The Quest of the Sacred Slipper

by Sax Rohmer

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 offices a month ago.”

“Oh,” commented Bristol, “then take my card to Mr. Knowlson; he will probably be able to give me Mr. Boulter’s present address.”

The boy hesitated. The detective had that authoritative manner which awes the youthful mind.

“He’s out, sir,” he said, but without conviction.

“Is he?” rapped Bristol. “Well, I’ll leave my card.”

He turned and quitted the office, carefully closing the door behind him. Three seconds later he reopened it, and peering in, was in time to see the boy knock upon the private door. A little wicket, or movable panel, was let down, the card of John Henry Smith was passed through to someone unseen, and the wicket was reclosed!

The boy turned and met the wrathful eye of the detective. Bristol reentered, closing the door behind him.

“See here, young fellow,” said he, “I don’t stand for those tricks! Why didn’t you tell me Mr. Knowlson was in?”

“I’m very sorry, sir!”—the boy quailed beneath his glance—“but he won’t see any one who hasn’t an appointment.”

“Is there someone with him, then?”

“No.”

“Well, what’s he doing?”

“I don’t know, sir; I’ve never been in to see!”

“What! never been in that room?”

“Never!” declared the boy solemnly. “And I don’t mind telling you,” he added, recovering something of his natural confidence, “that I am leaving on the 31st. This job ain’t any use to me!”

“Too much work?” suggested Bristol.

“No work at all!” returned the boy indignantly. “I’m just here for a blessed buffer, that’s what I’m here for, a buffer!”

“What do you mean?”

“I just have to sit here and see that nobody gets into that office. Lively, ain’t it? Where’s the prospects?”

Bristol surveyed him thoughtfully.

“Look here, my lad,” he said quietly; “is that door locked?”

“Always,” replied the boy.

“Does Mr. Knowlson come to that shutter when you knock?”

“Yes.”

“Then go and knock!”

The boy obeyed with alacrity. He rapped loudly on the door, not noticing or not caring that the visitor was standing directly behind him. The shutter was lowered and a grizzled, bearded face showed for a moment through the opening.

Bristol leant over the boy and pushed a card through into the hand of the man beyond. On this occasion it did not bear the legend “John Henry Smith,” but the following—

CHIEF INSPECTOR BRISTOL
C.I.D.
NEW SCOTLAND YARD

“Good afternoon, Mr. Knowlson,” said the detective dryly. “I want to come in!”

There followed a moment of silence, from which Bristol divined that he had blundered upon some mystery, possibly upon a big case; then a key was turned in the lock and the door thrown open.

“Come right in, Inspector,” invited a strident voice. “Carter, you can go home.”

Bristol entered warily, but not warily enough. For as the door was banged upon his entrance he faced around only in time to find himself looking down the barrel of a Colt automatic.

With his back to the door which contained the wicket, now reclosed, stood the man with the bearded face. The revolver was held in his left hand; his right arm terminated in a bandaged stump. But without that his steel-gray eyes would have betrayed him to the detective.

“Good God!” whispered Bristol. “It’s Earl Dexter!”

“It is!” replied the cracksman, “and you’ve looked in at a real inconvenient time! My visitors mostly seem to have that knack. I’ll have to ask you to stay, Inspector. Sit down in that chair yonder.”

Bristol knew his man too well to think of opening any argument at that time. He sat down as directed, and ignoring the revolver which covered him all the time, began coolly to survey the room in which he found himself. In several respects it was an extraordinary apartment.

The only bright patch in the room was the shining disc upon the ceiling; and the detective noted with interest that this marked the position of an arrangement of mirrors. A white-covered table, entirely bare, stood upon the floor immediately beneath this mysterious apparatus. With the exception of one or two ordinary items of furniture and a small hand lathe, the office otherwise was unfurnished. Bristol turned his eyes again upon the daring man who so audaciously had trapped him—the man who had stolen the slipper of the Prophet and suffered the loss of his hand by the scimitar of an Hashishin as a result. When he had least expected to find one, Fate had thrown a clue in Bristol’s way. He reflected grimly that it was like to prove of little use to him.

“Now,” said Dexter, “you can do as you please, of course, but you know me pretty well and I advise you to sit quiet.”

“I am sitting quiet!” was the reply.

“I am sorry,” continued Dexter, with a quick glance at his maimed arm, “that I can’t tie you up, but I am expecting a friend any moment now.”

He suddenly raised the wicket with a twitch of his elbow and, without removing his gaze from the watchful detective, cried sharply—

“Carter!”

But there was no reply.

“Good; he’s gone!”

Dexter sat down facing Bristol.

“I have lost my hand in this game, Mr. Bristol,” he said genially, “and had some narrow squeaks of losing my head; but having gone so far and lost so much I’m going through, if I don’t meet a funeral! You see I’m up against two tough propositions.”

Bristol nodded sympathetically.

“The first,” continued Dexter, “is you and Cavanagh, and English law generally. My idea—if I can get hold of the slipper again—oh! you needn’t stare; I’m out for it!—is to get the Antiquarian Institution to ransom it. It’s a line of commercial speculation I have worked successfully before. There’s a dozen rich highbrows, cranks to a man, connected with it, and they are my likeliest buyers—sure. But to keep the tone of the market healthy there’s Hassan of Aleppo, rot him! He’s a dangerous customer to approach, but you’ll note I’ve been in negotiation with him already and am still, if not booming, not much below par!”

“Quite so,” said Bristol. “But you’ve cut off a pretty hefty chew nevertheless. They used to call you The Stetson Man, you used to dress like a fashion plate and stop at the big hotels. Those days are past, Dexter, I’m sorry to note. You’re down to the skulking game now and you’re nearer an advert for Clarkson than Stein-Bloch!”

“Yep,” said Dexter sadly, “I plead guilty, but I think here’s Carneta!”

Bristol heard the door of the outer office open, and a moment later that upon which his gaze was set opened in turn, to admit a girl who was heavily veiled, and who started and stood still in the doorway, on perceiving the situation. Never for one unguarded moment did the American glance aside from his prisoner.

“The Inspector’s dropped in, Carneta!” he drawled in his strident way. “You’re handy with a ball of twine; see if you can induce him to stay the night!”

The girl, immediately recovering her composure, took off her hat in a businesslike way and began to look around her, evidently in search of a suitable length of rope with which to fasten up Bristol.

“Might I suggest,” said the detective, “that if you are shortly quitting these offices a couple of the window-cords neatly joined would serve admirably?”

“Thanks,” drawled Dexter, nodding to his companion, who went into the outer office, where she might be heard lowering the windows. She was gone but a few moments ere she returned again, carrying a length of knotted rope. Under cover of Dexter’s revolver, Bristol stoically submitted to having his wrists tied behind him. The end of the line was then thrown through the ventilator above the door which communicated with the outer office and Bristol was triced up in such a way that, his wrists being raised behind him to an uncomfortable degree, he was almost forced to stand upon tiptoe. The line was then secured.

“Very workmanlike!” commented the victim. “You’ll find a large handkerchief in my inside breast pocket. It’s a clean one, and I can recommend it as a gag!”

Very promptly it was employed for the purpose, and Inspector Bristol found himself helpless and constrained in a very painful position. Dexter laid down his revolver.

“We will now give you a free show, Inspector,” he said, genially, “of our camera obscura!”

He pulled down the blinds, which Bristol noted with interest to be black, but through an opening in one of them a mysterious ray of light—the same that he had noticed from Fleet Street—shone upon that point in the ceiling where the arrangement of mirrors was attached. Dexter made some alteration, apparently in the focus of the lens (for Bristol had divined that in some way a lens had been fixed in the reflector above the bank window below) and the disc of light became concentrated. The white-covered table was moved slightly, and in the darkness some further manipulation was performed.

“Observe,” came the strident voice—“we now have upon the screen here a minute moving picture. This little device, which is not protected in any way, is of my own invention, and proved extremely useful in the Arkwright jewel case, which startled Chicago. It has proved useful now. I know almost as much concerning the arrangements below as the manager himself. In confidence, Inspector, this is my last bid for the slipper! I have plunged on it. Madame Sforza, the distinguished Italian lady who recently opened an account below, opened it for 500 pounds cash. She has drawn a portion, but a balance remains which I am resigned to lose. Her motor-car (hired), her references (forged), the case of jewels which she deposited this morning (duds!)—all represent a considerable outlay. It’s a nerve-racking line of operation, too. Any hour of the day may bring such a visitor as yourself, for example. In short, I am at the end of my tether.”

Bristol, ignoring the increasing pain in his arms and wrists, turned his eyes upon the white-covered table and there saw a minute and clear-cut picture, such as one sees in a focussing screen, of the interior of the manager’s office of the London County and Provincial Bank!

CHAPTER XXVI
THE STRONG-ROOM

I wonder how often a sense of humour has saved a man from desperation? Perhaps only the Easterns have thoroughly appreciated that divine gift. I have interpolated the adventure of Inspector Bristol in order that the sequence of my story be not broken; actually I did not learn it until later, but when, on the following day, the whole of the facts came into my possession, I laughed and was glad that I could laugh, for laughter has saved many a man from madness.

Certainly the Fates were playing with us, for at a time very nearly corresponding with that when Bristol found himself bound and helpless in Bank Chambers I awoke to find myself tied hand and foot to my own bed! Nothing but the haziest recollections came to me at first, nothing but dim memories of the awful being who had lured me there; for I perceived now that all the messages proceeded, not from Bristol, but from Hassan of Aleppo! I had been a fool, and I was reaping the fruits of my folly. Could I have known that almost within pistol shot of me the Inspector was trussed up as helpless as I, then indeed my situation must have become unbearable, since upon him I relied for my speedy release.

