by Van Powell
Chapter 29 A SURPRISING CAPTURE
A sound in the lower hall made Roger turn. To his delight, Grover camein. Quickly the younger cousin set out the situation.
"Go down and draw the fuse again," Grover suggested. "Queer that I didnot think of that simple way to nullify all our protection. It explainshow the safe was so easily opened, as well as Doctor Ryder's situation.When you are ready, pull only the ten ampere fuse in the equalizer ofthe circuit marked number four."
Roger knew that the switch and fuse box held different fuses for variousparts of the home, with two heavier fuses set into the main feed fromthe street. Grover's idea was, he saw, to eliminate the front portion ofthe house including his room, while the light in the rear of the hall,and his aunt's quarters, would be left on. In that way, with a fronthall light going, Grover could tell when the fuse was out and have lightenough in the hall to work by.
As soon as he had performed his task he ran up the steps, to findGrover, extremely surprised, facing, in the hall, the last man they hadsuspected of interest in the matter.
The assistant electrical engineer, Mr. Millman, stood there.
"A lame explanation," Grover was saying as Roger arrived.
"To you, maybe. To me it seems reasonable that I would have hit on themethod somebody used to get to the safe and I think it is perfectlylogical that I should test out my theory that Roger had been playing allthose tricks in the laboratory."
"What tricks?" Roger demanded.
"This one, if you want a sample."
Millman walked over to the recording device, exchanged from his pocket areproducer, made a quick wire connection to Roger's compact table radio,as Roger had had the connection when the recorder had roughly re-playedthe formerly recorded cry and crackles.
"I was making a recording of motor sparking, and just as I set our lab.machine going, I realized that the diamond was cutting a sound record,not just running smoothly. You can tell if you are watching closely, asI was. We cut out the record, took it off, and I told Ellison and Zendtto say nothing. I began to suspect that Roger, who was up with Astrovox,was having fun at our expense."
He set the machine going and the needle, automatically dropping onto thegroove just beyond the cuttings, as Roger had set it, had to be liftedback. Then Grover heard, as had Roger before, the cry, "Fire" and therattling, crackling as if flames ate dry wood or paper.
"Now if that was recorded, it had to come from somewhere. We had notstarted the sparking motor." Millman was earnest. "And I knew that Rogerwas up there. Later, unable to find this record, at the laboratory, Ireasoned that it must be that Roger had brought it to his home.Evidently, I thought, he wanted to hide it. I decided to make sure.Being an electrician, I thought, at once, how to get in by pulling afuse, not needing to cut wires or put the safety devices out ofcommission permanently."
"What do you think, Roger?" Grover turned to his younger cousin, "Doesit strike you as convincing?"
"Maybe he might feel that way."
"But--with some desperate person abroad----"
"Do I look desperate?" Millman laughed. He was tallish, and a mostserious mannered, quiet, earnest person. "What motive could _I_ have forwanting to hurt Roger?"
"You can best answer that," Grover said quietly.
"I simply wanted to justify my belief that Roger was behind all thespooky goings-on; the animals on the films, and so on." He nodded toshow his satisfaction. "I think I have proved it."
"Did Potts put this record here?" demanded Grover, and Roger saw that hewas thinking fast.
Hating to add still one more count against the handy man who had onlyhis own word to support his declaration that he had flung away asupposably priceless Eye of Om when Clark had made his blunder in thetemple, and Potts had found the discarded gem, Roger nodded.
"And how was the recording made? Do you know?"
Again Roger nodded. Grover frowned.
"How?"
"I was helping Astrovox carry away packing papers; and he mentioned thatMars, the planet, ruled fire. That word, and the crackle of the paperbunched up in our arms, would make that sound."
"Was there an open microphone near you?"
Then Roger started.
"No."
"Then--how?----"
"If we could go to the lab." Roger had an inspiration, "I could showyou."
It would keep till morning, Grover decided; and dismissing Millman witha warning that his actions were at least not beyond suspicion, Groverset the cable-switch on, and prepared to sleep with Roger.
During the balance of the night their rest was undisturbed.
As soon as they reached the laboratory, Roger took Grover to therecording machine.
"You will think I did this, because I know so much about it," theyouthful radio and sound expert said, "but it is just putting a meaningbehind certain sounds on my list, and adding the natural explanation."
His reasoning proved to have been correct.
