by Van Powell
Chapter 27 A "THERMAL" TRICK
With every meaning that he tried to attach to his listings, Roger foundhimself growing more confused.
He had only imaginative evidence against any of the names he hadinserted in his diary-like notations. As he scanned his list Roger sawthat he had done less interpreting than speculating; but he saw no wayto make interpretation of the listings get him anywhere.
He filed it with his former list, and went to his routine, so that Tobycould go to dinner.
The rest of the day was without apparent development.
Toby, leaving the suitcase, at closing time, went home. The others didthe same. Roger and Tip remained until last.
"Well, Grover has stayed close to Doctor Ryder's patient," Tip mused,aloud. "That is, the patient Doctor Ryder just missed getting, because Itold the druggists I wanted 'aggrenalin' and they said they never heardof nothing like it. If I'd of got the right name, he'd of saved Astrovox'stead of the internes doing it."
"I talked over the wire with my cousin," responded Roger. "Just make anextra check on everything for safety's sake, and he says for us to _stayaway_ from here, tonight, no matter what we hear. You are to go to ahotel to sleep. And he says you must."
"What's going to happen here?"
"I wish I guessed," Roger retorted, "but I don't seem able to do eventhat. With all the clues on my list or somewhere in the films and so on,I just see new developments, and they are worse than before, and confuseme."
"What say we go to one of those spirit mediators."
"A medium? A fortune teller?"
"She might coagulate our ideas."
"Curdle them? She probably would."
"It means to make 'em set--hang together."
Roger chuckled and refused. He wanted to work out every circuit, traceevery wire, be certain that when he locked up, nothing could get in orout of that research laboratory without leaving a record and if anythinghappened then--well--he'd have to look to Tip about it!
Potts said good-night, and went away as instructed.
At home, telling with some reserves his experiences of the night before,to his aunt, Roger felt a constant tugging of desire to go and see ifall was right.
Grover's orders to stay away were, he felt, a magnet drawing, tugging,pulling him toward the forbidden place.
What danger, he wondered, might lurk in just a visit?
Still, he obeyed, against every dragging urge.
Toby Smith telephoned about nine o'clock.
"Say, can we get into that lab?"
"Why, Toby?"
"I clean forgot to put away Doctor Ryder's compounds. I put down hissuitcase, and got busy with Mr. Zendt who wanted a heap of chemicals,and it slipped my mind."
"Orders are not to go there at night," Roger told him.
"Well--but he said lock 'em in the safety cabinet, against fire. Iforgot. Well----"
"But there won't be any fire."
"But--lookit, Roger--you didn't notice, maybe----"
"That you had marked on a paper a list of words? I did. Fireworks.Pyrotechnics. Lycopodium."
"Well--I mixed some--an' left 'em in a big tray till tomorrow."
Roger gasped, at his end of the connection.
Suppose a gas in the atmosphere reacted with some exposed ingredient?
All at once, though, a person so far totally unsuspected began to assumeimportance.
This Toby Smith! He had originally sold, for a camera, a gem supposed tohave been both sacred and invaluable.
He had been to Tibet before, Doctor Ryder had mentioned. (He could haveknown the value of that gem).
Besides, here he was, at a time when Grover had explicitly forbiddenRoger, for some hidden reason, against going near the lab. And he wasinsisting on his disobedience of orders by implying dire happenings!
Roger hesitated.
Why was it important for him to be lured to the laboratory? Had Clarknot explained to the Tibetans about the blunder through which the realjewel, jettisoned by Clark, picked up by Potts, had been lost, theymight want to lure him, to bring some idea of revenge to pass.
Why should Toby want to do that?
Perhaps, Roger speculated, the youth wanted to get him there and then byuse of force open the safe or some other thing.
The value of their own laboratory formulae and data was not less, tothem, than a jewel such as the Eye of Aum.
"Against orders!"
Roger, his decision made, started to hang up.
"You'd let that stuff explode, maybe----"
"Listen, Toby. I obey the Boss. Besides, don't worry. We have apositive-action, fire smothering gas in drums, and a thermostat thatoperates a relay, much like those on heating equipment, at a rise ofeight degrees from the normal shown by another thermometer outside thelab. The gas smothers any fire. Chemicals, even."
"That's good. Then I needn't worry."
"You needn't worry, Toby."
Hanging up, Roger waited for a further effort.
When it came--if it _was_ a new attempt!--its form was startling.
The inter-connecting fire alarm in the library of his home rang. Rogerconsidered for a moment. Of course, the gas should cover every possibledanger, save everything. Even against the delicate electric adjustmentsand the unreplaceable devices, the gas would work without harming themas water might do.
The thought brought another.
"Water!"
The firemen would respond to the alarm, sent out over the telephone, toHeadquarters, automatically.
Water would ruin the delicate armatures, coils, etc.
And how could the alarm go off by human means when he had made socertain that no one could enter?
He decided to try to get Grover at the hospital where he waited for anyword, or murmur, raving or otherwise, from the unconscious astrologer.
Grover was not available, they told him. He had gone out to get a laterepast.
Grover would not be available for an hour. Roger could not see thelaboratory electrical apparatus ruined. The order to stay away had nottaken this development into account.
He got a taxi and was hurried to the vicinity of the lab.
Already he heard the screech of sirens, as at the start of the queerchain of contradictions, impossibilities and misfits.
This time, though, a weird orange-reddish glow came up into the cloudysky from above their skylight!
As Roger leaped out, flinging the taximan a dollar, the glow was quashedas if by magic. The system of protection had worked.
He stopped the breaking of the door, as before, but this time with noneed for argument. The X-Ray and fluoroscope were not going as they hadbeen that former time.
Hastily Roger located the Captain of the first company to have arrived:he knew that the one so scoring a beat was in charge, stayed till last,was responsible. It was "his fire."
Rapidly he told as much as was necessary to convince the man that nofurther damage could possibly ensue, but he found the man hard toconvince.
"But I declare," Roger insisted, "the lycopodium and stuff that you sawblazing up through the skylight was just fireworks compounds, made up--Ibegin to think--for just that use. It made a grand glow, but probablyblazed only in a tray. The room it was in is fireproof. Our film is allnon-flam, in sealed or airtight cans. Our chemicals are in airtightcontainers."
He added that his check of the tell-tale, on the brief entry he hadmade, disclosed no entrances by others. Such was impossible.
"Then how was the stuff ignited? Spontaneous combustion."
"I suppose some gas was left open, on purpose, that would in timepenetrate to the chemicals in the mixture. But the heat of that littlecouple of pounds of powder burning ten minutes would not raise ourfire-thermostat more than a degree, and it must go up six or eight toset off the alarm."
"The alarm came in, young fellow. How?"
Roger took him across to a drug store. In its window, against the wall,a huge a
dvertising thermometer registered Fahrenheit degrees and stoodat sixty-four. He hurried the man back, showed him the smallinterconnected thermometer for registering air temperature, againstwhich the other inside one reacted. This one stood at fifty-five.
"Somebody wanted the alarm set off to lure me here--simple trick. Onlyhad to hold ice on this one till it dropped eight degrees _below_ theother and then the other would be eight above it and off went thealarm."
Fire, an alarm adjusted for heat, set off by ice! Toby? Who else?