The Slayer Of souls Part 24

For the remainder of the day and evening Tressa seemed subdued--not restless, not nervous, but so quiet that, sometimes, glancing at her askance, Cleves involuntarily was reminded of some lithe young creature of the wilds, intensely alert and still, immersed in fixed and dangerous meditation.

About five in the afternoon they took their golf sticks, went down to the river, and embarked in the canoe.

The water was gla.s.sy and still. There was not a ripple ahead, save when a sleeping gull awoke and leisurely steered out of their way.

Tressa's arms and throat were bare and she wore no hat. She sat forward, wielding the bow paddle and singing to herself in a low voice.

"You feel all right, don't you?" he asked.

"Oh, I am so well, physically, now! It's really wonderful, Victor--like being a child again," she replied happily.

"You're not much more," he muttered.

She heard him: "Not very much more--in years," she said.... "Does Scripture tell us how old Our Lord was when He descended into h.e.l.l?"

"I don't know," he replied, startled.

After a little while Tressa tranquilly resumed her paddling and singing:

"_--And eight tall towers Guard the route Of human life, Where at all hours Death looks out, Holding a knife Rolled in a shroud._

_For every man, Humble or proud, Mighty or bowed, Death has a shroud;--for every man,-- Even for Tchingniz Khan!

Behold them pa.s.s!--lancer.

Baroula.s.s, Temple dancer In tissue gold, Khiounnou, Karlik bold,_

_Christian, Jew,-- Nations swarm to the great Urdu.

Yacaoul, with your kettledrum, Warn your Khan that his hour is come!

Shroud and knife at his spurred feet throw, And bid him stretch his neck for the blow!--_"

"You know," remarked Cleves, "that some of those songs you sing are devilish creepy."

Tressa looked around at him over her shoulder, saw he was smiling, smiled faintly in return.

They were off Orchid Cove now. The hotel and cottages loomed dimly in the silver mist. Voices came distinctly across the water. There were people on the golf course paralleling the river; laughter sounded from the club-house veranda.

They went ash.o.r.e.

CHAPTER VIII

THE MAN IN WHITE

It was at the sixth hole that they pa.s.sed the man ahead who was playing all alone--a courteous young fellow in white flannels, who smiled and bowed them "through" in silence.

They thanked him, drove from the tee, and left the polite and reticent young man still apparently hunting for a lost ball.

Like other things which depended upon dexterity and precision, Tressa had taken most naturally to golf. Her supple muscles helped.

At the ninth hole they looked back but did not see the young man in white flannels.

Hammock, set with pine and palmetto, and intervals of evil-looking swamp, flanked the course. Rank wire-gra.s.s, bayberry and scrub palmetto bounded the fairgreen.

On every blossoming bush hung b.u.t.terflies--Palomedes swallowtails--drugged with sparkle-berry honey, their gold and black velvet wings conspicuous in the sunny mist.

"Like the ceremonial vestments of a Yezidee executioner," murmured the girl. "The Tchortchas wear red when they robe to do a man to death."

"I wish you could forget those things," said Cleves.

"I am trying.... I wonder where that young man in white went."

Cleves searched the links. "I don't see him. Perhaps he had to go back for another ball."

"I wonder who he was," she mused.

"I don't remember seeing him before," said Cleves.... "Shall we start back?"

They walked slowly across the course toward the tenth hole.

Tressa teed up, drove low and straight. Cleves sliced, and they walked together into the scrub and towards the woods, where his ball had bounded into a bunch of palm trees.

Far in among the trees something white moved and vanished.

"Probably a white egret," he remarked, knocking about in the scrub with his midiron.

"It was that young man in white flannels," said Tressa in a low voice.

"What would he be doing in there?" he asked incredulously. "That's merely a jungle, Tressa--swamp and cypress, thorn and creeper,--and no man would go into that mess if he could. There is no bottom to those swamps."

"But I saw him in there," she said in a troubled voice.

"But when I tell you that only a wild animal or a snake or a bird could move in that jungle! The bog is one vast black quicksand. There's death in those depths."

"Victor."

"Yes?" He looked around at her. She was pale. He came up and took her hand inquiringly.

"I don't feel--well," she murmured. "I'm not ill, you understand----"

"What's the matter, Tressa?"

She shook her head drearily: "I don't know.... I wonder whether I should have tried to amuse you this morning----"

"You don't think you've stirred up any of those Yezidee beasts, do you?"

he asked sharply.

And as she did not answer, he asked again whether she was afraid that what she had done that morning might have had any occult consequences.