CHAPTER XXXV
THE PHOTOGRAPH
Benton King sat in his office at the mill, opening the morning mail, which had just been brought him by a boy. His face wore a heavy frown, and he ripped open the envelopes viciously with the steel paper cutter.
The sounds of the mill—the creaking of the windlass drawing the big sticks up the run, the scream of the saws tearing through logs, the pistol-claps of fresh-cut boards tossed flatly upon other boards by the laborers—annoyed him, and he rose and kicked shut the connecting door, which had been left slightly ajar.
Resuming his seat at the desk, his eye fell on a square, flat package at the bottom of the letters remaining unopened, and he caught it up eagerly.
“Ha!” he breathed, after looking at the address. “Fletcher’s handwriting! He got it! This is what I sent for.”
Even as he was tearing off the wrapper, however, hesitation and fear came upon him. What if it should not be what he wanted? What if the photograph he knew the wrapping contained were not that of the man he had accused? The possibility gave him a gripping throb that was keen as the thrust of steel.
“It must be,” he muttered huskily. “I can’t be wrong. He has put up a big bluff, but he’s the man.”
His hands were not wholly steady as he finished removing the wrapper of brown manila. The picture was faced with cardboard, and this he flung aside, revealing the printed likeness that had been caught by the camera. Snatching it up, he turned eagerly to permit the light to fall full upon it. His face flamed with triumph; his mouth opened, but no sound issued forth; his clenched fist rose and fell on the desk as if the blow settled the doom of a mortal foe. After a time he laughed; it was not a pleasant laugh.
Presently, when he had gazed until satisfied that even the most obtuse or most obstinate could not behold it and express a doubt as to the almost perfect likeness of the picture to the man who called himself Tom Locke, a likeness far stronger than a mere verisimilitude, he turned again swiftly to the letters that had not yet been opened. Running them over, he selected one on which the writing corresponded to that upon the wrapper that had been removed from the photograph. No time was wasted in opening it.
New York, June 28, 19—.