pursuers would be pounding and battering at the lower
doors in just as frenzied pursuit.

He no longer hesitated, but moved with that clear-thoughted rapidity of
action which often came to him in his moments of half-delirium.
Turning to his tool-bag and scooping out his bar of soap, he kneaded
together enough of the nitroglycerine from one of the stout rubber bags
to make a mixture of the consistency of liquid honey. This he quickly
but carefully worked into the crack of the obstructing door. Then he
attached his detonator, and shortened and lighted his fuse, scuttling
back to the momentary shelter of the outer passage, making sure to be
beyond the deadly "feathered radius" of the nitro.

There he waited behind the steel-bound door for the coming detonation.
The sound of it smote him like a blow on the chest, followed by a rush
of air and a sudden feeling of nausea.

But he did not wait. He groped his way in, relocked the passage door
and crawled on all fours through the smoke and heavy, malodorous gases.

The remnants of the blasted door hung, like a tattered pennon, on one
twisted hinge, and his way now lay clear to the ladder of grilled
ironwork leading to the floor above. But here the steel trapdoor again
barred his progress. One sharp twist and wrench with his steel lever,
however, tore the bolt-head from its setting, and in another
half-minute he was standing on the closed door above, shutting out the
noxious smoke from the basement.

Between him and the stairway stood still another fortified door,
heavier than the others. He did not stop to knead his paste, for
already he could hear the crash of glass and the sound of sledges on
the door at the rear of the cigar-shop. Catching up a strand of what
he knew to be the most explosive of all guncottons--it was
cellulose-hexanitrate--he worked it gently into the open keyhole and
again scuttled back to safety as the fuse burnt down.

He could feel the building shake with the tremor of the detonation,
shake and quiver like a ship pounded by strong head seas. A remote
window splintered and crashed to the floor, sucked in by the
atmospheric inrush following the explosion-vacuum. He noticed, too, as
he mounted the narrow stairs before him, that he was bleeding at the
nose. But this, he told himself, was no time for resting. For at the
head of the second stairway still another sheet of armored steel
blocked his passage, and still again the hurried, hollow de