The Mystery of the Fifteen Sounds

by Van Powell

  Chapter 30 THE VOICELESS WARNING

  Since Astrovox would be away for a good while and his experiments couldhardly be picked up by anyone else, Roger was told to arrange atemporary home for the rabbits, squirrels and mice and rats he had beenexperimenting on; and a nearby pet shop agreed to house them.

  In assembling their cages, Roger noticed several of the mice showingsymptoms of being very nearly done for.

  "What do you suppose is wrong?" he asked Doctor Ryder, who was clearingaside some of the absent man's apparatus in order to set up his cagesagain. He expected a fresh litter of white rats for his medicalexperiments.

  "There was a fire, wasn't there?"

  "You think the smoke overcame them, Doctor?"

  "Exactly, Roger." He wrote down some stimulating combinations ofmedicinal chemicals to try on them.

  The bio-chemist, Zendt, also took an interest.

  "Of course, if the lamps are already turned off," he said, "it is thatthe smoke overcame them. That little fellow is particularly bad."

  He indicated a tiny mouse of the sort used in the experiments, lyingalmost as if in a coma.

  Roger, with his quick sympathy, and with Toby eagerly obeying orders,improvised a makeshift "oxygen tent" and since it would be in the way inthe room already crowded with the cages and plant-beds, he took thesmall stimulator with its tiny occupant into the dark-room where hecould attend to it and watch the mouse's reaction and response while hedeveloped some plates taken by the staff the afternoon before.

  The mouse, Roger saw with pleasure, gave signs of reviving.

  So quickly it recuperated that he put it back into a cage, but kept itnear him in the dark-room while he saw, on the developing plates, slowimages emerge.

  The pictures, photographs of crystal formations, he finished, makingwet-contact prints. These he took to Mr. Zendt. Others, of the oldastrologer's, he put aside to print later. They would not be needed forsome time.

  Coming back, Roger observed that his tiny patient was apparently muchbetter. He dissembled the oxygen apparatus, and was about to take it tohis stock-room, to the section where spare apparatus was stored, when hehad a visitor.

  Mr. Clark, his Tibetan traveling companion, the well-to-do jeweler, camein through the light-trap, with a cheerful greeting.

  "How are you doing?" he inquired, "and what is the latest quotation onTibetan's, common." His stock-market joke made Roger grin.

  "Glad you didn't say 'Tibetan's, preferred.'" he answered. "As far as Iknow, they certainly are not preferred. The quotation islower-than-minus. No sale."

  He was wondering what might be the object of the call.

  Not a visit for love he was sure.

  "I hear there was almost a tragedy here," the rich gem expert wasgetting to the point, Roger surmised.

  "Yes, sir."

  He was not going to give information.

  "Poor old star-gazer. He should have seen his fate coming. If hisstar-reading could warn him, why didn't he take care?"

  "I don't know. He had said something about Neptune and Saturn inopposition and Mars opposed to Uranus, with the world between theopposite planets, pulled this way and that, if I understand him. Maybehe was trying to take care of himself, but he always says we are putinto this world to have certain experiences. We cannot escape them, andwhat the stars' forces did to influence our cells in brain and body atbirth, he thinks, indicates what sort of experiences we will have."

  Roger, seldom over-talkative, was willing to expand this idea.

  Not that he wholly grasped what it meant. Nor was he "sold" on the starphilosophy. But it diverted Mr. Clark from whatever plan he had comethere to try, Roger thought; and if he was right about it, Clark wouldcome back to his subject and would thus show Roger what it was.

  "Astrovox often said," he hurried on with the topic, "we cannot avoidour Destiny, escape experiences. But we have what he called Free Will todecide how we will meet them."

  "A very sound philosophy, Roger. But----"

  "Now he's going to give himself away," decided Roger.

  "But--where have you put The Eye of Om?"

  Roger, petrified by amazement, could only stare, in the dim, rubydark-room light. "I?----"

  "Yes. Eye of Om. You really took it, of course."

  "Mr. Clark!" Roger drew himself to his full height in sudden anger atthe challenge, the accusation.

  "Well, how else could it have happened? You know, for you saw, when theprongs in the Buddha's forehead socket were loosened, I took out the oldgem and put in a new one--the one we had brought. And when you sentPotts back, do you imagine I am idiot enough to believe that _he_ knewone stone from another, or that he found the one I chucked away into aregular abyss, there in the Himalayas?"

  He scowled.

  "You went there. You saw the real stone put in. You sent Potts to--shallI say the real word? No--to bring it--that's close and not quite soevil-sounding as the fact. Anyway, Roger, do you think we don't howloyal Potts is to you? He would tell any sort of story, just to protectyou."

  "Say, you go and tell Grover that."

  Roger was boiling.

  Clark, scanning his working face, calmly chuckled.

  "Your films will be overdone, or whatever happens if you forget them."

  Roger, reminded, hastily extracted from trays the plates of anexperiment with chemical diffusion, and got them into hypo.

  "I shan't bother Grover. We discussed it and he suggested coming to you.As long as this way doesn't elicit the information, perhaps there willbe other methods. You know what taking the gem means to those Tibetans?"

  Roger, fuming, smarting under the unjust accusation, refused to reply.

  Turning on his heel, Mr. Clark left.

  Roger washed his negatives, made his prints.

  To his surprise his pet, the tiny mouse, began to run about, to showunmistakable signs of animation--or was it of excitement?

  Roger studied him.

  The tiny animal was racing around its cage.

  Memory of the fact that such mice on submarines indicated the presenceof leaks from battery or engine of undetected gases such as sulphuricacid gas came. He wondered if his dark-room held such a menace torespiration. He decided to take the mouse to the outer air and observeits reaction.

  To his dismay, the inner door of the light trap did not respond.

  He was wedged or otherwise fastened in. And the mouse was certainlyexhibiting signs of uneasiness.