The Slayer of Souls by Robert W. Chambers

Author:Robert W. Chambers
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: fiction
Publisher: Prologue Books, an imprint of F+W Media, Inc.
Published: 2012-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter X

At The Ritz

When Victor Cleves telegraphed from St. Augustine to Washington that he and his wife were on their way North, and that they desired to see John Recklow as soon as they arrived, John Recklow remarked that he knew of no place as private as a public one. And he came on to New York and established himself at the Ritz, rather regally.

To dine with him that evening were two volunteer agents of the United States Secret Service, ZB-303, otherwise James Benton, a fashionable architect; and XYL-371, Alexander Selden, sometime junior partner in the house of Milwin, Selden & Co.

A single lamp was burning in the white-and-rose rococo room. Under its veiled glow these three men sat conversing in guarded voices over coffee and cigars, awaiting the advent of 53-6-26, otherwise Victor Cleves, recently Professor of Ornithology at Cambridge; and his young wife, Tressa, known officially as V-69.

“Did the trip South do Mrs. Cleves any good?” inquired Benton.

“Some,” said Recklow. “When Selden and I saw her she was getting better.”

“I suppose that affair of Yarghouz upset her pretty thoroughly.”

“Yes.” Recklow tossed his cigar into the fireplace and produced a pipe. “Victor Cleves upsets her more,” he remarked.

“Why?” asked Benton, astonished.

“She’s beginning to fall in love with him and doesn’t know what’s the matter with her,” replied the elder man drily. “Selden noticed it, too.”

Benton looked immensely surprised. “I supposed,” he said, “that she and Cleves considered the marriage to be merely a temporary necessity. I didn’t imagine that they cared for each other.”

“I don’t suppose they did at first,” said Selden. “But I think she’s interested in Victor. And I don’t see how he can help falling in love with her, because she’s a very beautiful thing to gaze on, and a most engaging one to talk to.”

“She’s about the prettiest girl I ever saw,” admitted Benton, “and about the cleverest. All the same — ”

“All the same — what?”

“Well, Mrs. Cleves has her drawbacks, you know — as a real wife, I mean.”

Recklow said: “There is a fixed idea in Cleves’s head that Tressa Norne married him as a last resort, which is true. But he’ll never believe she’s changed her ideas in regard to him unless she herself enlightens him. And the girl is too shy to do that. Besides, she believes the same thing of him. There’s a mess for you!”

Recklow filled his pipe carefully.

“In addition,” he went on, “Mrs. Cleves has another and very terrible fixed idea in her charming head, and that is that she really did lose her soul among those damned Yezidees. She believes that Cleves, though kind to her, considers her merely as something uncanny — something to endure until this Yezidee campaign is ended and she is safe from assassination.”

Benton said: “After all, and in spite of all her loveliness, I myself should not feel entirely comfortable with such a girl for a real wife.

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