The blueeyed Manchu Author:Achmed Abdullah Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IV "Doorgha!" "Hussain Kahn!" "Hussain Kahn!" "Doorgha!" sang the crunching of the wheels, like the response in some fantastic litany, ... more »as the train rushed West—and my mind took a back leap. I remembered—and I did not wish to remember. For, with Hussain Khan in his grave, what was there to fear? But—there was Mascasenhas—and there was the crunching of the wheels—there was the throb of remembrance in a back cell of my brain. Too, there was the memory of Hussain Khan's last message to me: "Even from beyond the grave I shall kill you!" I recalled when I had met Hussain Khan a little over eighteen months back. At that time I was employed in the Foreign Office in Washington, D. C.—a position which Iheld thanks to my familiarity with the Orient and my knowledge of Oriental languages, and it was quite natural that I should come into frequent contact with the Asiatic gentlemen who crowded Washington that winter, amongst them Hussain Khan, who had come to us with the best of introductions, and who became very much of a lion. And deservedly so. For he was rich, well-bred, a splendid linguist, a wonderful polo player, witty, and as handsome as a tiger. The Great War was over, and everything, including world peace, world gushings, Washington, the official society, the cave-dwelling society, myself, and Hussain Khan traveled along very smoothly until, over-night, the world was startled by a series of murders—murders which struck swiftly, mercilessly which, in every single instance, removed some Western man of high standing in his own country and directly or indirectly interested in or connected with the destinies of some Oriental country which, moreover, forced me to believe that one central intelligence, one central energy, was the drivin...« less