The Black Mask — page 52: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

50 bashi Tremaine got up and strode rapidly out of the room, passing through the hall into the deserted courtyard. A stiff wind was stirring. It bore with it, from the rear of the khan, the reek of a camel and yak, playing a melancholy dirge on the unseen harpstrings of the night. An excellent view of the mountains that encircled the Tsagan-dhuntsa valley could be gained from the gate of the Rest House, and here Tre- maine paused a moment, not, how- ever, to observe the dreary landscape, ‘but to assure himself that she, this girl of the Consulate doorway, had really sent for him. Involuntarily his eyes rose to the giant ridges that painted themselves in huge smears of dun-color on the dark sky. Below them, the Pass opened wolfish jaws on the caravan- road, and above, near the snow- tipped peaks and crags, the faint out- line of the whitewashed Lamaserie was sketched upon the rocks, a single light peering from its sullen portals into the night. Leaving the courtyard of the cara- vanserai, Tremaine moved at a swift pace along the winding, dwelling- lined main street to the Consulate. At the gate, where a lanthorn on one side of the doorway stuck a lurid tongue of light across the courtyard, he was halted by a huge, bearded Cossack with a Berdan rifle slung over one shoulder and a_ balalaika dangling from his waist. “Are you from the Rest House, barin?” asked the Russian. “Ves. ” The Cossack saluted. with me.’ Across the courtyard and into the Consulate building he followed the Muscovite. Within it was dark, but as they “Then come More Deadly than the Viper : entered, a door opposite the one through which they had just passed, opened, admitting a shaft of light. In the entranceway, silhouetted upon the yellow glow, Tremaine saw a slim form; heard a voice speaking to him, “Won’t you come in?” He advanced into the light alone, for the Cossack had retreated ; passed through the door; and once within he felt that he had left Tibet behind ; _ felt that he had shaken from him the dust of Tsagan-dhuntsa. “It was rather bold of me to send for you in this manner,” she said in a low, sweet voice, “But desperation knows no conventions.” What Tremaine saw made him catch his breath. Skin of lustrous white; wide set eyes of night blue; hair of .reddish gold, parted in the center and twisted in a knot on the back of her pallid neck; a figure at once quaint, ethereal—yet intensely human. She wore... . but he did not see what she wore—except that it was dark. : “My name is Miriam Amber,” she told him in that low, sweet voice, offering her hand. “Mine is Tremaine,” he returned, accepting the hand which was like China silk under his callous touch; “Travis Tremaine.” She smiled at him—and for a rea- son that was to him inexplicable he felt a holy dread of her, the fear of one who looks for the first time upon the face of a Madonna; felt, too, that the bonds of a new thralldom were being fastened about him. “T will have Lotus-eye take your coat and hat,” she said, and struck a gong that rang silvérn in the room— a room that was small and filled with a fragrant warmth, with shadows of deep amethyst. A brazier at one end of a divan sent