  Whatever was in the laboratory, it was coming straight up to the second floor. Roger, crouched beside the floor outlet to await a signal to plug in and electrify that chair, wondered why Grover did not move the film can, make contact and light the signal lamp to summon the police and the Tibetans. Instead, Grover spoke, low and meaningly. “The first man who gets up is the guilty one!” Zendt, who had started to rise, sank back abruptly. Ellison and Millman stayed as they were, half bent forward. “Guilty nothing!” Toby spoke in a rasping voice. “Think I’ll sit here and let something attack me?” “You heard me,” snapped Grover. Roger knew that it would be a question of seconds only; and they would then see the approaching creature. There in the dark it was a tense moment, and a nerve racking one. Louder, thudding on the floor, with a strange dragging sound at the end of each pause, came the approach. “Roger—that bag.” “The shoes, Grover?” in dismay. What was the matter with Grover? “Quickly. That bag.” Roger lifted it, and Grover, snatching it, opened the paper sack, dragged out a bulky object, just discernible in the dim light they had from the tell-tale panel. Roger gasped. “Boxing gloves!” “Lights!” snapped Grover; and as Potts, lifting an arm, snapped on the wall switch just above the place his chair occupied, Roger saw his cousin pulling on the padded mitten-like objects. Whether the rest knew or not, that told Roger what to expect, if not the whole situation. A kangaroo. A boxing kangaroo. The one he had photographed when he had questioned its attendant who had said no pet or trained animal had left the stable. In the next room something stopped, and there came, not loudly, a low command. There was an interval of suspense. What, Roger wondered, was the condition in that partitioned place adjoining their waiting room? After a momentary wait, and more seemingly guttural commands, the thumping was resumed; and the animal, in short hops, came to the entrance door. There it paused as if dazzled or surprised at the light or by the crowd. Behind it, in the other, darker room, shown by their own light, Roger saw a hairy, man-like creature, either chimpanzee or some other large mammal it seemed to be. The kangaroo’s keeper, he assumed. Just as in the under-exposed film, where the ghostly ape and its Australian companion had seemed to dance, the kangaroo hopped in, while the ape, grimacing and beating its chest, danced in behind it. Straight at Grover leaped the kangaroo. It wore boxing gloves! Roger, crouched, tense and frightened, saw his cousin, with a typical boxer’s stance, prepare to carry the coming battle to his astonishingly expert antagonist. In that room, while the company shrank back, against walls, pushing their chairs out in front of them, leaving a clear space, the animal and the man closed in as fast and as bizarre a contest as Roger had ever viewed. Not clumsily, but with lightning-quick jabs of its short forearms the beast lunged, taking blows without a sound. Grover, clever through gym training, fast on his feet, evaded the fairly clumsy leaps and lunges. At every chance he got in a blow. If, as Roger inferred, the ape was indeed the trainer, the bulky creature bore out the idea. Grover had to watch the skipping, leaping hairy thing that tried to get around and catch him; and also, as far as Roger could discern his cousin’s tactics, Grover seemed to be so handling his leaps and side-wise ducking that the ape would be mostly near to Potts who sat, tense, but still, in that chair; and Roger, crouched by the wall outlet, wondered if he, the handy man, meant to take part and if Grover had foreseen it. “No you don’t!” Grover seemed to be talking to the kangaroo, but of course it was the ape he really meant to have hear, Roger knew. “You keep far from the cabinet. What if it is ... och—oh! Missed me, old fellow ... even if it is unlocked.” As though telling a story as he dodged and ducked, Grover always talked as he maneuvered, his breath well conserved by his ease of action. “So there was a scientific student who turned to jewel theft! ... he did want to get rich quickly ... he was clever ... made a specialty of locating ... prized gems.... Through a jeweler named Clark, he ... he got into contact with those ... who would pay well ... got the gems ... used the jewelry place as a clearing house....” In that fashion he began outlining a solution. “Heard of the Eye of Om, didn’t he?... Went to Tibet, taking Toby ... didn’t dare make a stab for it, though....” Grover jumped back so that the monkey missed grabbing him. “Got through Clark a man ... who would pay fabulous price for that Eye. And ... worked out plan to have it so cleverly stolen for him that he would never be suspected by Tibetans or other gem thieves ... oh, you would, eh?...” as the ape made a lunge and Roger, avoiding it, had to drop to his haunches to avoid the boxing kangaroo’s leap and stroke, “Would, eh?... try to get to that cabinet.... Like to paw the Eye of the Buddha, eh, would you?” as the ape started to take a part by coming up to grasp him from behind. Roger was about