Gordon shuddered. “Just think if one went off the hooks suddenly, and people came round and tried to dig up one’s past from the old photographs and keepsakes one had hidden away in drawers! One should destroy everything—certainly one should destroy everything.”
But Reeves was no sentimentalist; he was a sleuth-hound with nose down on the trail. “Let’s see,” he reflected, “I can’t remember at the moment what the present Binver photographer is called.”
“You will find it,” suggested Carmichael, “on that group over your head.” Reeves had it down in a minute.
“Yes, that’s right: Campbell,” he said. “Now, if one of us goes off in Binver and says he’s found this photograph, and would Mr. Campbell be kind enough to let us know the address it was originally sent to, so that we can restore it, that ought to do the trick. Photographers are full of professional etiquette, but I don’t see that we could go wrong here.”
“I don’t mind going,” said Marryatt; “as a matter of fact, I’ve got to ride in to see a man on business.”
“Heaven defend me,” said Reeves, “from having business with anybody at Binver!”
“You will, though, with this man, some day.”
“Why, who is it?”
“The undertaker,” said Marryatt.
“Undertakers,” said Carmichael, “have been very much maligned in literature. They are always represented as either cynical or morbid in the exercise of their profession. As a matter of fact, I am told that no class of men is more considerate or more tactful.”