s all that
was left of Bock.

Chapter XV

Mr. Chapman Waves His Wand

Gissing Street will not soon forget the explosion at the Haunted
Bookshop. When it was learned that the cellar of Weintraub's pharmacy
contained just the information for which the Department of Justice had
been looking for four years, and that the inoffensive German-American
druggist had been the artisan of hundreds of incendiary bombs that had
been placed on American and Allied shipping and in ammunition
plants--and that this same Weintraub had committed suicide when
arrested on Bromfield Street in Boston the next day--Gissing Street
hummed with excitement. The Milwaukee Lunch did a roaring business
among the sensation seekers who came to view the ruins of the bookshop.
When it became known that fragments of a cabin plan of the George
Washington had been found in Metzger's pocket, and the confession of an
accomplice on the kitchen staff of the Octagon Hotel showed that the
bomb, disguised as a copy of one of Woodrow Wilson's favourite books,
was to have been placed in the Presidential suite of the steamship,
indignation knew no bounds. Mrs. J. F. Smith left Mrs. Schiller's
lodgings, declaring that she would stay no longer in a pro-German
colony; and Aubrey was able at last to get a much-needed bath.

For the next three days he was too busy with agents of the Department
of Justice to be able to carry on an investigation of his own that
greatly occupied his mind. But late on Friday afternoon he called at
the bookshop to talk things over.

The debris had all been neatly cleared away, and the shattered front of
the building boarded up. Inside, Aubrey found Roger seated on the
floor, looking over piles of volumes that were heaped pell-mell around
him. Through Mr. Chapman's influence with a well-known firm of
builders, the bookseller had been able to get men to work at once in
making repairs, but even so it would be at least ten days, he said,
before he could reopen for business. "I hate to lose the value of all
this advertising," he lamented. "It isn't often that a second-hand
bookstore gets onto the front pages of the newspapers."

"I thought you didn't believe in advertising," said Aubrey.

"The kind of advertising I believe in," said Roger, "is the kind that
doesn't cost you anything."

Aubrey smiled as he looked round at the dismantled shop. "It seems to
me that this'll cost you a tidy bit when the bill comes in."

"My dear