But there was no fire here!

Roger began to feel somewhat like a person flying in an airplane for the first time, seeing everything else swinging beneath him, and feeling no movement himself.

It made him sickish.

“Am I out of my mind?” he asked himself. “Is this a dream?”

There must be some loose end of this amazing situation that he could get hold of, to reel in the story and steady his rapidly failing sense of reality.

The sound-camera! It had been running perhaps, till its roll of non-flam film was done. It might tell him something.

Feverishly he got pyro, acid and the sodas into the developing water. He did not stop even for distilled water but took tap fluid.

He immersed the hurriedly rubber-wrapped celluloid.

As it stayed the required fifteen or eighteen minutes, he went over the lab. again, finding no more than before.

He took out the roll, dipped it into hypo-acid fixing solution, and impatiently watched its opaque yellowish high-lights slowly dissolve and lose the un-needed silver salts, to clear into transparency as grays and blacks became more evident.

Hastily washing the film, he unreeled an end, held it up under a light, to see if the sound-track at one side carried any shadows.

There was a recording!

Feverishly, forgetting his terrors, he raced to the projector in the screening room. Carefully in spite of haste he threaded the wet “stock” over the sprocket, down through the film gate, over another sprocket and clipped the end to the take-up reel. He snapped on the light.

At proper speed, and sorry that he must harm the wet emulsion, but eager to hear its story, he ran his find.

The picture was that of the upper room, narrowed down onto the various activities of the old star-reader. The first was a take of his rabbits as they scampered about under a change of ray-lamps.

Then came the brief time-exposures of tabulations, preserved thus.

But nowhere, except for natural sounds, the squeak of mice when a movement of a high-frequency ray cast it upon them—the chatter of the squirrels—ordinary lab. sounds of moving feet and muttered words by the old man, did Roger hear what he sought—enlightenment.

He was near the end of the reel, about to give up, when his ears sent a message that snapped his muscles into taut tension.

“Hear me. I am The Voice of Doom!”

He saw, in the picture, the astrologer wheel and stare. He saw him turn and run out of view.

Then, with scream subsiding in moan, the Voice of Doom repeated its earlier moaning, ending in the grind and sudden cessation.

The film, unnoticed, ran out of the gate, and the magazine clicked to the slap of its still revolving free end.

Roger let it run on. He had discovered a strange clue!

Once coming from a deserted room, and once spoken on a record that had been considered blank, and then a third time from a record that had been set to catch sound in Doctor Ryder’s home, had come that same Voice of Doom, the identical moaning and grating.

In reality, in the heart of Tibet, Roger had also heard that sound.

And in Tibet, the rock that cut off the sound had made no noise as its counterweight allowed it to shut out the wind that made the moans as it howled across the Himalayas and up through tunnel and whistling Buddha’s hollow cavities!

Even as he made his startling realization, Roger heard a bell.

It came from the office telephone.

He dashed down the stairs, cutting out the projector as he ran by.

“Hello!——”

A voice came, thin with distance.

“That you, Rog’?”

“Yes. Tip—at the lab. Where are you?”

“Hunting Grover.”

“Where did he go?”

“To find the star-man.”

“And why did he leave?”

“He was—took!”

“Do you—does Grover—think he was—was in danger—hurt?”

“We don’t know. You stay there. I’ll keep in touch.”

The connection broke off sharply.

From behind him a voice addressed Roger.

“Follow me—and be silent!”

There stood the Lama from the Tibetan lamasery. Two others, also.

Wordless, helpless, Roger moved: they closed in behind him.

The night swallowed the quartet.

Chapter 22
WHAT HAPPENED TO THE EYE OF OM

They allowed Roger to lock up the laboratory; but he had not been permitted to re-set the rays or other protective devices.

That did not concern him overmuch. Roger knew that the safe protection was a separate circuit from those he had cut out when he had unfastened the door on arriving. Besides, he told himself triumphantly, he had recalled the camera fixed in the small decorative panel over the interviewing chair, so arranged that it would photograph a short time exposure of the office and of anyone there. Used to make records of visitors on their arrival with new propositions, as well as a night protection and recorder for the office, it had been operated by Roger, with good presence of mind, when his captors had entered.

