Chapter 10
A DEFEAT FOR SCIENCE!
Shudders of superstitious fear shook Roger’s nerves as he flung on his clothes.
Rooms that were locked and barred he had read about in detective stories; they had been entered. A room not only so sealed but, far better, sealed by locks that not even Potts or Roger could have unsealed, was as impenetrable as a solid block of metal.
Yet some uncanny, mysterious thing, force or creature had penetrated!
Unless, and he caught at the idea, unless Doctor Ryder had been worked-up and nervous, and had dreamed some nightmare that had made him hide.
No matter what had happened, no matter what force had beaten the scientific measures employed, they would know the facts, because the registering devices could not have been stopped by the doctor himself, let alone any outside person or power. While that current flowed in the circuits, the devices must operate; and even if any wires were cut, still the automatic mechanical springs would run the recorder and the camera.
Driving on speeding wheels, Roger and Grover got there in quick time. The Falcon man rushed up as they leaped out of the car.
“Every fifteen minutes,” he reported, “the way you said, I put my copper key in the slot on the plate over the observation port you had cut in his room door, so the plate would move aside as long as I needed to look to see him in bed. Last time he wasn’t there. Up to then he’d looked to be sleeping sound.”
They hurried to the room door, on the second floor, down a hall.
Swiftly, while Roger watched, helping as he could, Grover took an observation, let Roger see the empty bed and vacant room. The next move was to test, with ammeter and test-circuit, every electrical wire that had been necessarily exposed outside the room.