BASKETBALL AND BRAINS
"Admitting your cleverness," Grover, informed by Roger, was more than
surprised, "I still find it hard to accept your deductions."
"I don't deduce anything," Roger argued, "I only got the facts. I think
I would almost as soon suspect you as to suspect Mr. Zendt, or Mr.
Ellison. But----"
"The appearances certainly look bad," Grover agreed.
Zendt, quiet, calm, thorough, had been in Australia, his own record
attested. Mr. Ellison, than whom no one was more clever in electrical
matters, had built power plants for a big utility company, some of his
work having been in Calcutta and Karachi, both Indian cities.
"I will watch them unobtrusively," Grover stated, "while you do an
errand for me."
Roger waited for instructions.
"I went to the address given by Doctor Ryder, just to check up and see
if his fantastic story had any basis of fact," Grover told his cousin.
"Sure enough, there was dull-witted Toby Smith, and when I represented
myself as an attache of a museum--I am, you remember, one of the
sub-committee on Egyptian Embalming research--the young fellow, about
twenty-two, promptly enough produced and let me study the memento of his
adventurous trip into Tibet. He certainly does not realize its value,
and to me, inexperienced as I am, it appears to be a marvel of Nature's
crystallizing stresses, as well as a credit to the Tibetan jeweler's
craftsmanship."
Roger was all ears.
"To him it was a souvenir, with little other value--a bit of art-glass,
he told me he supposed it was.
"I bought it. You are to go and get it."
"Why wouldn't he let you bring it?"
"I thought of the possibility of being watched----"
Oh, boy! was Roger's mental comment.
"I satisfied myself that I had not been; however, I had arranged to have
you take him, in return, a small moving-picture hand-camera that he had
confided to be his heart's desire. In exchange, he will surrender to you
a large envelope which will contain, disguised in heavy
documentary-looking papers, the art-glass." Grover smiled amusedly.
"And if you have any matches or duplicates in your stamp collection, you
might get intimate enough to trade for some of his foreign over-stock of
stamps."
"I'll take a batch of duplicates," agreed Roger.
His taxi, depositing him at the address given by Dr. Ryder, waited.
The Smith chap, he found, was intensely interested in collecting, and
had a fine collection of stamps; in fact, he spent most of his small
earnings as a dishwasher, on philatelic prizes.
He and Roger grew intimate and compared notes, exchanged stamps, and
chatted about the Tibetan expedition Smith had joined as a young man,
several years ago, he claimed.
He told about a Devil Dance, a religious rite, he had seen, wherein all
the devils and evil spirits were represented by disguised and
horrible-looking men, who chased a wildly terrified human soul, as a boy
represented himself to be in the pantomimic dance. Exhausted, unable to
escape, at last, he was supposed to be destroyed.
"It is supposed to show how we are chased by temptations and all," Toby
Smith explained; and he told of the Tibetan huts and other nomadic
possessions of the ever-moving grazers, and other interesting sights.
Then he gave Roger the heavy, sealed packet--Roger felt the lump
supposed to be the gem. Putting it in his coat with his stamp envelope,
Roger took his leave a little regretfully. Smith had been an interesting
person to talk with.
However, he concluded, he would, as he had promised, help with the new
and mystifying hobby of taking "movies."
The taxi--he had forgotten about it--was gone.
That did not much surprise Roger. The man had no doubt gone back to the
laboratory or had gone on elsewhere. In the first case they would have
told him they had a charge account with his company; in the other,
knowing it, he would have picked up other fares and forgotten the young
man he had brought there.
Roger, rather closely confined indoors by his laboratory work of giving
out hypo, sodium bisulphite, or, perhaps, electrical requisites, decided
that the air would be beneficial. He walked.
It came to him after a few squares that Cousin Grover had thought of
being watched. Roger glanced around hastily.
He wondered if that slouching fellow with the low-brimmed hat, could be
following him. He whirled in his tracks, to retrace his way past the
other, but the youth turned in at a cigar store, and Roger, with
reassurance making him whistle gaily, walked on.
Almost at the laboratory street he looked back again--and was puzzled.
The youth was on the trail, possibly, once more. But he had not kept
close; instead he was leaning against another smoking goods shop
window-frame. Roger, thinking to himself that such espionage could do no
harm, changed his course, and instead of going directly down to the
laboratory street, he turned into the one behind the laboratory, so that
if the youth had gone into the store to telephone his progress, he would
prevent being met by anyone at the logical corner he had been heading
for. He would approach from the far end of the block.
To his dismay, this seemed to have been anticipated. There were about a
dozen boisterous, rowdyish young men and boys racing to and fro in a
rough, noisy game of tag. They might be innocent of any interest in him
and his tight-buttoned coat; but he was taking no chances. He turned,
retracing his way. To his dismay, one, being chased by the pack, came
with long legs down the street. Roger stopped at a drug store intending
to go in and telephone for Tip; but a woman with a baby carriage
obstructed the entranceway.
He changed his plan quickly. Dodging around her, he walked rapidly
toward the candy factory adjoining the laboratory. The roughs were
passing him. Suddenly they were all thronging around, pushing, not
caring whether he got into the mixup of thrusting, hoarse-yelling
gamesters or not. Roger felt a little bit dismayed.
One of the tougher and taller youths caught hold of his tightly buttoned
coat.
"What you buttin' in our game fer, huh?"
Roger spoke quietly.
"I wasn't."
The hold on his coat was too tight to break; they were behind him as
well, and escape was impossible.
"What you got in your coat--candy?"
"Nothing much but a packet of lyddite--the explosive. Be careful!"
His ruse was not successful. One caught his shoulder.
"What's that, now lyddite?"
The grip of the other held, and Roger felt the buttons rip out.
As quick as a flash he had his hands on the packets: feeling told him
which was which. He snatched one out, and with his eyes fixed over the
heads of those he faced, he shouted:
"Catch it, Tip. Here she comes!" and he made a move to back out when
they would turn to see who he spoke to. But that ruse also failed and in
sudden desperation Roger realized that he must keep them from noticing
that his coat pocket still held something.
His basket-ball skill, that had enabled him to make goals by the tosses
that seemed impossible with antagonists all around him, he summoned to
help in his crisis.
He had noticed in the second floor office window, the work basket some
woman had put aside, full of samples she had brought in from the
wrapping machines.
With a deft flexing of muscles and a quick eye-glance to make sure of
distance, wind and other factors, as hands stretched to snatch his
packet, Roger gave it the well-rehearsed basket-ward toss. He saw it, as
baffled, disconcerted youths looked up, fly in a clean trajectory to
lose momentum just above the basket. It seemed to hover in the air. It
dropped into the basket. It stayed therein.
As if trying to recover a loss caused by such quick thinking, the
ringleader wheeled and raced into the building, evidently to ask for the
envelope thrown up by a boy at play.
Roger, as the rest hesitated, pushed through, and hurried for the lab.
The others broke and fled.
"Tip," Roger greeted the handy man as he entered, "I'm going to phone
the people next door to hold an envelope full of stamps I threw into one
of their baskets to save it from a gang of rowdies. Will you go and
recover it, please? I have to deliver a more precious pack to my
cousin."
Tip brought back the stamps, quite safe.
And, also quite safe, their strong-box held a scintillating, vivid,
thousand-faceted emerald, flashing its sun-fires of refracted light; as
it had done when in the forehead of the Buddha it had symbolized, the
all-seeing, all-ways-looking Eye of Om!