“Good old Scottie,” Jimmie chuckled. “He likes to kid me about my candid camera.”
“Yes, but he’s beginning to believe in it,” Tom took the enlargement from the table. “You stick by Scottie. He’ll give you anything you want. Providing what you want is right and for the good of all.
“Look at that picture,” he said a few seconds later. “Peach of an ear. Not another like it in the world.”
They were looking at an enlargement of a picture of the Silent Terror. Perhaps the only one in existence, it was the one taken by Jimmie on the eventful night before. For a full minute they stood staring at it in silence.
To Jimmie there was something about the picture that made him shudder. Is it true that some men are so evil, so terrifying by nature, that even before you have looked them in the eye you fear them? It would seem so, for Jimmie now found himself trembling from head to foot.
“It’s last night,” he told himself angrily. “I’m not over that shock. I mustn’t be such a softie!”
Then, that he might the sooner gain control of himself, he forced himself to recall what Tom had said to him about the man’s ear.
“Wha—what’s strange about the ear?” he at last managed to ask.
For an answer his host turned a small knob to open a broad, shallow cabinet. “Here,” he said, “are my ears.”
“Great guns!” Jimmie exclaimed. “They look real!”