The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches Read Online Free PDF Page A

acid, C 7 H 6 O 5 , which was obtained in small percentage from oak apples, those tumors that grew on the twigs and branches of the gall, or dyer’s oak, wherever they had been punctured by the gallfly in laying its eggs.
    Oddly enough, those same galls, dissolved in water, had also once been used as an antidote to strychnine poisoning.
    How pleasant it was to reflect that without the female gallfly, we might never have had either photography or a convenient means of saving one’s rich uncle Neddy from the hands of a would-be killer.
    But would this film I had found in the camera have retained its latent images? Interesting, wasn’t it, that one word—“latent”—was used to describe the invisible, undeveloped forms and shapes on photographic film as well as yet-invisible fingerprints?
    Would the film show anything at all? Or rather just the wet, gray, disappointing fog that might well have resulted from too many baking summers and freezing winters in the attic?
    I watched fascinated as, at my very fingertips, hundreds of tiny negative images began to form, fading into existence as if from nowhere—as if by magic.
    Each frame of the film was too small to guess at its content. Only when the film was fully processed would its secrets—if any—be revealed.
    Twelve minutes had now passed, and still the images did not yet seem to be fully developed. The coffee developer was obviously slower-acting than metol. I would keep up my twirling of the whisk until the images seemed as dark as a normal negative.
    Another twelve minutes went by and I was beginning to flag.
    When it comes to chemistry, impatience is not a virtue. Half an hour is far too long to engage in any activity, even one that’s enjoyable.
    By the time the images seemed satisfactory, I was ready to scream.
    But I wasn’t finished yet. Far from it. This was merely the first step.
    Now came the first wash: five minutes under running water.
    Waiting was agony. I could hardly resist the urge to load the partly processed film into the projector and hang the consequences.
    And then the bleach: I had already mixed a quarter teaspoon of potassium permanganate into a quart of water and added to it a second solution of sulfuric acid in a little less water.
    Another five minutes to wait as I slowly rotated the ribbon of film in the liquid.
    Another wash as I counted slowly to sixty to make a minute.
    Now the clearing solution: five teaspoons of potassium metabisulfite dissolved in a quart of water.
    It was now safe to switch on the room lights.
    The opaque silver halide—the part of the film that would eventually become black—was now a creamy yellow in color, like images daubed onto a ribbon of transparent glass with Mrs. Mullet’s abominable custard.
    By reflected light these images appeared to be negative, but when I held them up in front of the white light, they looked suddenly positive.
    I could already make out what seemed to be a distant view of Buckshaw: a yellow, aged Buckshaw like a dwelling from a dream.
    Now for the reversal.
    I held the whisk up at arm’s length until it was about eighteen inches from the white room light, then rotated it slowly as I counted to sixty, this time using a variation on a method I had learned while studying artificial respiration in Girl Guides before being sacked (unjustly) by that organization.
    “One cy-an-ide, two cy-an-ide, three cy-an-ide,” and so on.
    The minute flew by with surprising speed.
    At the end of that time, I removed the film from the whisk, turned it over, and similarly exposed the other side.
    Time for the coffee again: what the manual referred to as the second developer. The yellow objects in each frame would now become black.
    Six more minutes of dunking and dipping, turning the whisk to be certain that all parts of the film were equally immersed in the reeking liquid.
    The fourth wash—even though it took only sixty seconds—seemed an eternity. My hands and arms were becoming stiff from the