e.
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!"

"One of the dwarfs--"

"Not even one of the dwarfs," said Bristol, "could have passed
between those iron bars!"

"But there was blood on the window!"

"I know there was, and human blood. It's been examined!"

He stared at me fixedly. The thing was unspeakably uncanny.

"To-night," he went on, "I am remaining in here"--nodding toward
the Assyrian Room--"and I have so arranged it that no mortal being
can possibly know I am here. Mostyn is staying, and you can stay,
too, if you care to. Owing to Professor Deeping's will you are
badly involved in the beastly business, and I have no doubt you are
keen to see it through."

"I am," I admitted, "and the end I look for and hope for is the
recovery of the slipper by its murderous owners!"

"I am with you," said Bristol. "It's just a point of honour; but
I should be glad to make them a present of it. We're ostentatiously
placing a constable on duty in the hallway to-night--largely as a
blind. It will appear that we're taking no other additional
precautions."

He hurried off t