him--"shall deliver mighty America to us!"
* * * * *
A subdued cheer answered the man's words--while Thorn stared at thepacket of papers with unbelieving eyes. It had never occurred to himthat the Ziegler plans might be in that very room, on the table with therest of the welter of letters, thumbed documents, and cups and saucers.And there they were--the vital projector plans--not in a safe or hiddenin some fantastic place, but right before his eyes!
Involuntarily his hand extended eagerly toward the packet, then waswithdrawn. Not now. _He_ was invisible--but the papers, if he graspedthem, would not be. Clenched in his unseen hand, they would be perfectlyvisible, moving in jerks and starts as he raced for the door.
Like lightning his mind turned over one plan after another for makingaway with that precious packet. Each scheme seemed impossible offulfilment.
"The biggest difficulty is in getting them out of the country," thespare, elderly man was saying. "But we have solved that. Solved itsimply. I myself shall bear them, sewn in my clothes, to our nativeland. The American authorities could search, on some pretext, any otherof our number who tried to smuggle them out. But _me_ they dare not laya finger on. That would be an overt act."
Thorn's thoughts whirled desperately on. Wait till later and followwhoever left the room with the plans? But he hated to let them get outof his sight.
And at this point he became suddenly aware that the man named Kori wasgazing fixedly at him.
Thorn was between the section of the table where Kori sat, and theangular buffet-end. Kori could not possibly see anything but the shiningmahogany, thought Thorn. And yet the man's eyes were narrowing toominous slits as he started in his direction.
* * * * *
Thorn held his breath. Was the shielding film changing in structure?Were the repolarized atoms slowly losing their straight-linearrangement, allowing light rays to penetrate through to his bodyinstead of diverting them to form a pocket of invisibility around him?The film had never acted like that before--but never before had Thornapplied it to living flesh with its disintegrating heat and moisture.
"Excellency," said Kori at last, a hard edge to his voice, "look thou atthat buffet. No, no--the end nearest my chair."
"Well?" said the elderly man. "I see nothing."
Thorn breathed a sigh of relief. But the relief was to be of shortduration.
"Come to my place, if thou wilt, and see from here," said Kori.
The leader got up and came to Kori's place. Kori pointed straight atThorn.
"There--seest thou anything out of the ordinary?"
"I see nothing," said the leader, after a moment. "Thine eyes, Kori, arenot good."
"They are the eyes of a hawk," said Kori stubbornly. "And they seethis--the vertical line of the end of that buffet does not continuestraightly up and down. At its middle, the line is broken, thencontinues up--a fraction of an inch to the side! Like an object seenunder water, distorted by the sun-rays that strike the surface!"
Thorn fairly jumped away from the buffet and stood against bare wall.Fool! Of course the light refraction would not be perfect! Why hadn't hethought of that--thought to stand clear of revealing vertical lines!
"There, it is gone," said Kori, blinking. "But something, Excellency,made that distortion of line. And something made Soyo's wolfhound act asit did! Something--"
"Art thou attempting to say a spy listens unseen in this room?" demandedthe gray-mustachioed Arvanian.
"Something is odd--that is all I say."
* * * * *
All eyes were ranging along the wall against which Thorn leaned hisback. All eyes finally turned to Kori. "It is nonsense." "I see nothingwhatever." "Kori has drunk of champagne in place of tea!" were some ofthe exclamations.
And then occurred the thing that, in Thorn's perilous position, was likethe self-signing of his own death warrant.
He sneezed.
That agony of helplessness, as a man's nose wrinkles and twitchesand--in spite of the most desperate attempts at repression--thebetraying sound forces its way out! How many men have lost their livesbecause of that insistent soft nasal explosion which can be smothered,but not entirely hushed!
Thorn had felt the sneeze coming on for seconds. He had fought itfrantically, with life itself at stake. But he could not hold it back.In his naked body, beginning to burn with fever from the long-cloggedpores and insulated not at all by the film from the coolness of theroom, the seeds of that soft explosion had been planted--and they_would_ bear fruit!
So he had sneezed!
Instantly there was chaos. Men looked at each other, and back at theblank wall from which had come the painfully muffled sound. Then allsprang to their feet.
"Champagne, is it!" Kori exulted savagely. "Did I not say my eyes werethose of a hawk?"
