The Camera Fiend. E. W. Hornung

had a beast of a dream!” said Pocket, waking thoroughly. “I'm in a cold perspiration, and I thought it was cold blood! What time is it?”

      “A quarter to six,” said the doctor, who had invited the question by taking out his watch.

      “A quarter to twelve, you mean!”

      “No—six.”

      [pg 73]

      And the boy was shown the dial, but would not believe it until he had gaped at his own watch, which had stopped at half-past three. Then he bounded to his feet in a puerile passion, and there lay the little garden, a lake of sunlight as he remembered it, swallowed up entirely in the shadow of the house.

      “You promised to wake me!” gasped Pocket, almost speechless. “You've broken your word, sir!”

      “Only in your own interest,” replied the other calmly.

      “I believe you were waiting for me to wake—to catch my soul, or some rot!” cried the boy, with bitter rudeness; but he looked in vain for the stereoscopic or any other sort of camera, and Dr. Baumgartner only shrugged his shoulders as he opened an evening paper.

      “I apologise for saying that,” the boy resumed, with a dignity that sounded near to tears. “I know you meant it for the best—to make up for my bad night—you've been very kind to me, I know! But I was due in Welbeck Street at twelve o'clock, and now I shall have to bolt to catch the six-thirty from St. Pancras.”

      “You won't catch the six-thirty from St. Pancras,” replied Baumgartner, scarcely looking up from his paper.

      [pg 74]

      “I will unless I'm in some outlandish part of London!” cried Pocket, reflecting for the first time that he had no idea in what part of London he was. “I must catch it. It's the last train back to school. I'll get into an awful row if I don't!”

      “You'll get into a worse one if you do,” rejoined the doctor, looking over his paper, and not unfeelingly, at the boy.

      “What about?”

      Pocket held his breath instinctively as their eyes met. Baumgartner answered with increased compassion and restraint, a grey look on his grey face:

      “Something that happened this morning. I fear you will be wanted here in town about it.”

      “Do tell me what, sir!”

      “Can you face things, my young fellow?”

      “Is it about my people—my mother?” the boy cried wildly, at her funeral in a flash.

      “No—yourself.”

      “Then I can!”

      The doctor overcame his final hesitation.

      “Do you remember a man we left behind us on the grass?”

      “Perfectly; the grass looked as wet as it felt just now in my dream.”

      “Exactly. Didn't it strike you as strange that he should be lying there in the wet grass?”

      “I thought he was drunk.”

      [pg 75]

      “He was dead!”

      Pocket was shocked; he was more than shocked, for he had never witnessed death before; but next moment the shock was uncontrollably mitigated by a sudden view of the tragic incident as yet another adventure of that adventurous night. No doubt one to retail in reverential tones, but a most thrilling adventure none the less. He only failed to see why it should affect him as much as the doctor suggested. True, he might be called as witness at the inquest; his very natural density was pierced with the awkward possibility of that. But then he had not even known the man was dead.

      Had the doctor?

      Yes.

      Pocket wondered why he had not been told at the time, but asked another question first.

      “What did he die of?”

      “A bullet!”

      “Suicide?”

      “No.”

      “Not murder?”

      “This paper says so.”

      “Does it say who did it?”

      “It cannot.”

      “Can you?”

      “Yes!”

      “Tell me.”

      [pg 76]

      The doctor threw out both hands in a despairing gesture.

      “Have I to tell you outright, my young fellow, that you did it yourself?”