Kitabı oku: «The Bomb-Makers», sayfa 2
From where they stood they were afforded a wide view of the broad road which led from the town down to the landing-stage, from which the cruiser’s steam pinnace and picket-boat were speeding to and fro between ship and shore. A dozen or so smart motor-cars had descended the road, conveying the guests of the captain and officers who, after their long and unrelaxing vigil in the North Sea, certainly deserved a little recreation. Then, as the twilight deepened and the stars began to shine out over the bay, it was seen that the procession of guests had at last ended.
“I think, Ella, that we might, perhaps, go down to the landing-stage,” said Kennedy at last – “if you are not too tired, dear.”
“Tired? Why, of course not,” she laughed, and after he had helped her on with her coat, they both went out, passing down to the harbour by another road.
For fully an hour they idled about in the darkness, watching the swift brass-funnelled pinnace which, so spick and span, and commanded by a smart lad fresh from Osborne, was making the journey regularly between ship and quay. Away in the darkness the lights on the cruiser’s quarter-deck reflected into the sea, while ever and anon the high-up masthead signal-lamp winked in Morse code to the coastguard station five miles distant across the bay.
While they were watching, the pinnace came in again, whereupon the smart figure of a naval officer in his topcoat appeared within the zone of light, and descended the steps, shouting in an interrogative tone:
“Oakham?”
“Ay, ay, sir!” came a cheery voice from the pinnace.
“Look!” gasped Ella, clinging to her lover’s arm. “Why – it’s Benyon – dressed as a naval lieutenant! He’s going on board, and he’s carrying that despatch-box with him!”
Indeed, he had handed the heavy box to one of the men, and was at that moment stepping into the pinnace.
“Off to the ship – as quick as you can!” they heard him order, while, next moment, the boat was cast loose and the propeller began to revolve.
“We haven’t a second to lose!” whispered Kennedy who, as soon as the pinnace was around the pier-head, called out “Boat!” In an instant half-a-dozen men, noticing that he was a naval officer, were eagerly crowding around him.
“I want to follow that pinnace – quick!” he said. “Three men – and you can sail out there. The wind’s just right.”
In a few moments a boat came alongside the steps, and into it the pair stepped, with three hardy North Sea boatmen.
Quickly sail was set and, favoured by a fresh breeze, the boat slowly heeled over and began to skim across the dark waters.
Already the light on the pinnace showed far away, it having nearly reached the ship. Therefore Kennedy, in his eagerness, stirred the three men to greater effort, so that by rowing and sailing by turns, they gradually grew nearer the long, dark war-vessel, while Ella sat clasping her well-beloved’s hand in the darkness, and whispering excitedly with him.
Those were, indeed, moments of greatest tension, away upon that dark wintry sea beyond the harbour, that wide bay which, on account of its unusual depth and exposed position, was never considered a very safe anchorage.
Their progress seemed at a snail’s pace, as it always seems upon the sea at night. They watched the pinnace draw up, and they knew that the man, Benyon, who, though German-born, had lived in London the greater part of his life – was on board carrying that terrible instrument of death that had been cleverly prepared in such official guise.
At last – after an age it seemed – the boat swung in beside the lighted gangway against the pinnace, and Kennedy, stepping nimbly up, said to the sentry on board:
“Let nobody pass up or down, except this lady.” Then, seeing the officer on duty, he asked if a lieutenant had arrived on board with a despatch-box.
“Yes. I’ve sent him down to the captain,” was the reply.
“Take me to the captain at once, please,” Kennedy said in a calm voice. “There’s no time to lose. There’s treachery on board!”
In a second the officer was on the alert and ran down the stern gangway which led direct to the captain’s comfortable cabin, with its easy-chairs covered with bright chintzes like the small drawing-room of a country house.
Kennedy followed with Ella, but the captain was not there. The sentry said he was in the ward-room, therefore the pair waited till he came forward eagerly.
“Well,” asked the grey-haired captain with some surprise, seeing an officer and a lady. “What is it?”
“Have you received any despatches to-night, sir?” Kennedy inquired.
“No. What despatches?” asked the captain.
Then, in a few brief words, Kennedy explained how he had watched a man in naval uniform come off in the pinnace, carrying a heavy despatch-box. The man had passed the sentry and been directed below by the officer on duty. But he had never arrived at the captain’s cabin.
