A glint, as if of the sun shining on a pair of opera glasses could be seen from a window across the way.
"We are being watched," he said slowly, turning and looking at me fixedly, "but I don't dare investigate lest it cost the lives of more unfortunates."
He stood for a moment in deep thought. Then he pulled out a suitcase and began silently to pack it.
. . . . . . . .
Although we had not dared to investigate, we knew that from a building, across the street, emissaries of the Clutching Hand were watching for our signal of surrender.
The fact was, as we found out later, that in a poorly furnished room, much after the fashion of that which, with the help of the authorities, we had once raided in the suburbs, there were at that moment two crooks.
One of them was the famous, or rather the infamous, Professor LeCroix, with whom in a disguise as a doctor we had already had some experience when he stole from the Hillside Sanitarium the twilight sleep drugs. The other was the young secretary of the Clutching Hand who had given the warning at the suburban headquarters at the time when they were endeavoring to transfuse Elaine Dodge's blood to save the life of the crook whom she had shot.
This was the new headquarters of the master criminal, very carefully guarded.
"Look!" cried LeCroix, very much elated at the effect that had been produced by his infra-red rays, "There is the sign—the vase of flowers. We have got him this time!"
LeCroix gleefully patted a peculiar instrument beside him. Apparently it was a combination of powerful electric arcs, the rays of which were shot through a funnel-like arrangement into a converter or, rather, a sort of concentration apparatus from which the dread power could be released through a tube-like affair at one end. It was his infra-red heat wave, F-ray, engine.