"I'm sorry--but we can't be
too careful with this intruder, whoever he was."
They rose, surprised, but, as he continued to urge them, they
moved into my room.
Elaine, however, stopped at the door.
For a moment Kennedy appeared to be considering. Then his eye fell
on a fishing rod that stood in a corner. He took it and moved
toward the picture.
On his hands and knees, to one side, down as close as he could get
to the floor, with the rod extended at arm's length, he motioned
to me to do the same, behind him.
Elaine, unable to repress her interest took a half step forward,
breathless, from the doorway, while Susie Martin and Aunt
Josephine stood close behind her.
Carefully Kennedy reached out with the pole and straightened the
picture.
As he did so there was a flash, a loud, deafening report, and a
great puff of smoke from the fireplace.
The fire screen was riddled and overturned. A charge of buckshot
shattered the precious photograph of Elaine.
We had dropped flat on the floor at the report. I looked about.
Kennedy was unharmed, and so were the rest.
With a bound he was at the fireplace, followed by Elaine and the
rest of us. There, in what remained of a package done up roughly
in newspaper, was a shot gun with its barrel sawed off about six
inches from the lock, fastened to a block of wood, and connected
to a series of springs on the trigger, released by a little
electromagnetic arrangement actuated by two batteries and leading
by wires up along the moulding to the picture where the slightest
touch would complete the circuit.
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