Grover, with a wary eye on the still quiet kangaroo, which had not moved, spoke the command. Roger obeyed.
Released from the shocking cycles of current, the thing in the chair growled and struggled against the bonds which Potts had cleverly wound to prevent use of arms or legs. So powerful, though, was the beast, that it once upset the chair and had to be righted, growling and using guttural imprecations or shouts of hatred.
“To go on with my story,” Grover calmly confronted the quiet kangaroo, “the man chose our laboratory as the base of his plans. He came here. To start his operations, he watched his chance one night, and hid in our large refrigerating unit, that is in the spare-stores room, since we used it to test chilling processes for food shipments.
“Being unsuspected, he had been able to make certain preparations. First, he put the culture intended to inoculate some white rats, into our chemical section, half-hidden, but purposely left where it could throw suspicion on a certain person. Then, when the rats had been inoculated, but with a harmless drug that made them sleep, he was ready for his next step.”
To Roger’s surprise, everyone had been so amazed and so startled by this calm recital aimed, apparently, at a dumb brute that sat back with drooping, glove-shrouded forepaws and listened!—or was too baffled by the capture of the trainer to continue the battle—the staff had settled in the chairs again.
“This mysterious, clever criminal,” Grover coolly proceeded to tell the animal his theories and deductions. “This former student of various biological, chemical and related subjects, bribed an animal trainer who had a vaudeville animal act, to let the animal used in the act come here. He wanted it to be caught if any plan failed, so he could disappear but the animal could not tell on him.”
He bent forward, and quietly removed the laced ham-like gloves from the beast’s relaxed paws, and it seemed not to resent the act, but let the free forearms hang loosely across its stomach, and pouch.
“Borrowing the white rats from the act, this miscreant prevented them from being inoculated by exchanging labels on the culture, later recovering the labels as the bottles emptied were thrown to the fire. The labels, on the real culture again, were put where they would seem to clear someone by incriminating him through circumstantial position in the racks. Really, though, they had a different purpose.”
He startled all but Roger.
“The appearance was that the man whose rack they occupied was being persecuted. In reality, he did it himself, to make me suspect every other staff man.”