Meanwhile no time was lost in getting to the root of the mischief.
The danger could not be averted by switching off the power altogether
at the various electrical stations of the metropolis. At intervals
along the tubes were immense accumulators which for the present could
not be touched. It was these accumulators that rendered the streets
such a ghastly peril.
It was the electrical expert to the County Council--Alton Rossiter--who
first got on the track of the disaster. More than once before, the
contact between gas and electricity had produced minor troubles of this
kind. Gas that had escaped into man-holes and drains had been fired
from the sparks caused by a short-circuit current wire. For some time,
even as far back as 1895, instances of this kind had been recorded.
But how could the gas have leaked into the tube, seeing that it was a
steel core with a solid bedding of concrete beyond? Unless an accident
had happened when the tube was under repair, this seemed impossible.
The manager of the associated tubes was quite ready to afford every
information to Mr. Rossiter. The core had corroded in Bond Street in
consequence of a settling of the earth caused by a leaky water-main.
The night before, this had been located and the steel skin stripped off
for the necessary repairs.
Mr. Alton Rossiter cut the speaker short.
"Will you come to Bond Street with me, Mr. Fergusson?" he said; "we may
be able to get into the tunnel there."
Fergusson was quite ready. The damage in Bond Street was not so great,
though the lift shaft was filled with _débris_, and it became necessary
to cut a way into the station before the funnel was reached.
For a couple of hundred yards the tube was intact; beyond that point
the fumes of gas were overpowering. A long strip of steel hung from the
roof. Just where it was, a round, clean hole in the roadway rendered it
possible to work and breathe there in spite of the gas fumes.
"We shall have to manage as best we can," Rossiter muttered. "For a
little time, at any rate, the gas of London must be cut off entirely.
With broken mains all over the place the supply is positively
dangerous. Look here."
He pointed to the spot where the gas main had trended down and where
a short-circuit wire had fused it. Here was the whole secret in a
nutshell. A roaring gas main had poured a dense volume into the tube
for hours; mixed with the air it had become one of the most powerful
and deadly of explosives.
"What time does your first train start?" Rossiter asked.
"For the early markets, four o'clock," Fergusson replied. "In other
words, we switch on the current from the accumulator stations at twenty
minutes to four."
"And this is one of your generating stations?"
"Yes. Of course I see exactly what you are driving at. Practically
the whole circuit of tubes was more or less charged with a fearful
admixture of gas and air. As soon as the current was switched on a
spark exploded the charge. I fear, I very much fear, that you are
right. If we can only find the man in charge here! But that would be
nothing else than a miracle."
All the same the operator in charge of the switches was close by.
Fortunately for him the play of the current in the tube had carried
the gases towards St. James's Street. The explosion had lifted him out
of his box, and for a time he lay stunned. Dazed and confused, he had
climbed to the street and staggered into the shop of a chemist who
was just closing the door upon a customer who had rung him up for a
prescription.
But he could say very little. There had been an explosion directly he
pulled down the first of the switches, and his memory was a blank after
that.
Anyway, the cause of the disaster was found. To prevent further
catastrophe notice was immediately given to the various gas companies
to cut off the supplies at once. In a little time the whole disastrous
length of the tube was free from that danger.
* * * * *
By the afternoon a committee had gone over the whole route. At the
first blush it looked as if London had been half ruined. It was
impossible yet to estimate the full extent of the damage. In St.
James's Street alone the loss was pretty certain to run into millions.
Down in Whitehall and Parliament Street, and by Westminster Bridge, the
damage was terrible. Here sharp curves and angles had checked the rush
of expanding air with the most dire results. Huge holes and ruts had
been made in the earth, and houses had come down bodily.
Most of the people out in the streets by this time were properly
equipped in indiarubber shoes and gloves. It touched the imagination
strongly to know that between a man and hideous death was a thin sheet
of rubber no thicker than a shilling. It was like walking over the
crust of a slumbering volcano; like skating at top speed over very thin
ice.
Towards the evening a thrilling whisper ran round. From Deptford two
early specials had started to convey an annual excursion of five
hundred men and their wives to Paddington, whence they were going to
Windsor. It seemed impossible, incredible, that these could have been
overlooked; but by five o'clock the dreadful truth was established.
Those two specials had started; but what oblivion they had found--how
lingering, swift, or merciful, nobody could tell.