They were bizarre. Some were small and heavy. One was thin, with drooping shoulders, sunken chest, skinny neck, forward thrust, with a long head, bulging at the temples, and straight, fine hair. He wore spectacles, and looked like a person who had studied much. His skin was yellow beneath the lamplight.
Another had a big head, with a lion-like mane of hair. His hands were coarse and pudgy, and his eyelids over-hung his eyes so that he was forced to lean far backward to look up at the speaker.
One little Frenchman was wonderfully narrow between the eyes, which were moving, moving, moving all the time. He seemed the embodiment of energy and restlessness.
Peri Montparnasse, with his long, twining, snaky fingers, was there. François Lenoir, his long hair back-flung, his attitude studied and stagey, was there. Fabian Vaugirad, with his square jaw and bull-like neck, was there.
The man who was standing wore a full beard, and, in a certain way, he was handsome. He looked very mild and harmless, for all of his beard, and he spoke in a voice that was soft, soothing and musical. It was plain, however, that he was not a Frenchman, for he was often forced to pause and grope for a word, and his pronunciation was broken.
In his hand this man held something that gave Frank Merriwell a start.
It was a bomb!
The man was explaining about the construction of the deadly thing in his fingers. He told that if it should slip and fall upon the table every one in that room would be instantly killed, and the building would be wrecked!
And the men around the table betrayed not the least excitement or alarm.
Before the speaker lay other bombs, some round balls with fuse attachments, some made in pieces of gaspipe, six inches in length, some formed one way, and some another.