The constable, for the moment, had utterly lost his nerve. He stood
there in the great flaring roar of the gas mains with a dazed
expression that was pitiful.
"Can you tell us anything about it?" Lord Barcombe asked.
"I was in Piccadilly," was the reply. "Everything was perfectly quiet,
and so far as I could see not a soul was in sight. Then I heard a funny
rushing sound, just like the tear of an express train through a big,
empty station. Yes, it was for all the world like a ghostly express
train that you could hear and not see. It came nearer and nearer; the
whole earth trembled just as if the train had gone mad in Piccadilly.
It rushed past me down St. James's Street, and after that there was an
awful smash and a bang, and I was lying on my back in the middle of the
road. All the lights that remained went out, and for a minute or two
I was _in_ that railway collision. Then, when I got my senses back,
I blundered down here because of that big flaring light there; and I
can't tell you, gentlemen, any more, except that the tube has blown up."
Of that fact there was no question. There were piles of _débris_ thrown
high in one part, and a long deep depression in another like a ruined
dyke. A little further on the steel core of the tube lay bare with
rugged holes ripped in it.
"Some ghastly electric catastrophe," Sir George Egerton murmured.
It was getting light by this time, and it was possible to form some
idea of the magnitude of the disaster. Some of the clubs in St. James's
Street still appeared to be intact, but others had suffered terribly.
The heaps of tumbled masonry were powdered and glittering with broken
glass and a few walls hung perilously over the pavement. And still the
gas main roared on until the flame grew from purple to violet, and to
straw colour before the coming dawn. If this same thing had happened
all along the network of tubes, London would be more or less a hideous
ruin.
[Illustration: The explosion had had a straight run here, for the road
had been raised like some gigantic zigzag molehill.]
For the better part of Piccadilly things were brighter. Evidently the
explosion had had a straight run here, for the road had been raised
like some mighty zigzag molehill for many yards. The wood pavement
scattered all over the place suggested a gigantic box of child's
bricks strewn over a nursery floor. The tube had been forced up, its
outer envelope of concrete broken so that the now twisted steel core
might have been a black snake crawling down Piccadilly. Doubtless the
expanding air had met with some obstacle in the tube under St. James's
Street, hence the terrible force of the explosion there.
There was quite a large crowd in Oxford Street. The whole roadway was
wet; the gutters ran with the water from the broken pipes. The air was
full of the odour of gas. All the clocks in the streets seemed to have
gone mad. Lord Barcombe glanced at his own watch, to find that it was
racing furiously.
"By Jove!" he whispered excitedly, "we're in danger here. The air is
full of electricity. I went over some works once, and neglected to
leave my watch behind me, and it played me the same prank. It affects
the mainspring, you know."
There were great ropes and coils of electric wire of high voltage
cropping out of the ground here and there; coils attached to huge
accumulators, and discharging murderous current freely. A dog, picking
his way across the sopping street, trod on one of the wires, and
instantly all that remained of the dog was what looked like a twisted
bit of burnt skin and bone. It appealed to Sir George Egerton's
imagination strongly.
"Poor little brute!" he murmured. "It might have happened to you or me.
Don't you know that a force that only gives a man a bad shock when he
is standing on dry ground often kills him when the surface is wet? I
wonder if we can get some indiarubber gloves and galoshes hereabouts.
After that gruesome sight, I shall be afraid to put one foot before the
other."
Indeed, the precaution was a necessary one. A horse attached to a cab
came creeping over the blocked streets; the animal slipped on a grating
connected with the ventilation of the drains, and a fraction of a
second later there was no horse in existence. The driver sat on his
perch, white and scared.
"The galoshes," Lord Barcombe said hoarsely. "Don't you move till we
come back again, my man. And everybody keep out of the roadway."
The cry ran along that the roadway meant instant death. The cabman sat
there gibbering with terror. A little way further down was a rubber
warehouse, with a fine selection of waders' and electricians' gloves
in the window. With a fragment of concrete Sir George smashed in the
window, and took what he and Lord Barcombe required. They knew that
they would be quite safe now.
More dead than alive the cabman climbed down from his seat and was
carried to the pavement on Lord Barcombe's shoulder. The left side of
his face was all drawn up and puckered, the left arm was useless.
"Apoplexy from the fright," Sir George suggested.
"Not a bit of it," Lord Barcombe exclaimed, "It's a severe electric
shock. Hold up."
Gradually the man's face and arm ceased to twitch.
"If that's being struck by lightning," he said, "I don't want another
dose. It was as if something had caught hold of me and frozen my heart
in my body. I couldn't do a thing. And look at my coat."
All up the left side the coat was singed so that at a touch the whole
cloth fell to pieces. It was a strange instance of the freakishness
of the invisible force. A great fear fell on those who saw. This
intangible, unseen danger, with its awful swiftness, was worse than
the worst that could be seen.
"Let's get home," Lord Barcombe suggested. "It's getting on my nerves.
It's dreadful when all the terror is left to the imagination."