“I’ll go up and tackle him at once,” said Pocket, through his set teeth; but Phillida would not hear of it. “No! I must go first and see if there’s nothing I can get him; he mayn’t have had anything all day. There’s no need for you to come at all—I believe he’s forgotten all about us both!” “Not he!” whispered Pocket, as the door opened overhead. “Here he comes!” He could not help gripping his revolver as the stairs creaked again under Dr. Baumgartner; he had gripped it more than once already with the hand that was not holding Phillida’s. The doctor was coming down in a hurry, as though he had indeed forgotten something. But he passed the open drawing-room door; they saw him pass, jingling a bunch of keys, and never so much as glancing in on the way. It was the dark-room door he opened. Now he would find out everything! They heard a match struck, and saw the faint light turn into a strong deep crimson glow. The door shut. The children stood listening in the dark. Running water, and the chink of glass; the tapping of a stoppered bottle; the opening of the dark slide; these stages the younger photographer followed as though he were again looking on. Then there was a long period without a sound. “He’s developing now!” whispered Pocket, close to the folding-doors. He caught the sound of laboured breathing on the other side. “There it is—there it is—there it is!” cried the doctor’s voice in mingled ecstasy and mad excitement. A deep sigh announced the blackening of the plate at the conclusion of the first process. A tap ran for a moment; interminable minutes ensued. “It’s gone! It’s gone again!” cried the wild voice, with a sob; “it’s gone, gone, gone like all the rest!” One listener waited for the passionate smashing of the negative as before; but that did not happen again; and then he wondered if it was being put straight into the rack with the others, if the damage to the locker had been discovered at last. He never knew. The door opened. The red glow showed for a moment in the passage, then went out. The door shut behind Baumgartner, and again he passed the drawing-room, a bent figure, without looking in. And the flagging step on the stairs bore no resemblance to the one which had come hurrying down not many minutes before. “I must go to him!” said Phillida in broken undertones, and her grief communicated itself to the other young sympathetic soul, for all the base fears he had to fight alone. Personal safety, little as she might think of it, was the essence of her position as opposed to his; and he was of the type that thinks of everything. She left him listening breathless in the dark. And in the dark she found him when at length she returned to report the doctor busy writing at his desk; but a pin’s head of blue gas glimmered where there had been none before, and a paper which had been trodden underfoot now rustled in Pocket’s hand. “Does he know I’m here?” he asked.