Show Of IH THE DARK ROOM The Uncanny Adventure That Befell an Amateur Photographer lZ in San Francisco Argonaut When you go into your darkroom to develop plates always lock the door behind you to avoid interruptions So salth the learned writer of Instructions Instruc-tions to Amateur Photographers and it is a rule that has saved many negatives neg-atives Of coure it never occurred to the instructor in-structor of amateurs to add And always al-ways take a good look about you before be-fore shutting the door and sitting down in front of your ruby light i That admonition would be looked upon as outside the book and no amateur would see in it sense or relevancy YetI Yet-I never go Into my darkroom now without letting in a flood of light that searches out every corner When bought my camera and began be-gan to turn out foggy negatives from which sickly spectral prints came off I had no decently appointed darkroom using a small closet in my house for the purpose Now not being a socialist social-ist or a shoemaker I like good air and to sit in that stuffy hole in the S wall for the better part of an hour at a time had the result of eating up some of my enthusiasm for dabbling in solutions so-lutions of eikonogen carbonate of soda and stinking ether My illsmelling lamp seemed to exhaust as much oxygen I oxy-gen as my good pair of lungs and I Sometimes bore my negative out of the closet with such a pale face that in spite of my triumphant air in exhibiting exhibit-ing it to my wife she declared I was surely ill and that she had always heard that photographers were short 1 I lived She did not like the smell of my chemicals either and declared they I were a nuisance of the first order That was why I had my new and I carefullyventilated darkroom built for me It was a house all by itself and stood down in a little hollow a good tones throw from our dwelling We were living in the country then in a very pretty felt of woodland that had a wilderness of brown plain all about it I My new darkroom was quite a spacious affar and I gloried in its completeness of detail and the handiness handi-ness of the appointments I used to spend a good deal of time in there and as I learned how much bromide to use and to hit upon the happy moment for taking a plate out of the developing bath my progress was swift and oveet It so happened in the autumn that we went to the city for a month to live leaving our country place shut upI up-I took my camera to town and exposed a dozen or so dryplates on a lot of marble statuary Whenever at odd times I thought of these I became feverish to know whether Ariadne had been overtimed or whether Venus had been lichtstruck iTy wife smiled when I told her I intended to run down to the ranch to look after things a bit It was too diaphanous When she saw me packing my plates she laughed But she was indulgent and said goodbye with her own little pleasantry about my not being so very deeo after all Walking up to the house from the station I saw that the autumn winds had been making very free with the trees while we had been away and the brown leaves strewed the gravel walk and were scurrying along on their thin edges like little hoops driven by children A smoky haze lay over the plain and the hills beyond were deep in it The lowlying sun was blood red and sent a sickly yellow glow over the place Driving rather keenly the wind set me ashivering I had never known the ranch when it showed so bleak and forbidding a face Not caring car-ing to enter the vacant house I strode quickly down the path into the hollow which lay darkly in the shadow and harrying on to my little studio I pulled out my keys before the door Not finding the right key it came tome to-me of a sudden that I had left it in the lock inside on going to town and turning the handle of the door I saw it had not been locked at all This was really of little consequence as the ranch was not near the road and I had often boasted that a lock meant nothing there anyway though in the darkroom it had probably saved a negative or two on occasion I went in and from pure force of habit turned the key leaving it in the lock Then I struck a match found my lamp lighted it and poured my chemicals out into my graduate and tray Then with the lamp covered and only the thin str am of red light corning corn-ing dully forth I opened a doubleback and pulled out a plate It was Ariadne and the Panther for which I hoped great things As I put the plate into the developingtray and picked up my graduate to pour forth the developer I was startled by a rustling that I seemed to come from the corner where I kept my printing stuff It sounded like a movement of the stiff curtain that hung there but it occurred to me that the strange sound could have come from a windpuff among the leaves outside so I poured the developer devel-oper upon the lightyellow plate and began to rock the tray gently Nowhere except probably on your wedding morning or on getting a wrapped copy of your first book does the charm of expectancy get such a hold upon you as it does on watching for the image of an exposed object to appear upon a photographic plate Out of the yellow blank before me new came softly and silently the figure fig-ure of the smoothlimbed Ariadne sitting sit-ting her panther with the majesty I had seen in the marble But site was coming on rather too quickly because of overtiming and I rapidly reached back for the bottle of bromide As I measured off four crystal drops that fell splashing into the developer I heard a slight grating sofind as of a key being taken from a lock Surely the charm of Ariadne must have been strong upon me for the incident did not excite so much alarm as it did mere annoyance Must have been in rather loose and Just dropped out was my illogical thought but who can be logical concerning con-cerning things external when snug in his own tight little world of photography pho-tography Ariadne came on beautifully and I laid her in the water near my right hand to gain detail before fixing Then I took out Venus and began to develop her She came on well enough and I dipped her into the water too Everything was going well and I should have a fine set if this kept on Being my first trial with such a hard lot of subjects I was rather proud of myself Then my fingers groped for Ariadne who was now v ready for the fixing bath But though I felt all about in the water my finger tips never touched the glass It was a hard situation sit-uation to sense but Ariadne was gone