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The Quest of the Sacred Slipper

by Sax Rohmer · English · Gutenberg #2126 · 306,424 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Quest of the Sacred Slipper

Author: Sax Rohmer


        
Release date: March 1, 2000 [eBook #2126]
                Most recently updated: August 28, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2126


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE QUEST OF THE SACRED SLIPPER ***




The Quest of the Sacred Slipper

by Sax Rohmer




CONTENTS

 CHAPTER I. THE PHANTOM SCIMITAR.
 CHAPTER II. THE GIRL WITH THE VIOLET EYES
 CHAPTER III. "HASSAN OF ALEPPO"
 CHAPTER IV. THE OBLONG BOX
 CHAPTER V. THE OCCUPANT OF THE BOX
 CHAPTER VI. THE RING OF THE PROPHET
 CHAPTER VII. FIRST ATTEMPT ON THE SAFE
 CHAPTER VIII. THE VIOLET EYES AGAIN
 CHAPTER IX. SECOND ATTEMPT ON THE SAFE
 CHAPTER X. AT THE BRITISH ANTIQUARIAN MUSEUM
 CHAPTER XI. THE HOLE IN THE BLIND
 CHAPTER XII. THE HASHISHIN WATCH
 CHAPTER XIII. THE WHITE BEAM
 CHAPTER XIV. A SCREAM IN THE NIGHT
 CHAPTER XV. A SHRIVELLED HAND
 CHAPTER XVI. THE DWARF
 CHAPTER XVII. THE WOMAN WITH THE BASKET
 CHAPTER XVIII. WHAT CAME THROUGH THE WINDOW
 CHAPTER XIX. A RAPPING AT MIDNIGHT
 CHAPTER XX. THE GOLDEN PAVILION
 CHAPTER XXI. THE BLACK TUBE
 CHAPTER XXII. THE LIGHT OF EL-MEDINEH
 CHAPTER XXIII. THE THREE MESSAGES
 CHAPTER XXIV. I KEEP THE APPOINTMENT
 CHAPTER XXV. THE WATCHER IN BANK CHAMBERS
 CHAPTER XXVI. THE STRONG-ROOM
 CHAPTER XXVII. THE SLIPPER
 CHAPTER XXVIII. CARNETA
 CHAPTER XXIX. WE MEET MR. ISAACS
 CHAPTER XXX. AT THE GATE HOUSE
 CHAPTER XXXI. THE POOL OF DEATH
 CHAPTER XXXII. SIX PATCHES
 CHAPTER XXXIII. HOW WE WERE REENFORCED
 CHAPTER XXXIV. MY LAST MEETING WITH HASSAN OF ALEPPO




THE QUEST OF THE SACRED SLIPPER




CHAPTER I
THE PHANTOM SCIMITAR


I was not the only passenger aboard the S.S. Mandalay who perceived the
disturbance and wondered what it might portend and from whence proceed.
A goodly number of passengers were joining the ship at Port Said. I was
lounging against the rail, pipe in mouth, lazily wondering, with a
large vagueness.

What a heterogeneous rabble it was!—a brightly coloured rabble, but the
colours all were dirty, like the town and the canal. Only the sky was
clean; the sky and the hard, merciless sunlight which spared nothing of
the uncleanness, and defied one even to think of the term dear to
tourists, “picturesque.” I was in that kind of mood. All the natives
appeared to be pockmarked; all the Europeans greasy with perspiration.

But what was the stir about?

I turned to the dark, bespectacled young man who leaned upon the rail
beside me. From the first I had taken to Mr. Ahmad Ahmadeen.

“There is some kind of undercurrent of excitement among the natives,” I
said, “a sort of subdued Greek chorus is audible. What’s it all about?”

Mr. Ahmadeen smiled. After a gaunt fashion, he was a handsome man and
had a pleasant smile.

“Probably,” he replied, “some local celebrity is joining the ship.”

I stared at him curiously.

“Any idea who he is?” (The soul of the copyhunter is a restless soul.)

A group of men dressed in semi-European fashion—that is, in European
fashion save for their turbans, which were green—passed close to us
along the deck.

Ahmadeen appeared not to have heard the question.

The disturbance, which could only be defined as a subdued uproar, but
could be traced to no particular individual or group, grew momentarily
louder—and died away. It was only when it had completely ceased that
one realized how pronounced it had been—how altogether peculiar,
secret; like that incomprehensible murmuring in a bazaar when, unknown
to the insular visitor, a reputed saint is present.

Then it happened; the inexplicable incident which, though I knew it
not, heralded the coming of strange things, and the dawn of a new
power; which should set up its secret standards in England, which
should flood Europe and the civilized world with wonder.

A shrill scream marked the overture—a scream of fear and of pain, which
dropped to a groan, and moaned out into the silence of which it was the
cause.

“My God! what’s that?”

I started forward. There was a general crowding rush, and a darkly
tanned and bearded man came on board, carrying a brown leather case.
Behind him surged those who bore the victim.

“It’s one of the lascars!”

“No—an Egyptian!”

“It was a porter—?”

“What is it—?”

“Someone been stabbed!”

“Where’s the doctor?”

“Stand away there, if you please!”

That was a ship’s officer; and the voice of authority served to quell
the disturbance. Through a lane walled with craning heads they bore the
insensible man. Ahmadeen was at my elbow.

“A Copt,” he said softly. “Poor devil!” I turned to him. There was a
queer expression on his lean, clean-shaven, bronze face.

“Good God!” I said. “His hand has been cut off!”

That was the fact of the matter. And no one knew who was responsible
for the atrocity. And no one knew what had become of the severed hand!
I wasted not a moment in linking up the story. The pressman within me
acted automatically.

“The gentleman just come aboard, sir,” said a steward, “is Professor
Deeping. The poor beggar who was assaulted was carrying some of the
Professor’s baggage.” The whole incident struck me as most odd. There
was an idea lurking in my mind that something else—something more—lay
behind all this. With impatience I awaited the time when the injured
man, having received medical attention, was conveyed ashore, and
Professor Deeping reappeared. To the celebrated traveller and Oriental
scholar I introduced myself.

He was singularly reticent.

“I was unable to see what took place, Mr. Cavanagh,” he said. “The poor
fellow was behind me, for I had stepped from the boat ahead of him. I
had just taken a bag from his hand, but he was carrying another,
heavier one. It is a clean cut, like that of a scimitar. I have seen
very similar wounds in the cases of men who have suffered the old
Moslem penalty for theft.”

Nothing further had come to light when the Mandalay left, but I found
new matter for curiosity in the behaviour of the Moslem party who had
come on board at Port Said.

In conversation with Mr. Bell, the chief officer, I learned that the
supposed leader of the party was one, Mr. Azraeel. “Obviously,” said
Bell, “not his real name or not all it. I don’t suppose they’ll show
themselves on deck; they’ve got their own servants with them, and seem
to be people of consequence.”

This conversation was interrupted, but I found my unseen fellow
voyagers peculiarly interesting and pursued inquiries in other
directions. I saw members of the distinguished travellers’ retinue
going about their duties, but never obtained a glimpse of Mr. Azraeel
nor of any of his green-turbaned companions.

“Who is Mr. Azraeel?” I asked Ahmadeen.

“I cannot say,” replied the Egyptian, and abruptly changed the subject.

Some curious aroma of mystery floated about the ship. Ahmadeen conveyed
to me the idea that he was concealing something. Then, one night, Mr.
Bell invited me to step forward with him.

“Listen,” he said.

From somewhere in the fo’c’sle proceeded low chanting.

“Hear it?”

“Yes. What the devil is it?”

“It’s the lascars,” said Bell. “They have been behaving in a most
unusual manner ever since the mysterious Mr. Azraeel joined us. I may
be wrong in associating the two things, but I shan’t be sorry to see
the last of our mysterious passengers.”

The next happening on board the Mandalay which I have to record was the
attempt to break open the door of Professor Deeping’s stateroom. Except
when he was actually within, the Professor left his room door
religiously locked.

He made light of the affair, but later took me aside and told me a
curious story of an apparition which had appeared to him.

“It was a crescent of light,” he said, “and it glittered through the
darkness there to the left as I lay in my berth.”

“A reflection from something on the deck?”

Deeping smiled, uneasily.

“Possibly,” he replied; “but it was very sharply defined. Like the
blade of a scimitar,” he added.

I stared at him, my curiosity keenly aroused. “Does any explanation
suggest itself to you?” I said.

“Well,” he confessed, “I have a theory, I will admit; but it is rather
going back to the Middle Ages. You see, I have lived in the East a lot;
perhaps I have assimilated some of their superstitions.”

He was oddly reticent, as ever. I felt convinced that he was keeping
something back. I could not stifle the impression that the clue to
these mysteries lay somewhere around the invisible Mohammedan party.

“Do you know,” said Bell to me, one morning, “this trip’s giving me the
creeps. I believe the damned ship’s haunted! Three bells in the middle
watch last night, I’ll swear I saw some black animal crawling along the
deck, in the direction of the forward companion-way.”

“Cat?” I suggested.

“Nothing like it,” said Mr. Bell. “Mr. Cavanagh, it was some uncanny
thing! I’m afraid I can’t explain quite what I mean, but it was
something I wanted to shoot!”

“Where did it go?”

The chief officer shrugged his shoulders. “Just vanished,” he said. “I
hope I don’t see it again.”

At Tilbury the Mohammedan party went ashore in a body. Among them were
veiled women. They contrived so to surround a central figure that I
entirely failed to get a glimpse of the mysterious Mr. Azraeel.
Ahmadeen was standing close by the companion-way, and I had a momentary
impression that one of the women slipped something into his hand.
Certainly, he started; and his dusky face seemed to pale.

Then a deck steward came out of Deeping’s stateroom, carrying the brown
bag which the Professor had brought aboard at Port Said. Deeping’s
voice came:

“Hi, my man! Let me take that bag!”

The bag changed hands. Five minutes later, as I was preparing to go
ashore, arose a horrid scream above the berthing clamour. Those
passengers yet aboard made in the direction from which the scream had
proceeded.

A steward—the one to whom Professor Deeping had spoken—lay writhing at
the foot of the stairs leading to the saloon-deck. His right hand had
been severed above the wrist!




CHAPTER II
THE GIRL WITH THE VIOLET EYES


During the next day or two my mind constantly reverted to the incidents
of the voyage home. I was perfectly convinced that the curtain had been
partially raised upon some fantasy in which Professor Deeping figured.

But I had seen no more of Deeping nor had I heard from him, when
abruptly I found myself plunged again into the very vortex of his
troubled affairs. I was half way through a long article, I remember,
upon the mystery of the outrage at the docks. The poor steward whose
hand had been severed lay in a precarious condition, but the police had
utterly failed to trace the culprit.

I had laid down my pen to relight my pipe (the hour was about ten at
night) when a faint sound from the direction of the outside door
attracted my attention. Something had been thrust through the
letter-box.

“A circular,” I thought, when the bell rang loudly, imperatively.

I went to the door. A square envelope lay upon the mat—a curious
envelope, pale amethyst in colour. Picking it up, I found it to bear my
name—written simply—

“Mr. Cavanagh.”

Tearing it open I glanced at the contents. I threw open the door. No
one was visible upon the landing, but when I leaned over the banister a
white-clad figure was crossing the hall, below.

Without hesitation, hatless, I raced down the stairs. As I crossed the
dimly lighted hall and came out into the peaceful twilight of the
court, my elusive visitor glided under the archway opposite.

Just where the dark and narrow passage opened on to Fleet Street I
overtook her—a girl closely veiled and wrapped in a long coat of white
ermine.

“Madam,” I said.

She turned affrightedly.

“Please do not detain me!” Her accent was puzzling, but pleasing. She
glanced apprehensively about her.

You have seen the moon through a mist?—and known it for what it was in
spite of its veiling? So, now, through the cloudy folds of the veil, I
saw the stranger’s eyes, and knew them for the most beautiful eyes I
had ever seen, had ever dreamt of.

“But you must explain the meaning of your note!”

“I cannot! I cannot! Please do not ask me!”

She was breathless from her flight and seemed to be trembling. From
behind the cloud her eyes shone brilliantly, mysteriously.

I was sorely puzzled. The whole incident was bizarre—indeed, it had in
it something of the uncanny. Yet I could not detain the girl against
her will. That she went in apprehension of something, of someone, was
evident.

Past the head of the passage surged the noisy realities of Fleet
Street. There were men there in quest of news; men who would have given
much for such a story as this in which I was becoming entangled. Yet a
story more tantalizingly incomplete could not well be imagined.

I knew that I stood upon the margin of an arena wherein strange
adversaries warred to a strange end. But a mist was over all. Here,
beside me, was one who could disperse the mist—and would not. Her one
anxiety seemed to be to escape.

Suddenly she raised her veil; and I looked fully into the only really
violet eyes I had ever beheld. Mentally, I started. For the face framed
in the snowy fur was the most bewitchingly lovely imaginable. One
rebellious lock of wonderful hair swept across the white brow. It was
brown hair, with an incomprehensible sheen in the high lights that
suggested the heart of a blood-red rose.

“Oh,” she cried, “promise me that you will never breathe a word to any
one about my visit!”

“I promise willingly,” I said; “but can you give me no hint?”

“Honestly, truly, I cannot, dare not, say more! Only promise that you
will do as I ask!”

Since I could perceive no alternative—

“I will do so,” I replied.

“Thank you—oh, thank you!” she said; and dropping her veil again she
walked rapidly away from me, whispering, “I rely upon you. Do not fail
me. Good-bye!”

Her conspicuous white figure joined the hurrying throngs upon the
pavement beyond. My curiosity brooked no restraint. I hurried to the
end of the courtway. She was crossing the road. From the shadows where
he had lurked, a man came forward to meet her. A vehicle obstructed the
view ere I could confirm my impression; and when it had passed, neither
my lovely visitor nor her companion were anywhere in sight.

But, unless some accident of light and shade had deceived me, the man
who had waited was Ahmad Ahmadeen!

It seemed that some astral sluice-gate was raised; a dreadful sense of
foreboding for the first time flooded my mind. Whilst the girl had
stood before me it had been different—the mysterious charm of her
personality had swamped all else. But now, the messenger gone, it was
the purport of her message which assumed supreme significance.

Written in odd, square handwriting upon the pale amethyst paper, this
was the message—

Prevail upon Professor Deeping to place what he has in the brown case
in the porch of his house to-night. If he fails to do so, no power on
earth can save him from the Scimitar of Hassan.

A FRIEND.




CHAPTER III
“HASSAN OF ALEPPO”


Professor Deeping’s number was in the telephone directory, therefore,
on returning to my room, where there still lingered the faint perfume
of my late visitor’s presence, I asked for his number. He proved to be
at home.

“Strange you should ring me up, Cavanagh,” he said; “for I was about to
ring you up.”

“First,” I replied, “listen to the contents of an anonymous letter
which I have received.”

(I remembered, and only just in time, my promise to the veiled
messenger.)

“To me,” I added, having read him the note, “it seems to mean nothing.
I take it that you understand better than I do.”

“I understand very well, Cavanagh!” he replied. “You will recall my
story of the scimitar which flashed before me in the darkness of my
stateroom on the Mandalay? Well, I have seen it again! I am not an
imaginative man: I had always believed myself to possess the scientific
mind; but I can no longer doubt that I am the object of a pursuit which
commenced in Mecca! The happenings on the steamer prepared me for this,
in a degree. When the man lost his hand at Port Said I doubted. I had
supposed the days of such things past. The attempt to break into my
stateroom even left me still uncertain. But the outrage upon the
steward at the docks removed all further doubt. I perceived that the
contents of a certain brown leather case were the objective of the
crimes.”

I listened in growing wonder.

“It was not necessary in order to further the plan of stealing the bag
that the hands were severed,” resumed the Professor. “In fact, as was
rendered evident by the case of the steward, this was a penalty visited
upon any one who touched it! You are thinking of my own immunity?”

“I am!”

“This is attributable to two things. Those who sought to recover what I
had in the case feared that my death en route might result in its being
lost to them for ever. They awaited a suitable opportunity. They had
designed to take it at Port Said certainly, I think; but the bag was
too large to be readily concealed, and, after the outrage, might have
led to the discovery of the culprit. In the second place, they are
uncertain of my faith. I have long passed for a true Believer in the
East! As a Moslem I visited Mecca—”

“You visited Mecca!”

“I had just returned from the hadj when I joined the Mandalay at Port
Said! My death, however, has been determined upon, whether I be Moslem
or Christian!”

“Why?”

“Because,” came the Professor’s harsh voice over the telephone, “of the
contents of the brown leather case! I will not divulge to you now the
nature of these contents; to know might endanger you. But the case is
locked in my safe here, and the key, together with a full statement of
the true facts of the matter, is hidden behind the first edition copy
of my book ‘Assyrian Mythology,’ in the smaller bookcase—”

“Why do you tell me all this?” I interrupted.

He laughed harshly.

“The identity of my pursuer has just dawned upon me,” he said. “I know
that my life is in real danger. I would give up what is demanded of me,
but I believe its possession to be my strongest safeguard.”

Mystery upon mystery! I seemed to be getting no nearer to the heart of
this maze. What in heaven’s name did it all mean? Suddenly an idea
struck me.

“Is our late fellow passenger, Mr. Ahmadeen, connected with the
matter?” I asked.

“In no way,” replied Deeping earnestly. “Mr. Ahmadeen is, I believe, a
person of some consequence in the Moslem world; but I have nothing to
fear from him.”

“What steps have you taken to protect yourself?”

Again the short laugh reached my ears.

“I’m afraid long residence in the East has rendered me something of a
fatalist, Cavanagh! Beyond keeping my door locked, I have taken no
steps whatever. I fear I am quite accessible!”

A while longer we talked; and with every word the conviction was more
strongly borne in upon me that some uncanny menace threatened the
peace, perhaps the life, of Professor Deeping.

I had hung up the receiver scarce a moment when, acting upon a sudden
determination, I called up New Scotland Yard, and asked for
Detective-Inspector Bristol, whom I knew well. A few words were
sufficient keenly to arouse his curiosity, and he announced his
intention of calling upon me immediately. He was in charge of the case
of the severed hand.

I made no attempt to resume work in the interval preceding his arrival.
I had not long to wait, however, ere Bristol was ringing my bell; and I
hurried to the door, only too glad to confide in one so well equipped
to analyze my doubts and fears. For Bristol is no ordinary policeman,
but a trained observer, who, when I first made his acquaintance,
completely upset my ideas upon the mental limitations of the official
detective force.

In appearance Bristol suggests an Anglo-Indian officer, and at the time
of which I write he had recently returned from Jamaica and his face was
as bronzed as a sailor’s. One would never take Bristol for a detective.
As he seated himself in the armchair, without preamble I plunged into
my story. He listened gravely.

“What sort of house is Professor Deeping’s?” he asked suddenly.

“I have no idea,” I replied, “beyond the fact that it is somewhere in
Dulwich.”

“May I use your telephone?”

“Certainly.”

Very quickly Bristol got into communication with the superintendent of
P Division. A brief delay, and the man came to the telephone whose beat
included the road wherein Professor Deeping’s house was situated.

“Why!” said Bristol, hanging up the receiver after making a number of
inquiries, “it’s a sort of rambling cottage in extensive grounds.
There’s only one servant, a manservant, and he sleeps in a detached
lodge. If the Professor is really in danger of attack he could not well
have chosen a more likely residence for the purpose!”

“What shall you do? What do you make of it all?”

“As I see the case,” he said slowly, “it stands something like this:
Professor Deeping has...”

The telephone bell began to ring.

I took up the receiver.

“Hullo! Hullo.”

“Cavanagh!—is that Cavanagh?”

“Yes! yes! who is that?”

“Deeping! I have rung up the police, and they are sending some one. But
I wish...”

His voice trailed off. The sound of a confused and singular uproar came
to me.

“Hullo!” I cried. “Hullo!”

A shriek—a deathful, horrifying cry—and a distant babbling alone
answered me. There was a crash. Clearly, Deeping had dropped the
receiver. I suppose my face blanched.

“What is it?” asked Bristol anxiously.

“God knows what it is!” I said. “Deeping has met with some mishap—”

When, over the wires—

“Hassan of Aleppo!” came a dying whisper. “Hassan ... of Aleppo...”




CHAPTER IV
THE OBLONG BOX


“You had better wait for us,” said Bristol to the taxi-man.

“Very good, sir. But I shan’t be able to take you further back than the
Brixton Garage. You can get another cab there, though.”

A clock chimed out—an old-world chime in keeping with the loneliness,
the curiously remote loneliness, of the locality. Less than five miles
from St. Paul’s are spots whereto, with the persistence of Damascus
attar, clings the aroma of former days. This iron gateway fronting the
old chapel was such a spot.

Just within stood a plain-clothes man, who saluted my companion
respectfully.

“Professor Deeping,” I began.

The man, with a simple gesture, conveyed the dreadful news.

“Dead! dead!” I cried incredulously.

He glanced at Bristol.

“The most mysterious case I have ever had anything to do with, sir,” he
said.

The power of speech seemed to desert me. It was unthinkable that
Deeping, with whom I had been speaking less than an hour ago, should
now be no more; that some malign agency should thus murderously have
thrust him into the great borderland.

In that kind of silence which seems to be peopled with whispering
spirits we strode forward along the elm avenue. It was very dark where
the moon failed to penetrate. The house, low and rambling, came into
view, its facade bathed in silver light. Two of the visible windows
were illuminated. A sort of loggia ran along one side.

On our left, as we made for this, lay a black ocean of shrubbery. It
intruded, raggedly, upon the weed-grown path, for neglect was the
keynote of the place.

