tood in the foyer of the Astoria Hotel. About me was the pulsing
stir of transatlantic life, for the tourist season was now at its
height, and I counted myself fortunate in that I had been able to
secure a room at this establishment, always so popular with American
visitors. Chatting groups surrounded me and I became acquainted
with numberless projects for visiting the Tower of London, the
National Gallery, the British Museum, Windsor Castle, Kew Gardens,
and the other sights dear to the heart of our visiting cousins.
Loaded lifts ascended and descended. Bradshaws were in great
evidence everywhere; all was hustle and glad animation.

The tall military-looking man who stood beside me glanced about him
with a rather grim smile.

"You ought to be safe enough here, Mr. Cavanagh!" he said.

"I ought to be safe enough in my own chambers," I replied wearily.
"How many of these pleasure-seeking folk would believe that a man
can be as greatly in peril of his life in Fleet Street as in the
most uncivilized spot upon the world map? Do you think if I told
that prosperous New Yorker who is buying a cigar yonder, for
instance, that I had been driven from my chambers by a band of
Eastern assassins founded some time in the eleventh century, he
would believe it?"

"I am certain he wouldn't!" replied Bristol. "I should not have
credited it myself before I was put in charge of this damnable case."

My position at that hour was in truth an incredible one. The sacred
slipper of Mohammed lay once more in the glass case at the
Antiquarian Museum from which Earl Dexter had stolen it. Now, with
apish yellow faces haunting my dreams, with ghostly menaces dogging
me day and night, I was outcast from my own rooms and compelled, in
self-defence, to live amid the bustle of the Astoria. So wholly
nonplussed were the police authorities that they could afford me no
protection. They knew that a group of scientific murderers lay
hidden in or near to London; they knew that Earl Dexter, the foremost
crook of his day, was also in the metropolis--and they could make no
move, were helpless; indeed, as Bristol had confessed, were hopeless!

Bristol, on the previous day, had unearthed the Greek cigar merchant,
Acepulos, who had replaced the slipper in its case (for a monetary
consideration). He had performed a similar service when the
bloodstained thing had first been put upon exhibition at the Museum,
and for a considerable period had disappea