by Van Powell
Chapter 6 A WEIRD STORY
When that uncanny film was projected before him Grover seemed unwillingto believe the testimony of his eyes.
"It simply could not be," he declared. "That film was taken from a brandnew shipment, wasn't it?"
"Yes," Roger asserted.
"And there were no animals in the laboratory."
"Not animals we could see," said Doctor Ryder meaningly.
Grover, rather sharply, demanded his exact reason for saying that.
"I have heard the voices that seem to come out of nowhere," theexperimenter explained. "I have traveled in the Oriental countries. Ihave heard strange things; and I have _seen_ things even more odd. InIndia, in China, and all the more in Tibet, there is what they call thesect of the Bon--Black Magicians."
"Nonsense!" exclaimed Grover.
"To a scientific mind--yes. To an ignorant native of a country withouteducational facilities or communication such as our radio, telephone andso on--not so nonsensical. Besides, I have heard and I have seen curiousthings."
"Like what?" Tip demanded.
"In India, a seed planted and an orange bush growing before my eyes. Ora rope flung into the air, staying aloft as if hooked to some invisiblesupport, while a boy clambers up and seems to vanish.
"In Tibet, as well as in India, men who can apparently walk on water. Ofcourse, our science explains it as hypnotism--the man who performs thefeats is able to secure control over some part of the onlooker's mind,impress _his_ thoughts on the other mind, and make one believe the trickis a real occurrence."
"I have read about men who can walk on pits of live coals," Roger added.
"Those tricks or those marvels do not explain this film," Grover was notsatisfied, Roger knew by his tone.
"How about telepathy? Thought transference?"
"I believe," Grover answered, "there is some ground for accepting thatas possible. It might be reasonable to admit that if a man, by years ofpractice, can train himself and also treat his feet so that he can walkon fiery coals, a man might become able to impress a powerful idea onanother without words. But--on a film!"
"In the sect of the Bon, or manipulators of the darker forces of Natureand of man's superstition which is half of black magic," theexperimenter declared, "strange powers exist. I have read of a Frenchscientist who has succeeded in developing a film so sensitive that apowerful thought, held by his trained mind, seemed to cause some changesin the film. This is a similar situation produced by some Orientalmaster mind, probably."
"Or it could be that things like ghosts are true," Potts volunteered."What do we know about the unseen things? Even science is finding thingslike bacterions----"
"Bacteria," Grover corrected, smiling.
"--In the air and water and blood. Well--I went to a spirit-meetingonce. The woman threw a fit and talked awful funny about my 'deceasedaunt on the other side' and told me things--now, if we brought in one ofthem there test mediators----"
"Test mediums," Roger knew the right word. "They pretend to be able tocommunicate with spirits of people, but has it been verified?"
Potts was too eager to argue that. He stuck to his suggestion:
"All right. If we call in a trance medium, she'd tell us them spooks isaround us, right now."
"Just because the appearance seems to be that," Grover stated, "is nobasis for accepting the explanation of telepathy. In that case, Doctor,_we_ would have seen the objects, the animals. We did not. You and Rogerare sure you saw nothing. There are only two possible ways thephenomenon could happen."
"How?" Potts was anxious, eager.
"First: the film had been exposed, previously. Second: some one hidingin the dark-room, while Potiphar was not closely observing thedeveloping tank, changed for the original film in its rubber wrapping,this one."
"I used a deep tray, full of pyro," Potts stated, "wound the negativearound in the rubber, but didn't use a tank, on account of them bein'stained, and you was so positive about fresh stuff, I got a deep tray,never used before, and watched every step of developin'. The second wayof it happening is 'out.'"
"Then we will test the possibility of the first," Grover beckoned toRoger.
"Telephone downstairs for a taxi, and meanwhile, plug in the telephonein the screening room for me."
When Roger had summoned a night-hawk car, his cousin reported his ownactivity.
"I got the night-watchman at the Bizarre Theatre, where the animal actfinishes its engagement tonight," he said. "The white rats and dogs, andseveral monkeys are quartered at a pet shop near the theatre. There is akangaroo, and it stays in a stable. Here is the address, Roger. I wantyou to talk to the keeper, or some stable attendant who can say when theanimal was taken out and when returned."
Roger, when the taxi arrived, sped to his task.
He found a sleepy attendant, surprised at the time, so near dawn, for avisit from a young fellow who wanted details about the kangaroo.
"She ain't been out this night," the youth assured Roger.
"How about last night? Or the night before?"
"Neither time."
"Oh, but she must have been."
"Well, she wasn't."
"Well, then, was the ape?"
"What ape?"
"Doesn't the man who has the trained animals use an ape?"
"Never saw nor heard of no ape."
Roger was puzzled.
"Well--" He recalled a flash of inspiration that had been all his own.He pulled from his pocket the tiny, compact camera, smallmagnesium-flash gun, and tripod folding like a pocket ruler, veryslender, but sturdy when unfurled.
"Can I snap her picture? Our laboratory wants it to study."
"Cost you--how much you want to pay?"
