|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 40
"It is a bit like an Indian conjuring trick," I said, looking up to
the sky above us; "who fired the shot?"
"So far," replied Bristol, "I have failed to find out; but there's
a bullet in the thing's head. He was dead before he reached the
pavement."
"Did no one see the flash of the pistol?"
"No one that I have got hold of yet. Of course this kind of
evidence is very unreliable; these people regularly go out of their
way to mislead the police."
"You think the body may have been carried here from somewhere else?"
"Oh, no; this is where it fell, right enough. You can see where
his head struck the stones."
"He has not been moved at all?"
"No; I shall not move him until I've worked out where in heaven's
name he can have fallen from! You and I have seen some mysterious
things happen, Mr. Cavanagh, since the slipper of the Prophet came
to England and brought these people"--he nodded toward the thing
at our feet--"in its train; but this is the most inexplicable
incident to date. I don't know what to make of it at all. Quite
apart from the question of where the dwarf fell from, who shot at
him and why?"
"Have you no theory?" I asked. "The incident to my mind points
directly to one thing. We know that this uncanny creature belonged
to the organization of Hassan of Aleppo. We know that Hassan
implacably pursues one object--the slipper. In pursuit of the
slipper, then, the dwarf came here. Bristol!"--I laid my hand upon
his arm, glancing about me with a very real apprehension--"the
slipper must be somewhere near!"
Bristol turned to the constable standing hard by.
"Remain here," he ordered. Then to me: "I should like you to come
up on to the roof. From there we can survey the ground and perhaps
arrive at some explanation of how the dwarf came to fall upon that
spot."
Passing the constable on duty at one of the doorways and making our
way through the group of loiterers there, we ascended amid
conflicting odours to the topmost floor. A ladder was fixed against
the wall communicating with a trap in the ceiling. Several
individuals in their shirt sleeves and all smoking clay pipes had
followed us up. Bristol turned upon them.
"Get downstairs," he said--"all the lot of you, and stop there!"
With muttered imprecations our audience dispersed, slowly returning
by the way they had come. Bristol mounted the ladder and opened the
trap. Through the square opening showed a velvet patch spangled
with starry points. As he passed up on to the roof and I followed
him, the comparative cleanness of the air was most refreshing after
the varied fumes of the staircase.
Side by side we leaned upon the parapet looking down into the dirty
courtyard which was the theatre of this weird mystery; looking down
upon the stage, sordidly Western, where a mystic Eastern tragedy
had been enacted.
I could see the constable standing beside the crushed thing upon
the stones.
"Now," said Bristol, with a sort of awe in his voice, "where did he
fall from?"
And at his words, looking down at the spot where the dwarf lay, and
noting that he could not possibly have fallen there from any of the
buildings surrounding the courtyard, an eerie sensation crept over
me; for I was convinced that the happening was susceptible of no
natural explanation.
I had heard--who has not heard?--of the Indian rope trick, where
a fakir throws a rope into the air which remains magically suspended
whilst a boy climbs upward and upward until he disappears into space.
I had never credited accounts of the performance; but now I began
seriously to wonder if the arts of Hassan of Aleppo were not as
great or greater than the arts of fakir. But the crowning mystery
to my mind was that of the Hashishin's death. It would seem that
as he had hung suspended in space he had been shot!
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|