Whoever came there later would be able to develop the picture he had left recorded. He had not used the continuous mechanism, but his one photograph would reveal him and the Tibetan trio.

A taxi, taking them to some unknown district, was further cause for triumph. The taxi, from a nearby stand, had been used before by the laboratory people. Its driver knew him, though he gave no sign.

Roger meant to act in such a way that the man, discharging his fare and being paid, would suspect something wrong, return to the laboratory, or consult the police.

At a quiet, small hotel, the machine stopped. Roger, with hands clasped behind his back, made gestures; waggling his fingers to attract the taximan’s notice, then touching himself and clenching his fist.

“Thanks, feller,” the man took his fare, and added, to show Roger he was “wise,” “That science place brought me a good tip. Guess I better go back and see about more good fares there.”

Instead of causing a commotion as they passed the drowsy office clerk, Roger let things stand as they were, and was taken up to a quiet suite where the two guards placidly watched him while the Lama telephoned from another room.

After a while, returning, the man ushered in—Grover.

“How did you come here?” cried Roger.

“So they got you.”

“But you shouldn’t——”

“I didn’t exactly walk into a trap, Roger. The Chief of Police knows where I came in answer to a note handed me while I was trying to trace Astrovox. If I do not telephone within an hour, somebody will come to see what’s what.”

He explained what Roger had not known (after hearing the strange events of the opened door, the screeching table radio and seeing the smoke-filled office).

“I stayed to watch Astrovox make spectra-graphs of color bands,” Grover explained, “sending Tip here to be on guard. An excited call seeming to come from him brought me to the house just as a note he got started him to the laboratory. We passed, not knowing. I found your safeguards apparently working, and returned. Potts was trying to reassure the star-gazer who had heard that Voice of Doom. But Tip was frightened also. We sent the astrologer to lie down on Tip’s bed, while we investigated. He came back to us after a few minutes saying he was too much upset to stay there. He thought the Tibetans had involved him in some manner.”

Tip, it appeared, had agreed to go along to be sure the man got going and reached home safely.

Tip had bidden him wait, in the chemical section, while he went to his own room to get a weapon for safety’s sake.

“I suppose he must have heard something or started into the office, Roger. At any rate, suddenly, we heard the shot. I was down those stairs in a bound, and beat Tip by ten feet getting in where the smoke still hung in the air.”

“It was strong when I got there.”

“But the office was empty. I told Potts to stay, and ran out. A man, strolling, had stopped. I asked if he had seen a man go out and he pointed up the street, and like most of those night-prowlers he tried to avoid the light and hid his face with his hat brim. He was fairly short and stoutish, but it wasn’t Astrovox. I ran, and thought I saw the star-gazer further along; but it was not our man. I suppose Tip, worried, came to look for me. You say the wires were silent.”

He was stopped by the arrival of Tip who had been lured, as he had, by a note delivered by a boy; and almost on his heels came Clark and Doctor Ryder, fuming and puzzled and anxious.

They were given no time to exchange words. The Lama spoke:

“We want the sacred relic, the Eye of Om.”

“It is in the Buddha’s head,” Roger said earnestly, “I saw this man put it there.”

“He tells the truth,” Clark declared.

“To prove it,” Roger hurried on, “the prongs work open when you press the Buddha’s third left finger straight in and then back.”

The Lama stared.

“And to furthermore prove it and make it inadmissible——”

“Incontrovertible, Tip means,” said Grover.

“—I went back, later, to take wedges out of the lower lever, after we beat your trick tunnel, and picked up the Imitation that Rog’ tells me Mister Clark throwed away. I carried it as far as Bombay, and figured it wasn’t worth anything anyhow, so I left it in the waste-basket in the hotel room.”

The Tibetan lama stared at him sternly.

“That was but an imitation. It was the one taken out that I demand, from the boy who must know where it is.”

