  Something was wrong at the laboratory! Ringing bells, long before dawn, awakened Roger Brown. Dazed at first, he became alert as a strange, cold foreboding made him leap out of bed. “Just the telephone,” his thirty year old cousin, head of the laboratory, called from his room beyond the adjoining bath. Roger, who was already on his way to the downstairs library of his cousin’s home, paused. “No!” Well built and athletic, sharp-eyed, keen minded, a worthy student under his brilliant scientific cousin, Roger spoke earnestly, “It wasn’t just the protective beam system, or just the fire alarm, either. Grover, it was both!” “Impossible! Why have they stopped ringing?” Tying his robe cord, the older cousin followed Roger. He knew that “Ear Detective’s” reputation for reading sounds, even if his own incisive reasoning made him feel that this time Roger had been too drowsy to live up to his nickname. Just the same, he followed. “As long as the beam was broken,” he insisted, “The bells ought to continue to ring. I think your fame as a sound interpreter is done.” Roger did not try to defend himself. “It was probably a wrong number on the telephone.” Grover was five steps behind his younger relative, “If you are so sure it was our alarm system, especially both bells, why aren’t you dressing to rush to the lab?” “I’m getting down to be ready when Tip calls.” Potiphar Potts, nicknamed Tip, was handy man at the scientific research plant. He slept there. In a moment Roger expected to have him call up to report the reason for the alarm. “You will never hold your reputation now.” Grover turned at the library door as Roger, inside, stared, baffled, at the annunciator panel. The reputation his cousin spoke about had come when a chemist, sent to them to help the laboratory develop a new series of dyes for a textile mill, had begun to “hear things.” Deaf, wearing an Amplivox, composed of a chest microphone, batteries and an ear piece, the man had been nearly crazed by a persecuting, accusing voice picked up, it seemed, by his device. Roger, by identifying an odd click he got in a makeshift imitation Amplivox set, gave Grover the clue through which a revengeful enemy who had sought to terrify the man had been discovered. As The Ear Detective, Roger, who was in charge of the laboratory stock-room, had really been the means of solving the mystery. “I know I heard the laboratory bells,” Roger insisted. “But the lights on our tell-tale are not lit.” “I can’t help it. Both the fire alarm bell and the system that warns us if anybody enters——” “But Potts has not called up, either. Go back to bed.” Grover turned to leave the room. Roger, who was staying with his cousin while his own father headed an exploring expedition into Borneo for a museum, knew that his ears had not betrayed him. His cousin, several years before, had secured capital with which to start a scientific research laboratory for the use of small companies unable to maintain equipment and an expensive staff. Every form of research, electrical, chemical, industrial, and in one instance medical, had been successfully undertaken. The “lab” prospered, and enjoyed a reputation for scientific and human thoroughness and dependability. Priceless secrets, formulae, data and results were always in the laboratory, and its owner had devised seemingly perfect methods for safeguarding the secrets which rivals, or competing firms, might covet. A completed series of experiments to find a synthetic substitute for camphor gum, an industrial formula almost beyond price, was reposing in the safe on this early morning of Spring. The safeguards comprised two: There was a series of light-beams, interconnected with microphones and tiny speed cameras, at every possible entrance. Any broken beam, telling of wrongful entry, set off a laboratory bell in the room where Potts slept; and it also was wired to ring a bell at the owner’s home; and on a panel, numbered lights would show, by the one that glowed, which entrance had been used. To protect the laboratory from fire, and warn of its existence, a bell of a higher tone with a thermostat connection in the laboratory, in each section, would give warning; and if the blaze was in the cellar, a green bulb would glow; if in the main floor, a red bulb, and for the upper section a blue bulb would be lit. Naturally, Grover felt that his younger cousin had mistaken the sound that had awakened both. Roger, still feeling his weird and unexplainable sense of hidden danger, picked up the telephone. The laboratory, when he dialed repeatedly and waited long, did not respond. Tip, trusted, loyal, paid extra salary because he was counted on not to leave the