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——”
“It’s the
All three turned in a flash. Lola stood there smiling at them. Sir Denis was first with a chair. Lola thanked him and sat down.
“If you feel up to it, Miss Erskine,” he said quietly, “perhaps you would explain in more detail.”
“I feel up to anything. Particularly, I feel like an idiot for getting hysterical and then passing out! You see, Sir Denis,
She glanced up as Dakin returned from the kitchen quarters.
“It’s harmless now, sir,” he reported to Nayland Smith. “We have saved
Another member of Harkness’s party appeared in the doorway.
“What now?” Harkness demanded.
“Doc Alex reports that he’s suffering from thundering concussion . . . but there isn’t a single bruise on his head!”
“Who’s this?” Brian asked excitedly.
“Sergeant Ruppert.”
“Sergeant Ruppert! Where did you find him?”
“In 420C, the apartment of our next-door neighbours,” Nayland Smith told him dryly, “while you were taking care of Miss Erskine.” He turned to the man at the door. “Does the doctor think he will recover?”
“He does, sir—and hopes there’ll be no complications.”
“They found a dead man in there, too, Mr. Merrick,” Harkness broke in. “You mightn’t recognize him, the way he looks now. But up till today we all mistook him for Sir Denis!”
“I know! But the man in a blue turban?”
“Prince Ranji Bhutani?” Harkness laughed. “He and his horrible-looking servant have vanished, of course. I don’t imagine the ‘prince’ was wearing his blue turban! They must have got away soon after strangling your double, Sir Denis. We had that pair under observation already and there’s a fifty-fifty chance we pick them up.”
“If Sergeant Ruppert was found there, they evidently got him, too!”
Ray Harkness shook his head. “Four guests on your floor, Mr. Merrick, checked out earlier today. We don’t
