“What photographs did your father take?”
“It was a picture of trout,” she said, gathering her scattered thoughts; “but he took another picture—in his sleep. He was in the country waiting for a badger, and dozed. He must have pressed the starter; he thought that picture was a failure. It can’t be the trout; it doesn’t mention the trout; it must be the other.”
“We will go to Wardour Street.”
It was Elk who spoke so definitely, Elk who called a cab and hustled the two people into it. When they arrived at Wardour Street, Mr. Silenski was out at lunch, and nobody knew anything whatever about the film, or had authority to show it.
For an hour and a half they waited, fuming, in that dingy office, whilst messengers went in search of Silenski. He arrived at last, a polite and pleasant little Hebrew, who was all apologies, though no apology was called for, since he had not expected his visitors.
“Yes, it is a curious picture,” he said. “Your father, miss, is a very good amateur; in fact, he’s a professional now; and if it is true that he can get these Zoo photographs, he ought to be in the first rank of nature photographers.”
They followed him up a flight of stairs into a big room across which were row upon row of chairs. Facing them as they sat was a small white screen, and behind them an iron partition with two square holes.
“This is our theatre,” he explained. “You’ve no idea whether your father is trying to take motion pictures—I mean photo-plays? If he is, then this scene was pretty well acted, but I can’t understand why he did it. It’s labelled ‘Trout in a Pond’ or something of the sort, but there are no trout here, and there is no pond either!”
There was a click, and the room went black; and then there was shown on the screen a picture which showed in the foreground a stretch of grey, sandy soil, and the dark opening of a burrow, out of which peeped a queer-looking animal.
“That’s a badger,” explained Mr. Silenski. “It looked very promising up to there, and then I don’t know what he did. You’ll see he changed the elevation of the camera.”