can have it that's open to
pay for it--but I've got to retire on the deal, so I'll drive a
hard bargain! Good-night!"

There was a sound of retreating footsteps, and I heard the entrance
door close quietly.

CHAPTER XVIII

WHAT CAME THROUGH THE WINDOW

I had not been in my unnatural position for many minutes before I
began to suffer agonies, agonies not only physical but mental; for
standing there like some prisoner of the Inquisition, it came to me
how this dismantled apartment must be the focus of the dreadful
forces of Hassan of Aleppo!

That Earl Dexter had the slipper of the Prophet I no longer doubted,
and that he had sustained, in this dwelling beneath the roof, an
uncanny siege during the days which had passed since the theft from
the Antiquarian Museum, was equally certain. Helpless, gagged, I
pictured those hideous creatures, evil products of the secret East,
who might, nay, who must surround that place! I thought of the
horrible little yellow man who lay dead in Wyatt's Buildings; and
it became evident to me that the house in which I was now imprisoned
must overlook the back of those unsavoury tenements. The windows,
sack-covered now, no doubt commanded a view of the roofs of the
buildings. One of the mysteries that had puzzled us was solved. It
was Earl Dexter who had shot the yellow dwarf as he was bound for
this very room! But how humanly the Hashishin had proposed to gain
his goal, how he had travelled through empty space--for from empty
space the shot had brought him down--I could not imagine.

I knew something of the almost supernatural attributes of these
people. From Professor Deeping's book I knew of the incredible
feats which they could perform when under the influence of the drug
hashish. From personal experience also I knew that they had powers
wholly abnormal.

The pain in my arms and back momentarily increased. An awesome
silence ruled. I tortured myself with pictures of murderous
yellow men possessed of the power claimed by the Mahatmas, of
levitation. Mentally I could see a distorted half-animal creature
carrying a great gleaming knife and floating supernaturally toward
me through the night!

A soft pattering sound became perceptible on the sloping roof above!

I think I have never known such intense and numbing fear as that
which now descended upon me. Perhaps I may be forgiven it. A more
dreadful situation it would be hard to devise. Knowing that I was
o