The Mystery of the Fifteen Sounds

by Van Powell

  Chapter 1 "THEM MOUSES IS EXTRAVERTED!"

  Something was wrong at the laboratory! Ringing bells, long before dawn,awakened Roger Brown.

  Dazed at first, he became alert as a strange, cold foreboding made himleap out of bed.

  "Just the telephone," his thirty year old cousin, head of thelaboratory, called from his room beyond the adjoining bath. Roger, whowas already on his way to the downstairs library of his cousin's home,paused.

  "No!" Well built and athletic, sharp-eyed, keen minded, a worthy studentunder his brilliant scientific cousin, Roger spoke earnestly, "It wasn'tjust the protective beam system, or just the fire alarm, either. Grover,it was _both_!"

  "Impossible! Why have they stopped ringing?" Tying his robe cord, theolder cousin followed Roger. He knew that "Ear Detective's" reputationfor reading sounds, even if his own incisive reasoning made him feelthat this time Roger had been too drowsy to live up to his nickname.

  Just the same, he followed.

  "As long as the beam was broken," he insisted, "The bells ought tocontinue to ring. I think your fame as a sound interpreter is done."

  Roger did not try to defend himself.

  "It was probably a wrong number on the telephone." Grover was five stepsbehind his younger relative, "If you are so sure it was our alarmsystem, especially both bells, why aren't you dressing to rush to thelab?"

  "I'm getting down to be ready when Tip calls."

  Potiphar Potts, nicknamed Tip, was handy man at the scientific researchplant. He slept there. In a moment Roger expected to have him call up toreport the reason for the alarm.

  "You will never hold your reputation now." Grover turned at the librarydoor as Roger, inside, stared, baffled, at the annunciator panel.

  The reputation his cousin spoke about had come when a chemist, sent tothem to help the laboratory develop a new series of dyes for a textilemill, had begun to "hear things." Deaf, wearing an Amplivox, composed ofa chest microphone, batteries and an ear piece, the man had been nearlycrazed by a persecuting, accusing voice picked up, it seemed, by hisdevice. Roger, by identifying an odd click he got in a makeshiftimitation Amplivox set, gave Grover the clue through which a revengefulenemy who had sought to terrify the man had been discovered. As The EarDetective, Roger, who was in charge of the laboratory stock-room, hadreally been the means of solving the mystery.

  "I know I heard the laboratory bells," Roger insisted.

  "But the lights on our tell-tale are not lit."

  "I can't help it. Both the fire alarm bell and the system that warns usif anybody enters----"

  "But Potts has not called up, either. Go back to bed."

  Grover turned to leave the room. Roger, who was staying with his cousinwhile his own father headed an exploring expedition into Borneo for amuseum, knew that his ears had not betrayed him.

  His cousin, several years before, had secured capital with which tostart a scientific research laboratory for the use of small companiesunable to maintain equipment and an expensive staff.

  Every form of research, electrical, chemical, industrial, and in oneinstance medical, had been successfully undertaken.

  The "lab" prospered, and enjoyed a reputation for scientific and humanthoroughness and dependability.

  Priceless secrets, formulae, data and results were always in thelaboratory, and its owner had devised seemingly perfect methods forsafeguarding the secrets which rivals, or competing firms, might covet.A completed series of experiments to find a synthetic substitute forcamphor gum, an industrial formula almost beyond price, was reposing inthe safe on this early morning of Spring.

  The safeguards comprised two:

  There was a series of light-beams, interconnected with microphones andtiny speed cameras, at every possible entrance. Any broken beam, tellingof wrongful entry, set off a laboratory bell in the room where Pottsslept; and it also was wired to ring a bell at the owner's home; and ona panel, numbered lights would show, by the one that glowed, whichentrance had been used.

  To protect the laboratory from fire, and warn of its existence, a bellof a higher tone with a thermostat connection in the laboratory, in eachsection, would give warning; and if the blaze was in the cellar, a greenbulb would glow; if in the main floor, a red bulb, and for the uppersection a blue bulb would be lit.

  Naturally, Grover felt that his younger cousin had mistaken the soundthat had awakened both.

  Roger, still feeling his weird and unexplainable sense of hidden danger,picked up the telephone.

