HIS STORY.

Dunstan Times, Issue 856, 13 September 1878, Page 3

HIS STORY.

—o— It happened to myself. I was encaged at the London Hospital then, and my duty was to smflther people that didn’t seem likely to get better when the beds were wanted. I vised to do it in the middle of the night with the pillow. It’s a regular thing in the hospital, yon know. Well, oiie night I was just to create accommodation for one, when my hand was seized from behind. It was one of the nurses. ‘ Not him,’ said she ; ‘ here, I want you.’ She slipped a fiver into my hand, and led mo to an open casement. With the moon-' light streaming on her laven tresses she told me a fearful tale. ‘ He was in love with mo once,’ she said, ‘ and I don’t want him murdered; besides he has a mission to accomplish, and he'll get better.’ ‘ What’s his mission ?’ I said. She drew me from the ray of the moonbeams into the dark shadows that fell upon the wall. ‘ He has a torpedo in his inside., * Impossible !’ I exclaimed, preparing to dive under a bed. ‘ Do not be afraid,’she exclaimed ; ‘ it is ona of his ,own.invpplipn. He made it no bigger than a pill, and swallowed it by a mistake. It has made him very ill, bat so long as he lives it remains intact, if be dies by violence, it explodes. ‘ Then be musn’t die here.’ ‘ Certainly not-: he wants to utilise bis invention for the benefit of society. To morrow he will be removed in a cab to bis residence. There he proposes to manufacture torpedo pills for the million. They will regenerate society. People will he aide to live unmolested and at peace. No man will dare to kick his wife for fear of exploding her torpedo. No cabman will dare to run over a pedestrian lest he bo blown to atoms. Murder will mean the immediate execution of the assassin. War will be impossible ; the killing of the enemy’s soldiers will be annihilation of your own troops. The torpedo will be harmless during an unmolested life and a quiet death, but deadly the moment violence.is attempted.’ ‘ Ah 1 what was that ? Terrified by the nurse’s exclamation, I listened. For a moment there was a hissing sound from'olio of the beds, and then—a loud report. The Hospital shook to its foundation; the wails rocked, the roof went un in the air, ami the building collapsed—a heap of crumbling ruins. The man with the torpedo had gone off. - - How we escaped, I don’t know ; but the nurse and myself wore found senseless outside a pub-lic-house in the next street by two policemen. We have talked it over since, and we think the man struck himself on the chest accidentally. His loss was a sad loss to humanity. for no one possesses the secret of his torpedo pills.