The Camera Fiend Part 31

"And you left my son in that murderer's clutches a minute longer than you could help?" It was a previous incarnation of Pocket's father that broke in with this.

"You must remember in the first place that I couldn't be in the least sure it was your son; in the second, if murder had been intended, murder would have been done with as little delay in his case as in the others; thirdly, that we've nothing to show that Dr. Baumgartner is an actual murderer at all, but, fourthly, that to raid his place was the way to make him one.

Poor Mullins, too, as the original Sherlock of the show, was desperately against calling in the police under any circ.u.mstances. He a.s.sured me there was no sign of bad blood about the house, until the small hours, and then he saw your son make his escape. I told him he should have collared the lad, but he lost sight of him in the night and preferred to keep an eye on that poor desperate doctor."

Thrush treated this part of his narrative with the peculiar confidence which most counsel reserve for the less satisfactory aspects of their case. But Mr. Upton was not in a mood to press a point of grievance against anybody. And the name of Mullins reminded him that his curiosity on a very different point had not been gratified.

"Why on earth did you have Mullins run in?" he inquired, with characteristic absence of finesse.

"I'm not very proud of it," replied Thrush. "It didn't come off, you see."

"But whatever could the object have been?"

"I must have a d.a.m.n-it if I'm to tell you that," said Thrush; and the ironmaster concluded that he meant a final drink, from the action which he suited to the oath. "It was one way that occurred to me of putting salt on the lad."

"Tony?"

"Yes."

"You puzzle me more and more."

"Well, you see, I gathered that he was a particularly honourable boy, of fine sensibilities, and yet Mullins thought he had shot this man by accident and was lying low. I only thought that, if that were so, the news of an innocent man's arrest would bring him into the open as quick as anything. Mullins proving amenable to terms, and having really been within a hundred miles of both murders at the time they were committed, the rest was elementary. But what's the good of talking about it? It didn't come off."

"It very nearly did! I can tell you that straight from Tony; he was going to give himself up yesterday morning, if he hadn't accidentally satisfied himself of his own innocence."

Mr. Upton said more than this, but it was the explicit statement of fact that alone afforded Thrush real consolation. His spectacled eyes blinked keenly behind their flas.h.i.+ng lenses; the b.u.t.ton of a nose underneath twitched as though it scented battle once again; and the drink with the opprobrious name was suddenly put down unfinished.

"If only I could find that camera!" he cried. "It's the touchstone of the whole thing, mark my words. If it's an accomplice who did this thing, he's got it; even if not--"

He stood silenced by a sudden thought, a gleam of light that illumined his whole flushed face.

"Mullins!" he roared. Mullins was on the spot with somewhat suspicious alacrity. "Get the almanac, Mullins, and look up Time of High Water at London Bridge to-day!"

He himself flopped down behind the telephone to ring up the cab-office in Bolton Street. But it takes time even for a Eugene Thrush to consume all but three large whiskies and sodas; and the afternoon was already far advanced.

THE SECRET OF THE CAMERA

The camera had been placed upon a folded newspaper, for the better preservation of the hotel table-cloth. Its apertures were still choked with mud; beads of slime kept breaking out along the joints. And Phillida was still explaining to Pocket how the thing had come into her possession.

"The rain was the greatest piece of luck, though another big slice was an iron gangway to the foresh.o.r.e about a hundred yards up-stream. It was coming down so hard at the time that I couldn't see another creature out in it except myself. I don't believe a single soul saw me run down that gangway and up again; but I dropped my purse over first for an excuse if anybody did. I popped the camera under my waterproof, and carried it up to the King's Road before I could get a cab. But I never expected to find you awake and about again; next to the rain that's the best luck of all!"

"Why?"

"Because you know all about photography and I don't. Suppose he took a last photograph, and suppose that led directly to the murder!"

"That's an idea."

"The man threw the camera into the river, but the plate would be in it still, and you could develop it!"

