The Mystery of the Fifteen Sounds

by Van Powell

  Chapter 11 A PUZZLING THUMP

  While Tip was rushed out to the street, to drive Grover's car to andfro, and all around, in pursuit of the elusive, uncanny pair--or had theman left Doctor Ryder elsewhere?--Roger made the routine photographicstudy of every place that could give a clue to that almost spectralarrival, manipulation of a safe, and retreat.

  If only, Roger thought, as he made wide-angle and micro-lens exposures,if only Tip, excited, had not fumbled that switch!

  Had he gotten the lights on a few seconds sooner, they might have seenwhat was going on, or could have seen the departing figure. If someonehad been set to watch down cellar! If----!

  No use bewailing the past. No use wishing the past could be altered.Doctor Ryder was evidently a prisoner. His gem--the Tibetan jewel, wasgone. The Voice of Doom had spoken, but it had apparently turned out tobe some person known to the doctor, whom he had recognized, and hadidentified for them.

  Tip came dashing back. The car had been taken. Later a policemanreturned the abandoned vehicle, and Tip had more photographs to make ofits wheel, door-grips, seats, pedals.

  Tracks in the soft smeared stuff with which Grover had made such cluespossible, they found in plenty from coal pile upstairs and straight tothe safe, and, less defined, returning cellarward.

  Only one set! Great, over-size tracks. Defeat again, as Roger realized.Someone had worn huge boots! The shoe-size was unguessable from thoseelephantine clues.

  Gloves, as well as boots, left them no usable evidences.

  Roger, turning over to Tip the final stages of his work, went to Grover,who sat in the screening room, as dawn broke, and brooded. It seemed toRoger that his clever cousin, so often hoodwinked and made cheap by someseemingly more astute operator, was discouraged and certainly baffled.

  "Don't lose heart," Roger urged, "we'll get everything to come outright. All you need is one tiny hint of the truth."

  "I must have a dozen," groaned his cousin. "What good are they? My witsseem to be fogged." He looked disheartened. "I can't get my old sense ofproportion. Everything seems crazy and impossible. You can't enter anelectrically sealed room! You can't open a safe protected by water-jetsand high voltage streams. You can't take camera pictures of animalsjumping around where no animals are visible to the eye!"

  "_I_ can't," Roger tried to be jolly and pretend to make a joke. "But_you_ will see how somebody else did. When we had that mystery about therevengeful man who nearly sent a chemist crazy, all you needed was onehint. I happened to be lucky enough----"

  "Smart enough!"

  "Well--I caught the sound that got me named the Ear Detective. I'm goingto live up to my reputation."

  He crossed and stood in front of the downcast cousin.

  "_You_ solved the puzzle. You were called, in magazine articles intrue-mystery write-ups--and by the newspaper men--the Mystery Wizard,who solved scientifically from one tiny sound-clue thathaunted-laboratory thing. You'll do the same with this."

  Grover failed to snap out of his dejection.

  "You run up and get out your requisitions for needed supplies," Groversuggested. "I will check up that Clark man, and try to work out a courseof action."

  Roger obeyed.

  His work was light, and after laying out dark-room supplies, a set ofnew distributor points and a replacement insulator on their high-voltagetransformer line, and a few other needs, he sat down to try to think outsome way to help Grover.

  With pencil and paper he carried out a decision made during their chat.

  In a list, on the order they had come, he put down the sounds he thoughtmight be important, and even those that did not seem to have any bearingon the mystery. Opposite them, he set down as many interpretations as hecould figure out.

  His list, finished, he scanned thoughtfully. It ran:

  _Sound_ _Meanings_

  Clicks and hisses on Claws on glass cage. Rats clawing at the film. glass inside to get out. Might be a clue to something. A faint click in A distant relay switching in on a heating headset. oil-burner. Some electrical device somewhere. Does not seem much because it didn't have any effects after it. A thump in the corner Some trash in the corner shifted. A film in of the upstairs room its can shifted. The wall contracting. before I started the Plaster fell. It started me taking pictures camera. that turned out to have animals, when none were there, but I do not see any bearing on our case. The Voice of Doom. A hoarse voice coming from a room with nobody there. Ventriloquism. Important, but how? The Voice of Doom's cry. Either somebody screaming and being tortured, or somebody pretending it. Or some natural sound like a fog-siren. Must be important. Might be a clue to some place or person. The last two on a Both sounds just like before and clear. Same record. meanings I think. Must be clues. But how? The record of same in Like the others, only rougher as if it had Dr. Ryder's room. been made with the needle out of exact adjustment, but strong sounds. The Doctor's voice Had waits between sentences. Was his voice, after the Voice of though. Other one answering not audible Doom. with 3 stages audio. Ticks or drip-drip. Must have been safe combination being operated. How would it be known? Not to a stranger. Doctor Ryder couldn't get it. Grover leaves no memoranda on it. Both alarms at home at Can't mean anything, know what it was, but it start. was a sound-clue in a way. No fire. Why did fire alarm go off? How start? Monkey? Kangaroo hitting it with paw?

  He seemed not to remember any more. He studied his list, trying to findothers to add, new interpretations; but to no avail.

  He thought that if he tried increasing and adding radio-frequency tuningand amplification to his speaker-circuit--make it a regular radio, infact, he might get any possible radio sending if that could account forthe silent spaces on the last record.

  He made his circuits up, set the electric pick-up over the start of therecord; but with the new hookup he got no new slant.

  Only one small addition to his list of sounds, bringing his total up toeleven sound-clues--possibly--was the little thump, or thud that theneedle transmitted before starting in on the voice with no speakeranswering in its silent waits. Roger could get no further.

  He took his series of eleven sounds, including the alarm bell and thethump that could have been a tiny flaw of the record just on the soundtrack, and went to Grover.

  "Here are the sounds," he declared. "Maybe one will clear up all yourtangles."

  At least, studying the list, Grover was more alert, less depressed,Roger saw with relief.

  He examined the last-made record for the fault that made the odd jarringof its recording. No flaw showed, even under magnification.

  "It's actually part of the record," he got Grover to add to his list ofnotes; and then he said to his cousin, "it may mean that the locks wentoff, somehow, just there."

  "But it doesn't record the re-locking, so that doesn't fit."

  "If only we could see any cause for that thumping sound," Rogerreflected out loud. "We might have one more real clue."

  If only he had been able to decode the key hidden there!