“Or it could be that things like ghosts are true,” Potts volunteered. “What do we know about the unseen things? Even science is finding things like bacterions——”
“Bacteria,” Grover corrected, smiling.
“—In the air and water and blood. Well—I went to a spirit-meeting once. The woman threw a fit and talked awful funny about my ‘deceased aunt on the other side’ and told me things—now, if we brought in one of them there test mediators——”
“Test mediums,” Roger knew the right word. “They pretend to be able to communicate 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 is around us, right now.”
“Just because the appearance seems to be that,” Grover stated, “is no basis for accepting the explanation of telepathy. In that case, Doctor, we would have seen the objects, the animals. We did not. You and Roger are sure you saw nothing. There are only two possible ways the phenomenon could happen.”
“How?” Potts was anxious, eager.
“First: the film had been exposed, previously. Second: some one hiding in the dark-room, while Potiphar was not closely observing the developing tank, changed for the original film in its rubber wrapping, this one.”
“I used a deep tray, full of pyro,” Potts stated, “wound the negative around 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 way of it happening is ‘out.’”