THE VOICE IN THE SILENCE
"Had your sleep out?" Grover shook his cousin. "It's almost eight and
Aunt Ella has the bacon on."
Roger rubbed his eyes, snapped awake.
"Is it all right at the lab.?"
"I knew it would be. We left Tip to take turns watching with the men
from the Falcon Patrol Agency. Two at a time, one on each floor. But I
never count on human watchmen alone. They can be careless," Grover
talked as Roger dressed.
"I know. Capacity-overloading plates all around, so that anybody or
anything that got near any apparatus would overload an aerial field and
upset a delicate tube and open a relay, stamping the time, and starting
cameras with sound-films in them."
"Exactly. Just talked to Potts. Nothing at all happened."
Arriving at the laboratory, earlier than the staff, Roger and the Chief
verified the static condition.
"What do you think of this?" Grover took his cousin to the
sound-recording mechanism, the type that uses a large phonograph record
for the sound that synchronizes with a film in certain motion picture
studios.
He explained that as a double-check on any possible development, he had
hooked up the recorder to a separate microphone system, all concealed
flat-disk, super-sensitive diaphragm models, that were set in operation
by any interruption of infra-red beams.
"That's something!" commended Roger, examining the arrangements, "of
course, with the reports in, I may as well put away the record to keep
dust off it during the day."
Grover agreed.
Roger moved aside the recorder which had rested on the outer edge of the
disk, just past the polished edge of the wax.
"Here!" he cried out in surprise, "this isn't right. There is a
sound-track cut!"
"There can't be!"
"Well, look, Grover."
The older cousin stared at the abraded surface, the cuts in the surface
of the composition.
"But that is impossible," he stared, unbelievingly.
"Let's give it a playback," urged Roger. He hurried to give the surface
a good brushing with a soft brush, exchanged the diamond-pointed
recorder for the type that hooked up with the electrical amplifiers and
speaker in the screening room.
He adjusted the mechanism to run a minute before lowering the pickup
onto the disk, to give him and his cousin and Tip time to get into their
tiny theatre.
The low rasp of the needle as it ran over ungrooved parts was all they
heard, for several breaths.
Then:
Out of the speakers, amazing, booming like the hollow groans that had
followed the voices--as they now did!--came the ghostly salutation and
warning:
"Hear me! I am the Voice of Doom."
Again, while they stared at each other with dilated eyes, the needle ran
with no pickup. Then, again:
"Hear me! I am the Voice of Doom."
There rose that whining, shrieking moan of the demented and tortured
puppy, lowering in pitch until it became a hoarse and strident howl,
slowly falling away in volume but dropping in pitch until it sounded
like the moan of wind through stretched silk, ending, as had ended the
original, spooky manifestation upstairs, in a grinding, abrupt rumble
and silence.
Before the staff got there Roger had developed the sound-films of all
the small cameras, but not one had been impressed with picture or
audible sound record.
It was uncanny and inexplicable.
The Falcon men and Potts declared solemnly, and with sincerity, that
they had seen nothing, had heard nothing.
This supernatural appearance startled even Grover. Though he did not
depart from his usual calm or drop his cold poise, he looked more than
ever solemn, and even mistrusted human watchers and his
electricity-and-water protective device so far as to search the safe.
The jewel, as well as the camphor data and other precious things, to
his, and Roger's, relief, were intact.
Doctor Ryder, who was given a demonstration of the spectral recording,
looked dismayed.
"If I do not return that stone," he gasped, "my life is not worth
insuring. This is the third warning, and conveyed in a way that makes me
very certain that we are dealing with a sinister and very occult body of
priests."
"How do you propose to return the jewel?" Grover was practical.
"I dare not let it be known that I have it," the medical experimenter
declared. "I have thought of going to Tibet--but how shall I get into
that temple, and how give back the gem? White people will be all the
more forbidden access to the place; and I am already suspected of having
taken the Eye."
Grover considered it seriously.
Roger, too, gave his best thought to the puzzling complications.
"I don't suppose they'd have radios in temples in Tibet," Roger said,
half-hopefully.
"In the Dalai Lama's palace there is a radio, yes."
"Short-wave?"
"Probably of the best. We cannot resort to broadcasting, Roger," his
cousin objected, "the international gem thieves might pick it up."
"That's so----"
"Besides, to ask them to come and take it, as I suppose you had in mind,
would bring every gem hunter, in disguise or otherwise. And it might
lead to worse consequences than theft. They are fairly desperate, cold
blooded people," was the doctor's objection.
Tip, listening, put in a suggestion.
"Let one o' them that's been fetchin' kangaroos and apes take it. _Then_
radio who's in the possessive case. Let _them_ get the Voice of Doom
after them."
Grover smiled, shaking his head.
"Tip and I could take it in an airplane," Roger hinted eagerly.
"There is only one logical course open," Grover gave final decision,
"hold everything static. Make no move. Safeguard Doctor Ryder, with the
same type of protection we have given the safe, in a modified form.
Then, when the promised Doom arrives, its emissaries can be informed
that if they furnish proper credentials they may have their Eye of Om."
Tip looked as disappointed as did Roger.
No Tibet? No adventure? No thrills?
"I suppose," Doctor Ryder shrugged, "it is the sure way, though not too
safe for me, no matter what devices you arrange. If you knew the hidden
forces of Nature that those Lamas can call into play, modern scientific
protection would be as useful as a child's toys to combat unseen dangers
that strike through the air."
"I will pit my laboratory equipment against any force you can tell me
about," Grover spoke confidently.
"Well--as one example--how would you guard against mental suggestions
sent by a powerful will, in my sleep, perhaps causing me to leap out of
a window?"
"I have heard of such powers," Grover admitted. "I have never seen them
verified. However, for any occult science I am sure that we can find a
material device to counteract at least the effect on your safety."
Although Doctor Ryder was skeptical, he shrugged and submitted.
"I will arrange your room so that nothing can get in, you cannot creep,
crawl, run, jump, push or otherwise escape," smiled the scientist. "I
shan't say what will be set up, and then there can not be any way for
you to frustrate my plan to keep you safe."
Potiphar, with Roger, heard some quiet instructions. The sketch and
specifications they got made both of them chuckle.
Any secret schemer, thief, priest of Tibet, or what, must "go some" to
cheat the mass of light-beams, selenium cells, the recording phonograph,
a camera, and electrified door and window seals that as long as current
held them tight, could open only to Grover's own secret key, filed to
touch only certain contacts in a tiny slot on the circuit-cable just
outside the rooms of the doctor.
Tired and full of content after saying good-night to their protege,
Roger saw the switch set "on" and went home with Grover to sleep
soundly. Nothing could enter or leave that sealed place!
And to show the fallibility of human wisdom, Roger waked again in the
hour before dawn to hear Grover answering a wild summons from a Falcon
Patrol Agency guard at the Ryder home.
"Better come," he was telephoning, "I can't rouse him or get him to
answer; and from the observation port I can't even see him in that
room!"