The Quest of the Sacred Slipper

um 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 cur

ound him. "It has been left to the Institution by the late Professor Deeping. He describes it in a document furnished by his solici

oned by any of the Arabian historians to my knowledge-t

taken it from Al-Madinah-perhaps from the mysterious inner passage of the baldaquin where the treasures of

m. 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 ca

believe, upon many of those who have come in con

ould be brought here by a Moslem, but for a long time we failed to discover any Moslem who would undertake the

axen 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 da

now; no one beyond the circle coul

e slipper here, strongly escorted, and placed it where you now see it. No other hand has touched it." (The speaker's voice was

ly, "And has anything untoward hap

Bristol can tell,"

otland Yard man was conspicuous among the group of

sive that he had been kidnapped or anything of that kind. I think rather that the date of his disappearance tallies w

one asked, "are being ta

actually worn by Mohammed, it has certainly an enormous value according to Moslem ideas. There can be no doubt

eld fascinated by the baffled straining in those velvet eyes. But the lids fell as I looked; and the

d it in this room, from which I fancy it would

d, stared about the place

st 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

her voice struck in; I knew it afterwa

boyish interest. "Mr. Cavanagh here holds the keys of the case, under the will of the la

vants were turned

em in a place of safet

my bankers,

ebrated Orientalist, "that the slipper of

olar and the little group straggled away, Mo

ubted the accuracy of the doctor's prediction. He had already had some experienc

d to him, "when the general public i

ation cards," he replied. "The people who received them often give their ti

-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

son 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

ed 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

entering the doors of the impregnable Antiquarian Museum, had passed where the diabolical arts of the Hashishin had no power to reach it-where

he murderous company of fanatics who had pursued the stolen slipper from its ancie

er, 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 mut

corch 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

f 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 ca

ead of such beings,

haps the girl with the violet eyes was another. What else to be

t I hoped (I confess it), hoped that the slipp