by Van Powell
Chapter 5 WHAT ELECTRICITY COULD NOT CATCH
To Roger, the presence of Doctor Ryder showed that Grover suspected him.Of the whole staff only he had been told, included in this vigil.
The headset was shifted slightly away from his ears; Roger listened, asmidnight approached, to his cousin's chat with the experimenting medicalman.
"Of course I know that I am under suspicion," Dr. Ryder said. "Theculture was hidden in my section. Other things look bad----"
"Of the whole staff you are the only man I need _not_ suspect," Groversaw deeper into things than had Roger. "It is an old trick, to turnsuspicion toward an innocent man by 'planting' something."
That, Roger decided, was sounder sense than he had used. He hadforgotten to dig past appearances to the heart of truth!
"What do you expect will happen here?" asked the doctor.
"The miscreant will come, with his menagerie, for the priceless camphorsecret."
"Pretty smart stuff," broke in Potts, "coagulating camphor withkangaroos."
Coagulating was the wrong word, Roger knew; and the others saw throughthe meaning.
"Claws on glass implied something tall enough to reach up that high ontop of the cage," Grover explained. "The 'snake' trail and an animalwith a dragging tail 'coagulated.'"
"But why did the man take the white rats?" Potts was beaming, in thefaint glow from the bulbs in the shadow box; tickled that his word hadbeen so good; not dreaming that Grover was inwardly amused.
"With the same motive that makes a magician do meaningless movementswith his left hand while he really palms cards in his other hand," Dr.Ryder explained, "to make you look away from the real motive."
"And he brought the kangaroo and the ape to confusicate us," Potts wasbeing clever, he felt.
"I'd say the ape came so he could be used to climb down a rope, and goand open the cellar trap that had no beam-alarm," Roger spoke up. "Ilooked up notices in the theatre columns and there is an act that has aboxing kangaroo, and the critic called it 'she.' In the act, she 'bringsdown the house' when a fire is supposed to trap the trained rats on theroof of a little house, and 'she' makes everybody laugh by taking therats and putting them in the pouch they have to carry their young in."
"Oh, yes, that coagulates," Potts agreed.
Although all the others realized that the word meant to clot or curdle,and wanted to smile when it was used to mean "connects up," Potts, hadthey known it, was precisely correct--for they were to find that manydeductions certainly coagulated, in a broad way of speaking, the realtruth, instead of solving the mystery.
If clotting and curdling means to thicken and make lumpy, then as Pottssaid, Roger's explanation did exactly that to their deductivecleverness.
Roger, as the slow minutes dragged along, picked up with his headsetwhispers of the policemen outside a window, exchanging ideas about theirtedious watch; and even the slip and rattle of shifting coal in thecellar bin.
No invading menagerie, though, brought news to his intent ears.
A tiny, but sharp click broke a long silence. The oil-burner relays ofheating plants in adjoining buildings made such "static" on his homeradio, he knew, but the heat would not be used in the hour aftermidnight.
None of the apparatus or light was on the laboratory.
The interpretation Roger gave was that in moving he had jarred some poorconnection that made loose contact in his circuits; and he began testinghis wires at soldered points, seating tubes, and shaking headset bindingposts.
He did not succeed in locating the source of the single sound, becausethings began to happen.
From the darkness, and apparently from the upper floor, in a hollow,grave-yard sort of tone, an unexpected voice spoke.
Roger, with power full-on, got a roar, and dashed aside the set to savehis ear-drums, for a microphone had caught and had brought him what theothers heard naturally.
The voice spoke in English, low, deep, mournful and yet, somehow,menacing, as it said:
"_Hear me. I am the Voice of Doom!_"
Roger felt his blood "coagulate" in very truth. Grover, never more calm,although the unforeseen and uncanny call galvanized and terrified Pottsand made the Doctor's face look absolutely horrified, leaped up, andvanished out of the small pool of dull light from the shadow-boxedpanel. With the ease of familiarity, he got past their greattransformers, and the storage batteries from which direct current wasdrawn for certain types of experimentation. He avoided, in the gloom,the new high-intensity-spark mechanism, and took the stairs two at abound.
Roger, impulsively starting to follow, remembered his duty, and in spiteof his shuddering nerves and the cold fear always coming from anyuncanny and unexplained happening, he stuck to his post.
Doctor Ryder, attempting to follow, ran into the recording equipment andstopped, hesitating, as Grover, from above, threw on the lights. Rogergot the switch-snap, but it differed from his other "click."
"Nothing here," Grover called down. "Strange!"
"Potts," Doctor Ryder turned his head, half accusingly, "are you aventriloquist?"
"A----"
"Ventriloquist! Able to throw your voice so that it sounds as if it camefrom somewhere else than where you are."
"Are you?" asked Roger suddenly.
The other laughed.
Grover, leaving the lights going, came down, switching on illuminationall over the building; while several policemen came from concealment,blinking and staring around uncertainly, the experimenter in the brightlight walked over and sat beside Roger.
