working order. The button you turned must not only have stopped the
current that nailed me writhing to the spot: it must also have set
working the automatic photographic camera!

"That thought, as you may imagine, filled me with speechless alarm:
for I remembered then that one of the flashes broke upon us at the
exact moment when you fired the pistol. Such a possibility was
horrible to contemplate. The photographs by themselves could give no
clue to our conversation or to the events that compelled you, almost
against your own will, to fire that fatal shot. If they were found
by the police, all would be up with both of us. They might hang ME
if they liked: except for Elsie's sake, I didn't mind much about
that: but for your safety, come what might, I felt I must manage to
get hold of them or to destroy them.

"Were the negatives already in the hands of the police? That was now
the great question. I read the reports diligently, with all their
descriptions of the room, and noticed that while the table, the
alcove, the screen, the box, the electrical apparatus, were all
carefully mentioned, not a word was said anywhere about the
possession of the negatives. Reasoning further upon the description
of the supposed murderer as given by the servants, and placarded
broadcast in every town in England, I came to the conclusion that
the police couldn't yet have discovered the existence of these
negatives: for some of them must surely have photographed my face,
however little in focus; while the printed descriptions mentioned
only the man's back, as the servants saw him escaping from the
window. The papers said the room was being kept closed till the
inquest, for inspection in due time by the coroner's jury. I made up
my mind at once. When the room was opened for the jurors to view it,