The Quest of the Sacred Slipper

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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.

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