I said, “You must have quite a job keeping all the stuff straight.”
“It’s not bad,” she said. “I put these things in a developing frame and as soon as the electric timer indicates…”
The electric timer contributed its share by ringing a bell at that moment.
She lifted the container out of one tank, put it into another, said, “We have two minutes now. Then I put them in a chemical bath which gets rid of the hypo and then we wash them in alcohol, dry them, and while I’m in the next place my partner, who’s driving the car, will make the prints. There’s a number on each of the films.”
“Tell me about what happened last Saturday.”
She said, “Every once in a while we run into something like that. I don’t know why. Usually I never take a picture until I’ve verified it, but this time it looked so much on the up-and-up that I fell for it.”
“What happened?”
She said, “This couple were sitting there, eating. Very quiet, very subdued. Just like people who have been married to each other for a long while. Ordinarily I don’t waste time with them. It’s the gay blades and the visiting firemen who want to have a picture of the cutie with them to show the boys back home that give me my business. Sometimes a family party.”
“Go on,” I said.
She kept her eye on the electric clock with the luminous hands.