The “owner,” as the captain of a cruiser is often called by his brother officers, was instantly on the alert. The alarm was given, and the ship was at once thoroughly searched, especially the ammunition stores, where, in the flat close to the torpedoes on the port side, the deadly box was discovered. The guests knew nothing of this activity on the lower deck, but the two men who found the box heard a curious ticking within, and without a second’s delay brought it up and heaved it overboard.
Then again the boatswain piped, and every man, as he stood at his post, was informed that a spy who had attempted to blow up the ship was still on board. Indeed, as “Number One,” otherwise the first lieutenant, was addressing them a great column of water rose from an explosion deep below the surface, and much of it fell heavily on deck.
Another thorough search was made into every corner of the vessel, whereupon the stranger in uniform was at last discovered in one of the stokeholds. Two stokers rushed across to seize him, but with a quick movement he felled both with an iron bar. Then he ran up the ladder with the agility of a cat, and sped right into the arms of Ella and Kennedy.
“Curse you – I was too late!” he shrieked in fierce anger, on recognising them, and then seeing all retreat cut off, he suddenly sprang over the side of the vessel, intending, no doubt, to swim ashore.
At once the pinnace went after him, but in the darkness he could not be discovered, though the searchlights began to slowly sweep the dark swirling waters.
That he met a well-deserved fate, however, was proved by the fact that at dawn next day his body was picked up on the other side of the bay. Yet long before, Theodore Drost, suspecting that something was amiss by his fellow spy’s non-return, had left by train for London.
Seymour Kennedy was next day called to the Admiralty and thanked for his keen vigilance, but he only smiled and kept a profound secret the active part played by his particular friend, the popular actress – Miss Stella Steele.
Chapter Two.
The Great Tunnel Plot
“There! Is it not a very neat little toy, my dear Ernst?” asked Theodore Drost, speaking in German, dressed in his usual funereal black of a Dutch pastor, as everyone believed him to be.
Ernst Ortmann, the man addressed, screwed up his eyes, a habit of his, and eagerly examined the heavy walking-stick which his friend had handed to him.
It was a thick bamboo-stump, dark-brown and well-polished, bearing a heavy iron ferrule.
The root-end, which formed the bulgy knob, the wily old German had unscrewed, revealing in a cavity a small cylinder of brass. This Ortmann took out and, in turn, unscrewed it, disclosing a curious arrangement of cog-wheels – a kind of clockwork within.
“You see that as long as the stick is carried upright the clock does not work,” Drost explained. “But,” – and taking it from his friend’s hand he held it in a horizontal position – “but as soon as it is laid upon the ground, the mechanical contrivance commences to work. See!”
And the man Ortmann – known as Horton since the outbreak of war – gazed upon it and saw the cog-wheels slowly revolving.
“By Jove!” he gasped. “Yes. Now I see. What a devilish invention it is! It can be put to so many uses!”
“Exactly, my dear friend,” laughed the supposed Dutch pastor, crossing the secret room in the roof of his house at Barnes.
It was afternoon, and the sunlight streaming through the skylight fell upon the place wherein the bomb-makers worked in secret. The room contained several deal tables whereon stood many bottles containing explosive compounds, glass retorts, test-tubes, and glass apothecaries’ scales, with all sorts of other apparatus used in the delicate work of manufacturing and mixing high-explosives.
“You see,” Drost went on to explain, as he indicated a large mortar of marble. “I have been treating phenol with nitric acid and have obtained the nitrate called trinitrophenol. I shall fill this case with it, and then we shall have an unsuspicious-looking weapon which will eventually prove most useful to us – for it can be carried in perfect safety, only it must not be laid down.”
Ortmann laughed. He saw that his friend’s inventive mind had produced an ingenious, if devilish, contrivance. He had placed death in that innocent-looking walking-stick – certain death to any person unconscious of the peril.
Indeed, as Ortmann watched, his friend carefully filled the cavity in the brass cylinder with the explosive substance, and placed within a very strong detonator which he connected with the clockwork, winding it to the full. He then rescrewed the cap upon the fatal cylinder, replacing it in the walking-stick and readjusting the knob, which closed so perfectly that only close inspection would reveal anything abnormal in the stick.
“The other stuff is there already, I suppose?”
“I took it down there the night before last in four petrol-tins.”
“The new stuff?”
