Then he rushed to get Grover. The staff too!
He had a clue.
As nearly as he could have described the brief sound made and amplified with transformer-coupled, matched metal audio tubes of the most perfect type giving the speakers power, they had picked up a sound of hot grease sputtering, hissing and clicking, as it does if sausage is fried rapidly.
“Come on, Ear Detective,” chaffed Mr. Millman, “Who was frizzling sausages on the cage full of inoculated rats, so that the mike inside picked it up and took it on to the sound film?”
“That’s not sausage frying,” exclaimed the biochemist, “Someone had steam up and the mike picked up the sound the radiator valve made as air was expelled and steam arrived to close it spasmodically.”
“A microphone, inside of a glass cage top?” mocked Mr. Ellison. “How could a valve on a radiator across the room make all that noise?”
“Let the Ear Detective explain it,” urged Mr. Hope.
They all turned to Roger. He shook his head.
“It does sound most like the snick-snap, and sizzle, of sausage,” he admitted, “But——”
“It’s a snake, I say,” Potts defended his theory; “a snake, with hissing and his scales rattling on the glass when he was crawling up to dig his head in and grab breakfast.”