leaped from an office-window with an improvised parachute, really
succeeded in getting into the middle of the Boulevard, and he
refused to be ejected on the ground that he was chief of the
street-cleaning department. This department, by the way, was given
a remarkable illustration of the fine public spirit of the
citizens, for by three o'clock in the afternoon two hundred
thousand applications had been received from those eager to act as
volunteer street-cleaners and help scour the Boulevard after the
passage of the great parade.





CHAPTER IV

THE GREAT WAR BEGINS


As the echoes of the parade died away, public excitement was
roused to fever by the discovery that evening of an infernal
machine in the City Hall. Leaning against one of the great marble
pillars in the lobby of the building, a gleaming object (looking
very much like a four-inch shrapnel shell) was found by a vigilant
patrolman. To his horror he found it to be one of the much-
dreaded thermos bottles. Experts from the Bureau of Rumbustibles
were summoned, and the bomb was carefully analyzed. Much to the
disappointment of the chief inspector, the devilish ingredients of
the explosive had been spoiled by immersion in a pail of water, so
his examination was purely theoretical; but it was plain that the