Pule’s Bomb Attack and Narbondo’s Escape

Willis Pule’s bomb attack on Ignacio Narbondo is a failed act of revenge that briefly turns the concealed struggle over Narbondo’s experiments into a public disturbance on Pratlow Street. Pule carries an explosive device toward the laboratory intending to attack the doctor, but Bill Kraken and Hasbro intervene before he can bring it into the room. The device detonates in the street instead; Pule escapes, and Narbondo is later seen fleeing across the rooftops and disappearing from view.

Background and Motive

Pule’s attack grows out of his hostility toward Narbondo and the work conducted in the doctor’s laboratory. Earlier scenes establish the laboratory as a place where corpses and carp are brought together as part of Narbondo’s experiments. At one point, he extracts a gland from a carp and preserves it in a vial; in another, he prepares a corpse and a live carp beside one another on a gurney. These procedures give context to Pule’s dark thoughts about corpses and vivisection, without making his plan a calculated attempt to stop a single experiment. He imagines that, if the public demands corpses, it should have them—a bitter response to what he has witnessed and to the world that permits Narbondo’s work.

His plan is also shaped by personal attachment. As he approaches Pratlow Street, Pule thinks of Dorothy Keeble and insists to himself that he will not be deprived of her company. His stated resolve therefore joins anger at Narbondo with a wish to keep Dorothy near him. The scene presents these concerns together, but does not suggest that Dorothy has asked for or shares his plan. Pule’s aim is his own, and the attack threatens to draw others into its consequences.

The Approach to the Laboratory

Pule obtains a spherical explosive device from a maker working in a concealed sub-street shop. Less than ten minutes later, he is on his way to Pratlow Street with the device under his arm. He has reduced the intended attack to a simple sequence: enter through a passage from a downstairs closet, reach the laboratory, move the panel, and roll the lit device into the room. He hopes Narbondo will be there when it explodes. The plan depends on secrecy and on reaching the laboratory without warning; Pule’s private anticipation of confronting the doctor gives way to a more immediate danger once other people encounter him.

When Pule appears on the stairs, a sputtering fuse identifies the device before he reaches the men waiting above. Kraken recognizes the danger and rushes at him. Pule makes to throw the bomb toward Kraken, and the two struggle on the floor. Hasbro picks up the device and tries to deal with the fuse, but it continues to burn. Rather than keep handling it, he throws it along the corridor. It rolls down the stairs, and the corridor is left dark. This intervention prevents Pule from carrying out his intended attack inside the laboratory, but transfers the danger to the street below.

The Explosion and Pursuit

Kraken and Hasbro run for the roof and leap from one building to another. The explosion sounds from Pratlow Street as they reach a further rooftop. They find that the roof beneath them remains intact, then look down toward the street: the blast has left a crater, while Pule is moving away toward Holborn. The outcome is a reversal rather than a successful strike. The laboratory is not shown being destroyed, and Pule has not achieved his aim of attacking Narbondo there; instead, the explosive device has caused damage in the street, and the men who intervened must escape its immediate vicinity.

The rooftop route briefly brings the pursuers into sight of Narbondo as well. While considering whether to continue after Kraken and Hasbro, they see the doctor spring from hiding several rooftops away, carrying a satchel in either hand. Later, from a point near Old Compton Street, they see him momentarily before the front of a steep garret, with the afternoon sun behind him; then he is gone. The account confirms his escape from their sight but does not specify where he goes or what is in the satchels. His appearance turns the failed bombing into one part of a wider pursuit: Pule has escaped in one direction, while Narbondo has slipped away by another.

Consequences and Significance

The incident exposes the instability of the secret world surrounding Narbondo’s work. A hidden passage, a laboratory panel, the explosive device, and the rooftops all shape what the participants can do: Pule’s plan relies on concealed access; Kraken’s intervention interrupts it; Hasbro’s decision redirects the device; and the rooftops become an escape route for both the pursuers and the doctor. The outcome is therefore determined not by Pule’s intention alone but by a chain of encounters and physical obstacles that repeatedly alter the direction of the attack.

The episode also preserves the difference between what is witnessed and what is inferred. The earlier observer Theophilus Godall had seen Narbondo revive what he believed was a corpse and had speculated that the doctor might supply workers to Kelso Drake, while also considering whether Drake wanted the result of Sebastian Owlesby’s research. Those possibilities remain suspicions, not established explanations for Pule’s attack. In the bombing episode itself, Pule’s hostility toward Narbondo is plain, but the doctor’s precise purpose in fleeing with two satchels remains unstated. The failed attack settles neither the larger conflict nor the questions surrounding the experiments; it leaves the central adversaries mobile, their pursuit unfinished.