someone had thrown a bomb into a Quaker meeting, when
adventure suddenly began to crowd itself into the life of the studious
and methodical Leslie Larner, professor of entomology.

Fame had been his since early manhood, when he began to distinguish
himself in several sciences, but the adventure and thrills he had longed
for had always fallen to the lot of others.

His father, a college professor, had left him a good working brain and
nothing else. Later his mother died and he was left with no relatives in
the world, so far as he knew. So he gave his life over to study and hard
work.

Still youthful at twenty-five, he was hoping that fate would "give him
a break." It did.

He was in charge of a Government department having to do with Oriental
beetles, Hessian flies, boll weevils and such, and it seemed his life
had been just one bug after another. He took creeping, crawling things
seriously and believed that, unless curbed, insects would some day crowd
man off the earth. He sounded an alarm, but humanity was not disturbed.
So Leslie Larner fell back on his microscope and concerned himself with
saving cotton, wheat and other crops. His only diversion was fishing for
the elusive rainbow trout.

He managed to spend a month each year in the Colorado Rockies angling
for speckled beauties.

Larner was anything but a clock-watcher, but on a certain bright day in
June he was seated in his laboratory doing just that.

"Just five minutes to go," he mused.

It was just 4:25 P. M. He had finished his work, put his affairs in
order, and in five minutes would be free to leave on a much needed and
well earned vacation. His bags were packed and at the station. His
fishing tackle, the pride of his young life, was neatly rolled in oiled
silk and stood near at hand.

"I'll just fill my calabash, take one more quiet smoke, and then for the
mountains and freedom," he told himself. He settled back with his feet
on his desk. He half closed his eyes in solid comfort. Then the bomb
fell and exploded.

* * * * *

B-r-r-r-r!

The buzzer on his desk buzzed and his feet came off the desk and hit the
floor with a thud. His eyes popped open and the calabash was immediately
laid aside.

That buzzer usually meant business, and it would be his usual luck to
have trouble crash in on him just as he was on the edge of a rainbow
trout paradise.

A messenger was ushered into the room by an assistant. The boy h