Chapter Five.

Chapter Five.The Brass Triangle.A bank of dense fog hung over the Thames early on that December morning. The bell of St. Paul’s Church, at Hammersmith, had struck two o’clock when across the long suspension-bridge a tall man in a black waterproof coat and black plush hat walked with a swing, smoking a cigarette, and passed hurriedly out into the straight broad thoroughfare of Castelnau.For some distance he proceeded, then suddenly he slackened pace, glanced at the luminous watch upon his wrist, and, a few moments later, halted against some railings, and, looking across the road, waited patiently opposite the house occupied by the pious Dutch pastor, the Reverend Theodore Drost.The house was in darkness, and there was not a sound in the street save the barking of a dog at the rear of a house in the vicinity.In patience, Flight-Commander Kennedy, for it was he, waited watchfully. He remained for a full quarter of an hour, ever and anon glancing at his watch, until, of a sudden, the front door opposite was opened noiselessly, and he saw the gleam of a flash-lamp.In a moment he had crossed the road and, ascending the steps, met his well-beloved. As he met her, he thought how strange it all seemed, what a romance it was. Here was this charming girl, whom the world only knew as a celebrated revue artiste, helping him to frustrate the criminal plans of her German father.Ella, standing at the door, whispered:“Hush!”And without a word Seymour Kennedy, treading tiptoe, slipped within.The house was familiar to him. He grasped the soft white hand of his well-beloved and, raising it to his lips, kissed it in homage. She was wearing a dainty purple and yellow kimono, her little feet thrust into red morocco Turkish slippers, which were noiseless, and, as she ascended the thickly-carpeted stairs, he followed her without uttering a word.Up they went, to the top floor. The door which faced them at the head of the stairs she unlocked with a key, and after they were both inside she closed the door and then switched on the light.The big chemical laboratory, which her father had established in secret in that long attic, presented the same scene as it had when he had visited it before at the invitation of his well-beloved. With such constant demands upon his inventive powers, it was necessary that the Prussian ex-professor should have the place fitted up with all the latest scientific appliances.“Well, Seymour!” the girl exclaimed at last. “Here you are! What do you think of these?” And, crossing to a side table, she indicated two well-worn attaché-cases in brown leather, each about sixteen inches by eight, and three inches deep.One of them she opened, revealing a curious mechanism within, part of which was the movement of a cheap American clock. Her tall, good-looking companion, who was a skilled mechanic, examined both these innocent-looking little cases with keen interest, and then exclaimed:“Ah! I quite understand now! These are no doubt to be used in conjunction with explosives. They run for half an hour only, and then electrical contact is made into the explosive compound.”“Exactly. See there, that row of tins of lubricating-oil. They are already filled with the high-explosive and in readiness.”Kennedy bent and then saw, ranged below a bench on the opposite side of the laboratory, six tins of a certain well-known thick lubricating-oil used by motorists.“There is sufficient there, dear, to blow up the whole of Barnes,” she declared. “Evidently this latest outrage is intended to be a serious one.”“Ah!” sighed Kennedy. “It is a thousand pities, Ella, that your father is doing all this dastardly secret work for the enemy. Happily you, though his daughter, are taking measures to thwart his plans.”“I am doing only what is my duty, dear,” replied the girl in the kimono; “and with your aid I hope to upset this latest plot of Ortmann and his friends.”“Have you seen Ortmann lately?” her lover asked.“No. He has been away somewhere in Holland—conferring with the German Secret Service, without a doubt. I heard father say yesterday, however, that he had returned to Park Lane.”“Returned, in order to distribute more German money, I suppose?”“Probably. He must have spent many hundreds of thousands of pounds in the German cause both before the war and after it,” replied the girl.The pair stood in the laboratory for some time examining some of the apparatus which old Drost, now sleeping below, had during that day been using for the manufacture of the explosive contained in those innocent-looking oil-cans.Kennedy realised, by the delicacy of the apparatus, how well versed the grey-haired old Prussian was in explosives, and on again examining the attaché-cases with their mechanical contents, saw the cleverness with which the plot, whatever its object, had been conceived.What was intended? There was no doubt a conspiracy afoot to destroy some public building, or perhaps an important bridge or railway junction.This he pointed out to Ella, who, in reply, said:“Yes. I shall remain here and watch. I shall close up my flat, and send my maid on a holiday, so as to have excuse to remain here at home.”