The Quest of the Sacred Slipper, Sax Rohmer [books to read for self improvement .TXT] 📗

the open door.

Watching, breathless, and utterly forgetful of his own position, Bristol saw the messenger, all unconscious of danger, come up the stairs carrying a pail and broom. As his head reached the level of the railings The Stetson Man neatly sand-bagged him, rushed across to the outer door, and closed it!

Given duplicate keys and the private information which Dexter so ingeniously had obtained, there are many London banks vulnerable to similar attack. Certainly, bullion is rarely kept in a branch storeroom, but the detective was well aware that the keys of the case containing the slipper were kept in this particular safe!

He was convinced, and could entertain no shadowy doubt, that at last Dexter had triumphed. He wondered if it had ever hitherto fallen to the lot of a representative of the law thus to be made an accessory to a daring felony!

But human endurance has well-defined limits. The fading light rendered the ingenious picture dim and more dim. The pain occasioned by his position became agonizing, and uttering a stifled groan he ceased to take an interest in the robbery of the London County and Provincial Bank.

Fate is a comedian; and when later I learned how I had lain strapped to my bed, and, so near to me, Bristol had hung helpless as a butchered carcass in the office of the Congo Fibre Company, whilst, in our absence from the stage, the drama of the slipper marched feverish to its final curtain, I accorded Fate her well-earned applause. I laughed; not altogether mirthfully.

CHAPTER XXVII THE SLIPPER

Someone was breaking in at the door of my chambers!

I aroused myself from a state of coma almost death-like and listened to the blows. The sun was streaming in at my windows.

A splintering crash told of a panel broken. Then a moment later I heard the grating of the lock, and a rush of footsteps along the passage.

"Try the study!" came a voice that sounded like Bristol's, save that it was strangely weak and shaky.

Almost simultaneously the Inspector himself threw open the bedroom door—and, very pale and haggard-eyed, stood there looking across at me. It was a scene unforgettable.

"Mr. Cavanagh!" he said huskily—"Mr. Cavanagh! Thank God you're alive! But"—he turned—"this way, Marden!" he cried, "Untie him quickly! I've got no strength in my arms!"

Marden, a C.I.D. man, came running, and in a minute, or less, I was sitting up gulping brandy.

"I've had the most awful experience of my life," said Bristol. "You've fared badly enough, but I've been hanging by my wrists—you know Dexter's trick!—for close upon sixteen hours! I wasn't released until Carter, an office boy, came on the scene this morning!"

Very feebly I nodded; I could not talk.

"The strong-room of your bank was rifled under my very eyes last evening!" he continued, with something of his old vigour; "and five minutes after the Antiquarian Museum was opened to the public this morning quite an unusual number of visitors appeared.

"I saw the bank manager the moment he arrived, and learned a piece of news that positively took my breath away! I was at the Museum seven minutes later and got another shock! There in the case was the red slipper!"

"Then," I whispered-"it hadn't been stolen?"

"Wrong! It had! This was a duplicate, as Mostyn, the curator, saw at a glance! Some of the early visitors—they were Easterns—had quite surrounded the case. They were watched, of course, but any number of Orientals come to see the thing; and, short of smashing the glass, which would immediately attract attention, the authorities were unprepared, of course, for any attempt. Anyway, they were tricked. Somebody opened the case. The real slipper of the Prophet is gone!"

"They told you at the bank—"

"That you had withdrawn the keys! If Dexter had known that!"

"Hassan of Aleppo took them from me last night! At last the Hashishin have triumphed."

Bristol sank into the armchair.

"Every port is watched," he said. "But—"

CHAPTER XXVIII CARNETA

"I am entirely at your mercy; you can do as you please with me. But before you do anything I should like you to listen to what I have to say."

Her beautiful face was pale and troubled. Violet eyes looked sadly into mine.

"For nearly an hour I have been waiting for this chance—until I knew you were alone," she continued. "If you are thinking of giving me up to the police, at least remember that I came here of my own free will. Of course, I know you are quite entitled to take advantage of that; but please let me say what I came to say!"

She pleaded so hard, with that musical voice, with her evident helplessness, most of all with her wonderful eyes, that I quite abandoned any project I might have entertained to secure her arrest. I think she divined this masculine weakness, for she said, with greater confidence—

"Your friend, Professor Deeping, was murdered by the man called Hassan of Aleppo. Are you content to remain idle while his murderer escapes?"

God knows I was not. My idleness in the matter was none of my choosing. Since poor Deeping's murder I had come to handgrips with the assassins more than once, but Hassan had proved too clever for me, too clever for Scotland Yard. The sacred slipper was once more in the hands of its fanatic guardian.

One man there was who might have helped the search, Earl Dexter. But Earl Dexter was himself wanted by Scotland Yard!

From the time of the bank affair up to the moment when this beautiful visitor had come to my chambers I had thought Dexter, as well as Hassan, to have fled secretly from England. But the moment that I saw Carneta at my door I divined that The Stetson Man must still be in London.

She sat watching me and awaiting my answer.

"I cannot avenge my friend unless I can find his murderer."

Eagerly she bent forward.

"But if I can find him?"

That made me think, and I hesitated before speaking again.

