CHAPTER XVI
THE DWARF
The manner in which we next heard of the whereabouts of the Prophet'sslipper was utterly unforeseen, wildly dramatic. That the Hashishinwere aware that I, though its legal trustee, no longer had chargeof the relic nor knowledge of its resting-place, was sufficientlyevident from the immunity which I enjoyed at this time from thatceaseless haunting by members of the uncanny organization ruled byHassan. I had begun to feel more secure in my chambers, and nolonger worked with a loaded revolver upon the table beside me. Butthe slightest unusual noise in the night still sufficed to arouseme and set me listening intently, to chill me with dread of whatit might portend. In short, my nerves were by no means recoveredfrom the ceaseless strain of the events connected with and arisingout of the death of my poor friend, Professor Deeping.
One evening as I sat at work in my chambers, with the throb of busyFleet Street and its thousand familiar sounds floating in to methrough the open windows, my phone bell rang.
Even as I turned to take up the receiver a foreboding possessed methat my trusteeship was no longer to be a sinecure. It wasBristol who had rung me up, and upon very strange business.
"A development at last!" he said; "but at present I don't know whatto make of it. Can you come down now?"
"Where are you speaking from?"
"From the Waterloo Road--a delightful neighbourhood. I shall beglad if you can meet me at the entrance to Wyatt's Buildings inhalf an hour."
"What is it? Have you found Dexter?"
"No, unfortunately. But it's murder!"
I knew as I hung up the receiver that my brief period of peace wasended; that the lists of assassination were reopened. I hurriedout through the court into Fleet Street, thinking of the key of thenow empty case at the Museum which reposed at my bankers, thinkingof the devils who pursued the slipper, thinking of the hundred andone things, strange and terrible, which went to make up the historyof that gruesome relic.
Wyatt's Buildings, Waterloo Road, are a gloomy and forbidding blockof dwellings which seem to frown sullenly upon the high road, fromwhich they are divided by a dark and dirty courtyard. Passing aniron gateway, you enter, by way of an arch, into this sinister placeof uncleanness. Male residents in their shirt sleeves loungeagainst the several entrances. Bedraggled women nurse dirty infantsand sit in groups upon the stone steps, rendering them almostimpassable. But to-night a thing had happened in Wyatt's Buildingswhich had awakened in the inhabitants, hardened to sordid crime, asort of torpid interest.
Faces peered from most of the windows which commanded a view of thecourtyard, looking like pallid blotches against the darkness; buta number of police confined the loungers within their severaldoorways, so that the yard itself was comparatively clear.
I had had some difficulty in forcing a way through the crowd whichthronged the entrance, but finally I found myself standing besideInspector Bristol and looking down upon that which had brought usboth to Wyatt's Buildings.
There was no moon that night, and only the light of the lamp in thearchway, with some faint glimmers from the stairways surrounding thecourt, reached the dirty paving. Bristol directed the light of apocket-lamp upon the hunched-up figure which lay in the dust, and Isaw it to be that of a dwarfish creature, yellow skinned and wearingonly a dark loin cloth. He had a malformed and disproportionatehead, a head that had been too large even for a big man. I knewafter first glance that this was one of the horrible dwarfs employedby the Hashishin in their murderous business. It might even be theone who had killed Deeping; but this was impossible to determineby reason of the fact that the hideous, swollen head, together withthe features, was completely crushed. I shall not describe thecreature's appearance in further detail.
Having given me an opportunity to examine the dead dwarf, Bristolreturned the electric lamp to his pocket and stood looking at me inthe semi-gloom. A constable stood on duty quite near to us, andothers guarded the archway and the doors to the dwellings. Themurmur of subdued voices echoed hollowly in the wells of thestaircases, and a constant excited murmur proceeded from the crowdat the entrance. No pressmen had yet been admitted, though numbersof them were at the gates.
"It happened less than an hour ago," said Bristol. "The place wasmuch as you see it now, and from what I can gather there came thesound of a shot and several people saw the dwarf fall through theair and drop where he lies!"
The light was insufficient to show the expression upon the speaker'sface, but his voice told of a great wonder.
