But it was soon known that these were boxes of sweets that had been put in those places by practical jokers or lunatics.

One of the accused, when questioned by a magistrate, declared that he was the chief author of the explosions, and said that all his accomplices had lost their lives.

These confessions were published by the newspapers and helped to reassure public opinion.

It was only towards the close of the examination that the magistrates saw they had to deal with a pretender who was in no way connected with any of the crimes.
The experts chosen by the courts discovered nothing that enabled them to determine the engine employed in the work of destruction.

According to their conjectures the new explosive emanated from a gas which radium evolves, and it was supposed that electric waves, produced by a special type of oscillator, were propagated through space and thus caused the explosion.