We entered the cottage, crossed the tiny lobby, and came to the study.
A man, evidently Deeping’s servant, was sitting in a chair by the door,
his head sunken in his hands. He looked up, haggard-faced.

“My God! my God!” he groaned. “He was locked in, gentlemen! He was
locked in; and yet something murdered him!”

“What do you mean?” said Bristol. “Where were you?”

“I was away on an errand, sir. When I returned, the police were
knocking the door down. He was locked in!”

We passed him, entering the study.

It was a museum-like room, lighted by a lamp on the littered table. At
first glance it looked as though some wild thing had run amok there.
The disorder was indescribable.

“Touched nothing, of course?” asked Bristol sharply of the officer on
duty.

“Nothing, sir. It’s just as we found it when we forced the door.”

“Why did you force the door?”

“He rung us up at the station and said that something or somebody had
got into the house. It was evident the poor gentleman’s nerve had
broken down, sir. He said he was locked in his study. When we arrived
it was all in darkness—but we thought we heard sounds in here.”

“What sort of sounds?”

“Something crawling about!”

Bristol turned.

“Key is in the lock on the inside of the door,” he said. “Is that where
you found it?”

“Yes, sir!”

He looked across to where the brass knob of a safe gleamed dully.

“Safe locked?”

“Yes, sir.”

Professor Deeping lay half under the table, a spectacle so ghastly that
I shall not attempt to describe it.

“Merciful heavens!” whispered Bristol. “He’s nearly decapitated!”

I clutched dizzily at the mantelpiece. It was all so utterly,
incredibly horrible. How had Deeping met his death? The windows both
were latched and the door had been locked from within!

“You searched for the murderer, of course?” asked Bristol.

“You can see, sir,” replied the officer, “that there isn’t a spot in
the room where a man could hide! And there was nobody in here when we
forced the door!”

“Why!” cried my companion suddenly. “The Professor has a chisel in his
hand!”

“Yes. I think he must have been trying to prise open that box yonder
when he was attacked.”

Bristol and I looked, together, at an oblong box which lay upon the
floor near the murdered man. It was a kind of small packing case,
addressed to Professor Deeping, and evidently had not been opened.

“When did this arrive?” asked Bristol. Lester, the Professor’s man, who
had entered the room, replied shakily—

“It came by carrier, sir, just before I went out.”

“Was he expecting it?”

“I don’t think so.”

Inspector Bristol and the officer dragged the box fully into the light.
It was some three feet long by one foot square, and solidly
constructed.

“It is perfectly evident,” remarked Bristol, “that the murderer stayed
to search for—”

“The key of the safe!”

“Exactly. If the men really heard sounds here, it would appear that the
assassin was still searching at that time.”

“I assure you,” the officer interrupted, “that there was no living
thing in the room when we entered.”

Bristol and I looked at one another in horrified wonder.

“It’s incomprehensible!” he said.

“See if the key is in the place mentioned by the Professor, Mr.
Cavanagh, whilst I break the box.”

I went to a great, open bookcase, which the frantic searcher seemed to
have overlooked. Removing the bulky “Assyrian Mythology,” there, behind
the volume, lay an envelope, containing a key, and a short letter. Not
caring to approach more closely to the table and to that which lay
beneath it, I was peering at the small writing, in the semi-gloom by
the bookcase, when Bristol cried—

“This box is unopenable by ordinary means! I shall have to smash it!”

At his words, I joined him where he knelt on the floor. Mysteriously,
the chest had defied all his efforts.

“There’s a pick-axe in the garden,” volunteered Lester. “Shall I bring
it?”

“Yes.”

The man ran off.

“I see the key is safe,” said Bristol. “Possibly the letter may throw
some light upon all this.”

“Let us hope so,” I replied. “You might read it.”

He took the letter from my hand, stepped up to the table, and by the
light of the lamp read as follows—


My Dear Cavanagh,—

It has now become apparent to me that my life is in imminent danger.
You know of the inexplicable outrages which marked my homeward journey,
and if this letter come to your hand it will be because these have
culminated in my death.

The idea of a pursuing scimitar is not new to me. This phenomenon,
which I have now witnessed three times, is fairly easy of explanation,
but its significance is singular. It is said to be one of the devices
whereby the Hashishin warn those whom they have marked down for
destruction, and is called, in the East, “The Scimitar of Hassan.”

The Hashishin were the members of a Moslem secret society, founded in
1090 by one Hassan of Khorassan. There is a persistent tradition in
parts of the Orient that this sect still flourishes in Assyria, under
the rule of a certain Hassan of Aleppo, the Sheikh-al-jebal, or supreme
lord of the Hashishin. My careful inquiries, however, at the time that
I was preparing matter for my “Assyrian Mythology,” failed to discover
any trace of such a person or such a group.

I accordingly assumed Hassan to be a myth—a first cousin to the ginn. I
was wrong. He exists. And by my supremely rash act I have incurred his
vengeance, for Hassan of Aleppo is the self-appointed guardian of the
traditions and relics of Mohammed. And I have Stolen one of the holy
slippers of the Prophet!

He, with some of his servants, has followed me from Mecca to England.
My precautions have enabled me to retain the relic, but you have seen
what fate befell all those others who even touched the receptacle
containing it.

If I fall a victim to the Hashishin, I am uncertain how you, as my
confidant, will fare. Therefore I have locked the slipper in my safe
and to you entrust the key. I append particulars of the lock
combination; but I warn you—do not open the safe. If their wrath be
visited upon you, your possession of the key may prove a safeguard.

Take the copy of “Assyrian Mythology.” You will find in it all that I
learned respecting the Hashishin. If I am doomed to be assassinated, it
may aid you; if not in avenging me, in saving others from my fate. I
fear I shall never see you again. A cloud of horror settles upon me
like a pall. Do not touch the slipper, nor the case containing it.


EDWARD DEEPING.


“It is almost incredible!” I said hoarsely.

Bristol returned the letter to me without a word, and turning to
Lester, who had reentered carrying a heavy pick-axe, he attacked the
oblong box with savage energy.

Through the house of death the sound of the blows echoed and rang with
a sort of sacrilegious mockery. The box fell to pieces.

“My God! look, sir!”

Lester was the trembling speaker.

The box, I have said, was but three feet long by one foot square, and
had clearly defied poor Deeping’s efforts to open it. But a
crescent-shaped knife, wet with blood, lay within!




CHAPTER V
THE OCCUPANT OF THE BOX


Dimly to my ears came the ceaseless murmur of London. The night now was
far advanced, and not a sound disturbed the silence of the court below
my windows.

Professor Deeping’s “Assyrian Mythology” lay open before me, beside it
my notebook. A coal dropped from the fire, and I half started up out of
my chair. My nerves were all awry, and I had more than my horrible
memories of the murdered man to thank for it. Let me explain what I
mean.

When, after assisting, or endeavouring to assist, Bristol at his
elaborate inquiries, I had at last returned to my chambers, I had
become the victim of a singular delusion—though one common enough in
the case of persons whose nerves are overwrought. I had thought myself
followed.

During the latter part of my journey I found myself constantly looking
from the little window at the rear of the cab. I had an impression that
some vehicle was tracking us. Then, when I discharged the man and
walked up the narrow passage to the court, it was fear of a skulking
form that dodged from shadow to shadow which obsessed me.

Finally, as I entered the hall and mounted the darkened stair, from the
first landing I glanced down into the black well beneath. Blazing
yellow eyes, I thought, looked up at me!

I will confess that I leapt up the remaining flight of stairs to my
door, and, safely within, found myself trembling as if with a palsy.

When I sat down to write (for sleep was an impossible proposition) I
placed my revolver upon the table beside me. I cannot say why. It
afforded me some sense of protection, I suppose. My conclusions, thus
far, amounted to the following—

The apparition of the phantom scimitar was due to the presence of
someone who, by means of the moonlight, or of artificial light, cast a
reflection of such a weapon as that found in the oblong chest upon the
wall of a darkened apartment—as, Deeping’s stateroom on the Mandalay,
his study, etc.

A group of highly efficient assassins, evidently Moslem fanatics, who
might or might not be of the ancient order of the Hashishin, had
pursued the stolen slipper to England. They had severed any hand, other
than that of a Believer, which had touched the case containing it. (The
Coptic porter was a Christian.)

Uncertain, possibly, of Deeping’s faith, or fearful of endangering the
success of their efforts by an outrage upon him en route, they had
refrained from this until his arrival at his house. He had been warned
of his impending end by Ahmad Ahmadeen.

Who was Ahmadeen? And who was his beautiful associate? I found myself
unable, at present, to answer either of those questions. In order to
gain access to Professor Deeping, who so carefully secluded himself, a
box had been sent to him by ordinary carrier. (As I sat at my table,
Scotland Yard was busy endeavouring to trace the sender.) Respecting
this box we had made an extraordinary discovery.

It was of the kind used by Eastern conjurors for what is generally
known as “the Box Trick.” That is to say, it could only be opened
(short of smashing it) from the inside! You will remember what we found
within it? Consider this with the new fact, above, and to what
conclusion do you come?

Something (it is not possible to speak of someone in connection with so
small a box) had been concealed inside, and had killed Professor
Deeping whilst he was actually engaged in endeavouring to force it
open. This inconceivable creature had then searched the study for the
slipper—or for the key of the safe. Interrupted and trapped by the
arrival of the police, the creature had returned to the box, re-closed
it, and had actually been there when the study was searched!

For a creature so small as the murderous thing in the box to slip out
during the confusion, and at some time prior to Bristol’s arrival, was
no difficult matter. The inspector and I were certain that these were
the facts.

But what was this creature?

I turned to the chapter in “Assyrian Mythology”—“The Tradition of the
Hashishin.”

The legends which the late Professor Deeping had collected relative to
this sect of religious murderers were truly extraordinary. Of the
cult’s extinction at the time of writing he was clearly certain, but he
referred to the popular belief, or Moslem legend, that, since Hassan of
Khorassan, there had always been a Sheikh-al-jebal, and that a dreadful
being known as Hassan of Aleppo was the present holder of the title.

He referred to the fact that De Sacy has shown the word Assassin to be
derived from Hashishin, and quoted El-Idrisi to the same end. The
Hashishin performed their murderous feats under the influence of
hashish, or Indian hemp; and during the state of ecstasy so induced,
according to Deeping, they acquired powers almost superhuman. I read
how they could scale sheer precipices, pass fearlessly along narrow
ledges which would scarce afford foothold for a rat, cast themselves
from great heights unscathed, and track one marked for death in such a
manner as to remain unseen not only by the victim but by others about
him. At this point of my studies I started, in a sudden nervous panic,
and laid my hand upon my revolver.

I thought of the eyes which had seemed to look up from the black well
of the staircase—I thought of the horrible end of this man whose book
lay upon the table ... and I thought I heard a faint sound outside my
study door!

The key of Deeping’s safe, and his letter to me, lay close by my hand.
I slipped them into a drawer and locked it. With every nerve, it
seemed, strung up almost to snapping point, I mechanically pursued my
reading.

“At the time of the Crusades,” wrote Deeping, “there was a story
current of this awful Order which I propose to recount. It is one of
the most persistent dealing with the Hashishin, and is related to-day
of the apparently mythical Hassan of Aleppo. I am disposed to believe
that at one time it had a solid foundation, for a similar practice was
common in Ancient Egypt and is mentioned by Georg Ebers.”

My door began very slowly to open!

Merciful God! What was coming into the room!

So very slowly, so gently, nay, all but imperceptibly, did it move,
that had my nerves been less keenly attuned I doubt not I should have
remained unaware of the happening. Frozen with horror, I sat and
watched. Yet my mental condition was a singular one.

My direct gaze never quitted the door, but in some strange fashion I
saw the words of the next paragraph upon the page before me!

“As making peculiarly efficient assassins, when under the influence of
the drug, and as being capable of concealing themselves where a normal
man could not fail to be detected—”

(At this moment I remembered that my bathroom window was open, and that
the waste-pipe passed down the exterior wall.)

“—the Sheikh-al-jebal took young boys of a certain desert tribe, and
for eight hours of every day, until their puberty, confined them in a
wooden frame—”

What looked like a reed was slowly inserted through the opening between
door and doorpost! It was brought gradually around ... until it pointed
directly toward me!

I seemed to put forth a mighty mental effort, shaking off the icy hand
of fear which held me inactive in my chair. A saving instinct warned
me—and I ducked my head.

Something whirred past me and struck the wall behind.

Revolver in hand, I leapt across the room, dashed the door open, and
fired blindly—again—and again—and again—down the passage.

And in the brief gleams I saw it!

I cannot call it man, but I saw the thing which, I doubt not, had
killed poor Deeping with the crescent-knife and had propelled a
poison-dart at me.

It was a tiny dwarf! Neither within nor without a freak exhibition had
I seen so small a human being! A kind of supernatural dread gripped me
by the throat at sight of it. As it turned with animal activity and
bounded into my bathroom, I caught a three-quarter view of the
creature’s swollen, incredible head—which was nearly as large as that
of a normal man!

Never while my mind serves me can I forget that yellow, grinning face
and those canine fangs—the tigerish, blazing eyes—set in the great,
misshapen head upon the tiny, agile body.

Wildly, I fired again. I hurled myself forward and dashed into the
room.

Like nothing so much as a cat, the gleaming body (the dwarf was but
scantily clothed) streaked through the open window!

Certain death, I thought, must be his lot upon the stones of the court
far below. I ran and looked down, shaking in every limb, my mind filled
with a loathing terror unlike anything I had ever known.

Brilliant moonlight flooded the pavement beneath; for twenty yards to
left and right every stone was visible.

The court was empty!

Human, homely London moved and wrought intimately about me; but there,
at sight of the empty court below, a great loneliness swept down like a
mantle—a clammy mantle of the fabric of dread. I stood remote from my
fellows, in an evil world peopled with the creatures of Hassan of
Aleppo.

Moved by some instinct, as that of a frightened child, I dropped to my
knees and buried my face in trembling hands.




CHAPTER VI
THE RING OF THE PROPHET


“There is no doubt,” said Mr. Rawson, “that great personal danger
attaches to any contact with this relic. It is the first time I have
been concerned with anything of the kind.”

Mr. Bristol, of Scotland Yard, standing stiffly military by the window,
looked across at the gray-haired solicitor. We were all silent for a
few moments.

“My late client’s wishes,” continued Mr. Rawson, “are explicit. His
last instructions, evidently written but a short time prior to his
death, advise me that the holy slipper of the Prophet is contained in
the locked safe at his house in Dulwich. He was clearly of opinion that
you, Mr. Cavanagh, would incur risk—great risk—from your possession of
the key. Since attempts have been made upon you, murderous attempts,
the late Professor Deeping, my unfortunate client, evidently was not in
error.”

“Mysterious outrages,” said Bristol, “have marked the progress of the
stolen slipper from Mecca almost to London.”

“I understand,” interrupted the solicitor, “that a fanatic known as
Hassan of Aleppo seeks to restore the relic to its former
resting-place.”

“That is so.”

“Exactly; and it accounts for the Professor’s wish that the safe should
not be touched by any one but a Believer—and for his instructions that
its removal to the Antiquarian Museum and the placing of the slipper
within that institution be undertaken by a Moslem or Moslems.”

Bristol frowned.

“Any one who has touched the receptacle containing the thing,” he said,
“has either been mutilated or murdered. I want to apprehend the authors
of those outrages, but I fail to see why the slipper should be put on
exhibition. Other crimes are sure to follow.”

“I can only pursue my instructions,” said Mr. Rawson dryly. “They are,
that the work be done in such a manner as to expose all concerned to a
minimum of risk from these mysterious people; that if possible a Moslem
be employed for the purpose; and that Mr. Cavanagh, here, shall always
hold the key or keys to the case in the museum containing the slipper.
Will you undertake to look for some—Eastern workmen, Mr. Bristol? In
the course of your inquiries you may possibly come across such a
person.”

“I can try,” replied Bristol. “Meanwhile, I take it, the safe must
remain at Dulwich?”

“Certainly. It should be guarded.”

“We are guarding it and shall guard it,” Bristol assured him. “I only
hope we catch someone trying to get at it!”

Shortly afterward Bristol and I left the office, and, his duties taking
him to Scotland Yard, I returned to my chambers to survey the position
in which I now found myself. Indeed, it was a strange one enough,
showing how great things have small beginnings; for, as a result of a
steamer acquaintance I found myself involved in a dark business worthy
of the Middle Ages. That Professor Deeping should have stolen one of
the holy slippers of Mohammed was no affair of mine, and that an awful
being known as Hassan of Aleppo should have pursued it did not properly
enter into my concerns; yet now, with a group of Eastern fanatics at
large in England, I was become, in a sense, the custodian of the relic.
Moreover, I perceived that I had been chosen that I might safeguard
myself. What I knew of the matter might imperil me, but whilst I held
the key to the reliquary, and held it fast, I might hope to remain
immune though I must expect to be subjected to attempts. It would be my
affair to come to terms.

Contemplating these things I sat, in a world of dark dreams,
unconscious of the comings and goings in the court below, unconscious
of the hum which told of busy Fleet Street so near to me. The weather,
as is its uncomfortable habit in England, had suddenly grown tropically
hot, plunging London into the vapours of an African spring, and the sun
was streaming through my open window fully upon the table.

I mopped my clammy forehead, glancing with distaste at the pile of work
which lay before me. Then my eyes turned to an open quarto book. It was
the late Professor Deeping’s “Assyrian Mythology,” and embodied the
result of his researches into the history of the Hashishin, the
religious murderers of whose existence he had been so skeptical. To the
Chief of the Order, the terrible Sheikh Hassan of Aleppo, he referred
as a “fabled being”; yet it was at the hands of this “fabled being”
that he had met his end! How incredible it all seemed. But I knew full
well how worthy of credence it was.

Then upon my gloomy musings a sound intruded—the ringing of my door
bell. I rose from my chair with a weary sigh, went to the door, and
opened it. An aged Oriental stood without. He was tall and straight,
had a snow-white beard and clear-cut, handsome features. He wore
well-cut European garments and a green turban. As I stood staring he
saluted me gravely.

“Mr. Cavanagh?” he asked, speaking in faultless English.

“I am he.”

“I learn that the services of a Moslem workman are required.”

“Quite correct, sir; but you should apply at the offices of Messrs.
Rawson & Rawson, Chancery Lane.”

The old man bowed, smiling.

“Many thanks; I understood so much. But, my position being a peculiar
one, I wished to speak with you—as a friend of the late Professor.”

I hesitated. The old man looked harmless enough, but there was an air
of mystery about the matter which put me on my guard.

“You will pardon me,” I said, “but the work is scarcely of a kind—”

He raised his thin hand.

“I am not undertaking it myself. I wished to explain to you the
conditions under which I could arrange to furnish suitable porters.”

His patient explanation disposed me to believe that he was merely some
kind of small contractor, and in any event I had nothing to fear from
this frail old man.

“Step in, sir,” I said, repenting of my brusquerie—and stood aside for
him.

He entered, with that Oriental meekness in which there is something
majestic. I placed a chair for him in the study, and reseated myself at
the table. The old man, who from the first had kept his eyes lowered
deferentially, turned to me with a gentle gesture, as if to apologize
for opening the conversation.

“From the papers, Mr. Cavanagh,” he began, “I have learned of the
circumstances attending the death of Professor Deeping. Your papers”—he
smiled, and I thought I had never seen a smile of such sweetness—“your
papers know all! Now I understand why a Moslem is required, and I
understand what is required of him. But remembering that the object of
his labours would be to place a holy relic on exhibition for the
amusement of unbelievers, can you reasonably expect to obtain the
services of one?”

His point of view was fair enough.

“Perhaps not,” I replied. “For my own part I should wish to see the
slipper back in Mecca, or wherever it came from. But Professor
Deeping—”

“Professor Deeping was a thorn in the flesh of the Faithful!”

My visitor’s voice was gravely reproachful.

“Nevertheless his wishes must be considered,” I said, “and the methods
adopted by those who seek to recover the relic are such as to alienate
all sympathy.”

“You speak of the Hashishin?” asked the old man. “Mr. Cavanagh, in your
own faith you have had those who spilled the blood of infidels as
freely!”

“My good sir, the existence of such an organization cannot be tolerated
today! This survival of the dark ages must be stamped out. However just
a cause may be, secret murder is not permissible, as you, a man of
culture, a Believer, and”—I glanced at his unusual turban—“a descendant
of the Prophet, must admit.”

“I can admit nothing against the Guardian of the Tradition, Mr.
Cavanagh! The Prophet taught that we should smite the Infidel. I ask
you—have you the courage of your convictions?”

“Perhaps; I trust so.”

“Then assist me to rid England of what you have called a survival of
the dark ages. I will furnish porters to remove and carry the safe, if
you will deliver to me the key!”

I sprang to my feet.

“That is madness!” I cried. “In the first place I should be
compromising with my conscience, and in the second place I should be
defenceless against those who might—”

“I have with me a written promise from one highly placed—one to whose
will Hassan of Aleppo bows!”

My mind greatly disturbed, I watched the venerable speaker. I had
determined now that he was some religious leader of Islam in England,
who had been deputed to approach me; and, let me add, I was sorely
tempted to accede to his proposal, for nothing would be gained by any
one if the slipper remained for ever at the museum, whereas by
conniving at its recovery by those who, after all, were its rightful
owners I should be ridding England of a weird and undesirable visitant.