"It is a bit like an Indian conjuring trick," I said, looking up tothe sky above us; "who fired the shot?"
"So far," replied Bristol, "I have failed to find out; but there'sa bullet in the thing's head. He was dead before he reached thepavement."
"Did no one see the flash of the pistol?"
"No one that I have got hold of yet. Of course this kind ofevidence is very unreliable; these people regularly go out of theirway to mislead the police."
"You think the body may have been carried here from somewhere else?"
"Oh, no; this is where it fell, right enough. You can see wherehis head struck the stones."
"He has not been moved at all?"
"No; I shall not move him until I've worked out where in heaven'sname he can have fallen from! You and I have seen some mysteriousthings happen, Mr. Cavanagh, since the slipper of the Prophet cameto England and brought these people"--he nodded toward the thingat our feet--"in its train; but this is the most inexplicableincident to date. I don't know what to make of it at all. Quiteapart from the question of where the dwarf fell from, who shot athim and why?"
"Have you no theory?" I asked. "The incident to my mind pointsdirectly to one thing. We know that this uncanny creature belongedto the organization of Hassan of Aleppo. We know that Hassanimplacably pursues one object--the slipper. In pursuit of theslipper, then, the dwarf came here. Bristol!"--I laid my hand uponhis arm, glancing about me with a very real apprehension--"theslipper must be somewhere near!"
Bristol turned to the constable standing hard by.
"Remain here," he ordered. Then to me: "I should like you to comeup on to the roof. From there we can survey the ground and perhapsarrive at some explanation of how the dwarf came to fall upon thatspot."
Passing the constable on duty at one of the doorways and making ourway through the group of loiterers there, we ascended amidconflicting odours to the topmost floor. A ladder was fixed againstthe wall communicating with a trap in the ceiling. Severalindividuals in their shirt sleeves and all smoking clay pipes hadfollowed us up. Bristol turned upon them.
"Get downstairs," he said--"all the lot of you, and stop there!"
With muttered imprecations our audience dispersed, slowly returningby the way they had come. Bristol mounted the ladder and opened thetrap. Through the square opening showed a velvet patch spangledwith starry points. As he passed up on to the roof and I followedhim, the comparative cleanness of the air was most refreshing afterthe varied fumes of the staircase.
Side by side we leaned upon the parapet looking down into the dirtycourtyard which was the theatre of this weird mystery; looking downupon the stage, sordidly Western, where a mystic Eastern tragedyhad been enacted.
I could see the constable standing beside the crushed thing uponthe stones.
"Now," said Bristol, with a sort of awe in his voice, "where did hefall from?"
And at his words, looking down at the spot where the dwarf lay, andnoting that he could not possibly have fallen there from any of thebuildings surrounding the courtyard, an eerie sensation crept overme; for I was convinced that the happening was susceptible of nonatural explanation.
I had heard--who has not heard?--of the Indian rope trick, wherea fakir throws a rope into the air which remains magically suspendedwhilst a boy climbs upward and upward until he disappears into space.I had never credited accounts of the performance; but now I beganseriously to wonder if the arts of Hassan of Aleppo were not asgre
at or greater than the arts of fakir. But the crowning mysteryto my mind was that of the Hashishin's death. It would seem thatas he had hung suspended in space he had been shot!
"You say that someone heard the sound of the shot?" I asked suddenly.
"Several people," replied Bristol; "but no one knows, or no onewill say, from what direction it came. I shall go on with theinquiry, of course, and cross-examine every soul in Wyatt'sBuildings. Meanwhile, I'm open to confess that I am beaten."
In the velvet sky countless points blazed tropically. The hum ofthe traffic in Waterloo Road reached us only in a muffled way.Sordidness lay beneath us, but up there under the heavens we seemedremoved from it as any Babylonian astronomer communing with thestars.
When, some ten minutes later, I passed out into the noise ofWaterloo Road, I left behind me an unsolved mystery and took withme a great dread; for I knew that the quest of the sacred slipperwas not ended, I knew that another tragedy was added to its history--andI feared to surmise what the future might hold for all of us.