Читать книгу Whispering Death - Aidan de Brune - Страница 8

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The evil Dr. Night.

"SO Dr. Night robbed you of—something?" Bob Hardy spoke after a short pause. "And you come to me to recover it?"

Halliday shook his head.

"You may not be able to do that."

"Then why appeal to me?"

"Because years ago you fought Dr. Night and beat him."

"Hardly that." Bob smiled. "I had luck and the police on my side. Against me—But, tell me what Dr. Night has stolen from you?"

"The Whispering Death." Halliday spoke in a low voice. "No." He moved his hands impatiently. "He did not steal it; he took it."

"Leaving you an inadequate recompense?"

The Inventor swung his chair round and led into the building. As Ruth went to follow him he ordered her, brusquely, to go up to the house.

"Come in, Mr. Hardy." Halliday waved his hand in a sweeping gesture. "Welcome to my cave of dreams; my last interest in life."

"What is the Whispering Death?" Hardy glanced around a room that was partly laboratory and partly workshop.

"The most terrible engine of destruction ever evolved from man's brain." Halliday sent his chair, with a powerful push, along a low bench to a far corner. "Look, Mr. Hardy, here are photographs of my model. Unless you interfere, successfully, within a few days one of these machines will be hovering over Sydney, raining down death and destruction, with impunity."

Hardy bent over the photographs on the table. They showed what appeared to be an ordinary plane, yet there was something strange about it. He looked at the inventor.

"An aeroplane." He lifted his eyebrows slightly. "What is there about it, Mr. Halliday, to distinguish it from the dozens of ordinary 'planes that cross Sydney daily?"

"Look again." Halliday pushed his chair nearer the table. He lifted a pencil and tapped a section of the photograph. Hardy looked closer.

"You say this is a photograph of a model," he said at length. "Why—"

"A complete model. No. Look well, Mr. Hardy. Every detail of construction is there. What do you think is missing?"

"The propeller—yes—why, man, the machine has no engines. It's a glider, perhaps a sailplane—and you call it the 'Whispering Death!' Are you—"

"Can a sail-plane, or glider, travel at five hundred miles an hour?" There was gloomy triumph in the inventor's tones. "The Whispering Death will do that—possibly more. No, Mr. Hardy; the Whispering Death has no internal combustion engines. It is driven by a new force, the dream of scientists, but never before realised."

"And that is?"

The wheeled chair swung round and roiled to a bench in another part of the large room. Occupying the centre: of the bench was a large globe, set on-a spindle. Hardy immediately recognised a model of the earth.

Beside the sphere rested a delicate little model of an aeroplane, beautifully finished to scale and exact in detail. But the model, barely two inches long, bore no propeller. Halliday touched a switch and the globe started to revolve slowly. He touched another switch and from across the work-bench a powerful beam of light lit on the revolving sphere.

Again the inventor touched a switch. Hardy wondered, for nothing appeared to happen. The man in the wheeled chair lifted the little aeroplane and held it over the globe, about two inches above the surface. For a minute he held the 'plane, then released it. Instead of falling the model remained suspended above the globe.

"There is the Whispering Death. There is no weapon to equal it known to men. It has no engines, uses no petrol or oil. It has speed beyond the dreams of aeroracers. It is the super-aeroplane—mine."

The inventor's fingers went to a row of knobs on a board screwed to the edge of the bench. As he touched them, one after the other, the little 'plane circled, dipped and rose Hardy gasped in astonishment.

For minutes he stood, watching the little toy while the inventor played with the controls. He bent closer to the little machine, and then became aware of a slight, subtle sound, coming from it. For a long time he remained motionless, listening.

"The Whispering Death!" He straightened and looked at the inventor. "So that is why you named it the Whispering Death?"

The man nodded. "Where the sound comes from I cannot explain. There are no moving parts in the machine. Only in one way—" He broke off, suddenly.

"And Dr. Night stole that model—or rather, one like it?"

