  The Ear Detective, more favored than ever because he had been the means of listing sound-clues, one of which had completely linked Ryder into his crime, was busy. Astrovox, well recovered from his blow on the temple, was going to “shoot” the stars as they crossed over the lens of his telescope and Roger was getting a sound-film into a camera. “Why in the world did Ryder have to go to all that trouble?” the old star-reader inquired. “How much simpler to have come in his own clothes. More freedom for his hands, that way, and no need to bring the ape to unlace his animal skin.” “He knew,” Roger explained, “about out protective device, and by wearing the skin and bringing the dancing ape, he would never be photographed and he would fool us all the more.” “Well,” remarked Astrovox, “you’ll remember that Neptune—the planet of deception—was opposed by Saturn, the planet of obstruction, and there was an opposition of Mars, ruling explosives, with Uranus, which is, you might say, the planet that brings up the unexpected.” Roger smiled to himself. Good old Astrovox, he mused, with his oppositions and “aspects” and all, was, still, a very clever scientist, and must be humored. “Yes,” he chuckled, “and if I remember all you told me, something like this was in the ‘horoscope’ that day. The ‘sixth house’ has to do with animals—smaller animals, and Neptune with larger ones.” “That is my astrological teaching.” “Well, Neptune is in that sixth house, and if Saturn is the planet of obstruction it shows why the false doctor in his deceptive disguises, would be obstructed or caught.” “Rats!” Tip snapped. “Rats are under the sixth house,” Astrovox seriously persisted in apparently preposterous ideas, “and Neptune showed how the gas was used and also how the acid test, when Grover applied it to the shoes Ryder had worn, revealed in the paraffin cast the exploded gas of the torpedo he had stepped on to attract attention just when I ran in and recognized him.” “What explains my denseness?” Grover arrived, with a special quartz lens for some prism-and-spectroscope color work, “I was put off the track at first because Ryder knew my favorite axiom, ‘dig past appearances that can be falsified, to find truth which is ever the same.’ He deliberately hid the culture tubes in his own racks, and I fell into his trap, trusting him, thinking he was being victimized by some one else. It made it possible for him to be here, operate the trick with the Voice of Doom and hand Roger the prepared film supposed to be unexposed, carrying his animal pictures that he took at a special performance given him for good pay by the animal trainer.” “Your density was because Mercury was in the twelfth house, and squared the moon in the third—wrong deductions.” “Maybe those ‘houses’ are true,” chuckled Grover, “I know one house I am going to occupy. My own home. For a good sleep. How about you, Roger?” “After I see that all our apparatus is fixed for the night.” “You go ahead,” Potts grinned fondly at his chum, all suspicions forgiven, “I’ll see that everything er—uh—coagulates!” THE END The Mystery |
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