“Mine,” murmured the President, “is a single-track mind. I should be very much annoyed if anybody tampered with the rails—very much annoyed indeed, Mr. Recklow.” “They mustn’t murder that girl,” said the Secretary of the Navy. “Do you need any Marines, Mr. Recklow? Why not ask your Government for a few?” Recklow rose: “Mr. President,” he said, “I shall not deny that my Government is very deeply disturbed by this situation. In the beginning, these eight Assassins, and Sanang, came here for the purpose of attacking, overpowering, and enslaving the minds of the people of the United States and of the South American Republics. “But now, after four of their infamous colleagues have been destroyed, the ferocious survivors, thoroughly alarmed, have turned their every energy toward accomplishing the death of Mrs. Cleves! Why, sir, scarcely a day passes but that some attempt upon her life is made by these Yezidees. “Scarcely a day passes that this young girl is not suddenly summoned to defend her mind as well as her body against the occult attacks of these Mongol Sorcerers. Yes, sir, Sorcerers!” repeated Recklow, his calm voice deep with controlled passion, “—whatever your honourable Secretary of War may think about it!” His cold, grey eyes measured the President as he stood there. “Mr. President, I am at my wits’ end to protect her from assassination! Her husband is always with her—Victor Cleves, sir, of our Secret Service. But wherever he takes her these devils follow and send their emissaries to watch her, to follow, to attempt her mental destruction or her physical death. “There is no end to their stealthy cunning, to their devilish devices, to their hellish ingenuity! “And all we can do is to guard her person from the approach of strangers, and stand ready, physically, to aid her. “She is our only barrier—_your_ only defence—between civilisation and horrors worse than Bolshevism. “I believe, Mr. President, that civilisation in North and South America—in your own Republic as well as in ours—depends, literally, upon the safety of Tressa Cleves. For, if the Yezidees kill her, then I do not see what is to save civilisation from utter disintegration and total destruction.” There was a silence. Recklow was not certain that the President had been listening. His Excellency sat with finger tips joined, gazing pallidly into space; and Recklow heard him murmuring under his breath and all to himself, as though to fix the deathless thought forever in his brain: “May I not say that mine is a single-track mind? May I not say it? May I not,—may I not,—not, not, not——” CHAPTER XIII SA-N’SA June sunshine poured through the window of his bedroom in the Ritz; and Cleves had just finished dressing when he heard his wife’s voice in the adjoining sitting-room. He had not supposed that Tressa was awake. He hastened to tie his tie and pull on a smoking jacket, listening all the while to his wife’s modulated but gay young voice.