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!”