by Van Powell
Chapter 18 A LETTER ROGER HAD NOT SENT
Reunion with Grover and the laboratory staff, was, as Tip put it, "thebest part of assimilating Tibet." He explained that he meant "taking in"the country.
Roger agreed with his spirit if not with his choice of words.
It did give him a little twinge of dismay, a slight blow to his vanity,to discover that during his absence Toby Smith had been put to work inthe stock and supply department. Toby Smith, who had sold them thepriceless emerald Eye of Om for a movie camera!
At once Roger pushed away the feeling of disappointment and did not letit become envy. This world and its work, he realized, had to keepmoving, no matter who dropped out. Instead of being hurt, he dismissedhis emotion by telling himself that it showed that any person, no matterhow able, could be replaced. The important idea to have, he toldhimself, was that if one made one's self so capable as to be missed whenaway, more than that could not be done.
After a while he was glad he had not cherished mean feelings, for Tobyhad not replaced him. He had merely done his best. Roger, as the staffsoon let him know, had been missed for his competent way of handlingneeds, keeping everything neat and available, and being cheerful anduseful under any circumstances.
"Am I glad you're back!" Toby hailed him. "This chemistry is too muchfor me. One day Mr. Zendt asks for me to pack some frozen H--two--Oaround a can of stuff. How'd I know the man wanted ice?"
"It takes study to understand the chemical symbols," Roger said.
"Yeh. And they have so many things that sound safe, and they're dynamitein disguise. Like a guy wanted some citric acid, and I got picric acid,and I spilled some and was swabbing it up with cotton, and I used it toswab up something else--I forget what, but when I was going to chuck itin the furnace, they almost had a fit. It had turned into lyddite orsome other sort of explosive. Looked like the same cotton to me."
"I never could get them sodium calorides straight, neither," Potts tookup the complaint against chemistry's "cheating" symbols. "They say it'smade out of a gas in the ocean. And the ocean's _water_, and here comesgas, and they put metal, mind you--sodium--on top of it, and it turnsout to be common table salt."
"It's sodium chloride," Roger corrected him, "not caloride."
"And they talk the craziest lingo, here," Toby insisted. "Mr. Ellisonasked for motor brushes, so I looked, and the only brush I could findwas what we sweep up dust with, so I took that. Was he mad!"
Roger's return to his duties in charge of stock was acceptable!
Grover, when the celebrations were concluded and routine had beenresumed, sat down in the private "thinking den" as Roger called hisoffice, and chatted.
"We have quite a few new interests," he gave information. "Mr. Ellisonhas perfected his speed camera with stroboscopic lamps so strong thatthey beat sunshine. He can't use a shutter: nothing mechanical can bemade to work as fast as he wants it to. So he uses alternate flashes ofthe lamp, and his film runs so fast past the aperture that not evendaylight fogs it. Of course you know he was busy with it, but you don'tknow that he has succeeded in perfecting it, and is studying someamazing chemical and other operations of Nature.
"Mr. Zendt has brought in rather an unusual man for us. He was anastrologer--a man who reads 'destiny' in the planets by making a chartof the zodiac for the moment a person was born. He used to sell his'fortunes' at so-much a 'destiny' on a Coney Island boardwalk.
"Now, though, he has turned scientist."
His interest, Grover explained, was in studying in a scientific way thereactions of cells, tissues, plant and animal life to various rays oflight, heat and other frequencies of vibration. His theory was that asthe sun awakened life in the Spring, as the moon partly governed tides,so other planetary vibrations, reflections and modifications of sunrays, made changes in chemical constituents of cells; and if plants weremade up of cells, and if animals ate the plants and in their own bodiesmodified and incorporated these cells, then the rays must act on animalsalso; and from that, to saying they influenced the bodies of men in someway was not a far step.
With telescope, vibration-recorders, ray-filters, lamps and spectrumdevices he was carrying forward experiments in the room next to Roger'ssupply department.
"You will probably have to help Astrovox--he says he is 'the voice ofthe stars!'--with his apparatus," Grover added.
The most interesting point to Roger was the fact that nothing new hadoccurred in their mysteries.
"I guess everything is settled," Roger declared. "With the Eye in itsplace, there isn't any more danger for Doctor Ryder, and I saw Mr. Clarkexchange the one he had for it, and even helped.
"The big jewel was in a sort of depressed place, with prongs to holdit," he reconstructed the event, "and we found a way to make the prongsloosen, by working out that the gem had to be put in, and it was toofinely cut to enable them to hammer the prongs down, so we hunted forsome secret springs, and the Buddha image had a finger that could bebent back, and it turned the prongs outwards, so we substituted the realgem and then set the prongs, and all was well."
"I am not satisfied about the business, though," Grover stated. "In thefirst place, although we have explained a good deal, and what you sayabout replacing the gem is true, some of the manifestations weexperienced are sticking in the back of my head. They seemed so--so 'outof character' with what Tibetans, or gem thieves either, would havedone."
"But if the gem is replaced and there isn't any more need for the'manifestations,' we won't have any more, and we can forget the wholething."
Grover smiled.
"Suppose that a series of experiments were going forward to find a moredurable resistance wire for rheostats," he suggested, "and the firm thatcommissioned us said to drop it, how would you want to do?"
"The same as you always do in such a case, Grover. Go through with it. Isee your idea."
The sound of the Voice of Doom, he asserted, was explained. There reallyhad been such a natural phenomenon, caused by wind let into a tunnel andmaking the sounds through the shape like a whistle in the tunnel and inthe Buddha image.
"But how did it get on the records?"
Roger was equally unable to answer that.
"Besides," Grover insisted, "those priests are curious folk. You saw thegem replaced, and to white people that would end the need for stalking aculprit; but they seem bent on punishing people."
"'Seem'?" Roger caught the present tense.
"Why, your own letter says so."
"My--which letter?"
"The last one you wrote. It came yesterday."
Grover drew from the drawer an envelope postmarked, as Roger saw, fromBombay. They had come on down the caravan trails, until they had met anEnglish airplane that had been arranged for. It had "set down" on theplain. In that they had flown to India, leaving their stuff to bebrought along by the next caravan and shipped home.
The address seemed very like his own handwriting--close enough to havefooled Grover, evidently.
And yet--he had been on a packet boat, bound for Europe, on the dayshown by the postmark.
Quickly, startled, he opened the letter. In the same close imitation ofhis exact, clear script, he read:
Bombay, before sailing.
Dear Grover,
Well, we are homeward bound now. At the cost of a radio and camera left in the Lamasery of the Holiest Ones, I abandoned them. So far, no event has come from my visit there. But of course with the Eye of Om stolen, the Guardians of the Eye may strike. In haste, to catch the mail, I am,
Affectionately, Your cousin.
Roger looked up.
"But the Eye of Om was replaced! I helped."
"Then why did you write?----"
"I was on a boat when that letter was posted, Grover!"
He bent forward, earnest
and eager.
"Who?--And the Eye was _not_ sto----"
His lips closed. His face changed.
He remembered something.
It was unjust to let it mean anything. But----
Why had Potiphar Potts gone back to that secret tunnel?