  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! |
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