“Right-ho! darling. You can always get at me on the telephone. You remain here and watch at this end, while I will keep an eye on Ortmann—at least, as far as my flying duties will allow me.”Thus it was arranged, and the pair, treading noiselessly, closed the door and, relocking it, crept softly down the stairs. In the dark hall Seymour took his well-beloved in his strong arms and there held her, kissing her passionately upon the brow. Then he whispered:“Good-night, my darling. Be careful that you are not detected watching.”A moment later he had slipped out of the door and was gone.Hardly had the door closed when Ella was startled by a movement on the landing at the head of the stairs—a sound like a footstep. There was a loose board there, and it had creaked! Some one was moving.“Who’s there?” she asked in apprehension.There was no reply.“Some one is up there,” she cried. “Who is it?”Yet again there was no response.In the house there was the old servant and her father. Much puzzled at the noise, which she had heard quite distinctly, she crept back up the dark stairs and, finding no one, softly entered her father’s room, to discover him asleep and breathing heavily. Then she ascended to the servant’s room, but old Mrs Pennington was asleep.When she regained her own cosy room, which was, as always, in readiness for her, even though she now usually lived in the flat in Stamfordham Mansions, over in Kensington, she stood before the long mirror and realised how pale she was.That movement in the darkness had unnerved her. Some person had most certainly trodden upon that loose board, which she and her lover had been so careful to avoid.“I wonder!” she whispered to herself. “Can there have been somebody watching us?”If that were so, then her father and the chief of spies, the man Ortmann, would be on their guard. So, in order to satisfy herself, she took her electric torch and made a complete examination of the house, until she came to the small back sitting-room on the ground floor. There she found the blind drawn up and the window open.The discovery startled her. The person, whoever it could have been, must have slipped past her in the darkness and, descending the stairs, escaped by the way that entrance had been gained.Was it a burglar? Was it some one desirous of knowing the secrets of that upstairs laboratory? Or was it some person set to watch her movements?She switched on the electric light, which revealed that the room was a small one, with well-filled bookshelves and a roll-top writing-table set against the open window.Upon the carpet something glistened, and, stooping, she picked it up. It was a woman’s curb chain-bracelet, the thin safety-chain of which was broken.Could the intruder have been a woman? Had the bracelet fallen from her wrist in her hurried flight? Or had it fallen from the pocket of a burglar who had secured it with some booty from a house in the vicinity?Ella looked out into the small garden, but the intruder had vanished. Therefore she closed the window, to find that the catch had been broken by the mysterious visitor, and then returned again to her room, where she once more examined the bracelet beneath the light.“It may give us some clue,” she remarked to herself. “Yet it is of very ordinary pattern, and bears no mark of identification.”Next day, without telling her father of her midnight discovery, she met Seymour Kennedy by appointment at the theatre, showed him what she had found, and related the whole story.“Strange!” he exclaimed. “Extraordinary! It must have been a burglar!”“Or a woman?”“But why should a woman break into your house?”“In order to watch me. Perhaps Ortmann or my father may have suspicions,” replied the actress, arranging her hair before the big mirror.“I hope not, Ella. They are both the most daring and the most unscrupulous men in London.”“And it is for us to outwit them in secret, dear,” she replied, turning to him with a smile of sweet affection.In the days that followed, the mystery of the intruder became further increased by Ella making another discovery. In the garden, upon a thorn-bush against the wall, Mrs Pennington found a large piece of cream silk which had apparently formed part of the sleeve of a woman’s blouse. She brought it to Ella, saying:“I’ve found this in the garden, miss. It looks as if some lady got entangled in the bush, and left part of ’er blouse behind—don’t it? I wonder who’s been in our garden?”Ella took it and, expressing little surprise, suggested that it might have been blown into the bush by the wind.It, however, at once confirmed her suspicion that the midnight visitor had been a woman.While Ella sang and danced nightly at the theatre, and afterwards drove home to Castelnau, to that house where upstairs was stored all that high-explosive, Seymour Kennedy maintained a watchful vigilance upon Ernst von Ortmann, the chief of enemy spies, and kept that unceasing watch over him, not only at the house at Wandsworth, but also at the magnificent mansion in Park Lane.To von Ortmann’s frequent dinner-parties in the West End came the crafty and grave-faced old Drost, who there met other men of mysterious antecedents, adventurers who posed as Swiss, American, or Dutch, for that house was the headquarters of enemy activity in Great Britain, and from it extended many extraordinary and unexpected