“But—I tell you!” Roger was earnest, “I saw Mister Clark exchange the false one. And he dropped the one taken out into his coat, and when we got out of the tunnel and closed the rock, he threw it away, saying it wasn’t any use. Tip, here, found that!”

The lama shook his head.

“The Eye of Om is not in its socket!”

A sudden thought came to Mr. Clark. With a cry of dismay he told them his startling idea.

“It must be that in the excitement, meaning to exchange the imitation for the real—to put back what rightfully belonged there and protect my friend, Doctor Ryder, I must have mixed the gems, and instead of replacing the false one with the real one, I must have put the false one back, and really threw away the true Eye.”

“Then—I throwed it away in Bombay.”

The lama considered the statement made by Tip.

“If any of you speak falsely,” he said, slowly, “you who speak so shall hear the Voice of Doom and shall feel the Wrath of the Hand of Doom.”

With that threat he bade them depart.

Chapter 23
THE ACID TEST

“Oh, no you don’t,” Grover spoke for the first time during the interview, “there is a matter of a vanished scientific student of the stars, a shot prior to his disappearance, and other things.”

The lama turned toward his aides.

Grover, as Roger and Potts sidled close, smiled.

“An hour and ten minutes has elapsed since I arrived,” he remarked, pleasantly, cool and slightly triumphant, “I would not be surprised—yes, there they are.”

The police car, sent by the Chief of Police, brought two patrolmen and as a frightened clerk ushered them in, the lama shrugged.

Captor became prisoner, and with his pair of native aides, the lama was taken to the laboratory by the interested officers.

There, as Grover’s car discharged its crowd of former captives, Roger was able to reward the taximan who had faithfully read his signal and who was waiting with a patrolman to be assured that all was well there before going to the address the taximan had noted.

“I knew this joint was lucky,” the taximan chuckled, pocketing a pleasing tip, “Hope all stays well—but if it doesn’t—I’ll be handy.”

While Tip was sent to develop camera films from various devices which had been set off during the exciting developments, Roger was busy assembling the ingredients for an experiment which Grover meant to conduct, in order to learn which of the people there had held the pistol that might have harmed old Astrovox—that had certainly been fired in the office.

To their surprise as they brought together the necessary chemicals and Roger got out plaster-of-Paris from his stock-room, with highly refined paraffin, the star electrician, Ellison, arrived.

“What brings you here at five in the morning?” Grover stared at him with a degree of suspicion.

“I have been working out theories about our queer situation,” declared the electrical specialist, “I could not sleep, because Clark had told me all about his experiences with Roger in Tibet, and I was of the opinion that Roger might be in danger.”

“I told him how they had captured you,” Clark said, as Roger recalled that they had worked together in India on power-construction, so that there was nothing to fix suspicion on them in thus having a reunion after Clark’s return.

“I went to your home,” he told Grover. “Roger’s room was open, his aunt was greatly disturbed because you were also absent.”

Naturally, he had come to the laboratory.

While he softened the paraffin, Roger told him their adventures.

“Now,” Grover told the absorbed patrolmen, and a detective who had come, by Police Chief’s order, from Headquarters, “here is a dodge that some police departments have tried, and it will interest you.”

Roger assembled on the interviewing desk his heater for a great lot of the wax, held in a crucible over the electric stove. In a large glass container he mixed, according to a formula dictated by Grover, nitric acid and other chemicals, which discretion suggests should not be mentioned here.

“The purpose of this experiment,” Grover said, “is to learn which hand, if any among us, held, and discharged the weapon. That seems to be the simplest way to narrow down investigation. Once we know our culprit, he must reveal where Astrovox is, what happened.”

The very modern experiment, the police saw, was based on the fact that the charges used in modern pistol projectiles form, during combustion, gases which leave marks on any hand discharging the bullet.

Grover explained his procedure.

“The gases blow back sufficiently to mark the hand,” he stated. “If our test is made within five days after such an occurrence, the test will reveal it.

“I will be first. Roger will take the wax, properly softened, and at a temperature around one hundred and fifteen degrees, Fahrenheit, not hot enough to scald, will pour it over and will mould it around my hand.”

