on your defenceless shoulders, sleep, at the trigger’s mercy, the destroying energies of dynamite.’
‘My God!’ cried Harry.
‘Ah!’ she continued wildly, ‘will you flee now? At any moment you may hear the click that sounds the ruin of this building. I was sure M’Guire was wrong; this morning, before day, I flew to Zero; he confirmed my fears; I beheld you, my beloved Harry, fall a victim to my own contrivances. I knew then I loved you — Harry, will you go now? Will you not spare me this unwilling crime?’
Harry remained speechless, his eyes fixed upon the box: at last he turned to her.
‘Is it,’ he asked hoarsely, ‘an infernal machine?’
Her lips formed the word ‘Yes,’ which her voice refused to utter.
With fearful curiosity, he drew near and bent above the box; in that still chamber, the ticking was distinctly audible; and at the measured sound, the blood flowed back upon his heart.
‘For whom?’ he asked.
‘What matters it,’ she cried, seizing him by the arm. ‘If you may still be saved, what matter questions?’
‘God in heaven!’ cried Harry. ‘And the Children’s Hospital! At whatever cost, this damned contrivance must be stopped!’
‘It cannot,’ she gasped. ‘The power of man cannot avert the blow. But you, Harry — you, my beloved — you may still —’
And then from the box that lay so quietly in the corner, a sudden catch was audible, like the catch of a clock before it strikes the hour. For one second the two stared at each other with lifted brows and stony eyes. Then Harry, throwing one arm over his face, with the other clutched the girl to his breast and staggered against the wall.
A dull and startling thud resounded through the room; their eyes blinked against the coming horror; and still clinging together like drowning people, they fell to the floor. Then followed a prolonged and strident hissing as from the indignant pit; an offensive stench seized them by the throat; the room was filled with dense and choking fumes.
Presently these began a little to disperse: and when at length they drew themselves, all limp and shaken, to a sitting posture, the first object that greeted their vision was the box reposing uninjured in its corner, but still leaking little wreaths of vapour round the lid.
‘Oh, poor Zero!’ cried the girl, with a strange sobbing laugh. ‘Alas, poor Zero! This will break his heart!’
The Superfluous Mansion (Concluded)
Somerset ran straight upstairs; the door of the drawing-room, contrary to all custom, was unlocked; and bursting in, the young man found Zero seated on a sofa in an attitude of singular dejection. Close beside him stood an untasted grog, the mark of strong preoccupation. The room besides was in confusion: boxes had been tumbled to and fro; the floor was strewn with keys and other implements; and in the midst of this disorder lay a lady’s glove.
‘I have come,’ cried Somerset, ‘to make an end of this. Either you will instantly abandon all your schemes, or (cost what it may) I will denounce you to the police.’
‘Ah!’ replied Zero, slowly shaking his head. ‘You are too late, dear fellow! I am already at the end of all my hopes, and fallen to be a laughing-stock and mockery. My reading,’ he added, with a gentle despondency of manner, ‘has not been much among romances; yet I recall from one a phrase that depicts my present state with critical exactitude; and you behold me sitting here “like a burst drum.”’
‘What has befallen you?’ cried Somerset.
‘My last batch,’ returned the plotter wearily, ‘like all the others, is a hollow mockery and a fraud. In vain do I combine the elements; in vain adjust the springs; and I have now arrived at such a pitch of disconsideration that (except yourself, dear fellow) I do not know a soul that I can face. My subordinates themselves have turned upon me. What language have I heard to-day, what illiberality of sentiment, what pungency of expression! She came once; I could have pardoned that, for she was moved; but she returned, returned to announce to me this crushing blow; and, Somerset, she was very inhumane. Yes, dear fellow, I have drunk a bitter cup; the speech of females is remarkable for . . . well, well! Denounce me, if you will; you but denounce the dead. I am extinct. It is strange how, at this supreme crisis of my life, I should be haunted by quotations from works of an inexact and even fanciful description; but here,’ he added, ‘is another: “Othello’s occupation’s gone.” Yes, dear Somerset, it is gone; I am no more a dynamiter; and how, I ask you, after having tasted of these joys, am I to condescend to a less glorious life?’
‘I cannot describe how you relieve me,’ returned Somerset, sitting down on one of several boxes that had been drawn out into the middle of the floor. ‘I had conceived a sort of maudlin toleration for your character; I have a great distaste, besides, for anything in the nature of a duty; and upon both grounds, your news delights me. But I seem to perceive,’ he added, ‘a certain sound of ticking in this box.’
‘Yes,’ replied Zero, with the same slow weariness of manner, ‘I have set several of them going.’
‘My God!’ cried Somerset, bounding to his feet.
‘Machines?’
‘Machines!’ returned the plotter bitterly. ‘Machines indeed! I blush to be their author. Alas!’ he said, burying his face in his hands, ‘that I should live to say it!’
‘Madman!’ cried Somerset, shaking him by the arm. ‘What am I to understand? Have you, indeed, set these diabolical contrivances in motion? and do we stay here to be blown up?’
‘“Hoist with his own petard?”’ returned the plotter musingly. ‘One more quotation: strange! But indeed my brain is struck with numbness. Yes, dear boy, I have, as you say, put my contrivance in motion. The one on which you are sitting, I have timed for half an hour. Yon other —’
‘Half an hour!—’ echoed Somerset, dancing with trepidation. ‘Merciful Heavens, in half an hour?’
‘Dear fellow, why so much excitement?’ inquired Zero. ‘My dynamite is not more dangerous than toffy; had I an only child, I would give it him to play with. You see this brick?’ he continued, lifting a cake of the infernal compound from the laboratory-table. ‘At a touch it should explode, and that with such unconquerable energy as should bestrew the square with ruins. Well now, behold! I dash it on the floor.’
Somerset sprang forward, and with the strength of the very ecstasy of terror, wrested the brick from his possession. ‘Heavens!’ he cried, wiping his brow; and then with more care than ever mother handled her first-born withal, gingerly transported the explosive to the far end of the apartment: the plotter, his arms once more fallen to his side, dispiritedly watching him.
‘It was entirely harmless,’ he sighed. ‘They describe it as burning like tobacco.’
‘In the name of fortune,’ cried Somerset, ‘what have I done to you, or what have you done to yourself, that you should persist in this insane
