pered--"that white light by which the guardians of the relic
may always know its resting place!"

I managed to force words to my lips.

"If you know where the slipper is," I said, more for the sake of
talking than for anything else, "why do you not recover it?"

Hassan turned his eyes upon me again.

"Because the infidel dog," he cried loudly, "who has soiled it with
his unclean touch, defies us--mocks us! He has suffered the loss
of the offending hand, but the evil ginn protect him; he is inspired
by efreets! But God is great and Mohammed is His only Prophet! We
shall triumph; but it is written, oh, daring infidel, that you again
shall become the guardian of the slipper!"

He spoke like some prophet of old and I stared at him fascinated.
I was loth to believe his words.

"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 g