sh! Only
goes in on very big things. We had word at the Yard he was in town;
but we can't touch him--we can only keep our eyes on him. He
usually travels openly and in his own name, but this time he seems
to have slipped over quietly. He always dresses the same and has
just given me 'good day!' They call him The Stetson Man. We heard
this morning that he had booked two first-class sailings in the
Oceanic, leaving for New York three weeks hence. Now, Mr. Cavanagh,
what is his game?"

"It has occurred to me before, Bristol," I replied, "and you may
remember that I mentioned the idea to you, that there might be a
third party interested in the slipper. Why shouldn't Earl Dexter
be that third party?"

"Because he isn't a fool," rapped Bristol shortly. "Earl Dexter
isn't a man to gather up trouble for himself. More likely if his
visit has anything really to do with the slipper he's retained by
Hassan and Company. Museum-breaking may be a bit out of the line
of Hashishin!"

This latter suggestion dovetailed with my own ideas, and oddly
enough there was something positively wholesome in the notion of
the straightforward crookedness of a mere swell cracksman.

Then happened a singular thing, and one that effectually concluded
our whispered colloquy. From the top end of the room, beyond the
case containing the slipper, one of the yellow blinds came down
with a run.

Bristol turned in a flash. It was not a remarkable accident, and
might portend no more than a loose cord; but when, having walked
rapidly up the room, we stood before the lowered blind, it
appeared that this was no accident at all.

Some four feet from the bottom of the blind (or five feet from the
floor) a piece of linen a foot square had been neatly slashed out!

I glanced around the room. Several fashionably dressed visitors
were looking idly in our direction, but I could fasten upon no one
of them as a likely perpetrator.

Bristol stared at me in perplexity.

"Who on earth did it," he muttered, "and what the blazes for?"

CHAPTER XII

THE HASHISHIN WATCH

"The American gentleman has just gone out, sir," said the sergeant
at the door.

I nodded grimly and raced down the steps. Despite my half-formed
desire that the slipper should be recovered by those to whom
properly it belonged, I experienced at times a curious interest in
its welfare. I cannot explain this. Across the hall in front of
me I saw Earl Dexter passing out