There could be no doubt that the fire which had destroyed the laboratory had been far fiercer than that which had burnt down the cottage. The charred beams of the latter still existed, while nothing whatever remained of the wooden fittings of the former. And yet, in case of a concrete-built laboratory, one would have expected a fire merely to have burnt out the interior without doing much damage to the structure. The place must certainly have contained a large quantity of substances whose combustion produced great heat, such as thermite. And Dr. Priestley knew enough of the methods of research chemists, who as a rule deal in very small quantities, to wonder why Dr. Morlandson required such large quantities, and why, even supposing that his isolated situation made it necessary for him to obtain his supplies in bulk, he should store them in the laboratory itself. The suspicion that Dr. Morlandson’s activities had not been solely concerned with researches into the properties of medicinal drugs seemed to the Professor to be thoroughly well grounded.