during the heat wave. It was a day crowded with happenings. The
Burton Room was closed to the public, whilst a glazier worked upon
the broken east window and a new blind was fitted to the west.
Behind the workmen, guarded by a watchful commissionaire, yawned
the shattered case containing the slipper.

I wondered if the visitors to the other rooms of the Museum realized,
as I realized, that despite the blazing sunlight of tropical
London, the shadow of Hassan of Aleppo lay starkly on that haunted
building?

At about eleven o'clock, as I hurried along the Strand, I almost
collided with the girl of the violet eyes! She turned and ran like
the wind down Arundel Street, whilst I stood at the corner staring
after her in blank amazement, as did other passers-by; for a man
cannot with dignity race headlong after a pretty woman down a
public thoroughfare!

My mystification grew hourly deeper; and Bristol wallowed in
perplexities.

"It's the most horrible and confusing case," he said to me when
I joined him at the Museum, "that the Yard has ever had to handle.
It bristles with outrages and murders. God knows where it will
all end. I've had London scoured for a clue to the whereabouts
of Hassan and Company and drawn absolutely blank! Then there's
Earl Dexter. Where does he come in? For once in a way he's
living in hiding. I can't find his headquarters. I've been
thinking--"