mechanical devices to give the sole protection, should have answered his extension telephone. “I tell you there is something wrong,” insisted Roger. His cousin, partly convinced, taking on some of Roger’s concern, began to dress. Just as he came down Roger knotted his tie. In the car kept handy in the garage, they drove the several blocks to the two-story building. Before they got near it, Grover put on speed. Fire sirens and the scream of the warning signal on a police car made both cousins wonder what terrible situation they might face. Had some one, entering the laboratory, set off the first alarm as fire broke out? Had Potts, fighting either fire or intruder, been rendered incapable of responding to their telephone call? “Oh, I hope nothing has happened to Tip.” Roger was very fond of the dull-witted, but dependable man, almost an Albino with his sandy hair and light eyes, who loved to use big words whether they fitted his idea or not, and who helped in the many mechanical, photographic and other activities involved in their work. The car, racing forward, turned into the proper street and they saw fire apparatus gathering in front of the building. Roger, as the car slowed, leaped out, crouching and running to avoid being thrown down by the momentum. “Don’t break in!” he shouted to firemen, “Our protective gas will prevent damage—and water would ruin our electrical things.” The company captain paused as he saw, behind the youthful caller, the taller laboratory owner striding forward. His men, with a battering ram, delayed. The helmeted men, some with axes, others with scaling ladders, hose, or the rubber covers used by the emergency squad from the Fire Underwriters, paused. “What-da-ya mean, nothing more won’t burn?” growled a policeman from the patrol car standing nearby. His finger pointed toward the glass panel of the main door. Roger, looking in, saw the curious orange glow and the weirdly bluish-violet splaying out across the office from the inner spaces. “Who—what set off the flouroscope and the X-rays?” he gasped, while Grover reassured the gathered people. Unobtrusively setting one foot well to the side on the top step, so that his toe, pressed forward, found the small protecting pin, he unlocked the door, careful to keep the knob turned toward the left, instead of in the natural hand-turn to the right. That, Roger knew, cut out that particular light-beam system, so that they could enter without altering the present status of the tell-tale panel inside that would reveal where entry had been made, and by which magnetized plate the marauder would be held in trying to escape. They rushed in. His first rush took Roger to the panel. Not a bulb glowed! He stared, unable to accept the story it told—somebody had set off every light-beam-trip! That put out the lights. Not one of the row connected-in with the magnetized plates was lit, either, and yet no living person should have walked or crept or climbed away through door, window, coal-chute or other exit without getting caught. But Roger did not pause. He ran to Tip’s room. Tip, tied tightly to a bedpost, his lips taped shut, his eyes rolling as he sweated in his frantic effort to escape, saw him. Roger first took the tape off as gently as haste allowed. Just as soon as he was able to speak, Tip gasped: “Tell Grover them mouses ain’t is.” “Ain’t is?——” He knew that Potts used queer phrases, trying to fit big words in, and this might be his way of leading up to some puzzling declaration. “What happened? Stop being smart, and tell me!” ordered Roger. “If mouses is here, you say they is here?” “Well?——” “They ain’t is.” “Gone?” Roger stared, “The white rats. Gone?” “They done extraverted.” Roger had to study that out. He knew that the psychological word was used by analysts of human minds to indicate people whose outlook on life was normal, while introverts were shy, timid people who were afraid of life. “Extraverted” must mean that the animals had turned outward toward the world—run away, or escaped. “But those white rats—Doctor Ryder’s—were in a cage with a trap door on top, and they’d been inoculated with cultures of a spinal disease,” cried Roger. “How do you know?” “I was up lookin’ at ’em, and somethin’ with a hand like a ham hit me back of the ears, and when I come to, tied, them rats was evacuated. I was drug down here by a ape and tied. An’ there was somethin’ else I didn’t get a look at, behind the ape.” Was the man crazed? It worried Roger. But a call from Grover, upstairs, quickly told him that Potts had not been talking wildly. “Roger,” called his cousin, “The white rats’ cage is empty!” |
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