A strange voice had come unexplainably from an upper room having nooccupant:
Roger bent, examining the mechanism under the recording turntable. Heinvestigated the contacts whereby the electrical impulses sent from thesmall "mike" at the sparking motor, through the selenium cell, got intothe amplifying transformer-coil to be increased enough to operate therecording diamond attaching to a special diaphragm over the disk on theturntable.
"A wire had been soldered on, here--see," he pointed. "Somebody had awire that didn't need to be there. Now, if I just wind this end of a bitof wire around that contact, to replace the missing one--" he made thetemporary connection, "and lead it down to one or the other side of thefloor outlet, and there attach it even loosely around one prong of thelittle plug-in that furnishes current for the motor of our recorder, wemay discover where the speaker upstairs is located."
Hastily he made a temporary splice onto the plug prong. Grover went upthe steps, pausing as Roger put a commercial test-record in place,switched on the motor and set the reproducing needle on the groove.
Immediately, from upstairs, there came the recording, in a booming,hollow distortion, natural to the poor connection and the device theyhad to locate above.
Grover, walking over to the corner from which came the sound, gave asurprised call for his cousin who shut off the record and ran to thedisclosure he was sure he would find. His guess was right. There, laidpractically flat on one of the empty cabinet shelves, with its smallspeaker-unit set into a cutout spot of the shelves, and concealed by thethick wood it was let into, was a good sized slab of thin wood.
The wires to the small operating battery concealed in a non-flam filmcan, and from that running to a wall outlet that connected the roomdevices with the main source of current, they traced.
A recording had been made, downstairs, of voices in the upper room.
To all appearances there was no microphone up there to have conveyed thevoice and paper-rattle. Apparently there was no loud speaker up there tohave broadcast the Voice of Doom so bafflingly.
"You say to dig past appearances," Roger reminded his cousin, "and whilethey can be falsified, the truth never changes. Well, if it 'appears'that there is no mike, and that there is no speaker, we know we heardthe Voice of Doom, and we know we heard the recording made by Astrovox,upstairs, on a record, downstairs."
"There is, naturally, some connecting wire. But--it does not show. Youknow more about radio than I, Roger. Have you located it?"
"Well, when we used to build experimental sets, before commercial radiosgot to be common and reasonable in price, I used to try to record my ownvoice, so I could play it back. I used the same sort of radio hookup forthat, I think, that is used in making commercial phonographrecords--only, I didn't have a carbon mike, so I tried reversing thefunction of the speaker I had. It was a Balsa-wood one, that I assembledfrom a small vibrator-unit, and a flat slab of thin Balsa-wood."
"Used the speaker as a microphone or telephone receiver would be u
sedtoday."
"Right, Grover. And, another thing I remember from my experiments. Therewas a device that was supposed to use the house electric wiring as anantenna--an aerial. If you put a special plug, with only _one_ pronginstead of two the way regular electric contacts are made, in a walloutlet, the circuit of the house current was not carried at all, and thesingle contact went to the aerial binding-post of my set, and made thewhole house wiring act like an antenna. There was a terrible line-hum.It wasn't practical. But I think----"
"As long as only one 'side' of the house current is tapped," Roger toldhis cousin and Chief, "and the part it connects with is not grounded, itwill act like an antenna--or, in this hookup, it makes any of ouroutlets a conductor between whatever is plugged into it and theBalsa-wood speaker."
"Besides Ellison and Millman, both electricians," Grover mused out loud,"Potts would know, at least from observation, a lot of electrical'stunts'. This one, possibly. And he knows how to record; and all aboutmicrophones, speakers and other apparatus that he has to adjust in hisregular laboratory duties."
Another count against Potts, Roger thought--at least by implication inthe evidence.
But, then again, it also pointed to Ellison or Millman, maybe both.
Toby arrived. As with Roger he viewed the cremated powders, and themelted metal tray on a scorched table of fireproofed wood under a zincsheathing, where his "pyrotechnics" had burned, Roger had to admit tohimself that the youth's manner and expression indicated sincere shamethat he had experimented and had left his combustibles exposed. But,then, the call had come, last night, so close ahead of the fire alarmthat had led to his trip to the lab. Had Toby been lurking nearby afterhaving chilled the outside thermometer enough to cause the one on thealarm system to be higher and to set off the device? There had not beenenough heat to release the gas, he made certain of that at once. Toby_might_ be one of those "dumb"-clever fellows who pretended to beignorant to cover up something, to keep suspicion away from themselves.He decided to add Toby to his list of potentially suspectable people.