"No ordinary burst up, this!" muttered Starmidge, as he and Easleby forced their way through branches and obstacles to the open lawn. "My God!—look at it! Blown to pieces!"
The two men stood for a moment staring at the scene before them, as it was revealed in the faint light of a waning moon. Neither had ever seen the effect of high explosives before, and they remained transfixed with utter astonishment at what they saw. Never, until then, had either believed it possible that such ruin could be wrought by such means.
The laboratory was a mass of shapeless wreckage. It seemed as if the roof had been blown into the sky—only to collapse again on the shattered walls. The masonry and woodwork lay all over lawns and gardens, and amidst the surrounding bushes and trees. In the middle of it yawned a black, deep cavity, from the heart of which curled a wisp of yellowish smoke. Between these ruins and the house a beech tree of considerable size had been completely uprooted, and had crashed down on the lower windows of the house, part of the wall and roof of which had been wrecked. And on the opposite side of the garden a great gap had been made in the smaller trees, and the shrubberies beneath them by the falling in of Rob Walford's old dove-cot, the ancient walls and timber roof of which had completely collapsed under the force of the explosion.
Over the actual area of the wreckage everything was still as death, save for a faint crackling where some loose wood was just catching fire. Starmidge began to make his way towards it.
"The thing is," he said mechanically, "the thing is, the thing is—yes, is—was—there anybody here—anybody here! We must have lights."
And just then as he came to where the burst of flame was growing bigger, and Polke with a body of firemen and constables came hurrying through a gap in the lower wall, he caught sight of a man's face, turned up to the half-light. Easleby saw it at the same time—together they went nearer. And Starmidge bent down and found himself looking at Gabriel Chestermarke.
"Him!" he whispered. "Then he came—here!"
"He's gone, anyway," muttered Easleby. "Dead as can be!" He lifted himself erect and called to Polke who was making his way towards them. "Bring a lantern!" he said. "There's a dead man here!"
"And keep the crowd out," called Starmidge. "Keep everybody out—while we look round."
But at that moment he caught sight of Betty Fosdyke, who, with Lord Ellersdeane in close attendance, had made her way into the garden and was clambering towards him. Starmidge stepped back to her.