he crash of broken glass.

He leapt to the switch and flooded the room with light. A fear of
what it might hold possessed him, and he turned instantly.

Hard by the fragments of broken glass upon the floor and midway
between the case and the first easterly window lay the slipper. A
bell was ringing somewhere. His shot probably had aroused the
attention of the policeman. Someone was clamouring upon the door
of the Museum, too. Mostyn raced forward and raised the blind--that
toward which the slipper had seemed to move.

The lower pane of the window was smashed. Blood was trickling down
upon the floor from the jagged edges of the glass.

"Hullo there! Open the door! Open the door!"

Bells were going all over the place now; sounds of running footsteps
came from below; but Mostyn stood staring at the broken window and
at the solid iron bars which protected it without, which were intact,
substantial--which showed him that nothing human could possibly
have entered.

Yet the case was shattered, the holy slipper lay close beside him
upon the floor, and from the broken window-pane blood was
falling--drip-drip-drip...

That was the story as I heard it half an hour later. For Inspector
Bristol, apprised of the happening, was promptly on the scene; and
knowing how keen was my interest in the matter, he rang me up
immediately. I arrived soon after Bristol and found a perplexed
group surrounding the uncanny slipper of the Prophet. No one had
dared to touch it; the dread vengeance of Hassan of Aleppo would
visit any unbeliever who ventured to lay hand upon the holy, bloody
thing. Well we knew it, and as though it had been a venomous
scorpion we, a company of up-to-date, prosaic men of affairs, stood
around that dilapidated markoob, and kept a respectful distance.

Mostyn, an odd figure in pyjamas and dressing-gown, turned his pale,
intellectual face to me as I entered.

"It will have to be put back ... secretly," he said.

His voice was very unsteady. Bristol nodded grimly and glanced at
the two constables, who, with a plain-clothes man unknown to me,
made up that midnight company.

"I'll do it, sir," said one of the constables suddenly.

"One moment"--Mostyn raised his hand!

In the ensuing silence I could hear the heavy breathing of those
around me. We were all looking at the slipper, I think.

"Do you understand, fully," the curator continued, "the risk you
run?"

"I think so, sir," answered the con