The blue tongue of flame subsided, lower and lower, and finally disappeared, so that the apartment became enwrapped in absolute darkness. A faint rustling sound suggested that a heavy curtain had been lowered, and almost immediately the doors behind Nicol Brinn were opened again by Rama Dass.
'We congratulate you, brother,' he said, extending his hand. 'Yet the ordeal was no light one, for all the force of the Fire was focussed upon you.'
Nicol Brinn reentered the room where the shaded lamp stood upon the writing table. In the past he had moved unscathed through peril unknown to the ordinary man. He was well acquainted with the resources of the organization whose agents, unseen, surrounded him in that remote country house, but that their pretensions were extravagant his present immunity would seem to prove.
If the speaker with the strangely arresting voice were indeed that Fire-Tongue whose mere name was synonymous with dread in certain parts of the East, then Fire-Tongue was an impostor. He who claimed to read the thoughts of all men had signally failed in the present instance, unless Nicol Brinn stared dully into the smiling face of Rama Dass. Not yet must he congratulate himself. Perhaps the Hindu's smile concealed as much as the mask worn by Nicol Brinn.
'We congratulate you,' said Rama Dass. 'You are a worthy brother.'
He performed the secret salutation, which Nicol Brinn automatically acknowledged. Then, without another word, Rama Dass led the way to the door.
Out into the dark hallway Nicol Brinn stepped, his muscles taut, his brain alert for instant action. But no one offered to molest him. He was assisted into his coat, and his hat was placed in his hands. Then, the front door being opened, he saw the headlights of the waiting car shining on a pillar of the porch.
A minute later he was seated again in the shuttered limousine, and as it moved off, and the lights leapt up above him, he lay back upon the cushions and uttered a long sigh.
Already he divined that, following a night's sleep, these scenes would seem like the episodes of a dream. Taking off his hat, he raised his hand to his forehead, and discovered it to be slightly damp.
'No wonder,' he muttered.
Drawing out a silk handkerchief from the breast pocket of his dinner jacket, he wiped his face and forehead deliberately. Then, selecting a long black cigar from a case which bore the monogram of the late Czar of Russia, he lighted it, dropped the match in the tray, and lolling back in a corner, closed his eyes wearily.
Thus, almost unmoving, he remained throughout the drive. His only actions were, first, to assure himself that both doors were locked again, and then at intervals tidily to place a little cone of ash in the tray provided for the purpose. Finally, the car drew up and a door was unlocked by the chauffeur.
Nicol Brinn, placing his hat upon his head, stepped out before the porch of the Cavalry Club.
The chauffeur closed the door, and returned again to the wheel. Immediately the car moved away. At the illuminated number Nicol Brinn scarcely troubled to glance. Common sense told him that it was not that under which the car was registered. His interest, on the contrary, was entirely focussed upon a beautiful Rolls Royce, which was evidently awaiting some visitor or member of the club. Glancing shrewdly at the chauffeur, a smart, military-looking fellow, Nicol Brinn drew a card from his waistcoat pocket, and resting it upon a wing in the light of one of the lamps, wrote something rapidly upon it in pencil.
Returning the pencil to his pocket:
'Whose car, my man?' he inquired of the chauffeur.
'Colonel Lord Wolverham's, sir.'
'Good,' said Nicol Brinn, and put the card and a ten-shilling note into the man's hand. 'Go right into the club and personally give Colonel Lord Wolverham this card. Do you understand?'
The man understood. Used to discipline, he recognized the note of command in the speaker's voice.
'Certainly, sir,' he returned, without hesitation; and stepping down upon the pavement he walked into the club.
Less than two minutes afterward a highly infuriated military gentleman—who, as it chanced, had never even heard of the distinguished American traveller—came running out hatless into Piccadilly, holding a crumpled visiting card in his hand. The card, which his chauffeur had given him in the midst of a thrilling game, read as follows:
MR. NICOL BRINN RALEIGH HOUSE, PICCADILLY, W. I.
And written in pencil beneath the name appeared the following:
Borrowed your Rolls. Urgent. Will explain tomorrow. Apologize. N.B.
Chapter 23 PHIL ABINGDON'S VISITOR
On the following morning the card of His Excellency Ormuz Khan was brought to Phil Abingdon in the charming little room which Mrs. McMurdoch had allotted to her for a private sanctum during the period of her stay under this hospitable roof.
'Oh,' she exclaimed, and looked at the maid in a startled way. 'I suppose I must see him. Will you ask him to come in, please?'
A few moments later Ormuz Khan entered. He wore faultless morning dress, too faultless; so devoid of any flaw or crease as to have lost its masculine character. In his buttonhole was a hyacinth, and in one slender ivory hand he carried a huge bunch of pink roses, which, bowing deeply, he presented to the embarrassed girl.
'Dare I venture,' he said in his musical voice, bending deeply over her extended hand, 'to ask you to accept these flowers? It would honour me. Pray do not refuse.'
'Your excellency is very kind,' she replied, painfully conscious of acute nervousness. 'It is more than good of you.'
'It is good of you to grant me so much pleasure,' he returned, sinking gracefully upon a settee, as Phil Abingdon resumed her seat. 'Condolences are meaningless. Why should I offer them to one of your acute perceptions? But you know—' the long, magnetic eyes regarded her fixedly—'you know what is in my heart.'
Phil Abingdon bit her lip, merely nodding in reply.
'Let us then try to forget, if only for a while,' said Ormuz Khan. 'I could show you so easily, if you would consent to allow me, that those we love never leave us.'
The spell of his haunting voice was beginning to have its effect. Phil Abingdon found herself fighting against something which at once repelled and attracted her. She had experienced this unusual attraction before, and this was not the first time that she had combated it. But whereas formerly she had more or less resigned herself to the strange magic which lay in the voice and in the eyes of Ormuz Khan, this morning there was something within her which rebelled fiercely against the Oriental seductiveness of his manner.
She recognized that a hot flush had covered her cheeks. For the image of Paul Harley, bronzed, gray-eyed, and reproachful, had appeared before her mind's eye, and she knew why her resentment of the Persian's charm of manner had suddenly grown so intense. Yet she was not wholly immune from it, for:
'Does Your Excellency really mean that?' she whispered.
A smile appeared upon his face, an alluring smile, but rather that of a beautiful woman than of a man.
'As you of the West,' he said, 'have advanced step by step, ever upward in the mechanical sciences, we of the East have advanced also step by step in other and greater sciences.'
'Certainly,' she admitted, 'you have spoken of such things before.'
'I speak of things which I know. From that hour when you entered upon your first Kama, back in the dawn of time, until now, those within the ever-moving cycle which bears you on through the ages have been beside you, at times unseen by the world, at times unseen by you, veiled by the mist which men call death, but which is no more than a curtain behind which we sometimes step for a while. In the East we have learned to raise that curtain; in the West are triflers who make like claims, but whose knowledge of the secret of the veil is—' And he snapped his fingers contemptuously.
The strange personality of the man was having its effect. Phil Abingdon's eyes were widely open, and she was hanging upon his words. Underneath the soft effeminate exterior lay a masterful spirit—a spirit which had known few obstacles. The world of womanhood could have produced no more difficult subject than Phil Abingdon. Yet she realized, and became conscious of a sense of helplessness, that under certain conditions she would be as a child in the hands of this Persian mystic, whose weird eyes appeared to be watching not her body, nor even her mind, but her soul, whose voice touched unfamiliar chords within her—chords which had never responded to any
