"Come in," Asherton-Smith cried unsteadily.
A couple of men entered. One of them had a paper in his hand.
"Mr. Asherton-Smith and Mr. Carl Ericsson, alias James Jones," he said, "I have a warrant for your arrest which I will read to you presently. I warn you not to say too much. Your accomplice, Jacob Peters, has been arrested at Cape Town, and I am instructed by cable that he has made a full confession."
The snarling oath died away on Ericsson's lips.
"It's all up," he said hoarsely, "but it was a chance. Curse Peters for a white-livered fool. But for him I should be worth fifty millions."
[THE INVISIBLE FORCE.]
A Story of What Might Happen in the Days to Come, when Underground London is Tunnelled in all Directions for Electric Railways, if an Explosion Should Take Place in One of the Tubes.
I.
It seemed as if London had solved one of her great problems at last. The communication difficulty was at an end. The first-class ticket-holders no longer struggled to and from business with fourteen fellow-sufferers in a third-class carriage. There were no longer any particularly favoured suburbs, nor were there isolated localities where it took as long getting to the City as an express train takes between London and Swindon. The pleasing paradox of a man living at Brighton because it was nearer to his business than Surbiton had ceased to exist. The tubes had done away with all that.