I think I should have agreed, when I remembered that the Hashishin had
murdered Professor Deeping and had mutilated others wholly innocent of
offence. I looked across at the old man. He had drawn himself up to his
great height, and for the first time fully raising the lids, had fixed
upon me the piercing gaze of a pair of eagle eyes. I started, for the
aspect of this majestic figure was entirely different from that of the
old stranger who had stood suppliant before me a moment ago.

“It is impossible,” I said. “I can come to no terms with those who
shield murderers.”

He regarded me fixedly, but did not move.

“Es-selam ’aleykum!” I added (“Peace be on you!”) closing the interview
in the Eastern manner.

The old man lowered his eyes, and saluted me with graceful gravity.

“Wa-’aleykum!” he said (“And on you!”). I conducted him to the door and
closed it upon his exit. In his last salute I had noticed the flashing
of a ring which he wore upon his left hand, and he was gone scarce ten
seconds ere my heart began to beat furiously. I snatched up “Assyrian
Mythology” and with trembling fingers turned to a certain page.

There I read—

Each Sheikh of the Assassins is said to be invested with the “Ring of
the Prophet.” It bears a green stone, shaped in the form of a scimitar
or crescent.

My dreadful suspicion was confirmed. I knew who my visitor had been.

“God in heaven!” I whispered. “It was Hassan of Aleppo!”




CHAPTER VII
FIRST ATTEMPT ON THE SAFE


On the following morning I was awakened by the arrival of Bristol. I
hastened to admit him.

“Your visitor of yesterday,” he began, “has wasted no time!”

“What has happened?”

He tugged irritably at his moustache. “I don’t know!” he replied. “Of
course it was no surprise to find that there isn’t a Mohammedan who’ll
lay his little finger on Professor Deeping’s safe! There’s no doubt in
my mind that every lascar at the docks knows Hassan of Aleppo to be in
England. Some other arrangement will have to be arrived at, if the
thing is ever to be taken to the Antiquarian Museum. Meanwhile we stand
to lose it. Last night—”

He accepted a cigarette, and lighted it carefully.

“Last night,” he resumed, “a member of P Division was on point duty
outside the late Professor’s house, and two C.I.D. men were actually in
the room where the safe is. Result—someone has put in at least an
hour’s work on the lock, but it proved too tough a job!”

I stared at him amazedly.

“Someone has been at the lock!” I cried. “But that is impossible, with
two men in the room—unless—”

“They were both knocked on the head!”

“Both! But by whom! My God! They are not—”

“Oh, no! It was done artistically. They both came round about four
o’clock this morning.”

“And who attacked them?”

“They had no idea. Neither of them saw a thing!”

My amazement grew by leaps and bounds. “But, Bristol, one of them must
have seen the other succumb!”

“Both did! Their statements tally exactly!”

“I quite fail to follow you.”

“That’s not surprising. Listen: When I got on the scene about five
o’clock, Marden and West, the two C.I.D. men, had quite recovered their
senses, though they were badly shaken, and one had a cracked skull. The
constable was conscious again, too.”

“What! Was he attacked?”

“In exactly the same way! I’ll give you Marden’s story, as he gave it
to me a few minutes after the surgeon had done with him. He said that
they were sitting in the study, smoking, and with both windows wide
open. It was a fearfully hot night.”

“Did they have lights?”

“No. West sat in an armchair near the writing-table; Marden sat by the
window next to the door. I had arranged that every hour one of them
should go out to the gate and take the constable’s report. It was just
after Marden had been out at one o’clock that it happened.

“They were sitting as I tell you when Marden thought he heard a curious
sort of noise from the gate. West appeared to have heard nothing; but I
have no doubt that it was the sound of the constable’s fall. West’s
pipe had gone out, and he struck a match to relight it. As he did so,
Marden saw him drop the match, clench both fists, and with eyes glaring
in the moonlight and his teeth coming together with a snap, drop from
his chair.

“Marden says that he was half up from his seat when something struck
him on the back of the head with fearful force. He remembered nothing
more until he awoke, with the dawn creeping into the room, and heard
West groaning somewhere beside him. They both had badly damaged skulls
with great bruises behind the ear. It is instructive to note that their
wounds corresponded almost to a fraction of an inch. They had been
stunned by someone who thoroughly understood his business, and with
some heavy, blunt weapon. A few minutes later came the man to relieve
the constable; and the constable was found to have been treated in
exactly the same way!”

“But if Marden’s account is true—”

“West, as he lost consciousness, saw Marden go in exactly the same
way.”

“Marden was seated by the open window, but I cannot conjecture how any
one can have got at West, who sat by the table!”

“The case of Marden is little less than remarkable; he was some
distance from the window. No one could possibly have reached him from
outside.”

“And the constable?”

“The constable can give us no clue. He was suddenly struck down, as the
others were. I examined the safe, of course, but didn’t touch it,
according to instructions. Someone had been at work on the lock, but it
had defied their efforts. I’m fully expecting though that they’ll be
back to-night, with different tools!”

“The place is watched during the day, of course?”

“Of course. But it’s unlikely that anything will be attempted in
daylight. Tonight I am going down myself.”

“Could you arrange that I join you?”

“I could, but you can see the danger for yourself?”

“It is extraordinarily mysterious.”

“Mr. Cavanagh, it’s uncanny!” said Bristol. “I can understand that one
of these Hashishin could easily have got up behind the man on duty out
in the open. I know, and so do you, that they’re past masters of that
kind of thing; but unless they possess the power to render themselves
invisible, it’s not evident how they can have got behind West whilst he
sat at the table, with Marden actually watching him!”

“We must lay a trap for them to-night.”

“Rely upon me to do so. My only fear is that they may anticipate it and
change their tactics. Hassan of Aleppo apparently knows as much of our
plans as we do ourselves.”

Inspector Bristol, though a man of considerable culture, clearly was
infected with a species of supernatural dread.




CHAPTER VIII
THE VIOLET EYES AGAIN


At four o’clock in the afternoon I had heard nothing further from
Bristol, but I did not doubt that he would advise me of his
arrangements in good time. I sought by hard work to forget for a time
the extraordinary business of the stolen slipper; but it persistently
intruded upon my mind. Particularly, my thoughts turned to the night of
Professor Deeping’s murder, and to the bewitchingly pretty woman who
had warned me of the impending tragedy. She had bound me to secrecy—a
secrecy which had proved irksome, for it had since appeared to me that
she must have been an accomplice of Hassan of Aleppo. At the time I had
been at a loss to define her peculiar accent, now it seemed evidently
enough to have been Oriental.

I threw down my pen in despair, for work was impossible, went
downstairs, and walked out under the arch into Fleet Street. Quite
mechanically I turned to the left, and, still engaged with idle
conjectures, strolled along westward.

Passing the entrance to one of the big hotels, I was abruptly recalled
to the realities—by a woman’s voice.

“Wait for me here,” came musically to my ears.

I stopped, and turned. A woman who had just quitted a taxi-cab was
entering the hotel. The day was hot and thunderously oppressive, and
this woman with the musical voice wore a delicate costume of flimsiest
white. A few steps upward she paused and glanced back. I had a view of
a Greek profile, and for one magnetic instant looked into eyes of the
deepest and most wonderful violet.

Then, shaking off inaction, I ran up the steps and overtook the lady in
white as a porter swung open the door to admit her. We entered
together.

“Madame,” I said in a low tone, “I must detain you for a moment. There
is something I have to ask.”

She turned, exhibiting the most perfect composure, lowered her lashes
and raised them again, the gaze of the violet eyes sweeping me from
head to foot with a sort of frigid scorn.

“I fear you have made a mistake, sir. We have never met before!”

Her voice betrayed no trace of any foreign accent!

“But,” I began—and paused.

I felt myself flush; for this encounter in the foyer of an hotel, with
many curious onlookers, was like to prove embarrassing if my beautiful
acquaintance persisted in her attitude. I fully realized what
construction would be put upon my presence there, and foresaw that
forcible and ignominious ejection must be my lot if I failed to
establish my right to address her.

She turned away, and crossed in the direction of the staircase. A
sunbeam sought out a lock of hair that strayed across her brow, and
kissed it to a sudden glow like that which lurks in the heart of a
blush rose.

That wonderful sheen, which I had never met with elsewhere in nature,
but which no artifice could lend, served to remove my last frail doubt
which had survived the evidence of the violet eyes. I had been deceived
by no strange resemblance; this was indeed the woman who had been the
harbinger of Professor Deeping’s death. In three strides I was beside
her again. Curious glances were set upon me, and I saw a servant
evidently contemplating approach; but I ignored all save my own fixed
purpose.

“You must listen to what I have to say!” I whispered. “If you decline,
I shall have no alternative but to call in the detective who holds a
warrant for your arrest!”

She stood quite still, watching me coolly. “I suppose you would wish to
avoid a scene?” I added.

“You have already made me the object of much undesirable attention,”
she replied scornfully. “I do not need your assurance that you would
disgrace me utterly! You are talking nonsense, as you must be
aware—unless you are insane. But if your object be to force your
acquaintance upon me, your methods are novel, and, under the
circumstances, effective. Come, sir, you may talk to me—for three
minutes!”

The musical voice had lost nothing of its imperiousness, but for one
instant the lips parted, affording a fleeting glimpse of pearl beyond
the coral.

Her sudden change of front was bewildering. Now, she entered the lift
and I followed her. As we ascended side by side I found it impossible
to believe that this dainty white figure was that of an associate of
the Hashishin, that of a creature of the terrible Hassan of Aleppo. Yet
that she was the same girl who, a few days after my return from the
East, had shown herself conversant with the plans of the murderous
fanatics was beyond doubt. Her accent on that occasion clearly had been
assumed, with what object I could not imagine. Then, as we quitted the
lift and entered a cosy lounge, my companion seated herself upon a
Chesterfield, signing to me to sit beside her.

As I did so she lay back smiling, and regarding me from beneath her
black lashes. Thus, half veiled, her great violet eyes were most
wonderful.

“Now, sir,” she said softly, “explain yourself.”

“Then you persist in pretending that we have not met before?”

“There is no occasion for pretence,” she replied lightly; and I found
myself comparing her voice with her figure, her figure with her face,
and vainly endeavouring to compute her age. Frankly, she was
bewildering—this lovely girl who seemed so wholly a woman of the world.

“This fencing is useless.”

“It is quite useless! Come, I know New York, London, and I know Paris,
Vienna, Budapest. Therefore I know mankind! You thought I was pretty, I
suppose? I may be; others have thought so. And you thought you would
like to make my acquaintance without troubling about the usual
formalities? You adopted a singularly brutal method of achieving your
object, but I love such insolence in a man. Therefore I forgave you.
What have you to say to me?”

I perceive that I had to deal with a bold adventuress, with a
consummate actress, who, finding herself in a dangerous situation, had
adopted this daring line of defence, and now by her personal charm
sought to lure me from my purpose.

But with the scimitar of Hassan of Aleppo stretched over me, with the
dangers of the night before me, I was in no mood for a veiled duel of
words, for an interchange of glances in thrust and parry, however
delightful such warfare might have been with so pretty an adversary.

For a long time I looked sternly into her eyes; but their violet
mystery defied, whilst her red-lipped smile taunted me.

“Unfortunately,” I said, with slow emphasis, “you are protected by my
promise, made on the occasion of our previous meeting. But murder has
been done, so that honour scarcely demands that I respect my promise
further—”

She raised her eyebrows slightly.

“Surely that depends upon the quality of the honour!” she said.

“I believe you to be a member of a murderous organization, and unless
you can convince me that I am wrong, I shall act accordingly.”

At that she leaned toward me, laying her hand on my arm.

“Please do not be so cruel,” she whispered, “as to drag me into a
matter with which truly I have no concern. Believe me, you are utterly
mistaken. Wait one moment, and I will prove it.”

She rose, and before I could make move to detain her, quitted the room;
but the door scarcely had closed ere I was afoot. The corridor beyond
was empty. I ran on. The lift had just descended. A dark man whom I
recognized stood near the closed gate.

“Quick!” I said, “I am Cavanagh of the Report! Did you see a lady enter
the lift?”

“I did, Mr. Cavanagh,” answered the hotel detective; for this was he.

In such a giant inn as this I knew full well that one could come and go
almost with impunity, though one had no right to the hospitality of the
establishment; and it was with a premonition respecting what his answer
would be, that I asked the man—

“Is she staying here?”

“She is not. I have never seen her before!”

The girl with the violet eyes had escaped, taking all her secrets with
her!




CHAPTER IX
SECOND ATTEMPT ON THE SAFE


“You see,” said Bristol, “the Hashishin must know that the safe won’t
remain here unopened much longer. They will therefore probably make
another attempt to-night.”

“It seems likely,” I replied; and was silent. Outside the open windows
whispered the shrubbery, as a soft breeze stole through the bushes.
Beyond, the moon made play in the dim avenue. From the old chapel hard
by the sweet-toned bell proclaimed midnight. Our vigil was begun. In
this room it was that Professor Deeping had met death at the hands of
the murderous Easterns; here it was that Marden and West had
mysteriously been struck down the night before.

To-night was every whit as hot, and Bristol and I had the windows
widely opened. My companion was seated where the detective, Marden, had
sat, in a chair near the westerly window, and I lay back in the
armchair that had been occupied by West.

I may repeat here that the house of the late Professor Deeping was more
properly a cottage, surrounded by a fairly large piece of ground, for
the most part run wild. The room used as a study was on the ground
floor, and had windows on the west and on the south. Those on the west
(French windows) opened on a loggia; those on the south opened right
into the dense tangle of a neglected shrubbery. The place possessed an
oppressive atmosphere of loneliness, for which in some measure its
history may have been responsible.

The silence, seemingly intensified by each whisper that sped through
the elms and crept about the shrubbery, grew to such a stillness that I
told myself I had experienced nothing like it since crossing with a
caravan I had slept in the desert. Yet noisy, whirling London was
within gunshot of us; and this, though hard enough to believe, was a
reflection oddly comforting. Only one train of thought was possible,
and this I pursued at random.

By what means were Marden and West struck down? In thus exposing
ourselves, in order that we might trap the author or authors of the
outrage, did we act wisely?

“Bristol,” I said suddenly, “it was someone who came through the open
window.”

“No one,” he replied, “came through the windows. West saw absolutely
nothing. But if any one comes that way to-night, we have him!”

“West may have seen nothing; but how else could any one enter?”

Bristol offered no reply; and I plunged again into a maze of
speculation.

Powerful mantraps were set in such a way that any one or anything,
ignorant of their positions, coming up to the windows must unavoidably
be snared. These had been placed in position with much secrecy after
dusk, and the man on duty at the gate stood with his back to the wall.
No one could approach him except from the front. My thoughts took a new
turn.

Was the girl with the violet eyes an ally of the Hashishin? Thus far,
although she so palpably had tricked me, I had found myself unable to
speak of her to Bristol; for the idea had entered my mind that she
might have learned of the plan to murder Deeping without directly being
implicated. Now came yet another explanation. The publicity given to
that sensational case might have interested some third party in the
fate of the stolen slipper! Could it be that others, in no way
connected with the dreadful Hassan of Aleppo, were in quest of the
slipper?

Scotland Yard had taken care to ensure that the general public be kept
in ignorance of the existence of such an organization as the Hashishin,
but I must assume that this hypothetical third party were well aware
that they had Hassan, as well as the authorities, to count with.
Granting the existence of such a party, my beautiful acquaintance might
be classified as one of its members. I spoke again.

“Bristol,” I said, “has it occurred to you that there may be others, as
well as Hassan of Aleppo, seeking to gain possession of the sacred
slipper?”

“It has not,” he replied. “In the strictest sense of the expression,
they would be out for trouble! What gave you the idea?”

“I hardly know,” I returned evasively, for even now I was loath to
betray the mysterious girl with the wonderful eyes.

The chapel bell sounding the half-hour, Bristol rose with a sigh that
might have been one of relief, and went out to take the report of the
man on duty at the gate. As his footsteps died away along the elm
avenue, it came to me how, in the darkness about, menace lurked; and I
felt myself succumbing to the greatest dread experienced by man—the
dread of the unknown.

All that I knew of the weird group of fanatics—survivals of a dim and
evil past—who must now be watching this cottage as bloodlustful
devotees watch a shrine violated, burst upon my mind. I peopled the
still blackness with lurking assassins, armed with the murderous
knowledge of by-gone centuries, armed with invisible weapons which
struck down from afar, supernaturally.

I glanced toward the corner of the room where the safe stood, reliquary
of a worthless thing for which much blood had been spilled.

Then sounded footsteps along the avenue, and my fear whispered that
they were not those of Bristol but of one who had murdered him, and who
came guilefully, to murder me!

I snatched the revolver from my pocket and crossed the darkened room.
Just to the right of one of the French windows I stood looking out
across the loggia to the end of the avenue. The night was a bright one,
and the room was flooded with a reflected mystic light, but outside the
moon paved the avenue with pearl, and through the trees I saw a figure
approaching.

Was it Bristol? It had his build, it had his gait; but my fears
remained. Then the figure crossed the patch of shrubbery and stepped on
to the loggia.

“Mr. Cavanagh!”

I laughed dryly at my own cowardice, but my heart was still beating
abnormally.

“Here I am, Bristol, in a ghastly funk!”

“I don’t wonder! They may be on us any time now. All’s well at the
gate, but Morris says he heard, or thought he heard something at the
side of the chapel opposite, a while ago.”

“Wind in the bushes?”

“It may have been; but he says there was no breeze at the time.”

We resumed our seats.

“Bristol,” I said, “now that the danger grows imminent, doesn’t it seem
to you foolhardy for us thus to expose ourselves?”

“Perhaps it is,” he agreed; “but how otherwise are we likely to learn
what happened to Marden and West?”

“The enemy may adopt different measures to-night.”

“I think not. Our dispositions are the same, and I credit them with
cunning enough to know it. At the same time I credit ourselves with
having kept the existence of the steel traps completely secret. They
will assume (so I’ve reasoned) that we intend to rely entirely upon our
superior vigilance, therefore they will try the same game as last
night.”

Silence fell.

The moon rays, creeping around from the right of the avenue, crossing
the shrubbery and encroaching upon the low wall of the loggia, now
flooded its floor. Against the silvern light, Bristol appeared to me in
black silhouette. The breeze, too, seemed now to blow from a slightly
different direction. It came through the windows on my right, beyond
which lay the unkempt bushes which extended on that side to the wall of
the grounds.

So we sat, until the moonlight poured fully in upon Bristol’s back. So
we sat when the clock chimed the hour of one.

Bristol arose and once more went out to the gate. He had arranged to
visit Morris’s post every half-hour. Again I experienced the nervous
dread that he would be attacked in the avenue; but again he returned
unscathed.

“All’s well,” he said.

But from his tones I knew that he had not forgotten that it was at this
hour Marden and West had suffered mysterious attack.

Neither of us, I think, was disposed to talk. We both were unwilling to
break the silence, wherein, with all our ears, we listened for the
slightest disturbance.

And now my attention turned anew to the course of the slowly creeping
moon rays. In my mind an idea was struggling for definition. There was
something significant in the lunar lighting of the room. Why, I asked
myself, had the attack been made at one o’clock? Did the time signify
anything? If so, what? I looked toward Bristol.

His figure, the chair upon which he sat, were sharply outlined by the
cold light. The wall behind me, and to my left, was illuminated
brilliantly; but no light fell directly upon me.

The idea was taking shape. From the loggia and the avenue Bristol, I
reasoned, must be clearly visible. From the shrubbery on the south,
through the other windows could I be seen? Yes, silhouetted against the
moonlight!

A faint sound, quite indescribable, came to my ears from somewhere
outside-beyond.

“My God!” whispered Bristol. “Did you hear it?”

“Yes! What?”

“It must have been Morris!—”

Bristol was half standing, one hand upon the arm of the chair, the
other concealed, but grasping his revolver as I well knew. I, too, had
my revolver in my hand, and as I twisted in my seat, preparatory to
rising, in sheer nervousness I dropped the weapon upon the carpet.

With an exclamation of dismay, I stooped quickly to recover it.

As I did so something whistled past my ear, so closely as almost to
touch it—and struck with a dull thud upon the wall beyond!

“Bristol!” I whispered.

But as I raised my eyes to him he seemed to crumple up, and fell
loosely forward into the patch of moonlight spread upon the floor! “God
in heaven!” I said aloud.

In a cold sweat of fear I crouched there, for it had become evident to
me that, as I bent, I was entirely in shadow.

There was a rustling in the bushes on the left; but before I could turn
in that direction, my attention was claimed elsewhere. Over into the
loggia leapt an almost naked brown figure!

It was that of a small but strongly built man, who carried a short,
exceedingly thick bamboo rod in his hand. My fear was too great to
admit of my accurately observing anything at that time, but I noticed
that some kind of leather thong or loop was attached to the end of the
squat cane.

The panic fear of the supernatural was strongly upon me, and I was
unable to realize that this Eastern apparition was a creature of flesh
and blood. With my nerves strung up to snapping point, I crouched
watching him. He entered the room, bending over the body of Bristol.

A hot breath fanned my cheek!

At that my overwrought nerves betrayed me. I uttered a stifled cry,
looking upward ... and into a pair of gleaming eyes which looked down
into mine!

A second brown man (who must have entered by one of the windows
overlooking the shrubbery) was bending over me!

Scarce knowing what I did, I raised my revolver and blazed straight
into the dimly-seen face. Down upon me silently dropped a naked body,
and something warm came flowing over my hand. But, knowing my foes to
be of flesh and blood, feeling myself at handgrips now with a palpable
enemy, I threw off the body, leapt up and fired, though blindly, at the
flying shape that flashed across the loggia—and was lost in the shadow
pools under the elms.

