I wondered if the visitors to the other rooms of the Museum realized, as I realized, that despite the blazing sunlight of tropical London, the shadow of Hassan of Aleppo lay starkly3 on that haunted building?
At about eleven o'clock, as I hurried along the Strand4, I almost collided with the girl of the violet eyes! She turned and ran like the wind down Arundel Street, whilst I stood at the corner staring after her in blank amazement5, as did other passers-by; for a man cannot with dignity race headlong after a pretty woman down a public thoroughfare!
My mystification grew hourly deeper; and Bristol wallowed in perplexities.
"It's the most horrible and confusing case," he said to me when I joined him at the Museum, "that the Yard has ever had to handle. It bristles6 with outrages7 and murders. God knows where it will all end. I've had London scoured8 for a clue to the whereabouts of Hassan and Company and drawn9 absolutely blank! Then there's Earl Dexter. Where does he come in? For once in a way he's living in hiding. I can't find his headquarters. I've been thinking—"
He drew me aside into the small gallery which runs parallel with the Assyrian Room.
"Dexter has booked two passages in the Oceanic. Who is his companion?"
I wondered, I had wondered more than once, if his companion were my beautiful violet-eyed acquaintance. A scruple—perhaps an absurd scruple—hitherto had kept me silent respecting her, but now I determined10 to take Bristol fully11 into my confidence. A conviction was growing upon me that she and Earl Dexter together represented that third party whose existence we had long suspected. Whether they operated separately or on behalf of the Moslems (of which arrangement I could not conceive) remained to be seen. I was about to voice my doubts and suspicions when Bristol went on hurriedly—
"I have thoroughly12 examined the Burton Room, and considering that the windows are thirty feet from the ground, that there is no sign of a ladder having stood upon the lawn, and that the iron bars are quite intact, it doesn't look humanly possible for any one to have been in the room last night prior to Mostyn's arrival!"
"One of the dwarfs—"
"Not even one of the dwarfs," said Bristol, "could have passed between those iron bars!"
"But there was blood on the window!"
"I know there was, and human blood. It's been examined!"
"To-night," he went on, "I am remaining in here"—nodding toward the Assyrian Room—"and I have so arranged it that no mortal being can possibly know I am here. Mostyn is staying, and you can stay, too, if you care to. Owing to Professor Deeping's will you are badly involved in the beastly business, and I have no doubt you are keen to see it through."
"I am," I admitted, "and the end I look for and hope for is the recovery of the slipper by its murderous owners!"
"I am with you," said Bristol. "It's just a point of honour; but I should be glad to make them a present of it. We're ostentatiously placing a constable15 on duty in the hallway to-night—largely as a blind. It will appear that we're taking no other additional precautions."
He hurried off to make arrangements for my joining him in his watch, and thus again I lost my opportunity of confiding16 in him regarding the mysterious girl.
I half anticipated, though I cannot imagine why, that Earl Dexter would put in an appearance, during the day. He did not do so, however, for Bristol had put a constable on the door who was well acquainted with the appearance of The Stetson Man. The inspector17, in the course of his investigations18, had come upon what might have been a clue, but what was at best a confusing one. Close by the wall of the curator's house and lying on the gravel19 path he had found a part of a gold cuff20 link. It was of American manufacture.
Upon such slender evidence we could not justly assume that it pointed21 to the presence of Dexter on the night of the attempted robbery, but it served to complicate22 a matter already sufficiently23 involved.
In pursuance of Bristol's plan, I concealed24 myself that evening just before the closing of the Museum doors, in a recess25 behind a heavy piece of Babylonian sculpture. Bristol was similarly concealed in another part of the room, and Mostyn joined us later.
The Museum was closed; and so far as evidence went the authorities had relied again upon the bolts and bars hitherto considered impregnable, and upon the constable in the hall. The broken window was mended, the cut blind replaced, and within, in its shattered case, reposed26 the slipper of the Prophet.
