The Radiant Shell | Page 7

* * * * *
A subdued cheer answered the man's words--while Thorn stared at the
packet of papers with unbelieving eyes. It had never occurred to him
that the Ziegler plans might be in that very room, on the table with the
rest of the welter of letters, thumbed documents, and cups and saucers.
And there they were--the vital projector plans--not in a safe or hidden
in some fantastic place, but right before his eyes!
Involuntarily his hand extended eagerly toward the packet, then was
withdrawn. Not now. He was invisible--but the papers, if he grasped
them, would not be. Clenched in his unseen hand, they would be
perfectly visible, moving in jerks and starts as he raced for the door.
Like lightning his mind turned over one plan after another for making
away with that precious packet. Each scheme seemed impossible of
fulfilment.
"The biggest difficulty is in getting them out of the country," the spare,
elderly man was saying. "But we have solved that. Solved it simply. I
myself shall bear them, sewn in my clothes, to our native land. The
American authorities could search, on some pretext, any other of our
number who tried to smuggle them out. But me they dare not lay a
finger on. That would be an overt act."

Thorn's thoughts whirled desperately on. Wait till later and follow
whoever left the room with the plans? But he hated to let them get out
of his sight.
And at this point he became suddenly aware that the man named Kori
was gazing fixedly at him.
Thorn was between the section of the table where Kori sat, and the
angular buffet-end. Kori could not possibly see anything but the
shining mahogany, thought Thorn. And yet the man's eyes were
narrowing to ominous 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-line
arrangement, allowing light rays to penetrate through to his body
instead of diverting them to form a pocket of invisibility around him?
The film had never acted like that before--but never before had Thorn
applied it to living flesh with its disintegrating heat and moisture.
"Excellency," said Kori at last, a hard edge to his voice, "look thou at
that 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 short
duration.
"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 at
Thorn.
"There--seest thou anything out of the ordinary?"
"I see nothing," said the leader, after a moment. "Thine eyes, Kori, are
not good."

"They are the eyes of a hawk," said Kori stubbornly. "And they see
this--the vertical line of the end of that buffet does not continue
straightly up and down. At its middle, the line is broken, then continues
up--a fraction of an inch to the side! Like an object seen under 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
he thought 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
as it did! Something--"
"Art thou attempting to say a spy listens unseen in this room?"
demanded the gray-mustachioed Arvanian.
"Something is odd--that is all I say."
* * * * *
All eyes were ranging along the wall against which Thorn leaned his
back. All eyes finally turned to Kori. "It is nonsense." "I see nothing
whatever." "Kori has drunk of champagne in place of tea!" were some
of the exclamations.
And then occurred the thing that, in Thorn's perilous position, was like
the self-signing of his own death warrant.
He sneezed.
That agony of helplessness, as a man's nose wrinkles and twitches
and--in spite of the most desperate attempts at repression--the betraying
sound forces its way out! How many men have lost their lives because
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 it

frantically, with life itself at stake. But he could not hold it back. In his
naked body, beginning to burn with fever from the long-clogged pores
and insulated not at all by the film from the coolness of the room, 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