errand.

It appeared to consist of a piece of ordinary stovepipe about twelve
inches long. The face and works of an alarm clock, being of a slightly
smaller circumference, had been placed within one end of the pipe, the
face out, and the intervening space around this was packed with cotton
waste. The other end of the pipe was closed with a kind of gummy
cement.

Tom observed that the little alarm dial in the clock's face was set for
nine o'clock, which of course afforded him infinite relief, for it was
not yet seven.

With the greatest of care and hands trembling a little, he pulled out
some of the cotton waste around the clock face, holding the dial steady
with one hand, and found that nothing save this packing was holding the
clock in place. He joggled it very gently this way and that to make sure
that it was not connected with anything behind. Then he lifted it out
and stood it upright on a shelf with cans on either side of it to keep
it in place.

Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick--it went just as before, as if not in
the least disappointed that its tragic purpose had been thwarted; tick,
tick, tick, tick--like the old alarm clock that used to stand on the
shelf above the sink in Barrel Alley.

There was no Gold Cross for this little act of Tom's, and no "loud
plaudits," as Pee-Wee would have said, but Tom Slade had saved a couple
of hundred lives, just the same.

It occurred to him now that pretty soon he would be expected upstairs.
The hands of the clock pointed to a quarter of six and Tom's own watch,
which was as honest, plain and reliable as he was himself, said twelve
minutes of seven.

"That's funny," said he.

He peered into the open space which the removal of the clock had left in
the pipe's end. It ran for about four or five inches, where the pipe
appeared to be sealed with the same gummy substance as at the other end.

On the inside of the pipe was a rough-looking, yellowish area about two
inches square, and from this two black, heavy cords ran to the cement
wall.

Tom understood at once the mechanism of this horrible thing. The bell of
the alarm clock had been removed, and the clock so placed that at the
fatal tick the striker would have vibrated against this rough area,
which was probably inflammable like a match-end and which, on being
ignited, would have ignited the fuse.

Tom's imagination traced the hurrying little flames, racing along those
two cords to see which would get there fi