“Yes. It is a picric acid derivative, and its relative force is twice as great as that of gun-cotton,” was the reply of the grey-haired man. He spoke with knowledge and authority, for had he not been one of the keenest explosive experts in the German arsenal at Spandau before he had assumed the rôle of the Dutch pastor in England?
“It will create some surprise there,” remarked Ortmann, with an evil grin upon his sardonic countenance. “Your girl knows nothing, I hope?”
“Absolutely nothing. I have arranged to carry out our plans as soon as possible, to-morrow night, or the night after. Bohlen and Tragheim are both assisting.”
“Excellent! I congratulate you, my dear Drost, upon your clever contrivance. Truly, you are a good son of the Fatherland, and I will see that you receive your due and proper reward when our brave brothers have landed upon English soil.”
“You are the eyes and brains of Germany in England,” declared Drost to his friend. “I am only the servant. You are the organiser. Yours is the Mysterious Hand which controls, and controls so well, the thousands of our fellow-Teutons, all of whom are ready for their allotted task when the Day of Invasion comes.”
“I fear you flatter me,” laughed Mr Horton, whom none suspected to be anything else than a patriotic Englishman.
“I do not flatter you. I only admire your courage and ingenuity,” was the quiet reply.
And then the two alien enemies, standing in that long, low-ceilinged laboratory, containing as it did sufficient high-explosives to blow up the whole of Hammersmith and Barnes, bent over the long deal table upon which stood a long glass retort containing some bright yellow crystals that were cooling.
Theodore Drost, being one of Germany’s foremost scientists, had been sent to England before the war, just as a number of others had been sent, as an advance guard of the Kaiser’s Army which the German General Staff intended should eventually raid Great Britain. Truly, the foresight, patience, and thoroughness of the Hun had been astounding. The whole world’s history contained nothing equal to the amazing craft and cunning displayed by those who were responsible for Germany’s Secret Service – that service known to its agents under the designation of “Number Seventy, Berlin.”
It was fortunate that there was hardly a person in the whole of London who knew of the relationship between Stella Steele, the clever revue artiste, whose songs were the rage of all London and whose photographs were in all the shop-windows, and the venerable Dutch pastor. With his usual craft, Drost, knowing how thoroughly English was his daughter, had always posed to her as a great admirer of England and English ways. To judge by his protestations, he was a hater of the Kaiser and all his Satanic works.
If, however, Ella – to give Stella her baptismal name – could have looked into that long, low attic, which her father always kept so securely locked, she would have been struck by the evil gloating of both men.
Ortmann – whom she always held in suspicion – had conceived the plot a month ago – a foul and dastardly plot – and old Drost, as his paid catspaw, was about to put it into execution forthwith.
Next night, just about half-past ten, Stella Steele gay, laughing, with one portion of her lithe body clothed in the smartest of ultra costumes by a famous French couturière, the remainder of her figure either silk-encased or undraped, bounded off the stage of the popular theatre near Leicester Square, and fell into the arms of her grey-haired dresser.
It was Saturday night, and the “house,” packed to suffocation, were roaring applause.
“Lights up!” shouted the stage-manager, and Stella, holding her breath and patting her hair, staggered against the scenery, half-fainting with exhaustion, and then, with a fierce effort, tripped merrily upon the stage and smilingly bowed to her appreciative and enthusiastic audience.
The men in khaki, officers and “Tommies,” roared for an encore. The revue had “caught on,” and Stella Steele was the rage of London. Because she spoke and sang in French just as easily as she did in English, her new song, in what was really a very inane but tuneful revue – an up-to-date variation of musical comedy – had already been adopted in France as one of the marching songs of the French army.
From paper-seller to Peer, from drayman to Duke: in the houses of Peckham and Park Lane, in Walworth and in Wick, the world hummed, sang, or drummed out upon pianos and pianolas that catchy chorus which ran:
Dans la tranchée…
La voilà, la joli’ tranche:
Tranchi, trancho, tranchons le Boche;
La voilà, la joli’ tranche aux Boches,
La voilà, la joli’ tranche!
As she came off, a boy handed her a note which she tore open and, glancing at it, placed her hand upon her chest as though to stay the wild beating of her heart.
“Say yes,” was her brief reply to the lad, who a moment later disappeared.
She walked to her dressing-room and, flinging herself into the chair, sat staring at herself in the glass, much to the wonder of the grey-haired woman who dressed her.