"Watch me closely," he half-smiled, but kept his eyes glancing aroundhalf fearfully. "I did not dream--it would happen--again--and here!"
He spoke as if to himself.
"No, that is not ventriloquism," he muttered. "It is some art of the FarEast, known to the Lamas of Tibet----"
Again, and in the same hoarse, menacing, hollow way, the sound wasrepeated:
"Hear me! I am the Voice of Doom."
Potts was shaking with fright. Uncanny and weird, the sound woke in therather poorly educated man all the primitive fears and superstitions ofhis ancestors.
Grover, listening with his head on one side, his eyes on the Doctor,spoke:
"He isn't a ventriloquist, Roger. The changes in muscular and otherthroat parts developed by constant ventriloquial practice, do not show.We took a film, remember, of just such throat development in connectionwith our research for the clue to our case when the deaf man 'heardthings.'"
Roger, recalling that in that case a tiny click had also come, when hehad listened on a headset, jumped to the conclusion that he had beforefound correct.
"Somebody is using Mr. Ellison's little radio test-sender," he declared,confidently.
Grover nodded. "Possibly. Go and see."
"His private locker needs a key that is in the safe."
"Never mind, then. I think you have the explanation, Roger."
Grover sat down again, relieved, as was Potts.
Dr. Ryder, though, seemed unconvinced.
"Sorry, but I must dispute your deduction," he asserted. "I have heardthat voice before, and it is sent by some Asiatic, wise in use of thehidden forces of Nature. It is a manifestation that is directly intendedfor me."
Roger stared at him.
"'Manifestation'? You mean--like thought transference or the 'ghosts'that spirit-mediums pretend to call on?"
"Only this is more sinister and terrible, because it is the way that theFar East makes known to some intended victim the fact that he is to bepunished."
He rose, and began to pace.
Roger, suddenly intent, caught at a passing "hunch."
"Appearances" could be falsified. It appeared to be fact that somethinguncanny was happening. Might it not be the same sort of misleading useof one hand to distract attention while the other did some trick, aswith the white rats that "appeared" to have been inoculated, wereapparently "stolen" and so on?
Quickly the
headset was put on. He cut the output strength to avoidhaving his ears blasted if the microphone upstairs picked up thatbooming, hollow voice again.
Grover, intently considering the Doctor's last words, spoke:
"What do you mean by saying that you are being warned by some occultmeans that you are marked to be a victim?"
The man addressed held up a hand.
"It will tell you!" His face was set; he was listening.
Again Roger heard the inexplicable sound.
This time, no voice! Beginning in a low moan, faint and very much likethe whine of a puppy that is hungry, it grew in volume, and its tonechanged from a high falsetto, running down the scale and then up again,in cycles, constantly growing louder, while Grover, again rushing to theupper floor, stood looking around as, with a great grinding and rumble,following the last piercing roar of the sound, there fell silence.
Doctor Ryder, rising, walked around the recording machinery and Mr.Ellison's newest camera, that worked with a stroboscopic lamp and ranits film so fast that no shutter was needed, as daylight did not act onit long enough in any spot to fog it.
"That," he called upward, "was the real Voice of Doom."
Grover, bidding Roger turn over the monitoring work to Potts, summonedhis younger cousin.
"Roger," as the hurrying figure came into the room with the vacant glassexperiment-cage, "are you afraid to stay up here?"
"Not much--but if I am, I will stay, just the same."
"Then set up that sound camera, with film, so you can take in every footof this partitioned room. Be ready, and if the voice comes again, switchon, for continuous takes."
"You think--anybody is hiding?"
"No. But a voice means something vibrating. I could not locate anything.The camera might do so."
He went down, to give Potts some instructions and took over themonitor's post while the handy man executed his order, which was to mixfresh developers and fixing baths, and to be ready for whatever Rogercaught.
Doctor Ryder, helpful and desiring, as he made plain, to take awayRoger's sense of fear by explaining how the Far East made so uncanny amanifestation by mental powers, handed him the can of non-flam negativeso that Roger lost no time in "threading up" and getting all ready forhis duty.
Alert and steady, in spite of his chill of nervous uncertainty as towhat might come next, Roger heard, seemingly from a corner of the smallroom, a thump.
"Start it!" gasped the man beside him.
But when two minutes of time had run out the film in his magazine andnothing more had come, Roger disappointedly took the film into the darkroom and changed the magazines, hurrying back.
Half an hour later, with nothing to break the tedium, the next amazingdevelopment came. Potts, in the dark-room, shouted, and tore out intothe light, waving a damp strip of film. He had developed the film on thechance that the thump had caused some change.
Instead, developing that film, he had brought, to wave before Roger'sstartled eyes, an impossible thing.
On that film, in a different position on each Frame, or individualpicture, a spectral monkey and an equally indistinct kangaroo hopped,bounced, and skipped, finally vanishing into thin air!