Elk was first to his feet and flew back to his room. The door hung on its hinges; every pane of glass was gone, and the sashes with them. From his room poured a dense volume of smoke, into which he plunged. He had hardly taken a step before he tripped on the prostrate figure of Fayre, and, stooping, he half-lifted and half-dragged him into the corridor. One glance was sufficient to show that, if the man was not dead, there seemed little hope of his recovery. The fire-bells were ringing throughout the building. A swift rush of feet on the stairs, and the fire squad came pelting down the corridor, dragging their hose behind them. What fire there was, was soon extinguished, but Elk’s office was a wreck. Even the door of the safe had been blown from its hinges. There was not a single article of furniture left, and a big hole gaped in the floor. “Save those bags,” said Elk and went back to look after the injured man, and not until he had seen his assistant placed in the ambulance did he return to a contemplation of the ruin which the bomb had made. “Oh, yes, it was a bomb, sir,” said Elk. A group of senior officers stood in the corridor, looking at the havoc. “And something particularly heavy in the shape of bombs. The wonder is that Captain Gordon and I were not there. I told Fayre to open the bag, but I thought he’d wait until we returned with the knife—we intended examining the lining. Fayre must have opened the bag and the bomb exploded.” “But weren’t the bags examined before?” asked the Commissioner wrathfully. Elk nodded. “They were examined by me yesterday—every one. The Paddington bag was turned inside out, every article it contained was placed on my table, and catalogued. I myself returned them. There was no bomb.” “But how could they be got at?” asked the other. Elk shook his head. “I don’t know, sir. The only other person who has a key to this safe is the Assistant Commissioner of my department, Colonel McClintock, who is on his holidays. We might all have been killed.” “What was the explosive?” “Dynamite,” said Elk promptly. “It blew down.” He pointed to the hole in the floor. “Nitro-glycerine blows up and sideways,” he sniffed. “There’s no doubt about it being dynamite.” In his search of the office he found a twisted coil of thin steel, later the blackened and crumpled face of a cheap alarm dock. “Both time and contact,” he said. “Those Frogs are taking no chances.” He shifted such of his belongings as he could discover into Balder’s office. There was little chance that this outrage would be kept from the newspapers. The explosion had blown out the window and a portion of the brickwork and had attracted a crowd on the Embankment outside. Indeed, when Elk left headquarters, he was confronted by newspaper bills telling of the event.