"A quarter."
"Go to it, buddy."
Roger, with the hand of the youth clutching the coin, got a good snapjust as the flash startled and almost stampeded the kangaroo and severalhorses and a few mules quartered there.
He returned by taxi as the East streaked rosily to the rising of thesun.
"There was the kangaroo, but she had not been out--at least, theattendant vowed she hadn't," he said. "But I've got her picture tocompare with the ghost-one."
"Clever head," commended his older cousin. He went away, pleased, todevelop, print and fix his prize.
While negative and contact print were being fixed and washed, he sat atthe table in the adjoining room where the mysterious voice and roaringcry had been located, thinking hard.
"I wonder," he mused, "if it _could_ be that the film I used had somesort of emulsion that would be sensitive to rays we don't see. You cantake a picture through a quartz lens in a room that seems to be pitchyblack. I've done it, with our special equipment. Maybe a film coatingthat has some light-sensitive ingredient sensitive to high-frequencyvibrations of light, could catch what we don't see, and--who can disputethis?--there may be in the air, all around us, forms of things that wecan't see."
Science, he reflected, had managed to develop instruments so delicatelyadjusted that they caught earth tremors and recorded them, when thedisturbance might be hundreds, thousands of miles away from theseismograph.
Their own Mr. Ellison, the cleverest and best informed man in the city,on electrical matters, was preparing a camera that ran its film at highspeed past an aperture: a light more actinic than sunshine alternatelylit and was out, but so rapidly that its flashes impressed pictures litby it on the film, as many as a half million or more a minute, hebelieved. The papers had written it up as that many.
And scientific instruments pictured, in graphs, of course, suchinvisible things as electrical waves; yes, and radio made audible theinaudible electrical frequencies sent by an aerial, caught by another,transformed into sounds by other invisible agencies.
Grover, when appealed to, nodded.
"Anyone who has operated a modern laboratory knows better than to makefun of any theory," he admitted. "What our Pilgri
m ancestors would havecalled a witch talking to Satan, we see as an old crone listening to herradio."
"They had their witches-on-broomsticks," Roger chuckled. "We seeairplanes. That's so."
"It doesn't pay to scoff at your theory. It may be a scientificpossibility to prove it correct, some day. But, just yet, let's not takeit as the only explanation of our ghosts. I realize that the film canwas one of our last shipment, that you had to break the label, provingit had not been tampered with, apparently. Still, some test made at thefilm plant could have been inadvertently packed. We got it."
"My snap of the kangaroo will prove or disprove that." Roger went to getthe force-dried bromide enlargement and the camera film taken in thehaunted room. Comparison showed, apparently, the same animal, in onecase sharply defined, a solid object; and in the other, just a shadowyspecter. They looked to have the same proportions, though.
"My theory is that someone hired the animal trainer to send his ratshere, so they could be removed. He could have read notes of the Doctor'splanned experiment in a science column of the papers."
"Then where did the ape come from? The attendant was sure the act didnot have any ape in it." Roger was still unconvinced.
"That may have been the trainer, an agile man, in a masquerade costumeof Tarzan-type."
"It might."
"I will admit that Doctor Ryder tells a story that makes wilder theoriespossible," Grover added. "The policemen are gone, now. He gave me anoutline that made me discard the theory about danger to our camphorsubstitute. Suppose you listen with me to the full recital."
The narrative the man spun was amazing.
"Shortly after I left college," Doctor Ryder began, "I became interestedin study of medicinal herbs, because an old Indian in up-state New York,who had earned a reputation as an occult doctor, had made someastonishing cures of seemingly incurable cases. A friend and I got intoan argument. I supported the Indian's claims; and my chum argued it wasimpossible, that it was pure medication and not at all due to magicalpowers as the people claimed.
"I went to the Indian to study," he went on. "He took a liking to me,and after a long time, teaching me secrets of wayside weeds and theproperties of common plants in medication, he confided that in the FarEast there were schools in which full knowledge of herbal medicationcould be learned by those qualified to share the secret--a dangerousone, because knowledge of it might enable some evil-doer to procureenough deadly poison among common wayside flowers and herbs to destroy acity's populace."
Skipping his explanations of how he finally secured the Indian's help inreaching some one who knew more, and of how he finally found himself anaccepted student journeying toward a Lamasery in far-away Tibet, Roger'snext intense interest came with the declaration:
"I learned something about what Ponce de Leon spent his time seeking,the secret of eternal youth. I learned much about marvelous propertiesof common plants--and then, through a desire to view with my own eyesthe greatly revered Eye of Om--a precious jewel set in the forehead of asacred statue of Buddha--I became a hunted man, suspected of a theft Inever dreamed of committing, then. The Eye disappeared. I was suspected.My perils were many. I finally escaped from the land. But twice, since Ibegan my private researches, I have been reached by that strangewarning, the Voice of Doom--just as you, who have been my friends, heardit tonight."
He bent forward in his chair, earnest, eager.
"I know who took the Eye of Om. If only you would help me to restoreit--if only you _could_."