Roger knew that the switch and fuse box held different fuses for various parts of the home, with two heavier fuses set into the main feed from the street. Grover’s idea was, he saw, to eliminate the front portion of the house including his room, while the light in the rear of the hall, and his aunt’s quarters, would be left on. In that way, with a front hall light going, Grover could tell when the fuse was out and have light enough in the hall to work by.
As soon as he had performed his task he ran up the steps, to find Grover, extremely surprised, facing, in the hall, the last man they had suspected of interest in the matter.
The assistant electrical engineer, Mr. Millman, stood there.
“A lame explanation,” Grover was saying as Roger arrived.
“To you, maybe. To me it seems reasonable that I would have hit on the method somebody used to get to the safe and I think it is perfectly logical that I should test out my theory that Roger had been playing all those tricks in the laboratory.”
“What tricks?” Roger demanded.
“This one, if you want a sample.”
Millman walked over to the recording device, exchanged from his pocket a reproducer, made a quick wire connection to Roger’s compact table radio, as Roger had had the connection when the recorder had roughly re-played the formerly recorded cry and crackles.
“I was making a recording of motor sparking, and just as I set our lab. machine going, I realized that the diamond was cutting a sound record, not just running smoothly. You can tell if you are watching closely, as I was. We cut out the record, took it off, and I told Ellison and Zendt to say nothing. I began to suspect that Roger, who was up with Astrovox, was having fun at our expense.”
He set the machine going and the needle, automatically dropping onto the groove just beyond the cuttings, as Roger had set it, had to be lifted back. Then Grover heard, as had Roger before, the cry, “Fire” and the rattling, crackling as if flames ate dry wood or paper.