ramifications.That some great and desperate outrage was intended in the near future Kennedy was confident, as all the apparatus was ready. But of Drost’s intentions he could discover nothing, neither could Ella.One cold night, while loitering in the darkness beside the railings of the Park, Kennedy saw Ortmann emerge from the big portico of his house and walk to Hyde Park Corner, where he hailed a taxi and drove down Grosvenor Gardens. Within a few moments Kennedy was in another taxi closely following.They crossed Westminster Bridge and turned to the right, in the direction of Vauxhall. Then, on arriving at Clapham Junction station, Kennedy, discerning Ortmann’s destination to be the house in Park Road, Wandsworth Common, where at times he lived as the humble Mr Horton, the retired tradesman, he dismissed his taxi and walked the remainder of the distance.When he arrived before the house, he saw a light in Horton’s room, and hardly had he halted opposite ere the figure of a man in a black overcoat and soft felt hat came along and ascended the steps to the door.It was the so-called Dutch pastor, Theodore Drost.The latter had not been admitted more than five minutes when another visitor, a short, thick-set bearded man, having the appearance of a workman, probably an engineer, passed by, hesitated, looked at the house inquiringly, and then went up the steps and rang the bell.He also quickly gained admission, and therefore it seemed plain that a conference was being held there that night.The bearded man was a complete stranger, hence Kennedy resolved to follow him when he reappeared, and try to establish his identity. Being known to Drost and Ortmann, it was always both difficult and dangerous for him to follow either too closely. But with a stranger it was different.Before twenty-four hours had passed, the Flight-Commander had ascertained a number of interesting facts. The bearded man was known as Arthur Cole, and was an electrician employed at one of the County Council power-stations. He lived in Tenison Street, close to Waterloo Station, and was a widower.Next day, on making further inquiry of shops in the vicinity, a woman who kept a newspaper-shop exclaimed:“I may be mistaken, sir, but I don’t believe much in that there Mr Cole.”“Why?” asked Kennedy quickly.“Well, ’e’s lived ’ere some years, you know, and before the war I used to order for ’im a German newspaper—the Berliner-Something.”“TheBerliner-Tageblattit was, I expect.”“Yes. That’s the paper, sir,” said the woman. “’E used to be very fond of it, till I couldn’t get it any more.”“Then he may be German?”The woman bent over the narrow counter of her small establishment and whispered:“I’m quite certain ’e is, sir.”That night Seymour saw his well-beloved in the theatre between the acts, and told her the result of his inquiries. Then he returned to his vigil and watched the dingy house in Tenison Street, one of those drab London streets in which the sun never seems to shine.For three nights Kennedy remained upon constant vigil. On the fourth night, just as Ella was throwing off her stage dress at the conclusion of the show, she received a telegram which said: “Gone north. Return soon. Wait.”It was unsigned, but she knew its sender.Four days she waited in eager expectation of receiving news. On the fifth night, just before she left for the theatre, Ortmann arrived to visit her father. She greeted him merrily, but quickly escaped from that detestable atmosphere of conspiracy, at the same time remembering that mysterious female intruder.Who could she have been?In the meantime Seymour Kennedy, who had obtained a few days’ leave, had been living at the Central Hotel in that busy Lancashire town which must here be known as G—. To that town he had followed the man Cole and had constantly watched his movements. Cole had taken up his quarters at a modest temperance hotel quite close to the Central, which was the big railway terminus, and had been daily active, and had made several journeys to places in the immediate manufacturing outskirts of G—.At last he packed his modest Gladstone bag and returned to London, Kennedy, in an old tweed suit, travelling by the same train.On their arrival Kennedy took a taxi direct from Euston to the theatre.When Ella had sent her dresser out of the room upon an errand, he hurriedly related what had occurred.The man Cole had, he explained, met in G— a thin-faced, dark-haired young woman, apparently of his own social standing, a young woman of the working-class, who wore a brass war-badge in the shape of a triangle. The pair had been in each other’s company constantly, and had been twice out to a manufacturing centre about six miles away, a place known as Rivertown.Briefly he related what he had observed and what he had discovered. Then he went out while she dressed, eventually driving with her to a snug little restaurant off Oxford Street, where they supped together.“Do you know, Ella,” he asked in a low voice, as they sat in a corner, “now that we’ve established the fact that the man Cole has visited your father, and also that he is undoubtedly implicated in the forthcoming plot, can it be that this young woman whom he met in G— is the same who entered your father’s house on the night of my visit there?”