"Leave the store—quick!" rang out Kennedy's voice.
We backed away as fast as those behind us would permit. Kennedy and
Bennett were the last to leave, in fact paused at the door.
Down below the crooks were beating a hasty retreat through a secret entrance which they had effected.
"The bag! The bag!" we could hear one of them bellow.
"The bomb—run!" cried another voice gruffly.
A second later came an ominous silence. The last of the three must have fled.
The explosion that followed lifted us fairly off our feet. A great puff of smoke came belching up through the hole, followed by the crashing of hundreds of dollars' worth of glass ware in the jewelry shop as fragments of stone, brick and mortar and huge splinters of wood were flung with tremendous force in every direction from the miniature volcano.
As the smoke from the explosion cleared away, Kennedy could be seen, the first to run forward.
Meanwhile Martin's detectives had rushed down a flight of back stairs that led into a coal cellar. With coal shovels and bars, anything they could lay hands on, they attacked the door that opened forward from the coal cellar into the front basement where the robbers had been.
A moment Kennedy and Bennett paused on the brink of the abyss which the bomb had made, waiting for the smoke to decrease. Then they began to climb down cautiously over the piled up wreckage.