“It’s you!” Mariel repeated. “Your hat—your vest—those boots and trousers! I could tell it was you in an instant. It’s your build, and everything. And there, behind you, stands Pie-face!”
Otis could not find his voice. He gulped once or twice, striving for words to express his astonishment.
“Why, oh, why didn’t you tell me in the first place?” Mariel was moaning. “Why did you deny it? If you’d only confided in me! Maybe there was some reason—some extenuating circumstance! But Otis, Otis, I didn’t think you’d lie to me! Couldn’t you have trusted me?”
Otis found his voice.
“There’s something wrong, Mariel. It looks like me. Under any other circumstances, I’d say it was a picture of me, even if the face is hidden in shadow. But Mariel, it can’t be! I tell you, something’s wrong! Pie-face and I were miles away from this cabin when that picture was taken. Of course you wont believe me. Nobody would, now. With Fyffe’s dying message, and the empty cartridges in my gun, and now this picture—well, it looks like it’s all up with me.”
“Perhaps,” put in Mariel hesitantly but hopefully, “perhaps he had taken your picture at some other time, and hadn’t developed it.”
Otis shook his head. “No, to my knowledge Fyffe never took my picture. He never bothered about pictures of anything except wild animals, so far as I know. I still think this was the last picture he ever took. I still think it was taken before he was shot. But I know, as well as I’m standing here, that the man in that picture, however much he looks like me, isn’t Otis Carr!”
Mariel reached for the negative. For many moments she stood at the window, scrutinizing its every detail.
“What is it,” she asked finally, “that you—I mean the man in the picture—has in his hand?”
Otis took the plate again and examined it. “It looks like—Mariel, I believe that’s the clue we’ve been searching for! Look at the horse—there! I’ve got it, Mariel—the solution of everything! Wait until I make a print of that negative. I tell you if that doesn’t prove the whole thing—well, then I’ll be ready to accept the blame without a protest!”