"Run?" I cried.
"Exactly. Run for our lives! Preferably upstairs. Is there any vacant room above from which we can look out in the same direction as from your window?"
"The room above is vacant," I replied, "and probably we shall find the door unlocked."
"We'll risk that, then," said Gatton. "You might start and lead the way."
"Can I use my electric torch?" I asked.
"On the stairs," replied Gatton; "but you must extinguish it when we enter the room above."
With that he thrust open the door of my bedroom, ran in and ran out again, banging the door behind him as though pursued by devils!
Then the pair of us were racing up the stairs madly for the room above, I vaguely wondering if my companion had taken leave of his senses. Yet of the verity of the peril which he dreaded came speedy confirmation.
At the very moment that my hand touched the knob of the door above, and ere I could open it, the whole fabric of the Abbey Inn was convulsed—the floor rocked beneath my feet; and there ensued the sound of a deafening explosion from the room below! An echo, or what sounded like an echo, sharp and staccato, came from the distant hills!