The ingenious hypothesis had appealed to the eager credulity of the boy; but at the final proposition he shook a reluctant head.

"I'm afraid there's not much chance of there being anything to develop; the slide's been open all this time, you see."

"I know. I tried to shut it, but the wood must have swollen in the water.

Yet the more it has swollen, the better it ought to keep out the light, oughtn't it?"

"I'm afraid there isn't a dog's chance," he murmured, as he handled the camera again. Yet it was not of the folding-bellows variety, but was one of the earlier and stronger models in box form, and it had come through its ordeal wonderfully on the whole. Nothing was absolutely broken; but the swollen slide jammed obstinately, until in trying to shut it by main force, Pocket lost his grip of the slimy apparatus, and sent it flying to the floor, all but the slide which came out bodily in his hand.

"That settles it," remarked Phillida, resignedly. The exposed plate stared them in the face, a sickly yellow in the broad daylight. It was cracked across the middle, but almost dry and otherwise uninjured.

"I am sorry!" exclaimed Pocket, as they stood over the blank sheet of gla.s.s and gelatine; it was like looking at a slate from which some infinitely precious message had been expunged unread. "I'm not sure that you weren't right after all; what's water-tight must be more or less light-tight, when you come to think of it. I say, what's all this? The other side oughtn't to bulge like that!"

He picked the broken plate out of the side that was already open, and weighed the slide in his hand; it was not heavy enough to contain another plate, he declared with expert conviction; yet the side which had not been opened was a slightly bulging but distinctly noticeable convexity. Pocket opened it at a word from Phillida, and an over-folded packet of MS. leapt out.

"It's his writing!" cried the girl, with pain and awe in her excitement.

She had dropped the doc.u.ment at once.

"It's in English," said Pocket, picking it up.

"It must be what he was writing all last night!"

"It is."

"You see what it is!" urged Phillida, feebly. But she watched him closely as he read to himself:-

"_June 20,_190-."

"It is a grim coincidence that I should sit down to reveal the secret of my latter days on what is supposed to be the shortest night of the year; for they must come to an end at sunrise, viz., at 3.44 according to the almanac, and it is already after 10 p.m. Even if I sit at my task till four I shall have less than six hours in which to do justice to the great _ambition_ and the crowning folly of my life. I used the underlined word advisedly; some would subst.i.tute 'monomania,' but I protest I am as sane as they are, fail as I may to demonstrate that fact among so many others to be dealt with in the very limited time at my disposal. Had I more time, or the pen of a readier writer, I should feel surer of vindicating my head if not my heart. But I have been ever deliberate in all things (excepting, certainly, the supreme folly already mentioned), and I would be as deliberate over the last words I shall ever write, as in my final preparations for death--".

"What is it?" asked Phillida, for his eyes had dilated as he read, and he was breathing hard.

"He practically says he was going to commit suicide at daybreak! He's said so once already, but now he says it in so many words!"

"Well, we know he didn't do it," said Phillida, as though she found a crumb of comfort in the thought.

"I'm not so sure about that."

"Go on reading it aloud. I can bear it if that's the worst."

"But it isn't, Phillida. I can see it isn't!"

"Then let us read it together. I'd rather face it with you than afterwards all by myself. We've seen each other through so much, surely we can-surely--"

Her words were swept away in a torrent of tears, and it was with dim eyes but a palpitating heart that Pocket looked upon the forlorn drab figure of the slip of a girl; for as yet, despite her pretext to Mr. Upton, she had taken no thought for her mourning, that unfailing distraction to the normally bereaved, but had put on anything she could find of a neutral tint; and yet it was just her dear disdain of appearance, the intimate tears gathering in her great eyes, unchecked, and streaming down the fresh young face, the very shabbiness of her coat and skirt, that made her what she was in his sight. Outside, the rain had stopped, and Trafalgar Square was drying in the sun, that streamed in through the open window of the hotel sitting-room, and poured its warm blessing on the two young heads bent as one over the dreadful doc.u.ment.