Grover, when appealed to, nodded.
“Anyone who has operated a modern laboratory knows better than to make fun of any theory,” he admitted. “What our Pilgrim ancestors would have called a witch talking to Satan, we see as an old crone listening to her radio.”
“They had their witches-on-broomsticks,” Roger chuckled. “We see airplanes. That’s so.”
“It doesn’t pay to scoff at your theory. It may be a scientific possibility to prove it correct, some day. But, just yet, let’s not take it as the only explanation of our ghosts. I realize that the film can was one of our last shipment, that you had to break the label, proving it had not been tampered with, apparently. Still, some test made at the film plant could have been inadvertently packed. We got it.”
“My snap of the kangaroo will prove or disprove that.” Roger went to get the force-dried bromide enlargement and the camera film taken in the haunted room. Comparison showed, apparently, the same animal, in one case sharply defined, a solid object; and in the other, just a shadowy specter. They looked to have the same proportions, though.
“My theory is that someone hired the animal trainer to send his rats here, so they could be removed. He could have read notes of the Doctor’s planned experiment in a science column of the papers.”
“Then where did the ape come from? The attendant was sure the act did not have any ape in it.” Roger was still unconvinced.
“That may have been the trainer, an agile man, in a masquerade costume of Tarzan-type.”
“It might.”
“I will admit that Doctor Ryder tells a story that makes wilder theories possible,” Grover added. “The policemen are gone, now. He gave me an outline that made me discard the theory about danger to our camphor substitute. Suppose you listen with me to the full recital.”