Upon the din of my shooting fell silence like a cloak. A moment I
listened, tense, still; then I turned to the table and lighted the
lamp.

In its light I saw Bristol lying like a dead man. Close beside him was
a big and heavy lump of clay. It had been shaped as a ball, but now it
was flattened out curiously. Bending over my unfortunate companion and
learning that, though unconscious, he lived, I learnt, too, how the
Hashishin contrived to strike men insensible without approaching them;
I learnt that the one whom I had shot, who lay in his blood almost on
the spot where Professor Deeping once had lain, was an expert slinger.

The contrivance which he carried, as did the other who had escaped, was
a sling, of the ancient Persian type. In place of stones, heavy lumps
of clay were used, which operated much the same as a sand-bag, whilst
enabling the operator to work from a considerable distance.

Hidden, over by the ancient chapel it might be, one of this evil twain
had struck down Morris, the constable; from the shelter of the trees,
from many yards away, they had shot their singular missiles through the
open windows at Bristol and myself. Bristol had succumbed, and now,
with a redness showing through his close-cut hair immediately behind
the right ear, lay wholly unconscious at my feet.

It had been a divine accident which had caused me to drop my revolver,
and, stooping to recover it, unknowingly to frustrate the design of the
second slinger upon myself. The light of the lamp fell upon the face of
the dead Hashishin. He lay forward upon his hands, crouching almost,
but with his face, his dreadful, featureless face, twisted up at me
from under his left shoulder.

God knows he deserved his end; but that mutilated face is often
grinning, bloodily, in my dreams.

And then as I stood, between that horrid exultation which is born of
killing and the panic which threatened me out of the darkness, I saw
something advancing ... slowly ... slowly ... from the elmen shades
toward the loggia.

It was a shape—it was a shadow. Silent it came—on—and on. Where the
dusk lay deepest it paused, undefined; for I could give it no name of
man or spirit. But a horror seemed to proceed from it as light from a
lamp.

I groped about the table near to me, never taking my eyes from that
sinister form outside. As my fingers closed upon the telephone, distant
voices and the sound of running footsteps (of those who had heard the
shots) came welcome to my ears.

The form stirred, seeming to raise phantom arms in execration, and a
stray moonbeam pierced the darkness shrouding it. For a fleeting
instant something flashed venomously.

The sounds grew nearer. I could tell that the newcomers had found
Morris lying at the gate. Yet still I stood, frozen with uncanny fear,
and watching—watching the spot to which that stray beam had pierced;
the spot where I had seen the moon gleam upon the ring of the Prophet!




CHAPTER X
AT THE BRITISH ANTIQUARIAN MUSEUM


A little group of interested spectators stood at the head of the square
glass case in the centre of the lofty apartment in the British
Antiquarian Museum known as the Burton Room (by reason of the fact that
a fine painting of Sir Richard Burton faces you as you enter). A few
other people looked on curiously from the lower end of the case. It
contained but one exhibit—a dirty and dilapidated markoob—or slipper of
morocco leather that had once been red.

“Our latest acquisition, gentlemen,” said Mr. Mostyn, the curator,
speaking in a low tone to the distinguished Oriental scholars around
him. “It has been left to the Institution by the late Professor
Deeping. He describes it in a document furnished by his solicitor as
one of the slippers worn by the Prophet Mohammed, but gives us no
further particulars. I myself cannot quite place the relic.”

“Nor I,” interrupted one of the group. “It is not mentioned by any of
the Arabian historians to my knowledge—that is, if it comes from Mecca,
as I understand it does.”

“I cannot possibly assert that it comes from Mecca, Dr. Nicholson,”
Mostyn replied. “The Professor may have taken it from
Al-Madinah—perhaps from the mysterious inner passage of the baldaquin
where the treasures of the place lie. But I can assure you that what
little we do know of its history is sufficiently unsavoury.”

I fancied that the curator’s tired cultured voice faltered as he spoke;
and now, without apparent reason, he moved a step to the right and
glanced oddly along the room. I followed the direction of his glance,
and saw a tall man in conventional morning dress, irreproachable in
every detail, whose head was instantly bent upon his catalogue. But
before his eyes fell I knew that their long almond shape, as well as
the peculiar burnt pallor of his countenance, were undoubtedly those of
an Oriental.

“There have been mysterious outrages committed, I believe, upon many of
those who have come in contact with the slipper?” asked one of the
savants.

“Exactly. Professor Deeping was undoubtedly among the victims. His
instructions were explicit that the relic should be brought here by a
Moslem, but for a long time we failed to discover any Moslem who would
undertake the task; and, as you are aware, while the slipper remained
at the Professor’s house attempts were made to steal it.”

He ceased uneasily, and glanced at the tall Eastern figure. It had
edged a little nearer; the head was still bowed and the fine yellow
waxen fingers of the hand from which he had removed his glove fumbled
with the catalogue’s leaves. It may well have been that in those days I
read menace in every eye, yet I felt assured that the yellow visitor
was eavesdropping—was malignantly attentive to the conversation.

The curator spoke lower than ever now; no one beyond the circle could
possibly hear him as he proceeded—

“We discovered an Alexandrian Greek who, for personal reasons, not
unconnected with matrimony, had turned Moslem! He carried the slipper
here, strongly escorted, and placed it where you now see it. No other
hand has touched it.” (The speaker’s voice was raised ever so
slightly.) “You will note that there is a rail around the case, to
prevent visitors from touching even the glass.”

“Ah,” said Dr. Nicholson quizzically, “And has anything untoward
happened to our Graeco-Moslem friend?”

“Perhaps Inspector Bristol can tell,” replied the curator.

The straight, military figure of the well-known Scotland Yard man was
conspicuous among the group of distinguished—and mostly
round-shouldered—scholars.

“Sorry, gentlemen,” he said, smiling, “but Mr. Acepulos has vanished
from his tobacco shop in Soho. I am not apprehensive that he had been
kidnapped or anything of that kind. I think rather that the date of his
disappearance tallies with that on which he cashed his cheque for
service rendered! His present wife is getting most unbeautifully fat,
too.”

“What precautions,” someone asked, “are being taken to guard the
slipper?”

“Well,” Mostyn answered, “though we have only the bare word of the late
Professor Deeping that the slipper was actually worn by Mohammed, it
has certainly an enormous value according to Moslem ideas. There can be
no doubt that a group of fanatics known as Hashishin are in London
engaged in an extraordinary endeavour to recover it.”

Mostyn’s voice sank to an impressive whisper. My gaze sought again the
tall Eastern visitor and was held fascinated by the baffled straining
in those velvet eyes. But the lids fell as I looked; and the effect was
that of a fire suddenly extinguished. I determined to draw Bristol’s
attention to the man.

“Accordingly,” Mostyn continued, “we have placed it in this room, from
which I fancy it would puzzle the most accomplished thief to remove
it.”

The party, myself included, stared about the place, as he went on to
explain—

“We have four large windows here; as you see. The Burton Room occupies
the end of a wing; there is only one door; it communicates with the
next room, which in turn opens into the main building by another door
on the landing. We are on the first floor; these two east windows
afford a view of the lawn before the main entrance; those two west ones
face Orpington Square; all are heavily barred as you see. During the
day there is a man always on duty in these two rooms. At night that
communicating door is locked. Short of erecting a ladder in full view
either of the Square or of Great Orchard Street, filing through four
iron bars and breaking the window and the case, I fail to see how
anybody can get at the slipper here.”

“If a duplicate key to the safe—” another voice struck in; I knew it
afterward for that of Professor Rhys-Jenkyns.

“Impossible to procure one, Professor,” cried Mostyn, his eyes
sparkling with an almost boyish interest. “Mr. Cavanagh here holds the
keys of the case, under the will of the late Professor Deeping. They
are of foreign workmanship and more than a little complicated.”

The eyes of the savants were turned now in my direction.

“I suppose you have them in a place of safety?” said Dr. Nicholson.

“They are at my bankers,” I replied.

“Then I venture to predict,” said the celebrated Orientalist, “that the
slipper of the Prophet will rest here undisturbed.”

He linked his arm into that of a brother scholar and the little group
straggled away, Mostyn accompanying them to the main entrance.

But I saw Inspector Bristol scratching his chin; he looked very much as
if he doubted the accuracy of the doctor’s prediction. He had already
had some experience of the implacable devotion of the Moslem group to
this treasure of the Faithful.

“The real danger begins,” I suggested to him, “when the general public
is admitted—after to-day, is it not?”

“Yes. All to-day’s people are specially invited, or are using special
invitation cards,” he replied. “The people who received them often give
their tickets away to those who will be likely really to appreciate the
opportunity.”

I looked around for the tall Oriental. He seemed to have vanished, and
for some reason I hesitated to speak of him to Bristol; for my gaze
fell upon an excessively thin, keen-faced man whose curiously wide-open
eyes met mine smilingly, whose gray suit spoke Stein-Bloch, whose felt
was a Boss raw-edge unmistakably of a kind that only Philadelphia can
produce. At the height of the season such visitors are not rare, but
this one had an odd personality, and moreover his keen gaze was raking
the place from ceiling to floor.

Where had I met him before? To the best of my recollection I had never
set eyes upon the man prior to that moment; and since he was so
palpably an American I had no reason for assuming him to be associated
with the Hashishin. But I remembered—indeed, I could never forget—how,
in the recent past, I had met with an apparent associate of the Moslems
as evidently European as this curiously alert visitor was American.
Moreover ... there was something tauntingly familiar, yet elusive,
about that gaunt face.

Was it not upon the eve of the death of Professor Deeping that the girl
with the violet eyes had first intruded her fascinating personality
into my tangled affairs? Patently, she had then been seeking the holy
slipper, and by craft had endeavoured to bend me to her will. Then had
I not encountered her again, meeting the glance of her unforgettable
violet eyes outside a Strand hotel? The encounter had presaged a
further attempt upon the slipper! Certainly she acted on behalf of
someone interested in it; and since neither Bristol nor I could
conceive of any one seeking to possess the bloodstained thing except
the mysterious leader of the Hashishin—Hassan of Aleppo—as a creature
of that awful fanatic being I had written her down.

Why, then, if the mysterious Eastern employed a European girl, should
he not also employ an American man? It might well be that the relic, in
entering the doors of the impregnable Antiquarian Museum, had passed
where the diabolical arts of the Hashishin had no power to reach
it—where the beauty of Western women and the craft of Eastern man were
equally useless weapons. Perhaps Hassan’s campaign was entering upon a
new phase.

Was it a shirking of plain duty on my part that wish—that ever-present
hope—that the murderous company of fanatics who had pursued the stolen
slipper from its ancient resting-place to London, should succeed in
recovering it? I leave you to judge.

The crescent of Islam fades to-day and grows pale, but there are yet
fierce Believers, a lust for the blood of the infidel. In such as these
a faith dies the death of an adder, and is more venomous in its
death-throes than in the full pulse of life. The ghastly indiscretion
of Professor Deeping, in rifling a Moslem Sacristy, had led to the
mutilation of many who, unwittingly, had touched the looted relic, had
brought about his own end, had established a league of fantastic
assassins in the heart of the metropolis.

Only once had I seen the venerable Hassan of Aleppo—a stately, gentle
old man; but I knew that the velvet eyes could blaze into a passionate
fury that seemed to scorch whom it fell upon. I knew that the saintly
Hassan was Sheikh of the Hashishin. And familiarity with that dreadful
organization had by no means bred contempt. I was the holder of the
key, and my fear of the fanatics grew like a magic mango, darkened the
sunlight of each day, and filled the night with indefinable dread.

You, who have not read poor Deeping’s “Assyrian Mythology”, cannot
picture a creature with a huge, distorted head, and a tiny, dwarfed
body—a thing inhuman, yet human—a man stunted and malformed by the
cruel arts of brother men—a thing obnoxious to life, with but one
passion, the passion to kill. You cannot conceive of the years of agony
spent by that creature strapped to a wooden frame—in order to prevent
his growth! You cannot conceive of his fierce hatred of all humanity,
inflamed to madness by the Eastern drug, hashish, and directed against
the enemies of Islam—the holders of the slipper—by the wonderful power
of Hassan of Aleppo.

But I had not only read of such beings, I had encountered one!

And he was but one of the many instruments of the Hashishin. Perhaps
the girl with the violet eyes was another. What else to be dreaded
Hassan might hold in store for us I could not conjecture.

Do you wonder that I feared? Do you wonder that I hoped (I confess it),
hoped that the slipper might be recovered without further bloodshed?




CHAPTER XI
THE HOLE IN THE BLIND


I stepped over to the door, where a constable stood on duty.

“You observed a tall Eastern gentleman in the room a while ago,
officer?”

“I did, sir.”

“How long is he gone?”

The man started and began to peer about anxiously.

“That’s a funny thing, sir,” he said. “I was keeping my eyes specially
upon him. I noticed him hovering around while Mr. Mostyn was speaking;
but although I could have sworn he hadn’t passed out, he’s gone!”

“You didn’t notice his departure, then?”

“I’m sorry to say I didn’t, sir.”

The man clearly was perplexed, but I found small matter for wonder in
the episode. I had more than suspected the stranger to be a spy of
Hassan’s, and members of that strange company were elusive as
will-o’-the-wisps.

Bristol, at the far end of the room, was signalling to me. I walked
back and joined him.

“Come over here,” he said, in a low voice, “and pretend to examine
these things.”

He glanced significantly to his left. Following the glance, my eyes
fell upon the lean American; he was peering into the receptacle which
held the holy slipper.

Bristol led me across the room, and we both faced the wall and bent
over a glass case. Some yellow newspaper cuttings describing its
contents hung above it, and these we pretended to read.

“Did you notice that man I glanced at?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s Earl Dexter, the first crook in America! Ssh! Only goes
in on very big things. We had word at the Yard he was in town; but we
can’t touch him—we can only keep our eyes on him. He usually travels
openly and in his own name, but this time he seems to have slipped over
quietly. He always dresses the same and has just given me ‘good day!’
They call him The Stetson Man. We heard this morning that he had booked
two first-class sailings in the Oceanic, leaving for New York three
weeks hence. Now, Mr. Cavanagh, what is his game?”

“It has occurred to me before, Bristol,” I replied, “and you may
remember that I mentioned the idea to you, that there might be a third
party interested in the slipper. Why shouldn’t Earl Dexter be that
third party?”

“Because he isn’t a fool,” rapped Bristol shortly. “Earl Dexter isn’t a
man to gather up trouble for himself. More likely if his visit has
anything really to do with the slipper he’s retained by Hassan and
Company. Museum-breaking may be a bit out of the line of Hashishin!”

This latter suggestion dovetailed with my own ideas, and oddly enough
there was something positively wholesome in the notion of the
straightforward crookedness of a mere swell cracksman.

Then happened a singular thing, and one that effectually concluded our
whispered colloquy. From the top end of the room, beyond the case
containing the slipper, one of the yellow blinds came down with a run.

Bristol turned in a flash. It was not a remarkable accident, and might
portend no more than a loose cord; but when, having walked rapidly up
the room, we stood before the lowered blind, it appeared that this was
no accident at all.

Some four feet from the bottom of the blind (or five feet from the
floor) a piece of linen a foot square had been neatly slashed out!

I glanced around the room. Several fashionably dressed visitors were
looking idly in our direction, but I could fasten upon no one of them
as a likely perpetrator.

Bristol stared at me in perplexity.

“Who on earth did it,” he muttered, “and what the blazes for?”




CHAPTER XII
THE HASHISHIN WATCH


“The American gentleman has just gone out, sir,” said the sergeant at
the door.

I nodded grimly and raced down the steps. Despite my half-formed desire
that the slipper should be recovered by those to whom properly it
belonged, I experienced at times a curious interest in its welfare. I
cannot explain this. Across the hall in front of me I saw Earl Dexter
passing out of the Museum. I followed him through into Kingsway and
thence to Fleet Street. He sauntered easily along, a nonchalant gray
figure. I had begun to think that he was bound for his hotel and that I
was wasting my time when he turned sharply into quiet Salisbury Square;
it was almost deserted.

My heart leapt into my mouth with a presentiment of what was coming as
I saw an elegant and beautifully dressed woman sauntering along in
front of us on the far side.

Was it that I detected something familiar in her carriage, in the poise
of her head—something that reminded me of former unforgettable
encounters; encounters which without exception had presaged attempts
upon the slipper of the Prophet? Or was it that I recollected how
Dexter had booked two passages to America? I cannot say, but I felt my
heart leap; I knew beyond any possibility of doubt that this meeting in
Salisbury Square marked the opening of a new chapter in the history of
the slipper.

Dexter slipped his arm within that of the girl in front of him and they
paced slowly forward in earnest conversation. I suppose my action was
very amateurish and very poor detective work; but regardless of
discovery I crossed the road and passed close by the pair.

I am certain that Dexter was speaking as I came up, but, well out of
earshot, his voice was suddenly arrested. His companion turned and
looked at me.

I was prepared for it, yet was thrilled electrically by the flashing
glance of the violet eyes—for it was she—the beautiful harbinger of
calamities!

My brain was in a whirl; complication piled itself upon complication;
yet in the heart of all this bewilderment I thought I could detect the
key of the labyrinth, but at the time my ideas were in disorder, for
the violet eyes were not lowered but fixed upon me in cold scorn.

I knew myself helpless, and bending my head with conscious
embarrassment I passed on hurriedly.

I had work to do in plenty, but I could not apply my mind to it; and
now, although the obvious and sensible thing was to go about my
business, I wandered on aimlessly, my brain employed with a hundred
idle conjectures and the query, “Where have I seen The Stetson Man?”
seeming to beat, like a tattoo, in my brain. There was something
magnetic about the accursed slipper, for without knowing by what route
I had arrived there, I found myself in Great Orchard Street and close
under the walls of the British Antiquarian Museum. Then I was
effectually aroused from my reverie.

Two men, both tall, stood in the shadow of a doorway on the Opposite
side of the street, staring intently up at the Museum windows. It was a
tropically hot afternoon and they stood in deepest shadow. No one else
was in Orchard Street—that odd little backwater—at the time, and they
stood gazing upward intently and gave me not even a passing glance.

But I knew one for the Oriental visitor of the morning, and despite
broad noonday and the hum of busy London about me, my blood seemed to
turn to water. I stood rooted to the spot, held there by a most
surprising horror.

For the gray-bearded figure of the other watcher was one I could never
forget; its benignity was associated with the most horrible hours of my
life, with deeds so dreadful that recollection to this day sometimes
breaks my sleep, arousing me in the still watches, bathed in a cold
sweat of fear.

It was Hassan of Aleppo!

If he saw me, if either of them saw me, I cannot say. What I should
have done, what I might have done it is useless to speak of here—for I
did nothing. Inert, thralled by the presence of that eerie, dreadful
being, I watched them leave the shadow of the doorway and pace slowly
on with their dignified Eastern gait.

Then, knowing how I had failed in my plain duty to my fellow-men—how,
finding a serpent in my path, I had hesitated to crush it, had weakly
succumbed to its uncanny fascination—I made my way round to the door of
the Museum.




CHAPTER XIII
THE WHITE BEAM


That night the deviltry began. Mr. Mostyn found himself wholly unable
to sleep. Many relics have curious histories, and the experienced
archaeologist becomes callous to that uncanniness which seems to attach
to some gruesome curios. But the slipper of the Prophet was different.
No mere ghostly menace threatened its holders; an avenging scimitar
followed those who came in contact with it; gruesome tragedies,
mutilations, murders, had marked its progress throughout.

The night was still—as still as a London night can be; for there is
always a vague murmuring in the metropolis as though the sleeping city
breathed gently and sometimes stirred in its sleep.

Then, distinct amid these usual nocturnal noises, rose another,
unaccountable sound, a muffled crash followed by a musical tinkling.

Mostyn sprang up in bed, drew on a dressing-gown, and took from the
small safe at his bed-head the Museum keys and a loaded revolver. A
somewhat dishevelled figure, pale and wild-eyed, he made his way
through the private door and into the ghostly precincts of the Museum.
He did not hesitate, but ascended the stairs and unlocked the door of
the Assyrian gallery.

Along its ghostly aisles he passed, and before the door which gave
admittance to the Burton Room paused, fumbling a moment for the key.

Inside the room something was moving!

Mostyn was keenly alarmed; he knew that he must enter at once or never.
He inserted the key in the lock, swung open the heavy door, stepped
through and closed it behind him. He was a man of tremendous moral
courage, for now,—alone in the apartment which harboured the uncanny
relic, alone in the discharge of his duty, he stood with his back to
the door trembling slightly, but with the idea of retreat finding no
place in his mind.

One side of the room lay in blackest darkness; through the furthermost
window of the other a faint yellowed luminance (the moonlight through
the blind) spread upon the polished parquet flooring. But that which
held the curator spell-bound—that which momentarily quickened into life
the latent superstition, common to all mankind, was a beam of cold
light which poured its effulgence fully upon the case containing the
Prophet’s slipper! Where the other exhibits lay either in utter
darkness or semi-darkness this one it seemed was supernaturally picked
out by this lunar searchlight!

It was ghostly-unnerving; but, the first dread of it passed, Mostyn
recalled how during the day a hole inexplicably had been cut in that
blind; he recalled that it had not been mended, but that the damaged
blind had merely been rolled up again.

And as a dawning perception of the truth came to him, as falteringly he
advanced a step toward the mystic beam, he saw that one side of the
case had been shattered—he saw the broken glass upon the floor; and in
the dense shadow behind and under the beam of light, vaguely he saw a
dull red object.

It moved—it seemed to live! It moved away from the case and in the
direction of the eastern windows.

“My God!” whispered Mostyn; “it’s the Prophet’s slipper!”

