But I had to decide in
a moment, and I decided on trying the room. I slipped inside the door,
and, finding the key on the inside, locked it. It was a confused sort of
room, with a little iron bedstead in one corner and a sort of rough
boarded inclosure in another. This I rightly conjectured to be the
photographic dark-room, and made for it at once.
"There was plenty of light within when the door was left open, and I made
at once for the drying-rack that was fastened over the sink. There were a
number of negatives in it, and I began hastily examining them one after
another. In the middle of this our friend Mirsky returned and tried the
door. He rattled violently at the handle and pushed. Then he called.
"At this moment I had come upon the first of the negatives you have just
smashed. The fixing and washing had evidently only lately been completed,
and the negative was drying on the rack. I seized it, of course, and the
others which stood by it.
"'Who are you, there, inside?' Mirsky shouted indignantly from the
landing. 'Why for you go in my room like that? Open this door at once, or
I call the police!'
"I took no notice.
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