DETECTIVE ROGER
After further consideration of the sound clues, and discussion of the
uncanny appearance of animals on a film, and other points, and without
seeing any light, Grover rose.
"The staff will be arriving any time, now," said he. "Let's look up that
fellow, Joseph Z. Clark, because I want you to do a little
Sherlock-Hawkshaw work if we locate his address."
They took first the telephone book. He was listed, and his address was
in a section of the suburbs given over to large private estates. His
business also was listed. He was a jeweler, and the reason he could own
an estate was shown by his business address in fashionable Fifth Avenue.
"A man would seem to be a suspicious character loitering around a
private estate," Grover looked up, "but a boy----"
"I could wear my old sweater and cap, and ride my bicycle, and it would
be natural for me to rest anywhere along the road, or even go anywhere
to ask my way." Roger caught the spirit of the idea.
"I merely want you to 'look over the land,' and see how things look,"
Grover insisted. "Then after the staff goes, come back and report. That
gives you time for rest between riding out and back."
"After the staff goes--Do you still think?----"
"I have to think everything and nothing until I get a lead."
Roger took his time riding the dozen miles to the easily located point
of espionage. To get there by mid-morning was best.
The estate itself, walled in with ivy-covered stone, quite an extensive
acreage, he reached as the sun approached the zenith.
Near what seemed to be a servants' gateway he sat down by his reclining
bicycle.
From the grass beside the gateway he could see, along the driveway, the
beautifully rolled tennis court, the sweep of lovely lawn, from the main
gateway, winding up to a grand, white mansion, people moving about on
wide verandas or swimming in a distant pool.
"Pretty swell," Roger told himself musingly. "Not the sort of a place to
look for kidnapers or jewel thieves. Unless--as Grover is always so fond
of saying: 'I dig past appearances that can be falsified, to the heart
of truth that can't be changed.'"
He turned it over in his mind. Of course, it would not be past reason
that a prosperous man, with a millionaire's residence, might smuggle
gems, even make a man his prisoner to secure a gem with the world-wide
reputation Doctor Ryder had ascribed to the Eye of Om.
Om--Roger had looked it up--was the reverent name by which the Tibetans
referred to the All Highest, to Our Eternal Father.
It was sometimes spelled A-u-m, also, he had found out.
From his view of the rich, scintillating gem, the unbelievably many,
tiny, flat, facet surfaces, turned in every direction, well symbolised
the name, the Eye of Aum or Om, the All-seeing Gaze of the Supreme God.
Well, for that jewel, what would not some characters do?
He wondered, gazing idly, behind which window Doctor Ryder might be a
prisoner; and he thought how he might discover it.
If the man could look out, he thought, Doctor Ryder might give him some
signal.
He stood up, pretending to stretch, facing the house. He got up on the
wall, and knew that he was noticed, for a footman moved out toward him.
He jumped down, watching the upper windows.
No response. No signal. If only he could be seen from all four sides of
the house, he reflected, it might be different!
"Private property, son," said the footman, arriving at the gate.
Some remembrance of detectives who had "taken the bull by the horns" and
had "bluffed" people into telling the truth, who had tricked suspected
people into revealing things they tried to hide, made Roger act without
fully canvassing what the possible outcome might be.
"Private, yes," he said, grinning mysteriously, "but you'd better ask
Doctor Ryder whether I'd be called a trespasser or not."
His bold stroke brought him a revealing response.
"Huh? Doctor Ryder? Do you know him?"
"I know him," Roger said loftily, "better than he knows the Eye of Om."
"The what of who?"
"Oh, of course--I ought not to have mentioned----" Roger pretended to be
disconcerted, "I--uh--well, never mind."
"How comes it you're out here? Why'n't you ride right on in if you want
the Doctor?"
"I just stopped to rest."
If Roger's words were carelessly intoned, his heart was doing
speed-pulsations. Doctor Ryder was there!
"Well, all right. They didn't know who you were, climbing on our wall."
(_Our_ wall--Roger hid a grin.)
"Guess I'll walk up. Want to bring my machine?"
Might as well enjoy some of the luxury of having servants to wait on
him, Roger chuckled merrily to himself.
"Certainly, sir. You will find Doctor Ryder with Mister Clark, over
beyond the pool, at the first tee of the golf links. Or, would you
rather be announced?"
"'Station O.B.Y's,'" Roger pretended to be a radio announcer, playing on
the phrase, "Oh, be wise," as he shook his head.
"No, thank you. I'll go see the doctor without being heralded."
He walked ahead of the servant, across the lawn.
