I started to move a chair up for her, but she waved me away and sat on the arm of his, balancing herself with her hand on his shoulder. He grimaced but took it. I completed the group by moving to his other side, for the pictures were so small — the usual miniatures of a Leitax — that I had to get close to make them out.
There were thirty-six of them altogether, and most of them were pretty good shots. Wolfe discarded the majority the first time through — a bunch that had no discernible connection with Hawthornes or Dunns alive or dead, including nine or ten she had taken Monday evening at the World’s Fair. The remainder he examined with his magnifying glass, asking Sara about them, and marking on the back of each the place, date and hour it had been taken. Finally he returned thirty of them, together with the films, to the envelope, laid it aside, and concentrated on the six that were left. Sara got tired of balancing on the chair arm and resumed her former seat at the end of the desk. I got my own glass and did some concentrating myself, studying each of the six pictures in turn as he laid one down to pick up another one, and starting over again when my first tour disclosed nothing startling.
Sara’s information was that Number One had been taken about nine o’clock Wednesday morning. May Hawthorne was exhibiting one of the crows which had been shot the day before by Noel Hawthorne and which Titus Ames had just found in a meadow; Mrs. Dunn was looking at it curiously while April Hawthorne regarded it with revulsion. Sara had snapped them before they knew it, and a moment later, hearing a noise behind her on the terrace, had turned, seen Daisy with her veil standing there, and snapped her too. That was Number Two.
Number Three had been taken shortly after six o’clock Tuesday afternoon, when Sara had emerged from the shop where she worked and found Glenn Prescott there with his car waiting to take her to the country. Number Four had been taken some three hours earlier the same afternoon, Tuesday. Sara had gone up Park Avenue to deliver a vase to a customer in a hurry, and had taken her camera along as usual. She had seen, crossing the sidewalk, the woman whom she had seen before, months previously, entering Hartlespoon’s in the company of her Uncle Noel; and the door of the car which the woman headed for was being opened by a man whom she recognized, though she had not seen him for years, as Eugene Davis, the law partner of Glenn Prescott. She took a shot as the woman was approaching the car.
Number Five had been taken Wednesday morning, not long before Number One. She had gone through the woods for a look at the spot where her Uncle Noel had met his death, and finding her father, her brother, and Osric Stauffer there, had earned remonstrances from all three of them by snapping a picture of the scene. Number Six, of course, needed no explanation. It was the one she had taken with a flash there in Wolfe’s office Friday afternoon.
My glass was as good as Wolfe’s, and so I had no handicap with regard to details, but after completing my third inspection of everything I could find, I passed. As far as I was concerned, the only thing those snaps proved was that Sara was handy with a Leitax. I went to my desk and sat down.
Wolfe was through, too. He was leaning back in his chair with his eyes closed. I watched him. His lips were moving, pushing out and thickening, and then closing in again to make a thin line. I watched him, and wondered whether he really had something or was only bluffing. If he was bluffing it could have been only for my benefit, for Sara Dunn didn’t know what that movement of his lips meant.
Suddenly she demanded, “Well? Are you deducing something?”
His lips stopped moving. His eyelids raised to make slits, enough to see her through, and after a moment he slowly shook his head.
“No,” he murmured at her, “the deducing is finished. That was simple. The hard part of it—”