"Double guard all doors!" roared the Arvanian leader, to the guardsoutside. "Someone is in the house! And you in here," he went on in alower tone, "see that this unseen one dies!"
Soyo and several other men whipped out automatics and pointed them atthe wall. Thorn dropped to the floor. But with his quick action cameKori's voice.
"No, no! The sword, gentlemen. It is not so noisy, and covers a widersweep."
Thorn shivered. Far rather would he have had bullets as his lot thancold steel. The prospect of being hacked to pieces, of graduallyemerging from invisibility as a lump of gashed and bleeding flesh,turned him faint.
* * * * *
The Arvanians split up into orderly formation. Two went to guard thedoor to the butler's pantry, and two to cover the closed sliding doorsto the outer hall. Six, with drawn swords sweeping back and forth beforethem, walked slowly toward the wall from which the sneeze had come.
Thorn set his jaws--only just catching himself in time to prevent hislips from opening in the half-snarl instinctive to the most civilized ofmen when danger is threatening. That lip motion would have revealed histeeth for an instant!
The sensation of perspiring heavily flamed over him again. There were somany trifling things to keep in mind! And each, if neglected, meaningcertain death!
The nearest of the marching six stopped with his foot almost touchingThorn's hand. The dancing sword the man carried almost grazed thescientist's shoulder on its down sweep.
Thorn could not stay there. Lying flat along the baseboard, he would bestabbed at any instant by an inquiring sword point.
The six spread a little. A very little. But there was room enough forThorn to slide between the two men nearest him and roll soundlesslyunder the table.
There was no sanctuary for him there. The cursed Kori, with his hawkeyes, glanced under the table after stabbing vainly along the wall.
"The carpet!" he bellowed. "See how the nap is pressed down! He is underthere, comrades!"
The thrusting swords raked under the table a half second or so afterThorn had rolled out the other side, upsetting a chair in his hurry.
"After him!" panted Soyo. "By the living God, this is wizardry! But hemust not get away--"
"He won't!" snapped the elderly leader. "Men, form a line at the far endof the room and march slowly, shoulder to shoulder, to this end. The spymust be caught!"
* * * * *
The move was executed. All the men in the room, save the four guardingthe doors, lined up and advanced slowly, swerving and slashing theirswords. Like a line of workers hand-harvesting a wheat field theycame--foot by foot toward the corner where Thorn turned this way andthat in a vain effort to escape.
The line reached the table. Over and under and around it the swordsslashed viciously, leaving no space unprobed.
Thorn clenched his fists. He gazed at the packet containing the Zieglerplans. He gazed at the guarded door leading back to the kitchen. Then hetensed himself and leaped.
"The plans!" shouted Kori hoarsely. "Look--"
The vital packet, as far as the eye
could see, had suddenly grown wings,soared from the table top, and was floating rapidly, convulsively,toward the door.
"Stop him!" yelled Soyo. "Stop--"
At that instant the heads of the two who guarded the door were dashedtogether. The door itself slammed open. The Ziegler plans sped into thebutler's pantry.
The door to the kitchen began to open just as Kori reached the pantry.An oath burst from the Arvanian's lips. He flung his sword. In the air,shoulder high, appeared suddenly a small fountain of blood. Kori yelledtriumphantly.
Thorn, feeling the warm drip following the glancing slash in hisshoulder, knew the veil of invisibility had at last been rent.Abandoning efforts at noiselessness, knowing that his whereabouts wasconstantly marked by the packet in his hand, anyway, he fled through thekitchen to the rear door.
The bolt jerked back, under the astonished eyes of the five guards whohad not yet realized precisely what the commotion was all about--and whoonly saw a packet of papers waving in mid-air, a trickle of bloodappearing out of nothing, and a bolt banging open in its slot for noreason whatever.
* * * * *
Thorn's fingers worked feverishly at the chain. But before he couldbegin to get it undone, the guards had recovered from their surprise andhad joined the Arvanians who poured in from the dining room under Kori'slead.
With a score of men crowding the kitchen, Thorn looped back in histracks like a hunted creature, and sought the cellar door. Four men heupset, one after another, aided by the fact that his twisting body couldbe only approximately placed by the papers and the wound.
Then Kori's hand swept through the air above the waving packet, to clampover Thorn's wrist.
