The fuse-box bothered him. If an intruder could in any way get in and pull out fuses, perhaps all his precautions to hold them would be futile.
Presently a solution of that difficulty came to his trained mind.
With the fuses left in place, he disconnected the cables that fed the protective devices, wearing heavy rubber gloves and with rubbers on his feet.
Taking that set of flexible cables back behind the furnace and to the main box of the electric company input, he risked later censure for tampering with their property by breaking their seal on the box, throwing off the big, main switch, and connecting-in his cables to the main line just within the input lines. He closed the box, sealed it with the switch again in the “on” blades, and knew that any outsider must be ignorant of his precaution. The fuses could be pulled, the wires at the switch-boxes could be cut, and still his plates and microphones would be actively charged, potent and effective.
Roger, effectively sealed in, he felt, sat down with the supper he had ordered in, saving milk and sandwiches for later, and ate with a feeling that he was safe.
Half way through the meal, with an inspiration, he took a charged wire from the main-line up to the telescope still poked up out of the skylight. He had climbed up. If anyone started to climb down—what a shock that telescope would give.
Contentedly he closed his meal with a big cream-puff.
Soon after that darkness came. Roger, unwilling to discover his presence by lighting a light, sat comfortably in Grover’s “thinking den,” and put his thoughts to work on the problem of that list of sounds.
If he had only guessed it, his very elaborate precautions had been overdone by just one protective effort.
Night chased the western glow away and brought stars to look down upon a very quiet, apparently deserted building.