He took another quick look at the light gleaming from
the house in the darkness ahead of us.
"What is it?" I asked, indicating the "gun."
"This is what is known as the Mathiot gun," he explained as he
brought it into action, "invented by a French scientist for the
purpose, expressly, of giving the police a weapon to use against
the automobile bandits who entrench themselves, when cornered, in
houses and garages, as they have done in the outskirts of Paris,
and as some anarchists did once in a house in London."
"What does it do?" asked Dillon, who had taken a great interest in
the thing.
"It throws a bomb which emits suffocating gases without risking
the lives of the police," answered Garrick. "In spite of the
fragility of the bombs that I have here, it has been found that
they will penetrate a wooden door or even a thin brick partition
before the fuse explodes them. One bomb will render a room three
hundred feet off uninhabitable in thirty seconds. Now--watch!"
He had exploded the gun by hand, striking the flat head of a
hammer against the fulminating cap.
Pages:
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292