SCIENTIST ROGER
Brought back to the laboratory in Mr. Clark's car, with one of the
servants delegated to drive the estate carry-all in with his bicycle,
Roger got a new surprise.
Mr. Clark greeted their bio-chemist and their electrical specialist,
respectively Mr. Zendt and Mr. Ellison, as long-missed brothers.
"We attended the same technical college," he told Grover.
"And did we have experiences in India?" chuckled Ellison.
To himself Roger thought that here was some likely link with the
kangaroo and, perhaps, with the ape of the first startling night's
alarm.
He kept his thoughts behind his lips.
"But why must you restore the Eye, at so much risk?" Grover, put in
possession of facts already known to Roger, asked, "Turn it over to
those mysterious Tibetans who open safes and enter sealed rooms."
"That's the rub," Clark declared. "Are they genuine priests? Or
thieves?"
"The Voice of Doom is a genuine manifestation, apparently," Doctor Ryder
added, "at least, in the mountain temple, I heard something similar to
the screaming doom. In some way they produce that noise, on a much
greater scale of volume. It is said to be the Voice of Doom, and is
supposed to come through the lips of their image of Buddha, as an omen,
only when a criminal is being judged by the image, which is to say by
the temple priests--or before some calamity such as an earthquake or
famine year."
"But maybe these fellows are using that, and pretending to be priests
from the Forbidden Land, to scare us into giving up the gem," Mr. Clark
argued.
Real priests, bent on revenge, he insisted, struck first, spoke
afterward, if at all. Or, these might be of some other sect or lamasery,
as they called their mountain retreats.
"I can see that," Ellison agreed.
"It is not from them so much comes the danger to Ryder," Zendt was also
a champion, "More from the hidden menace of the real Doom comes it."
"If I could get away," said Ellison, "I'd take back the thing for
Ryder."
"It is my risk. I got into this thing."
"But why do you suggest taking Roger, Doctor?" Grover asked.
"Several reasons. First: he has proved that he is accurate in discerning
the correct interpretation of sounds, which leads to the next: he is
clever at photography and other scientific means of getting accurate
data. To explain that, let me say that with so much danger if it were
known that I meant to get into the temple, a secret way to restore the
Eye would be safer.
"There is a hidden way to enter the temple. I do not know it, but I feel
that in some way it may be connected with that Voice of Doom, and Roger
could photograph, enlarge his takes, study them, and with his sharp eye
and keen wit, could no doubt find the secret."
"A last reason," Mr. Clark added, "is that he can operate a
radio-telephone, as well as send wireless code. We might want the
former, if two parties, separated, needed to keep in constant touch. The
latter, short-wave sending and receiving, could keep us in touch with
the outside world--even with you, Mr. Mystery Wizard Brown."
Put that way, there seemed less to make Roger uncertain.
What an adventure!
"If you could spare that husky, loyal general assistant, Potts,"
suggested the doctor, "we could ask no better guardian for your cousin."
There was much to be considered; there was much apparatus to be designed
and assembled, including compact, tiny cameras, hand-operated generator
to supply current where electricity never had been used, light, but
powerful step-up transformers: there had to be clothing and other
traveling needs in sparsely settled Tibet to be planned.
Time, though, coupled with a spirit of eagerness, helps in such plans,
and it was soon time to say good-bye, to wave from the moving train, to
hear Tip shout, "At last we got everything coagulated. We're off!" and
to settle back in a parlor car seat until time to go into the diner.
Across America, and on the ship bearing the party toward the
International Date Line in the Pacific where one day changed to another
by the simple process of crossing the imaginary line--the way that the
astronomers had worked out to adjust Time to the sun's progress--and
even when they landed in China, only slight evidence had been noticed
that the effort to secure the gem was still alive in some one's mind.
Doctor Ryder felt that it indicated that the Tibetans had really been
the ones after the Eye; and the ransacking of a despatch box, in their
hotel room in San Francisco, he thought, had been the work of an
international jewel thief.
Roger, while they crossed the Republic of China from Shanghai, had
plenty to interest him, and so did Potts.
That loyal if uneducated guardian voiced his astonishment at the unusual
sights and experiences.
"No wonder they say these people are backward," he told Roger. "They do
everything hind-side-first. Men wear skirts and women wear pajamas. They
build a station where there ain't any railroad at all, and have roads
where there ain't any traffic to use 'em."
"Well, to them that is their way. They think our way is back-ways."
"It is all in the point of view," Mr. Clark took part in the chat.
"Everything depends on how you look at it. The moon looks far off if you
reverse your telescope, yet a star looks closer from the right end of
the same instrument."
"I don't care," Tip was stubborn about his idea, "They _are_ a backward
race. Look at that!"
"That" was a rickshaw boy, drawing his two wheeled carriage with two
American tourist women in it. The boy deliberately swerved and ran
across the street just in front of the automobile, the traveling
companions and Roger were using. The driver had to stand on his brakes.
"They think devils chase them, and if they turn right-angles and run in
front of something, _it_ runs over the devils that can't turn corners."
Potts was disgusted.
Other strange customs--strange because different from American
habit--kept them alert and amused as they progressed toward the place
where arrangements had been made for the party to join a caravan that
was on its way across Tibet bearing tea and other Chinese goods. It
seemed safest to go into the restricted territory as if bent on passing
through it. Camels, with great fuss and grumbling, swift ponies with
many whickers of eagerness to gallop rather than walk or trot, got under
way and Roger, swaying on his Ship of the Desert, bound, seemingly, for
the Kybur Pass and India, smiled as Potts found his curious steed
inducing a seasickness that made him prefer to walk a good part of the
time, unless the pace was too swift, when Tip rode and suffered.
As arranged, at one of the halting places, during the night, the
quartet, met by guides and bearers as arranged for by the caravan
leader, quietly forsook the caravan, and rode, on wiry ponies, into
darkness and a land over which brooded the mysterious, terrible
Himalayas.
Far away, in a city laboratory, with Roger's chum, Billy Summers, an
expert radio "op," Grover tuned a set, amplified, increasing output
strength; and then, as Roger, in the Tibetan night, increased his own
signal power as Tip ground at the generator, each knew that with the
other all was well. Yes. Just then!