camera with him."

"Then this is the suicide, or whatever it was!" cried Pocket, in
uncontrollable excitement. "It's not only the place; it's the thing
itself. Look at that man on the bench!"

The girl took a long look nearer the window.

"How horrible!" she shuddered. "His head looks as though it were falling
off! He might be dying."

"Dying or dead," said Pocket, "at the very second the plate was exposed!"

She looked at him in blank horror. His own horror was no less apparent,
but it was more understanding. He had Baumgartner's own confession of his
attempts to secure admission to hospital death-beds, even to executions;
he expounded Baumgartner on the whole subject, briefly, clumsily,
inaccurately enough, and yet with a certain graphic power which brought
those incredible theories home to his companion as forcibly as Baumgartner
himself had brought them home to Pocket. It was the first she had ever
heard of them. But then he had never discussed his photography with her,
never showed her plate or print. That it was not merely a hobby, that he
was an inventor, a pioneer, she had always felt, without dreaming in what
direction or to what extent. Even now she seemed unable to grasp the full
significance of the print from the broken negative; and when she would
have examined it afresh, there was nothing to see; the June sunshine had
done its work, and blotted out the repulsive picture even as she held it
in her hands.

"Then what do you think?" she asked at last; her voice was thin and
strained with formless terrors.

"I think that Dr. Baumgartner has the strangest power of any human being I
ever heard of; he can make you do anything he likes, whether you like it
yourself or not. The newspapers have been raking up this case in
connection with--mine--and I see that one theory was that the man in this
broken negative committed suicide. Well, if he did, I firmly believe that
Dr. Baumgartner was there and willed him to do it!"

"He must have been there if he took the photograph."

"Is there another man alive who tries these things? I've told you
all he told me about it, but I haven't told you all he said about the
value of human life."

"Nor need you! He makes no secret of his opinion about that!"

"Then put the two things together, and where do they lead you? To these
murders committed with the mad idea of taking the spirit in its flight
from the flesh; that's his own way of putting it, not m