Chapter 25

It was the desk that saved Drummond, and with him Ted Jerningham. Flat on their faces, their arms covering their heads, they lay on the floor waiting, as in days gone by they had waited for the bursting of a too-near crump. They heard Ginger Martin, as he blundered round the room, and then--suddenly it came. There was a deafening roar, and a sheet of flame which seemed to fill the room. Great lumps of the ceiling rained down and the big roll top desk, cracked in pieces and splintered into matchwood, fell over on…