When he had done these things, he gazed anxiously around the room, apprehensive that his actions might have been observed; but, to his great relief, he found that nobody was paying any attention to him. Then, as he saw the waiter approaching with the siphon of vichy in his hand, Hawley struck a match, held the flame for a moment to the cigar in his mouth, then threw the match away. Apparently he was careless, for the match, still alight, instead of falling to the floor, dropped into the glass of bromo seltzer in front of him. Instantly there was a blinding flash which momentarily illuminated the entire room, and a dull explosion. The siphon of seltzer fell from the startled bartender’s hand; several men gave vent to shouts of alarm; chairs and tables went crashing to the floor. Patrolman Horgan jumped excitedly to his feet, and advanced toward the Camera Chap, who still sat at the table, surrounded by a haze of smoke which was slowly lifting toward the ceiling. “Great guns! What was that?” the policeman demanded. Hawley, his face a picture of bewilderment, pointed to the bartender. “That’s what I’d like to know,” he said indignantly. “What was it? Maybe this man can tell us. I asked for bromo seltzer.” “It was marked bromo seltzer on the bottle,” the astonished waiter declared. “And I took it from the regular stock.” He turned to the Camera Chap with sudden suspicion. “But what did you throw that lighted match into it for, anyway, young feller? That was a queer thing to do.” “The match dropped in,” Hawley explained. “Didn’t you see that I was lighting my cigar? But this is the first time I’ve ever heard of bromo seltzer being an explosive. Mighty queer it should go off like that. It’s a mercy somebody wasn’t killed.” “Oh, I guess the stuff ain’t dangerous,” remarked Patrolman Horgan, glancing around the room. “Nobody is even hurted, so there’s nothing to get excited about. Let this be a lesson to you, young feller, to be more careful in future where you throw lighted matches.” “I certainly shall,” the Camera Chap assured him meekly. “I thought at first it was somebody takin’ one of them flash-light pictures,” said Patrolman Horgan. “It looked something like the kind of light them camera people use.” Hawley nodded. “Yes, it did look a little like that, didn’t it?” he agreed. “I once saw a man take a flash-light picture, and, now that you speak of it, there was some resemblance.” A few minutes later Fred Carroll, pacing nervously up and down the sidewalk outside Dutch Louie’s place, was astonished and much relieved to see the Camera Chap step out of the doorway, a smile on his face, and with no signs of having sustained bodily injuries. “Thank goodness, you’ve come at last!” the proprietor of the _Bulletin_ exclaimed. “I was just thinking of coming in for you. I heard the flash go off a few minutes ago, and things were so uncannily quiet afterward that I was beginning to be afraid they had killed you. What on earth happened?”