“Were the negatives already in the hands of the police?  That was now the great question.  I read the reports diligently, with all their descriptions of the room, and noticed that while the table, the alcove, the screen, the box, the electrical apparatus, were all carefully mentioned, not a word was said anywhere about the possession of the negatives.  Reasoning further upon the description of the supposed murderer as given by the servants, and placarded broadcast in every town in England, I came to the conclusion that the police couldn’t yet have discovered the existence of these negatives:  for some of them must surely have photographed my face, however little in focus; while the printed descriptions mentioned only the man’s back, as the servants saw him escaping from the window.  The papers said the room was being kept closed till the inquest, for inspection in due time by the coroner’s jury.  I made up my mind at once.  When the room was opened for the jurors to view it, I must get in there and carry them off, if they caught me in the attempt.

“It was no use trying before the jury had seen the room.  But as soon as that was all over, I judged the strictness of the watch upon the premises would be relaxed, and the windows would probably be opened a little to air the place.  So on the morning of the inquest, I told the Wilsons casually I’d met you at Torquay and had therefore a sort of interest in learning the result of the coroner’s deliberation.  Then I took my bicycle, and rode across to Woodbury.  Leaning up my machine against the garden wall, I walked carelessly in at the gate, and up the walk to the library window, as if the place belonged to me.  Oh, how my heart beat as I looked in and wondered!  The folding halves were open, and the box stood on the table, still connected with the wires that conducted the electrical current.  I stood and hesitated in alarm.  Were the negatives still there, or had the police discovered them?  If they were gone, all was up with you.  The game was lost.  No jury on earth, I felt sure, would believe my story.

“I vaulted up to the sill.  Thank heaven, I was athletic.  Not a soul was about:  but I heard a noise of muffled voices in the other rooms behind.  Treading cat-like across the floor, I turned the key in the lock.  A chalk mark still showed the position of the pistol on the ground exactly as you flung it.  The box was on the table, and I saw at a glance, the wires which connected it with the battery had never been disconnected.  I was afraid of receiving a shock if I touched them with my hands, and I had no time to waste in discovering electrical attachments.  So I pulled out my knife, and you can fancy with what trembling hands I cut that wire on either side and released the box from its dangerous connections.  I knew only too well the force of that current.  Then I took the thing under my arm, leaped from the window once more, and ran across the shrubbery towards the spot where I’d left my bicycle.