And wildly, blindly, he fired down the room. Later he knew that he had
fired in panic, for nothing human was or could be in the place; yet his
shot was not without effect. In the instant of its flash, something
struck sharply against the dimly seen blind of one of the east windows;
he heard the crash of broken glass.

He leapt to the switch and flooded the room with light. A fear of what
it might hold possessed him, and he turned instantly.

Hard by the fragments of broken glass upon the floor and midway between
the case and the first easterly window lay the slipper. A bell was
ringing somewhere. His shot probably had aroused the attention of the
policeman. Someone was clamouring upon the door of the Museum, too.
Mostyn raced forward and raised the blind—that toward which the slipper
had seemed to move.

The lower pane of the window was smashed. Blood was trickling down upon
the floor from the jagged edges of the glass.

“Hullo there! Open the door! Open the door!”

Bells were going all over the place now; sounds of running footsteps
came from below; but Mostyn stood staring at the broken window and at
the solid iron bars which protected it without, which were intact,
substantial—which showed him that nothing human could possibly have
entered.

Yet the case was shattered, the holy slipper lay close beside him upon
the floor, and from the broken window-pane blood was
falling—drip-drip-drip...

That was the story as I heard it half an hour later. For Inspector
Bristol, apprised of the happening, was promptly on the scene; and
knowing how keen was my interest in the matter, he rang me up
immediately. I arrived soon after Bristol and found a perplexed group
surrounding the uncanny slipper of the Prophet. No one had dared to
touch it; the dread vengeance of Hassan of Aleppo would visit any
unbeliever who ventured to lay hand upon the holy, bloody thing. Well
we knew it, and as though it had been a venomous scorpion we, a company
of up-to-date, prosaic men of affairs, stood around that dilapidated
markoob, and kept a respectful distance.

Mostyn, an odd figure in pyjamas and dressing-gown, turned his pale,
intellectual face to me as I entered.

“It will have to be put back ... secretly,” he said.

His voice was very unsteady. Bristol nodded grimly and glanced at the
two constables, who, with a plain-clothes man unknown to me, made up
that midnight company.

“I’ll do it, sir,” said one of the constables suddenly.

“One moment”—Mostyn raised his hand!

In the ensuing silence I could hear the heavy breathing of those around
me. We were all looking at the slipper, I think.

“Do you understand, fully,” the curator continued, “the risk you run?”

“I think so, sir,” answered the constable; “but I’m prepared to chance
it.”

“The hands,” resumed Mostyn slowly, “of those who hitherto have
ventured to touch it have been”—he hesitated—“cut off.”

“Your career in the Force would be finished if it happened to you, my
lad,” said Bristol shortly.

“I suppose they’d look after me,” said the man, with grim humour.

“They would if you met with—an accident, in the discharge of your
duty,” replied the inspector; “but I haven’t ordered you to do it, and
I’m not going to.”

“All right, sir,” said the man, with a sort of studied truculence,
“I’ll take my chance.”

I tried to stop him; Mostyn, too, stepped forward, and Bristol swore
frankly. But it was all of no avail.

A sort of chill seemed to claim my very soul when I saw the constable
stoop, unconcernedly pick up the slipper, and replace it in the broken
case.

It was out of a silence cathedral-like, awesome, that he spoke.

“All you want is a new pane of glass, sir,” he said—“and the thing’s
done.”

I anticipate in mentioning it here; but since Constable Hughes has no
further place in these records I may perhaps be excused for dismissing
him at this point.

He was picked up outside the section house on the following evening
with his right hand severed just above the wrist.




CHAPTER XIV
A SCREAM IN THE NIGHT


The day that followed was one of the hottest which we experienced
during the heat wave. It was a day crowded with happenings. The Burton
Room was closed to the public, whilst a glazier worked upon the broken
east window and a new blind was fitted to the west. Behind the workmen,
guarded by a watchful commissionaire, yawned the shattered case
containing the slipper.

I wondered if the visitors to the other rooms of the Museum realized,
as I realized, that despite the blazing sunlight of tropical London,
the shadow of Hassan of Aleppo lay starkly on that haunted building?

At about eleven o’clock, as I hurried along the Strand, I almost
collided with the girl of the violet eyes! She turned and ran like the
wind down Arundel Street, whilst I stood at the corner staring after
her in blank amazement, as did other passers-by; for a man cannot with
dignity race headlong after a pretty woman down a public thoroughfare!

My mystification grew hourly deeper; and Bristol wallowed in
perplexities.

“It’s the most horrible and confusing case,” he said to me when I
joined him at the Museum, “that the Yard has ever had to handle. It
bristles with outrages and murders. God knows where it will all end.
I’ve had London scoured for a clue to the whereabouts of Hassan and
Company and drawn absolutely blank! Then there’s Earl Dexter. Where
does he come in? For once in a way he’s living in hiding. I can’t find
his headquarters. I’ve been thinking—”

He drew me aside into the small gallery which runs parallel with the
Assyrian Room.

“Dexter has booked two passages in the Oceanic. Who is his companion?”

I wondered, I had wondered more than once, if his companion were my
beautiful violet-eyed acquaintance. A scruple—perhaps an absurd
scruple—hitherto had kept me silent respecting her, but now I
determined to take Bristol fully into my confidence. A conviction was
growing upon me that she and Earl Dexter together represented that
third party whose existence we had long suspected. Whether they
operated separately or on behalf of the Moslems (of which arrangement I
could not conceive) remained to be seen. I was about to voice my doubts
and suspicions when Bristol went on hurriedly—

“I have thoroughly examined the Burton Room, and considering that the
windows are thirty feet from the ground, that there is no sign of a
ladder having stood upon the lawn, and that the iron bars are quite
intact, it doesn’t look humanly possible for any one to have been in
the room last night prior to Mostyn’s arrival!”

“One of the dwarfs—”

“Not even one of the dwarfs,” said Bristol, “could have passed between
those iron bars!”

“But there was blood on the window!”

“I know there was, and human blood. It’s been examined!”

He stared at me fixedly. The thing was unspeakably uncanny.

“To-night,” he went on, “I am remaining in here”—nodding toward the
Assyrian Room—“and I have so arranged it that no mortal being can
possibly know I am here. Mostyn is staying, and you can stay, too, if
you care to. Owing to Professor Deeping’s will you are badly involved
in the beastly business, and I have no doubt you are keen to see it
through.”

“I am,” I admitted, “and the end I look for and hope for is the
recovery of the slipper by its murderous owners!”

“I am with you,” said Bristol. “It’s just a point of honour; but I
should be glad to make them a present of it. We’re ostentatiously
placing a constable on duty in the hallway to-night—largely as a blind.
It will appear that we’re taking no other additional precautions.”

He hurried off to make arrangements for my joining him in his watch,
and thus again I lost my opportunity of confiding in him regarding the
mysterious girl.

I half anticipated, though I cannot imagine why, that Earl Dexter would
put in an appearance, during the day. He did not do so, however, for
Bristol had put a constable on the door who was well acquainted with
the appearance of The Stetson Man. The inspector, in the course of his
investigations, had come upon what might have been a clue, but what was
at best a confusing one. Close by the wall of the curator’s house and
lying on the gravel path he had found a part of a gold cuff link. It
was of American manufacture.

Upon such slender evidence we could not justly assume that it pointed
to the presence of Dexter on the night of the attempted robbery, but it
served to complicate a matter already sufficiently involved.

In pursuance of Bristol’s plan, I concealed myself that evening just
before the closing of the Museum doors, in a recess behind a heavy
piece of Babylonian sculpture. Bristol was similarly concealed in
another part of the room, and Mostyn joined us later.

The Museum was closed; and so far as evidence went the authorities had
relied again upon the bolts and bars hitherto considered impregnable,
and upon the constable in the hall. The broken window was mended, the
cut blind replaced, and within, in its shattered case, reposed the
slipper of the Prophet.

All the blinds being lowered, the Assyrian Room was a place of gloom,
yellowed on the western side by the moonlight through the blind. The
door communicating with the Burton Room was closed but not fastened.

“They operated last night,” Bristol whispered to me, “at the exact time
when the moonlight shone through the hole in the westerly blind on to
the case. If they come to-night, and I am quite expecting them, they
will have to dispense with that assistance; but they know by experience
where to reach the case.”

“Despite our precautions,” I said, “they will almost certainly know
that a watch is being kept.”

“They may or they may not,” replied Bristol. “Either way I’m disposed
to think there will be another attempt. Their mysterious method is so
rapid that they can afford to take chances.”

This was not my first night vigil since I had become in a sense the
custodian of the relic, but it was quite the most dreary. Amid the
tomb-like objects about us we seemed two puny mortals toying with
stupendous things. We could not smoke and must converse only in
whispers; and so the night wore on until I began to think that our
watch would be dully uneventful.

“Our big chance,” whispered Mostyn, “is in the fact that any day may
change the conditions. They can’t afford to wait.”

He ceased abruptly, grasping my arm. From somewhere, somewhere outside
the building, we all three had heard a soft whistle. A moment of tense
listening followed.

“If only we could have had the place surrounded,” whispered
Bristol—“but it was impossible, of course.”

A faint grating noise echoed through the lofty Burton Room. Bristol
slipped past me in the semi-gloom, and gently opened the communicating
door a few inches.

A-tiptoe, I joined him, and craning across his shoulder saw a strange
and wonderful thing.

The newly glazed east window again was shattered with a booming crash!
The yellow blind was thrust aside. A long something reached out toward
the broken case. There was a sort of fumbling sound, and paralyzed with
the wonder of it—for the window, remember, was thirty feet from the
ground—I stood frozen to my post.

Not so Bristol. As the weird tentacle (or more exactly it reminded me
of a gigantic crab’s claw) touched the case, the Inspector leapt
forward. A white beam from his electric torch cut through to the broken
cabinet.

The thing was withdrawn ... and with it went the slipper of the
Prophet.

“Raise the blinds!” cried Bristol. “Mr. Cavanagh! Mr. Mostyn! We must
not let them give us the slip!”

I got up the blind of the nearer window as Bristol raised the other.
Not a living thing was in sight from either!

Mostyn was beside me, his hand resting on my shoulder. I noted how he
trembled. Bristol turned and looked back at us. The light from his
pocket torch flashed upon the curator’s face; and I have never seen
such an expression of horrified amazement as that which it wore.
Faintly, I could hear the constable racing up the steps from the hall.

Ideas of the supernatural came to us all, I know; when, with a
scuffling sound not unlike that of a rat in a ceiling, something moved
above us!

“Damn my thick head!” roared Bristol, furiously. “He’s on the roof!
It’s flat as a floor and there’s enough ivy alongside the water-spout
on your house adjoining, Mr. Mostyn, to afford foothold to an invading
army!”

He plunged off toward the open door, and I heard him racing down the
Assyrian Room.

“He had a short rope ladder fixed from the gutter!” he cried back at
us. “Graham! Graham!” (the constable on duty in the hall)—“Get the
front door open! Get...” His voice died away as he leapt down the
stairs.

From the direction of Orpington Square came a horrid, choking scream.
It rose hideously; it fell, rose again—and died.

The thief escaped. We saw the traces upon the ivy where he had hastened
down. Bristol ascended by the same route, and found where the
ladder-hooks had twice been attached to the gutterway. Constable
Graham, who was first actually to leave the building, declared that he
heard the whirr of a re-started motor lower down Great Orchard Street.

Bristol’s theory, later to be dreadfully substantiated, was that the
thief had broken the glass and reached into the case with an
arrangement similar to that employed for pruning trees, having a clutch
at the end, worked with a cord.

“Hassan has been too clever for us!” said the inspector. “But—what in
God’s name did that awful screaming mean?”

I had a theory, but I did not advance it then.

It was not until nearly dawn that my theory, and Bristol’s, regarding
the clutch arrangement, both were confirmed. For close under the
railings which abut on Orpington Square, in a pool of blood we found
just such an instrument as Bristol had described.

And still clutching it was a pallid and ghastly shrunken hand that had
been severed from above the wrist!

“Merciful God!” whispered the inspector—“look at the opal ring on the
finger! Look at the bandage where he cut himself on the broken
window-glass that first night, when Mr. Mostyn disturbed him. It wasn’t
the Hashishin who stole the thing.... It’s Earl Dexter’s hand!”

No one spoke for a moment. Then—

“Which of them has—” began Mostyn huskily.

“The slipper of the Prophet?” interrupted Bristol. “I wonder if we
shall ever know?”




CHAPTER XV
A SHRIVELLED HAND


Around a large square table in a room at New Scotland Yard stood a
group of men, all of whom looked more or less continuously at something
that lay upon the polished deal. One of the party, none other than the
Commissioner himself, had just finished speaking, and in silence now we
stood about the gruesome object which had furnished him with the text
of his very terse address.

I knew myself privileged in being admitted to such a conference at the
C.I.D. headquarters and owed my admission partly to Inspector Bristol,
and partly to the fact that under the will of the late Professor
Deeping I was concerned in the uncanny business we were met to discuss.

Novelty has a charm for every one; and to find oneself immersed in a
maelstrom of Eastern devilry, with a group of scientific murderers in
pursuit of a holy Moslem relic, and unexpectedly to be made a trustee
of that dangerous curiosity, makes a certain appeal to the adventurous.
But to read of such things and to participate in them are widely
different matters. The slipper of the Prophet and the dreadful crimes
connected with it, the mutilations, murders, the uncanny mysteries
which made up its history, were filling my world with horror.

Now, in silence we stood around that table at New Scotland Yard and
watched, as though we expected it to move, the ghastly “clue” which lay
there. It was a shrivelled human hand, and about the thumb and
forefinger there still dryly hung a fragment of lint which had bandaged
a jagged wound. On one of the shrunken fingers was a ring set with a
large opal.

Inspector Bristol broke the oppressive silence.

“You see, sir,” he said, addressing the Commissioner, “this marks a new
complication in the case. Up to this week although, unfortunately, we
had made next to no progress, the thing was straightforward enough. A
band of Eastern murderers, working along lines quite novel to Europe,
were concealed somewhere in London. We knew that much. They murdered
Professor Deeping, but failed to recover the slipper. They mutilated
everyone who touched it mysteriously. The best men in the department,
working night and day, failed to effect a single arrest. In spite of
the mysterious activity of Hassan of Aleppo the slipper was safely
lodged in the British Antiquarian Museum.”

The Commissioner nodded thoughtfully.

“There is no doubt,” continued Bristol, “that the Hashishin were
watching the Museum. Mr. Cavanagh, here”—he nodded in my direction—“saw
Hassan himself lurking in the neighbourhood. We took every precaution,
observed the greatest secrecy; but in spite of it all a constable who
touched the accursed thing lost his right hand. Then the slipper was
taken.”

He stopped, and all eyes again were turned to the table.

“The Yard,” resumed Bristol slowly, “had information that Earl Dexter,
the cleverest crook in America, was in England. He was seen in the
Museum, and the night following the slipper was stolen. Then outside
the place I found—that!”

He pointed to the severed hand. No one spoke for a moment. Then—

“The new problem,” said the Commissioner, “is this: who took the
slipper, Dexter or Hassan of Aleppo?”

“That’s it, sir,” agreed Bristol. “Dexter had two passages booked in
the Oceanic: but he didn’t sail with her, and—that’s his hand!”

“You say he has not been traced?” asked the Commissioner.

“No doctor known to the Medical Association,” replied Bristol, “is
attending him! He’s not in any of the hospitals. He has completely
vanished. The conclusion is obvious!”

“The evident deduction,” I said, “is that Dexter stole the slipper from
the Museum—God knows with what purpose—and that Hassan of Aleppo
recovered it from him.”

“You think we shall next hear of Earl Dexter from the river police?”
suggested Bristol.

“Personally,” replied the Commissioner, “I agree with Mr. Cavanagh. I
think Dexter is dead, and it is very probable that Hassan and Company
are already homeward bound with the slipper of the Prophet.”

With all my heart I hoped that he might be right, but an intuition was
with me crying that he was wrong, that many bloody deeds would be, ere
the sacred slipper should return to the East.




CHAPTER XVI
THE DWARF


The manner in which we next heard of the whereabouts of the Prophet’s
slipper was utterly unforeseen, wildly dramatic. That the Hashishin
were aware that I, though its legal trustee, no longer had charge of
the relic nor knowledge of its resting-place, was sufficiently evident
from the immunity which I enjoyed at this time from that ceaseless
haunting by members of the uncanny organization ruled by Hassan. I had
begun to feel more secure in my chambers, and no longer worked with a
loaded revolver upon the table beside me. But the slightest unusual
noise in the night still sufficed to arouse me and set me listening
intently, to chill me with dread of what it might portend. In short, my
nerves were by no means recovered from the ceaseless strain of the
events connected with and arising out of the death of my poor friend,
Professor Deeping.

One evening as I sat at work in my chambers, with the throb of busy
Fleet Street and its thousand familiar sounds floating in to me through
the open windows, my phone bell rang.

Even as I turned to take up the receiver a foreboding possessed me that
my trusteeship was no longer to be a sinecure. It was Bristol who had
rung me up, and upon very strange business.

“A development at last!” he said; “but at present I don’t know what to
make of it. Can you come down now?”

“Where are you speaking from?”

“From the Waterloo Road—a delightful neighbourhood. I shall be glad if
you can meet me at the entrance to Wyatt’s Buildings in half an hour.”

“What is it? Have you found Dexter?”

“No, unfortunately. But it’s murder!”

I knew as I hung up the receiver that my brief period of peace was
ended; that the lists of assassination were reopened. I hurried out
through the court into Fleet Street, thinking of the key of the now
empty case at the Museum which reposed at my bankers, thinking of the
devils who pursued the slipper, thinking of the hundred and one things,
strange and terrible, which went to make up the history of that
gruesome relic.

Wyatt’s Buildings, Waterloo Road, are a gloomy and forbidding block of
dwellings which seem to frown sullenly upon the high road, from which
they are divided by a dark and dirty courtyard. Passing an iron
gateway, you enter, by way of an arch, into this sinister place of
uncleanness. Male residents in their shirt sleeves lounge against the
several entrances. Bedraggled women nurse dirty infants and sit in
groups upon the stone steps, rendering them almost impassable. But
to-night a thing had happened in Wyatt’s Buildings which had awakened
in the inhabitants, hardened to sordid crime, a sort of torpid
interest.

Faces peered from most of the windows which commanded a view of the
courtyard, looking like pallid blotches against the darkness; but a
number of police confined the loungers within their several doorways,
so that the yard itself was comparatively clear.

I had had some difficulty in forcing a way through the crowd which
thronged the entrance, but finally I found myself standing beside
Inspector Bristol and looking down upon that which had brought us both
to Wyatt’s Buildings.

There was no moon that night, and only the light of the lamp in the
archway, with some faint glimmers from the stairways surrounding the
court, reached the dirty paving. Bristol directed the light of a
pocket-lamp upon the hunched-up figure which lay in the dust, and I saw
it to be that of a dwarfish creature, yellow skinned and wearing only a
dark loin cloth. He had a malformed and disproportionate head, a head
that had been too large even for a big man. I knew after first glance
that this was one of the horrible dwarfs employed by the Hashishin in
their murderous business. It might even be the one who had killed
Deeping; but this was impossible to determine by reason of the fact
that the hideous, swollen head, together with the features, was
completely crushed. I shall not describe the creature’s appearance in
further detail.

Having given me an opportunity to examine the dead dwarf, Bristol
returned the electric lamp to his pocket and stood looking at me in the
semi-gloom. A constable stood on duty quite near to us, and others
guarded the archway and the doors to the dwellings. The murmur of
subdued voices echoed hollowly in the wells of the staircases, and a
constant excited murmur proceeded from the crowd at the entrance. No
pressmen had yet been admitted, though numbers of them were at the
gates.

“It happened less than an hour ago,” said Bristol. “The place was much
as you see it now, and from what I can gather there came the sound of a
shot and several people saw the dwarf fall through the air and drop
where he lies!”

The light was insufficient to show the expression upon the speaker’s
face, but his voice told of a great wonder.

“It is a bit like an Indian conjuring trick,” I said, looking up to the
sky above us; “who fired the shot?”

“So far,” replied Bristol, “I have failed to find out; but there’s a
bullet in the thing’s head. He was dead before he reached the
pavement.”

“Did no one see the flash of the pistol?”

“No one that I have got hold of yet. Of course this kind of evidence is
very unreliable; these people regularly go out of their way to mislead
the police.”

“You think the body may have been carried here from somewhere else?”

“Oh, no; this is where it fell, right enough. You can see where his
head struck the stones.”

“He has not been moved at all?”

“No; I shall not move him until I’ve worked out where in heaven’s name
he can have fallen from! You and I have seen some mysterious things
happen, Mr. Cavanagh, since the slipper of the Prophet came to England
and brought these people”—he nodded toward the thing at our feet—“in
its train; but this is the most inexplicable incident to date. I don’t
know what to make of it at all. Quite apart from the question of where
the dwarf fell from, who shot at him and why?”

“Have you no theory?” I asked. “The incident to my mind points directly
to one thing. We know that this uncanny creature belonged to the
organization of Hassan of Aleppo. We know that Hassan implacably
pursues one object—the slipper. In pursuit of the slipper, then, the
dwarf came here. Bristol!”—I laid my hand upon his arm, glancing about
me with a very real apprehension—“the slipper must be somewhere near!”

Bristol turned to the constable standing hard by.

“Remain here,” he ordered. Then to me: “I should like you to come up on
to the roof. From there we can survey the ground and perhaps arrive at
some explanation of how the dwarf came to fall upon that spot.”