  The laboratory, when he dialed repeatedly and waited long, did notrespond. Tip, trusted, loyal, paid extra salary because he was countedon not to leave the mechanical devices to give the sole protection,should have answered his extension telephone.

  "I tell you there is something wrong," insisted Roger.

  His cousin, partly convinced, taking on some of Roger's concern, beganto dress.

  Just as he came down Roger knotted his tie.

  In the car kept handy in the garage, they drove the several blocks tothe two-story building.

  Before they got near it, Grover put on speed.

  Fire sirens and the scream of the warning signal on a police car madeboth cousins wonder what terrible situation they might face.

  Had some one, entering the laboratory, set off the first alarm as firebroke out? Had Potts, fighting either fire or intruder, been renderedincapable of responding to their telephone call?

  "Oh, I hope nothing has happened to Tip."

  Roger was very fond of the dull-witted, but dependable man, almost anAlbino with his sandy hair and light eyes, who loved to use big wordswhether they fitted his idea or not, and who helped in the manymechanical, photographic and other activities involved in their work.

  The car, racing forward, turned into the proper street and they saw fireapparatus gathering in front of the building. Roger, as the car slowed,leaped out, crouching and running to avoid being thrown down by themomentum.

  "Don't break in!" he shouted to firemen, "Our protective gas willprevent damage--and water would ruin our electrical things."

  The company captain paused as he saw, behind the youthful caller, thetaller laboratory owner striding forward.

  His men, with a battering ram, delayed.

  The helmeted men, some with axes, others with scaling ladders, hose, orthe rubber covers used by the emergency squad from the FireUnderwriters, paused.

  "What-da-ya mean, nothing more won't burn?" growled a policeman from thepatrol car standing nearby.

  His finger pointed toward the glass panel of the main door.

  Roger, looking in, saw the curious orange glow and the weirdlybluish-violet splaying out across the office from the inner spaces.

  "Who--what set off the flouroscope and the X-rays?" he gasped, whileGrover reassured the gathered people.

  Unobtrusively setting one foot well to the side on the top step, so thathis toe, pressed forward, found the small protecting pin, he unlockedthe door, careful to keep the knob turned toward the left, instead of inthe natural hand-turn to the right.

  That, Roger knew, cut out that particular light-beam system, so thatthey could enter without altering the present status of the tell-talepanel inside that would reveal where entry had been made, and by whichmagnetized plate the marauder would be held in trying to escape.

  They rushed in. His first rush took Roger to the panel.

  Not a bulb glowed! He stared, unable to accept the story ittold--somebody had set off every light-beam-trip! That put out thelights.

  Not one of the row connected-in with the magnetized plates was lit,either, and yet no living person should have walked or crept or climbedaway through door, window, coal-chute or other exit without gettingcaught. But Roger did not pause. He ran to Tip's room.

  Tip, tied tightly to a bedpost, his lips taped shut, his eyes rolling ashe sweated in his frantic effort to escape, saw him.

  Roger first took the tape off as gently as haste allowed.
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  Just as soon as he was able to speak, Tip gasped:

  "Tell Grover them mouses ain't is."

  "Ain't _is?_----"

  He knew that Potts used queer phrases, trying to fit big words in, andthis might be his way of leading up to some puzzling declaration.

  "What happened? Stop being smart, and tell me!" ordered Roger.

  "If mouses is here, you say they _is_ here?"

  "Well?----"

  "They ain't is."

  "Gone?" Roger stared, "The white rats. Gone?"

  "They done extraverted."

  Roger had to study that out. He knew that the psychological word wasused by analysts of human minds to indicate people whose outlook on lifewas normal, while introverts were shy, timid people who were afraid oflife. "Extraverted" must mean that the animals had turned outward towardthe world--run away, or escaped.

  "But those white rats--Doctor Ryder's--were in a cage with a trap dooron top, and they'd been inoculated with cultures of a spinal disease,"cried Roger. "How do you know?"

  "I was up lookin' at 'em, and somethin' with a hand like a ham hit meback of the ears, and when I come to, tied, them rats was evacuated. Iwas drug down here by a ape and tied. An' there was somethin' else Ididn't get a look at, behind the ape."

  Was the man crazed? It worried Roger.

  But a call from Grover, upstairs, quickly told him that Potts had notbeen talking wildly.

  "Roger," called his cousin, "The white rats' cage is empty!"