None of the apparatus or light was on the laboratory.
The interpretation Roger gave was that in moving he had jarred some poor connection that made loose contact in his circuits; and he began testing his wires at soldered points, seating tubes, and shaking headset binding posts.
He did not succeed in locating the source of the single sound, because things began to happen.
From the darkness, and apparently from the upper floor, in a hollow, grave-yard sort of tone, an unexpected voice spoke.
Roger, with power full-on, got a roar, and dashed aside the set to save his ear-drums, for a microphone had caught and had brought him what the others heard naturally.
The voice spoke in English, low, deep, mournful and yet, somehow, menacing, as it said:
“Hear me. I am the Voice of Doom!”
Roger felt his blood “coagulate” in very truth. Grover, never more calm, although the unforeseen and uncanny call galvanized and terrified Potts and made the Doctor’s face look absolutely horrified, leaped up, and vanished out of the small pool of dull light from the shadow-boxed panel. With the ease of familiarity, he got past their great transformers, and the storage batteries from which direct current was drawn for certain types of experimentation. He avoided, in the gloom, the new high-intensity-spark mechanism, and took the stairs two at a bound.
Roger, impulsively starting to follow, remembered his duty, and in spite of his shuddering nerves and the cold fear always coming from any uncanny and unexplained happening, he stuck to his post.
Doctor Ryder, attempting to follow, ran into the recording equipment and stopped, hesitating, as Grover, from above, threw on the lights. Roger got the switch-snap, but it differed from his other “click.”