All the blinds being lowered, the Assyrian Room was a place of gloom, yellowed on the western side by the moonlight through the blind. The door communicating with the Burton Room was closed but not fastened.
"They operated last night," Bristol whispered to me, "at the exact time when the moonlight shone through the hole in the westerly blind on to the case. If they come to-night, and I am quite expecting them, they will have to dispense27 with that assistance; but they know by experience where to reach the case."
"Despite our precautions," I said, "they will almost certainly know that a watch is being kept."
"They may or they may not," replied Bristol. "Either way I'm disposed to think there will be another attempt. Their mysterious method is so rapid that they can afford to take chances."
This was not my first night vigil since I had become in a sense the custodian28 of the relic29, but it was quite the most dreary30. Amid the tomb-like objects about us we seemed two puny31 mortals toying with stupendous things. We could not smoke and must converse32 only in whispers; and so the night wore on until I began to think that our watch would be dully uneventful.
"Our big chance," whispered Mostyn, "is in the fact that any day may change the conditions. They can't afford to wait."
He ceased abruptly33, grasping my arm. From somewhere, somewhere outside the building, we all three had heard a soft whistle. A moment of tense listening followed.
"If only we could have had the place surrounded," whispered Bristol—"but it was impossible, of course."
A faint grating noise echoed through the lofty Burton Room. Bristol slipped past me in the semi-gloom, and gently opened the communicating door a few inches.
A-tiptoe, I joined him, and craning across his shoulder saw a strange and wonderful thing.
The newly glazed34 east window again was shattered with a booming crash! The yellow blind was thrust aside. A long something reached out toward the broken case. There was a sort of fumbling35 sound, and paralyzed with the wonder of it—for the window, remember, was thirty feet from the ground—I stood frozen to my post.
Not so Bristol. As the weird36 tentacle37 (or more exactly it reminded me of a gigantic crab's claw) touched the case, the Inspector leapt forward. A white beam from his electric torch cut through to the broken cabinet.
"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 noted39 how he trembled. Bristol turned and looked back at us. The light from his pocket torch flashed upon the curator's face; and I have never seen such an expression of horrified40 amazement as that which it wore. Faintly, I could hear the constable racing41 up the steps from the hall.
Ideas of the supernatural came to us all, I know; when, with a scuffling sound not unlike that of a rat in a ceiling, something moved above us!
"Damn my thick head!" roared Bristol, furiously. "He's on the roof! It's flat as a floor and there's enough ivy42 alongside the water-spout on your house adjoining, Mr. Mostyn, to afford foothold to an invading army!"
"He had a short rope ladder fixed13 from the gutter44!" he cried back at us. "Graham! Graham!" (the constable on duty in the hall)—"Get the front door open! Get..." His voice died away as he leapt down the stairs.
From the direction of Orpington Square came a horrid45, choking scream. It rose hideously46; it fell, rose again—and died.
The thief escaped. We saw the traces upon the ivy where he had hastened down. Bristol ascended47 by the same route, and found where the ladder-hooks had twice been attached to the gutterway. Constable Graham, who was first actually to leave the building, declared that he heard the whirr of a re-started motor lower down Great Orchard48 Street.
Bristol's theory, later to be dreadfully substantiated49, was that the thief had broken the glass and reached into the case with an arrangement similar to that employed for pruning50 trees, having a clutch at the end, worked with a cord.
"Hassan has been too clever for us!" said the inspector. "But—what in 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, regarding the clutch arrangement, both were confirmed. For close under the railings which abut51 on Orpington Square, in a pool of blood we found just such an instrument as Bristol had described.
And still clutching it was a pallid52 and ghastly shrunken hand that had been severed53 from above the wrist!
"Merciful God!" whispered the inspector—"look at the opal ring on the finger! Look at the bandage where he cut himself on the broken window-glass that first night, when Mr. Mostyn disturbed him. It wasn't the Hashishin who stole the thing.... It's Earl Dexter's hand!"
"Which of them has—" began Mostyn huskily.
"The slipper of the Prophet?" interrupted Bristol. "I wonder if we shall ever know?"