“I’m not at all well,” she said to the woman at last. “Go and tell Mr Farquhar that I can’t go on again to-night. Miss Lambert must take my place in the last scene.”
“Are you really ill, miss?” asked the woman eagerly.
“Yes. I’ve felt unwell all day, and the heat to-night has upset me. If I went on again I should faint on the stage. Go and tell Mr Farquhar at once.”
The woman obeyed, whereupon Stella Steele commenced to divest herself rapidly of the rich and daring gown. Her one desire was to get away from the theatre as soon as possible.
Mr Farquhar, the stage-manager, came to the door to express regret at her illness, and within a few minutes Miss Lambert, the understudy, was dressing to go on and fulfil her place in the final scene.
Her car took her home to the pretty flat in Stamfordham Mansions, just off Kensington High Street, where she lived alone with Mariette her French maid, and there, in her dainty little drawing-room, she sat silent, almost statuesque, for fully five minutes.
“Is it possible?” she gasped. “Is it really possible that such a dastardly plot is being carried out!” she murmured in agitation.
Her little white hands clenched themselves, and her pretty mouth grew hard. She was sweet and charming, without any stage affectations. Yet, when she set herself to combat the evil designs of her enemy-father she was not a person to be trifled with – as these records of her adventures will certainly show.
“I wonder if Seymour can have been misled?” she went on, rising from her chair as she spoke aloud to herself. “And yet,” she added, “he is always so level-headed!”
Mariette – a slim, dark-eyed girl – entered with a glass tube of solidified eau-de-Cologne which she rubbed upon her mistress’s brow, and then Ella passed into her own room and quickly dismissed the girl for the night.
As soon as Mariette had gone she flung off her dress and took another from her wardrobe, a rough brown tweed golfing-suit, and put on a close-fitting cloth hat to match. Then, getting into a thick blanket-coat, she pulled on her gloves and, taking up a small leather blouse-case, went out, closing the door noiselessly after her.
At nine o’clock on the following evening Ella Drost descended in the lift from the second floor of the Victoria Hotel, in Sheffield, and, wearing her blanket-coat, went to the station platform and bought a ticket to Chesterfield – the town with the crooked spire.
Half-an-hour later she walked out into the station yard where she found her lover, the good-looking Flight-Commander, awaiting her in a big grey car. He no longer wore uniform, but was in blue serge with a thick brown overcoat.
“By Jove, Ella!” he exclaimed in welcome, as he grasped her hand. “I’m jolly glad you’ve come up here! There’s a lot going on. You were perfectly correct when you first hinted at it. I’ve been watching patiently for the past month. Hop in; we’ve no time to lose.”
Next second, Ella was in the seat beside her lover, and the powerful car moved off down the Arkwright Road, a high-road running due eastward, till they joined another well-kept highway which, in the pale light, showed wide and open with its many lines of telegraphs – the road to Clowne.
On through the falling darkness they travelled through Elmton and up the hill to Bolsover, where they suddenly turned off to the left and, passing down some dark, narrow lanes, with which Kennedy was evidently familiar, they at last pulled up at the corner of a thick wood.
“Now,” he said, speaking almost for the first time, and in a low voice, “we’ll have to be very careful indeed.”
He had shut off his engine and switched off his lamps.
“We ought to make quite certain to-night that we are not mistaken,” she said.
“That is my intention,” was her lover’s reply, and then she flung off her coat and crossed the stile, entering the wood after him. He had a pocket flash-lamp, and ever and anon threw its rays directly upon the ground so that they could see the path. The latter was an intricate one, for twice they came to cross-paths, and in both cases Kennedy selected one without hesitation.
At last, however, they began to move down the hill more cautiously, conversing in low whispers, and showing no light until they at last found themselves in the grounds attached to a large, low-built country house, lying in the valley.
“Ortmann is living here as Mr Horton,” Kennedy whispered. “They told me in the village that he took the house furnished about three months ago, from a Major Jackson, who is at the front.”
“But why is he living down here – in a house like this?” she asked.
“That’s just what we want to discover. Many Germans have country houses in England for some mysterious and unknown reason.”
Kennedy, glancing at his luminous wrist-watch, noted that it was nearly two o’clock in the morning. From where they stood at the edge of the wood the house was plainly visible, silhouetted on the other side of a wide lawn.
