by Van Powell
Chapter 8 BASKETBALL AND BRAINS
"Admitting your cleverness," Grover, informed by Roger, was more thansurprised, "I still find it hard to accept your deductions."
"I don't deduce anything," Roger argued, "I only got the facts. I thinkI would almost as soon suspect you as to suspect Mr. Zendt, or Mr.Ellison. But----"
"The appearances certainly look bad," Grover agreed.
Zendt, quiet, calm, thorough, had been in Australia, his own recordattested. Mr. Ellison, than whom no one was more clever in electricalmatters, had built power plants for a big utility company, some of hiswork having been in Calcutta and Karachi, both Indian cities.
"I will watch them unobtrusively," Grover stated, "while you do anerrand for me."
Roger waited for instructions.
"I went to the address given by Doctor Ryder, just to check up and seeif his fantastic story had any basis of fact," Grover told his cousin."Sure enough, there was dull-witted Toby Smith, and when I representedmyself as an attache of a museum--I am, you remember, one of thesub-committee on Egyptian Embalming research--the young fellow, abouttwenty-two, promptly enough produced and let me study the memento of hisadventurous trip into Tibet. He certainly does not realize its value,and to me, inexperienced as I am, it appears to be a marvel of Nature'scrystallizing stresses, as well as a credit to the Tibetan jeweler'scraftsmanship."
Roger was all ears.
"To him it was a souvenir, with little other value--a bit of art-glass,he told me he supposed it was.
"I bought it. You are to go and get it."
"Why wouldn't he let you bring it?"
"I thought of the possibility of being watched----"
Oh, boy! was Roger's mental comment.
"I satisfied myself that I had not been; however, I had arranged to haveyou take him, in return, a small moving-picture hand-camera that he hadconfided to be his heart's desire. In exchange, he will surrender to youa large envelope which will contain, disguised in heavydocumentary-looking papers, the art-glass." Grover smiled amusedly.
"And if you have any matches or duplicates in your stamp collection, youmight get intimate enough to trade for some of his foreign over-stock ofstamps."
"I'll take a batch of duplicates," agreed Roger.
His taxi, depositing him at the address given by Dr. Ryder, waited.
The Smith chap, he found, was intensely interested in collecting, andhad a fine collection of stamps; in fact, he spent most of his smallearnings as a dishwasher, on philatelic prizes.
He and Roger grew intimate and compared notes, exchanged stamps, andchatted about the Tibetan expedition Smith had joined as a young man,several years ago, he claimed.
He told about a Devil Dance, a religious rite, he had seen, wherein allthe devils and evil spirits were represented by disguised andhorrible-looking men, who chased a wildly terrified human soul, as a boyrepresented himself to be in the pantomimic dance. Exhausted, unable toescape, at last, he was supposed to be destroyed.
"It is supposed to show how we are chased by temptations and all," TobySmith explained; and he told of the Tibetan huts and other nomadicpossessions of the ever-moving grazers, and other interesting sights.Then he gave Roger the heavy, sealed packet--Roger felt the lumpsupposed to be the gem. Putting it in his coat with his stamp envelope,Roger took his leave a little regretfully. Smith had been an interestingperson to talk with.
However, he concluded, he would, as he had promised, help with the newand mystifying hobby of taking "movies."
The taxi--he had forgotten about it--was gone.
That did not much surprise Roger. The man had no doubt gone back to thelaboratory or had gone on elsewhere. In the first case they would havetold him they had a charge account with his company; in the other,knowing it, he would have picked up other fares and forgotten the youngman he had brought there.
Roger, rather closely confined indoors by his laboratory work of givingout hypo, sodium bisulphite, or, perhaps, electrical requisites, decidedthat the air would be beneficial. He walked.
It came to him after a few squares that Cousin Grover had thought ofbeing watched. Roger glanced around hastily.
He wondered if that slouching fellow with the low-brimmed hat, could befollowing him. He whirled in his tracks, to retrace his way past theother, but the youth turned in at a cigar store, and Roger, withreassurance making him whistle gaily, walked on.
Almost at the laboratory street he looked back again--and was puzzled.
The youth was on the trail, possibly, once more. But he had not keptclose; instead he was leaning against another smoking goods shopwindow-frame. Roger, thinking to himself that such espionage could do noharm, changed his course, and instead of going directly down to thelaboratory street, he turned into the one behind the laboratory, so thatif the youth had gone into the store to telephone his progress, he wouldprevent being met by anyone at the logical corner he had been headingfor. He would approach from the far end of the block.
To his dismay, this seemed to have been anticipated. There were about adozen boisterous, rowdyish young men and boys racing to and fro in arough, noisy game of tag. They might be innocent of any interest in himand his tight-buttoned coat; but he was taking no chances. He turned,retracing his way. To his dismay, one, being chased by the pack, camewith long legs down the street. Roger stopped at a drug store intendingto go in and telephone for Tip; but a woman with a baby carriageobstructed the entranceway.
He changed his plan quickly. Dodging around her, he walked rapidlytoward the candy factory adjoining the laboratory. The roughs werepassing him. Suddenly they were all thronging around, pushing, notcaring whether he got into the mixup of thrusting, hoarse-yellinggamesters or not. Roger felt a little bit dismayed.
One of the tougher and taller youths caught hold of his tightly buttonedcoat.
"What you buttin' in our game fer, huh?"
Roger spoke quietly.
"I wasn't."
The hold on his coat was too tight to break; they were behind him aswell, and escape was impossible.
"What you got in your coat--candy?"
"Nothing much but a packet of lyddite--the explosive. Be careful!"
His ruse was not successful. One caught his shoulder.
"What's that, now lyddite?"
The grip of the other held, and Roger felt the buttons rip out.
As quick as a flash he had his hands on the packets: feeling told himwhich was which. He snatched one out, and with his eyes fixed over theheads of those he faced, he shouted:
"Catch it, Tip. Here she comes!" and he made a move to back out whenthey would turn to see who he spoke to. But that ruse also failed and insudden desperation Roger realized that he must keep them from noticingthat his coat pocket still held something.
His basket-ball skill, that had enabled him to make goals by the tossesthat seemed impossible with antagonists all around him, he summoned tohelp in his crisis.
He had noticed in the second floor office window, the work basket somewoman had put aside, full of samples she had brought in from thewrapping machines.
With a deft flexing of muscles and a quick eye-glance to make sure ofdistance, wind and other factors, as hands stretched to snatch hispacket, Roger gave it the well-rehearsed basket-ward toss. He saw it, asbaffled, disconcerted youths looked up, fly in a clean trajectory tolose momentum just above the basket. It seemed to hover in the air. Itdropped into the basket. It stayed therein.
As if trying to recover a loss caused by such quick thinking, theringleader wheeled and raced into the building, evidently to ask for theenvelope thrown up by a boy at play.
Roger, as the rest hesitated, pushed through, and hurried for the lab.The others broke and fled.
"Tip," Roger greeted the handy man as he entered, "I'm going to phonethe people next door to hold an envelope full of stamps I threw into oneof their baskets to save it from a gang of rowdies. Will you go andrecover it, please? I have to del
iver a more precious pack to mycousin."
Tip brought back the stamps, quite safe.
And, also quite safe, their strong-box held a scintillating, vivid,thousand-faceted emerald, flashing its sun-fires of refracted light; asit had done when in the forehead of the Buddha it had symbolized, theall-seeing, all-ways-looking Eye of Om!