Roger carried out the action as it was described.

“The paraffin, now cooling, at a point where it is hard enough to hold its shape, is taken off.”

This, also, Roger carried out carefully, securing a sort of cast with the shape of the hand moulded inside it.

This, as Grover talked, Roger carefully placed in the chemical solution, and they all watched in absorbed attentiveness.

“If my hand has discharged any weapon or in any other way has gotten the peculiar gases of powder combustion on it, within the past five days, the acid and solution will bring up the stains as bluish discolorations on the wax.”

No such spots appeared.

Although a tedious operation to carry out for the Tibetan trio, and then, by their own insistence, for Doctor Ryder, Clark, Tip and Roger, the results in each case held them in suspense until there was clear exoneration of all.

“But Ellison hasn’t submitted yet,” said Tip, suddenly.

“Because I have handled chemicals in my work that may come out in the reaction,” Ellison frowned.

Nevertheless, though he declared that his work had brought out the stains that showed as small blue spots and smears within his mould, everybody felt that he ought to know what he declared he did not—where was the star-scientist?

Chapter 24
AN IMPOSSIBLE CAMERA “SHOT”

Grilled by the detective and the policemen, Ellison stubbornly protested his ignorance of the whereabouts of the former astrologer.

He could not establish an “alibi” further than his recent call at Grover’s home which the excited sister of the laboratory head was eager to verify.

Roger, finally, decided that there was one sure and final word to be said by chemistry. If, as Ellison insisted, other chemicals than actual burning gas caused the inside of the paraffin moulds to discolor, the special tests for the chemicals he might name would say if Ellison was truthful or not—a sort of chemical “Lie Detector,” Roger confided to Potts as they prepared for the experiments.

To their amazement, Ellison was proved honest. The tests gave a reaction for the very chemical he named.

The Tibetans, of course, had to be released. They were warned, and departed.

With the experiments done, the materials removed and no gain, Tip brought up the curious situation revealed by developing the office camera film and others.

“Here is the picture that Roger said he had it take,” Tip displayed, to the group assembled in the screening room, one “frame” of the non-flam film.

There were the Three, the Tibetan group, confronting Roger as his hand, on the edge of the desk, disclosed his clever use of the “take” to leave evidence of his capture.

“Now—study this out if you can!” Tip called out from behind the projector.

He shifted the sprocket-turning handle to bring up the next picture.

“That’s the office, what you can see through the smoke,” Tip declared, “and the smoke comes from behind the desk, and so of course the man standing there has got his back to the lens, and all we have got to go on is his coat and his hair.”

He readjusted the “framing handle” to bring the picture into even more exact alignment with the aperture plate of his projector, so that on the screen every part showed.

“Now, study that! There is old Astrovox, scared looking. He is facing the big smudge of smoke from the pistol.

“But what gets me,” Tip finished, “is that the whole big puff of smoke is still hanging in the air, and the man facing it is just hit—or else his face is contractuated——”

“Contorted,” cried Roger. “Skip big words and say your say.”

“Or else his face is contorted by being awful sure he has been hit.”

He focused more sharply.

“You can see him clear enough to know Astrovox didn’t fire no gun. The smoke is between him and the guy with his back to us. But—just look. His hands rest both of ’em on the desk edge. That’s how he hit against the button in the desk edge that snapped his picture.

“Now—where is any gun?”

“He couldn’t have dropped it, and have gotten his hands back onto the desk before the smoke puff would have begun to shift,” exclaimed a policeman. “Look.” He drew out his service weapon, aimed into a corner where his bullet would show little and its mark could be wiped out with putty and paint, and fired.

The smoke, with his own movements, revealed disturbances almost as it left the mouth of his weapon; and before he could drop it, the smoke shifted. More! The pistol, falling, cut a swath in the pall.

“There’s no gun. And no one is hiding. The smoke is in front of that man and between him and Astrovox,” the detective agreed.

“It’s impossible,” Potts exclaimed, “A camera can’t take a picture of a shot and leave out the gun.”