My ankles were firmly lashed to the rails at the foot of my bed; each of my wrists was tied back to a bedpost. I ached in every limb and my head burned feverishly, which latter symptom I ascribed to the powerful drug which had been expelled into my face by the uncanny weapon carried by Hassan of Aleppo. I reflected bitterly how, having transferred my quarters to the Astoria, I could not well hope for any visitor to my chambers; and even the event of such a visitor had been foreseen and provided against by the cunning lord of the Hashishin. A gag, of the type which Dumas has described in “Twenty Years After,” the poire d’angoisse, was wedged firmly into my mouth, so that only by preserving the utmost composure could I breathe. I was bathed in cold perspiration. So I lay listening to the familiar sounds without and reflecting that it was quite possible so to lie, undisturbed, and to die alone, my presence there wholly unsuspected!

Once, toward dusk, my phone bell rang, and my state of mind became agonizing. It was maddening to think that someone, a friend, was virtually within reach of me, yet actually as far removed as if an ocean divided us! I tasted the hellish torments of Tantalus. I cursed fate, heaven, everything; I prayed; I sank into bottomless depths of despair and rose to dizzy pinnacles of hope, when a footstep sounded on the landing and a thousand wild possibilities, vague possibilities of rescue, poured into my mind.

The visitor hesitated, apparently outside my door; and a change, as sudden as lightning out of a cloud, transformed my errant fancies. A gruesome conviction seized me, as irrational as the hope which it displayed, that this was one of the Hashishin—an apish yellow dwarf, a strangler, the awful Hassan himself!

The footsteps receded down the stairs. And my thoughts reverted into the old channels of dull despair.

I weighed the chances of Bristol’s seeking me there; and, eager as I was to give them substance, found them but airy—ultimately was forced to admit them to be nil.

So I lay, whilst only a few hundred yards from me a singular scene was being enacted. Bristol, a prisoner as helpless as myself, watched the concluding business of the day being conducted in the bank beneath him; he watched the lift descend to the strongroom—the spying apparatus being slightly adjusted in some way; he saw the clerks hastening to finish their work in the outer office, and as he watched, absorbed by the novelty of the situation, he almost forgot the pain and discomfort which he suffered...

“This little peep-show of ours has been real useful,” Dexter confided out of the darkness. “I got an impression of the key of the strongroom door a week ago, and Carneta got one of the keys of the safe only this morning, when she lodged her box of jewellery with the bank! I was at work on that key when you interrupted me, and as by means of this useful apparatus I have learnt the combination, you ought to see some fun in the next few hours!”

Bristol repressed a groan, for the prospect of remaining in that position was thus brought keenly home to him.

The bank staff left the premises one by one until only a solitary clerk worked on at a back desk. His task completed, he, too, took his departure and the bank messenger commenced his nightly duty of sweeping up the offices. It was then that excitement like an anaesthetic dulled the detective’s pain—indeed, he forgot his aching body and became merely a watchful intelligence.

So intent had he become upon the picture before him that he had not noticed the fact that he was alone in the office of the Congo Fibre Company. Now he realized it from the absolute silence about him, and from another circumstance.

The spying apparatus had been left focussed, and on to the screen beneath his eyes, bending low behind the desks and creeping, Indian-like, around, toward the head of the stair which communicated with the strongroom and the apartment used by the messenger, came the alert figure of Earl Dexter!

It may be a surprise to some people to learn that at any time in the day the door of a bank, unguarded, should be left open, when only a solitary messenger is within the premises; yet for a few minutes at least each evening this happens at more than one City bank, where one of the duties of the resident messenger is to clean the outer steps. Dexter had taken advantage of the man’s absence below in quest of scrubbing material to enter the bank through the open door.

Watching, breathless, and utterly forgetful of his own position, Bristol saw the messenger, all unconscious of danger, come up the stairs carrying a pail and broom. As his head reached the level of the railings The Stetson Man neatly sand-bagged him, rushed across to the outer door, and closed it!

Given duplicate keys and the private information which Dexter so ingeniously had obtained, there are many London banks vulnerable to similar attack. Certainly, bullion is rarely kept in a branch storeroom, but the detective was well aware that the keys of the case containing the slipper were kept in this particular safe!

He was convinced, and could entertain no shadowy doubt, that at last Dexter had triumphed. He wondered if it had ever hitherto fallen to the lot of a representative of the law thus to be made an accessory to a daring felony!

But human endurance has well-defined limits. The fading light rendered the ingenious picture dim and more dim. The pain occasioned by his position became agonizing, and uttering a stifled groan he ceased to take an interest in the robbery of the London County and Provincial Bank.

Fate is a comedian; and when later I learned how I had lain strapped to my bed, and, so near to me, Bristol had hung helpless as a butchered carcass in the office of the Congo Fibre Company, whilst, in our absence from the stage, the drama of the slipper marched feverish to its final curtain, I accorded Fate her well-earned applause. I laughed; not altogether mirthfully.

CHAPTER XXVII
THE SLIPPER

Someone was breaking in at the door of my chambers!

I aroused myself from a state of coma almost death-like and listened to the blows. The sun was streaming in at my windows.

A splintering crash told of a panel broken. Then a moment later I heard the grating of the lock, and a rush of footsteps along the passage.

“Try the study!” came a voice that sounded like Bristol’s, save that it was strangely weak and shaky.

Almost simultaneously the Inspector himself threw open the bedroom door—and, very pale and haggard-eyed, stood there looking across at me. It was a scene unforgettable.

“Mr. Cavanagh!” he said huskily—“Mr. Cavanagh! Thank God you’re alive! But”—he turned—“this way, Marden!” he cried, “Untie him quickly! I’ve got no strength in my arms!”

Marden, a C.I.D. man, came running, and in a minute, or less, I was sitting up gulping brandy.

“I’ve had the most awful experience of my life,” said Bristol. “You’ve fared badly enough, but I’ve been hanging by my wrists—you know Dexter’s trick!—for close upon sixteen hours! I wasn’t released until Carter, an office boy, came on the scene this morning!”

Very feebly I nodded; I could not talk.

“The strong-room of your bank was rifled under my very eyes last evening!” he continued, with something of his old vigour; “and five minutes after the Antiquarian Museum was opened to the public this morning quite an unusual number of visitors appeared.

“I saw the bank manager the moment he arrived, and learned a piece of news that positively took my breath away! I was at the Museum seven minutes later and got another shock! There in the case was the red slipper!”

“Then,” I whispered—“it hadn’t been stolen?”

“Wrong! It had! This was a duplicate, as Mostyn, the curator, saw at a glance! Some of the early visitors—they were Easterns—had quite surrounded the case. They were watched, of course, but any number of Orientals come to see the thing; and, short of smashing the glass, which would immediately attract attention, the authorities were unprepared, of course, for any attempt. Anyway, they were tricked. Somebody opened the case. The real slipper of the Prophet is gone!”

“They told you at the bank—”

“That you had withdrawn the keys! If Dexter had known that!”

“Hassan of Aleppo took them from me last night! At last the Hashishin have triumphed.”

Bristol sank into the armchair.

“Every port is watched,” he said. “But—”

CHAPTER XXVIII
CARNETA

“I am entirely at your mercy; you can do as you please with me. But before you do anything I should like you to listen to what I have to say.”

Her beautiful face was pale and troubled. Violet eyes looked sadly into mine.

“For nearly an hour I have been waiting for this chance—until I knew you were alone,” she continued. “If you are thinking of giving me up to the police, at least remember that I came here of my own free will. Of course, I know you are quite entitled to take advantage of that; but please let me say what I came to say!”

She pleaded so hard, with that musical voice, with her evident helplessness, most of all with her wonderful eyes, that I quite abandoned any project I might have entertained to secure her arrest. I think she divined this masculine weakness, for she said, with greater confidence—

“Your friend, Professor Deeping, was murdered by the man called Hassan of Aleppo. Are you content to remain idle while his murderer escapes?”

God knows I was not. My idleness in the matter was none of my choosing. Since poor Deeping’s murder I had come to handgrips with the assassins more than once, but Hassan had proved too clever for me, too clever for Scotland Yard. The sacred slipper was once more in the hands of its fanatic guardian.

One man there was who might have helped the search, Earl Dexter. But Earl Dexter was himself wanted by Scotland Yard!

From the time of the bank affair up to the moment when this beautiful visitor had come to my chambers I had thought Dexter, as well as Hassan, to have fled secretly from England. But the moment that I saw Carneta at my door I divined that The Stetson Man must still be in London.

She sat watching me and awaiting my answer.

“I cannot avenge my friend unless I can find his murderer.”

Eagerly she bent forward.

“But if I can find him?”

That made me think, and I hesitated before speaking again.

“Say what you came to say,” I replied slowly. “You must know that I distrust you. Indeed, my plain duty is to detain you. But I will listen to anything you may care to tell me, particularly if it enables me to trap Hassan of Aleppo.”

“Very well,” she said, and rested her elbows upon the table before her. “I have come to you in desperation. I can help you to find the man who murdered Professor Deeping, but in return I want you to help me!”

