e of the death of Professor Deeping that the
girl with the violet eyes had first intruded her fascinating
personality into my tangled affairs? Patently, she had then been
seeking the holy slipper, and by craft had endeavoured to bend me
to her will. Then had I not encountered her again, meeting the
glance of her unforgettable violet eyes outside a Strand hotel?
The encounter had presaged a further attempt upon the slipper!
Certainly she acted on behalf of someone interested in it; and since
neither Bristol nor I could conceive of any one seeking to possess
the bloodstained thing except the mysterious leader of the
Hashishin--Hassan of Aleppo--as a creature of that awful fanatic
being I had written her down.

Why, then, if the mysterious Eastern employed a European girl,
should he not also employ an American man? It might well be that
the relic, in entering the doors of the impregnable Antiquarian
Museum, had passed where the diabolical arts of the Hashishin had
no power to reach it--where the beauty of Western women and the
craft of Eastern man were equally useless weapons. Perhaps Hassan's
campaign was entering upon a new phase.

Was it a shirking of plain duty on my part that wish--that
ever-present hope--that the murderous company of fanatics who had
pursued the stolen slipper from its ancient resting-place to London,
should succeed in recovering it? I leave you to judge.

The crescent of Islam fades to-day and grows pale, but there are yet
fierce Believers, alust for the blood of the infidel. In such as
these a faith dies the death of an adder, and is more venomous in
its death-throes than in the full pulse of life. The ghastly
indiscretion of Professor Deeping, in rifling a Moslem Sacristy, had
led to the mutilation of many who, unwittingly, had touched the
looted relic, had brought about his own end, had established a league
of fantastic assassins in the heart of the metropolis.

Only once had I seen the venerable Hassan of Aleppo--a stately,
gentle old man; but I knew that the velvet eyes could blaze into a
passionate fury that seemed to scorch whom it fell upon. I knew
that the saintly Hassan was Sheikh of the Hashishin. And
familiarity with that dreadful organization had by no means bred
contempt. I was the holder of the key, and my fear of the fanatics
grew like a magic mango, darkened the sunlight of each day, and
filled the night with indefinable dread.

You, who have not read poor Deeping's