A SURPRISING CAPTURE
A sound in the lower hall made Roger turn. To his delight, Grover came
in. Quickly the younger cousin set out the situation.
"Go down and draw the fuse again," Grover suggested. "Queer that I did
not think of that simple way to nullify all our protection. It explains
how the safe was so easily opened, as well as Doctor Ryder's situation.
When you are ready, pull only the ten ampere fuse in the equalizer of
the circuit marked number four."
Roger knew that the switch and fuse box held different fuses for various
parts of the home, with two heavier fuses set into the main feed from
the street. Grover's idea was, he saw, to eliminate the front portion of
the house including his room, while the light in the rear of the hall,
and his aunt's quarters, would be left on. In that way, with a front
hall light going, Grover could tell when the fuse was out and have light
enough in the hall to work by.
As soon as he had performed his task he ran up the steps, to find
Grover, extremely surprised, facing, in the hall, the last man they had
suspected of interest in the matter.
The assistant electrical engineer, Mr. Millman, stood there.
"A lame explanation," Grover was saying as Roger arrived.
"To you, maybe. To me it seems reasonable that I would have hit on the
method somebody used to get to the safe and I think it is perfectly
logical that I should test out my theory that Roger had been playing all
those tricks in the laboratory."
"What tricks?" Roger demanded.
"This one, if you want a sample."
Millman walked over to the recording device, exchanged from his pocket a
reproducer, made a quick wire connection to Roger's compact table radio,
as Roger had had the connection when the recorder had roughly re-played
the formerly recorded cry and crackles.
"I was making a recording of motor sparking, and just as I set our lab.
machine going, I realized that the diamond was cutting a sound record,
not just running smoothly. You can tell if you are watching closely, as
I was. We cut out the record, took it off, and I told Ellison and Zendt
to say nothing. I began to suspect that Roger, who was up with Astrovox,
was having fun at our expense."
He set the machine going and the needle, automatically dropping onto the
groove just beyond the cuttings, as Roger had set it, had to be lifted
back. Then Grover heard, as had Roger before, the cry, "Fire" and the
rattling, crackling as if flames ate dry wood or paper.
"Now if that was recorded, it had to come from somewhere. We had not
started the sparking motor." Millman was earnest. "And I knew that Roger
was up there. Later, unable to find this record, at the laboratory, I
reasoned that it must be that Roger had brought it to his home.
Evidently, I thought, he wanted to hide it. I decided to make sure.
Being an electrician, I thought, at once, how to get in by pulling a
fuse, not needing to cut wires or put the safety devices out of
commission permanently."
"What do you think, Roger?" Grover turned to his younger cousin, "Does
it strike you as convincing?"
"Maybe he might feel that way."
"But--with some desperate person abroad----"
"Do I look desperate?" Millman laughed. He was tallish, and a most
serious mannered, quiet, earnest person. "What motive could _I_ have for
wanting to hurt Roger?"
"You can best answer that," Grover said quietly.
"I simply wanted to justify my belief that Roger was behind all the
spooky goings-on; the animals on the films, and so on." He nodded to
show his satisfaction. "I think I have proved it."
"Did Potts put this record here?" demanded Grover, and Roger saw that he
was thinking fast.
Hating to add still one more count against the handy man who had only
his own word to support his declaration that he had flung away a
supposably priceless Eye of Om when Clark had made his blunder in the
temple, and Potts had found the discarded gem, Roger nodded.
"And how was the recording made? Do you know?"
Again Roger nodded. Grover frowned.
"How?"
"I was helping Astrovox carry away packing papers; and he mentioned that
Mars, the planet, ruled fire. That word, and the crackle of the paper
bunched up in our arms, would make that sound."
"Was there an open microphone near you?"
Then Roger started.
"No."
"Then--how?----"
"If we could go to the lab." Roger had an inspiration, "I could show
you."
It would keep till morning, Grover decided; and dismissing Millman with
a warning that his actions were at least not beyond suspicion, Grover
set the cable-switch on, and prepared to sleep with Roger.
During the balance of the night their rest was undisturbed.
As soon as they reached the laboratory, Roger took Grover to the
recording machine.
"You will think I did this, because I know so much about it," the
youthful radio and sound expert said, "but it is just putting a meaning
behind certain sounds on my list, and adding the natural explanation."
His reasoning proved to have been correct.
