I got a detonator, and fixed it to a couple of feet of fuse. Then I
took a quarter of a lentonite brick, and buried it near the door
below one of the sacks in a crack of the floor, fixing the detonator
in it. For all I knew half those boxes might be dynamite. If the
cupboard held such deadly explosives, why not the boxes? In that
case there would be a glorious skyward journey for me and the
German servants and about an acre of surrounding country. There
was also the risk that the detonation might set off the other bricks
in the cupboard, for I had forgotten most that I knew about
lentonite. But it didn't do to begin thinking about the possibilities.
The odds were horrible, but I had to take them.
I ensconced myself just below the sill of the window, and lit the
fuse. Then I waited for a moment or two. There was dead silence--
only a shuffle of heavy boots in the passage, and the peaceful cluck
of hens from the warm out-of-doors. I commended my soul to my
Maker, and wondered where I would be in five seconds ...
A great wave of heat seemed to surge upwards from the floor,
and hang for a blistering instant in the air. Then the wall opposite
me flashed into a golden yellow and dissolved with a rending
thunder that hammered my brain into a pulp. Something dropped
on me, catching the point of my left shoulder.
And then I think I became unconscious.
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