to shout, but he saw that Grover, like an eel, slipped aside. He did not strike at the ape. “The gem robber knew he would be suspected if he ... took the Eye ... returned to America ... made an elaborate plan ... would use science ... chose our lab....” Grover, his cousin saw, as did the rest, kept maneuvering so as to keep the lunging paws approaching as he backed around. For some unseen purpose he seemed to be manipulating his actions so that he could get the ape and the kangaroo into some desired relationship or position. Roger, still at his place, not daring to desert his post, saw the ape back toward Potts. Instantly, as though by some previous order, Potts snapped his body out of the chair, and with his arms, catching the thing that walked upright like a man around its torso, he dragged its shaggy body backward off the huge feet and flung it into the chair. “Plug in!” Still dancing backward from the leaping kangaroo, Grover shouted. Roger, checking the tremble and shake of his excited hands, swiftly drove home the prepared plug and at the same instant from the thus electrified chair rose a sheer animal howl of pain and fright and fury. Still alert, Grover had a moment to catch his breath. As if startled, the kangaroo paused. On haunches, its forepaws were hanging down over its pouch—it was a female with the pouch to carry its young!—while from the chair came the most ferocious grunts and screeches. The trainer, thought Roger, was an actor in spite of his surprise. He maintained the animal voice well. As if prepared for the situation, Potts dragged from a pocket some light, strong electric wire, and with gloves of rubber which Roger had seen him getting ready, he managed to get the wire around the beast, or rather, as Roger put it to himself, the man in the animal hide. “You can cut the plug out, now, Roger.” Grover, with a wary eye on the still quiet kangaroo, which had not moved, spoke the command. Roger obeyed. Released from the shocking cycles of current, the thing in the chair growled and struggled against the bonds which Potts had cleverly wound to prevent use of arms or legs. So powerful, though, was the beast, that it once upset the chair and had to be righted, growling and using guttural imprecations or shouts of hatred. “To go on with my story,” Grover calmly confronted the quiet kangaroo, “the man chose our laboratory as the base of his plans. He came here. To start his operations, he watched his chance one night, and hid in our large refrigerating unit, that is in the spare-stores room, since we used it to test chilling processes for food shipments. “Being unsuspected, he had been able to make certain preparations. First, he put the culture intended to inoculate some white rats, into our chemical section, half-hidden, but purposely left where it could throw suspicion on a certain person. Then, when the rats had been inoculated, but with a harmless drug that made them sleep, he was ready for his next step.” To Roger’s surprise, everyone had been so amazed and so startled by this calm recital aimed, apparently, at a dumb brute that sat back with drooping, glove-shrouded forepaws and listened!—or was too baffled by the capture of the trainer to continue the battle—the staff had settled in the chairs again. “This mysterious, clever criminal,” Grover coolly proceeded to tell the animal his theories and deductions. “This former student of various biological, chemical and related subjects, bribed an animal trainer who had a vaudeville animal act, to let the animal used in the act come here. He wanted it to be caught if any plan failed, so he could disappear but the animal could not tell on him.” He bent forward, and quietly removed the laced ham-like gloves from the beast’s relaxed paws, and it seemed not to resent the act, but let the free forearms hang loosely across its stomach, and pouch. “Borrowing the white rats from the act, this miscreant prevented them from being inoculated by exchanging labels on the culture, later recovering the labels as the bottles emptied were thrown to the fire. The labels, on the real culture again, were put where they would seem to clear someone by incriminating him through circumstantial position in the racks. Really, though, they had a different purpose.” He startled all but Roger. “The appearance was that the man whose rack they occupied was being persecuted. In reality, he did it himself, to make me suspect every other staff man.” “Not Doctor Ryder!” Millman gasped. “You have named the culprit.” “But he’s poisoned, in the hospital——” Grover went right on, ignoring Ellison’s shout. “He confused us by ‘stealing’ the rats, and in other ways, because he wanted us to think of every possibility but the real one.” “And that was?——” prompted Hope. “He wanted us to help him take a false imitation of the Eye of Om to a Tibetan temple, replace it for the true one, which he could then sell for a great sum. In other words, what we thought we were doing, helping restore the true jewel, was exactly the reverse! “We innocently helped remove the True Eye of Om!” |
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