Page:Marsh--The seen and the unseen.djvu/70

46 away. But I mean to keep those photographs; I mean to write their history, and I mean to leave them to my—heirs, and a ghost story to the ages. Seriously, Paley! It's nonsense to suppose that I could have photographed a woman — seventeen times — if she hadn't been there to photograph. She must have been visible to the camera if she was invisible to me. And from being visible to the camera, to being visible, and even audible and tangible, to Solly, and even Slater, it's but one step further. And that's why I say, referring to the story which Solly and Slater have just now told, that I don't know what to think; and candidly, I tell you again, I don't"

"I tell you what I mean to do; I mean to have that man transferred."

"That's one way out of it, certainly — transfer the solution of the ghost story on to someone else's shoulders. Have you heard anything about the report — our report I mean?"

"Yes. This morning. Hardinge's coming down to-morrow."

"Hardinge! Nice sort of man to whom to entrust a case like that! Might as well expect an elephant to dance lightly upon egg-shell china! Blundering bull!"

Major Hardinge, the gentleman thus disrespectfully alluded to, was no less a personage than one of the inspectors of Her Majesty's prisons. As such he was a personage who, as is well known, ought to have been regarded by all properly constituted official minds with awe and respect — to speak of nothing else. On the morrow he appeared. Having