And Toby. And Clark. They came uppermost again.
If only he could get the hidden clue in his list!
Chapter 34
TRAGEDY STRIKES AGAIN
Without consulting his list, because he did not want to have it in sight any more than he wanted its place in the files discovered, Roger used the “thinking den” for just what its name implied.
“Claws on glass,” he reflected. “Click of a contact. Voice of Doom upstairs from Balsa-wood speaker. That’s what the click was for. The plug-in that made the connection through the house-wiring from record to speaker-unit. The Voice again on a record that ought to have been blank?”
He went through his list, mentally, to get all fifteen sounds clear in his brain again.
“The call of ‘Fire’ and paper rattle sounding like flames,” he completed his silent inventory.
“Of course,” he told himself, “the last one links up with the Voice of Doom on the record, and that links up with the Voice out of the speaker upstairs. And the click, as the plug-in was made is a link there too. Then, again, the thump in the corner that made me start the picture machine—that could have been disconnecting the plug-in. Doctor Ryder had thought it was going to be more, for he was with me and cried out, ‘start the machine’ or something.”
The clicks that he had first misread as dripping faucets in a washing-sink, that had turned out to be the safe combination being manipulated by an expert, he put out of mind as explained.
“The claws on glass hooks up with the film that showed the ghost-kangaroo,” he decided. “That can be side-tracked. Now, that leaves the talk that named Clark, after the Voice of Doom—all three times it could have been the same record, of course—what is left?”