The piecing of the plates was like a children’s puzzle, only easier, because the pieces were not many. One of the reconstructed negatives was of painful interest; it reminded Pocket of the fatal one smashed to atoms by Baumgartner in the pink porcelain trough. There were trees again, only leafless, and larger, and there was a larger figure sprawling on a bench. Pocket felt he must have a print of this; he remembered having seen printing-frames and tubes of sensitised paper in the other room; and hardly had he filled his frame and placed it in position, than Phillida ran down stairs, and he told her what he had done. “I wish you hadn’t,” she said nervously, as she made mechanical preparations with pot and kettle. “It would only make matters worse if my uncle came in now.” “But he wasn’t back on Friday before ten or eleven.” “You never know!” Pocket spoke out with a truculence which his brothers had inherited, but not he, valiantly as he might try to follow a family example. “I don’t care! I can’t help it if he does come. I’ll tell him exactly what I’ve done, and why, and exactly what I’m going to do next. I give him leave to stop me if he can.” “I’m afraid he won’t wait for that. But I wish you had waited for his leave before printing his negative.” Pocket jumped up from table, and ran to the printing-frame in the sunny room at the back. He had been reminded of it only just in time. It was a rather dark print that he first examined, one half at a time, and then extracted from the frame. It was meshed with white veils, showing the joins of the broken plate. But it had been an excellent negative originally. And it was still good enough to hold Pocket rooted to the carpet in the sunny room, until Phillida came in after him, and stood looking over his shoulder. “I know that place!” said she at once. “It’s Holland Walk, in Kensington.” He turned to her quickly. “The place where there was a suicide or something not long ago?” “The very place!” exclaimed the girl, looking up from the darkening print. “I remember my uncle would take me to see it next day. He’s always so interested in mysteries. I’m sure that’s the very spot he showed me as the one where it must have happened.” “Did he take the photograph then?” “No; he hadn’t his 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!”