The “lab” prospered, and enjoyed a reputation for scientific and human thoroughness and dependability.
Priceless secrets, formulae, data and results were always in the laboratory, and its owner had devised seemingly perfect methods for safeguarding the secrets which rivals, or competing firms, might covet. A completed series of experiments to find a synthetic substitute for camphor gum, an industrial formula almost beyond price, was reposing in the safe on this early morning of Spring.
The safeguards comprised two:
There was a series of light-beams, interconnected with microphones and tiny speed cameras, at every possible entrance. Any broken beam, telling of wrongful entry, set off a laboratory bell in the room where Potts slept; and it also was wired to ring a bell at the owner’s home; and on a panel, numbered lights would show, by the one that glowed, which entrance had been used.
To protect the laboratory from fire, and warn of its existence, a bell of a higher tone with a thermostat connection in the laboratory, in each section, would give warning; and if the blaze was in the cellar, a green bulb would glow; if in the main floor, a red bulb, and for the upper section a blue bulb would be lit.
Naturally, Grover felt that his younger cousin had mistaken the sound that had awakened both.
Roger, still feeling his weird and unexplainable sense of hidden danger, picked up the telephone.
The laboratory, when he dialed repeatedly and waited long, did not respond. Tip, trusted, loyal, paid extra salary because he was counted on not to leave the mechanical devices to give the sole protection, should have answered his extension telephone.
“I tell you there is something wrong,” insisted Roger.
His cousin, partly convinced, taking on some of Roger’s concern, began to dress.