He hurriedly excused himself, then he and Jerry hurried after Scotty.
Scotty already had loaded the rephotographing camera with film and screwed a photo flood bulb into a convenient receptacle. It took Rick only ten minutes to select the frames he wanted to rephotograph and finish the operation. Then he gave the rephotographing camera to Scotty who wound the film all the way through and took it out.
"Let's develop it," he said, and reached for the shelf to take down a small developing tank.
"Wait!" An idea struck Rick. "How do we know Brad isn't going to load again tonight? Remember the Kelsos have only a few more days at Creek House."
Jerry snapped his fingers. "That's right! And I'll bet they're gloating over hoodwinking the State Police, too. They wouldn't be afraid to ship out another load, particularly since they know they're suspected of smuggling stuff in and it might be their last chance."
"We can't risk it," Rick said decisively. "We'll take this film to Whiteside and have the photographer at the paper develop it. How about that, Jerry?" The reporter nodded agreement and he continued, "While it's being developed, we can go through the New York papers again and find out if a ship of Caribbean registry is sailing. About midnight would be right for a sailing time."
Scotty reached for the light. "We'd better hurry." He snapped it out and led the way through the door. He and Jerry went directly to the boat landing while Rick ran upstairs and picked up his infrared camera, just in case. If the police raided Creek House tonight, he intended to be on hand.
Scotty had chosen the fast speedboat and already had the engine turning over. Rick jumped aboard and they roared toward Whiteside. At the dock they transferred to Jerry's car and sped through the streets to the newspaper office. Duke Barrows had just finished with the early newscast and, taking advantage of the lull, had gone home for dinner; he would return in about an hour, the photographer said. He was the only man in the office. Jerry gave him the roll of film on which Rick had rephotographed the critical scenes from the movie and asked for two enlargements of each.
"It's urgent," he said. "Duke will want to see these when he gets back."
"He'll have 'em." The photographer headed for the darkroom.