"Never mind the mutton! Pull yourself together and tell me what happened." He had cut the cords, and lifted her from the bed. "Oh, it near killed me, it did. I was just come upstairs to put on a clean apron when I heard the door open, and some one went into the kitchen. I thought it was the doctor, and called out that I was coming. Next minute two men came rushing up, and before I knew where I was they smothered my head in the towel, and flung me on to the bed like a bundle and tied my hands and feet. It shook me all to pieces, sir." Burton waited for no more, but leapt down the stairs, vaulted over the window sill, and rushed towards the laboratory, trembling with nameless fears. He tried to burst in the door, but it resisted all his strength. There were no windows in the walls; the place was lighted from above. Shinning up the drain-pipe, he scrambled along the gutter until he could look through the skylight in the sloping roof. And then he saw Micklewright, with his back towards him, sitting rigid in a chair. III Burton drove his elbow through the skylight, swung himself through the hole, and dropped to the floor. To his great relief he saw that Micklewright was neither dead nor unconscious; indeed, his eyes were gazing placidly at him through his spectacles. It was the work of a moment to cut the cords that bound the chemist’s legs and arms to the chair, and to tear from his mouth the thick fold of newspaper that had gagged him. "Wood pulp!" said Micklewright, with a grimace of mild disgust, as soon as he could speak. "Beastly stuff!--if I’ve got to be gagged, gag me with rag!" "Who did it? What’s it mean?" said Burton. "It means that somebody was keenly interested in that paragraph which the Admiralty clerk so kindly supplied to his journalist brother." "The new explosive?" "Yes. Competitors abhor a secret.... The taste of printer’s ink on pulp paper is very obnoxious, Teddy." "Hang the paper! Tell me what happened." "It was very neatly done. As nearly as I can recollect, a man put his head in at the door and asked politely, but in broken English, the way to Faversham. Being rather busy at the time I’m afraid I misdirected him. But it didn’t matter, because a second or two after I was kicking the shins of two other fellows who were hugging me; I’m sorry I had to use my boots, but my fists were not at the moment available. You see how it ended. "They had just fixed me in the chair--printer’s ink is _very_ horrid--when the telephone bell rang. My first visitor told one of the others, in French, to cut the wire: it must have been rather annoying to the person at the other end." "I was trying to get you in the ’Sun.’ But go on."