I watched her closely. She was very plainly, almost poorly, dressed. Her face was pale and there were dark marks around her eyes. This but served to render their strange beauty more startling; yet I could see that my visitor was in real trouble. The situation was an odd one.

“You are possibly about to ask me,” I suggested, “to assist Earl Dexter to escape the police?”

She shook her head. Her voice trembled as she replied—

“That would not have induced me to run the risk of coming here. I came because I wanted to find a man who was brave enough to help me. We have no friends in London, and so it became a question of terms. I can repay you by helping you to trace Hassan.”

“What is it, then, that Dexter asks me to do?”

“He asks nothing. I, Carneta, am asking!”

“Then you are not come from him?”

At my question, all her self-possession left her. She abruptly dropped her face into her hands and was shaken with sobs! It was more than I could bear, unmoved. I forgot the shady past, forgot that she was the associate of a daring felon, and could only realize that she was a weeping woman, who had appealed to my pity and who asked my aid.

I stood up and stared out of the window, for I experienced a not unnatural embarrassment. Without looking at her I said—

“Don’t be afraid to tell me your troubles. I don’t say I should go out of my way to be kind to Mr. Dexter, but I have no wish whatever to be instrumental in”—I hesitated—“in making you responsible for his misdeeds. If you can tell me where to find Hassan of Aleppo, I won’t even ask you where Dexter is—”

“God help me! I don’t know where he is!”

There was real, poignant anguish in her cry. I turned and confronted her. Her lashes were all wet with tears.

“What! has he disappeared?”

She nodded, fought with her emotion a moment, and went on unsteadily,

“I want you to help me to find him for in finding him we shall find Hassan!”

“How so?”

Her gaze avoided me now.

“Mr. Cavanagh, he has staked everything upon securing the slipper—and the Hashishin were too clever for him. His hand—those Eastern fiends cut off his hand! But he would not give in. He made another bid—and lost again. It left him almost penniless.”

She spoke of Earl Dexter’s felonious plans as another woman might have spoken of her husband’s unwise investments! It was fantastic hearing that confession of The Stetson Man’s beautiful partner, and I counted the interview one of the strangest I had ever known.

A sudden idea came to me. “When did Dexter first conceive the plan to steal the slipper?” I asked.

“In Egypt!” answered Carneta. “Yes! You may as well know! He is thoroughly familiar with the East, and he learned of the robbery of Professor Deeping almost as soon as it became known to Hassan. I know what you are going to ask—”

“Ahmad Ahmadeen!”

“Yes! He travelled home as Ahmadeen—the only time he ever used a disguise. Oh! the thing is accursed!” she cried. “I begged him, implored him, to abandon his attempts upon it. Day and night we were watched by those ghastly yellow men! But it was all in vain. He knew, had known for a long time, where Hassan of Aleppo was in hiding!”

And I reflected that the best men at New Scotland Yard had failed to pick up the slightest clue!

“The Hashishin, of whom that dreadful man is leader, are rich, or have supporters who are rich. The plan was to make them pay for the slipper.”

“My God! it was playing with fire!”

She sat silent awhile. Emotion threatened to get the upper hand. Then—

“Two days ago,” she almost whispered, “he set out—to ... get the slipper!”

“To steal it?”

“To steal it!”

“From Hassan of Aleppo?”

I could scarcely believe that any man, single-handed, could have had the hardihood to attempt such a thing.

“From Hassan, yes!”

I faced her, amazed, incredulous.

“Dexter had suffered mutilation, he knew that the Hashishin sought his life for his previous attempts upon the relic of the Prophet, and yet he dared to venture again into the very lions’ den?”

“He did, Mr. Cavanagh, two days ago. And—”

“Yes?” I urged, as gently as I could, for she was shaking pitifully.

“He never came back!”

The words were spoken almost in a whisper. She clenched her hands and leapt from the chair, fighting down her grief and with such a stark horror in her beautiful eyes that from my very soul I longed to be able to help her.

“Mr. Cavanagh” (she had courage, this bewildering accomplice of a cracksman), “I know the house he went to! I cannot hope to make you understand what I have suffered since then. A thousand times I have been on the point of going to the police, confessing all I knew, and leading them to that house! O God! if only he is alive, this shall be his last crooked deal—and mine! I dared not go to the police, for his sake! I waited, and watched, and hoped, through two such nights and days ... then I ventured. I should have gone mad if I had not come here. I knew you had good cause to hate, to detest me, but I remembered that you had a great grievance against Hassan. Not as great, O heaven! not as great as mine, but yet a great one. I remembered, too, that you were the kind of man—a woman can come to...”

She sank back into the chair, and with her fingers twining and untwining, sat looking dully before her.

“In brief,” I said, “what do you propose?”

“I propose that we endeavour to obtain admittance to the house of Hassan of Aleppo—secretly, of course, and all I ask of you in return for revealing the secret of its situation is—”

“That I let Dexter go free?”

Almost inaudibly she whispered: “If he lives!”

Surely no stranger proposition ever had been submitted to a law-abiding citizen. I was asked to connive in the escape of a notorious criminal, and at one and the same time to embark upon an expedition patently burglarious! As though this were not enough, I was invited to beard Hassan of Aleppo, the most dreadful being I had ever encountered East or West, in his mysterious stronghold!

I wondered what my friend, Inspector Bristol, would have thought of the project; I wondered if I should ever live to see Hassan meet his just deserts as a result of this enterprise, which I was forced to admit a foolhardy one. But a man who has selected the career of a war correspondent from amongst those which Fleet Street offers, is the victim of a certain craving for fresh experiences; I suppose, has in his character something of an adventurous turn.

For a while I stood staring from the window, then faced about and looked into the violet eyes of my visitor.

“I agree, Carneta!” I said.

CHAPTER XXIX
WE MEET MR. ISAACS

Quitting the wayside station, and walking down a short lane, we came out upon Watling Street, white and dusty beneath the afternoon sun. We were less than an hour’s train journey from London but found ourselves amid the Kentish hop gardens, amid a rural peace unbroken. My companion carried a camera case slung across her shoulder, but its contents were less innocent than one might have supposed. In fact, it contained a neat set of those instruments of the burglar’s art with whose use she appeared to be quite familiar.

“There is an inn,” she said, “about a mile ahead, where we can obtain some vital information. He last wrote to me from there.”

Side by side we tramped along the dusty road. We both were silent, occupied with our own thoughts. Respecting the nature of my companion’s I could entertain little doubt, and my own turned upon the foolhardy nature of the undertaking upon which I was embarked. No other word passed between us then, until upon rounding a bend and passing a cluster of picturesque cottages, the yard of the Vinepole came into view.

“Do they know you by sight here?” I asked abruptly.

“No, of course not; we never made strategic mistakes of that kind. If we have tea here, no doubt we can learn all we require.”

I entered the little parlour of the inn, and suggested that tea should be served in the pretty garden which opened out of it upon the right.

The host, who himself laid the table, viewed the camera case critically.

“We get a lot of photographers down here,” he remarked tentatively.

“No doubt,” said my companion. “There is some very pretty scenery in the neighbourhood.”

The landlord rested his hands upon the table.

“There was a gentleman here on Wednesday last,” he said; “an old gentleman who had met with an accident, and was staying somewhere hereabouts for his health. But he’d got his camera with him, and it was wonderful the way he could use it, considering he hadn’t got the use of his right hand.”

“He must have been a very keen photographer,” I said, glancing at the girl beside me.

“He took three or four pictures of the Vinepole,” replied the landlord (which I doubted, since probably his camera was a dummy); “and he wanted to know if there were any other old houses in the neighbourhood. I told him he ought to take Cadham Hall, and he said he had heard that the Gate House, which is about a mile from here, was one of the oldest buildings about.”

A girl appeared with a tea tray, and for a moment I almost feared that the landlord was about to retire; but he lingered, whilst the girl distributed the things about the table, and Carneta asked casually, “Would there be time for me to photograph the Gate House before dark?”

“There might be time,” was the reply, “but that’s not the difficulty. Mr. Isaacs is the difficulty.”

“Who is Mr. Isaacs?” I asked.

“He’s the Jewish gentleman who bought the Gate House recently. Lots of money he’s got and a big motor car. He’s up and down to London almost every day in the week, but he won’t let anybody take photographs of the house. I know several who’ve asked.”

“But I thought,” said Carneta, innocently, “you said the old gentleman who was here on Wednesday went to take some?”

“He went, yes, miss; but I don’t know if he succeeded.”

Carneta poured out some tea.

“Now that you speak of it,” she said, “I too have heard that the Gate House is very picturesque. What objection can Mr. Isaacs have to photographers?”

“Well, you see, miss, to get a picture of the house, you have to pass right through the grounds.”

“I should walk right up to the house and ask permission. Is Mr. Isaacs at home, I wonder?”

“I couldn’t say. He hasn’t passed this way to-day.”

“We might meet him on the way,” said I. “What is he like?”

“A Jewish gentleman sir, very dark, with a white beard. Wears gold glasses. Keeps himself very much to himself. I don’t know anything about his household; none of them ever come here.”

Carneta inquired the direction of Cadham Hall and of the Gate House, and the landlord left us to ourselves. My companion exhibited signs of growing agitation, and it seemed to me that she had much ado to restrain herself from setting out without a moment’s delay for the Gate House, which, I readily perceived, was the place to which our strange venture was leading us.

I found something very stimulating in the reflection that, rash though the expedition might be, and, viewed from whatever standpoint, undeniably perilous, it promised to bring me to that secret stronghold of deviltry where the sinister Hassan of Aleppo so successfully had concealed himself.

