The Mystery of the Fifteen Sounds

by Van Powell

  Chapter 21 TRAGEDY!

  Half way to the laboratory, Roger pulled up in his stride, half ready tolaugh at his stupidity. A joke? Of course.

  Potts, on Grover's instructions, had made the room installation. To "getback" at his chum for the suspicion about the Eye of Om, the handy mancould have made that "Fire" cry on a record, could have known how tobreak a light beam. He, alone, could have prepared the impregnable placeso that it might be entered, it seemed to Roger.

  A recording, he also knew, was the other end of a reproduction. To printa sound-track on a disk, one used a microphone; its diaphragm sentvibrations through a selenium cell and other apparatus until it actuatedthe recording diamond: to play it back, the process was reversed.

  The use of the diamond, instead of a smooth reproducing needle on ahardened surface, _could_ cause that high, thin, scratchy voice.

  "But Cousin Grover was not at home," his mind prompted, "and the doorwas open, and the light would not work. The lab. telephone was dead,too!"

  Perhaps Potts had tried a joke; but it seemed as if it had turned into awarning, a summons; because, when he reached the building, the door wasnot secured, no protective beam had been set; and in the main office, hesmelt the sharp, acrid odor of burned powder.

  A gun must have been fired in there, he reasoned. By whom? For what? Hismind raced to terrifying impressions. Explosion! Shot!

  The place was jet-dark. As he investigated he decided that odor wasstrongest close to the interviewing desk, pungent enough to choke him.

  Into the larger main room he made his way, finding the powder odor wasless strong beyond the main office as he switched on lights and tookbroader observations.

  On the large desk used for interviewing visitors he saw that the framedphotograph of his aunt, Grover's sister, had been knocked down, and layon its face. An inkwell, in a pool of black on the floor beyond thedesk, was shattered into large fragments, and tiny bits.

  He stood still, and shouted.

  "Tip! Tip! Potiphar Potts! Tip!"

  Getting no answer he raced across the chemical section to the man'ssmall quarters.

  The bed had been used, its covers had been thrown back, as if in haste.

  No Potts, as once before, stood tied to the bedpost.

  The room was empty.

  He shouted for Astrovox, feeling a strange desire to laugh at the soundof the name when it was shouted. "Astro--_vox!_"

  He called for his cousin.

  Then, with every light going, in spite of queer terrors, Roger made athorough search of the lower floor.

  That brought no result. Nothing seemed to have been moved and as far ashe could tell the safe was all right and the device that now made itsink into a channel in the cellar, so that a steel plate could slideover and make it impregnable, seemed to be in working condition.

  Reluctantly, forcing his dragging feet, he crept upstairs.

  No one was in sight. The old star-gazer was gone also!

  Roger stood, uncertainly glancing around.

  Had this been tragedy? A shot? At whom? Where were the rest?

  Of a sudden the threat in the note became his uppermost thought. Hadsomeone--or something!--drawn the rest away, and lured _him_ there?

  Roger, nervously, glanced around him.

  The innocent squirrels and rabbits and mice curled up in their temporaryrespite from the ray-baths. The machines set up earlier hummed quietly,recording, slowly moving the telescope, casting spectra of a star'slight in bands of greenish-brown, yellow and indigo on a flatpaper-table. Everything seemed innocent enough.

  But where, he mused, had the scientific star-student gone to?

  Where was Cousin Grover? And, above all, where was Tip, one out of allof them who ought to have been on duty, if not asleep.

  Roger glanced up at the clock.

  Not five, but two, was the hour toward which the smaller hand wasdropping as the minute hand marked the quarter-of.

  It _had_ been "fire" that his record had screeched at him.

  But there was no fire here!

  Roger began to feel somewhat like a person flying in an airplane for thefirst time, seeing everything else swinging beneath him, and feeling nomovement himself.

  It made him sickish.

  "Am I out of my mind?" he asked himself. "Is this a dream?"

  There must be some loose end of this amazing situation that he could gethold of, to reel in the story and steady his rapidly failing sense ofreality.

  The sound-camera! It had been running perhaps, till its roll of non-flamfilm was done. It might tell him something.

  Feverishly he got pyro, acid and the sodas into the developing water. Hedid not stop even for distilled water but took tap fluid.

  He immersed the hurriedly rubber-wrapped celluloid.

  As it stayed the required fifteen or eighteen minutes, he went over thelab. again, finding no more than before.

  He took out the roll, dipped it into hypo-acid fixing solution, andimpatiently watched its opaque yellowish high-lights slowly dissolve andlose the un-needed silver salts, to clear into transparency as grays andblacks became more evident.

  Hastily washing the film, he unreeled an end, held it up under a light,to see if the sound-track at one side carried any shadows.

  There was a recording!

  Feverishly, forgetting his terrors, he raced to the projector in thescreening room. Carefully in spite of haste he threaded the wet "stock"over the sprocket, down through the film gate, over another sprocket andclipped the end to the take-up reel. He snapped on the light.

  At proper speed, and sorry that he must harm the wet emulsion, but eagerto hear its story, he ran his find.

  The picture was that of the upper room, narrowed down onto the variousactivities of the old star-reader. The first was a take of his rabbitsas they scampered about under a change of ray-lamps.

  Then came the brief time-exposures of tabulations, preserved thus.

  But nowhere, except for natural sounds, the squeak of mice when amovement of a high-frequency ray cast it upon them--the chatter of thesquirrels--ordinary lab. sounds of moving feet and muttered words by theold man, did Roger hear what he sought--enlightenment.

  He was near the end of the reel, about to give up, when his ears sent amessage that snapped his muscles into taut tension.

  "Hear me. I am The Voice of Doom!"

  He saw, in the picture, the astrologer wheel and stare. He saw him turnand run out of view.

  Then, with scream subsiding in moan, the Voice of Doom repeated itsearlier moaning, ending in the grind and sudden cessation.

  The film, unnoticed, ran out of the gate, and the magazine clicked tothe slap of its still revolving free end.

  Roger let it run on. He had discovered a strange clue!

  Once coming from a deserted room, and once spoken on a record that hadbeen considered blank, and then a third time from a record that had beenset to catch sound in Doctor Ryder's home, had come that same Voice ofDoom, the identical moaning and grating.

  In reality, in the heart of Tibet, Roger had also heard that sound.

  And in Tibet, the rock that cut off the sound had made no noise as itscounterweight allowed it to shut out the wind that made the moans as ithowled across the Himalayas and up through tunnel and whistling Buddha'shollow cavities!

  Even as he made his startling realization, Roger heard a bell.

  It came from the office telephone.

  He dashed down the stairs, cutting out the projector as he ran by.

  "Hello!----"

  A voice came, thin with distance.

  "That you, Rog'?"

  "Yes. Tip--at the lab. Where are you?"

  "Hunting Grover."

  "Where did he go?"

  "To find the star-man."

  "And why did he leave?"

  "He was--took!"

  "Do you--does Grover--think he was--was in danger--hurt?"

  "We don't know. You
stay there. I'll keep in touch."

  The connection broke off sharply.

  From behind him a voice addressed Roger.

  "Follow me--and be silent!"

  There stood the Lama from the Tibetan lamasery. Two others, also.

  Wordless, helpless, Roger moved: they closed in behind him.

  The night swallowed the quartet.