‘Yes,’ the Doctor said. ‘But it’s not very probable.’
‘Why not? Why not?’ Klausner pointed to a fly sitting on a small roll of copper wire on the workbench. ‘You see that fly? What sort of a noise is that fly making now? None – that one can hear. But for all we know the creature may be whistling like mad on a very high note, or barking or croaking or singing a song. It’s got a mouth, hasn’t it? It’s got a throat!’
The Doctor looked at the fly and he smiled. He was still standing by the door with his hands on the doorknob. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘So you’re going to check up on that?’
‘Some time ago,’ Klausner said, ‘I made a simple instrument that proved to me the existence of many odd inaudible sounds. Often I have sat and watched the needle of my instrument recording the presence of sound vibrations in the air when I myself could hear nothing. And those are the sounds I want to listen to. I want to know where they come from and who or what is making them.’
‘And that machine on the table there,’ the Doctor said, ‘is that going to allow you to hear these noises?’
‘It may. Who knows? So far, I’ve had no luck. But I’ve made some changes in it and tonight I’m ready for another trial. This machine,’ he said, touching it with his hands, ‘is designed to pick up sound vibrations that are too high-pitched for reception by the human ear, and to convert them to a scale of audible tones. I tune it in, almost like a radio.’
‘How d’you mean?’
‘It isn’t complicated. Say I wish to listen to the squeak of a bat. That’s a fairly high-pitched sound – about thirty thousand vibrations a second. The average human ear can’t quite hear it. Now, if there were a bat flying around this room and I tuned in to thirty thousand on my machine, I would hear the squeaking of that bat very clearly. I would even hear the correct note – F sharp, or B flat, or whatever it might be – but merely at a much lower pitch. Don’t you understand?’
The Doctor looked at the long, black coffin-box. ‘And you’re going to try it tonight?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, I wish you luck.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘My goodness!’ he said. ‘I must fly. Good-bye, and thank you for telling me. I must call again sometime and find out what happened.’ The Doctor went out and closed the door behind him.
For a while longer, Klausner fussed about with the wires in the black box; then he straightened up and in a soft excited whisper said, ‘Now we’ll try again… We’ll take it out into the garden this time… and then perhaps… perhaps… the reception will be better. Lift it up now… carefully.… Oh, my God, it’s heavy!’ He carried the box to the door, found that he couldn’t open the door without putting it down, carried it back, put it on the bench, opened the door, and then carried it with some difficulty into the garden. He placed the box carefully on a small wooden table that stood on the lawn. He returne
d to the shed and fetched a pair of earphones. He plugged the wire connexions from the earphones into the machine and put the earphones over his ears. The movements of his hands were quick and precise. He was excited, and breathed loudly and quickly through his mouth. He kept on talking to himself with little words of comfort and encouragement, as though he were afraid – afraid that the machine might not work and afraid also of what might happen if it did.
He stood there in the garden beside the wooden table, so pale, small, and thin that he looked like an ancient, consumptive, bespectacled child. The sun had gone down. There was no wind, no sound at all. From where he stood, he could see over a low fence into the next garden, and there was a woman walking down the garden with a flower-basket on her arm. He watched her for a while without thinking about her at all. Then he turned to the box on the table and pressed a switch on its front. He put his left hand on the volume control and his right hand on the knob that moved a needle across a large central dial, like the wavelength dial of a radio. The dial was marked with many numbers, in a series of bands, starting at 15,000 and going on up to 1,000,000.
And now he was bending forward over the machine. His head was cocked to one side in a tense, listening attitude. His right hand was beginning to turn the knob. The needle was travelling slowly across the dial, so slowly he could hardly see it move, and in the earphones he could hear a faint, spasmodic crackling.
Behind this crackling sound he could hear a distant humming tone which was the noise of the machine itself, but that was all. As he listened, he became conscious of a curious sensation, a feeling that his ears were stretching out away from his head, that each ear was connected to his head by a thin stiff wire, like a tentacle, and that the wires were lengthening, that the ears were going up and up towards a secret and forbidden territory, a dangerous ultrasonic region where ears had never been before and had no right to be.
The little needle crept slowly across the dial, and suddenly he heard a shriek, a frightful piercing shriek, and he jumped and dropped his hands, catching hold of the edge of the table. He stared around him as if expecting to see the person who had shrieked. There was no one in sight except the woman in the garden next door, and it was certainly not she. She was bending down, cutting yellow roses and putting them in her basket.
Again it came – a throatless, inhuman shriek, sharp and short, very clear and cold. The note itself possessed a minor, metallic quality that he had never heard before. Klausner looked around him, searching instinctively for the source of the noise. The woman next door was the only living thing in sight. He saw her reach down, take a rose stem in the fingers of one hand and snip the stem with a pair of scissors. Again he heard the scream.
It came at the exact moment when the rose stem was cut.
At this point, the woman straightened up, put the scissors in the basket with the roses and turned to walk away.
‘Mrs Saunders!’ Klausner shouted, his voice shrill with excitement. ‘Oh, Mrs Saunders!’
And looking round, the woman saw her neighbour standing on his lawn – a fantastic, arm-waving little person with a pair of earphones on his head – calling to her in a voice so high and loud that she became alarmed.
‘Cut another one! Please cut another one quickly!’
She stood still, staring at him. ‘Why, Mr Klausner,’ she said. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Please do as I ask,’ he said. ‘Cut just one more rose!’
Mrs Saunders had always believed her neighbour to be a rather peculiar person; now it seemed that he had gone completely crazy. She wondered whether she should run into the house and fetch her husband. No, she thought. No, he’s harmless. I’ll just humour him. ‘Certainly, Mr Klausner, if you like,’ she said. She took her scissors from the basket, bent down and snipped another rose.
Again Klausner heard that frightful, throatless shriek in the earphones; again it came at the exact moment the rose stem was cut. He took off the earphones and ran to the fence that separated the two gardens. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘That’s enough. No more. Please, no more.’
The woman stood there, a yellow rose in one hand, clippers in the other, looking at him.
‘I’m going to tell you something, Mrs Saunders,’ he said, ‘something that you won’t believe.’ He put his hands on top of the fence and peered at her intently through his thick spectacles. ‘You have, this evening, cut a basketful of roses. You have with a sharp pair of scissors cut through the stems of living things, and each rose that you cut screamed in the most terrible way. Did you know that, Mrs Saunders?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I certainly didn’t know that.’