William Le Queux - The Gay Triangle - The Romance of the First Air Adventurers

Dick was intensely interested and amused by his skill and courtesy. None the less the position was most dangerous. He realised fully that – as was indeed the fact – the officer might be one of Mestich’s lieutenants, and unless he could be satisfied their chances of getting away from Langengrad were trifling.

At length he seemed satisfied that Dick was really what he pretended to be, and finally left them with a courteous farewell, having accepted a glass of slivovitza – or plum gin – the liqueur of the Galdavians – and chatted for a time on ordinary topics.

“That man is dangerous, Dick,” whispered Yvette when he had gone. “We shall have to be most careful. I wish I knew how much he knows, or suspects.”

They were soon to learn how acute this visitor really was!

Shortly after, Dick, smoking an exquisite cigarette such as can only be bought in Langengrad, a dark coat thrown over his evening dress, left the hotel quite openly, but keenly on the alert. He suspected he might be followed, a premonition that was to prove useful.

He strolled idly through the broad Kossowska agog with evening life, gradually working his way towards the rendezvous, and keeping a sharp look out. Soon he picked out the figure of a man who always seemed to be about fifty yards behind him. A few turns through side streets confirmed his suspicions; clearly, he was being “shadowed!”

Dick Manton’s brain always worked rapidly in a crisis. Obviously the man must be got rid of. So he speedily formed a plan.

Strolling down the alley behind the old storehouse, Dick marked the exact locality of the clematis-grown doorway, passed it and then turned, so timing his movement that he and his pursuer met exactly outside the door. It was the agent of political police who had interrogated him after dinner!

Further pretence was useless, and Dick came straight to the point.

“To what am I indebted for Monsieur’s very polite attentions?” he demanded bluntly.

The stranger shrugged his shoulders insolently.

“Langengrad at night is not too healthy for foreigners,” he replied with an obvious sneer, “and of course we feel responsible for – ”

He got no further. Dick’s clenched fist jerked upward with every ounce of his strength and skill behind it. Taken utterly by surprise the police agent was caught squarely on the point of the jaw and went down like a log.

Dick tapped at the door, which was instantly opened by Fédor, and together they dragged the unconscious officer inside. A moment later he was securely bound, gagged and blindfolded.

Dick was now thoroughly alarmed about Yvette. Would she be followed, and if so, could she win clear?

Here fortune favoured them. Apparently the police official, whatever his suspicions were, had meant to make sure of Dick, knowing that Yvette alone could not escape him. A few minutes later they heard her knock, and soon all three were in the house.

“Safe enough now,” said Fédor laconically as he led the way through piles of stored goods to an upper room at the top of the building.

The room was faintly illuminated by a gleam of moonlight which came through a skylight in the roof, and when a small lamp was turned on Dick looked around him with keen interest. Filthily dirty, and apparently unused for years, the room was crammed with a heterogeneous mass of canvas packages and wooden boxes. The only window was covered with shutters through which circular holes had been bored to admit light, but these were covered over with flaps of felt. The dust of years lay thick everywhere.

Dick’s attention was instantly centred on a large, square table in the middle of the room.

Upon the table stood what appeared to be a big camera, its lens pointing to the window, with a screen of ground glass at the back of the camera exposed. A few feet behind, on a tripod, stood a small cinema apparatus with the lens aperture directed at the ground glass plate of the camera. To each ran electric wires from a bracket on the wall of the room. The whole of the electrical apparatus was weird and complicated.

There were also on the table two head telephones connected by wires to the horn of what looked like a large phonograph.

“Now, Mr Manton,” said Fédor in a low, intense voice, “I will show you my new apparatus. Mademoiselle Pasquet knows about it.”

Dick was breathless with excitement. Yvette’s story of Fédor’s wonderful invention had filled him with keenest curiosity.

“If you will look through one of the holes in this shutter,” Fédor went on, “you will see, directly opposite, the window of Mestich’s dining-room. The curtains are drawn, but you will see the room is lighted inside. He and his friends have been there for some time; apparently they have been awaiting Horst.” Dick looked through the hole and saw the lighted window. “Now, come and look at the screen,” urged the Count.

As he spoke he touched an electric switch. Immediately a soft purring noise came from the camera and on the screen there showed a vivid well-focused picture of a room with about a dozen men seated round a long table. The interior of the closed room was revealed by the new invention. At the head of the table, facing the camera, sat a big, soldierly man whom Dick at once recognised, from his published photographs, as General Mestich.

Fédor rapidly named the others – Bausch, Horst, Colonel Federvany, leader of the Parliamentary Opposition, several officials of the Galdavian Government and War Office, and two or three Jew financiers, one of whom named Mendelssohn Dick knew to be of international reputation.

The marvellous picture was framed in a solid black outline. It gave a curious effect, just as though one were looking from the darkness into a fiercely lighted cave.

Dick was almost stupefied with astonishment.

“Do you mean to say that that is the room in the house on the opposite side of the road?” he asked.

“Certainly I do,” said Fédor with a grim smile.

“But how is it done?” demanded Dick, aghast. “The shutters are closed here and the curtains drawn on the other side.”

“It’s a new electric ray I stumbled upon quite by accident,” Fédor explained. “I was experimenting, and found it. It passes quite readily through wood, fibre and fabric, in fact through almost anything except stone, mica, and metal. That is why you see only part of the room; the walls cut off everything except the space directly behind the window. If the table were in the corner of the room they would be safe enough – if they only knew!”

“Marvellous!” Dick ejaculated.

“This new ray is projected from these two rods of silenium,” the Count went on, “and for some reason which I cannot explain it follows the direction of the longitudinal axis of the metal. Thus any object at which the rods are pointed is rendered luminous by the ray on the screen, which is coated with the barium sulphate used in X-ray work. It can be photographed by the cinema and we shall have evidence enough to hang the lot.”

Then he paused for a few seconds.

“Now we must begin,” he said suddenly. “They are just about to start. Hold the telephone receivers to your ear. Mademoiselle will look after the cinema.”

Picking up the receiver, Dick heard a voice speaking clearly and earnestly. It was evidently that of General Mestich, who, as he saw by the screen, was on his feet and speaking. The language, of course, he did not understand, but Fédor, who was also listening, became excited and snapped on a switch which started the phonograph. In the meantime Yvette was turning the handle of the cinema camera.

“Here it comes,” Fédor ejaculated a moment later, and Dick saw General Mestich take from his pocket a big blue document which he unfolded and spread on the table before him. Bausch at the same time produced a similar paper.