to fetch it. But it was a large and heavy box, and the only one of
its kind as yet manufactured; so, to carry it away in his hands
would no doubt have led to instant detection. I concluded,
therefore, the man would take off the box entire, so as to prevent
the danger of removing the plates on the spot; and as soon as he
reached a place of safety in the shrubbery, he'd fling away the
camera, either destroying the incriminating negatives then and there
or carrying them off with him. The details of the invention had
already been explained to me by your father's instrument-maker, who
set up the clockwork for him from his own designs; and I knew that
the removal of the plates from the box was a delicate, and to some
extent a difficult, operation. So I felt sure they could only have
been taken out in a place of comparative safety, not far from the
house; and I searched the shrubbery carefully, to find the camera."

"And you found it at last?" I asked, unable to restrain my
agitation.

"I found it at last," he answered, "near the far end of the grounds,
just flung into the deep grass, behind a clump of lilacs. The camera
was there intact, but five plates were missing. The sixth, from
which the positive you hold in your hand was taken, had got jammed
in the mechanism in the effort to remove it. Evidently the murderer
had tried to take out the plates in a very great hurry and with
trembling hands, as was not unnatural. He had succeeded with five,
when the sixth stuck fast in the groove of the clockwork. Just at
that moment, as we judged, either an alarm was raised in the rear,
or some panic fear seized on him. Probably the fellow judged right
that the most incriminating pictures of all had by that time been
removed, and that the last would only show his back, if it included