stable; "but I'm prepared to
chance it."

"The hands," resumed Mostyn slowly, "of those who hitherto have
ventured to touch it have been"--he hesitated--"cut off."

"Your career in the Force would be finished if it happened to you,
my lad," said Bristol shortly.

"I suppose they'd look after me," said the man, with grim humour.

"They would if you met with--an accident, in the discharge of your
duty," replied the inspector; "but I haven't ordered you to do it,
and I'm not going to."

"All right, sir," said the man, with a sort of studied truculence,
"I'll take my chance."

I tried to stop him; Mostyn, too, stepped forward, and Bristol
swore frankly. But it was all of no avail.

A sort of chill seemed to claim my very soul when I saw the
constable stoop, unconcernedly pick up the slipper, and replace it
in the broken case.

It was out of a silence cathedral-like, awesome, that he spoke.

"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.

CHAPTER XIV

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 handl