Furthermore, Roger mused, why had the fluoroscope and X-ray machinery been put into operation?
The entire situation seemed to be too bizarre to be true: more than all the rest, the mad story of Potts that he had felt a hand as “big as a ham,” hit him before he had lost his senses!
Nothing fitted anything else.
Doctor Ryder, arriving, was as much a contrast to cold, unexcited Grover as could be imagined. He sputtered his fears for the public, his dismay that this should have brought discredit on the laboratory that had been known to safeguard its precious data.
Roger, watching the pudgy, stout little germ experimenter who excitedly mixed wild theories with wilder plans of procedure, thought to himself that if anybody or anything would upset his cousin, the man’s emotional excitement would be the thing.
Grover was not stirred out of his quiet manner.
The staff began to arrive. They had all seen in newspapers or had heard by radio the warnings and the brief story of the lost rats.
Mr. Millman, the electrical engineer, asked immediately of Dr. Ryder: “Have you any enemies?”
The experimenter thought that he might have antagonists among the scientists who disagreed with his theories; but they would not be men who would endanger the public for so small a revenge as could come from criticism of his laxness in not watching his experiment more closely.
Mr. Ellison, the laboratory’s electrical research specialist who worked with Mr. Millman, agreed; and so did the bio-chemist, Mr. Zendt; the analytical chemist, Mr. Hope, and Grover.