The young man felt the west wind at the back of his left ear. Then he began to laugh. “Heavenly Eyes,” he said, “thy end is come—together with the two police who hide in the pines yonder behind thee! Behold the bottle magic of Yarghouz Khan!” And he lifted the glass flask in the moonlight as though he were about to smash it at her feet. Then a terrible thing occurred. The entire flask glowed red hot in his grasp; and the man screamed and strove convulsively to fling the bottle; but it stuck to his hand, melted into the smoking flesh. Then he screamed again—or tried to—but his entire lower jaw came off and he stood there with the awful orifice gaping in the moonlight—stood, reeled a moment—and then—and _then_—his whole face slid off, leaving nothing but a bony mask out of which burst shriek after shriek—— Keuke Mongol had fainted dead away. Cleves took her into his arms. Recklow, trembling and deathly white, went over to the thing that lay among the young pines and forced himself to bend over it. The glass flask still stuck to one charred hand, but it was no longer hot. And Recklow rolled the unspeakable thing into the white shroud and pushed it into the swamp. An evil ooze took it, slowly sucked it under and engulfed it. A few stinking bubbles broke. Recklow went back to the little glade among the pines. A young girl lay sobbing convulsively in her husband’s arms, asking God’s pardon and his for the justice she had done upon an enemy of all mankind. 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.”