Passing the constable on duty at one of the doorways and making our way
through the group of loiterers there, we ascended amid conflicting
odours to the topmost floor. A ladder was fixed against the wall
communicating with a trap in the ceiling. Several individuals in their
shirt sleeves and all smoking clay pipes had followed us up. Bristol
turned upon them.

“Get downstairs,” he said—“all the lot of you, and stop there!”

With muttered imprecations our audience dispersed, slowly returning by
the way they had come. Bristol mounted the ladder and opened the trap.
Through the square opening showed a velvet patch spangled with starry
points. As he passed up on to the roof and I followed him, the
comparative cleanness of the air was most refreshing after the varied
fumes of the staircase.

Side by side we leaned upon the parapet looking down into the dirty
courtyard which was the theatre of this weird mystery; looking down
upon the stage, sordidly Western, where a mystic Eastern tragedy had
been enacted.

I could see the constable standing beside the crushed thing upon the
stones.

“Now,” said Bristol, with a sort of awe in his voice, “where did he
fall from?”

And at his words, looking down at the spot where the dwarf lay, and
noting that he could not possibly have fallen there from any of the
buildings surrounding the courtyard, an eerie sensation crept over me;
for I was convinced that the happening was susceptible of no natural
explanation.

I had heard—who has not heard?—of the Indian rope trick, where a fakir
throws a rope into the air which remains magically suspended whilst a
boy climbs upward and upward until he disappears into space. I had
never credited accounts of the performance; but now I began seriously
to wonder if the arts of Hassan of Aleppo were not as great or greater
than the arts of fakir. But the crowning mystery to my mind was that of
the Hashishin’s death. It would seem that as he had hung suspended in
space he had been shot!

“You say that someone heard the sound of the shot?” I asked suddenly.

“Several people,” replied Bristol; “but no one knows, or no one will
say, from what direction it came. I shall go on with the inquiry, of
course, and cross-examine every soul in Wyatt’s Buildings. Meanwhile,
I’m open to confess that I am beaten.”

In the velvet sky countless points blazed tropically. The hum of the
traffic in Waterloo Road reached us only in a muffled way. Sordidness
lay beneath us, but up there under the heavens we seemed removed from
it as any Babylonian astronomer communing with the stars.

When, some ten minutes later, I passed out into the noise of Waterloo
Road, I left behind me an unsolved mystery and took with me a great
dread; for I knew that the quest of the sacred slipper was not ended, I
knew that another tragedy was added to its history—and I feared to
surmise what the future might hold for all of us.




CHAPTER XVII
THE WOMAN WITH THE BASKET


Deep in thought respecting the inexplicable nature of this latest
mystery, I turned in the direction of the bridge, and leaving behind me
an ever-swelling throng at the gate of Wyatt’s Buildings, proceeded
westward.

The death of the dwarf had lifted the case into the realms of the
marvellous, and I noted nothing of the bustle about me, for mentally I
was still surveying that hunched-up body which had fallen out of empty
space.

Then in upon my preoccupation burst a woman’s scream!

I aroused myself from reverie, looking about to right and left.
Evidently I had been walking slowly, for I was less than a hundred
yards from Wyatt’s Buildings, and hard by the entrance to an uninviting
alley from which I thought the scream had proceeded.

And as I hesitated, for I had no desire to become involved in a drunken
brawl, again came the shrill scream: “Help! help!”

I cannot say if I was the only passer-by who heard the cry; certainly I
was the only one who responded to it. I ran down the narrow street,
which was practically deserted, and heard windows thrown up as I passed
for the cries for help continued.

Just beyond a patch of light cast by a street lamp a scene was being
enacted strange enough at any time and in any place, but doubly
singular at that hour of the night, or early morning, in a lane off the
Waterloo Road.

An old woman, from whose hand a basket of provisions had fallen, was
struggling in the grasp of a tall Oriental! He was evidently trying to
stifle her screams and at the same time to pinion her arms behind her!

I perceived that there was more in this scene than met the eye.
Oriental footpads are rarities in the purlieus of Waterloo Road. So
much was evident; and since I carried a short, sharp argument in my
pocket, I hastened to advance it.

At the sight of the gleaming revolver barrel the man, who was dressed
in dark clothes and wore a turban, turned and ran swiftly off. I had
scarce a glimpse of his pallid brown face ere he was gone, nor did the
thought of pursuit enter my mind. I turned to the old woman, who was
dressed in shabby black and who was rearranging her thick veil in an
oddly composed manner, considering the nature of the adventure that had
befallen her.

She picked up her basket, and turned away. Needless to say I was rather
shocked at her callous ingratitude, for she offered no word of thanks,
did not even glance in my direction, but made off hurriedly toward
Waterloo Road.

I had been on the point of inquiring if she had sustained any injury,
but I checked the words and stood looking after her in blank
wonderment. Then my ideas were diverted into a new channel. I
perceived, as she passed under an adjacent lamp, that her basket
contained provisions such as a woman of her appearance would scarcely
be expected to purchase. I noted a bottle of wine, a chicken, and a
large melon.

The nationality of the assailant from the first had marked the affair
for no ordinary one, and now a hazy notion of what lay behind all this
began to come to me.

Keeping well in the shadows on the opposite side of the way, I followed
the woman with the basket. The lane was quite deserted; for, the
disturbance over, those few residents who had raised their windows had
promptly lowered them again. She came out into Waterloo Road, crossed
over, and stood waiting by a stopping-place for electric cars. I saw
her arranging a cloth over her basket in such a way as effectually to
conceal the contents. A strong mental excitement possessed me. The
detective fever claims us all at one time or another, I think, and I
had good reason for pursuing any inquiry that promised to lead to the
elucidation of the slipper mystery. A theory, covering all the facts of
the assault incident, now presented itself, and I stood back in the
shadow, watchful; in a degree, exultant.

A Greenwich-bound car was hailed by the woman with the basket. I could
not be mistaken, I felt sure, in my belief that she cast furtive
glances about her as she mounted the steps. But, having seen her
actually aboard, my attention became elsewhere engaged.

All now depended upon securing a cab before the tram car had passed
from view!

I counted it an act of Providence that a disengaged taxi appeared at
that moment, evidently bound for Waterloo Station. I ran out into the
road with cane upraised.

As the man drew up—

“Quick!” I cried. “You see that Greenwich car—nearly at the Ophthalmic
Hospital? Follow it. Don’t get too near. I will give you further
instructions through the tube.” I leapt in. We were off!

The rocking car ahead was rounding the bend now toward St. George’s
Circus. As it passed the clock and entered South London Road it
stopped. I raised the tube.

“Pass it slowly!”

We skirted the clock tower, and bore around to the right. Then I drew
well back in the corner of the cab.

The woman with the basket was descending! “Pull up a few yards beyond!”
I directed. As the car re-started, and passed us, the taxi became
stationary. I peered out of the little window at the back.

The woman was returning in the direction of Waterloo Road!

“Drive slowly back along Waterloo Road,” was my next order. “Pretend
you are looking for a fare; I will keep out of sight.”

The man nodded. It was unlikely that any one would notice the fact that
the cab was engaged.

I was borne back again upon my course. The woman kept to the right,
and, once we were entered into the straight road which leads to the
bridge, I again raised the speaking-tube.

“Pull up,” I said. “On the right-hand side is an old woman carrying a
basket, fifty yards ahead. Do you see her? Keep well behind, but don’t
lose sight of her.”

The man drew up again and sat watching the figure with the basket until
it was almost lost from sight. Then slowly we resumed our way. I would
have continued the pursuit afoot now, but I feared that my quarry might
again enter a vehicle. She did not do so, however, but coming abreast
of the turning in which the mysterious assault had taken place, she
crossed the road and disappeared from view.

I leapt out of the cab, thrust half a crown into the man’s hand, and
ran on to the corner. The night was now far advanced, and I knew that
the chances of detection were thereby increased. But the woman seemed
to have abandoned her fears, and I saw her just ahead of me walking
resolutely past the lamp beyond which a short time earlier she had met
with a dangerous adventure.

Since the opposite side of the street was comparatively in darkness, I
slipped across, and in a state of high nervous tension pursued this
strange work of espionage. I was convinced that I had forestalled
Bristol and that I was hot upon the track of those who could explain
the mystery of the dead dwarf.

The woman entered the gate of the block of dwellings even more
forbidding in appearance than those which that night had staged a
dreadful drama.

As the figure with the basket was lost from view I crept on, and in
turn entered the evil-smelling hallway. I stepped cautiously, and
standing beneath a gaslight protected by a wire frame, I congratulated
myself upon having reached that point of vantage as silently as any
Sioux stalker.

Footsteps were receding up the stone stairs. Craning my neck, I peered
up the well of the staircase. I could not see the woman, but from the
sound of her tread it was possible to count the landings which she
passed. When she had reached the fourth, and I heard her step upon yet
another flight, I knew that she must be bound for the topmost floor;
and observing every precaution, almost holding my breath in a nervous
endeavour to make not the slightest sound, rapidly I mounted the
stairs.

I was come to the third landing in this secret fashion when quite
distinctly I heard the grating of a key in a lock!

Since four doors opened upon each of the landings, at all costs, I
thought, I must learn by which door she entered.

Throwing caution to the winds I raced up the remaining flights ... and
there at the top the woman confronted me, with blazing eyes!—with eyes
that thrilled every nerve; for they were violet eyes, the only truly
violet eyes I have ever seen! They were the eyes of the woman who like
a charming, mocking will-o’-the-wisp had danced through this tragic
scene from the time that poor Professor Deeping had brought the
Prophet’s slipper to London up to this present hour!

There at the head of those stone steps in that common dwelling-house I
knew her—and in the violet eyes it was written that she knew, and
feared, me!

“What do you want? Why are you following me?”

She made no endeavour to disguise her voice. Almost, I think, she spoke
the words involuntarily.

I stood beside her. Quickly as she had turned from the door at my
ascent, I had noted that it was that numbered forty-eight which she had
been about to open.

“You waste words,” I said grimly. “Who lives there?”

I nodded in the direction of the doorway. The violet eyes watched me
with an expression in their depths which I find myself wholly unable to
describe. Fear predominated, but there was anger, too, and with it a
sort of entreaty which almost made me regret that I had taken this task
upon myself. From beneath the shabby black hat escaped an errant lock
of wavy hair wholly inconsistent with the assumed appearance of the
woman. The flickering gaslight on the landing sought out in that
wonderful hair shades which seemed to glow with the soft light seen in
the heart of a rose. The thick veil was raised now and all attempts at
deception abandoned. At bay she faced me, this secret woman whom I knew
to hold the key to some of the darkest places which we sought to
explore.

“I live there,” she said slowly. “What do you want with me?”

“I want to know,” I replied, “for whom are those provisions in your
basket?”

She watched me fixedly.

“And I want to know,” I continued, “something that only you can tell
me. We have met before, madam, but you have always eluded me. This time
you shall not do so. There’s much I have to ask of you, but
particularly I want to know who killed the Hashishin who lies dead at
no great distance from here!”

“How can I tell you that? Of what are you speaking?”

Her voice was low and musical; that of a cultured woman. She evidently
recognized the futility of further subterfuge in this respect.

“You know quite well of what I am speaking! You know that you can tell
me if any one can! The fact that you go disguised alone condemns you!
Why should I remind you of our previous meetings—of the links which
bind you to the history of the Prophet’s slipper?” She shuddered and
closed her eyes. “Your present attitude is a sufficient admission!”

She stood silent before me, with something pitiful in her pose—a
wonderfully pretty woman, whose disarranged hair and dilapidated hat
could not mar her beauty; whose clumsy, ill-fitting garments could not
conceal her lithe grace.

Our altercation had not thus far served to arouse any of the
inhabitants and on that stuffy landing, beneath the flickering
gaslight, we stood alone, a group of two which epitomized strange
things.

Then, with that quietly dramatic note which marks real life entrances
and differentiates them from the loudly acclaimed episodes of the
stage, a third actor took up his cue.

“Both hands, Mr. Cavanagh!” directed an American voice.

Nerves atwitch, I started around in its direction.

From behind the slightly opened door of No. 48 protruded a steel
barrel, pointed accurately at my head!

I hesitated, glancing from the woman toward the open door.

“Do it quick!” continued the voice incisively. “You are up against a
desperate man, Mr. Cavanagh. Raise your hands. Carneta, relieve Mr.
Cavanagh of his gun!”

Instantly the girl, with deft fingers, had obtained possession of my
revolver.

“Step inside,” said the crisp, strident voice. Knowing myself helpless
and quite convinced that I was indeed in the clutches of desperate
people, I entered the doorway, the door being held open from within.
She whom I had heard called Carneta followed. The door was reclosed;
and I found myself in a perfectly bare and dim passageway. From behind
me came the order—

“Go right ahead!”

Into a practically unfurnished room, lighted by one gas jet, I walked.
Some coarse matting hung before the two windows and a fairly large grip
stood on the floor against one wall. A gas-ring was in the hearth,
together with a few cheap cooking utensils.


I turned and faced the door. First entered Carneta, carrying the
basket; then came a man with a revolver in his left hand and his right
arm strapped across his chest and swathed in bandages. One glance
revealed the fact that his right hand had been severed—revealed the
fact, though I knew it already, that my captor was Earl Dexter.

He looked even leaner than when I had last seen him. I had no doubt
that his ghastly wound had occasioned a tremendous loss of blood. His
gaunt face was positively emaciated, but the steely gray eyes had lost
nothing of their brightness. There was a good deal about Mr. Earl
Dexter, the cracksman, that any man must have admired.

“Shut the door, Carneta,” he said quietly. His companion closed the
door and Dexter sat down on the grip, regarding me with his oddly
humorous smile.

“You’re a visitor I did not expect, Mr. Cavanagh,” he said. “I expected
someone worse. You’ve interfered a bit with my plans but I don’t know
that I can’t rearrange things satisfactorily. I don’t think I’ll stop
for supper, though—” He glanced at the girl, who stood silent by the
door.

“Just pack up the provisions,” he directed, nodding toward the
basket—“in the next room.”

She departed without a word.

“That’s a noticeable dust coat you’re wearing, Mr. Cavanagh,” said the
American; “it gives me a great notion. I’m afraid I’ll have to borrow
it.”

He glanced, smiling, at the revolver in his left hand and back again to
me. There was nothing of the bully about him, nothing melodramatic; but
I took off the coat without demur and threw it across to him.

“It will hide this stump,” he said grimly; “and any of the Hashishin
gentlemen who may be on the look-out—though I rather fancy the road is
clear at the moment—will mistake me for you. See the idea? Carneta will
be in a cab and I’ll be in after her and away before they’ve got time
to so much as whistle.”

Very awkwardly he got into the coat.

“She’s a clever girl, Carneta,” he said. “She’s doctored me all along
since those devils cut my hand off.”

As he finished speaking Carneta returned.

She had discarded her rags and wore a large travelling coat and a
fashionable hat.

“Ready?” asked Dexter. “We’ll make a rush for it. We meant to go
to-night anyway. It’s getting too hot here!” He turned to me.

“Sorry to say,” he drawled, “I’ll have to tie you up and gag you.
Apologize; but it can’t be helped.”

Carneta nodded and went out of the room again, to return almost
immediately with a line that looked as though it might have been
employed for drying washing.

“Hands behind you,” rapped Dexter, toying with the revolver—“and think
yourself lucky you’ve got two!”

There was no mistaking the manner of man with whom I had to deal, and I
obeyed; but my mind was busy with a hundred projects. Very neatly the
girl bound my wrists, and in response to a slight nod from Dexter threw
the end of the line up over a beam in the sloping ceiling, for the room
was right under the roof, and drew it up in such a way that, my wrists
being raised behind me, I became utterly helpless. It was an ingenious
device indicating considerable experience.

“Just tie his handkerchief around his mouth,” directed Dexter: “that
will keep him quiet long enough for our purpose. I hope you will be
released soon, Mr. Cavanagh,” he added. “Greatly regret the necessity.”

Carneta bound the handkerchief over my mouth.

Dexter extinguished the gas.

“Mr. Cavanagh,” he said, “I’ve gone through hell and I’ve lost the most
useful four fingers and a thumb in the United States to get hold of the
Prophet’s slipper. Any one can have it that’s open to pay for it—but
I’ve got to retire on the deal, so I’ll drive a hard bargain!
Good-night!”

There was a sound of retreating footsteps, and I heard the entrance
door close quietly.




CHAPTER XVIII
WHAT CAME THROUGH THE WINDOW


I had not been in my unnatural position for many minutes before I began
to suffer agonies, agonies not only physical but mental; for standing
there like some prisoner of the Inquisition, it came to me how this
dismantled apartment must be the focus of the dreadful forces of Hassan
of Aleppo!

That Earl Dexter had the slipper of the Prophet I no longer doubted,
and that he had sustained, in this dwelling beneath the roof, an
uncanny siege during the days which had passed since the theft from the
Antiquarian Museum, was equally certain. Helpless, gagged, I pictured
those hideous creatures, evil products of the secret East, who might,
nay, who must surround that place! I thought of the horrible little
yellow man who lay dead in Wyatt’s Buildings; and it became evident to
me that the house in which I was now imprisoned must overlook the back
of those unsavoury tenements. The windows, sack-covered now, no doubt
commanded a view of the roofs of the buildings. One of the mysteries
that had puzzled us was solved. It was Earl Dexter who had shot the
yellow dwarf as he was bound for this very room! But how humanly the
Hashishin had proposed to gain his goal, how he had travelled through
empty space—for from empty space the shot had brought him down—I could
not imagine.

I knew something of the almost supernatural attributes of these people.
From Professor Deeping’s book I knew of the incredible feats which they
could perform when under the influence of the drug hashish. From
personal experience also I knew that they had powers wholly abnormal.

The pain in my arms and back momentarily increased. An awesome silence
ruled. I tortured myself with pictures of murderous yellow men
possessed of the power claimed by the Mahatmas, of levitation. Mentally
I could see a distorted half-animal creature carrying a great gleaming
knife and floating supernaturally toward me through the night!

A soft pattering sound became perceptible on the sloping roof above!

I think I have never known such intense and numbing fear as that which
now descended upon me. Perhaps I may be forgiven it. A more dreadful
situation it would be hard to devise. Knowing that I was on the fifth
story of a house, bound, helpless, I knew, too, that a second mystic
guardian of the slipper was come to accomplish the task in which the
first had failed!

I began to pray fervently.

Neither of the windows were closed; and now through the intense
darkness I heard one of them being raised up—up—up...

The sacking was pulled aside inch by inch.

Silhouetted against the faintly luminous background I saw a hunched,
unnatural figure. The real was more dreadful even than the
imaginary—for some stray beam of light touched into cold radiance a
huge curved knife which the visitant held between his teeth!

My fear became a madness, and I twisted my body violently in a wild
endeavour to free myself. A dreadful pain shot through my left
shoulder, and the whole nightmare scene—the thing with the knife at the
window—the low-ceiled room-began to fade away from me. I seemed to be
falling into deep water.

A splintering crash and the sound of shouting formed my last
recollections ere unconsciousness came.

I found myself lying in an armchair with Bristol forcing brandy between
my lips. My left arm hung limply at my side and the pain in my
dislocated shoulder was excruciating.

“Thank God you are all right, Mr. Cavanagh!” said the inspector. “I got
the surprise of my life when we smashed the door in and found you tied
up here!”

“You came none too soon,” I said feebly. “God knows how Providence
directed you here.”

“Providence it was,” replied Bristol. “From the roof of Wyatt’s
Buildings—you know the spot?—I saw the second yellow devil coming. By
God! They meant to have it to-night! They don’t value their lives a
brass farthing against that damned slipper!”

“But how—”

“Along the telegraph-wires, Mr. Cavanagh! They cross Wyatt’s Buildings
and cross this house. It was a moonless night or we should have seen it
at once! I watched him, saw him drop to this roof—and brought the men
around to the front.”

“Did he, that awful thing, escape?”

“He dropped full forty feet into a tree—from the tree to the ground,
and went off like a cat!”

“Earl Dexter has escaped us,” I said, “and he has the slipper!”

“God help him!” replied Bristol. “For by now he has that hell-pack at
his heels! What a case! Heavens above, it will drive me mad!”




CHAPTER XIX
A RAPPING AT MIDNIGHT


Inspector Bristol finished his whisky at a gulp and stood up, a tall,
massive figure, stretching himself and yawning.

“The detective of fiction would be hard at work on this case, now,” he
said, smiling, “but I don’t even pretend to be. I am at a standstill
and I don’t care who knows it.”

“You have absolutely no clue to the whereabouts of Earl Dexter?”

“Not the slightest, Mr. Cavanagh. You hear a lot about the machinery of
the law, but as a matter of fact, looking for a clever man hidden in
London is a good deal like looking for a needle in a haystack. Then, he
may have been bluffing when he told you he had the Prophet’s slipper.
He’s already had his hand cut off through interfering with the beastly
thing, and I really can’t believe he would take further chances by
keeping it in his possession. Nevertheless, I should like to find him.”

He leaned back against the mantelpiece, scratching his head
perplexedly. In this perplexity he had my sympathy. No such pursuit, I
venture to say, had ever before been required of Scotland Yard as this
of the slipper of the Prophet. An organization founded in 1090, which
has made a science of assassination, which through the centuries has
perfected the malign arts, which, lingering on in a dark spot in Syria,
has suddenly migrated and established itself in London, is a
proposition almost unthinkable.

