THE STALKING TERROR
Roger left the laboratory. He located Grover. His recital amazed and
stunned his cousin.
"Astrovox unconscious still. Ryder hovering in the balance. Toby in a
cell." Grover summed up. "Two attempts to reach you--and why? Can't you
think, Roger?"
"I've mauled my brain, but I just don't see what I seem to be expected
to know."
"And the missing jewel," groaned Grover. "Where is it?"
"I haven't seen it since Clark put it in his pocket, in the temple,
Grover."
His cousin considered the matter as they took lunch in a quiet corner of
an uptown restaurant.
"You lock up securely and make certain that the devices all work."
Grover said, as they separated, "I shan't have to stay with the old man,
because it isn't expected that he will regain his wits for at least
several days. I must go to the museum. Business has to go on. Then I
will have a talk with Potts. We have given him what the French call a
'white card'--a clean slate. But--I want to question him. He might have
picked up the real gem. He could have realized what a find it was. He
may not have discarded it. And while I hate to suspect him--"
"But he wasn't there, today, when Doctor Ryder--"
"How do you know?"
Roger was silent. Like Grover he hated the idea; but Potts had been
free, supposedly resting. He might have been around. If anybody could
know ways to get in--oh, it was not thinkable, though!
Much more Roger preferred to mistrust the electricians, or the
bio-chemist.
On his way back he stopped at home to get the record carrying the "fire"
and crackles. He would need a fresh record for that night.
With his package he returned to the laboratory. Everything was quiet,
there. The men, in their activities, were sober but busy. Zendt greeted
Roger.
"How is Astrovox?"
Roger told him. It was suspicious, the young cousin decided, that Zendt
was so anxious. Less so, it seemed, about Doctor Ryder. He made no
inquiry, though Roger, coming in, had called up the hospital to learn
that the man was out of danger due to the prompt action of the interne
at the laboratory. He must be quiet, for ten days or, at least, for a
week, Roger had been told.
"Astrovox," he told Zendt, "is unable to say anything, and they don't
expect anything else for days."
That, he hoped, would "spike" any intentions the man might have to harm
the old astrologer. Not wishing to say more he hurried to the dark-room,
quickly put the waiting films in a time-and-temperature regulated bath
and went out of the place for the eighteen minutes that would elapse
during development. He busied himself clearing out the waiting
requisitions for minor needs from the stockroom, tested the glass used
by the doctor with no result, and then put the films in hypo. for
fifteen minutes, staying in the open rooms during fixing period and
washing afterward. He was not going to be caught in that dark-room, with
Grover and Potts away and some stalking menace quite possibly still
abroad.
His list was still in the file, he made certain. He had thought that it
might have been taken; but he realized that whatever was on the paper
was also in his head, and that was why he was endangered.
When it came close to closing time he helped clear away used trays and
other chemical apparatus, washing-up. He gathered up all films and got
ready for the next day's work. The developed and printed film he left on
the drying drums, not caring to stay long in the dark-room.
When, close to the office at all times, he was certain that the staff
was absolutely out of the building, he began a careful and thorough, but
hurried series of operations.
His decision to stay there all night, discussed with Grover, had finally
been agreed to by his older cousin.
At home, there was no way to avert the trick used before. The fuse box
could not be guarded unless they hired a Falcon patrolman.
That the laboratory was more impregnable had been proved the night
before by the effort used to enter. The fire, set off probably by a pole
carrying a light, inserted from above the telescope, had been assurance
that even the skylight was considered too risky by whoever had wanted to
enter. That one had set the fire, hoping that firemen would have broken
in, giving him--not her unless the stenographer was suspectable--a
chance to run in with them.
What _they_ could want (or what _he_ could want), Roger did not seem
able to decide. Not the laboratory's secrets. When the false gem had
been sought in the safe, nothing else had been disturbed.
Roger, determined to stay all night in the laboratory, made his
preparations with thoroughness and care in spite of his speed.
The old microphones set at doors, windows and other probable entrances,
he tested. The cameras he took out of circuit. They would not need to
record, because no one must get in to be snapped.
From the upper room he resurrected the old shadow-box with its panel of
lights, connecting them into circuits so that the least disturbance by
any microphone, even a vibration of its sensitive diaphragm by slight
sounds, would cut a relay and light the right lamp.
The connections of the magnetic plates he traced, to be sure no one had
cut a cable. Where they all came together at the transformer Roger
transferred the connection from the 180-volt step-up to the next higher
output. Anyone touching any plate must receive a 300-volt charge. He
would not risk anyone getting away, granting that such a one got past
the bolts he wired fast, as he did with window catches.
The fuse-box bothered him. If an intruder could in any way get in and
pull out fuses, perhaps all his precautions to hold them would be
futile.
Presently a solution of that difficulty came to his trained mind.
With the fuses left in place, he disconnected the cables that fed the
protective devices, wearing heavy rubber gloves and with rubbers on his
feet.
Taking that set of flexible cables back behind the furnace and to the
main box of the electric company input, he risked later censure for
tampering with their property by breaking their seal on the box,
throwing off the big, main switch, and connecting-in his cables to the
main line just within the input lines. He closed the box, sealed it with
the switch again in the "on" blades, and knew that any outsider must be
ignorant of his precaution. The fuses could be pulled, the wires at the
switch-boxes could be cut, and still his plates and microphones would be
actively charged, potent and effective.
Roger, effectively sealed in, he felt, sat down with the supper he had
ordered in, saving milk and sandwiches for later, and ate with a feeling
that he was safe.
Half way through the meal, with an inspiration, he took a charged wire
from the main-line up to the telescope still poked up out of the
skylight. He had climbed up. If anyone started to climb down--what a
shock that telescope would give.
Contentedly he closed his meal with a big cream-puff.
Soon after that darkness came. Roger, unwilling to discover his presence
by lighting a light, sat comfortably in Grover's "thinking den," and put
his thoughts to work on the problem of that list of sounds.
If he had only guessed it, his very elaborate precautions had been
overdone by just one protective effort.
Night chased the western glow away and brought stars to look down upon a
very quiet, apparently deserted building.
Roger, restless after an hour of fruitless thinking, wandered at slow
pace toward the upper floor, planning to start there on an inspection
route that would kill time and give new assurance.
He had not completely mounted the stairs when he heard a sharp, almost
explosive crackle. His eyes were dazzled by a flash as if it had begun
to storm and lightning had flashed. He stood, transfixed. The flash
died, and to his amazement he heard a queer sound as if splintered glass
were dropping, tinkling and scattering; and yet it was a muffled sort of
clinking noise.
He summoned his best courage and with shaking limbs crept on up to the
second story. There, looking around half-fearfully, he was more amazed
than ever. In the gloom, objects he knew well by location loomed without
any apparent change. The telescope pushed its long barrel upward, the
table and chairs, cabinets and cages, seemed as before.
He threw on a switch for light.
None came!
He stood there, baffled. Had the power-house cut off their "juice" or
had a dynamo cut out for the time? No. There had been that detonation
and flash. A torpedo such as he had made? No--more like the spark from
their high-tension transformer jumping a gap.
As he stood there, something below him went over with a crash!