“Did it ever occur to you,” he demanded suddenly, “to ask yourself the question: ‘Where did those photographs come from? Who took them?’”
Joyce started. “N—no, it didn’t.”
“I’ll tell you. But first let me assure you that the taking of such pictures is difficult, tiresome and often dangerous work. It requires a great deal of time. Those prints are only a hundred or so selected from more than a thousand. To take those pictures required many days of soaring in a powerful airplane, close to the surface of the earth. For such work an airplane is expensive. Those pictures cost a pretty large sum of money. They were the property of two men, an aged prospector and a young man. They invested their joint fortunes in the undertaking, hoping for large returns. They had made one enlargement from each film when all the films were stolen.”
“Stolen!”
“Stolen.”
“By whom?”
“I leave you to guess.”
The expressions that flitted across the girl’s face, as clouds pass over a landscape, were strange to see. Despair, distrust, sorrow, hope, then despair again—all these.
“My father,” she murmured at last, “my poor father.”
“He knows nothing of it. That goes without saying,” Johnny hastened to assure her.