“Chemicals,” prompted Grover, “could make the smudge.”

“Then how about this?”

Potts had another film spliced onto the first one. He reeled it in at regular motion picture speed, and out of the speakers came the strange and abrupt recording of a loud, sharp, detonating sound, as near to the discharge of a pistol as any of them had heard.

Taken away by the ventilating system, the smoke of the police shot was out of the way, the screen was clear to all, and they saw that the camera had recorded light from the direction of the office, an abrupt flash. With it, the detonation.

“Kangaroos and apes dancin’ on a film where none could be,” Tip summed up, baffled, “and now—a gunshot where the camera shows us there can’t be any gun.”

Even Grover, usually calm, looked disconcerted, and yet a little bit excited.

“Maybe,” he declared, and turned to Roger, “but here is one more ‘sound’ to add to your list. And I feel sure that out of that list, either as it is, or when you complete it up to date, will come the hint that will enable me to clear up everything.”

Over-confidence?

Roger hoped not.

Chapter 25
SCORE ONE FOR THE MYSTERY WIZARD

Grover stood up. His eyes were bright with some inner fire as he walked forward, turned and faced his attentive audience.

“You have overlooked a number of points shown in that picture,” began the laboratory Chief.

“In the first place, assuming that a shot had been fired, you see that there is no inkwell on the desk and that the picture of my sister has been knocked over or has fallen over.”

“You mean, the shot was fired from another direction, and not by the man whose back is turned.” The detective spoke.

“Can you see any other explanation for the disclosed conditions?”

“The inkwell was in a pool of ink on the floor when I got here,” said Roger, excitedly, “and the picture of Auntie was on its face.”

“The shot was fired from a gun behind Astrovox,” said Potts.

“No,” Grover corrected him, “because the smoke is closer to the other man than to Astrovox. In fact, it is up around his side of the desk.”

“But his hands——”

“He did not fire a gun,” answering the policeman, Grover clarified his deduction. “But—think! Where in that office could a man be, and not have the camera register his presence? Granting that he could lift the gun above his head and still keep it out of sight of the lens.”

“Can’t be,” cried Potts.

“Can.” Roger almost shouted in his interest. “He could crouch on the side of the desk toward Astrovox, and shoot at the man behind the desk, and the puff of smoke would shoot out toward the man.”

“Yes,” Grover agreed, but suddenly he jumped as his nerves reacted to a new idea.

“But—wait! A gun at that angle could not discharge a bullet to smash the inkwell.”

They stared, and then admitted his sensible reasoning.

“Back where we started,” growled the detective.

“It is a ‘composite’ picture, perhaps,” said Ellison. “You know—one part taken at one time, another exposed elsewhere, or at another time.”

“Possible, not probable,” volunteered Doctor Ryder. “In double-exposures, wouldn’t the smoke be—I don’t know the phrase——”

“Not in register,” cried Roger. “It can’t be double- or triple-exposed. Everything is all together, the smoke over the desk, and the men properly distinct.”

“It just must be some trick picture,” argued Ellison.

“Did no other camera operated by some one having entered—they all ran for three minutes—did none have the shot recorded?” asked Grover, and Potts displayed films.

“They all did. Some fainter.”

“We can test for distance, with a sort of applause-volume machine,” suggested Ellison.

“But, first, let us come back to Astrovox,” urged Grover. “He is gone. Why? How? Did the man at the desk take him?” He turned and scanned the groups intently. “The fellow with his back turned has your shoulders, Ellison.”

“But not my suit.”

“You could change suits.”

“You certainly want to ‘pin it on’ me.”

“We want to find Astrovox.”

The electrician made a grunting sound.

“I can’t help, there.”

Grover, though, did not pursue the argument. He seemed buried in meditation.

“Here is something we overlooked, too.” He spoke slowly, searching for hints in his own inner processes. “Look at the smoke. The light in that office, according to the picture itself, was the overhead dome. Now, with that small actinic quality, the camera with a daylight type of film, would have recorded only in exposures amounting to at least a second. It would have been possible for the man to have fired, dropped the gun. Possibly if he snatched it up and let it drop—no. The flash would have been filmed! Let’s work at this!

