“All you want is a new pane of glass, sir,”
he said—“and the thing’s done.”
I anticipate in mentioning it here; but since Constable
Hughes has no further place in these records I may
perhaps be excused for dismissing him at this point.
He was picked up outside the section house on the
following evening with his right hand severed just
above the wrist.
A SCREAM IN THE NIGHT
The day that followed was one of the hottest which
we experienced during the heat wave. It was
a day crowded with happenings. The Burton Room
was closed to the public, whilst a glazier worked upon
the broken east window and a new blind was fitted to
the west. Behind the workmen, guarded by a watchful
commissionaire, yawned the shattered case containing
the slipper.
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 starkly on that haunted building?
At about eleven o’clock, as I hurried along
the Strand, 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 amazement, 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 bristles with outrages and murders. God knows
where it will all end. I’ve had London
scoured for a clue to the whereabouts of Hassan and
Company and drawn 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 determined
to take Bristol fully 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 thoroughly 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!”
