But, for a Yezidee, there was still a little detail to attend to before his soul departed;—two matters to regulate. One was to select his shroud. The other was to cut the white throat of this young snow-leopardess called Keuke Mongol, the Yezidee temple girl. And he could steal down to her bedroom and finish that matter in five minutes. But first he must choose his shroud, as is the custom of the Yezidee. That office, however, was quickly accomplished in a country where fine white sheets of linen are to be found on every hotel bed. So, on his way to the door, his naked knife in his right hand, he paused to fumble under the bed-covers and draw out a white linen sheet. Something hurt his hand like a needle. He moved it, felt the thing squirm under his fingers and pierce his palm again and again. With a shriek, he tore the bedclothes from the bed. A little yellow snake lay coiled there. He got as far as the telephone, but could not use it. And there he fell heavily, shaking the room and dragging the instrument down with him. There was some excitement. Cleves and Selden in their bathrobes went in to look at the body. The hotel physician diagnosed it as heart-trouble. Or, possibly, poison. Some gazed significantly at the naked knife still clutched in the dead man’s hands. Around the wrist of the other hand was twisted a pliable gold bracelet representing a little snake. It had real emeralds for eyes. It had not been there when Gutchlug died. But nobody except Sanang could know that. And later when Sanang came back and found Gutchlug very dead on the bed and a policeman sitting outside, he offered no information concerning the new bracelet shaped like a snake with real emeralds for eyes, which adorned the dead man’s left wrist. Toward evening, however, after an autopsy had confirmed the house physician’s diagnosis that heart-disease had finished Gutchlug, Sanang mustered enough courage to go to the desk in the lobby and send up his card to Miss Norne. It appeared, however, that Miss Norne had left for Chicago about noon. CHAPTER III GREY MAGIC To Victor Cleves came the following telegram in code: “_Washington_ “April 14th, 1919.” “_Investigation ordered by the State Department as the result of frequent mention in despatches of Chinese troops operating with the Russian Bolsheviki forces has disclosed that the Bolsheviki are actually raising a Chinese division of 30,000 men recruited in Central Asia. This division has been guilty of the greatest cruelties. A strange rumour prevails among the Allied forces at Archangel that this Chinese division is led by Yezidee and Hassani officers belonging to the sect of devil-worshipers and that they employ black arts and magic in battle._