“Notice—the edge of the smoke is duller, less distinct, but the lower part of the smudge is thick and dense, as though—the smoke had been settling during the exposure.”

“So, where does that get us?” asked Ellison.

“To this. The man at the desk is extremely clear. Astrovox is less distinct, recognizable but still a trifle hazy. We assumed it was the smoke. It isn’t. It is the fact that when he heard the shot, Astrovox was just outside the doorway. He ran in, too fast to be recorded in that brief exposure that caught him just pausing. Now, that accounts for the other camera’s proving that a shot was fired.

“It was fired at the man behind the desk. Then Astrovox ran in, and he had to be there an appreciable fraction of time to be registered. He got in just about half-way through the exposure, and his pause imprinted his image just before the shutter closed. Now—what would have been his natural, subsequent procedure?”

Frightened by the past sound of the Voice of Doom, he went on, the man had been about to leave, and was merely waiting for Potts.

“He ran in, saw the source of the shot, saw the man crouched under the desk after his shot had hit the inkwell instead of his mark, the other man. He turned, and ran. But the man who had crouched would know that he had been seen, must think the old man ran for help.

“He went after Astrovox—to silence him!”

The auditors, spellbound by his train of reasoning, had literally hung in suspense.

“The man evidently had a gun,” Grover went ahead with his thought, speaking slowly. “He took only a fraction of time to leap up and pursue. He would not have let Astrovox get far.

“Let us search the areaways nearby,” he concluded, seriously.

They scattered, the police officers and the detective organizing the search.

It was “score one” for the Mystery Wizard.

Sound had been his deductions, as events showed.

Only in one point had he been mistaken.

The old astrologer had not been shot. His limp body, brought in from its place within an old packing case across the street, showed that not the muzzle had been used to make of him a target. The butt of the weapon had left its mark.

“Adrenalin—we may bring him back!” shouted Doctor Ryder.

Potts raced for the nearest drug-store, while the police called an ambulance.

“Let me work with him,” pleaded Doctor Ryder.

But Tip did not secure the heart stimulant, so seldom, and yet occasionally able to restore heart action after it has seemed to cease.

They took him away, and Grover, stunned at his own accurate deductions, hopeful that he had reasoned so accurately in time, went too.

The rest hung around the telephone.

At last came word.

“He will probably live!”

Chapter 26
ROGER LISTS HIS CLUES

During Grover’s absence at the hospital, the staff began to arrive. Until the secretary should come to handle the switchboard Doctor Ryder volunteered to be monitor on calls, being extremely anxious concerning the condition of the assaulted star-reader, as were the rest.

Roger, as Toby Smith with a heavy suitcase arrived, turned over the few requisitions for stock to his willing assistant.

He wanted very much to fill up the list of sounds he had begun in the office before going to Tibet.

“Suits me fine,” Toby agreed, “I got a lot more of Doctor Ryder’s what he calls compounds, that he is going to use to medicate the rats he is going to replace.”

The members of the staff, trained under the phlegmatic, scientific methods of Grover, took very little time to discuss conditions. The routine work of scientific research had to proceed. They made it do so. Each took up his task. Mr. Zendt, with his new investigations, and the electricians and other staff men, left the matter that had no bearing on their results in the hands of those most interested.

Potts, while Roger located his “sound” list, speculated about the situation.

“That Ellison come out on top in the chemistry retroactivities,” he began, and when Roger had substituted “reactions,” he proceeded:

“But are you so sure, Rog’?”

“Well, the way Grover works, I am not sure and I am not un-sure. I’m going to dig to the heart of truth. Now, with our clues, we have a lot of circumstantial evidence-clues; and we have a heap of visible clues; but I think the audible ones will tell most, just as Grover does.”

“Circumstantial evidence? Such as what?”

“People being at certain places. Here, maybe, when something happened. And like Mister Ellison arriving just when we least expected.”

“Then, what about visible ones?”

