“Just a minute,” Otis returned, looking up. “The plate-slide’s missing. We’ll have to find it before we can use this.”
Mariel glanced up at him quickly, her lips parted, as if a significant idea had flashed upon her.
“Let me see it,” she commanded, holding out her hand for the camera. “Um-m. Just as I thought. Look at that plateholder. One plate has been exposed. The slide hasn’t been inserted, and the holder hasn’t been reversed. It looks as if—”
“I’ve got it!” Otis exclaimed eagerly. “It was the last picture Fyffe ever took! And he must have taken it hurriedly, or he’d have replaced the slide and reversed the plate-holder. Maybe—maybe that last plate holds our clue! Maybe it will reveal something about the murder!”
CHAPTER X
For a moment they stood, eying each other in silence. Was this really the clue for which they had been searching? Did the plate hold the solution to the murder? Mariel met Otis’ eager glance with shining eyes.
“But we mustn’t raise our hopes too high,” she protested. “Remember, the camera was knocked off the table in the cabin after Fyffe had run inside. It was closed, too. Wouldn’t that show that the ranger hadn’t used it since—well, since some time before the murder?”
“That was merely our—my conclusion,” Otis reminded her. “The deputy found the camera on the floor under the table. In reconstructing the crime, I leaped at the conclusion that it must have been knocked off the table as he reached for the phone, or when he fell to the floor. Maybe he brought it into the cabin with him as he ran to the telephone after being shot. It’s possible that he dropped it as he reached for the phone.”
“But,” Mariel reasoned, seeking to prevent him from building his hopes too high, “assuming that he had it with him out here when he was shot, and assuming that he had taken some picture that might throw light on the murder—then how did it happen that it was closed when you found it? A man who had just been mortally shot would hardly stop and calmly close his camera before running to summon aid.”
Otis’ face fell—for just a moment. Then he replied: