“Make ten-by-twelve bromide enlargement prints,” he ordered.
Roger, although it seemed impossible that anyone could have moved the stiff rusted bolt inside the trapdoor of the coal chute, a trap that lifted up and out onto the street, said no word of objection.
He felt that Grover would find nothing in the enlargements.
Expertly he adjusted paper on the camera-stand, extended the bellows to secure most perfect focus, made his exposures, developed, and fixed the large prints, and took them to his cousin’s own den.
“As I expected—nothing!” he reported.
“No abrasions of the bolt, or edge of the trap?”
“You mean, where someone inserted a ‘jimmy’ to shove back the bolt?”
Grover nodded.
“Not a thing shows.” Roger asserted. His cousin did not accept his statement; but his disappointed eyes told Roger that the examination he had made during developing work had been accurate, thorough, and had led to a correct decision.
They were at a standstill. Calls to the zoo, brought from its curator the declaration that no snake was absent from its cage, that no one of his keepers had tried to “train” snakes—as the laboratory head had half-laughingly suggested.