whole thing would be crystal clear. What chance had I in this

moorland house with three desperadoes and their armed servants?
I began to think wistfully of the police, now plodding over the

hills after my wraith. They at any rate were fellow-countrymen and
honest men, and their tender mercies would be kinder than these

ghoulish aliens. But they wouldn't have listened to me. That old
devil with the eyelids had not taken long to get rid of them. I

thought he probably had some kind of graft with the constabulary.
Most likely he had letters from Cabinet Ministers saying he was to

be given every facility for plotting against Britain. That's the sort
of owlish way we run our politics in the Old Country.

The three would be back for lunch, so I hadn't more than a
couple of hours to wait. It was simply waiting on destruction, for I

could see no way out of this mess. I wished that I had Scudder's
courage, for I am free to confess I didn't feel any great fortitude.

The only thing that kept me going was that I was pretty furious. It
made me boil with rage to think of those three spies getting the

pull on me like this. I hoped that at any rate I might be able to
twist one of their necks before they downed me.

The more I thought of it the angrier I grew, and I had to get up
and move about the room. I tried the shutters, but they were the

kind that lock with a key, and I couldn't move them. From the
outside came the faint clucking of hens in the warm sun. Then I

groped among the sacks and boxes. I couldn't open the latter, and
the sacks seemed to be full of things like dog-biscuits that smelt of

cinnamon. But, as I circumnavigated the room, I found a handle in
the wall which seemed worth investigating.

It was the door of a wall cupboard - what they call a 'press' in
Scotland - and it was locked. I shook it, and it seemed rather

flimsy. For want of something better to do I put out my strength
on that door, getting some purchase on the handle by looping my

braces round it. Presently the thing gave with a crash which I
thought would bring in my warders to inquire. I waited for a bit,

and then started to explore the cupboard shelves.
There was a multitude of queer things there. I found an odd

vesta or two in my trouser pockets and struck a light. It was out in
a second, but it showed me one thing. There was a little stock of

electric torches on one shelf. I picked up one, and found it was in
working order.

With the torch to help me I investigated further. There were
bottles and cases of queer-smelling stuffs, chemicals no doubt for

experiments, and there were coils of fine copper wire and yanks and
yanks of thin oiled silk. There was a box of detonators, and a lot of

cord for fuses. Then away at the back of the shelf I found a stout
brown cardboard box, and inside it a wooden case. I managed to

wrench it open, and within lay half a dozen little grey bricks, each a
couple of inches square.

I took up one, and found that it crumbled easily in my hand. Then I
smelt it and put my tongue to it. After that I sat down to think. I hadn't

been a mining engineer for nothing, and I knew lentonite when I saw it.
With one of these bricks I could blow the house to smithereens.

I had used the stuff in Rhodesia and knew its power. But the
trouble was that my knowledge wasn't exact. I had forgotten the

proper charge and the right way of preparing it, and I wasn't sure
about the timing. I had only a vague notion, too, as to its power,

for though I had used it I had not handled it with my own fingers.
But it was a chance, the only possible chance. It was a mighty

risk, but against it was an absolute black certainty. If I used it the
odds were, as I reckoned, about five to one in favour of my

blowing myself into the tree-tops; but if I didn't I should very
likely be occupying a six-foot hole in the garden by the evening.

That was the way I had to look at it. The prospect was pretty dark
either way, but anyhow there was a chance, both for myself and for

my country.
The remembrance of little Scudder decided me. It was about the

beastliest moment of my life, for I'm no good at these cold-blooded
resolutions. Still I managed to rake up the pluck to set my teeth

and choke back the horrid doubts that flooded in on me. I simply
shut off my mind and pretended I was doing an experiment as

simple as Guy Fawkes fireworks.
I got a detonator, and fixed it to a couple of feet of fuse. Then I

took a quarter of a lentonite brick, and buried it near the door
below one of the sacks in a crack of the floor, fixing the detonator

in it. For all I knew half those boxes might be dynamite. If the
cupboard held such deadly explosives, why not the boxes? In that

case there would be a glorious skyward journey for me and the
German servants and about an acre of surrounding country. There

was also the risk that the detonation might set off the other bricks
in the cupboard, for I had forgotten most that I knew about

lentonite. But it didn't do to begin thinking about the possibilities.
The odds were horrible, but I had to take them.

I ensconced myself just below the sill of the window, and lit the
fuse. Then I waited for a moment or two. There was dead silence -

only a shuffle of heavy boots in the passage, and the peaceful cluck
of hens from the warm out-of-doors. I commended my soul to my

Maker, and wondered where I would be in five seconds ...
A great wave of heat seemed to surge upwards from the floor,

and hang for a blistering instant in the air. Then the wall opposite
me flashed into a golden yellow and dissolved with a rending

thunder that hammered my brain into a pulp. Something dropped
on me, catching the point of my left shoulder.

And then I think I became unconscious.
My stupor can scarcely have lasted beyond a few seconds. I felt

myself being choked by thick yellow fumes, and struggled out of
the debris to my feet. Somewhere behind me I felt fresh air. The

jambs of the window had fallen, and through the ragged rent the
smoke was pouring out to the summer noon. I stepped over the

broken lintel, and found myself standing in a yard in a dense and
acrid fog. I felt very sick and ill, but I could move my limbs, and I

staggered blindly forward away from the house.
A small mill-lade ran in a wooden aqueduct at the other side of

the yard, and into this I fell. The cool water revived me, and I had
just enough wits left to think of escape. I squirmed up the lade

among the slippery green slime till I reached the mill-wheel. Then I
wriggled through the axle hole into the old mill and tumbled on to

a bed of chaff. A nail caught the seat of my trousers, and I left a
wisp of heather-mixture behind me.

The mill had been long out of use. The ladders were rotten with
age, and in the loft the rats had gnawed great holes in the floor.

Nausea shook me, and a wheel in my head kept turning, while my
left shoulder and arm seemed to be stricken with the palsy. I looked

out of the window and saw a fog still hanging over the house and
smoke escaping from an upper window. Please God I had set the

place on fire, for I could hear confused cries coming from the
other side.

But I had no time to linger, since this mill was obviously a bad
hiding-place. Anyone looking for me would naturally follow the

lade, and I made certain the search would begin as soon as they
found that my body was not in the storeroom. From another

window I saw that on the far side of the mill stood an old stone
dovecot. If I could get there without leaving tracks I might find a

hiding-place, for I argued that my enemies, if they thought I could
move, would conclude I had made for open country, and would go

seeking me on the moor.