No light showed in any of the windows, and to all appearances the inmates were asleep.
As the pair stood whispering, a big Airedale suddenly bounded forth, barking angrily as a preliminary to attacking them.
It was an exciting moment. But in that instant Ella recognised the bark as that of her father’s dog.
“Jack!” she said, in a low voice of reproof. “Be quiet, and come here.”
In a moment the dog, which Drost had evidently lent to his friend Ortmann as watch-dog, bounded towards his mistress and licked her hand.
It was evident that the occupiers of the lonely place did not desire intruders.
Fearing lest the barking of “Jack” might have alarmed the inmates, they remained silent for a full quarter-of-an-hour, and then again creeping beneath the shadows of the hedges and trees, they managed to cross the lawn and the gravelled path, until they stood together beneath the front of the house.
“Listen!” gasped Kennedy, grasping the girl’s arm. “Do you hear anything?”
“Yes – a kind of muffled crackling noise.”
“That’s a wireless spark!” her lover declared. “So they have wireless here!”
Creeping along, they passed the main entrance and gained the other side of the house where, quite plainly, there could be heard the whir of a dynamo supplying the current.
But though Kennedy’s keen eyes searched for aerial wires, he could discover none in that dim light, the moon having now disappeared entirely. So he concluded that they were so constructed that they could be raised at night and lowered and concealed at daybreak, or perhaps even disguised as a portion of wire fencing.
“As the wireless is working – sending information to the enemy without a doubt – then our friend Ortmann is most probably at home,” whispered the flying-man. “As the motor is still running it will drown any noise, and we might get inside without being heard. Are you ready to risk it?”
“With you, dear, I’ll risk anything that may be for my country’s benefit,” she declared. Then he pressed her soft hand in his, stooping till his lips met hers.
As they stood there in that single blissful moment, there came the sound of a train suddenly emerging from a long tunnel in the side of the hill in the near vicinity, and with the light of the furnace glaring in the darkness it sped away eastward. Its sound showed it to be a goods train – one of the many which, laden with munitions from the Midlands, went nightly towards the coast on their way to the British front.
Only then did they realise that the railway-line ran along the end of the grounds, and that the mouth of the great G – Tunnel was only five hundred yards or so from where they stood. Kennedy took from his pocket a small jemmy in two pieces, which he screwed together, and then began to examine each of the French windows which led on to the lawn. All were closed, with their heavy wooden shutters secured.
The shutters of one, however, though closed, had, he saw by the aid of his flash-lamp, not been fastened. The dog, Jack, following his mistress, was sniffing and assisting in the investigation.
Examining the long window minutely, they saw that it had been closed hurriedly and, hence, scarcely latched. The room, too, was in darkness.
Suddenly, just as Kennedy was about to make an attempt to enter, the electric light was switched on within the room, and the pair had only time to slip round the corner of the house, when the French window opened, and four men stepped forth upon the lawn, conversing in whispers as they walked on tiptoe together across the gravel on to the grass.
“I wonder what’s up!” whispered Kennedy to Ella. “Let us follow and see.”
This they did, keeping always in the dark shadows, and retracing their footsteps to the edge of the wood close to where the railway ran.
As they watched they saw that, having crossed the lawn, the four men entered a meadow adjoining, and they then recognised the figures of Drost and Ortmann with two strangers. They all walked straight to the corner where stood an old cow-shed, and into this they all four disappeared.
For a full half-hour they remained there, Kennedy and his well-beloved crouching beneath a bush in wonder at what there could be in the cow-shed to detain them so long.
The shed was at the base of a high wooded hill. Away, at some distance on the left, the railway-line entered the great tunnel which pierced the hill, and through it ran one of the most important railways from the Midlands to the East Coast.
The reason of their long absence in that tumbledown cow-shed was certainly mysterious. The lovers strained their ears to listen, but no sound reached them.
“Very curious!” whispered Kennedy. “What, I wonder, should detain them so long? There is some further mystery here, without a doubt. Something of interest is in progress.”
Suddenly, all four men emerged from the shed laughing and chatting in subdued tones. Drost was carrying his hat in his hand.
They passed within ten yards of the lovers, and as they went by they overheard Drost say in German: “To-morrow night at 11:30 a heavy munition train will come through the tunnel. Then we shall see!”
And at his words his three companions laughed merrily as they walked back to the house.
