The Camera Fiend, E. W. Hornung [important of reading books txt] 📗

tei-q">“And we never guessed it!” said he. “That's why he went in for this sort of double camera, [pg 314] and rigged it up to take both kinds of shot in quick succession. It's the cleverest thing I ever heard of in my life.”

He spoke as if it were only clever! Phillida stared at it and him without a word.

“The cleverest part is the way you aim. I do believe he relied altogether on that spot about the middle of the focussing screen. I've been trying it against the window, and where that spot comes the pistol's pointing every time. It's a fixed focus, about ten to fifteen feet, I fancy, and the spot isn't quite in the middle of the screen, but just enough to the left to allow. I don't quite see how the one bulb works everything, but these springs and things are a bit confusing. We shan't understand everything till we take it to pieces.”

“You mean the police won't!” said Phillida, bitterly.

“The police! I never thought of them.”

“What do you mean to do with this—this infernal machine?” the girl asked, her voice breaking over the perfectly applicable term.

“What do you mean to do with—the writing?” demanded Pocket in his turn.

“Burn it! I've asked for a fire in my room; it's locked away meanwhile.”

“Well, this is yours, too,” said Pocket, deliberately, “to do what you like with as well.”

[pg 315]

“They wouldn't think so!”

“They'll never know.”

Phillida shook her head, and not without some scorn. “You couldn't keep it to yourself,” she said. “You would have to tell.”

“Well, but not everybody,” said poor Pocket. “Only my father, if you like!” he added, valiantly.

“Mr. Upton would feel bound to tell.”

“I don't see that. Didn't you hear what he said about a man's secrets dying with him?”

“He's so kind! He says that; he said it again to me; but this is the mystery of the day. It'll be the talk for months, if not years. And as yet only you and I, in all the world, have found it out!”

She looked at him so wistfully, so sweetly and sadly and confidentially, that he would have been either more or less than human boy if he had failed to see her heart's desire, and how it was still in his power to save her the supreme humiliation and distress of sharing their secret with the world. He made up his mind on the spot; and yet it was a mind that looked both ways at every turn of affairs, and even then he saw what he was going to lose. Fred and Horace would not sit nearly so spellbound as they might have done, would probably back their penetration of the mystery against his! There would be no boasting about it in front of the [pg 316] hall fire at school, no breathing it even to Smith minor out for a walk; no adventure to recount all his days; and Pocket was one to whom the salt of an adventure would always be its subsequent recital. But he could “play the game” as well as Horace himself, when he happened to have no doubt as to the game to play. And now he had none whatever.

“Phillida, if you wish it, I'll never breathe a syllable of all this to a single soul on earth, I don't care who they are, or what they do to me!”

He wanted them to put him on the rack that moment.

“Oh, Tony, do you mean it?”

Her eyes had filled.

“Of course I mean it! I'll swear it more solemnly than I've ever sworn anything in my life so far.”

“No, no! Your word's enough. Don't I know what that's worth, after this terrible week?”

And she cried again at its hideous memories, so that Pocket turned away and put the camera together again, and wrapped it up in her waterproof, so that he might not see her tears.

“I'll never breathe a single word to a single soul,” he vowed, “except yourself.”

She caught at that through her tears. He could talk to her about it, always, as much as ever he [pg 317] liked; it would be a bond between them all their lives. And not until she said it, to be just to Pocket, did he think of a reward or look beyond those days.

But what were they to do with a stereoscopic camera containing an automatic pistol? It was not to be burnt in a grate like a sheaf of MS. They thought about it for some time with anxious faces; for it was getting on towards evening now, though the sun was out again, and it was lighter than the early afternoon; but Mr. Upton might be back any minute. It was Phillida who at last said she knew. She would not tell him what she meant to do; but she put on her waterproof again, little as it was wanted now, and the camera under it as before; and together they sallied forth into the noisy and crowded Strand.

Pocket did not know where he was, and Phillida would not tell him where she was going, neither could he question her in that alarming throng. He felt a frightful sense of guilt and danger, not so much to himself as to her, with that lethal weapon concealed about her; every man who looked at them was a detective in his eyes, and past the policemen at the corners he wanted to run. But they gained the middle of Waterloo Bridge undetected and ensconced themselves in a recess without creating a sensation.

[pg 318]

“Now, then,” said Phillida, “will you focus Westminster Bridge and the Houses of Parliament, or shall I?”

There they were before them against the sunset, the long lithe bridge, the stately towers. But Pocket could not see Phillida's drift until she aimed herself, and, aiming, let the square black box slip clean through her fingers into the depths of the river from which she had only retrieved it a couple of hours before, as a body is committed to the deep.

She bewailed her stupidity; he had the wit to echo her then, and in a loud voice, that any eye-witness or passer-by might be struck with the genuine severity of their loss. But there had been no eye-witness who thought it worth while to rally them on the occurrence, and the busy townsfolk hastening past were all too much engrossed in their own affairs to take any interest in those of the boy and girl who seemed themselves in something of a hurry to get back to the Strand.

And in the Strand the first thing they saw was a yellow poster bearing but four words in enormous black letters:—

CHELSEA INQUEST

CAMERA CLUE!

[pg 319]

Phillida slipped her hand within Pocket's arm. Pocket was man enough to press it to his side.

THE END

Printed in Great Britain by Wyman & Sons, Ltd., London and Reading