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, alust 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?

CHAPTER XI

THE HOLE IN THE BLIND

I stepped over to the door, where a constable stood on duty.