
down on the ground a second before the blast. For, sticking to the icy smoothness of the glass front he
had seen a round lump with a fuse hanging from it. A sticky bomb like the ones the anti-tank boys had
used in the war.
It rocked the neighborhood. The glass was gone as though it had never existed. The inside of the shop
was full of torn and scattered remnants that in no way resembled what they had been such an infinitesimal
time before.
The sound was gone. The smaller sounds of plaster and brick falling had long since ceased before Raoll,
sick at his stomach and with blood running from his ears, staggered out from behind the breastworks that
had saved his life.
He looked at his store, or what little was left of it. He was rocky. Even as he stood there, he swayed
from side to side like a fighter who had been hit on the jaw and hasn’t quite realized he’s knocked out.
So the rumors had been correct. Bonds was trying to muscle into his section. He wanted the whole town.
Raoll took one last look at his store and turning, walked away, staggering, before the police cars rocked
into view.
In the wonderful old house that Gerald Winthrop’s family had owned for a hundred years, Winthrop, a
badly worried man, waited. He had heard from his city desk, and the editor was as excited as Winthrop
had ever known that phlegmatic man to be.
Reports had come in that showed the town was in for a criminal war. The city editor had mentioned the
murder of an unidentified man in a lonely alley that was capped by an explosion that had torn up a whole
building down on the South Side of town.
Winthrop, waiting, wondered what, if anything, Cranston could do. The bell rang. Winthrop, in a moment
of bad manners that was rare, elbowed the butler out of the way as he ran for the door. In the open
doorway stood Lamont Cranston, cool, impeccably dressed, carrying the inevitable brief case.
Winthrop grabbed him by the arm and piloted him into the library. He mixed two drinks and offering one
to Lamont Cranston, downed the other at one gulp. He told Cranston about the blast.
As it happened, this was a twice told tale, for Cranston in that guise of night, that costume that brought
fear to even the hardiest criminals, had followed the keening sounds of the police cars. At the outskirts,
unseen, he had looked at what remained after the bomb had finished its work. Not that it had been
necessary, but the profligacy of the method had given another spur to his desire to end this menace to the
peaceful life of the city of Skillton.
However, he listened and pretended to be amazed as Winthrop, with a wealth of adjectives, described
the scene, the loss of property, the two old people in a nearby house who had died of shock, and wound
up with a heart-felt plea to Cranston.
In the background, almost unnoticed because of Winthrop’s commanding air, was Peebles, a secretary
who looked precisely like what one would imagine a male secretary to look.
He gulped before he said, "It’s terrible, that’s all I can say, terrible!" He shivered to show how terrible he
thought it was. His thin frame, narrow shoulders and a certain pigeon-breasted look that he had, all
combined to make him look like a mouse in an animated movie.
Winthrop turned, looking down from his greater height, glowered at his employee. "That’s certainly a big
help, Peebles. Do you have anything else as concrete to offer to this meeting?"