THE VIGIL
"Blue glow," Roger gasped. "Are _you_ going to have fireworks too?"
"No. You will adjust the big sun-lamp so it sends rays upward. Put the
blue filter from the star-reader's plant beds on it. It is only fair
that part of his equipment should help catch and round up the one who
struck him."
Roger, with nothing but thoughts to occupy him, went to prepare the
signal. He could hear Grover making calls. To a police Bureau. To his
staff men. To Falcon's patrol agency.
To Roger it appeared to be as dense a mystery as ever; but to his
brilliant cousin something had torn aside the fog.
He tried to fathom that evasive clue. He went over his ideas. Claws on
glass? No! Then what, besides? Something he should recognize in the
light of what he knew. Something that the miscreant had imagined him
bright enough to have guessed, perhaps.
It escaped him, eluded his every attempt to read that riddle.
Only a short time was he allowed to concentrate.
There were hookups to be made. A chair in the store-room was to be wired
down two legs, positive and negative wiring, a plate of metal as thin as
possible was to be found and put on the seat, with small clamps to hold
it in place under a thin covering cloth. It was to be left where it
stood, but two wires must be taken from a wall outlet, led to small,
flat disks like microphone diaphragms, tacked onto the floor at a place
Grover designated.
With that done and the wires fixed in a plug-in to fit the outlet, Roger
left the circuit disconnected as ordered, and busied himself leading
wires from the sun-lamp, with its blue cover-glass, to the stock-room
shelves where they must be so set that a can of film, shifted and
dropped over them by hand, would complete the circuit, act as a switch
to light up the sun-lamp.
Grover came up, inspected, and pronounced the work well done.
"Now, get a nitric acid test-bath ready, in a big container--and have
some wax melted and ready for the test for exploded gases."
"Whose hands did we overlook?"
"No hands. Feet." Grover answered, alertly, and with a
smile--mystery-solving seemed to transform him from a staid,
self-contained scientist into an eager, boyish experimenter.
"Shoes?"
"Exactly."
"His?"
"Right."
"Then--whose?"
"If you are too dull to have read your own sound clues, Ear Detective,
far be it from me to dull your wits by telling. Think!"
Presently Millman, Zendt, Ellison, Hope and several other staff men, in
pairs or alone, arrived. They were eager, excited as they questioned.
Grover, picking Roger's list of clues out of his file, presented it and
suggested that what he had learned they could learn, while Roger
recounted his own experiences up to date.
That was done; and they pored over his list. Grover, getting a lot of
amusement out of their guesses, chuckled to himself; but his younger
cousin felt that he was watching them to see when the guilty one would
crack and admit that he was cornered.
Who, besides, could be guilty? Doctor Ryder was in hospital; so was
Astrovox. So, in jail, Toby Smith was out of the night's excitement.
To his amazement, a police car, arriving, brought an officer who brought
in the last captive he had been thinking about--Toby.
The men seemed to have found no light in Roger's list.
Roger, who had heard their sane, or wild surmises, suddenly sat up.
Some brain cell, stimulated by the continual stress of cogitation, spoke
its concealed message.
"I know--Grover--how dumb I've been."
He scribbled a name on a slip from the office desk.
Grover nodded.
"You should have seen--heard the right answer long ago."
"I left it for the Mystery Wizard, so he could keep up his reputation,"
grinned Roger.
The Tibetans walked past, identifying their presence, but went on down
the street. Grover, watchful, looking out of the window, made a signal
that he had noticed them, and then suggested that they all go up to the
stock room.
There, in the silence, with no light except that in the monitor-panel
which Roger had set up to show which entrance was used when they could
expect callers, they sat around, puzzling and trying to make Grover
speak, although any one of them could have been suspicious of any other,
the way they talked. A light announced the arrival of a visitor, but
Grover did not move. Potts, he knew, was coming; and his inference was
the right one.
Potts, with a bagful of shoes, came in and dropped his find beside
Grover's chair.
"Take this chair, old fellow," Grover was very grave and had an air of
trying to make up to his handy man for Roger's mistrust; but Roger knew
that the chair moved over so casually had been most carefully set on two
small disks, not charged yet--but how easily so made active agents for
trapping the sitter!
"Now we must be patient," Grover stated, arranging the nitric-acid bath,
paraffin heater and other apparatus on a table. "I shall test some
shoes, presently, and I expect them to verify my judgment. In the dark,
though, I shall give the miscreant one chance to secure his Eye of Om
before I denounce him."
Someone, in the dark, shifted his feet, Roger imagined, uneasily.
"You don't mean to say you left it there!" It was Toby who made the
gasping admission in his sudden excitement.
_He_ knew it was there!
"Still where, for all your seeming denseness, you worked out its place,"
agreed Grover. "If you care to, you might apologize to Roger for telling
the millionaire collector that _he_ had it. Of course it was to avert
all suspicion from yourself."
"Aw--"
He did not have time to complete his denial or blustering cry.
A light in the tell-tale went out. The main door was opening.
"Nervy," commented Grover.
A strange, heavy thudding, or thumping, accompanied by something as much
like the drag of a heavy rope as any other sound, told Roger that some
weird development was coming. Could it be--really, a kangaroo?
And why, then, was there a strange chattering and jumping sound?
What would they see?
Those sounds grew louder. The stairway shook. Low growls or words of
command sounded.
Some animal, approaching. Or animals! No man--Roger was sure.