"The whole thing," he concluded, "came to a head the other night—the night I didn't show up. We knew that something was going to break, somewhere, but we couldn't discover where until it was too late to prevent the explosion across the river. Now that they've gotten away with that, they'll probably lay their lines for something even bigger."
"Well, now that I've told you, what d'you think?"
"You mean you'd like to marry me?" Mary asked with a smile.
"I don't know how to put it any plainer," Dick admitted—and what followed caused the waiter to wheel around and suddenly commence dusting off a table that already was bright enough to see your face in.
"There wasn't the slightest clue left after the Black Tom affair?" Mary asked, as she straightened her hat.
"Not one. We did find two of the bombs that hadn't exploded—devilishly clever arrangements, with a new combination of chemicals. Something was evidently wrong with the mixture, though, for they wouldn't go off, even when our experts started to play with them. The man who made them evidently wasn't quite sure of his ground. But there wasn't a thing about the bombs themselves that would provide any indication of where they came from."
"The man who made them must have had a pretty thorough knowledge of chemistry," Mary mused.
"Mighty near perfect," admitted Walters. "At least six exploded on time, and, from what I understand, they were loaded to the muzzle with a mixture that no one but an expert would dare handle."
"And," continued Mary, with just a hint of excitement in her voice, "the bomb-maker would continue to investigate the subject. He would want to get the latest information, the most recent books, the—"
"What are you driving at?" Walters interrupted.