which involved little real risk;
for the doctor had not yet been gone an hour; and a loaded revolver is a
loaded revolver, be it brandished by man or boy.

The piecing of the plates was like a children's puzzle, only easier,
because the pieces were not many. One of the reconstructed negatives was
of painful interest; it reminded Pocket of the fatal one smashed to atoms
by Baumgartner in the pink porcelain trough. There were trees again, only
leafless, and larger, and there was a larger figure sprawling on a bench.
Pocket felt he must have a print of this; he remembered having seen
printing-frames and tubes of sensitised paper in the other room; and
hardly had he filled his frame and placed it in position, than Phillida
ran down stairs, and he told her what he had done.

"I wish you hadn't," she said nervously, as she made mechanical
preparations with pot and kettle. "It would only make matters worse if my
uncle came in now."

"But he wasn't back on Friday before ten or eleven."

"You never know!"

Pocket spoke out with a truculence which his brothers had inherited, but
not he, valiantly as he might try to follow a family example.

"I don't care! I can't help it if he does come. I'll tell him exactly
what I've done, and why, and exactly what I'm going to do next. I give
him leave to stop me if he can."

"I'm afraid he won't wait for that. But I wish you had waited for his
leave before printing his negative."

Pocket jumped up from table, and ran to the printing-frame in the sunny
room at the back. He had been reminded of it only just in time. It was a
rather dark print that he first examined, one half at a time, and then
extracted from the frame. It was meshed with white veils, showing the
joins of the broken plate. But it had been an excellent negative
originally. And it was still good enough to hold Pocket rooted to the
carpet in the sunny room, until Phillida came in after him, and stood
looking over his shoulder.

"I know that place!" said she at once. "It's Holland Walk, in Kensington."

He turned to her quickly.

"The place where there was a suicide or something not long ago?"

"The very place!" exclaimed the girl, looking up from the darkening print.

"I remember my uncle would take me to see it next day. He's always so
interested in mysteries. I'm sure that's the very spot he showed me as
the one where it must have happened."

"Did he take the photograph then?"

"No; he hadn't his