by Sax Rohmer
CHAPTER XIV
A SCREAM IN THE NIGHT
The day that followed was one of the hottest which we experiencedduring the heat wave. It was a day crowded with happenings. TheBurton Room was closed to the public, whilst a glazier worked uponthe broken east window and a new blind was fitted to the west.Behind the workmen, guarded by a watchful commissionaire, yawnedthe shattered case containing the slipper.
I wondered if the visitors to the other rooms of the Museum realized,as I realized, that despite the blazing sunlight of tropicalLondon, the shadow of Hassan of Aleppo lay starkly on that hauntedbuilding?
At about eleven o'clock, as I hurried along the Strand, I almostcollided with the girl of the violet eyes! She turned and ran likethe wind down Arundel Street, whilst I stood at the corner staringafter her in blank amazement, as did other passers-by; for a mancannot with dignity race headlong after a pretty woman down apublic thoroughfare!
My mystification grew hourly deeper; and Bristol wallowed inperplexities.
"It's the most horrible and confusing case," he said to me whenI joined him at the Museum, "that the Yard has ever had to handle.It bristles with outrages and murders. God knows where it willall end. I've had London scoured for a clue to the whereaboutsof Hassan and Company and drawn absolutely blank! Then there'sEarl Dexter. Where does he come in? For once in a way he'sliving in hiding. I can't find his headquarters. I've beenthinking--"
He drew me aside into the small gallery which runs parallel withthe Assyrian Room.
"Dexter has booked two passages in the Oceanic. Who is hiscompanion?"
I wondered, I had wondered more than once, if his companion weremy beautiful violet-eyed acquaintance. A scruple--perhaps anabsurd scruple--hitherto had kept me silent respecting her, butnow I determined to take Bristol fully into my confidence. Aconviction was growing upon me that she and Earl Dexter togetherrepresented that third party whose existence we had long suspected.Whether they operated separately or on behalf of the Moslems (ofwhich arrangement I could not conceive) remained to be seen. Iwas about to voice my doubts and suspicions when Bristol went onhurriedly--
"I have thoroughly examined the Burton Room, and considering thatthe windows are thirty feet from the ground, that there is no signof a ladder having stood upon the lawn, and that the iron bars arequite intact, it doesn't look humanly possible for any one to havebeen in the room last night prior to Mostyn's arrival!"
"One of the dwarfs--"
"Not even one of the dwarfs," said Bristol, "could have passedbetween those iron bars!"
"But there was blood on the window!"
"I know there was, and human blood. It's been examined!"
He stared at me fixedly. The thing was unspeakably uncanny.
"To-night," he went on, "I am remaining in here"--nodding towardthe Assyrian Room--"and I have so arranged it that no mortal beingcan possibly know I am here. Mostyn is staying, and you can stay,too, if you care to. Owing to Professor Deeping's will you arebadly involved in the beastly business, and I have no doubt you arekeen to see it through."
"I am," I admitted, "and the end I look for and hope for is therecovery of the slipper by its murderous owners!"
"I am with you," said Bristol. "It's just a point of honour; butI should be glad to make them a present of it. We're ostentatiouslyplacing a constable on duty in the hallway to-night--largely as ablind. It will appear that we're taking no other additionalprecautions."
He hurried off to make arrangements for my joining him in his watch,and thus again I lost my opportunity of confiding in him regardingthe mysterious girl.
I half anticipated, though I cannot imagine why, that Earl Dexterwould put in an appearance, during the day. He did not do so,however, for Bristol had put a constable on the door who was wellacquainted with the appearance of The Stetson Man. The inspector,in the course of his investigations, had come upon what might havebeen a clue, but what was at best a confusing one. Close by thewall of the curator's house and lying on the gravel path he hadfound a part of a gold cuff link. It was of American manufacture.
Upon such slender evidence we could not justly assume that itpointed to the presence of Dexter on the night of the attemptedrobbery, but it served to complicate a matter already sufficientlyinvolved.
In pursuance of Bristol's plan, I concealed myself that eveningjust before the closing of the Museum doors, in a recess behind aheavy piece of Babylonian sculpture. Bristol was similarlyconcealed in another part of the room, and Mostyn joined us later.
The Museum was closed; and so far as evidence went the authoritieshad relied again upon the bolts and bars hitherto consideredimpregnable, and upon the constable in the hall. The broken windowwas mended, the cut blind replaced, and within, in its shatteredcase, reposed the slipper of the Prophet.
All the blinds being lowered, the Assyrian Room was a place ofgloom, yellowed on the western side by the moonlight through theblind. The door communicating with the Burton Room was closedbut not fastened.
