Upon the table stood what appeared to be a big camera, its lens pointing to the window, with a screen of ground glass at the back of the camera exposed. A few feet behind, on a tripod, stood a small cinema apparatus with the lens aperture directed at the ground glass plate of the camera. To each ran electric wires from a bracket on the wall of the room. The whole of the electrical apparatus was weird and complicated.
There were also on the table two head telephones connected by wires to the horn of what looked like a large phonograph.
“Now, Mr Manton,” said Fédor in a low, intense voice, “I will show you my new apparatus. Mademoiselle Pasquet knows about it.”
Dick was breathless with excitement. Yvette’s story of Fédor’s wonderful invention had filled him with keenest curiosity.
“If you will look through one of the holes in this shutter,” Fédor went on, “you will see, directly opposite, the window of Mestich’s dining-room. The curtains are drawn, but you will see the room is lighted inside. He and his friends have been there for some time; apparently they have been awaiting Horst.” Dick looked through the hole and saw the lighted window. “Now, come and look at the screen,” urged the Count.
As he spoke he touched an electric switch. Immediately a soft purring noise came from the camera and on the screen there showed a vivid well-focused picture of a room with about a dozen men seated round a long table. The interior of the closed room was revealed by the new invention. At the head of the table, facing the camera, sat a big, soldierly man whom Dick at once recognised, from his published photographs, as General Mestich.
Fédor rapidly named the others—Bausch, Horst, Colonel Federvany, leader of the Parliamentary Opposition, several officials of the Galdavian Government and War Office, and two or three Jew financiers, one of whom named Mendelssohn Dick knew to be of international reputation.
The marvellous picture was framed in a solid black outline. It gave a curious effect, just as though one were looking from the darkness into a fiercely lighted cave.
Dick was almost stupefied with astonishment.
“Do you mean to say that that is the room in the house on the opposite side of the road?” he asked.