“There!” I cried triumphantly. “Do you know what this grey stick is? But why should you? Well, let me tell you. This dull, sugary-looking stuff is dynamite, dynamite in its most concentrated form. This is a stick of the terrific Pepsinite. It has moved more than any explosive known. Now do you understand?”
Her eyes were rivetted on the little grey stick.
“Ah, well may you shudder, girl! There’s enough in this tiny piece to blow a score of us to atoms, to bring this mighty monument careening down, to make the embankment look like an excavation for the underground railway. Oh, is it not glorious? Pepsinite!”
Still looking at it as if fascinated, she made a movement of utter alarm.
“Just think of it,” I whispered gloatingly; “in two more minutes we shall be launched into eternity. Does that not thrill you with rapture? And think of our revenge! Here with our death we will destroy their monument, hard as their hearts, black as their selfishness, sharp as their scorn. It, too, will be blown to pieces.”
She looked up at the black column almost as if she were sorry for it. I laughed harshly.
“Yes, I know. You do not hate the Needle, but just think of the people who are so proud of it, the devils who have goaded us to this. At first I thought that with my death I would destroy their Albert Memorial, and so break their philistine hearts. But that would have taken so much pepsinite, and I have only this pitiful piece. So it had to be the Needle.”
Again she seemed almost to regret its impending doom.
“And now,” I cried, “the time has come. Oh, curse you, curse you, vast vain-glorious city! Under the Upas window of your smoke what dreams have withered, what idols turned to clay! How many hearts of splendid pride have failed and fallen! How many poets cursed thy publishers and died! Oh heedless, heartless London!”
With a gesture full of noble scorn I shook my fist in the direction of the Savoy Hotel. Then I changed to another key.