The Mystery of the Fifteen Sounds

by Van Powell

  Chapter 41 MAN AND BEAST

  With his mocking smile Grover walked over to their safety cabinets,unlocked and threw one wide open.

  Roger, with Potts, sidled over near the door, to block the beast if ithad been taught to snatch anything in its paws and hop away.

  "No need," Grover laughed, "with its partner, the ape, bound. There isno way to get out of that hide." He gestured toward the cabinet. "Thereit is, just as you hid it, the True Eye, in a can supposed to containmedicating compounds to use on the rats. Clever, just as was entry intoRoger's room, with the 'Fire' record, by that often-used idea of thepulled fuse. I have wondered why you did nothing to him. Or did Millmancome along too soon and scare you off?"

  He paused, and they all stared. Could Grover have miscalculated, Rogerwondered, in implying that the kangaroo was the impersonator? He hadassumed it was the ape.

  The beast, on its haunches and flatly extended tail, reached two clawedpaws upward, caught one of the round cans from the front row, anddropping it in the loose pouch, in the skin, turned and started hoppingtoward the door, its claws upraised.

  Grover, as it moved toward the chair occupied by the ape, deftly caughtits tail and swung an end around a chair leg.

  "Shall I turn on the current?" he chuckled.

  The animal became quiet, stopped.

  Once only he tried to escape and when Potts made a move to obstruct theway Grover calmly waved him back.

  "But he's got the can, Grover!" Roger also stepped forward.

  Grover actually grinned at them.

  "Let him go," Grover waved back Potts and Roger as the thing began tohop toward them and they made preparations to try to stop it.

  "The Doctor," went on Grover as the animal paused an instant, "to getToby where his word would not be trusted, to remove him from thelaboratory before he could take away the gem he knew about, planned hisown poisoning this morning. He sent Toby for a drink, and by swallowingsome quick-acting sedative, perhaps strong codein, or another of thepoppy derivatives, he seemed to be poisoned. To make it appear likestrychnine or some other--wait! I'll venture to assert that in the otherroom Roger will find the shell of some pit such as you crack in a peachand extract a tiny kernel. Those inner kernels of a peach pit, chewedup, would leave on his breath just the same odor as a very dangerouspoison which I shan't name."

  Later that was verified. Roger found the cracked peach pit.

  "It was easy to 'recover' and come here tonight," Grover ended.

  He stood, looking with a mocking smile at the crouched beast and thebound animal. The latter, quiet for a moment, growled deeply.

  "The ape, trained at a certain point, to unfasten the kangaroo-skin sothat Doctor Ryder can wriggle out of it, can't help," he remarked. "Oh,yes," to Millman's question, "the ape is genuine, a well trained animal.The kangaroo--shall we help him?"

  He walked over, and with a quick motion pointing out the lacedarrangement of eyelets under an armpit--or forepaw--he dragged thelacing apart.

  Revealed, it was seen by all that Doctor Ryder actually was in the skin,crouched down as the size of the animal compelled him to be so that hecould barely get his forearms into the front paws.

  The head, too small to hold his own cranium, was fixed almost in oneposition by supports, and eye-holes were cut lower in the skin, wellconcealed by the way the skin of the chest was sewed and the animal hairarranged.

  "He rented it from the animal trainer, who sometimes put it on, andplayed the part of his own animal in the act if the kangaroo became toofractious or when it was ill in our varied climate as they travelledfrom theatre to theatre."

  Cramped, scowling, Doctor Ryder emerged.

  "Very cleverly worked out," he growled. "Yes, it is all true. I did planto have your laboratory staff help me steal the Eye, just the way youhave it worked out. And if it had not been for Roger, almost at thebeginning thinking of developing a sound-film I had neglected to put outof commission, you might not have found out."

  "Probably we never would," Grover agreed, and as bluecoats came trampingup the stairs, with a man who went at once to his animal, and withsoothing words quieted it, released and removed it, the Tibetan lama andhis cohorts came in.

  "But what _was_ the sound-clue?" asked Millman, "the fire-cry on arecord supposed to be unused? I got that, you know. But it meant only aprank of Roger's to me."

  "Neither that, which revealed how the Balsa-wood was connected up, northe Voice of Doom, made by Ryder, here, but not traceable to him alone;nor the click as he switched on the motor; nor the clicks as his trainedthief's fingers manipulated our safe; nor the rest."

  "Well, what _did_ the sound that Roger described as claws on glassreally signify that linked up Ryder and not any of us?" asked Zendt.

  The pseudo-physician, scowling, was twirling his watch-charm withnervous fingers as he watched the Tibetans who scowled at him.

  "He is showing you," Grover remarked.

  "Don't you see?" Roger turned to Millman. "I got the right idea onlyjust tonight."

  "The watch-chain? But----"

  "You, Mr. Millman, and Mr. Ellison, were on the ground floor when theman came down because he had seen the rich man arrive in his car, andknew Toby had played false to him," Grover stated.

  "Think," Roger hinted, "he twitched and twirled that charm so it flickedlight from the gold, the way a heliograph does."

  "That, when Roger told me, connected him with the first sound-clue ofthe scratching, hissing, clicking sound at first claimed to be a snake,then supposed to be his kangaroo."

  "Don't you see," interposed Tip, who was improving, by leaving out thebig words, "he had to bend over to get the rats out of the trap on topof the cage. He brought the ape to unlace his disguise. And his watchchain and charm scraped and rattled and slid on the cage, and oursound-camera film got the sound from the microphone inside the cage."

  "Of course--and no one else wears a chain and charm," agreed Zendt, "weall have wrist-watches."

  "Well, what's the use of holding me for all this?" growled the man bythe skin. He picked it up.

  "I'll just return this--go on and arrest me if you have any charge youcan support with evidence that a clever lawyer can't break down,"snarled the man.

  "A sound record, through your own Balsa-wood device, and down to ourrecorder, will do the trick," Grover smiled. "Made by you, just now,when you admitted all my previously recorded accusations."

  "All right. I'm licked. Good night, all."

  He turned as if to give himself up to a policeman.

  "He's got the Eye, in with that compound!" cried Roger, as Toby pointedat the pouch in the Kangaroo skin.

  "Oh, no he hasn't," Grover actually chuckled in triumph, "in the sameway that he substituted the prepared can of film for a blank strip whenhe handed Roger the can to load the magazine--so his animal ghosts wouldseem to appear on an unexposed film when developed, I substituted a canof oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen and a trace of ozone, perhaps, and a fewother gases----"

  "Air?" gasped Ryder, shaking the can taken from the skin.

  "A free sample of air that is no longer contaminated by the gas Roger socleverly used to drive you out--a ruse that enabled me to get herebefore you could return in disguise."

  The man was defeated.

  He was allowed to remain only long enough to make Grover's triumphcomplete by sending Roger to the cabinet to take down the can justbehind the place from which he had removed his false one.

  Therefrom, the Tibetans were glad to receive, as they forgot allanimosity toward Roger, the true Eye of Om.

  For his attempts on Roger's safety and his act toward Astrovox, Ryderstayed behind bars a long time.