“It’s the receiver that converts the sound,” a clear voice explained.
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, he” (she seemed to avoid naming Dr. Fu Manchu, as Nayland Smith had known others to do), “was good enough to give me all particulars before leaving me to be shattered. The transmitter, he informed me, is really a sort of selector, or filter. It picks up only certain high notes, vocal or instrumental. On an ordinary receiving set this would come through as atmospheric interference. It was the thing that Brian blew up which converted the sound to what he called ‘the super-aural key’ which shatters everything within range.”
She glanced up as Dakin returned from the kitchen quarters.
“It’s harmless now, sir,” he reported to Nayland Smith. “We have saved some evidence.”
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 know if any of them belonged to the gang. Only one, Mrs. Nadia Narovska, has disappeared like the ‘prince’ and left her luggage behind: Number 421. Said to be a very good-looker.”
“But she may be coming back,” Brian pointed out.
“The management report she came in only a few minutes before the elevator was stopped and the sergeant went on duty at the stair door. How did she get out?”
“But it would be impossible for her to have overpowered a big fellow like that!”
“If she belonged to Fu Manchu,” Nayland Smith said bitterly, “and she sounds like one of his women, nothing is impossible! I haven’t settled down yet to the fact that that cunning fiend has escaped me again. In my crazy over-confidence I missed my chance. It was my duty to the world when I stood before him to shoot him dead.”
He banged his fist into the palm of his left hand.
“They all slipped away in whatever time they had from the attack on Ruppert until Merrick and I came upstairs,” Sir Denis went on. “Once on street level, Manhattan was open to them. Our hush-hush policy has defeated its own ends.”
“It’s not so black as you paint it,” Harkness insisted. “We may have lost the secret of this wonderful air-cover, but if the price Uncle Sam had to pay for it was putting our defences in the hands of Dr. Fu Manchu, we gain more than we lose.”
Nayland Smith forced a smile.
“You may be right. Dr. Fu Manchu has still to get out of the country. . . . Oh, Merrick, Miss Erskine has passed through a frightful ordeal. I suggest you take her along for a champagne cocktail and a good dinner. Dine downstairs. I’ll page you when your father arrives. . . . We shall all have many things to talk about. . . . And I can see that you have a lot of things to say to Lola. . . .”