A strange voice had come unexplainably from an upper room having no
occupant:
Roger bent, examining the mechanism under the recording turntable. He
investigated the contacts whereby the electrical impulses sent from the
small "mike" at the sparking motor, through the selenium cell, got into
the amplifying transformer-coil to be increased enough to operate the
recording diamond attaching to a special diaphragm over the disk on the
turntable.
"A wire had been soldered on, here--see," he pointed. "Somebody had a
wire that didn't need to be there. Now, if I just wind this end of a bit
of wire around that contact, to replace the missing one--" he made the
temporary connection, "and lead it down to one or the other side of the
floor outlet, and there attach it even loosely around one prong of the
little plug-in that furnishes current for the motor of our recorder, we
may discover where the speaker upstairs is located."
Hastily he made a temporary splice onto the plug prong. Grover went up
the steps, pausing as Roger put a commercial test-record in place,
switched on the motor and set the reproducing needle on the groove.
Immediately, from upstairs, there came the recording, in a booming,
hollow distortion, natural to the poor connection and the device they
had to locate above.
Grover, walking over to the corner from which came the sound, gave a
surprised call for his cousin who shut off the record and ran to the
disclosure he was sure he would find. His guess was right. There, laid
practically flat on one of the empty cabinet shelves, with its small
speaker-unit set into a cutout spot of the shelves, and concealed by the
thick wood it was let into, was a good sized slab of thin wood.
The wires to the small operating battery concealed in a non-flam film
can, and from that running to a wall outlet that connected the room
devices with the main source of current, they traced.
A recording had been made, downstairs, of voices in the upper room.
To all appearances there was no microphone up there to have conveyed the
voice and paper-rattle. Apparently there was no loud speaker up there to
have broadcast the Voice of Doom so bafflingly.
"You say to dig past appearances," Roger reminded his cousin, "and while
they can be falsified, the truth never changes. Well, if it 'appears'
that there is no mike, and that there is no speaker, we know we heard
the Voice of Doom, and we know we heard the recording made by Astrovox,
upstairs, on a record, downstairs."
"There is, naturally, some connecting wire. But--it does not show. You
know more about radio than I, Roger. Have you located it?"
"Well, when we used to build experimental sets, before commercial radios
got to be common and reasonable in price, I used to try to record my own
voice, so I could play it back. I used the same sort of radio hookup for
that, I think, that is used in making commercial phonograph
records--only, I didn't have a carbon mike, so I tried reversing the
function of the speaker I had. It was a Balsa-wood one, that I assembled
from a small vibrator-unit, and a flat slab of thin Balsa-wood."
"Used the speaker as a microphone or telephone receiver would be used
today."
"Right, Grover. And, another thing I remember from my experiments. There
was a device that was supposed to use the house electric wiring as an
antenna--an aerial. If you put a special plug, with only _one_ prong
instead of two the way regular electric contacts are made, in a wall
outlet, the circuit of the house current was not carried at all, and the
single contact went to the aerial binding-post of my set, and made the
whole house wiring act like an antenna. There was a terrible line-hum.
It wasn't practical. But I think----"
"As long as only one 'side' of the house current is tapped," Roger told
his cousin and Chief, "and the part it connects with is not grounded, it
will act like an antenna--or, in this hookup, it makes any of our
outlets a conductor between whatever is plugged into it and the
Balsa-wood speaker."
"Besides Ellison and Millman, both electricians," Grover mused out loud,
"Potts would know, at least from observation, a lot of electrical
'stunts'. This one, possibly. And he knows how to record; and all about
microphones, speakers and other apparatus that he has to adjust in his
regular laboratory duties."
Another count against Potts, Roger thought--at least by implication in
the evidence.
But, then again, it also pointed to Ellison or Millman, maybe both.
Toby arrived. As with Roger he viewed the cremated powders, and the
melted metal tray on a scorched table of fireproofed wood under a zinc
sheathing, where his "pyrotechnics" had burned, Roger had to admit to
himself that the youth's manner and expression indicated sincere shame
that he had experimented and had left his combustibles exposed. But,
then, the call had come, last night, so close ahead of the fire alarm
that had led to his trip to the lab. Had Toby been lurking nearby after
having chilled the outside thermometer enough to cause the one on the
alarm system to be higher and to set off the device? There had not been
enough heat to release the gas, he made certain of that at once. Toby
_might_ be one of those "dumb"-clever fellows who pretended to be
ignorant to cover up something, to keep suspicion away from themselves.
He decided to add Toby to his list of potentially suspectable people.