"Say what you came to say," I replied slowly. "You must know that I distrust you. Indeed, my plain duty is to detain you. But I will listen to anything you may care to tell me, particularly if it enables me to trap Hassan of Aleppo."

"Very well," she said, and rested her elbows upon the table before her. "I have come to you in desperation. I can help you to find the man who murdered Professor Deeping, but in return I want you to help me!"

I watched her closely. She was very plainly, almost poorly, dressed. Her face was pale and there were dark marks around her eyes. This but served to render their strange beauty more startling; yet I could see that my visitor was in real trouble. The situation was an odd one.

"You are possibly about to ask me," I suggested, "to assist Earl Dexter to escape the police?"

She shook her head. Her voice trembled as she replied—

"That would not have induced me to run the risk of coming here. I came because I wanted to find a man who was brave enough to help me. We have no friends in London, and so it became a question of terms. I can repay you by helping you to trace Hassan."

"What is it, then, that Dexter asks me to do?"

"He asks nothing. I, Carneta, am asking!"

"Then you are not come from him?"

At my question, all her self-possession left her. She abruptly dropped her face into her hands and was shaken with sobs! It was more than I could bear, unmoved. I forgot the shady past, forgot that she was the associate of a daring felon, and could only realize that she was a weeping woman, who had appealed to my pity and who asked my aid.

I stood up and stared out of the window, for I experienced a not unnatural embarrassment. Without looking at her I said—

"Don't be afraid to tell me your troubles. I don't say I should go out of my way to be kind to Mr. Dexter, but I have no wish whatever to be instrumental in"—I hesitated—"in making you responsible for his misdeeds. If you can tell me where to find Hassan of Aleppo, I won't even ask you where Dexter is—"

"God help me! I don't know where he is!"

There was real, poignant anguish in her cry. I turned and confronted her. Her lashes were all wet with tears.

"What! has he disappeared?"

She nodded, fought with her emotion a moment, and went on unsteadily,

"I want you to help me to find him for in finding him we shall find Hassan!"

"How so?"

Her gaze avoided me now.

"Mr. Cavanagh, he has staked everything upon securing the slipper—and the Hashishin were too clever for him. His hand—those Eastern fiends cut off his hand! But he would not give in. He made another bid—and lost again. It left him almost penniless."

She spoke of Earl Dexter's felonious plans as another woman might have spoken of her husband's unwise investments! It was fantastic hearing that confession of The Stetson Man's beautiful partner, and I counted the interview one of the strangest I had ever known.

A sudden idea came to me. "When did Dexter first conceive the plan to steal the slipper?" I asked.

"In Egypt!" answered Carneta. "Yes! You may as well know! He is thoroughly familiar with the East, and he learned of the robbery of Professor Deeping almost as soon as it became known to Hassan. I know what you are going to ask—"

"Ahmad Ahmadeen!"

"Yes! He travelled home as Ahmadeen—the only time he ever used a disguise. Oh! the thing is accursed!" she cried. "I begged him, implored him, to abandon his attempts upon it. Day and night we were watched by those ghastly yellow men! But it was all in vain. He knew, had known for a long time, where Hassan of Aleppo was in hiding!"

And I reflected that the best men at New Scotland Yard had failed to pick up the slightest clue!

"The Hashishin, of whom that dreadful man is leader, are rich, or have supporters who are rich. The plan was to make them pay for the slipper."

"My God! it was playing with fire!"

She sat silent awhile. Emotion threatened to get the upper hand. Then—

"Two days ago," she almost whispered, "he set out—to ... get the slipper!"

"To steal it?"

"To steal it!"

"From Hassan of Aleppo?"

I could scarcely believe that any man, single-handed, could have had the hardihood to attempt such a thing.

"From Hassan, yes!"

I faced her, amazed, incredulous.

"Dexter had suffered mutilation, he knew that the Hashishin sought his life for his previous attempts upon the relic of the Prophet, and yet he dared to venture again into the very lions' den?"

"He did, Mr. Cavanagh, two days ago. And—"

"Yes?" I urged, as gently as I could, for she was shaking pitifully.

"He never came back!"

The words were spoken almost in a whisper. She clenched her hands and leapt from the chair, fighting down her grief and with such a stark horror in her beautiful eyes that from my very soul I longed to be able to help her.

"Mr. Cavanagh" (she had courage, this bewildering accomplice of a cracksman), "I know the house he went to! I cannot hope to make you understand what I have suffered since then. A thousand times I have been on the point of going to the police, confessing all I knew, and leading them to that house! O God! if only he is alive, this shall be his last crooked deal—and mine! I dared not go to the police, for his sake! I waited, and watched, and hoped, through two such nights and days ... then I ventured. I should have gone mad if I had not come here. I knew you had good cause to hate, to detest me, but I remembered that you had a great grievance against Hassan. Not as great, O heaven! not as great as mine, but yet a great one. I remembered, too, that you were the kind of man—a woman can come to..."

She sank back into the chair, and with her fingers twining and untwining, sat looking dully before her.

"In brief," I said, "what do you propose?"

"I propose that we endeavour to obtain admittance to the house of Hassan of Aleppo—secretly, of course, and all I ask of you in return for revealing the secret of its situation is—"

"That I let Dexter go free?"

Almost