“Neither that, which revealed how the Balsa-wood was connected up, nor the Voice of Doom, made by Ryder, here, but not traceable to him alone; nor the click as he switched on the motor; nor the clicks as his trained thief’s fingers manipulated our safe; nor the rest.”
“Well, what did the sound that Roger described as claws on glass really signify that linked up Ryder and not any of us?” asked Zendt.
The pseudo-physician, scowling, was twirling his watch-charm with nervous fingers as he watched the Tibetans who scowled at him.
“He is showing you,” Grover remarked.
“Don’t you see?” Roger turned to Millman. “I got the right idea only just tonight.”
“The watch-chain? But——”
“You, Mr. Millman, and Mr. Ellison, were on the ground floor when the man came down because he had seen the rich man arrive in his car, and knew Toby had played false to him,” Grover stated.
“Think,” Roger hinted, “he twitched and twirled that charm so it flicked light from the gold, the way a heliograph does.”
“That, when Roger told me, connected him with the first sound-clue of the scratching, hissing, clicking sound at first claimed to be a snake, then supposed to be his kangaroo.”
“Don’t you see,” interposed Tip, who was improving, by leaving out the big words, “he had to bend over to get the rats out of the trap on top of the cage. He brought the ape to unlace his disguise. And his watch chain and charm scraped and rattled and slid on the cage, and our sound-camera film got the sound from the microphone inside the cage.”