y wholly unconscious at my
feet.

It had been a divine accident which had caused me to drop my
revolver, and, stooping to recover it, unknowingly to frustrate the
design of the second slinger upon myself. The light of the lamp
fell upon the face of the dead Hashishin. He lay forward upon his
hands, crouching almost, but with his face, his dreadful,
featureless face, twisted up at me from under his left shoulder.

God knows he deserved his end; but that mutilated face is often
grinning, bloodily, in my dreams.

And then as I stood, between that horrid exultation which is born
of killing and the panic which threatened me out of the darkness,
I saw something advancing ... slowly ... slowly ... from the
elmen shades toward the loggia.

It was a shape--it was a shadow. Silent it came--on--and on.
Where the dusk lay deepest it paused, undefined; for I could give
it no name of man or spirit. But a horror seemed to proceed from
it as light from a lamp.

I groped about the table near to me, never taking my eyes from
that sinister form outside. As my fingers closed upon the
telephone, distant voices and the sound of running footsteps
(of those who had heard the shots) came welcome to my ears.

The form stirred, seeming to raise phantom arms in execration, and
a stray moonbeam pierced the darkness shrouding it. For a fleeting
instant something flashed venomously.

The sounds grew nearer. I could tell that the newcomers had found
Morris lying at the gate. Yet still I stood, frozen with uncanny
fear, and watching--watching the spot to which that stray beam had
pierced; the spot where I had seen the moon gleam upon the ring of
the Prophet!

CHAPTER X

AT THE BRITISH ANTIQUARIAN MUSEUM

A little group of interested spectators stood at the head of the
square glass case in the centre of the lofty apartment in the
British Antiquarian Museum known as the Burton Room (by reason of
the fact that a fine painting of Sir Richard Burton faces you as
you enter). A few other people looked on curiously from the lower
end of the case. It contained but one exhibit--a dirty and
dilapidated markoob--or slipper of morocco leather that had once
been red.

"Our latest acquisition, gentlemen," said Mr. Mostyn, the curator,
speaking in a low tone to the distinguished Oriental scholars
around him. "It has been left to the Institution by the late
Professor Deeping. He describes it in a document furnished by his
solicitor