  “Had your sleep out?” Grover shook his cousin. “It’s almost eight and Aunt Ella has the bacon on.” Roger rubbed his eyes, snapped awake. “Is it all right at the lab.?” “I knew it would be. We left Tip to take turns watching with the men from the Falcon Patrol Agency. Two at a time, one on each floor. But I never count on human watchmen alone. They can be careless,” Grover talked as Roger dressed. “I know. Capacity-overloading plates all around, so that anybody or anything that got near any apparatus would overload an aerial field and upset a delicate tube and open a relay, stamping the time, and starting cameras with sound-films in them.” “Exactly. Just talked to Potts. Nothing at all happened.” Arriving at the laboratory, earlier than the staff, Roger and the Chief verified the static condition. “What do you think of this?” Grover took his cousin to the sound-recording mechanism, the type that uses a large phonograph record for the sound that synchronizes with a film in certain motion picture studios. He explained that as a double-check on any possible development, he had hooked up the recorder to a separate microphone system, all concealed flat-disk, super-sensitive diaphragm models, that were set in operation by any interruption of infra-red beams. “That’s something!” commended Roger, examining the arrangements, “of course, with the reports in, I may as well put away the record to keep dust off it during the day.” Grover agreed. Roger moved aside the recorder which had rested on the outer edge of the disk, just past the polished edge of the wax. “Here!” he cried out in surprise, “this isn’t right. There is a sound-track cut!” “There can’t be!” “Well, look, Grover.” The older cousin stared at the abraded surface, the cuts in the surface of the composition. “But that is impossible,” he stared, unbelievingly. “Let’s give it a playback,” urged Roger. He hurried to give the surface a good brushing with a soft brush, exchanged the diamond-pointed recorder for the type that hooked up with the electrical amplifiers and speaker in the screening room. He adjusted the mechanism to run a minute before lowering the pickup onto the disk, to give him and his cousin and Tip time to get into their tiny theatre. The low rasp of the needle as it ran over ungrooved parts was all they heard, for several breaths. Then: Out of the speakers, amazing, booming like the hollow groans that had followed the voices—as they now did!—came the ghostly salutation and warning: “Hear me! I am the Voice of Doom.” Again, while they stared at each other with dilated eyes, the needle ran with no pickup. Then, again: “Hear me! I am the Voice of Doom.” There rose that whining, shrieking moan of the demented and tortured puppy, lowering in pitch until it became a hoarse and strident howl, slowly falling away in volume but dropping in pitch until it sounded like the moan of wind through stretched silk, ending, as had ended the original, spooky manifestation upstairs, in a grinding, abrupt rumble and silence. Before the staff got there Roger had developed the sound-films of all the small cameras, but not one had been impressed with picture or audible sound record. It was uncanny and inexplicable. The Falcon men and Potts declared solemnly, and with sincerity, that they had seen nothing, had heard nothing. This supernatural appearance startled even Grover. Though he did not depart from his usual calm or drop his cold poise, he looked more than ever solemn, and even mistrusted human watchers and his electricity-and-water protective device so far as to search the safe. The jewel, as well as the camphor data and other precious things, to his, and Roger’s, relief, were intact. Doctor Ryder, who was given a demonstration of the spectral recording, looked dismayed. “If I do not return that stone,” he gasped, “my life is not worth insuring. This is the third warning, and conveyed in a way that makes me very certain that we are dealing with a sinister and very occult body of priests.” “How do you propose to return the jewel?” Grover was practical. “I dare not let it be known that I have it,” the medical experimenter declared. “I have thought of going to Tibet—but how shall I get into that temple, and how give back the gem? White people will be all the more forbidden access to the place; and I am already suspected of having taken the Eye.” Grover considered it seriously. Roger, too, gave his best thought to the puzzling complications. “I don’t suppose they’d have radios in temples in Tibet,” Roger said, half-hopefully. “In the Dalai Lama’s palace there is a radio, yes.” “Short-wave?” “Probably of the best. We cannot resort to broadcasting, Roger,” his cousin objected, “the international gem thieves might pick it up.” “That’s so——” “Besides, to ask them to come and take it, as I suppose you had in mind, would bring every gem hunter, in disguise or otherwise. And it might lead to worse consequences than theft. They are fairly desperate, cold blooded people,” was the doctor’s objection. Tip, listening, put in a suggestion. “Let one o’ them that’s been fetchin’ kangaroos and apes take it. Then radio who’s in the possessive case. Let them get the Voice of Doom after them.” Grover smiled, shaking his head. “Tip and I could take it in an airplane,” Roger hinted eagerly. “There is only one logical course open,” Grover gave final decision, “hold everything static. Make no move. Safeguard Doctor Ryder, with the same type of protection we have given the safe, in a modified form. Then, when the promised Doom arrives, its emissaries can be informed that if they furnish proper credentials they may have their Eye of Om.” Tip looked as disappointed as did Roger. No Tibet? No adventure? No thrills? “I suppose,” Doctor Ryder shrugged, “it is the sure way, though not too safe for me, no matter what devices you arrange. If you knew the hidden forces of Nature that those Lamas can call into play, modern scientific protection would be as useful as a child’s toys to combat unseen dangers that strike through the air.” “I will pit my laboratory equipment against any force you can tell me about,” Grover spoke confidently. “Well—as one example—how would you guard against mental suggestions sent by a powerful will, in my sleep, perhaps causing me to leap out of a window?” “I have heard of such powers,” Grover admitted. “I have never seen them verified. However, for any occult science I am sure that we can find a material device to counteract at least the effect on your safety.” Although Doctor Ryder was skeptical, he shrugged and submitted. “I will arrange your room so that nothing can get in, you cannot creep, crawl, run, jump, push or otherwise escape,” smiled the scientist. “I shan’t say what will be set up, and then there can not be any way for you to frustrate my plan to keep you safe.” Potiphar, with Roger, heard some quiet instructions. The sketch and specifications they got made both of them chuckle. Any secret schemer, thief, priest of Tibet, or what, must “go some” to cheat the mass of light-beams, selenium cells, the recording phonograph, a camera, and electrified door and window seals that as long as current held them tight, could open only to Grover’s own secret key, filed to touch only certain contacts in a tiny slot on the circuit-cable just outside the rooms of the doctor. Tired and full of content after saying good-night to their protegÉ, Roger saw the switch set “on” and went home with Grover to sleep soundly. Nothing could enter or leave that sealed place! And to show the fallibility of human wisdom, Roger waked again in the hour before dawn to hear Grover answering a wild summons from a Falcon Patrol Agency guard at the Ryder home. “Better come,” he was telephoning, “I can’t rouse him or get him to answer; and from the observation port I can’t even see him in that room!” |
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