The work of the modern journalist had many points of contact with that of the detective; and since the murder of Professor Deeping I had succumbed to the man-hunting fever more than once. I knew that Scotland Yard had failed to locate the hiding-place of the remarkable and evil man who, like an efreet of Oriental lore, obeyed the talisman of the stolen slipper, striking down whomsoever laid hand upon its sacredness. It was a novel sensation to know that, aided by this beautiful accomplice of a rogue, I had succeeded where the experts had failed!

Misgivings I had and shall not deny. If our scheme succeeded it would mean that Deeping’s murderer should be brought to justice. If it failed-well, frankly, upon that possibility I did not dare to reflect!

It must be needless for me to say that we two strangely met allies were ill at ease, sometimes to the point of embarrassment. We proceeded on our way in almost unbroken silence, and, save for a couple of farm hands, without meeting any wayfarer, up to the time that we reached the brow of the hill and had our first sight of the Gate House lying in a little valley beneath. It was a small Tudor mansion, very compact in plan and its roof glowed redly in the rays of the now setting sun.

From the directions given by the host of the Vinepole it was impossible to mistake the way or to mistake the house. Amid well-wooded grounds it stood, a place quite isolated, but so typically English that, as I stood looking down upon it, I found myself unable to believe that any other than a substantial country gentleman could be its proprietor.

I glanced at Carneta. Her violet eyes were burning feverishly, but her lips twitched in a bravely pitiful way.

Clearly now my adventure lay before me; that red-roofed homestead seemed to have rendered it all substantial which hitherto had been shadowy; and I stood there studying the Gate House gravely, for it might yet swallow me up, as apparently it had swallowed Earl Dexter.

There, amid that peaceful Kentish landscape, fantasy danced and horrors unknown lurked in waiting...

The eminence upon which we were commanded an extensive prospect, and eastward showed a tower and flagstaff which marked the site of Cadham Hall. There were homeward-bound labourers to be seen in the lanes now, and where like a white ribbon the Watling Street lay across the verdant carpet moved an insect shape, speedily.

It was a car, and I watched it with vague interest. At a point where a dense coppice spread down to the roadway and a lane crossed west to east, the car became invisible. Then I saw it again, nearer to us and nearer to the Gate House. Finally it disappeared among the trees.

I turned to Carneta. She, too, had been watching. Now her gaze met mine.

“Mr. Isaacs!” she said; and her voice was less musical than usual. “His chauffeur, who learned his business in Cairo, is probably the only one of his servants who remains in England.”

“What!” I began—and said no more.

Where the road upon which we stood wound down into the valley and lost itself amid the trees surrounding the Gate House, the car suddenly appeared again, and began to mount the slope toward us!

“Heavens!” whispered Carneta. “He may have seen us—with glasses! Quick! Let us walk back until the hill-top conceals us; then we must hide somewhere!”

I shared her excitement. Without a moment’s hesitation we both turned and retraced our steps. Twenty paces brought us to a spot where a stack of mangel wurzels stood at the roadside.

“This will do!” I said.

We ran around into the field, and crouched where we could peer out on the road without ourselves being seen. Nor had we taken up this position a moment too soon.

Topping the slope came a light-weight electric, driven by a man who, in his spruce uniform, might have passed at a glance for a very dusky European. The car had a limousine back, and as the chauffeur slowed down, out from the open windows right and left peered the solitary occupant.

He had the cast of countenance which is associated with the best type of Jew, with clear-cut aquiline features wholly destitute of grossness. His white beard was patriarchal and he wore gold-rimmed pince-nez and a glossy silk hat. Such figures may often be met with in the great money-markets of the world, and Mr. Isaacs would have passed for a successful financier in even more discerning communities than that of Cadham.

But I scarcely breathed until the car was past; and, beside me, my companion, crouching to the ground, was trembling wildly. Fifty yards toward the village Mr. Isaacs evidently directed the man to return.

The car was put about, and flashed past us at high speed down into the valley. When the sound of the humming motor had died to something no louder than the buzz of a sleepy wasp, I held out my hand to Carneta and she rose, pale, but with blazing eyes, and picked up her camera case.

“If he had detected us, everything would have been lost!” she whispered.

“Not everything!” I replied grimly—and showed her the revolver which I had held in my hand whilst those eagle eyes had been seeking us. “If he had made a sign to show that he had seen us, in fact, if he had once offered a safe mark by leaning from the car, I should have shot him dead without hesitation!”

“We must not show ourselves again, but wait for dusk. He must have seen us, then, on the hilltop, but I hope without recognizing us. He has the sight and instincts of a vulture!”

I nodded, slipping the revolver into my pocket, but I wondered if I should not have been better advised to have risked a shot at the moment that I had recognized “Mr. Isaacs” for Hassan of Aleppo.

CHAPTER XXX
AT THE GATE HOUSE

From sunset to dusk I lurked about the neighbourhood of the Gate House with my beautiful accomplice—watching and waiting: a man bound upon stranger business, I dare swear, than any other in the county of Kent that night.

Our endeavour now was to avoid observation by any one, and in this, I think, we succeeded. At the same time, Carneta, upon whose experience I relied implicitly, regarded it as most important that we should observe (from a safe distance) any one who entered or quitted the gates.

But none entered, and none came out. When, finally, we made along the narrow footpath skirting the west of the grounds, the night was silent—most strangely still.

The trees met overhead, but no rustle disturbed their leaves and of animal life no indication showed itself. There was no moon.

A full appreciation of my mad folly came to me, and with it a sense of heavy depression. This stillness that ruled all about the house which sheltered the awful Sheikh of the Assassins was ominous, I thought. In short, my nerves were playing me tricks.

“We have little to fear,” said my companion, speaking in a hushed and quivering voice. “The whole of the party left England some days ago.”

“Are you sure?”

“Certain! We learned that before Earl made his attempt. Hassan remains, for some reason; Hassan and one other—the one who drives the car.”

“But the slipper?”

“If Hassan remains, so does the slipper!” From the knapsack, which, as you will have divined, did not contain a camera, she took out an electric pocket lamp, and directed its beam upon the hedge above us.

“There is a gap somewhere here!” she said. “See if you can find it. I dare not show the light too long.”

Darkness followed. I clambered up the bank and sought for the opening of which Carneta had spoken.

“The light here a moment,” I whispered. “I think I have it!”

Out shone the white beam, and momentarily fell upon a black hole in the thickset hedge. The light disappeared, and as I extended my hand to Carneta she grasped it and climbed up beside me.

“Put on your rubber shoes,” she directed. “Leave the others here.”

There in the darkness I did as she directed, for I was provided with a pair of tennis shoes. Carneta already was suitably shod.

“I will go first,” I said. “What is the ground like beyond?”

“Just unkempt bushes and weeds.”

Upon hands and knees I crawled through, saw dimly that there was a short descent, corresponding with the ascent from the lane, and turned, whispering to my fellow conspirator to follow.

The grounds proved even more extensive than I had anticipated. We pressed on, dodging low-sweeping branches and keeping our arms up to guard our faces from outshoots of thorn bushes. Our progress necessarily was slow, but even so quite a long time seemed to have elapsed ere we came in sight of the house.

This was my first expedition of the kind; and now that my goal was actually in sight I became conscious of a sort of exultation hard to describe. My companion, on the contrary, seemed to have become icily cool. When next she spoke, her voice had a businesslike ring, which revealed the fact that she was no amateur at this class of work.

“Wait here,” she directed. “I am going to pass all around the house, and I will rejoin you.”

I could see her but dimly, and she moved off as silent as an Indian deer-stalker, leaving me alone there crouching at the extreme edge of the thicket. I looked out over a small wilderness of unkempt flower-beds; so much it was just possible to perceive. The plants in many instances had spread on to the pathways and contested survival with the flourishing weeds. All was wild—deserted—eerie.

A sense of dampness assailed me, and I raised my eyes to the low-lying building wherein no light showed, no sign of life was evident. The nearer wing presented a verandah apparently overgrown by some climbing plant, the nature of which it was impossible to determine in the darkness.

The zest for the nocturnal operation which temporarily had thrilled me succumbed now to loneliness. With keen anxiety I awaited the return of my more experienced accomplice. The situation was grotesque, utterly bizarre; but even my sense of humour could not save me from the growing dread which this seemingly deserted place poured into my heart.

When upon the right I heard a faint rustling I started, and grasped the revolver in my pocket.

“Not a sound!” came in Carneta’s voice. “Keep just inside the bushes and come this way. There is something I want to show you.”

The various profuse growths rendered concealment simple enough—if indeed any other concealment were necessary than that which the strangely black night afforded. Just within the evil-smelling thicket we made a half circuit of the building, and stopped.

“Look!” whispered Carneta.

The word was unnecessary, for I was staring fixedly in the direction of that which evidently had occasioned her uneasiness.

It was a small square window, so low-set that I assumed it to be that of a cellar, and heavily cross-barred.

From it, out upon a tangled patch of vegetation, shone a dull red light!

“There’s no other light in the place,” my companion whispered. “For God’s sake, what can it be?”

My mind supplied no explanation. The idea that it might be a dark room no doubt was suggested by the assumed role of Carneta; but I knew that idea to be absurd. The red light meant something else.

Evidently the commencing of operations before all lights were out was irregular, for Carneta said slowly—

“We must wait and watch the light. There was formerly a moat around the Gate House; that must be the window of a dungeon.”

