  Watching, Roger saw and recognized the man who entered. The bio-chemist, Zendt, came in with a film magazine of exposed celluloid in one hand. “How are my diffusion shots coming along?” “In the hypo.” Roger watched narrowly. Zendt was either a master of facial control or he was one of those “innocent bystanders” who manage to intrude when some crucial point of a drama is about to be played. “Please develop this run from the speed camera. Ellison and Millman have caught the torque of their erratic motor on film. Sixteen exposures to a foot—a million to the minute. Shooting time, one half minute. Does that tell you the size of reel to wind it on?” Roger, making mental computation with one side of his mind as he studied the situation with the other, nodded. He would put the ceiling light out, but he would not satisfy Zendt by staying there. Perhaps the man came prepared to hold him at his dark-room work in case he had not yet been sufficiently dosed. “Bring you prints soon,” he told Zendt. “I’ll get this into a developing tank.” He risked a question. “Is anybody in the cellar? The ventilator seems to be choked. No air comes in. It’s—stuffy.” “Maybe. Millman was down, earlier. Potts hasn’t come. Grover has gone out.” To let Potts get sleep, to stand guard over Astrovox, Roger decided. “I’ll telephone down and see—oh, look. It was shut off.” Clever actor or innocent intruder, Zendt betrayed neither interest nor disappointment. He simply nodded and went out. Roger considered his position. He reasoned: if Zendt was blameless, some one else was watching. From seeing Zendt emerge the unknown would be sure that Roger was still all right. But if he left, all possibility of detecting who was the culprit might be gone. Still, he had no chemicals in assortments that would enable him to detect the possible introduction of some fume through a hole in the walls, or some other move. Besides, he was open to bodily attack. He must not be there. No one must see him leave. He remembered that there were chemicals that he would need, and inasmuch as he was known to be all right, he could easily get them. He emerged, seeing Doctor Ryder busy with his arrival of white rats, with Toby helping him put them into the glass pen through the trapdoor in the top that prevented them from escaping. “Got to force-up some underexposed negatives,” he remarked as he passed them. To the stock-room he went, and procured the ingredients he needed; but not for an intensifier for under-exposed film! Returning, he noticed Zendt, watching the rats also. Once more in the dark-room Roger proceeded methodically and carefully to produce a very businesslike detonating torpedo with crystals of gritty hard iron oxide-rust! to take the place of the gravel usually packed in a commercial torpedo of the sort formerly sold for exploding by contact with the sidewalk. The other ingredients he mixed with care as to method, as well as formula, knowing that certain chemicals must be combined in a certain sequence. Wrapped in a fairly good paper taken from a packet of printing paper, he had his torpedo ready at last. There was no window from which to fling it, but he knew that by putting a chair on the developing table by the wall, he could get his hands up to the small outlet around the exhaust fan. The old equipment, discontinued since the laboratory had put in air-conditioning, led to the open air. He got to the position carefully, took his torpedo, and adjusting the small exhaust fan so that its blades would interfere the least with an open passage for the missile, he took his chance, against striking the blades, flinging with a quick jerk of his wrist that sent the detonator straight through past the fan. Hurriedly he climbed down and got the chair back in place as he heard, muffled by the drop, a sharp explosion on the pavement in front of the laboratory. He was certain that the noise would draw everybody. In the space between the outer and the inner light door he listened. Doctor Ryder and Toby went with the rest. The way must be free. Roger, emerging, saw that his guess had been correct. There, poked up through the skylight coaming, was the long, and large-girth telescope of Astrovox. To an athletic youth, with agility and endurance, to climb the steadily enlarging, inclined barrel was no hard task. Once at the top he got over onto the roof with skilful swings of his body and flexing muscles drawing him safely over the coaming. Then he watched, unseen from below, careful to be on the side facing the sun so as not to let his shadow reveal his position. There he watched for an hour as Doctor Ryder and Toby returned, and others came to the stock-room, but went away to await his arrival from the dark-room. Their wants must not be urgent. The vigil was fruitless, though. No one entered the dark-room, barely visible in his quick glances. A new idea came. He went up the rainspout of the adjoining roof, using knees for grip and hands to pull him up from one bracing ring to another. Down the adjoining fire escape he went, to the top floor of the candy factory where, to the surprised girls, he whispered, pretending to be mischievous, “Playing a trick on the folks next door.” They all knew him, from seeing him going to and from work. He accepted some candy, and went down and out onto the street. He saw no one watching. The brown mark of the torpedo detonation was still on the pavement. He slipped into the laboratory cellar, by way of its ash-lift, unobserved as far as he could tell. To the air-conditioning system he made his way, trying to see if any of its outlets, especially one to the dark-room section, had been removed or tampered with. He saw some signs that a pipe wrench had ground rough bright spots on the piping, and smiled. His idea had been right as to where the gas had been sent up. A survey among old trash awaiting the attention of Potts revealed a large, empty tank. Some one must have charged it—whether by purchasing the materials or by injecting the exhaust from a car he never found out. There, though, was his evidence. He left it as it was. Grover had been right. Some person or group, with intentions far more vicious than had been in evidence among the Tibetans, had marked him. Why? What did he know? Not the place of the lost Eye of Om. For that they would want to take him prisoner, to question him. This attack had been because someone was sure that he knew more than he did. Could he find out what he was supposed to know? To try was Roger’s immediate intention. |
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