  When he heard Doctor Ryder’s startling plea, Roger’s clear, gray eyes lighted with a fire of hope and excitement. To be involved in a mystery in the laboratory was thrilling; but to have a share in restoring the Eye of Om, evidently a priceless gem, would be more so. His quick mind flashed over the fascinating prospect; but with equal quickness he saw the reason why Grover sat so silent and unimpressed. A man accused, anxious to return a jewel, would merit help. A man who knew the real taker of the gem and wanted it restored meant possible trouble. He might want them to help him get the gem away from its possessor. That was not their duty. It was police work. “Please be more definite,” Grover said. “I don’t want you to help me ‘steal’ the gem from anybody,” the medical experimenter declared. “I need financial help to buy it.” “To buy it,” Roger exclaimed. “That would take a lot of money. Would the people in Tibet pay you?” “They would pay a handsome profit, Roger. But it would not cost such a vast sum as you may think. You see, the one who has it is not aware of its value.” “That is curious,” remarked Grover. “What happened was this: I went to the temple with a native priest to see the marvel I had heard of. While we were entering, a figure slipped away out of another door to the sacred crypt. As we approached the great figure of Buddha, I saw a vacant hole in it and realized that the priceless jewel was gone. Terrified at the thought of being caught, suspected or in some way associated with the crime against their holiest treasure and venerated religious symbol, the priest and I hurried away just as other temple attendants discovered the situation.” Without being certain, the rest of the gem’s history was assumed to be that the thief, terrified, had thrown away his loot. One of his camp staff, an ignorant, though strong pack-carrying youth from an American city, whose way the doctor had paid for his ability to obey orders without trying to improve on them, had found the gem, in a fissure of the great mountain pass they traversed in escaping. He had evidently taken it to be only a beautiful native art object and had put it in his pack, apparently, without mentioning it, meaning to bring it back to America to “give to his sweetheart,” as the medical experimenter supposed. “At any rate,” Doctor Ryder summed up, “he is living here in the city, his sweetheart had forgotten him, he has that treasure, put away, and I dare not go and talk to him about it. I know he has it because he has shown it, as a souvenir, to people who have recognized its worth without knowing just what it is. He would probably sell it for a fairly good sum, if approached by someone from a museum; but if he was told its history, and knew its real value, he might sell it to some gem dealer who would put it beyond my reach in some private collection. And my life would be forfeit, because I cannot prove, in the circumstances, my innocence to the Tibetan Dalai Lama and his vindictive, fanatical subordinates.” Grover, as Roger watched him eagerly, anxiously, considered the situation thoughtfully. “I suppose that there are complications,” he said, finally. “Some international jewel thieves must know the affair.” “Exactly.” The other man nodded. “That accounts for the entry, here, night before last. From the use of a kangaroo I would assume that an Australian is interested——” “An ape would mean somebody from Africa,” Roger argued. “While the strange projection of the Voice of Doom implies that the Tibetans are preparing to strike at me,” Doctor Ryder added. Grover sat considering the matter. “With that all granted,” he said, finally, “it is easy to see what caused the queer ghost-figures in our film. I assume that the purpose of using the trained boxing kangaroo with a pouch to carry its young, also trained to ‘rescue’ from fire, was to furnish a novel way of hiding and removing the gem which evidently the thieves think, as do the Tibetans, that you have.” “Certainly. In your safe.” “And whoever came,” Roger was able to fill it all in, now, “with the kangaroo, meant to get into the safe, get the gem, put it in the animal’s pouch, and then, to make it go away safely, he had to turn on the fire alarm that rang a bell, the way it must ring in the act, for the kangaroo’s signal to rescue the rats. It rescued them, and hopped away, to its attendant, just the way it would in the theatre.” “And what about the film?” asked Doctor Ryder. “Some was probably in the ‘sound camera’ by the cage. Either in trying to shut it off or in an accidental knock against it by the animal, the ‘continuous’ lever was thrown. Focused with a diaphragm opening to catch the white rats’ movements under a vivid light, the lens got only an under-exposure in the light from the ceiling!” “Logically,” Grover finished up for his younger cousin, “the man knew the camera had been running. He took out that