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1
watchful
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| adj.注意的，警惕的 | |
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slipper
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| n.拖鞋 | |
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starkly
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| adj. 变硬了的,完全的 adv. 完全,实在,简直 | |
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strand
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| vt.使（船）搁浅，使（某人）困于（某地） | |
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amazement
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| n.惊奇，惊讶 | |
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bristles
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| 短而硬的毛发，刷子毛( bristle的名词复数 ) | |
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7
outrages
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| 引起…的义愤，激怒( outrage的第三人称单数 ) | |
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scoured
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| 走遍（某地）搜寻（人或物）( scour的过去式和过去分词 )； （用力）刷； 擦净； 擦亮 | |
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drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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fixedly
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| adv.固定地；不屈地，坚定不移地 | |
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constable
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| n.(英国)警察，警官 | |
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confiding
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| adj.相信人的，易于相信的v.吐露（秘密，心事等）( confide的现在分词 )；（向某人）吐露（隐私、秘密等） | |
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inspector
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| n.检查员，监察员，视察员 | |
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investigations
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| （正式的）调查( investigation的名词复数 )； 侦查； 科学研究； 学术研究 | |
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gravel
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| n.砂跞；砂砾层；结石 | |
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cuff
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| n.袖口；手铐；护腕；vt.用手铐铐；上袖口 | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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complicate
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| vt.使复杂化，使混乱，使难懂 | |
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sufficiently
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| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
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concealed
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| a.隐藏的，隐蔽的 | |
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recess
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| n.短期休息，壁凹（墙上装架子，柜子等凹处） | |
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reposed
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| v.将（手臂等）靠在某人（某物）上( repose的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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dispense
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| vt.分配，分发；配(药)，发(药)；实施 | |
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custodian
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| n.保管人，监护人；公共建筑看守 | |
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relic
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| n.神圣的遗物，遗迹，纪念物 | |
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dreary
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| adj.令人沮丧的，沉闷的，单调乏味的 | |
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puny
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| adj.微不足道的，弱小的 | |
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converse
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| vi.谈话，谈天，闲聊；adv.相反的，相反 | |
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33
abruptly
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| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
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glazed
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| adj.光滑的，像玻璃的；上过釉的；呆滞无神的v.装玻璃( glaze的过去式)；上釉于，上光；（目光）变得呆滞无神 | |
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35
fumbling
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| n. 摸索,漏接 v. 摸索,摸弄,笨拙的处理 | |
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36
weird
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| adj.古怪的，离奇的；怪诞的，神秘而可怕的 | |
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37
tentacle
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| n.触角，触须，触手 | |
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38
withdrawn
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| vt.收回；使退出；vi.撤退，退出 | |
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39
noted
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| adj.著名的，知名的 | |
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40
horrified
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| a.(表现出)恐惧的 | |
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41
racing
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| n.竞赛，赛马；adj.竞赛用的，赛马用的 | |
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42
ivy
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| n.常青藤，常春藤 | |
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43
plunged
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| v.颠簸( plunge的过去式和过去分词 )；暴跌；骤降；突降 | |
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44
gutter
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| n.沟，街沟，水槽，檐槽，贫民窟 | |
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45
horrid
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| adj.可怕的；令人惊恐的；恐怖的；极讨厌的 | |
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46
hideously
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| adv.可怕地，非常讨厌地 | |
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47
ascended
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| v.上升，攀登( ascend的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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48
orchard
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| n.果园，果园里的全部果树，(美俚)棒球场 | |
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49
substantiated
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| v.用事实支持（某主张、说法等），证明，证实( substantiate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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50
pruning
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| n.修枝，剪枝，修剪v.修剪（树木等）( prune的现在分词 )；精简某事物，除去某事物多余的部分 | |
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51
abut
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| v.接界，毗邻 | |
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52
pallid
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| adj.苍白的，呆板的 | |
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53
severed
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| v.切断，断绝( sever的过去式和过去分词 )；断，裂 | |
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54
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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