“No kidding?” he said. “About six inches? And thirty-five millimeter, huh? Did you find a cartridge or a spool?” He listened for another moment and then said “Sure. Thanks, Chief,” and hung up.
“I guess you all heard that.” There was a note of triumph in Sandy’s voice. “They found a six-inch scrap of thirty-five-millimeter film in the wastebasket. My guess is it’s the remains of a roll for a candid camera like mine.”
“That still doesn’t make it an incendiary job,” Bert said firmly. “Probably some customer of Sam’s had just picked the roll up at a drugstore, where he was having it developed. He looked at it while he was waiting in Sam’s, saw that it was no good, and threw it away.”
“Could be.” Richard Holt nodded his agreement. “Of course anybody should know better than to throw film into a public wastebasket where it might cause just this kind of trouble. But there are always careless people around.”
“Write just a brief paragraph on the fire, Ken,” Pop said decisively. “Then, if Sam does report anything missing among his stock, we’ll go to work on it.” He turned to Dick Holt. “Did Sam do a good job on your box?”
“Perfect,” Ken’s father assured him.
“Fine. I’m not surprised. Sam’s a good man.”
“And he wouldn’t let us pay for it, Dad,” Ken said.
Pop smiled. “I’m not surprised at that either. Here, I’ll help you with that, Dick,” he added, as the correspondent brought out the wrapping paper and ribbon he had put into his overcoat pocket that morning at the house.
Ken and Sandy were alone in the office that noon. Pop and Bert had carried Richard Holt off to their weekly lunch club meeting.