We were in the front room where a good fire was burning—in my honour, I guessed, for the apartment had not the air of being much used. On the table were some photographs. Barnes showed them me. They were enlargements from those he had taken of poor Radcliffe's last ascent.
"They've been shown all over the world," he said. "Millions of people have seen them."
"Well?" I said.
"But there's one no one has seen—no one except me."
He produced another print and gave it to me. I glanced at it. It seemed much like the others, having been apparently one of the last of the series, taken when the aeroplane was at a great height. The only thing in which it differed from the others was that it seemed a trifle blurred.
"A poor one," I said; "it's misty."
"Look at the mist," he said.
I did so. Slowly, very slowly, I began to see that that misty appearance had a shape, a form. Even as I looked I saw the features of a human countenance—and yet not human either, so spectral was it, so unreal and strange. I felt the blood run cold in my veins and the hair bristle on the scalp of my head, for I recognised beyond all doubt that this face on the photograph was the same as that Radcliffe had sketched. The resemblance was absolute, no one who had seen the one could mistake the other.
"You see it?" Barnes muttered, and his face was almost as pale as mine.
"There's a woman," I stammered, "a woman floating in the air by his side. Her arms are held out to him."