"They operated last night," Bristol whispered to me, "at the exacttime when the moonlight shone through the hole in the westerlyblind on to the case. If they come to-night, and I am quiteexpecting them, they will have to dispense with that assistance;but they know by experience where to reach the case."
"Despite our precautions," I said, "they will almost certainlyknow that a watch is being kept."
"They may or they may not," replied Bristol. "Either way I'mdisposed to think there will be another attempt. Their mysteriousmethod is so rapid that they can afford to take chances."
This was not my first night vigil since I had become in a sense thecustodian of the relic, but it was quite the most dreary. Amid thetomb-like objects about us we seemed two puny mortals toying withstupendous things. We could not smoke and must converse only inwhispers; and so the night wore on until I began to think that ourwatch would be dully uneventful.
"Our big chance," whispered Mostyn, "is in the fact that any daymay change the conditions. They can't afford to wait."
He ceased abruptly, grasping my arm. From somewhere, somewhereoutside the building, we all three had heard a soft whistle. Amoment of tense listening followed.
"If only we could have had the place surrounded," whispered Bristol--"butit was impossible, of course."
A faint grating noise echoed through the lofty Burton Room. Bristolslipped past me in the semi-gloom, and gently opened thecommunicating door a few inches.
A-tiptoe, I joined him, and craning across his shoulder saw a strangeand wonderful thing.
The newly glazed east window again was shattered with a boomingcrash! The yellow blind was thrust aside. A long something reachedout toward the broken case. There was a sort of fumbling sound, andparalyzed with the wonder of it--for the window, remember, wasthirty feet from the ground--I stood frozen to my post.
Not so Bristol. As the weird tentacle (or more exactly it remindedme of a gigantic crab's claw) touched the case, the Inspector leaptforward. A white beam from his electric torch cut through to thebroken cabinet.
The thing was withdrawn ... and with it went the slipper of theProphet.
"Raise the blinds!" cried Bristol. "Mr. Cavanagh! Mr. Mostyn!We must not let them give us the slip!"
I got up the blind of the nearer window as Bristol raised the other.Not a living thing was in sight from either!
Mostyn was beside me, his hand resting on my shoulder. I noted howhe trembled. Bristol turned and looked back at us. The light fromhis pocket torch flashed upon the curator's face; and I have neverseen such an expression of horrified amazement as that which itwore. Faintly, I could hear the constable racing up the steps fromthe hall.
Ideas of the supernatural came to us all, I know; when, with ascuffling sound not unlike that of a rat in a ceiling, something movedabove us!
"Damn my thick head!" roared Bristol, furiously. "He's on the roof!It's flat as a floor and there's enough ivy alongside the water-spouton your house adjoi
ning, Mr. Mostyn, to afford foothold to aninvading army!"
He plunged off toward the open door, and I heard him racing downthe Assyrian Room.
"He had a short rope ladder fixed from the gutter!" he cried backat us. "Graham! Graham!" (the constable on duty in the hall)--"Getthe front door open! Get..." His voice died away as heleapt down the stairs.
From the direction of Orpington Square came a horrid, chokingscream. It rose hideously; it fell, rose again--and died.
The thief escaped. We saw the traces upon the ivy where he hadhastened down. Bristol ascended by the same route, and found wherethe ladder-hooks had twice been attached to the gutterway. ConstableGraham, who was first actually to leave the building, declared thathe heard the whirr of a re-started motor lower down Great OrchardStreet.
Bristol's theory, later to be dreadfully substantiated, was thatthe thief had broken the glass and reached into the case with anarrangement similar to that employed for pruning trees, having aclutch at the end, worked with a cord.
"Hassan has been too clever for us!" said the inspector. "But--whatin God's name did that awful screaming mean?"
I had a theory, but I did not advance it then.
It was not until nearly dawn that my theory, and Bristol's, regardingthe clutch arrangement, both were confirmed. For close under therailings which abut on Orpington Square, in a pool of blood we foundjust such an instrument as Bristol had described.
And still clutching it was a pallid and ghastly shrunken hand thathad been severed from above the wrist!
"Merciful God!" whispered the inspector--"look at the opal ring onthe finger! Look at the bandage where he cut himself on thebroken window-glass that first night, when Mr. Mostyn disturbed him.It wasn't the Hashishin who stole the thing.... It's EarlDexter's hand!"
No one spoke for a moment. Then--
"Which of them has--" began Mostyn huskily.
"The slipper of the Prophet?" interrupted Bristol. "I wonder if weshall ever know?"