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Updated: May 16, 2025
"My God! look, sir!" Lester was the trembling speaker. The box, I have said, was but three feet long by one foot square, and had clearly defied poor Deeping's efforts to open it. But a crescent-shaped knife, wet with blood, lay within! Dimly to my ears came the ceaseless murmur of London. The night now was far advanced, and not a sound disturbed the silence of the court below my windows.
Uncertain, possibly, of Deeping's faith, or fearful of endangering the success of their efforts by an outrage upon him en route, they had refrained from this until his arrival at his house. He had been warned of his impending end by Ahmad Ahmadeen. Who was Ahmadeen? And who was his beautiful associate? I found myself unable, at present, to answer either of those questions.
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.
"It's the lascars," said Bell. "They have been behaving in a most unusual manner ever since the mysterious Mr. Azraeel joined us. I may be wrong in associating the two things, but I shan't be sorry to see the last of our mysterious passengers." The next happening on board the Mandalay which I have to record was the attempt to break open the door of Professor Deeping's stateroom.
It was the late Professor Deeping's "Assyrian Mythology," and embodied the result of his researches into the history of the Hashishin, the religious murderers of whose existence he had been so skeptical. To the Chief of the Order, the terrible Sheikh Hassan of Aleppo, he referred as a "fabled being"; yet it was at the hands of this "fabled being" that he had met his end!
You, who have not read poor Deeping's "Assyrian Mythology", cannot picture a creature with a huge, distorted head, and a tiny, dwarfed body a thing inhuman, yet human a man stunted and malformed by the cruel arts of brother men a thing obnoxious to life, with but one passion, the passion to kill.
Ahmadeen was standing close by the companion-way, and I had a momentary impression that one of the women slipped something into his hand. Certainly, he started; and his dusky face seemed to pale. Then a deck steward came out of Deeping's stateroom, carrying the brown bag which the Professor had brought aboard at Port Said. Deeping's voice came: "Hi, my man! Let me take that bag!"
I thought of the eyes which had seemed to look up from the black well of the staircase I thought of the horrible end of this man whose book lay upon the table ... and I thought I heard a faint sound outside my study door! The key of Deeping's safe, and his letter to me, lay close by my hand. I slipped them into a drawer and locked it.
In appearance Bristol suggests an Anglo-Indian officer, and at the time of which I write he had recently returned from Jamaica and his face was as bronzed as a sailor's. One would never take Bristol for a detective. As he seated himself in the armchair, without preamble I plunged into my story. He listened gravely. "What sort of house is Professor Deeping's?" he asked suddenly.
Are you content to remain idle while his murderer escapes?" God knows I was not. My idleness in the matter was none of my choosing. Since poor Deeping's murder I had come to handgrips with the assassins more than once, but Hassan had proved too clever for me, too clever for Scotland Yard. The sacred slipper was once more in the hands of its fanatic guardian.
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