. 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
f