AT THE BRITISH ANTIQUARIAN MUSEUM
A little group of interested spectators stood at the head of the square
glass case in the centre of the lofty apartment in the British
Antiquarian Museum known as the Burton Room (by reason of the fact that
a fine painting of Sir Richard Burton faces you as you enter). A few
other people looked on curiously from the lower end of the case. It
contained but one exhibit—a dirty and dilapidated markoob—or slipper of
morocco leather that had once been red.
“Our latest acquisition, gentlemen,” said Mr. Mostyn, the curator,
speaking in a low tone to the distinguished Oriental scholars around
him. “It has been left to the Institution by the late Professor
Deeping. He describes it in a document furnished by his solicitor as
one of the slippers worn by the Prophet Mohammed, but gives us no
further particulars. I myself cannot quite place the relic.”
“Nor I,” interrupted one of the group. “It is not mentioned by any of
the Arabian historians to my knowledge—that is, if it comes from Mecca,
as I understand it does.”
“I cannot possibly assert that it comes from Mecca, Dr. Nicholson,”
Mostyn replied. “The Professor may have taken it from
Al-Madinah—perhaps from the mysterious inner passage of the baldaquin
where the treasures of the place lie. But I can assure you that what
little we do know of its history is sufficiently unsavoury.”
I fancied that the curator’s tired cultured voice faltered as he spoke;
and now, without apparent reason, he moved a step to the right and
glanced oddly along the room. I followed the direction of his glance,
and saw a tall man in conventional morning dress, irreproachable in
every detail, whose head was instantly bent upon his catalogue. But
before his eyes fell I knew that their long almond shape, as well as
the peculiar burnt pallor of his countenance, were undoubtedly those of
an Oriental.
“There have been mysterious outrages committed, I believe, upon many of
those who have come in contact with the slipper?” asked one of the
savants.
“Exactly. Professor Deeping was undoubtedly among the victims. His
instructions were explicit that the relic should be brought here by a
Moslem, but for a long time we failed to discover any Moslem who would
undertake the task; and, as you are aware, while the slipper remained
at the Professor’s house attempts were made to steal it.”
He ceased uneasily, and glanced at the tall Eastern figure. It had
edged a little nearer; the head was still bowed and the fine yellow
waxen fingers of the hand from which he had removed his glove fumbled
with the catalogue’s leaves. It may well have been that in those days I
read menace in every eye, yet I felt assured that the yellow visitor
was eavesdropping—was malignantly attentive to the conversation.
The curator spoke lower than ever now; no one beyond the circle could
possibly hear him as he proceeded—
“We discovered an Alexandrian Greek who, for personal reasons, not
unconnected with matrimony, had turned Moslem! He carried the slipper
here, strongly escorted, and placed it where you now see it. No other
hand has touched it.” (The speaker’s voice was raised ever so
slightly.) “You will note that there is a rail around the case, to
prevent visitors from touching even the glass.”
“Ah,” said Dr. Nicholson quizzically, “And has anything untoward
happened to our Graeco-Moslem friend?”
“Perhaps Inspector Bristol can tell,” replied the curator.
The straight, military figure of the well-known Scotland Yard man was
conspicuous among the group of distinguished—and mostly
round-shouldered—scholars.
“Sorry, gentlemen,” he said, smiling, “but Mr. Acepulos has vanished
from his tobacco shop in Soho. I am not apprehensive that he had been
kidnapped or anything of that kind. I think rather that the date of his
disappearance tallies with that on which he cashed his cheque for
service rendered! His present wife is getting most unbeautifully fat,
too.”
“What precautions,” someone asked, “are being taken to guard the
slipper?”
“Well,” Mostyn answered, “though we have only the bare word of the late
Professor Deeping that the slipper was actually worn by Mohammed, it
has certainly an enormous value according to Moslem ideas. There can be
no doubt that a group of fanatics known as Hashishin are in London
engaged in an extraordinary endeavour to recover it.”
Mostyn’s voice sank to an impressive whisper. My gaze sought again the
tall Eastern visitor and was held fascinated by the baffled straining
in those velvet eyes. But the lids fell as I looked; and the effect was
that of a fire suddenly extinguished. I determined to draw Bristol’s
attention to the man.
“Accordingly,” Mostyn continued, “we have placed it in this room, from
which I fancy it would puzzle the most accomplished thief to remove
it.”
The party, myself included, stared about the place, as he went on to
explain—
“We have four large windows here; as you see. The Burton Room occupies
the end of a wing; there is only one door; it communicates with the
next room, which in turn opens into the main building by another door
on the landing. We are on the first floor; these two east windows
afford a view of the lawn before the main entrance; those two west ones
face Orpington Square; all are heavily barred as you see. During the
day there is a man always on duty in these two rooms. At night that
communicating door is locked. Short of erecting a ladder in full view
either of the Square or of Great Orchard Street, filing through four
iron bars and breaking the window and the case, I fail to see how
anybody can get at the slipper here.”
“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, a lust 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.
Only once had I seen the venerable Hassan of Aleppo—a stately, gentle
old man; but I knew that the velvet eyes could blaze into a passionate
fury that seemed to scorch whom it fell upon. I knew that the saintly
Hassan was Sheikh of the Hashishin. And familiarity with that dreadful
organization had by no means bred contempt. I was the holder of the
key, and my fear of the fanatics grew like a magic mango, darkened the
sunlight of each day, and filled the night with indefinable dread.
You, who have not read poor Deeping’s “Assyrian Mythology”, cannot
picture a creature with a huge, distorted head, and a tiny, dwarfed
body—a thing inhuman, yet human—a man stunted and malformed by the
cruel arts of brother men—a thing obnoxious to life, with but one
passion, the passion to kill. You cannot conceive of the years of agony
spent by that creature strapped to a wooden frame—in order to prevent
his growth! You cannot conceive of his fierce hatred of all humanity,
inflamed to madness by the Eastern drug, hashish, and directed against
the enemies of Islam—the holders of the slipper—by the wonderful power
of Hassan of Aleppo.
But I had not only read of such beings, I had encountered one!
And he was but one of the many instruments of the Hashishin. Perhaps
the girl with the violet eyes was another. What else to be dreaded
Hassan might hold in store for us I could not conjecture.
Do you wonder that I feared? Do you wonder that I hoped (I confess it),
hoped that the slipper might be recovered without further bloodshed?