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Every building on the block had lost aForty-fourth Street was littered with broken glass They turned their backs on the crowds surging in panic on Broadway and ran west on Forty-fourth toward the river They crossed Eighth Avenue, then Ninth, and ran through the slu out of saloons and tene “What happened?”

The Van Dorn detectives raced across Tenth Avenue, over the New York Central Railroad tracks, across Eleventh, dodging fire engines and panicked horses The closer they got to the water, the more broken s they saw A cop tried to stop thees and brushed past him

“Fireboat!” Bell shouted

Bristling with fires away from Pier 84 Bell ran after it, jumped Abbott landed beside him

“Van Dorn,” they told the startled deckhand “We have to get to Jersey City”

“Wrong boat We’re dispatched don to spray the piers”

The reason for the fireboat’s orders was soon apparent Across the river, fla into the sky from the Jersey City piers With the end of the rain, the wind had shifted west, and it was blowing sparks across the river onto Manhattan’s piers So instead of helping fight the fire in Jersey City, the fireboat etting down Manhattan’s piers to keep the sparks froside

“He’s a ot to hand him that”

“A Napoleon of crireed “As if Conan Doyle sicced Professor Moriarty on us instead of Sherlock Holmes”

Bell spotted a New York Police Department Marine Division launch at the Twenty-third Street Lackawanna Ferry Terminal “Drop us there!”

The New York cops agreed to run theed boats with sails in tatters or smokestacks toppled by the blast So repairs sufficient to get them to shore A Jersey Central Railroad ferry limped toward Manhattan, its s shattered and its superstructure blackened

“There’s Eddie Edwards!”

Edwards’s white hair had been singed black, and his eyes were glea in a face of soot, but he was otherwise unhurt

“Thank God you telephoned, Isaac We got the gun in place in time to stop the bastards”

“Stop the about?”