a short rope ladder fixed from the gutter!" he cried back
at us. "Graham! Graham!" (the constable on duty in the hall)--"Get
the front door open! Get..." His voice died away as he
leapt down the stairs.

From the direction of Orpington Square came a horrid, choking
scream. It rose hideously; it fell, rose again--and died.

The thief escaped. We saw the traces upon the ivy where he had
hastened down. Bristol ascended by the same route, and found where
the ladder-hooks had twice been attached to the gutterway. Constable
Graham, who was first actually to leave the building, declared that
he heard the whirr of a re-started motor lower down Great Orchard
Street.

Bristol's theory, later to be dreadfully substantiated, was that
the thief had broken the glass and reached into the case with an
arrangement similar to that employed for pruning trees, having a
clutch at the end, worked with a cord.

"Hassan has been too clever for us!" said the inspector. "But--what
in God's name did that awful screaming mean?"

I had a theory, but I did not advance it then.

It was not until nearly dawn that my theory, and Bristol's, regarding
the clutch arrangement, both were confirmed. For close under the
railings which abut on Orpington Square, in a pool of blood we found
just such an instrument as Bristol had described.

And still clutching it was a pallid and ghastly shrunken hand that
had been severed from above the wrist!

"Merciful God!" whispered the inspector--"look at the opal ring on
the finger! Look at the bandage where he cut himself on the
broken window-glass that first night, when Mr. Mostyn disturbed him.
It wasn't the Hashishin who stole the thing.... It's Earl
Dexter's hand!"

No one spoke for a moment. Then--

"Which of them has--" began Mostyn huskily.

"The slipper of the Prophet?" interrupted Bristol. "I wonder if we
shall ever know?"

CHAPTER XV

A SHRIVELLED HAND

Around a large square table in a room at New Scotland Yard stood a
group of men, all of whom looked more or less continuously at
something that lay upon the polished deal. One of the party, none
other than the Commissioner himself, had just finished speaking,
and in silence now we stood about the gruesome object which had
furnished him with the text of his very terse address.

I knew myself privileged in being admitted to such a conference at
the C.I.D. headquarters and owed my admission partly to Inspector
Bristol,