“Very nicely argued out, Roger,” his cousin complimented him. “Now, we must find a way to draw that criminal who trains animals to do his work, into the open where police can get him.”
Chapter 4
AN ELECTRICAL TRAP
Startling though Grover’s statement that a man trained animals to be criminals was, it gave Roger the one link to build what he knew into a chain.
Trained animals! That fitted in with claws on glass and made the rest of the puzzle fall into place.
To Roger, it seemed clear that a clever animal trainer could teach his beasts to obey criminally intended orders just as well as make them do the ordinary tricks.
What animal, he mused, would fit the conditions?
A monkey came to mind as the logical sort.
First of all, it was the one animal able to climb down a rope from the skylight on the roof, which it could have reached by being taken up the fire-escape on a candy factory next door, one story higher than Grover’s research laboratory.
Coming down in that fashion, it could have been made to do a trick taught for the purpose—take the white rats, put them in a sack, and fix it to the rope—or the sack could already be at the end of the rope. Then, unaware that it had set off an alarm, it could have wandered about, doing such tricks as getting into the light beams, pulling the switch to “on” for the X-ray and the other electrical devices.
Such an ape, too, with its master joining it during the time it wandered about, could have invaded Tip’s room, striking him with a huge paw, because it would be an ape; no smaller monkey could have reached down into the rats’ cage.