  After further consideration of the sound clues, and discussion of the uncanny appearance of animals on a film, and other points, and without seeing any light, Grover rose. “The staff will be arriving any time, now,” said he. “Let’s look up that fellow, Joseph Z. Clark, because I want you to do a little Sherlock-Hawkshaw work if we locate his address.” They took first the telephone book. He was listed, and his address was in a section of the suburbs given over to large private estates. His business also was listed. He was a jeweler, and the reason he could own an estate was shown by his business address in fashionable Fifth Avenue. “A man would seem to be a suspicious character loitering around a private estate,” Grover looked up, “but a boy——” “I could wear my old sweater and cap, and ride my bicycle, and it would be natural for me to rest anywhere along the road, or even go anywhere to ask my way.” Roger caught the spirit of the idea. “I merely want you to ‘look over the land,’ and see how things look,” Grover insisted. “Then after the staff goes, come back and report. That gives you time for rest between riding out and back.” “After the staff goes—Do you still think?——” “I have to think everything and nothing until I get a lead.” Roger took his time riding the dozen miles to the easily located point of espionage. To get there by mid-morning was best. The estate itself, walled in with ivy-covered stone, quite an extensive acreage, he reached as the sun approached the zenith. Near what seemed to be a servants’ gateway he sat down by his reclining bicycle. From the grass beside the gateway he could see, along the driveway, the beautifully rolled tennis court, the sweep of lovely lawn, from the main gateway, winding up to a grand, white mansion, people moving about on wide verandas or swimming in a distant pool. “Pretty swell,” Roger told himself musingly. “Not the sort of a place to look for kidnapers or jewel thieves. Unless—as Grover is always so fond of saying: ‘I dig past appearances that can be falsified, to the heart of truth that can’t be changed.’” He turned it over in his mind. Of course, it would not be past reason that a prosperous man, with a millionaire’s residence, might smuggle gems, even make a man his prisoner to secure a gem with the world-wide reputation Doctor Ryder had ascribed to the Eye of Om. Om—Roger had looked it up—was the reverent name by which the Tibetans referred to the All Highest, to Our Eternal Father. It was sometimes spelled A-u-m, also, he had found out. From his view of the rich, scintillating gem, the unbelievably many, tiny, flat, facet surfaces, turned in every direction, well symbolised the name, the Eye of Aum or Om, the All-seeing Gaze of the Supreme God. Well, for that jewel, what would not some characters do? He wondered, gazing idly, behind which window Doctor Ryder might be a prisoner; and he thought how he might discover it. If the man could look out, he thought, Doctor Ryder might give him some signal. He stood up, pretending to stretch, facing the house. He got up on the wall, and knew that he was noticed, for a footman moved out toward him. He jumped down, watching the upper windows. No response. No signal. If only he could be seen from all four sides of the house, he reflected, it might be different! “Private property, son,” said the footman, arriving at the gate. Some remembrance of detectives who had “taken the bull by the horns” and had “bluffed” people into telling the truth, who had tricked suspected people into revealing things they tried to hide, made Roger act without fully canvassing what the possible outcome might be. “Private, yes,” he said, grinning mysteriously, “but you’d better ask Doctor Ryder whether I’d be called a trespasser or not.” His bold stroke brought him a revealing response. “Huh? Doctor Ryder? Do you know him?” “I know him,” Roger said loftily, “better than he knows the Eye of Om.” “The what of who?” “Oh, of course—I ought not to have mentioned——” Roger pretended to be disconcerted, “I—uh—well, never mind.” “How comes it you’re out here? Why’n’t you ride right on in if you want the Doctor?” “I just stopped to rest.” If Roger’s words were carelessly intoned, his heart was doing speed-pulsations. Doctor Ryder was there! “Well, all right. They didn’t know who you were, climbing on our wall.” (Our wall—Roger hid a grin.) “Guess I’ll walk up. Want to bring my machine?” Might as well enjoy some of the luxury of having servants to wait on him, Roger chuckled merrily to himself. “Certainly, sir. You will find Doctor Ryder with Mister Clark, over beyond the pool, at the first tee of the golf links. Or, would you rather be announced?” “‘Station O.B.Y’s,’” Roger pretended to be a radio announcer, playing on the phrase, “Oh, be wise,” as he shook his head. “No, thank you. I’ll go see the doctor without being heralded.” He walked ahead of the servant, across the lawn. Before he had passed the girls with gay frocks, joking with their escorts, and the