"Dr. Night stole a complete set of plans for a full-sized machine. He stole a full-sized machine, nearly completed." Halliday spoke bitterly.

"He was one of the burglars who broke in here?" asked Hardy.

"No burglar could enter here. This workshop is protected so well that it would be death to anyone who penetrated beyond that door without my permission. No, Dr. Night came through the door, a visitor."

"How, and when?"

"How he came to know of me I do not know." Halliday spoke without inflection. "He came here, he told me, having heard rumours that I had invented a new 'plane."

"Perhaps it was my vanity that betrayed me," the inventor continued. "I had spoken to no one of my experiments. I should have known that he must have spied to have learned my secrets. Instead, I invited him here and showed him that toy."

He pointed to the little toy continually circling the whirling globe.

"I explained to him the principle of my discovery. Somehow he drew me to talk. I told him of the dreams of power I had for my country when I had finished my experiments and had perfected my machine.

"Then, one day, he came here while I was working. I had come to look upon him as a friend. He said he wanted to help me, and laid on that bench banknotes for ten thousand pounds. That was not to be the price of the machine, it was money in advance to help me conclude my experiments quickly. I was to hire what help I required. As soon as possible I was to commence the erection of a full-sized machine. When that was built he would undertake the sale of it to the Australian Government."

"Why should he make the sale, and not you, direct?" asked Hardy.

Halliday motioned to his wheeled chair—to all that remained of his lower limbs.

"How am I to negotiate,'" he asked bitterly. "I am unknown, working in secret. How am I to travel about from Government office to office, interviewing many people; conducting negotiations on all sides. No, from the first I realised that I could not do that; that some day I should have to take someone into my confidence. I thought that I had found a trustworthy agent in Dr. Night—a rich man who would work for the good of his country."

"But you knew that he was not an Australian!" Hardy exclaimed in astonishment. "Dr. Night is an Asian—why, your daughter spoke to me of him as a Chinaman."

"I know now. I knew but a few days ago, when he came to see me and boasted of his power and his race. I did not know when he first came to me."

"How long is it since he first came to see you?" asked the journalist.

"Four months ago; that is two visits before he brought me the money Then I went to work and completed my experiments. He asked me for the plans to build a full-sized machine. Later he came here in a handsome car and drove me out to the factory where the machine was to be built. It was then I had my first doubts of him. The factory was manned, almost exclusively, by Asians. Only the manager and a couple of men—subordinates—were white."

"You gave him the full set of plans?' questioned the journalist.

"Everything except the key-plans to the secret power that lifts and flies the machine." The inventor answered. "That apparatus is small. Dr. Night suggested that I should manufacture that myself, to preserve my secret. I did."

"But, if you preserved the secret plan, what use were the other plans to Dr. Night?'

"I completed the secret apparatus about the time the rest of the machine was ready." Halliday paused. "Dr. Night suggested that he and I make a secret test of the machine the night before last! I was thrilled at the thought of ascending above the earth in the creation of my brain, and consented. He came for me that night in his car, accompanied by a couple of Chinese servants to carry me and the apparatus. They carried out the apparatus while Dr. Night waited with me, here."

"Well?" exclaimed Hardy, impatiently; yet he guessed what was to come.

"Suddenly Dr. Night commanded me to look at him. I did, and found myself held in thrall. I could not move, speak, or cry out. He left me like that, to await discovery by my wife and daughter, long after midnight. He drove away with the key-apparatus to my aeroplane."

"Then the mystery 'plane that flew over Sydney last night was the Whispering Death!" exclaimed Hardy.

"What do you mean?'" cried the inventor.

In a few words Hardy explained the happenings at the Mirror offices the previous night.

"That was my machine." Halliday raised himself in his chair with a sudden effort. "If I could get my hands on him!"

"What did he promise you for the 'plane?" asked Hardy, after a long pause. He could not think of Dr. Night descending to deliberate theft.

"Half a million pounds."

"Jumping tin hares!" Hardy could not restrain his laughter. "Why, that's the identical sum he proposes to blackmail the rich men of this city for."