At this Sam Smalling chuckled.
“It’s better than that, my boy, far better. I’ve got a picture of my benevolent employer, took in the queerest way you ever heard of.”
He drew out an old pocketbook, and rummaging through this found a small piece of cardboard which he handed to the boy.
Ralph uttered an exclamation of astonishment.
The photograph was weak, having either faded from age, or else because of insufficient light at the time of taking; but it was easy to distinguish in one of the two figures a man who much resembled Sam Smalling.
“Why, isn’t this you?” demanded Ralph.
“No other. And that chap standing there is Mr. Andrew Jackson, as he called himself, which I believe is the same as Mr. Arnold Musgrove,” replied the man.
“But what is he handing you—that bundle?” gasped the boy, suspecting the truth.
“That was you, Ralph, the poor little baby that he wanted to have disappear! Yes, this picture was taken at just the minute he gave you to me. You wonder how that could ever happen, and I’ll tell you. I was bunking at the time with a drunken photographer, and he knew what I was going to do. It was his suggestion that he try and get a picture of the man of money. I remember we had a hazy notion that it might help us to get money out of the chap later on.”
“And he managed it, then?” asked Ralph, wondering; for flashlights were hardly in use so far back, and this picture showed no signs of having been taken in that fashion.