quartet of laughing, splashing swimmers, he saw the man he had supposed to be a prisoner. Doctor Ryder, his bald head and plump frame easily discernible, was certainly as free as the tall, sallow, thin-cheeked, hatless man in white flannels who was swinging a golf club over a ball. “Why—Roger!” The doctor, turning, recognized him as he approached, “How’d you locate me so soon?” Roger, coming up, on guard, hiding his surprise at the unexpected freedom of the man, took on a careless air of wisdom. “Science!” “Oh, you laboratory people!” Doctor Ryder smiled. “So my voice did make a record.” He turned to the other man, “I told you that disconnecting the selenium cell wire wouldn’t stop the sound from getting onto the film, any more than you could stop the motor, even if you did keep it from taking your picture by holding the card by a rubber band snapped over the lens barrel.” The other man laughed. “They may have your voice, and welcome,” he chuckled, giving the rather flabbergasted young detective a cheerful grin of welcome, “but they didn’t get my picture, and they won’t have my voice, because—well, young man, how do you imagine I beat that?” “Wrote your answers,” said Roger after an instant of thought. The man nodded. “I told you he was clever—who wouldn’t be under the Mystery Wizard, as his older relative is sometimes referred to.” Doctor Ryder slapped Roger’s left shoulder. Roger, cautious, eyes alert, saw no signs of duplicity. The situation puzzled him. After all of the mysterious, baffling, weird and unexplained circumstances, after the strain and excitement, here was the victim of capture and jewel robbery, about to play golf, laughing, free. Were “appearances” cheating his common sense? He decided to pretend to accept conditions, but he watched alertly for clues. “But I expect you are surprised to see this situation,” the man who owned these acres of wealth declared. Roger could not dissemble well enough. “No fair keeping him in the dark,” Doctor Ryder prompted. “I was going to telephone, but we had some details to work out over a few holes of Scotch Croquet,” he laughed at his own allusion to golf. “So you sleuthed me anyhow. Well, let’s put our cards on the table.” “All right,” Mr. Clark—the footman’s identification—said. “I was getting the Voice of Doom manifestation again when—how, only he can reveal—this old traveling chum, who has gone further in making money than I have in curing spinal disease,” Doctor Ryder was speaking, “stalked into my room.” “Well, I knew you were in danger,” the other remarked. “So I just went in through a cellar window and up the stairs, and just as the Tibetans were getting the hang of the slotted cable trick to shut off the current so they could walk in, I knocked down the ring-leader.” Could that have been the thump on the record, Roger asked himself. “They had a copperized gadget, and so I chased the other two, and used the gadget, walked in, and brought my old chum out here.” “You might have saved us a lot of worry,” Roger spoke abruptly. “We thought all sorts of terrible things about you, doctor.” “But I said, at the end of the record, that we would go to the safe, and if all was well there we would come here and communicate.” “The record ran out before it was spoken,” said Roger, and he added: “Well—did you find the jewel safe?” “Just as Clark drove us up near the laboratory,” Doctor Ryder informed him, “we saw the Tibetans emerge. How they had worked it is beyond me. But we let them start in a car, trailed it, and when they got out we jumped them, and after a tussle, sure enough!—they had this, so we took charge.” There, in his palm, lay the great, flashing emerald! “Matter of fact,” Clark spoke up, “as long as your laboratory Chief won’t help my friend to restore this to Tibet and escape all the danger—and worse—that those Tibetans can stage, I am going to finance his trip back to Tibet, and may even go along.” “All right,” said Roger, swinging on the soft turf, “I’d better tell Grover to stop worrying himself about your protection and all.” “You can call from the house—a servant will show you where,” the estate owner suggested, and Roger saw no trickery or exchange of glances to tell him anything was deceptive in their manner. “While you are telling him, if you like the idea, you might ask if he can give a good young radio operator a leave-of-absence to go along. We have had a Roger, the Ear Detective, so far. We’d be willing to pay expenses and salary to a Roger, the Scientist, on our trip to restore a priceless religious symbol.” Roger’s jaw dropped, sagging with his astonishment. “Straight goods,” added Doctor Ryder. “The Tibetan priests are bugs about scientific cleverness. You’d be a help.” “Name your own salary, too,” added Mr. Clark. Roger may have set his feet on greensward; but to him it was as if he walked on clouds. But he did not ask Grover over the telephone. He was not so sure about that frank offer. |
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