A PUZZLING THUMP
While Tip was rushed out to the street, to drive Grover's car to and
fro, and all around, in pursuit of the elusive, uncanny pair--or had the
man left Doctor Ryder elsewhere?--Roger made the routine photographic
study of every place that could give a clue to that almost spectral
arrival, manipulation of a safe, and retreat.
If only, Roger thought, as he made wide-angle and micro-lens exposures,
if only Tip, excited, had not fumbled that switch!
Had he gotten the lights on a few seconds sooner, they might have seen
what was going on, or could have seen the departing figure. If someone
had been set to watch down cellar! If----!
No use bewailing the past. No use wishing the past could be altered.
Doctor Ryder was evidently a prisoner. His gem--the Tibetan jewel, was
gone. The Voice of Doom had spoken, but it had apparently turned out to
be some person known to the doctor, whom he had recognized, and had
identified for them.
Tip came dashing back. The car had been taken. Later a policeman
returned the abandoned vehicle, and Tip had more photographs to make of
its wheel, door-grips, seats, pedals.
Tracks in the soft smeared stuff with which Grover had made such clues
possible, they found in plenty from coal pile upstairs and straight to
the safe, and, less defined, returning cellarward.
Only one set! Great, over-size tracks. Defeat again, as Roger realized.
Someone had worn huge boots! The shoe-size was unguessable from those
elephantine clues.
Gloves, as well as boots, left them no usable evidences.
Roger, turning over to Tip the final stages of his work, went to Grover,
who sat in the screening room, as dawn broke, and brooded. It seemed to
Roger that his clever cousin, so often hoodwinked and made cheap by some
seemingly more astute operator, was discouraged and certainly baffled.
"Don't lose heart," Roger urged, "we'll get everything to come out
right. All you need is one tiny hint of the truth."
"I must have a dozen," groaned his cousin. "What good are they? My wits
seem to be fogged." He looked disheartened. "I can't get my old sense of
proportion. Everything seems crazy and impossible. You can't enter an
electrically sealed room! You can't open a safe protected by water-jets
and high voltage streams. You can't take camera pictures of animals
jumping around where no animals are visible to the eye!"
"_I_ can't," Roger tried to be jolly and pretend to make a joke. "But
_you_ will see how somebody else did. When we had that mystery about the
revengeful man who nearly sent a chemist crazy, all you needed was one
hint. I happened to be lucky enough----"
"Smart enough!"
"Well--I caught the sound that got me named the Ear Detective. I'm going
to live up to my reputation."
He crossed and stood in front of the downcast cousin.
"_You_ solved the puzzle. You were called, in magazine articles in
true-mystery write-ups--and by the newspaper men--the Mystery Wizard,
who solved scientifically from one tiny sound-clue that
haunted-laboratory thing. You'll do the same with this."
Grover failed to snap out of his dejection.
"You run up and get out your requisitions for needed supplies," Grover
suggested. "I will check up that Clark man, and try to work out a course
of action."
Roger obeyed.
His work was light, and after laying out dark-room supplies, a set of
new distributor points and a replacement insulator on their high-voltage
transformer line, and a few other needs, he sat down to try to think out
some way to help Grover.
With pencil and paper he carried out a decision made during their chat.
In a list, on the order they had come, he put down the sounds he thought
might be important, and even those that did not seem to have any bearing
on the mystery. Opposite them, he set down as many interpretations as he
could figure out.
His list, finished, he scanned thoughtfully. It ran:
_Sound_ _Meanings_
Clicks and hisses on Claws on glass cage. Rats clawing at the
film. glass inside to get out. Might be a clue to
something.
A faint click in A distant relay switching in on a heating
headset. oil-burner. Some electrical device
somewhere. Does not seem much because it
didn't have any effects after it.
A thump in the corner Some trash in the corner shifted. A film in
of the upstairs room its can shifted. The wall contracting.
before I started the Plaster fell. It started me taking pictures
camera. that turned out to have animals, when none
were there, but I do not see any bearing on
our case.
The Voice of Doom. A hoarse voice coming from a room with nobody
there. Ventriloquism. Important, but how?
The Voice of Doom's cry. Either somebody screaming and being tortured,
or somebody pretending it. Or some natural
sound like a fog-siren. Must be important.
Might be a clue to some place or person.
The last two on a Both sounds just like before and clear. Same
record. meanings I think. Must be clues. But how?
The record of same in Like the others, only rougher as if it had
Dr. Ryder's room. been made with the needle out of exact
adjustment, but strong sounds.
The Doctor's voice Had waits between sentences. Was his voice,
after the Voice of though. Other one answering not audible
Doom. with 3 stages audio.
Ticks or drip-drip. Must have been safe combination being
operated. How would it be known? Not to a
stranger. Doctor Ryder couldn't get it.
Grover leaves no memoranda on it.
Both alarms at home at Can't mean anything, know what it was, but it
start. was a sound-clue in a way. No fire. Why did
fire alarm go off? How start? Monkey?
Kangaroo hitting it with paw?
He seemed not to remember any more. He studied his list, trying to find
others to add, new interpretations; but to no avail.
He thought that if he tried increasing and adding radio-frequency tuning
and amplification to his speaker-circuit--make it a regular radio, in
fact, he might get any possible radio sending if that could account for
the silent spaces on the last record.
He made his circuits up, set the electric pick-up over the start of the
record; but with the new hookup he got no new slant.
Only one small addition to his list of sounds, bringing his total up to
eleven sound-clues--possibly--was the little thump, or thud that the
needle transmitted before starting in on the voice with no speaker
answering in its silent waits. Roger could get no further.
He took his series of eleven sounds, including the alarm bell and the
thump that could have been a tiny flaw of the record just on the sound
track, and went to Grover.
"Here are the sounds," he declared. "Maybe one will clear up all your
tangles."
At least, studying the list, Grover was more alert, less depressed,
Roger saw with relief.
He examined the last-made record for the fault that made the odd jarring
of its recording. No flaw showed, even under magnification.
"It's actually part of the record," he got Grover to add to his list of
notes; and then he said to his cousin, "it may mean that the locks went
off, somehow, just there."
"But it doesn't record the re-locking, so that doesn't fit."
"If only we could see any cause for that thumping sound," Roger
reflected out loud. "We might have one more real clue."
If only he had been able to decode the key hidden there!