I little relished the prospect of waiting in that swamp-like spot, but since no alternative presented itself I accepted the inevitable. For close upon an hour we stood watching the red window. No sound of bird, beast, or man disturbed our vigil; in fact, it would appear that the very insects shunned the neighbourhood of Hassan of Aleppo. But the red light still shone out.

“We must risk it!” said Carneta steadily. “There are French windows opening on to that verandah. Ten yards farther around the bushes come right up to the wall of the house. We’ll go that way and around by the other wing on to the verandah.”

Any action was preferable to this nerve-sapping delay, and with a determination to shoot, and shoot to kill, any one who opposed our entrance, I passed through the bushes and, with Carneta, rounded the southern border of that silent house and slipped quietly on to the verandah.

Kneeling, Carneta opened the knapsack. My eyes were growing accustomed to the darkness, and I was just able to see her deft hands at work upon the fastenings. She made no noise, and I watched her with an ever-growing wonder. A female burglar is a personage difficult to imagine. Certainly, no one ever could have suspected this girl with the violet eyes of being an expert crackswoman; but of her efficiency there could be no question. I think I had never witnessed a more amazing spectacle than that of this cultured girl manipulating the tools of the house breaker with her slim white fingers.

Suddenly she turned and clutched my arm.

“The windows are not fastened!” she whispered.

A strange courage came to me—perhaps that of desperation. For, ignoring the ominous circumstance, I pushed open the nearest window and stepped into the room beyond! A hissing breath from Carneta acknowledged my performance, and she entered close behind me, silent in her rubber-soled shoes.

For one thrilling moment we stood listening. Then came the white beam from the electric lamp to cut through the surrounding blackness.

The room was totally unfurnished!

CHAPTER XXXI
THE POOL OF DEATH

Not a sound broke the stillness of the Gate House. It was the most eerily silent place in which I had ever found myself. Out into the corridor we went, noiselessly. It was stripped, uncarpeted.

Three doors we passed, two upon the left and one upon the right. We tried them all. All were unfastened, and the rooms into which they opened bare and deserted. Then we came upon a short, descending stair, at its foot a massive oaken door.

Carneta glided down, noiseless as a ghost, and to one of the blackened panels applied an ingenious little instrument which she carried in her knapsack. It was not unlike a stethoscope; and as I watched her listening, by means of this arrangement, for any sound beyond the oaken door, I reflected how almost every advance made by science places a new tool in the hand of the criminal.

No word had been spoken since we had discovered this door; none had been necessary. For we both knew that the place beyond was that from which proceeded the mysterious red light.

I directed the ray of the electric torch upon Carneta, as she stood there listening, and against that sombre oaken background her face and profile stood out with startling beauty. She seemed half perplexed and half fearful. Then she abruptly removed the apparatus, and, stooping to the knapsack, replaced it and took out a bunch of wire keys, signing to me to hand her the lamp.

As I crept down the steps I saw her pause, glancing back over her shoulder toward the door. The expression upon her face induced me to direct the light in the same direction.

Why neither of us had observed the fact before I cannot conjecture; but a key was in the lock!

Perhaps the traffic of the night afforded no more dramatic moment than this. The house which we were come prepared burglariously to enter was thrown open, it would seem, to us, inviting our inspection!

Looking back upon that moment, it seems almost incredible that the sight of a key in a lock should have so thrilled me. But at the time I perceived something sinister in this failure of the Lord of the Hashishin to close his doors to intruders. That Carneta shared my doubts and fears was to be read in her face; but her training had been peculiar, I learned, and such as establishes a surprising resoluteness of character.

Quite noiselessly she turned the key, and holding a dainty pocket revolver in her hand, pushed the door open slowly!

An odour, sickly sweet and vaguely familiar, was borne to my nostrils. Carneta became outlined in dim, reddish light. Bending forward slightly, she entered the room, and I, with muscles tensed nervously, advanced and stood beside her.

I perceived that this was a cellar; indeed, I doubt not that in some past age it had served as a dungeon. From the stone roof hung the first evidence of Eastern occupation which the Gate House had yielded; in the form of an Oriental lantern, or fanoos, of rose-coloured waxed paper upon a copper frame. Its vague light revealed the interior of the hideous place upon whose threshold we stood.

Straight before us, deep set in the stone wall, was the tiny square window, iron-barred without, and glazed with red glass, the light from which had so deeply mystified us. Within a niche in the wall, a little to the left of the window, rested an object which, at that moment, claimed our undivided attention the sight of which so wrought upon us that temporarily all else was forgotten.

It was the red slipper of the Prophet!

“My God!” whispered Carneta—“my God!”—and clutched at me, swaying dizzily.

A few inches from our feet the floor became depressed, how deeply I could not determine, for it was filled with water, water filthy and slimy! The strange, nauseating odour had grown all but unsupportable; it seemingly proceeded from this fetid pool which, occupying the floor of the dungeon, offered a barrier, since its depth was unknown, of fully twelve feet between ourselves and the farther wall.

There was a faint, dripping sound: a whispering, echoing drip-drip of falling water. I could not tell from whence it proceeded.

Almost supporting my companion, whose courage seemed suddenly to have failed her, I stared fascinatedly at that blood-stained relic. Something then induced me to look behind; I suppose a warning instinct of that sort which is unexplainable. I only know that upholding Carneta with my left arm, and nervously grasping my revolver in my right, I turned and glanced over my shoulder.

Very slowly, but with a constant, regular motion, the massive door was closing!

I snatched away my arm; in my left hand I held the electric torch, and springing sharply about I directed the searching ray into the black gap of the stairway. A yellow face, a malignant Oriental face, came suddenly, fully, into view! Instantly I recognized it for that of the man who had driven Hassan’s car!

Acting upon the determination with which I had entered the Gate House, I raised my revolver and fired straight between the evil eyes! To the fact that I dropped my left hand in the act of pulling the trigger with my right, and thus lost my mark, the servant of Hassan of Aleppo owed his escape. I missed him. He uttered a shrill cry of fear and went racing up the wooden stair. I followed him with the light and fired twice at the retreating figure. I heard him stumble and a second time cry out. But, though I doubt not he was hit, he recovered himself, for I heard his tread in the corridor above.

Propping wide the door with my foot, I turned to Carneta. Her face was drawn and haggard; but her mouth set in a sort of grim determination.

“Earl is dead!” she said, in a queer, toneless voice. “He died trying to get—that thing! I will get it, and destroy it!”

Before I could detain her, even had I sought to do so, she stepped into the filthy water, struggled to recover her foothold, and sank above her waist into its sliminess. Without hesitation she began to advance toward the niche which contained the slipper. In the middle of the pool she stopped.

What memory it was which supplied the clue to the identity of that nauseating smell, heaven alone knows; but as the girl stopped and drew herself up rigidly—then turned and leapt wildly back toward the door—I knew what occasioned that sickly odour!

She screamed once, dreadfully—shrilly—a scream of agonizing fear that I can never forget. Then, roughly I grasped her, for the need was urgent—and dragged her out on to the floor beside me. With her wet garments clinging to her limbs, she fell prostrate on the stones.

A yard from the brink the slimy water parted, and the yellow snout of a huge crocodile was raised above the surface! The saurian eyes, hungrily malevolent, rose next to view!

The extremity of our danger found me suddenly cool. As the thing drew its slimy body up out of the pool I waited. The jaws were extended toward the prostrate body, were but inches removed from it, dripped their saliva upon the soddened skirt—when I bent forward, and at a range of some ten inches emptied the remaining three loaded chambers of my revolver into the creature’s left eye!

Upchurned in bloody foam became the water of that dreadful place.... As one recalls the incidents of a fevered dream, I recall dragging Carneta away from the contorted body of the death-stricken reptile. A nightmare chaos of horrid, revolting sights and sounds forms my only recollection of quitting the dungeon of the slipper.

I succeeded in carrying her up the stairs and out through the empty rooms on to the verandah; but there, from sheer exhaustion, I laid her down. I had no means of reviving her and I lacked the strength to carry her farther. Having recharged my revolver, I stood watching her where she lay, wanly beautiful in the dim light.

There was no doubt in my mind respecting the fate of Earl Dexter, nor could I doubt that the slipper in the dungeon below was a duplicate of the real one. It was a death-trap into which he had lured Dexter and which he had left baited for whomsoever might trace the cracksman to the Gate House. Why Hassan should have remained behind, unless from fanatic lust of killing, I could not imagine.

When at last the fresher night air had its effect, and Carneta opened her eyes, I led her to the gates, nor did she offer the slightest resistance, but looked dully before her, muttering over and over again, “Earl, Earl!”

The gates were open; we passed out on to the open road. No man pursued us, and the night was gravely still.

CHAPTER XXXII
SIX GRAY PATCHES

When the invitation came from my old friend Hilton to spend a week “roughing it” with him in Warwickshire I accepted with alacrity. If ever a man needed a holiday I was that man. Nervous breakdown threatened me at any moment; the ghastly experience at the Gate House together with Carneta’s grief-stricken face when I had parted from her were obsessing memories which I sought in vain to shake off.

A brief wire had contained the welcome invitation, and up to the time when I had received it I had been unaware that Hilton was back in England. Moreover, beyond the fact that his house, “Uplands,” was near H—, for which I was instructed to change at New Street Station, Birmingham, I had little idea of its location. But he added “Wire train and will meet at H—”; so that I had no uneasiness on that score.

