All that remained now to do was to hinge the board and the glass, and this he did with a piece of insulating tape from his ever ready knapsack. It was some that had been bought for the purpose of repairing the telephone lines when they were on the forest fire patrol, when they had first entered the woods.
Dick then retired to the darkroom, and setting his negative against a piece of sensitized paper, inserted the two between the glass and the wood. Then holding the other end firmly together between his thumb and fingers, held the improvised frame with the glass up to the electric light from which had been removed the red cloth.
Dick was familiar enough with printing to “read” the paper as it developed. This was then put into the printing bath and soon the picture appeared. When it was finished, Dick stared at it in amazement; for instead of the features of Jean LeBlanc, which he firmly expected to see, he noted that it was not Jean, but his brother, Baptiste!
“I might have remembered that they would probably be together,” he thought, as he remembered that Baptiste had been in the motor launch, by the aid of which Jean had escaped from the lumber camp. “Well, that leaves still two to be disposed of, for the tramps and Lafe Green will be taken tonight.”
He cleaned up after his work of developing and printing, and then looking at his watch, found it was nearly time to be starting for the rendezvous with the sheriff and the constable.
“Where’s Phil?” asked Aunt Abbie. “I thought he would be around for supper tonight.”
“He went off to Coldenham to do a little investigating,” answered Dick, “and there was some likelihood of his not being back tonight, unless he could get a conveyance to bring him. There’s nothing to worry about, however,” said Dick lightly, not knowing of the accident that had befallen his comrade.
At the police station, he found that all the men of the party had already arrived. The sheriff stated that they would wait for about one hour and then proceed singly or in pairs to the general store and postoffice. Here they would take positions in hiding and wait for the approach of the raiders.
“We’ll let them get in the store so that we can catch them red-handed, and that will give us enough to keep them in prison for a good while to come. Also, it will cause the re-arrest of Lafe Green, who, to my mind, should never have been let out on bail. This second offense will forfeit his right to asking bail again, and that will clean up the last of a bad gang in these parts,” said the sheriff.
The hour passed quickly, while Dick told of some of the events that took place at the lumber camp.