Before he had passed the girls with gay frocks, joking with their
escorts, and the quartet of laughing, splashing swimmers, he saw the man
he had supposed to be a prisoner.
Doctor Ryder, his bald head and plump frame easily discernible, was
certainly as free as the tall, sallow, thin-cheeked, hatless man in
white flannels who was swinging a golf club over a ball.
"Why--Roger!" The doctor, turning, recognized him as he approached,
"How'd you locate me so soon?"
Roger, coming up, on guard, hiding his surprise at the unexpected
freedom of the man, took on a careless air of wisdom.
"Science!"
"Oh, you laboratory people!" Doctor Ryder smiled. "So my voice _did_
make a record." He turned to the other man, "I told you that
disconnecting the selenium cell wire wouldn't stop the sound from
getting onto the film, any more than you could stop the motor, even if
you did keep it from taking your picture by holding the card by a rubber
band snapped over the lens barrel."
The other man laughed.
"They may have your voice, and welcome," he chuckled, giving the rather
flabbergasted young detective a cheerful grin of welcome, "but they
didn't get my picture, and they won't have my voice, because--well,
young man, how do you imagine I beat that?"
"Wrote your answers," said Roger after an instant of thought.
The man nodded.
"I told you he was clever--who wouldn't be under the Mystery Wizard, as
his older relative is sometimes referred to." Doctor Ryder slapped
Roger's left shoulder.
Roger, cautious, eyes alert, saw no signs of duplicity.
The situation puzzled him.
After all of the mysterious, baffling, weird and unexplained
circumstances, after the strain and excitement, here was the victim of
capture and jewel robbery, about to play golf, laughing, free.
Were "appearances" cheating his common sense? He decided to pretend to
accept conditions, but he watched alertly for clues.
"But I expect you are surprised to see this situation," the man who
owned these acres of wealth declared.
Roger could not dissemble well enough.
"No fair keeping him in the dark," Doctor Ryder prompted. "I was going
to telephone, but we had some details to work out over a few holes of
Scotch Croquet," he laughed at his own allusion to golf. "So you
sleuthed me anyhow. Well, let's put our cards on the table."
"All right," Mr. Clark--the footman's identification--said.
"I was getting the Voice of Doom manifestation again when--how, only he
can reveal--this old traveling chum, who has gone further in making
money than I have in curing spinal disease," Doctor Ryder was speaking,
"stalked into my room."
"Well, I knew you were in danger," the other remarked. "So I just went
in through a cellar window and up the stairs, and just as the Tibetans
were getting the hang of the slotted cable trick to shut off the current
so they could walk in, I knocked down the ring-leader."
Could that have been the thump on the record, Roger asked himself.
"They had a copperized gadget, and so I chased the other two, and used
the gadget, walked in, and brought my old chum out here."
"You might have saved us a lot of worry," Roger spoke abruptly. "We
thought all sorts of terrible things about you, doctor."
"But I said, at the end of the record, that we would go to the safe, and
if all was well there we would come here and communicate."
"The record ran out before it was spoken," said Roger, and he added:
"Well--did you find the jewel safe?"
"Just as Clark drove us up near the laboratory," Doctor Ryder informed
him, "we saw the Tibetans emerge. How they had worked it is beyond me.
But we let them start in a car, trailed it, and when they got out we
jumped them, and after a tussle, sure enough!--they had this, so we took
charge."
There, in his palm, lay the great, flashing emerald!
"Matter of fact," Clark spoke up, "as long as your laboratory Chief
won't help my friend to restore this to Tibet and escape all the
danger--and worse--that those Tibetans can stage, I am going to finance
his trip back to Tibet, and may even go along."
"All right," said Roger, swinging on the soft turf, "I'd better tell
Grover to stop worrying himself about your protection and all."
"You can call from the house--a servant will show you where," the estate
owner suggested, and Roger saw no trickery or exchange of glances to
tell him anything was deceptive in their manner. "While you are telling
him, if you like the idea, you might ask if he can give a good young
radio operator a leave-of-absence to go along. We have had a Roger, the
Ear Detective, so far. We'd be willing to pay expenses and salary to a
Roger, the Scientist, on our trip to restore a priceless religious
symbol."
Roger's jaw dropped, sagging with his astonishment.
"Straight goods," added Doctor Ryder. "The Tibetan priests are bugs
about scientific cleverness. You'd be a help."
"Name your own salary, too," added Mr. Clark.
Roger may have set his feet on greensward; but to him it was as if he
walked on clouds.
But he did not ask Grover over the telephone.
_He_ was not so sure about that frank offer.