I leaned back in my chair in a state bordering on utter collapse Water doesnt melt solid glass and an eight byten negative doesnt get up and walk out of a tray What in the name of the great Daguerre did this thing mean Looking at the tray in vague distress I saw a great black hand steal silently into the circle of the dim red light grasp the Venus negative and as silently si-lently dart back Into the thick impenetrable Im-penetrable gloom of the darkroom I would have jumped up if I could but the ugly circumstance weighed me down Then I heard the negative strike the floor and shiver into little bits This started me up I grasped the cover of the red light and was tbout to lift It when the whole con I trlvance was wrenched from the table I and the ruby glow was turned full upn my face Before It I could see nothing but the handle at the bottom = > 7 > < i Ii1I I was clutched by that same black hand I The lamp was raised high and then down it came crashing against the floor tlte light blotting out in the heavy blackness I sprang for the door and missing i it graspedsomething soft and slippery that slid ItroI1 my grasp It was like I a clothed arm but It was so cold and slimy that It seemed hardly human At the same time a form full of burly strerth knocked Tjashly agaInst me whether accidentally or not I could not I tell A slight mass of cold slime that reeked horribly came off the orm ana adhered to my face and the stie of my I neck This was more than I could stand My clogged throat opened and I yelled like a demon Out of this Out of this whaUver you are Then was forced upon my mazed mind a peculiarity that I had not noted before I did not speak npr growl nor utter any sound It would have been a relief even to have heard it hiss its silence was more awful than any sort of utterance Flattening my quickmoving hands along the side of the wall I touched the door at last and feeling for the knob I turned it and tugged at it like a young giant But the door did not move and the key was gone Of course that was what I had heard when beginning be-ginning my workthat dropping out of the key So down I dropped to feel for it all abount the floor near the I door but to feel in vain I I was locked up in the dark with a nameless creature sinister and powerful power-ful from whom there was no flight for the darkroom had but one exit the door There was no window nor any hole save the small ventilation traps through which not even so mucn as a hand might be thrust While there was any hope by way of the door I had not been more than commonly fearsome but now my fright was more than mere alarm It was a steady growth of terrorthe kind of terrorthat makes the scalp feel prickly prick-ly and the breath come hard It was chill palpitating fear of the kind that makes you turn sick and sets your shoulders twitching And the chief of it was a pallid dread of something unspeakably un-speakably uncouth and actual ac-tual contact with the thing in the darkroom dark-room I believe I could have borne a stroke from any weapon it might have in hand better than a touch or close meeting with the body of the repulsive creature I crawled into the corner nearest the doer and waited with drained ear Presently I heard a low ehuf fling and then a pitting along the wall and a scraping along the floor He of the black hand was feelintr for me of tha I was certain My ear la good and judging tile location of the pstUng and screong as well as of another sound ISke the dragging of some small soft body upon the floor I moved wibhout noise around the edge away from my pursuer Though shaken and fevered I kept out of that dread cluJ chIt ch-It was neoveitiralning work and the tension was something frightful but I kept it up until I fell over a box and wen sprchhng rigrlt into tine arms of the creature My head fell upon its clammy shoulder from which oozed the noisome moisture and its wet and iilsmelirg arms closed upon me bringing to bear smch force that I thought they would crush my very breae bone At tile seme time there came ut a low tSiroaty lau 13 laugh so uncouth and lacking in levKty as to be positively harrowing There was fight in me yet shaken and crushed as I was anti getting one arm loose I hammered with all my force upon the creature striking where I judged ts head should be My blows slid off because of the slime thai eveloped the face but once I struck full hard upon a solid jaw and before I could pull my hand back my thumb was bitten nearly In two And then the hand of the creaturethat I great black hand that I had seen in the low red light stole up to my throat and clutching It in nighty grasp shut off my breath and made me grow dizzy and faint there in the dark rccni My own hands flying about wildly now struck an iron hat hook in the wall Wrenching this hook off I drove ifc so deeD into the hand at my throat that breathing very hard aJmoK gasping in pun the creature suddenly let go its hold upon me and I was free Now I was furious frenzied I darted at my assailant with the hook in my hand and presenitJy I deal a vicious blow full in the face The creature butted forward with ahead a-head so hard that Wlen J 1 struck me In the breast I though my breath was gone I fell over and il i came upon mel me-l n Ks blood falling on my face and its breath hot on my forehead Of a sudden there was a tiock as of the solid eanth bursting asunder and I sped off into space and oblivion When next I knew the world the door of my darkroom was onen and the morning sun was shining in uoon the floor wihere I lay with aching head and a searing sense of vain in my throac while my bitten iiaumb fainly throbbed My face hands and cloJhes were nearly covered with blood green slime and muddy ooze and all about the studiQ the waIls and floors were streaked and daubed with the plain cnprlnt of five long Augers I doubted not tha iit had been made by the great black hand that had ciutched at my thrcal in i the darkness dark-ness I crawled to the efaik and washed myself and took a good drink after which I made my way out of the darkroom into the < house where I changed my clothes and bandaged my thumb Ait my gate I saw two man on horseback horse-back Seen anything of a big burk nig ger going bjj here asked one of them Hes got big hands and feet and is perfectly dumb We lacked him down to the slough where he probably waded across I stared at the men Yes I replied Jve seen himor at least Ive seen his hand Where is he from Napa Insane asylum Broke loose yesterday morning |