"Bombardment of London from the air--dome of St Paul's smashed by a shell--Guildhall, Mansion House, and Bank of England in ruins--orful scenes in the streets. Paper, sir?" He got out of the carriage and grabbed the first newspaper that was thrust into his hand, gave the boy sixpence for it, and hurried away towards the entrance. He found a few cabmen outside the station; he hailed one of the drivers, got in, and said: "Downing Street--quick. There's a sovereign; there'll be another for you when I get there." "It's a mighty risky job, guv'nor, these times, driving a keb through London streets. Still, one's got to live, I suppose. 'Old up there--my Gawd, that's another of those bombs! You just got out of there in time, sir." Even as though it had been timed, as it might well have been, a torpedo dropped from a ghostly shape drifting slowly across the grey November clouds. Then there came a terrific shock. Every pane in the vast roof and in the St Pancras Hotel shivered to the dust. The engine which had drawn Lennard's train blew up like one huge shell, and the carriages behind it fell into splinters. If that shell had only dropped three minutes sooner the end of the World war of 1910 would have been very different to what it was; for, as Lennard learned afterwards, of all the porters, officials and passengers, who had the misfortune to be in the great station at that moment, only half a hundred cripples, maimed for life, escaped. "I wonder whether that was meant for me," said Lennard as the frightened horse sprang away at a half gallop. "If that's the case, John Castellan knows rather more than he ought to do, and, good Lord, if he knows that, he must know where Auriole is, and what's to stop him taking one of those infernal things of his up to Whernside, wrecking the house and the observatory, and taking her off with him to the uttermost ends of the earth if he likes? "There must be something in it or that shell would not have dropped just after I got outside the station. They watched the train come in, and they knew I was in it--they must have known. "What a ghastly catastrophe it would be if they got on to that scheme of ours at the pit. Fancy one of those aerial torpedoes of his dropping down the bore of the cannon a few minutes before the right time! It would mean everything lost, and nothing gained, not even for him. "Ah, good man Erskine," he went on, as he opened the paper, and read that every cruiser, battleship and transport that had forced the entrance to the Thames and Medway had been sunk. "That will be a bit of a check for them, anyhow. Yes, yes, that's very good. Garrison Fort, Chatham and Tilbury, of course, destroyed from the air, but not a ship nor a man left to go and take possession of them."