A bomb falling in the Avenue midway between a motor bus and a taxi had taken a heavy toll of the passengers of both, while the two vehicles, still standing upright, had been flattened until their appearance was not unlike that of their respective “property” prototypes occasionally employed to give perspective to the stage-setting of a street. A dozen or more dead and wounded lay in a row in front of a gin palace which had collapsed under a bomb; but, as far as we could see or learn, there had been little, if any, loss of life in the historic old theatre which had been struck. A sinister coincidence had landed one bomb on a temporary wooden building occupied as Belgian Refugee headquarters. Miraculously however, although the rickety frame was blown quite out of shape, no fire was started among the small mountains of highly inflammable baggage on which the bomb exploded. “The ’Uns ain’t satisfied with wot they did to ’em in Belg’um,” snorted an indignant coster, viewing the wreck; “the baby-killers ’ad to follow ’em to Lunnon.” This was, I believe, about the nearest thing to “hate” that I heard expressed during the several hours we mingled with the crowds on the streets. Faring on down the “bomb-track” into that historic section of Old London which lies to the east of the Avenue, we came upon an apparition quite as astounding to me as the spectacle of the “panicky” Frivolity girls had been to J----. It was nothing less than a London police constable, hatless, breathless, and so little master of himself that he was unable to respond with the customary “First to the right, second to the left, and so on” formula when we asked him the way to the B---- Court, where we had heard there had been heavy damage. Slamming down on the pavement a heavy burden which he carried by a loop of wire, he began jabbering something to the effect that the “bloomin’ pill” came down “’arf a rod” from where he stood, and that orders called for the instant fetching of all “evidences” to the nearest station. I switched on my electric-torch--everybody here has carried them since the streets were darkened,--to recoil before the sight of the pear-shaped cone of dented steel toppled over on the cobbles at my feet. “Good heavens, man, you’ve got an unexploded bomb!” I gasped, backing against the wall. “What do you mean by slamming it around in that way?” “If she didn’t go off after fallin’ from the sky, I fancy she can stand a drop of a few inches,” was the reply. “It isn’t ’avin’ ’er ’ere, sir, that gets my nerves. They went to pieces when she came down and bounced along the pavement in front of where I stood.” “Perhaps she has a time fuse, set to go off when she gets a crowd around her,” said the irrepressible J---- by way of encouragement. “The Huns are adepts at just such forms of subtlety. Better leave her alone for a spell.”