THE HIDDEN MENACE
Instead of shouting, beating on the door and otherwise wasting energy
and using up the available oxygen of the room, Roger paused, taking only
the precaution of mounting on a high developing table, to avoid any
floor accumulation of poisonous fumes.
Such mice, he remembered, could detect a dangerous fume long before
human nostrils caught the odor; and this made them life-savers on
submarines. They gave the crews time to trace gas fumes and suppress or
nullify their effect.
"Now, there isn't any gas I know of in what I am using," Roger spoke,
under his breath, to his tiny companion, just as most people will
discuss an emergency with a dog or cat.
Fumes of such chemicals as he might use for "reducing" and
"intensifying" improperly exposed negatives gave off offensive odors in
certain mixtures; but he had mixed none. Hypo was not dangerous: and the
ventilating system should have sucked away any fumes of whatever sort,
he knew.
Nevertheless, the animal grew still more excited.
Roger lighted the white, glaring dome light, ignoring possible ruining
of the developing plates in his trays.
He knew every content of that room.
Nothing was out of place except what he had been using.
There was the extra paraphernalia of the oxygen apparatus. Nothing else
was visible.
It came to him that no odor or fume could be liberated that would cause
such frenzy in the little white savior unless it was introduced from an
outside source.
He would find out.
He went to the intake of the ventilator, and with litmus paper, and
other handy agents, he made several tests, keeping his nose and lips
within the tight folds of a handkerchief as he did it.
The litmus did not at once indicate anything. But when he thought of
what he had sometimes read of closed garages, with car engines running,
in which people had been overcome by exhaust fumes such as carbon
monoxide, he made a hasty test, with what he had available, and was very
sure that the gas or one of that nature, was in the air.
A tiny animal might be going to save his life. Roger knew his next move.
He would shut the ventilator, prevent the inflow of any more fumes,
leaving the exhaust openings to suck clear the accumulation which would
lie near the floor. He got his oxygen equipment, and climbing onto the
highest table, he made an improvised airman's outfit such as they used
when ascending beyond the human range of breathable air. He used his
oxygen and mixed it with air inhaled only through a handkerchief
strainer.
He thought in this way he could hold out, and then whoever had come so
close to being in line for the electric chair----. He watched the mouse
for signs.
After a few minutes the animal, at his level, quieted.
Roger, allowing still more time, finally laid aside his protective "gas
mask" arrangement, and quietly tried the door. It had been unwedged. He
did not emerge, however, but went into a corner to wait.
Whoever might open that door, he thought----
A criminal would haunt the scene, to see the effect of his plan.
Would it, he wondered, be Clark? He had threatened. Or--Toby? Or
Millman? Of course not the Tibetans. They were not chemists: they were
priests.
He grew tense, watchful.
The outer light-trap door was being opened.