With an effort--that bulged the muscles of that blacksmith's fore-arm ofhis till it seemed they must burst through the film, Thorn whirled Koriclear off his feet and sent him stumbling into the charge of threeguards. But in the meantime the cellar was barred to him by a doubleline of men.
Fighting for his life--and, far more important, the existence of hiscountry--Thorn lashed out with his invisible right fist while his leftclutched the plans.
A score of men arrayed in a death struggle against one! But the oddswere not twenty to one. Not quite. The score could mark Thorn's generalwhereabouts--but they could not see his flying right fist! That was aninvisible weapon that did incredible damage.
But if they could not see the fist to guard against it, they could seethe results of the fist's impacts. Here a nose suddenly crumpled and aninstant later gushed red. There a head was snapped back and up, whileits owner slowly sagged to the floor. And all the while the stilldripping wound and the packet of documents kept with devilish ingenuitybetween the body of some swordless guard and the impatient blades of theArvanian nobles.
Almost, it seemed to Thorn, he would win free. Almost, it appeared tothe Arvanians, the unseen one would reach the big window near thedoor--which the path of his wreckage indicated was his goal. But one ofthe wildly swinging fists of a guard caught Thorn at last.
It landed on the glass cup over his right eye, cutting a perfect circlein the skin around the eyesocket, and tearing the film over the glass!
* * * * *
Now there were three things about the lithe, invisible body that theArvanians could see: the crumpled papers, a slowly drying patch of bloodthat moved shoulder high in the air, and a blood-rimmed, ice-gray eyethat glared defiance at them from apparently untenanted atmosphere.
Then came what seemed must be the end. Soyo appeared in the pantrydoorway with a machine gun.
"Everybody to the end of the kitchen by the window!" he cried. "To thedevil with silence--we'll spray this room with lead, and let the soundof shots bring what consequences it may!"
The men scattered. The machine gun muzzle swept toward the place wherethe eye, the papers, and the blood spot were to be seen.
That spot was now at one end of the great kitchen range on which a fewcopper pots simmered over white-hot electric burners. At the other endof the range, in the end wall of the kitchen, was a second window. Itwas small, less than a yard square, and had evidently been punchedthrough the wall as an afterthought to carry off some of the heat of thehuge stove.
Soyo's face twisted exultantly. The machine gun belched flame. Chasingrelentlessly after the dodging, shifting blood spot, a line of holesappeared in the wall following instantly on the tap--tap--tap of thegun.
Eye and papers and blood spot appeared to float through the air. One ofthe copper pots on the range flew off onto the floor. The glass of thesmall ventilating window smashed to bits. In the jagged frame its brokenedges presented, the Arvanians saw for a flashing instant the seared,blistered soles of a pair of human feet.
"Outside!" bawled Kori. "He jumped onto the range and dove through thewindow! After him!"
* * * * *
After precious seconds had been wasted, the rear door was unchained andwrenched open. The Arvanians, swords and guns drawn, raced out to therear yard.
His Excellency's town car, that had been standing in front of the opengarage doors, leaped into life. With motor roaring wide open, it toretoward the Arvanians, some of whom leaped aside and some of whom werehurled to right and left by the heavy fenders....
Startled people on Sixteenth Street saw a great town car swaying downthe asphalt seemingly guided by no hand other than that of fate; somesaid afterward they saw a single eye gleaming through the windshield,but no one believed that. Equally startled people saw the car screech toa stop in front of the home of the Secretary of War. After it, scarcelya full minute later, three motors with the Arvanian coat of arms on themcame to a halt.
"My dear fellow," said the Secretary blandly to the livid ArvanianAmbassador, "no one has come in here with papers or anything else. I sawa man jump out of your town car and run south on Connecticut Avenue.That's all I know."
"But I tell you--" shrieked the Arvanian.
He stopped, impaled on the Secretary's icy cold glance.
"Your story is rather incredible," murmured the Secretary. "Valuableplans stolen from your Embassy by an invisible man? Come, come!"
Dark Arvanian eyes glared into light American ones.
"By the way," said the Secretary affably, "I am thinking of giving asemi-official banquet to celebrate future, friendly relations betweenour two countries. Do you approve?"
The Arvanian Ambassador tugged at his collar to straighten it. Worlddominion had been in his fingers--and had slipped through--but he wouldnot have been a diplomat had he let his face continue to express thebitterness in his heart.
"I think such a banquet would be a splendid idea," he said suavely.
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