magazine, took the blank film from the new can to replace it, making as many snaps as had been made of the rats, jarred the continuous-take lever on by accident, giving us the clue of claws-on-glass as his animal came to the cage, with the ringing of the alarm bell.” “Science to the rescue!” Roger exclaimed. “Now we know it must be the animal trainer who is the key-man. If he did it for his own greed, we can protect ourselves from him in the future.” “If he was a hired accomplice of others, as I assume to be most likely,” Grover added, “he can be compelled to tell us the facts.” Declaring that he would interview the man in person, bidding Roger to add to the few hours of sleep secured before their midnight watch, the laboratory head, as the staff began to arrive, urged Doctor Ryder to say little, and to wait until consideration could be given to his plea that they help him get the Eye of Om. On the emergency couch, in a small combination of rest-and-first-aid room, Roger stretched out without feeling the least bit drowsy. The excitement was still keeping him alert. “Science to the rescue,” he mused. “Modern apparatus is wonderful and understanding how it works and what can be done with it ought to help people solve many mysteries. They have developed instruments to measure nerve responses and other things. There is the lie-detector for one device to help fight crime. “And if scientific appliances, and scientific understanding, both can be coupled with Cousin Grover’s axiom about ignoring appearances and digging to the heart of truth, analyzing down to the basic element of a complex combination, it will be even better.” He thought back along the course of the many happenings, and of all the clues that scientific apparatus and wisdom had opened up. He sat up suddenly. “Science to the rescue!” he repeated to himself. “We don’t need to wait to see if the animal trainer will tell the truth. We can find out right away.” In the files he found the enlargements made the day before, from the “routine” wide-angle and close-up views Potts had taken. The folder full of pictures, and the rolls of film from the cabinet he studied carefully. Roger’s study was concentrated on the close-up and magnified detail of door locks, window catches and all openings. If any catch had been moved the picture should show to the screen-observing youth, some abrasion, or some disturbance of rust, or at least a displacement of the accumulated dust. Nothing. Nothing in any picture, on any film! “That tells me that the entry was made through the skylight, as we had thought,” he decided, but added: “Or—does it tell more?” An ape, he felt sure, could not have been trained, or have sense, to swing so as not to touch a magnetized and super-charged metal plate concealed by being painted the same color as the wooden floor under the skylight. A man, dressed as an ape, might. But it seemed like a long way to go around to get through, when a more simple possibility was open. Roger assumed that it might be possible that one of the people interested in securing that priceless treasure which could be supposed to be in their safe, could work there! The fact that no pressure from outside had given its clue in the pictures, showed him that some “insider” might have opened the only possible place to get the kangaroo in—the coal chute. His examination, with a high-powered, beam-focusing light and a magnifying lens, revealed that rust under the bolt had been scraped. But the pictures had shown no sign of the use of “jimmy” or other implement for prying back bolts! An “insider” was responsible for opening that chute trap. It would be simple to associate kangaroos with Australians, apes with Africa, possibly India. It would be just as easy to narrow it down to whether any of the staff connected-in with either place. A man from Australia would naturally think of a kangaroo and its peculiar qualities and usefulness for his plan. A man familiar with a country wherein apes were found might see the usefulness of that animal, or would resort to a costume for disguise that a man from the coal counties of Pennsylvania, for instance, would not have thought of. To the office files Roger hurried. All the data concerning each employe, such as age, experience and so on, was there. When he had looked, Roger put away the sheets of data carefully, and waited eagerly for Grover to return from interviewing the trainer. Two sheets had told him much. One had given its maker’s experience on an expedition to India for a power-plant construction job. There was India, ape country. Roger knew that in many sections of India, apes were sacred. The other sheet had told him that its maker had worked in Australia under Government chemists, studying the inroads of a destructive insect. He had two names to give Grover. Science, with brains, had come to the rescue. |
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