Only, of course, it was taken from another point of view, and
represented things in rather different relative positions to those I
figured them in. But it showed my father's body lying dead upon the
floor; it showed his poor corpse weltering helpless in its blood; it
showed myself, as a girl of eighteen, standing awestruck, gazing on
in blank horror at the sight; and in the background, half blurred by
the summer evening light, it showed the vague outline of a man's
back, getting out of the window. On one side was the door: that
formed no part of my mental picture, because it was at my back; but
in the photograph it too was indistinct, as if in the very act of
being burst open. The details were vague, in part--probably the
picture had never been properly focussed;--but the main figures
stood out with perfect clearness, and everything in the room was,
allowing for the changed point of view, exactly as I remembered it
in my persistent mental photograph.

I drew a deep breath.

"That's my Picture," I said, slowly. "But it recalls to me nothing
new. I--I don't understand it."

The Inspector stared at me hard once more.

"Do you know," he asked, "how that photograph was produced, and how
it came into our possession?"

I trembled violently.

"No, I don't," I answered, reddening. "But--I think it had something
to do with the flash like lightning."