I had contemplated catching the 2:45 from Euston, but by the time I had got my work into something like order, I decided that the 6:55 would be more suitable and decided to dine on the train.

Altogether, there was something of a rush and hustle attendant upon getting away, and when at last I found myself in the cab, bound for Euston, I sat back with a long-drawn sigh. The quest of the Prophet’s slipper was ended; in all probability that blood-stained relic was already Eastward bound. Hassan of Aleppo, its awful guardian, had triumphed and had escaped retribution. Earl Dexter was dead. I could not doubt that; for the memory of his beautiful accomplice, Carneta, as I last had seen her, broken-hearted, with her great violet eyes dulled in tearless agony—have I not said that it lived with me?

Even as the picture of her lovely, pale face presented itself to my mind, the cab was held up by a temporary block in the traffic—and my imagination played me a strange trick.

Another taxi ran close alongside, almost at the moment that the press of vehicles moved on again. Certainly, I had no more than a passing glimpse of the occupants; but I could have sworn that violet eyes looked suddenly into mine, and with equal conviction I could have sworn to the gaunt face of the man who sat beside the violet-eyed girl for that of Earl Dexter!

The travellers, however, were immediately lost to sight in the rear, and I was left to conjecture whether this had been a not uncommon form of optical delusion or whether I had seen a ghost.

At any rate, as I passed in between the big pillars, “The gateway of the North,” I scrutinized, and closely, the numerous hurrying figures about me. None of them, by any stretch of the imagination, could have been set down for that of Dexter, The Stetson Man. No doubt, I concluded, I had been tricked by a chance resemblance.

Having dispatched my telegram, I boarded the 6:55. I thought I should have the compartment to myself, and so deep in reverie was I that the train was actually clear of the platforms ere I learned that I had a companion. He must have joined me at the moment that the train started. Certainly, I had not seen him enter. But, suddenly looking up, I met the eyes of this man who occupied the corner seat facing me.

This person was olive-skinned, clean-shaven, fine featured, and perfectly groomed. His age might have been anything from twenty-five to forty-five, but his hair and brows were jet black. His eyes, too, were nearer to real black than any human eyes I had ever seen before—excepting the awful eyes of Hassan of Aleppo. Hassan of Aleppo! It was, to that hour, a mystery how his group of trained assassins—the Hashishin—had quitted England. Since none of them were known to the police, it was no insoluble mystery, I admit; but nevertheless it was singular that the careful watching of the ports had yielded no result. Could it be that some of them had not yet left the country? Could it be—

I looked intently into the black eyes. They were caressing, smiling eyes, and looked boldly into mine. I picked up a magazine, pretending to read. But I supported it with my left hand; my right was in my coat pocket—and it rested upon my Smith and Wesson!

So much had the slipper of Mohammed done for me: I went in hourly dread of murderous attack!

My travelling companion watched me; of that I was certain. I could feel his gaze. But he made no move and no word passed between us. This was the situation when the train slowed into Northampton. At Northampton, to my indescribable relief (frankly, I was as nervous in those days as a woman), the Oriental traveller stepped out on to the platform.

Having reclosed the door, he turned and leaned in through the open window.

“Evidently you are not concerned, Mr. Cavanagh,” he said. “Be warned. Do not interfere with those that are!”

The night swallowed him up.

My fears had been justified; the man was one of the Hashishin—a spy of Hassan of Aleppo! What did it mean?

I craned from the window, searching the platform right and left. But there was no sign of him.

When the train left Northampton I found myself alone, and I should only weary you were I to attempt to recount the troubled conjectures that bore me company to Birmingham.

The train reached New Street at nine, with the result that having gulped a badly needed brandy and soda in the buffet, I grabbed my bag, raced across—and just missed the connection! More than an hour later I found myself standing at ten minutes to eleven upon the H— platform, watching the red taillight of the “local” disappear into the night. Then I realized to the full that with four miles of lonely England before me there hung above my head a mysterious threat—a vague menace. The solitary official, who but waited my departure to lock up the station, was the last representative of civilization I could hope to encounter until the gates of “Uplands” should be opened to me!

What was the matter with which I was warned not to interfere? Might I not, by my mere presence in that place, unwittingly be interfering now?

With the station-master’s directions humming like a refrain in my ears, I passed through the sleeping village and out on to the road. The moon was exceptionally bright and unobscured, although a dense bank of cloud crept slowly from the west, and before me the path stretched as an unbroken thread of silvery white twining a sinuous way up the bracken-covered slope, to where, sharply defined against the moonlight sky, a coppice in grotesque silhouette marked the summit.

The month had been dry and tropically hot, and my footsteps rang crisply upon the hard ground. There is nothing more deceptive than a straight road up a hill; and half an hour’s steady tramping but saw me approaching the trees.

I had so far resolutely endeavoured to keep my mind away from the idea of surveillance. Now, as I paused to light my pipe—a never-failing friend in loneliness—I perceived something move in the shadows of a neighbouring bush.

This object was not unlike a bladder, and the very incongruity of its appearance served to revive all my apprehensions. Taking up my grip, as though I had noticed nothing of an alarming nature, I pursued my way up the slope, leaving a trail of tobacco smoke in my wake; and having my revolver secreted up my right coat-sleeve.

Successfully resisting a temptation to glance behind, I entered the cover of the coppice, and, now invisible to any one who might be dogging me, stood and looked back upon the moon-bright road.

There was no living thing in sight, the road was empty as far as the eye could see. The coppice now remained to be negotiated, and then, if the station-master’s directions were not at fault, “Uplands” should be visible beyond. Taking, therefore, what I had designed to be a final glance back down the hillside, I was preparing to resume my way when I saw something—something that arrested me.

It was a long way behind—so far that, had the moon been less bright, I could never have discerned it. What it was I could not even conjecture; but it had the appearance of a vague gray patch, moving—not along the road, but through the undergrowth—in my direction.

For a second my eye rested upon it. Then I saw a second patch—a third—a fourth!

Six!

There were six gray patches creeping up the slope toward me!

The sight was unnerving. What were these things that approached, silently, stealthily—like snakes in the grass?

A fear, unlike anything I had known before the quest of the Prophet’s slipper had brought fantastic horror into my life, came upon me. Revolver in hand I ran—ran for my life toward the gap in the trees that marked the coppice end. And as I went something hummed through the darkness beside my head, some projectile, some venomous thing that missed its mark by a bare inch!

Painfully conversant with the uncanny weapons employed by the Hashishin, I knew now, beyond any possibility of doubt, that death was behind me.

A pattering like naked feet sounded on the road, and, without pausing in my headlong career, I sent a random shot into the blackness.

The crack of the Smith and Wesson reassured me. I pulled up short, turned, and looked back toward the trees.

Nothing—no one!

Breathing heavily, I crammed my extinguished briar into my pocket—re-charged the empty chamber of the revolver—and started to run again toward a light that showed over the treetops to my left.

That, if the man’s directions were right, was “Uplands”—if his directions were wrong—then...

A shrill whistle—minor, eerie, in rising cadence—sounded on the dead silence with piercing clearness! Six whistles—seemingly from all around me—replied!

Some object came humming through the air, and I ducked wildly.

On and on I ran—flying from an unknown, but, as a warning instinct told me, deadly peril—ran as a man runs pursued by devils.

The road bent sharply to the left then forked. Overhanging trees concealed the house, and the light, though high up under the eaves, was no longer visible. Trusting to Providence to guide me, I plunged down the lane that turned to the left, and, almost exhausted, saw the gates before me—saw the sweep of the drive, and the moonlight, gleaming on the windows!

None of the windows were illuminated.

Straight up to the iron gates I raced.

They were locked!

Without a moment’s hesitation I hurled my grip over the top and clambered up the bars! As I got astride, from the blackness of the lane came the ominous hum, and my hat went spinning away across the lawn!—the black cloud veiled the moon and complete darkness fell.

Then I dropped and ran for the house—shouting, though all but winded—“Hilton! Hilton! Open the door!”

Sinking exhausted on the steps, I looked toward the gates—but they showed only dimly in the dense shadows of the trees.

Bzzz! Buzz!

I dropped flat in the portico as something struck the metal knob of the door and rebounded over me. A shower of gravel told of another misdirected projectile.

Crack! Crack! Crack! The revolver spoke its short reply into the mysterious darkness; but the night gave up no sound to tell of a shot gone home.

“Hilton! Hilton!” I cried, banging on the panels with the butt of the weapon. “Open the door! Open the door!”

And now I heard the coming footsteps along the hall within; heavy bolts were withdrawn—the door swung open—and Hilton, pale-faced, appeared. His hand shot out, grabbed my coat collar; and weak, exhausted, I found myself snatched into safety, and the door rebolted.

“Thank God!” I whispered. “Thank God! Hilton, look to all your bolts and fastenings. Hell is outside!”

CHAPTER XXXIII
HOW WE WERE REINFORCED

Hilton, I learned, was living the simple life at “Uplands.” The place was not yet decorated and was only partly furnished. But with his man, Soar, he had been in solitary occupation for a week.

“Feel better now?” he asked anxiously.

I reached for my tumbler and blew a cloud of smoke into the air. I could hear Soar’s footsteps as he made the round of bolts and bars, testing each anxiously.

“Thanks, Hilton,” I said. “I’m quite all right. You are naturally wondering what the devil it all means? Well, then, I wired you from Euston that I was coming by the 6:55.”

