“When again,” he continued, “the
slipper shall be in the receptacle of which you hold
the key, that key must be given to me!”
I thought I saw the drift of his words now; I thought
I perceived with what object I had been trapped and
borne to this mysterious abode for whose whereabouts
the police vainly were seeking. By the exercise
of the gift of divination it would seem that Hassan
of Aleppo had forecast the future history of the accursed
slipper or believed that he had done so. According
to his own words I was doomed once more to become
trustee of the relic. The key of the case at
the Antiquarian Museum, to which he had prophesied
the slipper’s return, would be the price of
my life! But—
“In order that these things may be fulfilled,”
he continued, “I must permit you to return to
your house. So it is written, so it shall be.
Your life is in my hands; beware when it is demanded
of you that you hesitate not in yielding up the key!”
He raised his hands before him, making a sort of obeisance,
I doubt not in the direction of Mecca, drew aside
one of the yellow hangings behind him and disappeared,
leaving me alone again in that nightmare apartment
of yellow and green and gold. A moment I stood
watching the swaying curtain. Utter silence
reigned, and a sort of panic seized me infinitely
greater than that occasioned by the presence of the
weird Sheikh. I felt that I must escape from
the place or that I should become raving mad.
I leapt forward to the curtain which Hassan had raised
and jerked it aside; it had concealed a door.
In this door and about level with my eyes was a kind
of little barred window through which shone a dim
green light. I bent forward, peering into the
place beyond, but was unable to perceive anything
save a vague greenness.
And as I peered, half believing that the whole episode
was a dreadful, fevered dream, the abominable fumes
of hashish grew, or seemed to grow, quite suddenly
insupportable. Through the square opening, from
the green void beyond, a cloud of oily vapour, pungent,
stifling, resembling that of burning Indian hemp, poured
out and enveloped me!
With a gasping cry I fell back, fighting for breath,
for a breath of clean air unpolluted with hashish.
But every inhalation drew down into my lungs the
fumes that I sought to escape from. I experienced
a deathly sickness; I seemed to be sinking into a sea
of hashish, amid bubbles of yellow and green and gold,
and I knew no more until, struggling again to my feet,
surrounded by utter darkness—I struck my
head on the corner of my writing-table . . . for I
lay in my own study!
My revolver, unloaded, was upon the table beside me.
The night was very still. I think it must have
been near to dawn.
“My God!” I whispered, “did I dream
it all? Did I dream it all?”
THE BLACK TUBE
