“But why do you suggest taking Roger, Doctor?” Grover asked.
“Several reasons. First: he has proved that he is accurate in discerning the correct interpretation of sounds, which leads to the next: he is clever at photography and other scientific means of getting accurate data. To explain that, let me say that with so much danger if it were known that I meant to get into the temple, a secret way to restore the Eye would be safer.
“There is a hidden way to enter the temple. I do not know it, but I feel that in some way it may be connected with that Voice of Doom, and Roger could photograph, enlarge his takes, study them, and with his sharp eye and keen wit, could no doubt find the secret.”
“A last reason,” Mr. Clark added, “is that he can operate a radio-telephone, as well as send wireless code. We might want the former, if two parties, separated, needed to keep in constant touch. The latter, short-wave sending and receiving, could keep us in touch with the outside world—even with you, Mr. Mystery Wizard Brown.”
Put that way, there seemed less to make Roger uncertain.
What an adventure!
“If you could spare that husky, loyal general assistant, Potts,” suggested the doctor, “we could ask no better guardian for your cousin.”
There was much to be considered; there was much apparatus to be designed and assembled, including compact, tiny cameras, hand-operated generator to supply current where electricity never had been used, light, but powerful step-up transformers: there had to be clothing and other traveling needs in sparsely settled Tibet to be planned.
Time, though, coupled with a spirit of eagerness, helps in such plans, and it was soon time to say good-bye, to wave from the moving train, to hear Tip shout, “At last we got everything coagulated. We’re off!” and to settle back in a parlor car seat until time to go into the diner.
Across America, and on the ship bearing the party toward the International Date Line in the Pacific where one day changed to another by the simple process of crossing the imaginary line—the way that the astronomers had worked out to adjust Time to the sun’s progress—and even when they landed in China, only slight evidence had been noticed that the effort to secure the gem was still alive in some one’s mind.