released the box from its dangerous connections. I knew only too
well the force of that current. Then I took the thing under my arm,
leaped from the window once more, and ran across the shrubbery
towards the spot where I'd left my bicycle.

"On the way, the thought struck me that if I carried along the
camera, all would be up with me should I happen to be challenged. It
was the only one of the sort in existence at the time, and the wires
at the side would at once suffice to identify it and to arouse the
suspicion even of an English policeman. I paused for a moment behind
a thick clump of lilacs and tried to pull out the incriminating
negatives. Oh, Una, I did it for your sake; but there, terrified and
trembling, in hiding behind the bushes, and in danger of my life,
with that still more unspeakable danger for yours haunting me always
like a nightmare, can you wonder that for the moment I almost felt
myself a murderer? The very breezes in the trees made my heart give
a jump, and then stand still within me. I got out the first two or
three plates with some trifling difficulty, for I didn't understand
the automatic apparatus then as I understand it now: but the fourth
stuck hard for a minute; the fifth broke in two; and the
sixth--well, the sixth plate baffled me entirely by getting jammed
in the clockwork, and refusing to move, either backward or forward.

"At that moment, I either heard or fancied I heard a loud noise of
pursuit, a hue and cry behind me. Zeal for your safety had made me
preternaturally nervous. I looked about me hurriedly, thrust the
negatives I'd recovered into my breast-pocket as fast as ever I
could, flung the apparatus away from me with the sixth plate jammed
hard in the groove, and made off at the top of my speed for the wall
behind me. For there, at that critical point, it occurred to me