It was hard to believe that even the daring American cracksman should
have ventured to touch that blood-stained relic of the Prophet, that he
should have snatched it away from beneath the very eyes of the fanatics
who fiercely guarded it. What he hoped to gain by his possession of the
slipper was not evident, but the fact remained that if he could be
believed, he had it, and provided Scotland Yard’s information was
accurate, he still lurked in hiding somewhere in London.

Meanwhile, no clue offered to his hiding-place, and despite the
ceaseless vigilance of the men acting under Bristol’s orders, no trace
could be found of Hassan of Aleppo nor of his fiendish associates.

“My theory is,” said Bristol, lighting a cigarette, “that even Dexter’s
cleverness has failed to save him. He’s probably a dead man by now,
which accounts for our failing to find him; and Hassan of Aleppo has
recovered the slipper and returned to the East, taking his gruesome
company with him—God knows how! But that accounts for our failing to
find him.”

I stood up rather wearily. Although poor Deeping had appointed me legal
guardian of the relic, and although I could render but a poor account
of my stewardship, let me confess that I was anxious to take that
comforting theory to my bosom. I would have given much to have known
beyond any possibility of doubt that the accursed slipper and its
blood-lustful guardian were far away from England. Had I known so much,
life would again have had something to offer me besides ceaseless fear,
endless watchings. I could have slept again, perhaps; without awaking,
clammy, peering into every shadow, listening, nerves atwitch to each
slightest sound disturbing the night; without groping beneath the
pillow for my revolver.

“Then you think,” I said, “that the English phase of the slipper’s
history is closed? You think that Dexter, minus his right hand, has
eluded British law—that Hassan and Company have evaded retribution?”

“I do!” said Bristol grimly, “and although that means the biggest
failure in my professional career, I am glad—damned glad!”

Shortly afterward he took his departure; and I leaned from the window,
watching him pass along the court below and out under the arch into
Fleet Street. He was a man whose opinions I valued, and in all
sincerity I prayed now that he might be right; that the surcease of
horror which we had recently experienced after the ghastly tragedies
which had clustered thick about the haunted slipper, might mean what he
surmised it to mean.

The heat to-night was very oppressive. A sort of steaming mist seemed
to rise from the court, and no cooling breeze entered my opened
windows. The clamour of the traffic in Fleet Street came to me but
remotely. Big Ben began to strike midnight. So far as I could see,
residents on the other stairs were all abed and a velvet shadow carpet
lay unbroken across three parts of the court. The sky was tropically
perfect, cloudless, and jewelled lavishly. Indeed, we were in the midst
of an Indian summer; it seemed that the uncanny visitants had brought,
together with an atmosphere of black Eastern deviltry, something, too,
of the Eastern climate.

The last stroke of the Cathedral bell died away. Other more distant
bells still were sounding dimly, but save for the ceaseless hum of the
traffic, no unusual sound now disturbed the archaic peace of the court.

I returned to my table, for during the time that had passed I had badly
neglected my work and now must often labour far into the night. I was
just reseated when there came a very soft rapping at the outer door!

No doubt my mood was in part responsible, but I found myself thinking
of Poe’s weird poem, “The Raven”; and like the character therein I
found myself hesitating.

I stole quietly into the passage. It was in darkness. How odd it is
that in moments of doubt instinctively one shuns the dark and seeks the
light. I pressed the switch lighting the hall lamp, and stood looking
at the closed door.

Why should this late visitor have rapped in so uncanny a fashion in
preference to ringing the bell?

I stepped back to my table and slipped a revolver into my pocket.

The muffled rapping was repeated. As I stood in the study doorway I saw
the flap of the letter-box slowly raised!

Instantly I extinguished both lights. You may brand me as childishly
timid, but incidents were fresh in my memory which justified all my
fears.

A faintly luminous slit in the door showed me that the flap was now
fully raised. It was the dim light on the stairway shining through.
Then quite silently the flap was lowered. Came the soft rapping again.

“Who’s there?” I cried.

No one answered.

Wondering if I were unduly alarming myself, yet, I confess, strung up
tensely in anticipation that this was some device of the phantom enemy,
I stood in doubt.

The silence remained unbroken for thirty seconds or more. Then yet
again it was disturbed by that ghostly, muffled rapping.

I advanced a step nearer to the door.

“Who’s there?” I cried loudly. “What do you want?”

The flap of the letter box began to move, and I formed a sudden
determination. Making no sound in my heelless Turkish slippers I crept
close up to the door and dropped upon my knees.

Thereupon the flap became fully lifted, but from where I crouched
beneath it I was unable to see who or what was looking in; yet I
hesitated no longer. I suddenly raised myself and thrust the revolver
barrel through the opening!

“Who are you?” I cried. “Answer or I fire!”—and along the barrel I
peered out on to the landing.

Still no one answered. But something impalpable—a powder—a vapour—to
this hour I do not know what—enveloped me with its nauseating fumes;
was puffed fully into my face! My eyes, my mouth, my nostrils became
choked up, it seemed, with a deadly stifling perfume.

Wildly, feeling that everything about me was slipping away, that I was
sinking into a void, for ought I knew that of dissolution, I pulled the
trigger once, twice, thrice...

“My God!”—the words choked in my throat and I reeled back into the
passage—“it’s not loaded!”

I threw up my arms to save myself, lurched, and fell forward into what
seemed a bottomless pit.




CHAPTER XX
THE GOLDEN PAVILION


When I opened my eyes it was to a conviction that I dreamed. I lay upon
a cushioned divan in a small apartment which I find myself at a loss
adequately to describe.

It was a yellow room, then, its four walls being hung with yellow silk,
its floor being entirely covered by a yellow Persian carpet. One lamp,
burning in a frame of some lemon coloured wood and having its openings
filled with green glass, flooded the place with a ghastly illumination.
The lamp hung by gold chains from the ceiling, which was yellow.
Several low tables of the same lemon-hued wood as the lamp-frame stood
around; they were inlaid in fanciful designs with gleaming green
stones. Turn my eyes where I would, clutch my aching head as I might,
this dream chamber would not disperse, but remained palpable before
me—yellow and green and gold.

There was a niche behind the divan upon which I lay framed about with
yellow wood. In it stood a golden bowl and a tall pot of yellow
porcelain; I lay amid yellow cushions having golden tassels. Some of
them were figured with vivid green devices.

To contemplate my surroundings assuredly must be to court madness. No
door was visible, no window; nothing but silk and luxury, yellow and
green and gold.

To crown all, the air was heavy with a perfume wholly unmistakable by
one acquainted with Egypt’s ruling vice. It was the reek of smouldering
hashish—a stench that seemed to take me by the throat, a vapour
damnable and unclean. I saw that a little censer, golden in colour and
inset with emeralds, stood upon the furthermost corner of the yellow
carpet. From it rose a faint streak of vapour; and I followed the
course of the sickly scented smoke upward through the still air until
in oily spirals it lost itself near to the yellow ceiling. As a sick
man will study the veriest trifle I studied that wisp of smoke,
pencilled grayly against the silken draperies, the carven tables,
against the almost terrifying persistency of the yellow and green and
gold.

I strove to rise, but was overcome by vertigo and sank back again upon
the yellow cushions. I closed my eyes, which throbbed and burned, and
rested my head upon my hands. I ceased to conjecture if I dreamed or
was awake. I knew that I felt weak and ill, that my head throbbed
agonizingly, that my eyes smarted so as to render it almost impossible
to keep them open, that a ceaseless humming was in my ears.

For some time I lay endeavouring to regain command of myself, to
prepare to face again that scene which had something horrifying in its
yellowness, touched with the green and gold.

And when finally I reopened my eyes, I sat up with a suppressed cry.
For a tall figure in a yellow robe from beneath which peeped yellow
slippers, a figure crowned with a green turban, stood in the centre of
the apartment!

It was that of a majestic old man, white bearded, with aquiline nose,
and the fierce eagle eyes of a fanatic set upon me sternly,
reprovingly.

With folded arms he stood watching me, and I drew a sharp breath and
rose slowly to my feet.

There amid the yellow and green and gold, amid the abominable reek of
burning hashish I stood and faced Hassan of Aleppo!

No words came to me; I was confounded.

Hassan spoke in that gentle voice which I had heard only once before.

“Mr. Cavanagh,” he said, “I have brought you here that I might warn
you. Your police are seeking me night and day, and I am fully alive to
my danger whilst I stay in your midst. But for close upon a thousand
years the Sheikh-al-jebal, Lord of the Hashishin, has guarded the
traditions and the relics of the Prophet, Salla-’llahu ’ale yhi
wasellem! I, Hassan of Aleppo, am Sheikh of the Order to-day, and my
sacred duty has brought me here.”

The piercing gaze never left my face. I was not yet by any means my own
man and still I made no reply.

“You have been wise,” continued Hassan, “in that you have never touched
the sacred slipper. Had you lain hands upon it, no secrecy could have
availed you. The eye of the Hashishin sees all. There is a shaft of
light which the true Believer perceives at night as he travels toward
El-Medineh. It is the light which uprises, a spiritual fire, from the
tomb of the Prophet (Salla-’llahu ’aleyhi wasellem!). The relics also
are radiant, though in a lesser degree.”

He took a step toward me, spreading out his lean brown hands, palms
downward.

“A shaft of light,” he said impressively, “shines upward now from
London. It is the light of the holy slipper.” He gazed intently at the
yellow drapery at the left of the divan, but as though he were looking
not at the wall but through it. His features worked convulsively; he
was a man inspired. “I see it now!” he almost whispered—“that white
light by which the guardians of the relic may always know its resting
place!”

I managed to force words to my lips.

“If you know where the slipper is,” I said, more for the sake of
talking than for anything else, “why do you not recover it?”

Hassan turned his eyes upon me again.

“Because the infidel dog,” he cried loudly, “who has soiled it with his
unclean touch, defies us—mocks us! He has suffered the loss of the
offending hand, but the evil ginn protect him; he is inspired by
efreets! But God is great and Mohammed is His only Prophet! We shall
triumph; but it is written, oh, daring infidel, that you again shall
become the guardian of the slipper!”

He spoke like some prophet of old and I stared at him fascinated. I was
loth to believe his words.

“When again,” he continued, “the slipper shall be in the receptacle of
which you hold the key, that key must be given to me!”

I thought I saw the drift of his words now; I thought I perceived with
what object I had been trapped and borne to this mysterious abode for
whose whereabouts the police vainly were seeking. By the exercise of
the gift of divination it would seem that Hassan of Aleppo had forecast
the future history of the accursed slipper or believed that he had done
so. According to his own words I was doomed once more to become trustee
of the relic. The key of the case at the Antiquarian Museum, to which
he had prophesied the slipper’s return, would be the price of my life!
But—

“In order that these things may be fulfilled,” he continued, “I must
permit you to return to your house. So it is written, so it shall be.
Your life is in my hands; beware when it is demanded of you that you
hesitate not in yielding up the key!”

He raised his hands before him, making a sort of obeisance, I doubt not
in the direction of Mecca, drew aside one of the yellow hangings behind
him and disappeared, leaving me alone again in that nightmare apartment
of yellow and green and gold. A moment I stood watching the swaying
curtain. Utter silence reigned, and a sort of panic seized me
infinitely greater than that occasioned by the presence of the weird
Sheikh. I felt that I must escape from the place or that I should
become raving mad.

I leapt forward to the curtain which Hassan had raised and jerked it
aside; it had concealed a door. In this door and about level with my
eyes was a kind of little barred window through which shone a dim green
light. I bent forward, peering into the place beyond, but was unable to
perceive anything save a vague greenness.

And as I peered, half believing that the whole episode was a dreadful,
fevered dream, the abominable fumes of hashish grew, or seemed to grow,
quite suddenly insupportable. Through the square opening, from the
green void beyond, a cloud of oily vapour, pungent, stifling,
resembling that of burning Indian hemp, poured out and enveloped me!

With a gasping cry I fell back, fighting for breath, for a breath of
clean air unpolluted with hashish. But every inhalation drew down into
my lungs the fumes that I sought to escape from. I experienced a
deathly sickness; I seemed to be sinking into a sea of hashish, amid
bubbles of yellow and green and gold, and I knew no more until,
struggling again to my feet, surrounded by utter darkness—I struck my
head on the corner of my writing-table ... for I lay in my own study!

My revolver, unloaded, was upon the table beside me. The night was very
still. I think it must have been near to dawn.

“My God!” I whispered, “did I dream it all? Did I dream it all?”




CHAPTER XXI
THE BLACK TUBE


“There’s no doubt in my mind,” said Inspector Bristol, “that your
experience was real enough.”

The sun was shining into my room now, but could not wholly disperse the
cloud of horror which lay upon it. That I had been drugged was
sufficiently evident from my present condition, and that I had been
taken away from my chambers Inspector Bristol had satisfactorily proved
by an examination of the soles of my slippers.

“It was a clever trick,” he said. “God knows what it was they puffed
into your face through the letter box, but the devilish arts of ten
centuries, we must remember, are at the command of Hassan of Aleppo!
The repetition of the trick at the mysterious place you were taken to
is particularly interesting. I should say you won’t be in a hurry to
peer through letter boxes and so forth in the future?”

I shook my aching head.

“That accursed yellow room,” I replied, “stank with the fumes of
hashish. It may have been some preparation of hashish that was used to
drug me.”

Bristol stood looking thoughtfully from the window.

“It was a nightmare business, Mr. Cavanagh,” he said; “but it doesn’t
advance our inquiry a little bit. The prophecy of the old man with the
white beard—whom you assure me to be none other than Hassan of
Aleppo—is something we cannot very well act upon. He clearly believes
it himself; for he has released you after having captured you,
evidently in order that you may be at liberty to take up your duty as
trustee of the slipper again. If the slipper really comes back to the
Museum the fact will show Hassan to be something little short of a
magician. I shan’t envy you then, Mr. Cavanagh, considering that you
hold the keys of the case!”

“No,” I replied wearily. “Poor Professor Deeping thought that he acted
in my interests and that my possession of the keys would constitute a
safeguard. He was wrong. It has plunged me into the very vortex of this
ghastly affair.”

“It is maddening,” said Bristol, “to know that Hassan and Company are
snugly located somewhere under our very noses, and that all Scotland
Yard can find no trace of them. Then to think that Hassan of Aleppo,
apparently by means of some mystical light, has knowledge of the
whereabouts of the slipper and consequently of the whereabouts of Earl
Dexter (another badly wanted man) is extremely discouraging! I feel
like an amateur; I’m ashamed of myself!”

Bristol departed in a condition of irritable uncertainty.

My head in my hands, I sat for long after his departure, with the
phantom characters of the ghoulish drama dancing through my brain. The
distorted yellow dwarfs seemed to gibe apish before me. Severed hands
clenched and unclenched themselves in my face, and gleaming knives
flashed across the mental picture. Predominant over all was the stately
figure of Hassan of Aleppo, that benignant, remorseless being, that
terrible guardian of the holy relic who directed the murderous
operations. Earl Dexter, The Stetson Man, with his tightly bandaged
arm, his gaunt, clean-shaven face and daredevil smile, figured, too, in
my feverish daydream; nor was that other character missing, the girl
with the violet eyes whose beautiful presence I had come to dread; for
like a sybil announcing destruction her appearances in the drama had
almost invariably presaged fresh tragedies. I recalled my previous
meetings with this woman of mystery. I recalled my many surmises
regarding her real identity and association with the case. I wondered
why in the not very distant past I had promised to keep silent
respecting her; I wondered why up to that present moment, knowing
beyond doubt that her activities were inimical to my interests, were
criminal, I had observed that foolish pledge.

And now my door-bell was ringing—as intuitively I had anticipated. So
certain was I of the identity of my visitor that as I walked along the
passage I was endeavouring to make up my mind how I should act, how I
should receive her.

I opened the door; and there, wearing European garments but a green
turban ... stood Hassan of Aleppo!

When I say that amazement robbed me of the power to speak, to move,
almost to think, I doubt not you will credit me. Indeed, I felt that
modern London was crumbling about me and that I was become involved in
the fantastic mazes of one of those Oriental intrigues such as figure
in the Romance of Abu Zeyd, or with which most European readers have
been rendered familiar by the glowing pages of “The Thousand and One
Nights.”

“Effendim,” said my visitor, “do not hesitate to act as I direct!”

In his gloved hand he carried what appeared to be an ebony cane. He
raised and pointed it directly at me. I perceived that it was, in fact,
a hollow tube.

“Death is in my hand,” he continued; “enter slowly and I will follow
you.”

Still the sense of unreality held me thralled and my brain refused me
service. Like an hypnotic subject I walked back to my study, followed
by my terrible visitor, who reclosed the door behind him.

He sat facing me across my littered table with the mysterious tube held
loosely in his grasp.

How infinitely more terrifying are perils unknown than those known and
appreciated! Had a European armed with a pistol attempted a similar act
of coercion, I cannot doubt that I should have put up some sort of
fight; had he sat before me now as Hassan of Aleppo sat, with a
comprehensible weapon thus laid upon his knees, I should have taken my
chance, should have attacked him with the lamp, with a chair, with
anything that came to my hand.

But before this awful, mysterious being who was turning my life into
channels unsuspected, before that black tube with its unknown
potentialities, I sat in a kind of passive panic which I cannot attempt
to describe, which I had never experienced before and have never known
since.

“There is one about to visit you,” he said, “whom you know, whom I
think you expect. For it is written that she shall come and such events
cast a shadow before them. I, too, shall be present at your meeting!”

His eagle eyes opened widely; they burned with fanaticism.

“Already she is here!” he resumed suddenly, and bent as one listening.
“She comes under the archway; she crossed the courtyard—and is upon the
stair! Admit her, effendim; I shall be close behind you!”

The door-bell rang.

With the consciousness that the black tube was directed toward the back
of my head, I went and opened the door. My mind was at work again, and
busy with plans to terminate this impossible situation.

On the landing stood a girl wearing a simple white frock which fitted
her graceful figure perfectly. A white straw hat, of the New York
tourist type, with a long veil draped from the back suited her delicate
beauty very well. The red mouth drooped a little at the corners, but
the big violet eyes, like lamps of the soul, seemed afire with mystic
light.

“Mr. Cavanagh,” she said, very calmly and deliberately, “there is only
one way now to end all this trouble. I come from the man who can return
the slipper to where it belongs; but he wants his price!”

Her quiet speech served completely to restore my mental balance, and I
noted with admiration that her words were so chosen as to commit her in
no way. She knew quite well that thus far she might appear in the
matter with impunity, and she clearly was determined to say nothing
that could imperil her.

“Will you please come in?” I said quietly—and stood aside to admit her.

Exhibiting wonderful composure, she entered—and there, in the badly
lighted hallway came face to face with my other visitor!

It was a situation so dramatic as to seem unreal.

Away from that tall figure retreated the girl with the violet eyes—and
away—until she stood with her back to the wall. Even in the gloom I
could see that her composure was deserting her; her beautiful face was
pallid.

“Oh, God!” she whispered, all but inaudible—“You!”

Hassan, grasping the black rod in his hand, signed to her to enter the
study. She stood quite near to me, with her eyes fixed upon him. I bent
closer to her.

“My revolver—in left-hand table drawer,” I breathed in her ear. “Get
it. He is watching me!”

I could not tell if my words had been understood, for, never taking her
gaze from the Sheikh of the Assassins, she sidled into the study. I
followed her; and Hassan came last of all. Just within the doorway he
stood, confronting us.

“You have come,” he said, addressing the girl and speaking in perfect
English but with a marked accent, “to open your impudent negotiations
through Mr. Cavanagh for the return of the thrice holy relic to the
Museum! Your companion, the man, who is inspired by the Evil One, has
even dared to demand ransom for the slipper from me!”

Hassan was majestic in his wrath; but his eyes were black with venomous
hatred.

“He has suffered the penalty which the Koran lays down; he has lost his
right hand. But the lord of all evil protects him, else ere this he had
lost his life! Move no closer to that table!”

I started. Either Hassan of Aleppo was omniscient or he had overheard
my whispered words!

“Easily I could slay you where you stand!” he continued. “But to do so
would profit me nothing. This meeting has been revealed to me. Last
night I witnessed it as I slept. Also it has been revealed to me by
Erroohanee, in the mirror of ink, that the slipper of the Prophet,
Salla-’llahu ’ale yhi wasellem! Shall indeed return to that place
accursed, that infidel eyes may look upon it! It is the will of Allah,
whose name be exalted, that I hold my hand, but it is also His will
that I be here, at whatever danger to my worthless body.”

He turned his blazing eyes upon me.

“To-morrow, ere noon,” he said, “the slipper will again be in the
Museum from which the man of evil stole it. So it is written; obscure
are the ways. We met last night, you and I, but at that time much was
dark to me that now is light. The holy ’Alee spoke to me in a vision,
saying: ‘There are two keys to the case in which it will be locked.
Secure one, leaving the other with him who holds it! Let him swear to
be secret. This shall be the price of his life!’”

The black tube was pointed directly at my forehead.

“Effendim,” concluded the speaker, “place in my hand the key of the
case in the Antiquarian Museum!”

Hands convulsively clenched, the girl was looking from me to Hassan. My
throat felt parched, but I forced speech to my lips.

“Your omniscience fails you,” I said. “Both keys are at my bank!”

Blacker grew the fierce eyes—and blacker. I gave myself up for lost; I
awaited death—death by some awful, unique means—with what courage I
could muster.

From the court below came the sound of voices, the voices of passers-by
who so little suspected what was happening near to them that had
someone told them they certainly had refused to credit it. The noise of
busy Fleet Street came drumming under the archway, too.

Then, above all, another sound became audible. To this day I find
myself unable to define it; but it resembled the note of a silver bell.

Clearly it was a signal; for, hearing it, Hassan dropped the tube and
glanced toward the open window.

