“Well, a snake creeps. A snake! What else?”
Chapter 3
A “SOUND” CLUE
Without waiting for the gelatin to harden, Roger summoned the staff and his cousin to the screening room. As soon as they had set their wrist watches with the observatory time signals, a routine part of the staff’s accuracy, they joined him.
He had the tender emulsion-covered celluloid threaded from the top magazine through film gate and take-up sprockets down to the lower magazine of the projector. In the small, compact theatre, with its platform for lecture and demonstration procedure, its large screen, easy chairs, loud speakers and apparatus, he showed Grover and the men what caused him to agree with Tip.
“It almost has to be a snake,” Roger declared.
No other than a creeping thing could drag over a step edge. Four footed creatures, he explained, did not disturb dust at the point indicated in close-up and wide-angle pictures, greatly enlarged by the projector.
The chief electrical specialist, Mr. Ellison, agreed. “It ends the mystery. A snake ate the rats.”
“Then there won’t be any disease epidemic,” Doctor Ryder was much relieved, “It will crawl somewhere and the germs may destroy the reptile.” To this Mr. Millman, electrical engineer; Mr. Zendt, bio-chemist; Mr. Hope, their analyst, and others, agreed.
Roger saw that his cousin reserved opinion. But routine had to go forward, and the staff men separated. Zendt went to resume experiments in the search for a dye of a certain desired shade and quality: the two electrical men were busy developing means to find a better way to insulate high-tension cable for carrying electricity from generators to distributing stations in small communities; the others had equally absorbing work in progress.
Grover, busy examining each picture projected and held on the screen without danger of the “cold” light igniting the protected film, gave Roger a dozen cellar views around the coal-chute to enlarge.