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Rh powder-room had been deliberately disclosed to him by Jimmy.

Probably, then, the keg and fuse were but stage properties

At any rate he concluded that it were better to be extinguished in the space of a second, annihilated by an explosion, than to die thus lingeringly. On this consideration, he drew Rose with him back to the bulkhead. It was solid—a crackless barrier of stout oaken planks reinforced with straps of iron.

The water was stalking them even there like an insatiable enemy. The lisp of its advancing wavelets rang in his hearing like the purring of a man-killing tiger in the darkness of a night-bound jungle. When they had been some fifteen minutes beside the bulkhead the water mounted the head of a slight rise perhaps ten feet behind them and poured down in ever-deeper volume to back up against the barrier.

It was waist-deep there before they retreated to the head of the rise. Half an hour later it was waist-deep even there, the highest spot in the tunnel.

In fifteen minutes more it had reached their chins. Holding Rose close to him, Alan kissed her lips that were as cold as death.

Then fumbling under water, he found the hand of the man at his side. ...

In the tunnel that branched off from the main-