In that instant I sprang upon him!

That I had to deal with a fanatic, a dangerous madman, I knew; that it
was his life or mine, I was fully convinced. I struck out then and
caught him fairly over the heart. He reeled back, and I made a wild
clutch for the damnable tube, horrid, unreasoning fear of which thus
far had held me inert.

I heard the girl scream affrightedly, and I knew, and felt my heart
chill to know, that the tube had been wrenched from my hand! Hassan of
Aleppo, old man that he appeared, had the strength of a tiger. He
recovered himself and hurled me from him so that I came to the floor
crashingly half under my writing-table!

Something he cried back at me, furiously—and like an enraged animal,
his teeth gleaming out from his beard, he darted from the room. The
front door banged loudly.

Shaken and quivering, I got upon my feet. On the threshold, in a state
of pitiable hesitancy, stood the pale, beautiful accomplice of Earl
Dexter. One quick glance she flashed at me, then turned and ran!

Again the door slammed. I ran to the window, looking out into the
court. The girl came hurrying down the steps, and with never a backward
glance ran on and was lost to view in one of the passages opening
riverward.

Out under the arch, statelily passed a tall figure—and Inspector
Bristol was entering! I saw the detective glance aside as the two all
but met. He stood still, and looked back!

“Bristol!” I cried, and waved my arms frantically.

“Stop him! Stop him! It’s Hassan of Aleppo!”

Bristol was not the only one to hear my wild cry—not the only one to
dash back under the arch and out into Fleet Street.

But Hassan of Aleppo was gone!




CHAPTER XXII
THE LIGHT OF EL-MEDINEH


Bristol and I walked slowly in the direction of the entrance of the
British Antiquarian Museum. It was the day following upon the
sensational scene in my chambers.

“There’s very little doubt,” said Bristol, “that Earl Dexter has the
slipper and that Hassan of Aleppo knows where Dexter is in hiding. I
don’t know which of the two is more elusive. Hassan apparently melted
into thin air yesterday; and although The Stetson Man has never within
my experience employed disguises, no one has set eyes upon him since
the night that he vanished from his lodgings off the Waterloo Road.
It’s always possible for a man to baffle the police by remaining
closely within doors, but during all the time that has elapsed Dexter
must have taken a little exercise occasionally, and the missing hand
should have betrayed him.”

“The wonder to me is,” I replied, “that he has escaped death at the
hands of the Hashishin. He is a supremely daring man, for I should
think that he must be carrying the slipper of the Prophet about with
him!”

“I would rather he did it than I!” commented Bristol. “For sheer
audacity commend me to The Stetson Man! His idea no doubt was to use
you as intermediary in his negotiations with the Museum authorities,
but that plan failing, he has written them direct, thoughtfully
omitting his address, of course!”

We were, in fact, at that moment bound for the Museum to inspect this
latest piece of evidence.

“The crowning example of the man’s audacity and cleverness,” added my
companion, “is his having actually approached Hassan of Aleppo with a
similar proposition! How did he get in touch with him? All Scotland
Yard has failed to find any trace of that weird character!”

“Birds of a feather—” I suggested.

“But they are not birds of a feather!” cried Bristol. “On your own
showing, Hassan of Aleppo is simply waiting his opportunity to balance
Dexter’s account forever! I always knew Dexter was a clever man; I
begin to think he’s the most daring genius alive!”

We mounted the steps of the Museum. In the hallway Mostyn, the curator,
awaited us. Having greeted Bristol and myself he led the way to his
private office, and from a pigeon-hole in his desk took out a letter
typewritten upon a sheet of quarto paper.

Bristol spread it out upon the blotting pad and we bent over it
curiously.

SIR—


I believe I can supply information concerning the whereabouts of the
missing slipper of Mohammed. As any inquiry of this nature must be
extremely perilous to the inquirer and as the relic is a priceless one,
my fee would be 10,000 pounds. The fanatics who seek to restore the
slipper to the East must not know of any negotiations, therefore I omit
my address, but will communicate further if you care to insert
instructions in the agony column of Times.

Faithfully,
EARL DEXTER


Bristol laughed grimly.

“It’s a daring game,” he said; “a piece of barefaced impudence quite
characteristic.

“He’s posing as a sort of private detective now, and is prepared for a
trifling consideration to return the slipper which he stole himself! He
must know, though, that we have his severed hand at the Yard to be used
in evidence against him.”

“Is the Burton Room open to the public again?” I asked Mostyn.

“It is open, yes,” he replied, “and a quite unusual number of visitors
come daily to gaze at the empty case which once held the slipper of the
Prophet.”

“Has the case been mended?”

“Yes; it is quite intact again; only the exhibit is missing.”

We ascended the stairs, passed along the Assyrian Room, which seemed to
be unusually crowded, and entered the lofty apartment known as the
Burton Room. The sunblinds were drawn, and a sort of dim, religious
light prevailed therein. A group of visitors stood around an empty case
at the farther end of the apartment.

“You see,” said Mostyn, pointing, “that empty case has a greater
attraction than all the other full ones!”

But I scarcely heeded his words, for I was intently watching the
movements of one of the group about the empty case. I have said that
the room was but dimly illuminated, and this fact, together no doubt
with some effect of reflected light, enhanced by my imagination,
perhaps produced the phenomenon which was occasioning me so much
amazement.

Remember that my mind was filled with memories of weird things, that I
often found myself thinking of that mystic light which Hassan of Aleppo
had called the light of El-Medineh—that light whereby, undeterred by
distance, he claimed to be able to trace the whereabouts of any of the
relics of the Prophet.

Bristol and Mostyn walked on then; but I stood just within the doorway,
intently, breathlessly watching an old man wearing an out-of-date
Inverness coat and a soft felt hat. He had a gray beard and moustache,
and long, untidy hair, walked with a stoop, and in short was no unusual
type of Visitor to that institution.

But it seemed to me, and the closer I watched him the more convinced I
became, that this was no optical illusion, that a faint luminosity, a
sort of elfin light, played eerily about his head!

As Bristol and Mostyn approached the case the old man began to walk
toward me and in the direction of the door. The idea flashed through my
mind that it might be Hassan of Aleppo himself, Hassan who had
predicted that the stolen slipper should that day be returned to the
Museum!

Then he came abreast of me, passed me, and I felt that my surmise had
been wrong. I saw Bristol, from farther up the room, turn and look
back. Something attracted his trained eye, I suppose, which was not
perceptible to me. But he suddenly came striding along. Obviously he
was pursuing the old man, who was just about to leave the apartment.
Seeing that the latter had reached the doorway, Bristol began to run.

The old man turned; and amid a chorus of exclamations from the
astonished spectators, Bristol sprang upon him!

How it all came about I cannot say, cannot hope to describe; but there
was a short, sharp scuffle, the crack of a well-directed blow ... and
Bristol was rolling on his back, the old man, hatless, was racing up
the Assyrian Room, and everyone in the place seemed to be shouting at
once!

Bristol, with blood streaming from his face, staggered to his feet,
clutching at me for support.

“After him, Mr. Cavanagh!” he cried hoarsely. “It’s your turn to-day!
After him! That’s Earl Dexter!”

Mostyn waited for no more, but went running quickly through the
Assyrian Room. I may mention here that at the head of the stairs he
found the caped Inverness which had served to conceal Dexter’s
mutilated arm, and later, behind a piece of statuary, a wig and a very
ingenious false beard and moustache were discovered. But of The Stetson
Man there was no trace. His brief start had enabled him to make good
his escape.

As Mostyn went off, and a group of visitors flocked in our direction,
Bristol, who had been badly shaken by the blow, turned to them.

“You will please all leave the Burton Room immediately,” he said.

Looks of surprise greeted his words; but with his handkerchief raised
to his face, he peremptorily repeated them. The official note in his
voice was readily to be detected; and the wonder-stricken group
departed with many a backward glance.

As the last left the Burton Room, Bristol pointed, with a rather shaky
finger, at the soft felt hat which lay at his feet. It had formed part
of Dexter’s disguise. Close beside it lay another object which had
evidently fallen from the hat—a dull red thing lying on the polished
parquet flooring.

“For God’s sake don’t go near it!” whispered Bristol. “The room must be
closed for the present. And now I’m off after that man. Step clear of
it.”

His words were unnecessary; I shunned it as a leprous thing.

It was the slipper of the Prophet!




CHAPTER XXIII
THE THREE MESSAGES


I stood in the foyer of the Astoria Hotel. About me was the pulsing
stir of transatlantic life, for the tourist season was now at its
height, and I counted myself fortunate in that I had been able to
secure a room at this establishment, always so popular with American
visitors. Chatting groups surrounded me and I became acquainted with
numberless projects for visiting the Tower of London, the National
Gallery, the British Museum, Windsor Castle, Kew Gardens, and the other
sights dear to the heart of our visiting cousins. Loaded lifts ascended
and descended. Bradshaws were in great evidence everywhere; all was
hustle and glad animation.

The tall military-looking man who stood beside me glanced about him
with a rather grim smile.

“You ought to be safe enough here, Mr. Cavanagh!” he said.

“I ought to be safe enough in my own chambers,” I replied wearily. “How
many of these pleasure-seeking folk would believe that a man can be as
greatly in peril of his life in Fleet Street as in the most uncivilized
spot upon the world map? Do you think if I told that prosperous New
Yorker who is buying a cigar yonder, for instance, that I had been
driven from my chambers by a band of Eastern assassins founded some
time in the eleventh century, he would believe it?”

“I am certain he wouldn’t!” replied Bristol. “I should not have
credited it myself before I was put in charge of this damnable case.”

My position at that hour was in truth an incredible one. The sacred
slipper of Mohammed lay once more in the glass case at the Antiquarian
Museum from which Earl Dexter had stolen it. Now, with apish yellow
faces haunting my dreams, with ghostly menaces dogging me day and
night, I was outcast from my own rooms and compelled, in self-defence,
to live amid the bustle of the Astoria. So wholly nonplussed were the
police authorities that they could afford me no protection. They knew
that a group of scientific murderers lay hidden in or near to London;
they knew that Earl Dexter, the foremost crook of his day, was also in
the metropolis—and they could make no move, were helpless; indeed, as
Bristol had confessed, were hopeless!

Bristol, on the previous day, had unearthed the Greek cigar merchant,
Acepulos, who had replaced the slipper in its case (for a monetary
consideration). He had performed a similar service when the
bloodstained thing had first been put upon exhibition at the Museum,
and for a considerable period had disappeared. We had feared that his
religious pretensions had not saved him from the avenging scimitar of
Hassan; but quite recently he had returned again to his Soho shop, and
in time thus to earn a second cheque.

As Bristol and I stood glancing about the foyer of the hotel, a
plain-clothes officer whom I knew by sight came in and approached my
companion. I could not divine the fact, of course, but I was about to
hear news of the money-loving and greatly daring Graeco-Moslem.

The detective whispered something to Bristol, and the latter started,
and paled. He turned to me.

“They haven’t overlooked him this time, Mr. Cavanagh,” he said.
“Acepulos has been found dead in his room, nearly decapitated!”

I shuddered involuntarily. Even there, amid the chatter and laughter of
those light-hearted tourists, the shadow of Hassan of Aleppo was
falling upon me.

Bristol started immediately for Soho and I parted from him in the
Strand, he proceeding west and I eastward, for I had occasion that
morning to call at my bank. It was the time of the year when London is
full of foreigners, and as I proceeded in the direction of Fleet Street
I encountered more than one Oriental. To my excited imagination they
all seemed to glance at me furtively, with menacing eyes, but in any
event I knew that I had little to fear whilst I contrived to keep to
the crowded thoroughfares. Solitude I dreaded and with good reason.

Then at the door of the bank I found fresh matter for reflection. The
assistant manager, Mr. Colby, was escorting a lady to the door. As I
stood aside, he walked with her to a handsome car which waited, and
handed her in with marks of great deference. She was heavily veiled and
I had no more than a glimpse of her, but she appeared to be of middle
age and had gray hair and a very stately manner.

I told myself that I was unduly suspicious, suspicious of everyone and
of everything; yet as I entered the bank I found myself wondering where
I had seen that dignified, grayhaired figure before. I even thought of
asking the manager the name of his distinguished customer, but did not
do so, for in the circumstances such an inquiry must have appeared
impertinent.

My business transacted, I came out again by the side entrance which
opens on the little courtyard, for this branch of the London County and
Provincial Bank occupies a corner site.

A ragged urchin who was apparently waiting for me handed me a note. I
looked at him inquiringly.

“For me?” I said.

“Yes, sir. A dark gentleman pointed you out as you was goin’ into the
bank.”

The note was written upon a half sheet of paper and, doubting if it was
really intended for me, I unfolded it and read the following—

Mr. Cavanagh, take the keys of the case containing the holy slipper to
your hotel this evening without fail.
HASSAN.


“Who gave you this, boy?” I asked sharply.

“A foreign gentleman, sir, very dark—like an Indian.”

“Where is he?”

“He went off in a cab, sir, after he give me the note.”

I handed the boy sixpence and slowly pursued my way. An idea was
forming in my mind to trap the enemy by seeming acquiescent. I wondered
if my movements were being watched at that moment. Since it was more
than probable, I returned to the bank, entered, and made some trivial
inquiry of a cashier, and then came out again and walked on as far as
the Report office.

I had not been in the office more than five minutes before I received a
telegram from Inspector Bristol. It had been handed in at Soho, and the
message was an odd one.

CAVANAGH, Report, London.
Plot afoot to steal keys. Get them from bank and join me 11 o’clock at
Astoria. Have planned trap.

BRISTOL.


This was very mysterious in view of the note so recently received by
me, but I concluded that Bristol had hit upon a similar plan to that
which was forming in my own mind. It seemed unnecessarily hazardous,
though, actually to withdraw the keys from their place of safety.

Pondering deeply upon the perplexities of this maddening case, I
shortly afterward found myself again at the bank. With the manager I
descended to the strong-room, and the safe was unlocked which contained
the much-sought-for keys of the case at the Antiquarian Museum.

“There are the keys, quite safe!—and by the way, this is my second
visit here this morning, Mr. Cavanagh,” said the manager, with whom I
was upon rather intimate terms. “A foreign lady who has recently become
a customer of the bank deposited some valuable jewels here this
morning—less than an hour ago, in fact.”

“Indeed,” I said, and my mind was working rapidly. “The lady who came
in the large blue car, a gray-haired lady?”

“Yes,” was the reply, “did you notice her, then?”

I nodded and said no more, for in truth I had no more to say. I had
good reason to respect the uncanny powers of Hassan of Aleppo, but I
doubted if even his omniscience could tell him (since I had actually
gone down into the strong-room) whether when I emerged I had the keys,
or whether my visit and seeming acceptance of his orders had been no
more than a subterfuge!

That the Hashishin had some means of communicating with me at the
Astoria was evident from the contents of the note which I had received,
and as I walked in the direction of the hotel my mind was filled with
all sorts of misgivings. I was playing with fire! Had I done rightly or
should I have acted otherwise? I sighed wearily. The dark future would
resolve all my doubts.

When I reached the Astoria, Bristol had not arrived. I lighted a
cigarette and sat down in the lounge to await his coming. Presently a
boy approached, handing me a message which had been taken down from the
telephone by the clerk. It was as follows—

Tell Mr. Cavanagh, who is waiting in the hotel, to take what I am
expecting to his chambers, and say that I will join him there in twenty
minutes.

INSPECTOR BRISTOL.


Again I doubted the wisdom of Bristol’s plan. Had I not fled to the
Astoria to escape from the dangerous solitude of my rooms? That he was
laying some trap for the Hashishin was sufficiently evident, and whilst
I could not justly suspect him of making a pawn of me I was quite
unable to find any other explanation of this latest move.

I was torn between conflicting doubts. I glanced at my watch. Yes!
There was just time for me to revisit the bank ere joining Bristol at
my chambers! I hesitated. After all, in what possible way could it
jeopardize his plans for me merely to pretend to bring the keys?

“Hang it all!” I said, and jumped to my feet. “These maddening
conjectures will turn my brain! I’ll let matters stand as they are, and
risk the consequences!”

I hesitated no longer, but passed out from the hotel and once more
directed my steps in the direction of Fleet Street.

As I passed in under the arch through which streamed many busy workers,
I told myself that to dread entering my own chambers at high noon was
utterly childish. Yet I did dread doing so! And as I mounted the stair
and came to the landing, which was always more or less dark, I paused
for quite a long time before putting the key in the lock.

The affair of the accursed slipper was playing havoc with my nerves,
and I laughed dryly to note that my hand was not quite steady as I
turned the key, opened my door, and slipped into the dim hallway.

As I closed it behind me, something, probably a slight noise, but
possibly something more subtle—an instinct—made me turn rapidly.

There facing me stood Hassan of Aleppo.




CHAPTER XXIV
I KEEP THE APPOINTMENT


That moment was pungent with drama. In the intense hush of the next
five seconds I could fancy that the world had slipped away from me and
that I was become an unsubstantial thing of dreams. I was in no sense
master of myself; the effect of the presence of this white-bearded
fanatic was of a kind which I am entirely unable to describe. About
Hassan of Aleppo was an aroma of evil, yet of majesty, which marked him
strangely different from other men—from any other that I have ever
known. In his venerable presence, remembering how he was Sheikh of the
Assassins, and recalling his bloody history, I was always conscious of
a weakness, physical and mental. He appalled me; and now, with my back
to the door, I stood watching him and watching the ominous black tube
which he held in his hand. It was a weapon unknown to Europe and
therefore more fearful than the most up-to-date of death-dealing
instruments.

Hassan of Aleppo pointed it toward me.

“The keys, effendim,” he said; “hand me the keys!”

He advanced a step; his manner was imperious. The black tube was less
than a foot removed from my face. That I had my revolver in my pocket
could avail me nothing, for in my pocket it must remain, since I dared
to make no move to reach it under cover of that unfamiliar, terrible
weapon.

The black eyes of Hassan glared insanely into mine.

“You will have placed them in your pocketcase,” he said. “Take it out;
hand it to me!”

I obeyed, for what else could I do? Taking the case from my pocket, I
placed it in his lean brown hand.

An expression of wild exultation crossed his features; the eagle eyes
seemed to be burning into my brain. A puff of hot vapour struck me in
the face—something which was expelled from the mysterious black tube.
And with memories crowding to my mind of similar experiences at the
hands of the Hashishin, I fell back, clutching at my throat, fighting
for my life against the deadly, vaporous thing that like a palpable
cloud surrounded me. I tried to cry out, but the words died upon my
tongue. Hassan of Aleppo seemed to grow huge before my eyes like some
ginn of Eastern lore. Then a curtain of darkness descended. I
experienced a violent blow upon the forehead (I suppose I had pitched
forward), and for the time resigned my part in the drama of the sacred
slipper.




CHAPTER XXV
THE WATCHER IN BANK CHAMBERS


At about five o’clock that afternoon Inspector Bristol, who had spent
several hours in Soho upon the scene of the murder of the Greek, was
walking along Fleet Street, bound for the offices of the Report. As he
passed the court, on the corner of which stands a branch of the London
County and Provincial Bank, his eye was attracted by a curious
phenomenon.

There are reflectors above the bank windows which face the court, and
it appeared to Bristol that there was a hole in one of these, the
furthermost from the corner. A tiny beam of light shone from the bank
window on to the reflector, or from the reflector on to the window,
which circumstance in itself was not curious. But above the reflector,
at an acute angle, this mysterious beam was seemingly projected upward.
Walking a little way up the court he saw that it shone through, and
cast a disc of light upon the ceiling of an office on the first floor
of Bank Chambers above.

It is every detective’s business to be observant, and although many
thousands of passersby must have cast their eyes in the same direction
that day, there is small matter for wonder in the fact that Bristol
alone took the trouble to inquire into the mystery—for his trained eye
told him that there was a mystery here.

Possibly he was in that passive frame of mind when the brain is
particularly receptive of trivial impressions; for after a futile
search of the Soho cigar store for anything resembling a clue, he was
quite resigned to the idea of failure in the case of Hassan and
Company. He walked down the court and into the entrance of Bank
Chambers. An Inspection of the board upon the wall showed him that the
first floor apparently was occupied by three firms, two of them legal,
for this is the neighbourhood of the law courts, and the third a press
agency. He stepped up to the first floor. Past the doors bearing the
names of the solicitors and past that belonging to the press agent he
proceeded to a fourth suite of offices. Here, pinned upon the door
frame, appeared a card which bore the legend—

THE CONGO FIBRE COMPANY

Evidently the Congo Fibre Company had so recently taken possession of
the offices that there had been no time to inscribe their title either
upon the doors or upon the board in the hall.

Inspector Bristol was much impressed, for into one of the rooms
occupied by the Fibre Company shone that curious disc of light which
first had drawn his attention to Bank Chambers. He rapped on the door,
turned the handle, and entered. The sole furniture of the office in
which he found himself apparently consisted of one desk and an office
stool, which stool was occupied by an office boy. The windows opened on
the court, and a door marked “Private” evidently communicated with an
inner office whose windows likewise must open on the court. It was the
ceiling of this inner office, unless the detective’s calculation erred,
which he was anxious to inspect.

“Yes, sir?” said the boy tentatively.

Bristol produced a card which bore the uncompromising legend: John
Henry Smith.

“Take my card to Mr. Boulter, boy,” he said tersely. The boy stared.

“Mr. Boulter, sir? There isn’t any one of that name here.”

“Oh!” said Bristol, looking around him in apparent surprise: “how long
is he gone?”

“I don’t know, sir. I’ve only been here three weeks, and Mr. Knowlson
only took the offic

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