“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“That you had withdrawn the keys!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!”