to recollect that this would lay him open to suspicion. He left off
running, and walked briskly instead.

Presently the great door of the works was opened, and the porter
appeared crying wildly for help, and that the place was on fire.

The few people that were about made a rush, and Coventry, driven by an
awful curiosity, went in with them; for why should he be suspected any
more than they?

He had not gone in half a minute when Mr. Ransome arrived with several
policemen, and closed the doors at once against all comers.

Strange to say, the last explosion had rung the bell in the
police-office; hence this prompt appearance of the police.

The five or six persons who got in with Coventry knew nothing, and
ran hither and thither. Coventry, better informed, darted at once to
Little's quarters, and there beheld an awful sight; the roof presented
the appearance of a sieve: of the second floor little remained but a
few of the joists, and these were most of them broken and stood on and
across each other, like a hedgehog's bristles.

In Little's room, a single beam in the center, with a fragment of board,
kept its place, but the joists were all dislocated or broken in two, and
sticking up here and there in all directions: huge holes had been blown
in the walls of both rooms and much of the contents of the rooms blown
out by them; so vast were these apertures, that it seemed wonderful how
the structure hung together; the fog was as thick in the dismembered
and torn building as outside, but a large gas-pipe in Little's room was
wrenched into the form of a snake and broken, and the gas set on fire
and flaring, so that the devastation was visible; the fireplace also
hung on, heaven knows how.

Coventry cast his eyes round, and recoiled with horror at what he had
done: his foot struck something; it was the letter-box, full of letters,
still attached to the broken door. By some instinct of curiosity he
stooped and peered. There was one letter addressed "Grace Carden."

He tried to open the box: he could not: he gave it a wrench, it was
a latticed box, and came to pieces. He went down the stairs with the
fragments and the letters in his hand; feet approached, and he heard a
voice close to him say, "This way, Mr. Ransome, for God's sake!" A sort
of panic seized him; he ran back, and in his desperation jumped on to
the one beam that was standing, and from that through the open wall, and
fell on the soft mud by the river bank.