“H— Post Office shuts at 7. I shall get your wire in the morning!”

“That explains your failing to meet me. Now for my explanation!”

“Surrounding this house at the present moment,” I continued, “are members of an Eastern organization—the Hashishin, founded in Khorassan in the eleventh century and flourishing to-day!”

“Do you mean it, Cavanagh?”

“I do! One Hassan of Aleppo is the present Sheikh of the order, and he has come to England, bringing a fiendish company in his train, in pursuit of the sacred slipper of Mohammed, which was stolen by the late Professor Deeping—-”

“Surely I have read something about this?”

“Probably. Deeping was murdered by Hassan! The slipper was placed in the Antiquarian Museum—”

“From which it was stolen again!”

“Correct—by Earl Dexter, America’s foremost crook! But the real facts have never got into print. I am the only pressman who knows them, and I have good reason for keeping my knowledge to myself! Dexter is dead (I believe I saw his ghost to-day). But although, to the best of my knowledge, the accursed slipper is in the hands of Hassan and Company, I have been watched since I left Euston, and on my way to ‘Uplands’ my life was attempted!”

“For God’s sake, why?”

“I cannot surmise, Hilton. Deeping, for certain reasons that are irrelevant at the moment, left the keys of the case at the Museum in my perpetual keeping—but the case was rifled a second time—”

“I read of it!”

“And the keys were stolen from me. I am utterly at a loss to understand why the Hashishin—for it is members of that awful organization who, without a doubt, surround this house at the present moment—should seek my life. Hilton, I have brought trouble with me!”

“It’s almost incredible!” said Hilton, staring at me. “Why do these people pursue you?”

Ere I had time to reply Soar entered, arrayed, as was Hilton, in his night attire. Soar was an ex-dragoon and a model man.

“Everything fast, sir,” he reported; “but from the window of the bedroom over here—the room I got ready for Mr. Cavanagh—I thought I saw someone in the orchard.”

“Eh?” jerked Hilton—“in the orchard? Come on up, Cavanagh!”

We all ran upstairs. The moonlight was streaming into the room.

“Keep back!” I warned.

Well within the shadow, I crept up to the window and looked out. The night was hot and still. No breeze stirred the leaves, but the edge of the frowning thunder cloud which I had noted before spread a heavy carpet of ebony black upon the ground. Beyond, I could dimly discern the hills. The others stood behind me, constrained by the fear of this mysterious danger which I had brought to “Uplands.”

There was someone moving among the trees!

Closer came the figure, and closer, until suddenly a shaft of moonlight found passage and spilled a momentary pool of light amid the shadows, I could see the watcher very clearly. A moment he stood there, motionless, and looking up at the window; then as he glided again into the shade of the trees the darkness became complete. But I watched, crouching there nervously, for long after he was gone.

“For God’s sake, who is it?” whispered Hilton, with a sort of awe in his voice.

“It’s Hassan of Aleppo!” I replied.

Virtually, the house, with the capital of the Midlands so near upon the one hand, the feverish activity of the Black Country reddening the night upon the other, was invested by fanatic Easterns!

We descended again to the extemporized study. Soar entered with us and Hilton invited him to sit down.

“We must stick together to-night!” he said. “Now, Cavanagh, let us see if we can find any explanation of this amazing business. I can understand that at one period of the slipper’s history you were an object of interest to those who sought to recover it; but if, as you say, the Hashishin have the slipper now, what do they want with you? If you have never touched it, they cannot be prompted by desire for vengeance.”

“I have never touched it,” I replied grimly; “nor even any receptacle containing it.”

As I ceased speaking came a distant muffled rumbling.

“That’s the thunder,” said Hilton. “There’s a tremendous storm brewing.”

He poured out three glasses of whisky, and was about to speak when Soar held up a warning finger.

“Listen!” he said.

At his words, with tropical suddenness down came the rain.

Hilton, his pipe in his hand, stood listening intently.

“What?” he asked.

“I don’t know, sir; the sound of the rain has drowned it.”

Indeed, the rain was descending in a perfect deluge, its continuous roar drowning all other sounds; but as we three listened tensely we detected a noise which hitherto had seemed like the overflowing of some spout.

But louder and clearer it grew, until at last I knew it for what it was.

“It’s a motor-car!” I cried.

“And coming here!” added Soar. “Listen! it’s in the lane!”

“It certainly isn’t a taxicab,” declared Hilton. “None of the men will come beyond the village.”

“That’s the gate!” said Soar, in an awed voice, and stood up, looking at Hilton.

“Come on,” said the latter abruptly, making for the door.

“Be careful, Hilton!” I cried; “it may be a trick!”

Soar unbolted the front door, threw it open, and looked out. In the darkness of the storm it was almost impossible to see anything in the lane outside. But at that moment a great sheet of lightning split the gloom, and we saw a taxicab standing close up to the gateway!

“Help! Open the gate!” came a high-pitched voice; “open the gate!”

Out into the rain we ran and down the gravel path. Soar had the gate open in a twinkling, and a woman carrying a brown leather grip, but who was so closely veiled that I had no glimpse of her features, leapt through on to the drive.

“Lend a hand, two of you!” cried a vaguely familiar voice—“this way!”

Hilton and Soar stepped out into the road. The driver of the cab was lying forward across the wheel, apparently insensible, but as Hilton seized his arm he moved and spoke feebly.

“For God’s sake be quick, sir!” he said. “They’re after us! They’re on the other side of the lane, there!”

With that he dropped limply into Hilton’s arms!

He was dragged in on to the drive—and something whizzed over our heads and went sputtering into the gravel away up toward the house. The last to enter was the man who had come in the cab. As he barred the gate behind him he suddenly reached out through the bars and I saw a pistol in his hand.

Once—twice—thrice—he fired into the blackness of the lane.

“Take that, you swine!” he shouted. “Take that!”

As quickly as we could, bearing the insensible man, we hurried back to the door. On the step the woman was waiting for us, with her veil raised. A blinding flash of lightning came as we mounted the step—and I looked into the violet eyes of Carneta! I turned and stared at the man behind me.

It was Earl Dexter.

Three of the mysterious missiles fell amongst us, but miraculously no one was struck. Amid the mighty booming of the thunder we reentered the houses and got the door barred. In the hall we laid down the unconscious man and stood, a strangely met company, peering at one another in the dim lamplight.

“We’ve got to bury the hatchet, Mr. Cavanagh!” said Dexter. “It’s a case of the common enemy. I’ve brought you your bag!” and he pointed to the brown grip upon the floor.

“My bag!” I cried. “My bag is upstairs in my room.”

“Wrong, sir!” snapped The Stetson Man. “They are like as two peas in a pod, I’ll grant you, but the bag you snatched off the platform at New Street was mine! That’s what I’m after; I ought to be on the way to Liverpool. That’s what Hassan’s after!”

“The bag!”

“You don’t need to ask what’s in the bag?” suggested Dexter.

“What is in the bag?” ask Hilton hoarsely.

“The slipper of the Prophet, sir!” was the reply.

CHAPTER XXXIV
MY LAST MEETING WITH HASSAN OF ALEPPO

I felt dazed, as a man must feel who has just heard the death sentence pronounced upon him. Hilton seemed to have become incapable of speech or action; and in silence we stood watching Carneta tending the unconscious man. She forced brandy from a flask between his teeth, kneeling there beside him with her face very pale and dark rings around her eyes. Presently she looked up.

“Will you please get me a bowl of water and a sponge?” she said quietly.

Soar departed without a word, and no one spoke until he returned, bringing the sponge and the water, when the girl set to work in a businesslike way to cleanse a wound which showed upon the man’s head.

“She’s a good nurse is Carneta,” said Dexter coolly. “She was the only doctor I had through this”—indicating his maimed wrist. “If you will fetch my bag down, there’s some lint in it.”

I hesitated.

“You needn’t worry,” said Dexter; “as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb. You’ve handled the bag, and I’m not asking you to do any more.”

I went up to my room and lifted the grip from the chair upon which I had put it. Even now I found it difficult to perceive any difference between this and mine. Both were of identical appearance and both new. In fact, I had bought mine only that morning, my old one being past use, and being in a hurry, I had not left it to be initialled.

As I picked up the bag the lightning flashed again, and from the window I could see the orchard as clearly as by sunlight. At the farther end near the wall someone was standing watching the house.

I went downstairs carrying the fatal bag, and rejoined the group in the hall.

“He will have to be got to bed,” said Carneta, referring to the wounded man; “he will probably remain unconscious for a long time.”

Accordingly, we took the patient into one of the few furnished bedrooms, and having put him to bed left him in care of the beautiful nurse. When we four men met again downstairs, amazement had rendered the whole scene unreal to me. Soar stood just within the open door, not knowing whether to go or to remain; but Hilton motioned to him to stay. Earl Dexter bit off the end of a cigar and stood with his left elbow resting on the mantelpiece.

His gaunt face looked gaunter than ever, but the daredevil gray eyes still nursed that humorous light in their depths.

“Mr. Cavanagh,” he said, “we’re brothers! And if you’ll consider a minute, you’ll see that I’m not lying when I say I’m on the straight, now and for always!”

I made no reply: I could think of none.

“I’m a crook,” he resumed, “or I was up to a while ago. There’s a warrant out for me—the first that ever bore my name. I’ve sailed near the wind often enough, but it was desperation that got me into hot water about that!”

He jerked his cigar in the direction of his grip, which lay now on the rug at his feet.

