"I don't know. Some kind of a machine maybe."
They were in the hall moving quietly through the darkness. "Anything like that would probably be in a cellar or basement somewhere wouldn't it?"
"You'd think so. Under the biggest building I imagine."
"That's right here—the hotel."
"Let's look for a door."
They hunted quietly, making the sparest use of the pocket flashes they carried clipped in their breast pockets. But they found no cellar door, no basement entrance, and ascertained, finally, that the building stood on solid ground.
"We'll have to check the other ones," Brazier said.
They found what they were looking for under the restaurant. They broke in through the back door and found a trap behind the counter. Brazier lifted it.
A soft blue glow lit the narrow stairway and they went downward into a steel-walled room in the center of which stood a shining machine. Though inanimate, the bright metal monster seemed to possess a life force. Electrical impulses chuckled and muttered behind the glowing bulbs and dials that created mysterious profiles on its surface.
"Well I'll be damned!" Frank Brooks muttered. "You figured it was here. We looked for it—and found it! Now what I want to know is—"