s to be feared that the fate of such as poor Charlton excites but
little public interest in its explanation, and that the police themselves
never took more than an academic interest in the case."

"To me it was a bitter disappointment on other grounds. I had lost very
few seconds between pulling the revolver trigger and pressing the bulb of
my pneumatic shutter; but one had to get back into position for this, and
the fact remains that I was too late. The result may be found among my
negatives. It is dreadfully good of the dead man, if not a unique
photograph of actual death; but it lacks the least trace of the
super-normal. The flight of the soul had been too quick for me; it would
be too quick again unless I hit upon some new method. I had not only
failed to leave convincing evidence of suicide, but the fatal pause
between pistol-shot and snap-shot was due entirely to my elaborate attempt
in that direction. It was not worth making again. The next case should
be a more honest breach of the Sixth Commandment; the shot to be fired,
and the photograph taken, at the same range and all but at the same
instant. There would be no further point in leaving the weapon behind, so
I was free to choose the one best suited to my purpose, and to adapt it at
my leisure to my peculiar needs. Eventually I evolved the ingenious
engine which, no doubt, has already explained itself better than I could
possibly explain it; if not, the discoverer of the camera need not
hesitate to experiment with the pistol, as it will not be loaded when
found."

There was a brief discussion here. The children could not understand
about the pistol; but only one of them cared what had become of it. For
Phillida it was enough to know that the writer of this shameless
rigmarole, with its pompous periods and its callous gusto, must long ago
have lost his reason. She had no doubt whatever about that, and already
it had brought a new light into her eyes. She would pause to discuss
nothing else. It was her finger that pointed the way through the next
passages.

"The perfection or completion of my device was the secret work of many
weeks; it brings me down almost to the other day, and to what I have
described as the supreme folly of my life. I had everything in readiness
for another attempt to liberate and photograph a human soul in consecutive
fractions of a second. But the right man was never in the right place at
the right time; one saw him by the