“I lost a useful right hand,” he went on—“and I lost every cent I had. It was a dead rotten speculation—for I lost my good name! I mean it! Believe me, I’ve handled some shady propositions in the past, but I did it right in the sunlight! Up to the time I went out for that damned slipper I could have had lunch with any detective from Broadway to the Strand! I didn’t need any false whiskers and the Ritz was good enough for The Stetson Man. What now? I’m ‘wanted!’ Enough said.”

He tossed the cigar—he had smoked scarce an inch of it—into the empty grate.

“I’m an Aunt Sally for any man to shy at,” he resumed bitterly. “My place henceforth is in the dark. Right! I’ve finished; the book’s closed. From the time I quit England—if I can quit—I’m on the straight! I’ve promised Carneta, and I mean to keep my word. See here—”

Dexter turned to me.

“You’ll want to know how I escaped from the cursed death-trap at Hassan’s house in Kent? I’ll tell you. I was never in it! I was hiding and waiting my chance. You know what was left to guard the slipper while the Sheikh—rot him—was away looking after arrangements for getting his mob out of the country?”

I nodded.

“You fell into the trap—you and Carneta. By God! I didn’t know till it was all over! But two minutes later I was inside that place—and three minutes later I was away with the slipper! Oh, it wasn’t a duplicate; it was the goods! What then? Carneta had had a sickening of the business and she just invited me to say Yes or No. I said Yes; and I’m a straight man onward.”

“Then what were you doing on the train with the slipper?” asked Hilton sharply.

“I was going to Liverpool, sir!” snapped The Stetson Man, turning on him. “I was going to try to get aboard the Mauretania and then make terms for my life! What happened? I slipped out at Birmingham for a drink—grip in hand! I put it down beside me, and Mr. Cavanagh here, all in a hustle, must have rushed in behind me, snatched a whisky and snatched my grip and started for H—!”

A vivid flash of lightning flickered about the room. Then came the deafening boom of the thunder, right over the house it seemed.

“I knew from the weight of the grip it wasn’t mine,” said Dexter, “and I was the most surprised guy in Great Britain and Ireland when I found whose it was! I opened it, of course! And right on top was a waistcoat and right in the first pocket was a telegram. Here it is!”

He passed it to me. It was that which I had received from Hilton. I had packed the suit which I had been wearing that morning and must previously have thrust the telegram into the waistcoat pocket.

“Providence!” Dexter assured me. “Because I got on the station in time to see Hassan of Aleppo join the train for H—! I was too late, though. But I chartered a taxi out on Corporation Street and invited the man to race the local! He couldn’t do it, but we got here in time for the fireworks! Mr. Cavanagh, there are anything from six to ten Hashishin watching this house!”

“I know it!”

“They’re bareheaded; and in the dark their shaven skulls look like nothing human. They’re armed with those damned tubes, too. I’d give a thousand dollars—if I had it!—to know their mechanism. Well, gentlemen, deeds speak. What am I here for, when I might be on the way to Liverpool, and safety?”

“You’re here to try to make up for the past a bit!” said a soft, musical voice. “Mr. Cavanagh’s life is in danger.”

Carneta entered the room.

The light played in that wonderful hair of hers; and pale though she was, I thought I had never seen a more beautiful woman.

“Tell them,” she said quietly, “what must be done.”

Soar glanced at me out of the corner of his eyes and shifted uneasily. Hilton stared as if fascinated.

“Now,” rapped Dexter, in his strident voice, “putting aside all questions of justice and right (we’re not policemen), what do we want—you and I, Mr. Cavanagh?”

“I can’t think clearly about anything,” I said dully. “Explain yourself.”

“Very well. Inspector Bristol, C.I.D., would want me and Hassan arrested. I don’t want that! What I want is peace; I want to be able to sleep in comfort; I want to know I’m not likely to be murdered on the next corner! Same with you?”

“Yes—yes.”

“How can we manage it? One way would be to kill Hassan of Aleppo; but he wants a lot of killing—I’ve tried! Moreover, directly we’d done it, another Sheikh-al-jebal would be nominated and he’d carry on the bloody work. We’d be worse off than ever. Right! we’ve got to connive at letting the blood-stained fanatic escape, and we’ve got to give up the slipper!”

“I’ll do that with all my heart!”

“Sure! But you and I have both got little scores up against Hassan, which it’s not in human nature to forget. But I’ve got it worked out that there’s only one way. It may nearly choke us to have to do it, I’ll allow. I’m working on the Moslem character. Mr. Hilton, make up a fire in the grate here!”

Hilton stared, not comprehending.

“Do as he asks,” I said. “Personally, I am resigned to mutilation, since I have touched the bag containing the slipper, but if Dexter has a plan—”

“Excuse me, sir,” Soar interrupted. “I believe there’s some coal in the coal-box, but I shall have to break up a packing-case for firewood—or go out into the yard!”

“Let it be the packing-case,” replied Hilton hastily.

Accordingly a fire was kindled, whilst we all stood about the room in a sort of fearful uncertainty; and before long a big blaze was roaring up the chimney. Dexter turned to me.

“Mr. Cavanagh,” said he, “I want you to go right upstairs, open a first-floor window—I would suggest that of your bedroom—and invite Hassan of Aleppo to come and discuss terms!”

Silence followed his words; we were all amazed. Then—

“Why do you ask me to do this?” I inquired.

“Because,” replied Dexter, “I happen to know that Hassan has some queer kind of respect for you—I don’t know why.”

“Which is probably the reason why he tried to kill me to-night!”

“That’s beside the question, Mr. Cavanagh. He will believe you—which is the important point.”

“Very well. I have no idea what you have in mind but I am prepared to adopt any plan since I have none of my own. What shall I say?”

“Say that we are prepared to return the slipper—on conditions.”

“He will probably try to shoot me as I stand at the window.”

Dexter shrugged his shoulders.

“Got to risk it,” he drawled.

“And what are the conditions?”

“He must come right in here and discuss them! Guarantee him safe conduct and I don’t think he’ll hesitate. Anyway, if he does, just tell him that the slipper will be destroyed immediately!”

Without a word I turned on my heel and ascended the stairs.

I entered my room, crossed to the window, and threw it widely open. Hovering over the distant hills I could see the ominous thunder cloud, but the storm seemed to have passed from “Uplands,” and only a distant muttering with the faint dripping of water from the pipes broke the silence of the night. A great darkness reigned, however, and I was entirely unable to see if any one was in the orchard.

Like some mueddin of fantastic fable I stood there.

“Hassan!” I cried—“Hassan of Aleppo!”

The name rang out strangely upon the stillness—the name which for me had a dreadful significance; but the whole episode seemed unreal, the voice that had cried unlike my voice.

Instantly as any magician summoning an efreet I was answered.

Out from the trees strode a tall figure, a figure I could not mistake. It was that of Hassan of Aleppo!

“I hear, effendim, and obey,” he said. “I am ready. Open the door!”

“We are prepared to discuss terms. You may come and go safely”—still my voice sounded unfamiliar in my ears.

“I know, effendim; it is so written. Open the door.”

I closed the window and mechanically descended the stairs.

“Mind it isn’t a trap!” cried Hilton, who, with the others, had overheard every word of this strange interview. “They may try to rush the door directly we open it.”

“I’ll stand the chest behind it,” said Soar; “between the door and the wall, so that only one can enter at a time.”

This was done, and the door opened.

Alone, majestic, entered Hassan of Aleppo.

He was dressed in European clothes but wore the green turban of a Sherif. With his snowy beard and coal-black eyes he seemed like a vision of the Prophet, of the Prophet in whose name he had committed such ghastly atrocities.

Deigning no glance to Soar nor to Hilton, he paced into the room, passing me and ignoring Carneta, where Earl Dexter awaited him. I shall never forget the scene as Hassan entered, to stand looking with blazing eyes at The Stetson Man, who sat beside the fire with the slipper of Mohammed in his hand!

“Hassan,” said Dexter quietly, “Mr. Cavanagh has had to promise you safe conduct, or as sure as God made me, I’d put a bullet in you!”

The Sheikh of the Hashishin glared fixedly at him.

“Companion of the evil one,” he said, “it is not written that I shall die by your hand—or by the hand of any here. But it has been revealed to me that to-night the gates of Paradise may be closed in my face.”

“I shouldn’t be at all surprised,” drawled Dexter. “But it’s up to you. You’ve got to swear by Mohammed—”

“Salla-’llahu ’aleyhi wasellem!”

“That you won’t lay a hand upon any living soul, or allow any of your followers to do so, who has touched the slipper or had anything to do with it, but that you will go in peace.”

“You are doomed to die!”

“You don’t agree, then?”

“Those who have offended must suffer the penalty!”

“Right!” said Dexter—and prepared to toss the slipper into the heart of the fire!

“Stop! Infidel! Stop!”

There was real agony in Hassan’s voice. To my inexpressible surprise he dropped upon his knee, extending his lean brown hands toward the slipper.

Dexter hesitated. “You agree, then?”

Hassan raised his eyes to the ceiling.

“I agree,” he said. “Dark are the ways. It is the will of God...”

Dimly the booming of the thunder came echoing back to us from the hills. Above its roll sounded a barbaric chanting to which the drums of angry heaven formed a fitting accompaniment.

I heard Soar shooting the bolts again upon the going of our strange visitor.

Faint and more faint grew the chanting, until it merged into the remote muttering of the storm—and was lost. The quest of the sacred slipper was ended.