Freyberger, unable to contain his curiosity, came up behind the doctor and gazed over his shoulder at the photograph, mounted upon the card.
It was a large grey-coloured platinotype, showing a blurred and misty picture; it was the picture of a human face.
It was the face, the sight of which had killed, from sheer terror, the valet Leloir.
The arteries of the dead man’s retina had left their trace upon the photograph, but they did not blur the face; their tracery could be seen in the background, forming a sort of halo round the nebulous visage, that held the two gazers with a witchery all its own.
“That is the result,” said the doctor, laying the photograph on a table near by.
Freyberger moistened his lips.
“Scarcely pretty,” said Dr Murrell, taking a cigarette from a box near by and offering his companion one.
“It is a face to give one pause,” said Freyberger, lighting his cigarette in a meditative manner.
“I’m sure of this,” said Dr Murrell, leaning back against the mantelpiece and glancing sideways at the thing on the table, “that half of the impression that thing makes upon me is caused by the fact that I have the knowledge of how it was obtained.
“The fact of finding a man dead of terror and then finding that picture on his retina, is, I think, part of the reason why I feel—pretty sick.”