The newly glazed east window again was shattered with a booming
crash! The yellow blind was thrust aside. A long something reached
out toward the broken case. There was a sort of fumbling sound, and
paralyzed with the wonder of it--for the window, remember, was
thirty feet from the ground--I stood frozen to my post.

Not so Bristol. As the weird tentacle (or more exactly it reminded
me of a gigantic crab's claw) touched the case, the Inspector leapt
forward. A white beam from his electric torch cut through to the
broken cabinet.

The thing was withdrawn . . . and with it went the slipper of the
Prophet.

"Raise the blinds!" cried Bristol. "Mr. Cavanagh! Mr. Mostyn!
We must not let them give us the slip!"

I got up the blind of the nearer window as Bristol raised the other.
Not a living thing was in sight from either!

Mostyn was beside me, his hand resting on my shoulder. I noted how
he trembled. Bristol turned and looked back at us. The light from
his pocket torch flashed upon the curator's face; and I have never
seen such an expression of horrified amazement as that which it
wore. Faintly, I could hear the constable racing up the steps from
the hall.

Ideas of the supernatural came to us all, I know; when, with a
scuffling sound not unlike that of a rat in a ceiling, something moved