And you lived there?"
"Fourteen years."
"When?"
"From 1904 to 1918."
"During the great war," he remarked, "you were in China?"
"Yes."
"Then you arrived here very recently."
"In November, from the Coast."
"I see. You played the theatres from the Coast eastward."
"And went to pieces in New York," she added calmly, finishing her glass of champagne.
"Have you any family?" he asked.
"No."
"Do you care to say anything further?" he inquired, pleasantly.
"About my family? Yes, if you wish. My father was in the spice trade in Yian. The Yezidees took Yian in 1910, threw him into a well in his own compound and filled it up with dead imperial troops. I was thirteen years old… The Hassani did that. They held Yian nearly eight years, and I lived with my mother, in a garden pagoda, until 1914. In January of that year Germans got through from Kiaou-Chou. They had been six months on the way. I think they were Hassanis. Anyway, they persuaded the Hassanis to massacre every English-speaking prisoner. And so – my mother died in the garden pagoda of Yian… I was not told for four years."
"Why did they spare you?" he asked, astonished at her story so quietly told, so utterly destitute of emotion.
"I was seventeen. A certain person had placed me among the temple girls in the temple of Erlik. It pleased this person to make of me a Mongol temple girl as a mockery at Christ. They gave me the name Keuke Mongol. I asked to serve the shrine of Kwann-an – she being like to our Madonna. But this person gave me the choice between the halberds of the Tchortchas and the sorcery of Erlik."
She lifted her sombre eyes. "So I learned how to do the things you saw. But – what I did there on the stage is not – respectable."
An odd shiver passed over him. For a second he took her literally, suddenly convinced that her magic was not white but black as the demon at whose shrine she had learned it. Then he smiled and asked her pleasantly, whether indeed she employed hypnosis in her miraculous exhibitions.
But her eyes became more sombre still, and, "I don't care to talk about it," she said. "I have already said too much."
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to pry into professional secrets – "
"I can't talk about it," she repeated. "… Please – my glass is quite empty."
When he had refilled it:
"How did you get away from Yian?" he asked.
"The Japanese."
"What luck!"
"Yes. One battle was fought at Buldak. The Hassanis and Blue Flags were terribly cut up. Then, outside the walls of Yian, Prince Sanang's Tchortcha infantry made a stand. He was there with his Yezidee horsemen, all in leather and silk armour with casques and corselets of black Indian steel.
"I could see them from the temple – saw the Japanese gunners open fire. The Tchortchas were blown to shreds in the blast of the Japanese guns… Sanang got away with some of his Yezidee horsemen."
"Where was that battle?"
"I told you, outside the walls of Yian."
"The newspapers never mentioned any such trouble in China," he said, suspiciously.
"Nobody knows about it except the Germans and the Japanese."
"Who is this Sanang?" he demanded.
"A Yezidee-Mongol. He is one of the Sheiks-el-Djebel – a servant of The Old Man of Mount Alamout."
"What is he?"
"A sorcerer – assassin."
"What!" exclaimed Cleves incredulously.
"Why, yes," she said, calmly. "Have you never heard of The Old Man of Mount Alamout?"
"Well, yes – "
