“You’ll make the some enlargements of the films you are keeping?”
“To be sure.” He rubbed his hands together. “Very fine ones. And, my dear, they shall cost you absolutely nothing. I shall charge you nothing for these. You are almost a genius at light, shadows, and grouping. Such a choice of subjects! Such placing, to bring out the angles, and the contrasts. Please allow me to do all your films.”
“Where have I heard all that before?” the girl asked herself as she left the place. The answer, she felt sure, was, “Never anywhere before.” It was strange.
As she mounted her motorcycle and set it pop-popping, the three black pigeons, who had returned, once more went flapping out to sea.
“Pointing the way to Black Knob,” she told herself. “I wonder if they ever go all the way?”
Days glided by. There was study and work, hours on end. At last more work and less study.
They studied types of airplanes and subs until they were fairly sure of recognizing them in daylight. Learning them by sound would be quite another matter. For some enemy planes they had sound recordings. Norma, who had quite a remarkable ear for sound variations, spent hours on end listening first to the American fighter planes that every day zoomed overhead, and then to the recordings of Zeros and Messerschmitts.
The day after her camera disappeared, she found it just where she had left it. Had someone taken it by mistake and returned it? Did Mr. Sperry or someone else suspect her of taking forbidden snapshots? This seemed improbable for she had taken two pictures and the spot still showed number three. What was more, the shutter was just as she had left it and the time, still set at one-twenty-fifth of a second.
“It can’t have been someone who wished to use it for taking forbidden pictures either,” Betty assured her. “No pictures have been taken.”