And again the Dead Man shifted the form of his questions to quiet the nervous dread that had sprung into the big eyes.
"Willem," said he, "what would you rather see than anything else in all this world? Think. Something that every little boy loves?"
"I—I like the circus," hazarded Willem, setting his tired wits to work at this possible conundrum, "and the clowns, and——"
He hesitated. Peter Grimm motioned toward the photograph's fragments on the desk.
"——and my mother," finished the boy.
Then, his gaze following the Dead Man's gesture, he caught sight of part of a pictured face, torn diagonally across. With a cry he picked it up.
"Why," he exclaimed, "there she is! There's her face,—part of it. And," fumbling among the torn bits of cardboard, "there's the other part. It's a picture of Anne Marie. All torn up."
"It would be fun to put it together," suggested Peter Grimm, "the way you did with those picture puzzles I got you once. Suppose we try?"
The idea caught the child's fancy. With knitted brows and puckered lips he bent over the desk and began the task of piecing the scraps into a whole.
"That's right," approved the Dead Man. "Put it all together until the picture is all perfect.—See, there's the bit you are looking for to finish off the shoulder,—and then we must show it to everybody in the house, and set them all to thinking."