"Just tie his handkerchief around his mouth," directed Dexter: "that will keep him quiet long enough for our purpose. I hope you will be released soon, Mr. Cavanagh," he added. "Greatly regret the necessity."
Carneta bound the handkerchief over my mouth.
Dexter extinguished the gas.
"Mr. Cavanagh," he said, "I've gone through hell and I've lost the most useful four fingers and a thumb in the United States to get hold of the Prophet's slipper. Any one can have it that's open to pay for it — but I've got to retire on the deal, so I'll drive a hard bargain! Good-night!"
There was a sound of retreating footsteps, and I heard the entrance door close quietly.
Chapter 18
WHAT CAME THROUGH THE WINDOW
I had not been in my unnatural position for many minutes before I began to suffer agonies, agonies not only physical but mental; for standing there like some prisoner of the Inquisition, it came to me how this dismantled apartment must be the focus of the dreadful forces of Hassan of Aleppo!
That Earl Dexter had the slipper of the Prophet I no longer doubted, and that he had sustained, in this dwelling beneath the roof, an uncanny siege during the days which had passed since the theft from the Antiquarian Museum, was equally certain. Helpless, gagged, I pictured those hideous creatures, evil products of the secret East, who might, nay, who must surround that place! I thought of the horrible little yellow man who lay dead in Wyatt's Buildings; and it became evident to me that the house in which I was now imprisoned must overlook the back of those unsavoury tenements. The windows, sack-covered now, no doubt commanded a view of the roofs of the buildings. One of the mysteries that had puzzled us was solved. It was Earl Dexter who had shot the yellow dwarf as he was bound for this very room! But how humanly the Hashishin had proposed to gain his goal, how he had travelled through empty space — for from empty space the shot had brought him down — I could not imagine.
I knew something of the almost supernatural attributes of these people. From Professor Deeping's book I knew of the incredible feats which they could perform when under the influence of the drug hashish. From personal experience also I knew that they had powers wholly abnormal.
The pain in my arms and back momentarily increased. An awesome silence ruled. I tortured myself with pictures of murderous yellow men possessed of the power claimed by the Mahatmas, of levitation. Mentally I could see a distorted half-animal creature carrying a great gleaming knife and floating supernaturally toward me through the night!
A soft pattering sound became perceptible on the sloping roof above!
I think I have never known such intense and numbing fear as that which now descended upon me. Perhaps I may be forgiven it. A more dreadful situation it would be hard to devise. Knowing that I was on the fifth story of a house, bound, helpless, I knew, too, that a second mystic guardian of the slipper was come to accomplish the task in which the first had failed!
I began to pray fervently.
Neither of the windows were closed; and now through the intense darkness I heard one of them being raised up — up — up…
The sacking was pulled aside inch by inch.
Silhouetted against the faintly luminous background I saw a hunched, unnatural figure. The real was more dreadful even than the imaginary — for some stray beam of light touched into cold radiance a huge curved knife which the visitant held between his teeth!
My fear became a madness, and I twisted my body violently in a wild endeavour to free myself. A dreadful pain shot through my left shoulder, and the whole nightmare scene — the thing with the knife at the window — the low-ceiled room-began to fade away from me. I seemed to be falling into deep water.
A splintering crash and the sound of shouting formed my last recollections ere unconsciousness came.
I found myself lying in an armchair with Bristol forcing brandy between my lips. My left arm hung limply at my side and the pain in my dislocated shoulder was excruciating.
"Thank God you are all right, Mr. Cavanagh!" said the inspector. "I got the surprise of my life when we smashed the door in and found you tied up here!"
"You came none too soon," I said feebly. "God knows how Providence directed you here."
"Providence it was," replied Bristol. "From the roof of Wyatt's Buildings — you know the spot? — I saw the second yellow devil coming. By God! They meant to have it to-night! They don't value their lives a brass farthing against that damned slipper!"
"But how—"
"Along the telegraph-wires, Mr. Cavanagh! They cross Wyatt's Buildings and cross this house. It was a moonless night or we should have seen it at once! I watched him, saw him drop to this roof — and brought the men around to the front."
"Did he, that awful thing, escape?"
"He dropped full forty feet into a tree — from the tree to the ground, and went off like a cat!"
"Earl Dexter has escaped us," I said, "and he has the slipper!"
"God help him!" replied Bristol. "For by now he has that hell-pack at his heels! What a case! Heavens above, it will drive me mad!"
Chapter 19
A RAPPING AT MIDNIGHT
Inspector Bristol finished his whisky at a gulp and stood up, a tall, massive figure, stretching himself and yawning.
"The detective of fiction would be hard at work on this case, now," he said, smiling, "but I don't even pretend to be. I am at a standstill and I don't care who knows it."
"You have absolutely no clue to the whereabouts of Earl Dexter?"
"Not the slightest, Mr. Cavanagh. You hear a lot about the machinery of the law, but as a matter of fact, looking for a clever man hidden in London is a good deal like looking for a needle in a haystack. Then, he may have been bluffing when he told you he had the Prophet's slipper. He's already had his hand cut off through interfering with the beastly thing, and I really can't believe he would take further chances by keeping it in his possession. Nevertheless, I should like to find him."
He leaned back against the mantelpiece, scratching his head perplexedly. In this perplexity he had my sympathy. No such pursuit, I venture to say, had ever before been required of Scotland Yard as this of the slipper of the Prophet. An organization founded in 1090, which has made a science of assassination, which through the centuries has perfected the malign arts, which, lingering on in a dark spot in Syria, has suddenly migrated and established itself in London, is a proposition almost unthinkable.
It was hard to believe that even the daring American cracksman should have ventured to touch that blood-stained relic of the Prophet, that he should have snatched it away from beneath the very eyes of the fanatics who fiercely guarded it. What he hoped to gain by his possession of the slipper was not evident, but the fact remained that if he could be believed, he had it, and provided Scotland Yard's information was accurate, he still lurked in hiding somewhere in London.
Meanwhile, no clue offered to his hiding-place, and despite the ceaseless vigilance of the men acting under Bristol's orders, no trace could be found of Hassan of Aleppo nor of his fiendish associates.
"My theory is," said Bristol, lighting a cigarette, "that even Dexter's cleverness has failed to save him. He's probably a dead man by now, which accounts for our failing to find him; and Hassan of Aleppo has recovered the slipper and returned to the East, taking his gruesome company with him — God knows how! But that accounts for our failing to find him."