An automatic in his hand, Sir Denis stepped warily into a well-equipped kitchenette. Brian followed. There were traces of that peculiar chemical smell which he had noted before, on the night of the demonstration.
They pushed on into what was evidently a dining-room. But it didn’t appear to have been used for one. The only window was blacked out with heavy velvet drapes. On the buffet odd pieces of chemical apparatus stood, as well as a number of bottles and phials. There was very little furniture except a narrow table covered with green baize and a large chair. A green-shaded lamp stood on the table—the only light in the room.
Near the lamp was a cabinet the front of which consisted of a small switchboard.
“Some kind of radio control,” Nayland Smith commented.
“In here! Oh! Be quick!”
Brian, at that wild appeal, pushed past Sir Denis and burst in ahead of everybody.
He stopped so suddenly that he was nearly floored by the rush from behind.
The room in which he had witnessed the extraordinary experiment carried out by the man calling himself Dr. Hessian seemed to swim before his eye. A plan of Manhattan still covered the whole of the top of the long table; but the rows of chairs had been removed. The metal containers which had hung from the ceiling were there no longer. The radio set which produced the “inaudible note” remained in its place on a bureau. A small box, which might have been the one used at the demonstration to represent a specially-equipped plane, stood on one end of the table.
Near by, in a heavy armchair, Lola was seated, white and wild-eyed. Her ankles were lashed to the front legs. Both wrists had been tied to the arms of the chair, but she had managed to free her right hand and to tear off the adhesive tape strapped to her mouth.
It had been done in frantic haste, for her lip was red and swollen.
Brian sprang to her side and began to unfasten her other wrist, but: “Smash that thing!” she said, in a shrill, unnatural voice, pointing to the little box. “The Sound comes from there! Smash it!”
Brian stood upright, and ignoring Nayland Smith who had a hand on his shoulder, pulled out the police revolver and fired two shots into the flimsy framework.
There came a loud explosion, a crash of glass, splinters flew, and one bullet rebounded to be buried in the wall beyond. Then—the box burst into flames!
Dakin acted promptly. Dashing out to the kitchen, he was back in quick time carrying a big pitcher of water. With this, he dowsed the flaming fragments on the table.
When Brian turned—Lola had fainted. . . .
* * *
Brian carried Lola downstairs, using the kitchen entrance. Dakin came with him to unlock the door of the suite. All the other doors along the corridor were wide open, and sounds indicated that the search-parties were at work—apparently without success. As Brian laid Lola on the big couch:
“She’ll soon pull out of it,” Dakin assured him. “Number One has the heart of a lion. If you have any brandy, I think”— he smiled—”I can leave the patient in your hands. I’ll leave the key, too.”
Dakin retired, closing the outer door. Brian ran to the buffet and was looking for the brandy when he heard Lola’s voice:
“I don’t think I ever fainted in my life before——”
He turned, ran to her. She was sitting up.
“Lola, my dearest!”
“But I do believe a small glass of brandy would do me good!”
Brian ran back, found the brandy, and poured out a liberal shot.
He knelt beside her, his arm around her shoulders as she took the glass. Lola smiled, that fascinating, mocking smile.
“If I drank all this, Brian, I should faint a second time!”
She took a sip of the brandy, and he drew her to him.
“Lola!” he whispered.
“My lips are sticky from that beastly tape,” she protested.
Brian held her very close, but kissed her gently.
“I nearly went crazy when I heard you were missing.”
Lola took another sip and then set the glass down. “So you have found me out.” She spoke softly. “You know what a little liar I am!”
“I know you have more grit in your little finger than I have in all my hulking carcass!”
“You mean you forgive me for what I had to do?”
“Forgive you!” She raised her hand; checked him.
“Brian, dear, go back now, and let me lie here for five minutes. I shall be quite all right, when I have rested—and cleaned the gum off my face! Then I’ll join you.”
“Leave you here alone! And Fu Manchu——”
“Fu Manchu is too far away to harm me.”
“But we heard his voice!”
“I know you did. He intended you to hear it. But he isn’t there! Go up and see for yourself. I’ll be with you in a few minutes. ...”
And when Brian, torn between his desire to stay with Lola and a burning curiosity, returned to the penthouse, he found the proper entrance door open. Harkness was bending over the cabinet which looked like a radio set, the back of which had been removed. Nayland Smith was pacing the room and twitching the lobe of his ear.
“How is she?” he rapped.
“Fine. She’s coming up after a little rest. But where’s ... Dr. Fu Manchu?”
Sir Denis pointed to an open drawer of the bureau.
“There—all we have of him! A tape-recorder playing back our conversations in Cairo! If you and I had listened a while longer we should have heard my voice as well! Brought over for the benefit of my successor. The machine had played right through the records. The cunning devil!”
Brian stared about the room incredulously, still half expecting to see the dark spectacles of Dr. Hessian (the only picture he had of the dreaded Fu Manchu) peering out from some shadowy corner.
“But the door! What was the danger of opening the door?”
“The danger’s on the table there,” Harkness called out. “Three ordinary bell-pushes which were under the carpet where anybody coming in couldn’t miss stepping on one of them!”
“Wired to the receiver you shot to pieces!” Sir Denis added grimly. “If Lola hadn’t lost her head (although God knows I don’t blame her) we might have disconnected them, and so had the secret of the Sound Zone in our hands!”
“Then the other thing”—Brian nodded towards the cabinet—”was connected all the time?”
“It was. One step, and Lola, as well as everyone else and everything breakable in the penthouse, would have gone West! Which reminds me of something you may be able to tell me. ... The french windows. You saw the demonstration. Why weren’t the windows blown out?”
Brian thought hard; tried to picture this room as he had seen it then—and a memory came.
“I think I can tell you. I remember now that just before Dr. Hessian began to talk, the Japanese lowered what looked like metal shutters over the windows, and then drew those drapes over them.”
“Shutters still there,” Sir Denis told him. “Couldn’t make out if they were a hotel fixture. Now I know, they should be examined. Evidently made of some material non-conductive of the fatal sound.”
Harkness stood up from his examination of the cabinet, and lighted a cigarette.
“Fu Manchu planned to leave no evidence, Mr. Merrick,” he remarked. “We found a small, but I guess effective, time-bomb inside this thing! Dakin worked with a bomb-disposal squad in England in the war. He’s an expert. He’s out in the kitchen fixing it.”
“You see, Merrick?” Nayland Smith rapped. “I’m naturally proud of Scotland Yard, but your F.B.I, isn’t without merit. What d’you make of that set, Harkness?”
“This is by no means an ordinary radio set, Sir Denis. It’s some kind of transmitter. Though what it transmits and where it gets it from are mysteries. We haven’t tinkered with it. That’s a laboratory job. But Dakin thinks it can convert all sorts of sounds into that one, high, inaudible note on which we had a report from Number One. Evidently this note doesn’t become dangerous until it has passed through the special receiver——”