“Hell, no,” she said. “I had an order of four bucks for that negative. Do you think I was going to throw that away?”
“So what did you do?”
“Gave him the next negative that was in the camera, pulled it out and pulled the slide out of the plate-holder. Elgin took the film and passed it over to the girl at the table and asked him if that satisfied her, and she said it did, so that was all there was to it, as far as those people were concerned.”
“And as far as you were concerned?”
She said, “I found my party. I told her the price of prints had gone up to ten dollars a print. She said that was too steep. She offered me twenty-five dollars for the lot. I felt that was all I could get, I told her I’d mail them. I didn’t dare make delivery that night.”
“And the negative?”
She said, “Just a minute while I put these films in the water.”
She transferred the films, and I heard the rush of running water, then she pulled the top off another tank and I smelled alcohol. She sloshed the films around a minute, then took them out and placed them on hangers to dry. She said, “I could make four more prints for twenty-five dollars.”
“How soon?”
“I’ll put it next on the list. My partner will make the prints while I’m in this next club.”
The trailer came to a stop, evidently at a traffic signal. She reached up, switched on a light, consulted a book which had a lot of numbers in it, opened a drawer in a little filing system and took out an envelope which had a negative.
I took out two tens and a five from my note-case and handed them to her. “When do I get them?”
“Soon as I finish this run in here,” she said. “Want to go in the club and watch me work?”
“No thanks, I’ll stay here and watch your partner do the printing. Can you tell me anything about the person who ordered the pictures?”
“Cute blonde,” she said, “nice figure but unusually small.”
We started on again, rode for about five minutes, then the trailer lurched to one side as the car turned off the pavement and into a graveled driveway.
“This is my next stop,” she said. “You sure you don’t want to come along?”
“No, I’ll wait.”
She took her camera and a supply of flashbulbs, pulled the raincoat to one side, straightened her stockings, fluffed out her scanty skirt, said, “How do I look?”
“Like a million dollars.”
“Thanks.”
“Who’s driving the car?” I asked.
“My partner.”
“Boy friend?”
“Don’t be silly. She’s a girl — homely as a mud fence but a good photographer and a good driver. A man would want to be the whole thing, both in the business and in my private life. Us two girls get along fine. We share living expenses and split the earnings fifty-fifty.”
I heard steps on the outside of the trailer. Someone tried the knob.
My friend on the inside said, “Okay, Elsie, I’m coming right out.”
She unlocked the door.
The woman who came in looked at me with angry disapproval. She was sallow-faced, angular, with a firm, determined mouth and steady, steel-grey eyes.
“It’s all right, Elsie. It’s a business deal. He wants picture number 45228, four prints — twenty-five bucks.”
Elsie said, “Good. We’re making money on that negative. You don’t want it thrown away, I take it.”
“Don’t be silly.”
“When do I get the four prints?” I said.
“Right quick,” Elsie said.
“There are four more negatives in there to be printed, four of each.”
“Okay, Bessie,” Elsie said, “I’ll get them.”
Bessie gave me one swift look over her shoulder, then, with the camera in her hand, the raincoat buttoned, entered the circle of white lights around the building. Elsie rolled up her sleeves and started working. She pulled a printer toward her, connected it up, laid out five negatives in a pile, a pile of printing paper, and started work, slipping the negatives into the printer, slamming the paper in on top of them, latching the printer cover down, making the exposure and jerking out the paper, putting the exposed sheets in a pile by themselves.
“Know anything about photography?” she asked.
“Some.”
“Ever done any of this stuff?”
“Developing and printing, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“Uh huh.”
She said, “Start running that bunch of paper through the developer. It works pretty fast. Don’t figure on time; just watch it in the red light. When the prints begin to show, stick ’em through that washing tray and into the hypo. It’s a concentrated developer and it works fast.”
I started running the prints through. Elsie watching me with an expert eye, checking my timing. After she saw I knew what I was doing, she didn’t pay any further attention, but kept on printing the pictures.
By the time she had her pile finished I had caught up with her. I ran through the last of the prints, and Elsie started taking the bottom ones out of the hypo. She sloshed them around for a minute in plain water, then put them in a water containing a chemical to dissolve the hypo, then washed them once more and put them in a dryer.
“Which ones are mine?” I asked.
“There’s a number on them,” she said. “It’ll tell. How about the twenty-five?”
“I paid your partner.”
“She didn’t say so.”
“She will when she gets back.”
She said, “Okay, you’ll have to wait.”
“It’s all right,” I told her.
Elsie saw that the prints were dry, then she took photographic mounts from the big pasteboard box that was under the shelf in the darkroom, mounted the pictures and again switched on white lights.
It was a neat trailer. There was a kitchenette in front, a bedroom in the rear that had twin beds. It was a big trailer, but everything was remarkably compact.
“I take it you girls live here all the time.”
“Sure. Why not? Why should we be moving things back and forth into an apartment when we already have an apartment on wheels.”
“You rent space in a trailer lot?”
“That’s right. Only it isn’t a trailer lot, it’s in behind a private residence. We drive in there, park under a tree, hook up the electricity, sleep until noon, then have breakfast. We eat again about seven-thirty, then start out to work, and usually wind the business up about three o’clock in the morning.”
“Looks like a nice business,” I said.
“The other person’s racket always does,” she commented dryly. “Seen the evening paper?”
“No.”
“You may as well take a look at it. We may have to wait for Bessie. She’s pretty good at hustling business.”
“Let’s have a look at the pictures.”
“Don’t make any mistake. I don’t know that you’ve paid the twenty-five bucks yet,” Elsie said.
“I won’t take them. I just want to look.”
The pictures had a certain muddy, drab look about them, but considering the circumstances under which they were taken, they were a pretty good job. And the folders classed them up a lot. One was of the redhead who was now lying on a slab in the morgue. The other was Tom Durham.
It was a good twenty minutes before Bessie came back.
“I’ve got a load for you, Elsie,” she said. “I’ll start putting them through while you go to the next place. But you’ll have to finish them. I got nine pictures in there.”
“You mean nine separate jobs?”
“That’s right.”
“Gosh!” Elsie said in a tone of awe. “And it’s Sunday night, tool”
“I kidded them along and got everybody feeling good,” Bessie said. “Did you give this man his pictures?”
“Did he give you the twenty-five?”
“Yes.”
“Okay,” Elsie said, handing me four prints. “You get the pictures.”