Page 86 - the-thirty-nine-steps

tended I was doing an experiment as simple as Guy Fawkes
fireworks.
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 sky-
ward 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 cup-
board, 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.
My stupor can scarcely have lasted beyond a few sec-
onds. I felt myself being choked by thick yellow fumes, and

86 The Thirty-Nine Steps