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Mack,’ said Knollys, ‘I thought it might be you.’
    ‘It’s nice to see you again, Mr Knollys,’ said Mr Mack. ‘I was hoping that you’d give me a hand here, if the worst comes to the worst, and this madman actually turns up. It sounds very peculiar to me. Some crazed individual with a grudge wants to rush in here with a little time-bomb, hoping it will blow Tower Bridge to pieces. Most unlikely, you know. It may have naval stokers, but it isn’t a ship. And it won’t sink. Still, the Home Secretary thought it was a matter for Home Office Explosions, which is why I’m here. Colonel Majendie’s in Cardiff this week, so it had to be me. I demurred, of course, but there’s no arguing with Mr Asquith. So we’ll all contain ourselves in patience until a quarter to twelve.’ 
     
    It was at just twenty minutes to the hour that Sergeant Knollys, who had stationed himself behind the outer door of No 1 Boiler Room, heard the clatter of boots on the slip road which heralded the arrival of the relief stokers. He alerted Inspector Hare with an urgent whisper, and then rejoined Mr Mack in the tiled storeroom. The retiring stokers moved swiftly to the iron staircase rising up to the accumulator platform, and in seconds they had disappeared from sight. The police officers drew their truncheons and stood silently in the shelter of the inner wall.
    At a quarter to twelve the door was opened, and four men came into the room. Three of them passed through the arch into the second boiler room, apparently intent on their work. Knollys saw the fourth man, who was dressed like the others in the uniform of a naval stoker, dart across the floor to the rear of the first boiler, and wedge a canvas-covered parcel underneath two of its supporting struts.
    The man had taken no more than a couple of steps backwards when Jack Knollys, with a mighty bellow of rage, hurled himself on to the would-be destroyer and brought him crashing to the floor. At the same time, the posse of Bermondsey police rushed through the arch, truncheons drawn. In a moment, they had hauled the man to his feet.
    Mr Mack had left his shelter in the storeroom, dragged the parcel from its hiding place, and unwrapped it from its concealing cloth. Knollys saw him raise his hammer, and smash a small glass dial let into the front of the device. Knollys had seen the old explosives expert perform that crude but effective remedy for timing-clocks before. For the moment at least, they were all safe.
    Outside, beneath the blazing June sky, the Prince of Wales’s carriage passed on to the bridge. There came a sustained bout of cheering, and the band of the Coldstream Guards struck up ‘God save the Queen’.
    Beneath the southern approach road, in the hidden boiler room, Inspector Hare confronted the man who had tried unsuccessfully to plant a lethal device beneath the first boiler. He saw a man of about thirty, with a long, narrow face, good features, dark hair, and cold blue eyes. His arms had been pinioned by two of the constables. His head hung down upon his chest in what looked like total despair.
    Knollys, who had rejoined Mr Mack, turned round to look at the man, who raised his head and caught his glance, and there was something in the bomber’s expression that intrigued Knollys. He had expected anger, or even wild hatred. But this man regarded him with what seemed like reproach. Reproach ?
    ‘You are Anders Grunwalski,’ said Inspector Hare, ‘and I arrest you—’
    Grunwalski suddenly sprang back to life. With a shrill cry of rage he wrenched himself free from his captors, seized one of the constables’ truncheons, and used it as a deadly flail to cut a way of escape towards the exit. To the accompaniment of shouts andcurses from the dazed and bleeding officers, who had fallen to the floor, he threw the door open and dashed into the slip road.
    Oh, no, my beauty, thought Jack Knollys, you’re not going to escape so lightly. He leapt over the injured men and