TRAGEDY STRIKES AGAIN
Without consulting his list, because he did not want to have it in sight
any more than he wanted its place in the files discovered, Roger used
the "thinking den" for just what its name implied.
"Claws on glass," he reflected. "Click of a contact. Voice of Doom
upstairs from Balsa-wood speaker. That's what the click was for. The
plug-in that made the connection through the house-wiring from record to
speaker-unit. The Voice again on a record that ought to have been
blank?"
He went through his list, mentally, to get all fifteen sounds clear in
his brain again.
"The call of 'Fire' and paper rattle sounding like flames," he completed
his silent inventory.
"Of course," he told himself, "the last one links up with the Voice of
Doom on the record, and that links up with the Voice out of the speaker
upstairs. And the click, as the plug-in was made is a link there too.
Then, again, the thump in the corner that made me start the picture
machine--that could have been disconnecting the plug-in. Doctor Ryder
had thought it was going to be more, for he was with me and cried out,
'start the machine' or something."
The clicks that he had first misread as dripping faucets in a
washing-sink, that had turned out to be the safe combination being
manipulated by an expert, he put out of mind as explained.
"The claws on glass hooks up with the film that showed the
ghost-kangaroo," he decided. "That can be side-tracked. Now, that leaves
the talk that named Clark, after the Voice of Doom--all three times it
could have been the same record, of course--what is left?"
He re-pictured his clues.
"The grind of moving rocks on the records. None in real rocks. A thump
on the record. How do they tell me anything? The record was not really
made in Tibet. It was made in America. I seem to remember that the Tibet
voice was deeper than the one on the record. But why did the record add
something not in Tibet? The rock rasp. Is that my real clue?"
Puzzling about it, and trying to see what link there was between the
thump and that additional grinding sound, he got no inspiration.
His meditation was interrupted by the arrival of a caller, a man from
the Museum of Natural History.
He wanted the laboratory to work out some extremely complete system for
protecting the museum's very valuable collections, such as the gem
exhibit, and other priceless collections.
Roger had to explain the absence of his cousin on "business" and to
accept the assignment conditionally on Grover's acceptance.
"Probably some short-wave system could be worked out," he said, and the
caller left.
Grover telephoned. Told of the call, he agreed to accept the commission
and would call at the museum before coming to the lab., when relieved by
Potts toward nightfall.
Roger went back to his broken thread of meditation.
An attempt had been made to get into his room. Millman had been caught.
His motive, he had said, was to learn whether Roger played scientific
tricks. Did that ring true? Or, as Roger felt, could he have wanted to
silence a tongue able to accuse him about Astrovox?
Roger tried to fit that theory in.
"It just won't quite come," he mused, despondently. "But I must be
considered fair game because I know something. There is the man who
thinks I have the Eye. Having it wouldn't make them want to get me out
of the way. Only the Tibetans would try that, and _not until_ I said
where the Eye is hidden. And I don't know. Still, I have been attacked
by some gas in the dark-room. Now what _am_ I supposed to know that
would reveal the 'who' in this?"
A shout from the upper floor broke his reflections.
With a sinking feeling in his stomach and with heart skipping, he opened
the private door and looked, listening, toward the stairs.
Millman and Ellison, Hope and others, were stampeding toward the steps.
"What was it?" he called.
"Doctor Ryder--something has happened----"
He joined the hurrying group.
In the partitioned room, among the cages and plant-housing, on the
floor, lay Doctor Ryder, with Toby standing beside him, his face looking
horrified.
"What is it?" Mr. Zendt came stamping up the steps.
Ellison, bending in a crouch over the prone figure, looked up.
"Did he faint?" he asked Toby sharply.
"N--no, sir. Just fell down that way."
"Are you--sure?"
"Ye--yes-sir."
Roger moved closer. "Is he--alive?"
"His pulse is very low, but he breathes. Now," Ellison stood up,
organizing them dictatorially, "Toby, bring ammonium--any form."
It flicked through Roger's subconscious mind that the electrician knew
chemicals. He had not used the ordinary, every-day "ammonia" but then he
had not added the word to indicate the chemical nature of an ammonia
solution. It might be because he was excited.
"Roger, have the stenographer call a doctor--or an ambulance from police
Headquarters is a quicker call. Zendt, what do you say this is?--Stroke?
Coma?" The bio-chemist bent down, squatted.
"Did he stand in front of that Beta-ray?" he asked Toby.
The helper, apparently very much frightened, perhaps afraid of being
accused of something, grasped at this eagerly.
"Oh, yes-sir. He was right in front of it, working on them new rats he
got in. Why? Will that lamp burn him?"
"Those rays may have a disintegrative effect, some reaction in the human
body. I can't say. I saw it was on, and asked."
If that was a solution, there was tragedy, but not a culprit--a careless
accident, instead, Roger mused.
Was Toby's word, he mused, having made the stenographer contact the
police--was Toby's word to be trusted. Or had he--what?
The ammonia, and chafing of wrists, had no beneficial effect.
Almost immediately a police car came; and soon afterward the interne
from the ambulance was examining the man who had been put on the
laboratory's emergency cot.
The doctor bent close, sniffed at the faint breath.
"Get the stretcher," he ordered abruptly.
"What is it?" Roger's voice shook.
"Poison, I think." He used their medicinal emetics as a first-aid
measure, but almost without waiting for effects, took the inert figure
away.
Mr. Zendt, standing reflective among the group of stunned laboratory
workers, suddenly confronted Toby.
"Did he--drink anything?"
"Y--er----"
"_Did he?_"
"I--no--yes, sir."
"Water?"
"Y--yes, sir."
"Did he get it himself--where? What glass did he use? A clean one?"
Under the fire of questions Roger saw Toby redden and then whiten, heard
him stammer and try to evade.
Out of it all came a sudden declaration.
"I never give him no poison. He told me to get him a drink. I went to
the cooler, and drawed water in the glass. I knowed it was clean. I
always get told about washing everything the minute it's done with, and
I did it even with the glass."
If he had washed the glass, no evidence or clue to its former contents
would remain in it. Was that, thought Roger, a way that a person might
behave who had put something in the water? Or was Toby, as he insisted,
innocent. But no one else had been there! Or had Zendt, formerly up with
the doctor, put anything in that glass perhaps intended for either of
the pair working there?
It was a maze.
And out of the staff, two were impotent.
Roger shuddered. A thought turned him all goose-flesh.
Might some one else be the next?
Which of them?
Maybe he, himself, might be.
Or--he thought--was it all over? Was the real culprit caught?
The police arrested Toby, took him away.