in bitterness, while
Pocket picked up the camera and set it back in its place on the muddy
newspaper. Phillida folded up the packet, and after a moment's hesitation
went away with it, jingling keys in her other hand. On her return she
stood petrified on the threshold.

Pocket was seated at the table, the red bulb of the pneumatic shutter
between his finger and thumb; he pressed the bulb, and there was a loud
metallic snap inside the camera; he released the pressure, and the shutter
snapped like a shutter and nothing else. Phillida came forward with a
cry. Pocket had taken the top off the camera; it was like a box without
the lid, and on the one side there was nothing between the lens and the
grooved carrier for the slide, but on the other there was an automatic
pistol, fixed down with wires, as a wild beast might be lashed, and its
muzzle pointing through the orifice intended for the second lens of the
stereoscopic camera.

Pocket pressed again, and again the mild clash of the shutter was preceded
by the vicious one that would have been an explosion if there had been
another cartridge in the pistol.

"And we never guessed it!" said he. "That's why he went in for this sort
of double camera, and rigged it up to take both kinds of shot in quick
succession. It's the cleverest thing I ever heard of in my life."

He spoke as if it were only clever! Phillida stared at it and him without
a word.

"The cleverest part is the way you aim. I do believe he relied altogether
on that spot about the middle of the focussing screen. I've been trying
it against the window, and where that spot comes the pistol's pointing
every time. It's a fixed focus, about ten to fifteen feet, I fancy, and
the spot isn't quite in the middle of the screen, but just enough to the
left to allow. I don't quite see how the one bulb works everything, but
these springs and things are a bit confusing. We shan't understand
everything till we take it to pieces."

"You mean the police won't!" said Phillida, bitterly.

"The police! I never thought of them."

"What do you mean to do with this--this infernal machine?" the girl asked,
her voice breaking over the perfectly applicable term.

"What do _you_ mean to do with--the writing?" demanded Pocket in his turn.

"Burn it! I've asked for a fire in my room; it's locked away meanwhile."

"Well, this is yours, too," said Pocket, deliberately, "to do what you
like with as well."

"They wouldn't t