Kennedy and the popular revue artiste – the girl whose name was as a household word, and whose songs were sung everywhere – crouched in silence watching the men until they had disappeared through that long French window opening on to the lawn.
Then, when they were alone, Kennedy said in a low voice:
“There’s more going on here, Ella, than we at first anticipated – much more! I wonder what secret that old shed contains – eh?”
“Let’s investigate!” the girl beside him suggested eagerly.
Five minutes later they emerged from the shadow, and hurrying quickly across the grass, entered the old tumbledown shed, whereupon Kennedy switched on his electric torch, when there became revealed a wide hole in the ground, which sloped away steeply in the darkness.
“Hulloa! Why, here’s a tunnel!” exclaimed Kennedy in surprise. “They’ve been down there, evidently! I wonder where it leads to?”
Then, as they both glanced around, they saw a thin, twisted electric cable containing two wires which led from a cigar-box on the ground in a corner away down into the tunnel. Kennedy lifted the lid of the box, and within found an electric tapping-key with ebonite base and two small dry cells for the supply of the current.
“Now what can this mean, I wonder? Some devil’s work here, without a doubt!” he said. “Let us ascertain.”
Together the pair carefully descended into the narrow tunnel that had been driven into the side of the hill, evidently by expert hands, for its roof had been shored up along the whole length with trees cut from the wood. Away along the narrow passage they groped, finding it so low that they were compelled to bend and creep forward in uncomfortable positions until they came to a sudden turn.
Whoever had constructed it had also succeeded – as was afterwards found – in cleverly disguising the great heap of earth excavated. He had also probably misread his bearings, for at one point the subterranean gallery went away at right angles for about fifty yards, until there – where the atmosphere was heavy and oppressive because of lack of ventilation – stood several petrol-tins. To one of them the end of the cable leading from the unsuspicious cow-shed had been attached.
As they stood staring at the petrol-tins a sudden roar slowly approaching sounded directly overhead – a heavy rumble of wheels. Then it died away again.
“Hark!” gasped Ella. “Isn’t that a train? Why, we are directly under the railway-line running through the tunnel.”
“Yes, dear. A touch upon that key up in the shed and we should be blown out of recognition, and the tunnel, one of the most important on the line of railway communication running east and west across England, would be blocked for months.”
“That is what those devils intend!” Ella declared. “How can we frustrate them?”
Seymour Kennedy reflected for a few seconds, holding his torch so that its rays fell upon those innocent-looking petrol-tins at the end of the cunningly contrived sap. Then he took up one of them and carrying it said:
“Let’s get back, dear. We know the truth now.”
“It is evident that they intend to blow in the tunnel from below,” declared Ella, as they crept back along the narrow gallery.
“Without a doubt,” was her lover’s reply. “Mr Horton, as he is known, took the house with but one object – namely, to cut the railway-line to the coast – the line over which so much war material for the front goes nightly. Truly, the Hun leaves nothing to chance.”
“And my father is actually assisting in this dastardly work?”
“I’m afraid he is, darling. But so long as we remain wary and watchful, I hope we may be able to combat the evil activities of these assassins.”
“I’m ready to help you always, as you know,” was the girl’s ready reply. “But it grieves me that father is so completely German in his actions.”
“It is but natural, Ella. He is a German. If he were English, and lived secretly in Germany, he would act as an Englishman. All enemy aliens should have been interned long ago.”
Ever and anon, on their way back to the opening, they both stumbled upon the wire, while Seymour, carrying the petrol-tin, evidently filled with some heavy explosive, followed his well-beloved, who held the torch.
At last they emerged from the close atmosphere of the long, tortuous gallery that had been secretly driven to a point exactly beneath the railway-line in the very heart of the hill, and once again stood upright in the shed. Their clothes were muddy, and their hands and faces were besmeared with mud.
At last Kennedy put down the square heavy tin, the cap of which he very carefully unscrewed, and then examined it by aid of his torch, smelling it critically.
Taking from his pocket a strong clasp-knife he went back into the tunnel again for about fifty yards. With a swift cut he severed the lead which led away to the concealed tins of explosive, and bringing it back with him to the shed, took the severed end, unravelled the silk insulation of both wires, bared them by scraping them thoroughly with his knife, and with expert hand attached them to a detonator which he had taken from the tins concealed at the end of the gallery.
