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