Chapter 1

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_Title:_ Gleanings from the Wreckage
_Date of first publication:_ 1929
_Author:_ Richard Austin Freeman (1862-1943)
_Date first posted:_ Apr. 13, 2018
_Date last updated:_ Nov. 2, 2018
Faded Page eBook #20180410

This ebook was produced by: Delphine Lettau, Mark Akrigg, Jen Haines &
the online Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at
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[Cover Illustration]

21 GLEANINGS FROM THE
WRECKAGE

There was a time, and not so very long ago, when even the main streets
of London, after midnight, were as silent as—not the grave; that is an
unpleasant simile. Besides, who has any experience of conditions in the
grave? But they were nearly as silent as the streets of a village. Then
the nocturnal pedestrian could go his way encompassed and soothed by
quiet, which was hardly disturbed by the rumble of a country wagon
wending to market or the musical tinkle of the little bells on the
collar of the hansom-cab horse sedately drawing some late reveller
homeward.

Very different is the state of those streets nowadays. Long after the
hour when the electric trams have ceased from troubling and the motor
omnibuses are at rest, the heavy road transport from the country
thunders through the streets; the air is rent by the howls of the
electric hooter, and belated motor-cyclists fly past, stuttering
explosively like perambulant Lewis guns with an inexhaustible charge.

“Let us get into the by-streets,” said Thorndyke, as a car sped past us
uttering sounds suggestive of a dyspeptic dinosaur. “We don’t want our
conversation seasoned with mechanical objurgations. In the back-streets
it is still possible to hear oneself speak and forget the march of
progress.”

We turned into a narrow by-way with the confidence of the born and bred
Londoner in the impossibility of losing our direction, and began to
thread the intricate web of streets in the neighbourhood of a canal.

“It is a remarkable thing,” Thorndyke resumed anon, “that every new
application of science seems to be designed to render the environment of
civilised man more and more disagreeable. If the process goes much
farther, as it undoubtedly will, we shall presently find ourselves
looking back wistfully at the Stone-age as the golden age of human
comfort.”

At this point his moralising was cut short by a loud, sharp explosion.
We both stopped and looked about from the parapet of the bridge that we
were crossing.

“Quite like old times,” Thorndyke remarked. “Carries one back to 1915,
when friend Fritz used to call on us. Ah! There is the place; the top
story of that tall building across the canal.” He pointed as he spoke to
a factory-like structure, from the upper windows of which a lurid light
shone and rapidly grew brighter.

“It must be down the next turning,” said I, quickening my pace. But he
restrained me, remarking: “There is no hurry. That was the sound of high
explosive, and those flames suggest nitro compounds burning. _Festina
lente._ There may be some other packets of high explosives.”

He had hardly finished speaking when a flash of dazzling violet light
burst from the burning building. The windows flew out bodily, the roof
opened in places, and almost at the same moment the clang of a violent
explosion shook the ground under our feet, a puff of wind stirred our
hair, and then came a clatter of falling glass and slates.

We made our way at a leisurely pace towards the scene of the explosion,
through streets lighted up by the ruddy glare from the burning factory.
But others were less cautious. In a few minutes the street was filled by
one of those crowds which, in London, seem mysteriously to spring up in
an instant where but a moment before not a person was to be seen. Before
we had reached the building, a fire-engine had rumbled past us, and
already a sprinkling of policemen had appeared as if, like the
traditional frogs, they had dropped from the clouds.

In spite of the ferocity of its outbreak, the fire seemed to be no great
matter, for even as we looked and before the fire-hose was fully run
out, the flames began to die down. Evidently, they had been dealt with
by means of extinguishers within the building, and the services of the
engine would not be required after all. Noting this flat ending to what
had seemed so promising a start, we were about to move off and resume
our homeward journey when I observed a uniformed inspector who was known
to us, and who, observing us at the same instant, made his way towards
us through the crowd.

“You remind me, sir,” said he, when he had wished us good-evening, “of
the stories of the vultures that make their appearance in the sky from
nowhere when a camel drops dead in the desert. I don’t mean anything
uncomplimentary,” he hastened to add. “I was only thinking of the
wonderful instinct that has brought you to this very spot at this
identical moment, as if you had smelt a case afar off.”

“Then your imagination has misled you,” said Thorndyke, “for I haven’t
smelt a case, and I don’t smell one now. Fires are not in my province.”

“No, sir,” replied the inspector, “but bodies are, and the fireman tells
me that there is a dead man up there—or at least the remains of one. I
am going up to inspect. Do you care to come up with me?”

Thorndyke considered for a moment, but I knew what his answer would be,
and I was not mistaken.

“As a matter of professional interest, I should,” he replied, “but I
don’t want to be summoned as a witness at the inquest.”

“Of course you don’t, sir,” the inspector agreed, “and I will see that
you are not summoned, unless an expert witness is wanted. I need not
mention that you have been here; but I should be glad of your opinion
for my own guidance in investigating the case.”

He led us through the crowd to the door of the building, where we were
joined by a fireman—whose helmet I should have liked to borrow—by whom
we were piloted up the stairs. Half-way up we met the night-watchman,
carrying an exhausted extinguisher and a big electric lantern, and he
joined our procession, giving us the news as we ascended.