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 mine.” “But I thought your case was an accident pure and simple?” “On my part, certainly; but how do I know he couldn’t get more power over me in my sleep than at any other time? He saw me walking in my sleep with this wretched revolver. He said himself I’d given him the chance of a lifetime. You may be sure he meant before that poor man’s death, not after it.” “It isn’t possible,” declared Phillida, as though she had laid hold of one solid certainty in a sea of floating hypotheses. “And I know he hasn’t a pistol of his own,” she added, lest he should simplify his charge. But there they were agreed.