The developer was evidently a very slow one. For fully half a minute no change could be seen in the uniform surface. Then, gradually, almost insensibly, the marginal portion began to darken, leaving the outline of the mummy in pale relief. The change, once started, proceeded apace. Darker and darker grew the margin of the paper until from slaty gray it had turned to black; and still the shape of the mummy, now in strong relief, remained an enlongated patch of bald white. But not for long. Presently the white shape began to be tinged with gray, and, as the color deepened, there grew out of it a paler form that seemed to steal out of the enshrouding gray like an apparition, spectral, awesome, mysterious. The skeleton was coming into view.
"It is rather uncanny," said Dr. Norbury. "I feel as if I were assisting at some unholy rite. Just look at it now!"
The gray shadow of the cartonnage, the wrappings and the flesh was fading away into the background and the white skeleton stood out in sharp contrast. And it certainly was rather a weird spectacle.
"You'll lose the bones if you develop much farther," said Dr. Norbury.
"I must let the bones darken," Thorndyke replied, "in case there are any metallic objects. I have three more papers in the envelope."
The white shape of the skeleton now began to gray over and, as Dr. Norbury had said, its distinctness became less and yet less. Thorndyke leaned over the tray with his eyes fixed on a point in the middle of the breast and we all watched him in silence. Suddenly he rose. "Now, Polton," he said sharply; "get the hypo on as quickly as you can."
Polton, who had been waiting with his hand on the stop-cock of the drain-tube, rapidly ran off the developer into the bucket and flooded the paper with the fixing solution.
"Now we can look at it at our leisure," said Thorndyke. After waiting a few seconds, he switched on one of the glow-lamps, and as the flood of light fell on the photograph, he added: "You see we haven't quite lost the skeleton."
"No." Dr. Norbury put on a pair of spectacles and bent down over the tray; and at this moment I felt Ruth's hand touch my arm, lightly at first, and then with a strong nervous grasp; and I could feel that her hand was trembling. I looked round at her anxiously and saw that she had turned deathly pale.