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Page 29
"If a duplicate key to the safe--" another voice struck in; I knew
it afterward for that of Professor Rhys-Jenkyns.
"Impossible to procure one, Professor," cried Mostyn, his eyes
sparkling with an almost boyish interest. "Mr. Cavanagh here holds
the keys of the case, under the will of the late Professor Deeping.
They are of foreign workmanship and more than a little complicated."
The eyes of the savants were turned now in my direction.
"I suppose you have them in a place of safety?" said Dr. Nicholson.
"They are at my bankers," I replied.
"Then I venture to predict," said the celebrated Orientalist, "that
the slipper of the Prophet will rest here undisturbed."
He linked his arm into that of a brother scholar and the little
group straggled away, Mostyn accompanying them to the main entrance.
But I saw Inspector Bristol scratching his chin; he looked very much
as if he doubted the accuracy of the doctor's prediction. He had
already had some experience of the implacable devotion of the Moslem
group to this treasure of the Faithful.
"The real danger begins," I suggested to him "when the general public
is admitted--after to-day, is it not?"
"Yes. All to-day's people are specially invited, or are using
special invitation cards," he replied. "The people who received
them often give their tickets away to those who will be likely
really to appreciate the opportunity."
I looked around for the tall Oriental. He seemed to have vanished,
and for some reason I hesitated to speak of him to Bristol; for my
gaze fell upon an excessively thin, keen-faced man whose curiously
wide-open eyes met mine smilingly, whose gray suit spoke Stein-Bloch,
whose felt was a Boss raw-edge unmistakably of a kind that only
Philadelphia can produce. At the height of the season such visitors
are not rare, but this one had an odd personality, and moreover his
keen gaze was raking the place from ceiling to floor.
Where had I met him before? To the best of my recollection I had
never set eyes upon the man prior to that moment; and since he was
so palpably an American I had no reason for assuming him to be
associated with the Hashishin. But I remembered--indeed, I could
never forget--how, in the recent past, I had met with an apparent
associate of the Moslems as evidently European as this curiously
alert visitor was American. Moreover . . . there was something
tauntingly familiar, yet elusive, about that gaunt face.
Was it not upon the eve of the death of Professor Deeping that the
girl with the violet eyes had first intruded her fascinating
personality into my tangled affairs? Patently, she had then been
seeking the holy slipper, and by craft had endeavoured to bend me
to her will. Then had I not encountered her again, meeting the
glance of her unforgettable violet eyes outside a Strand hotel?
The encounter had presaged a further attempt upon the slipper!
Certainly she acted on behalf of someone interested in it; and since
neither Bristol nor I could conceive of any one seeking to possess
the bloodstained thing except the mysterious leader of the
Hashishin--Hassan of Aleppo--as a creature of that awful fanatic
being I had written her down.
Why, then, if the mysterious Eastern employed a European girl,
should he not also employ an American man? It might well be that
the relic, in entering the doors of the impregnable Antiquarian
Museum, had passed where the diabolical arts of the Hashishin had
no power to reach it--where the beauty of Western women and the
craft of Eastern man were equally useless weapons. Perhaps Hassan's
campaign was entering upon a new phase.
Was it a shirking of plain duty on my part that wish--that
ever-present hope--that the murderous company of fanatics who had
pursued the stolen slipper from its ancient resting-place to London,
should succeed in recovering it? I leave you to judge.
The crescent of Islam fades to-day and grows pale, but there are yet
fierce Believers, alust for the blood of the infidel. In such as
these a faith dies the death of an adder, and is more venomous in
its death-throes than in the full pulse of life. The ghastly
indiscretion of Professor Deeping, in rifling a Moslem Sacristy, had
led to the mutilation of many who, unwittingly, had touched the
looted relic, had brought about his own end, had established a league
of fantastic assassins in the heart of the metropolis.
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