“The animals on a film taken in a room with no animals in it. The actions of people, if we could only read them. The picture in the office, last night, with a man’s back turned, Astrovox scared, and the smoke.”

“The others—the vocational clues——”

“Do you mean ‘vocal’?”

“Uh-hum. Them I know most of. But there’s ol—olle—something about a factory——”

“Olfactory? Clues coming from smells? I think you’ve got something. The powder smell, for one.”

“And now, how will we coagulate ’em?”

He was fond of that word, erroneously used, before—but to him a discovery.

“I don’t know,” Roger admitted, “there must be some link.”

He suggested that inasmuch as the man in the office shot had worn gloves, as revealed on his outspread hands, no finger prints had been left when he had inadvertently pressed the desk button.

“But there might be clues on the floor, if they haven’t been tracked up too much,” Roger suggested. “You do some micro-photography while I revise my list.”

The list he located in their office file, behind the registrations he had previously looked up to find the clue, as it had seemed, that Zendt, with Australian experiences, must know about kangaroos, while Ellison—there he cropped up again! could know, from India work, about the ape they had seen in the film of the upper room.

Looking over his list, in the light of what had happened, Roger was inclined to drop out the seemingly unimportant fact that the case had begun when both the fire and the protective system alarms had rung. He felt that it had no discernible connection with his mystery, being so easily accounted for by the fact that an ape and a kangaroo had evidently gamboled around in the studio, setting off alarms unwittingly.

Still, half-hesitant, he left it in, but re-wrote his list, so as to put what seemed important in order, rather than try to follow the succession of historical order, as he had done before.

His list, thus revised and added to, ran this way:

Those, as far as he could recall, were his sound-clues.

Chapter 27
A “THERMAL” TRICK

With every meaning that he tried to attach to his listings, Roger found himself growing more confused.

He had only imaginative evidence against any of the names he had inserted in his diary-like notations. As he scanned his list Roger saw that he had done less interpreting than speculating; but he saw no way to make interpretation of the listings get him anywhere.

He filed it with his former list, and went to his routine, so that Toby could go to dinner.

The rest of the day was without apparent development.

Toby, leaving the suitcase, at closing time, went home. The others did the same. Roger and Tip remained until last.

“Well, Grover has stayed close to Doctor Ryder’s patient,” Tip mused, aloud. “That is, the patient Doctor Ryder just missed getting, because I told the druggists I wanted ‘aggrenalin’ and they said they never heard of nothing like it. If I’d of got the right name, he’d of saved Astrovox ’stead of the internes doing it.”

“I talked over the wire with my cousin,” responded Roger. “Just make an extra check on everything for safety’s sake, and he says for us to stay away from here, tonight, no matter what we hear. You are to go to a hotel to sleep. And he says you must.”

“What’s going to happen here?”

“I wish I guessed,” Roger retorted, “but I don’t seem able to do even that. With all the clues on my list or somewhere in the films and so on, I just see new developments, and they are worse than before, and confuse me.”

“What say we go to one of those spirit mediators.”

“A medium? A fortune teller?”

“She might coagulate our ideas.”

“Curdle them? She probably would.”

“It means to make ’em set—hang together.”

Roger chuckled and refused. He wanted to work out every circuit, trace every wire, be certain that when he locked up, nothing could get in or out of that research laboratory without leaving a record and if anything happened then—well—he’d have to look to Tip about it!

Potts said good-night, and went away as instructed.

At home, telling with some reserves his experiences of the night before, to his aunt, Roger felt a constant tugging of desire to go and see if all was right.

Grover’s orders to stay away were, he felt, a magnet drawing, tugging, pulling him toward the forbidden place.

What danger, he wondered, might lurk in just a visit?

Still, he obeyed, against every dragging urge.

Toby Smith telephoned about nine o’clock.

“Say, can we get into that lab?”

“Why, Toby?”

“I clean forgot to put away Doctor Ryder’s compounds. I put down his suitcase, and got busy with Mr. Zendt who wanted a heap of chemicals, and it slipped my mind.”