“I wonder!” she exclaimed. “Why should she go there?”“Out of curiosity, perhaps. Who knows? She’s evidently on friendly terms with this electrician. Cole, who, if my information is correct, is no Englishman at all—but a German!”Ella reflected deeply. Then she answered:“Perhaps both the man and woman came there for the purpose either of robbery—or—”“No. They were probably suspicious of your father’s manner, and came to examine the house.”“But if they did not trust my father surely they would not be in active association with him, as you say they are,” the girl argued.“True. But they might, nevertheless, have had their curiosity aroused.”“And by so doing they may have seen us,” she declared apprehensively. “I hope not.”“And even if they did, they surely would not recognise us again,” he exclaimed. “But,” he added, “no time must be lost. You must take another brief holiday from the theatre, and see what we can do.”“Very well,” was the dancer’s reply. “I’ll see Mr Pettigrew to-morrow, and get a rest. It will give my understudy a chance.”Over a fortnight went by.It was half-past five o’clock on a cold January evening when a trainful of merry-faced girl munition workers stood at the Central Station at G— ready to start out to Rivertown to work on the night shift in those huge roaring factories where the big shells were being made.Each girl wore a serviceable raincoat and close-fitting little hat, each carried a small leather attaché-case with her comb, mirror, and other little feminine toilet requisites, and each wore upon her blouse the brass triangle which denoted that she was a worker on munitions.Peering out from the window of one of those dingy third-class compartments was a young girl in a rather faded felt hat and a cheap navy-blue coat, while upon the platform, apparently taking notice of nobody, stood a tallish young man in a brown overcoat. The munition-girl was Ella Drost, and the man her lover, Seymour Kennedy.As the train at last moved out across the long bridge over the river, the pair exchanged glances, and then Ella, with her brass triangle on her blouse, sat back in the crowded carriage in thought, her little attaché-case upon her knees, listening to the merry chat of her fellow-workers.Arrived at the station, she followed the crowd of workers to the huge newly-erected factory close by, a great hive of industry where, through night and day, Sunday and weekday, over eight thousand women made big shells for the guns at the front.At the entrance-gate each girl passed singly beneath the keen eyes of door-keepers and detectives, for no intruder was allowed within, it being as difficult for strangers to gain admission there as to enter the presence of the Prime Minister at Downing Street.The shifts were changing, and the day-workers were going off. Hence there was considerable bustle, and many of those lathes drilling and turning the great steel projectiles were, for the moment, still.Presently the night-workers began to troop in, each in her pale-brown overall with a Dutch cap, around the edge of which was either a red or blue band denoting the status of the worker, while the forewomen were distinctive in their dark-blue overalls.Some of the girls had exchanged their skirts for brown linen trousers. Those were the girls working the travelling cranes which, moving up and down the whole length of the factory, carried the shells from one lathe to another as they passed through the many processes between drilling and varnishing. Ella was among these latter, and certainly nobody who met her in her Dutch cap with its blue band, her linen overall jacket with its waistband, and her trousers, stained in places with oil, would have ever recognised her as the star of London revue.Lithely she mounted the straight steep iron ladder up to her lofty perch on the crane, and, seating herself, she touched the switch and began to move along the elevated rails over the heads of the busy workers below.The transfer of a shell from one lathe to another was accomplished with marvellous ease and swiftness. A girl below her lifted her hand as signal, whereupon Ella advanced over her, and let down a huge pair of steel grips which the lathe-worker placed upon the shell, at the same time releasing it from the lathe. Again she raised her hand, and the shell was lifted a few yards above her head and lowered to the next machine, where the worker there placed it in position, and then released it to undergo its next phase of manufacture.Such was Ella’s work. In the fortnight she had been there she had become quite expert in the transfer of the huge shells, and, further, she had become much interested in her new life and its unusual surroundings In that great place the motive force of all was electricity. All those whirring lathes, drills, hammers, saws, cutting and polishing machines, cranes, everything in that factory, as well as the two other great factories in the near vicinity, were driven from the great electrical power-station close by.Now and then, as the night hours passed, though within all was bright and busy as day, Ella would give a glance at the woman working the crane opposite hers, a thin-faced, dark-haired young woman, who was none other than the mysterious friend of the man Cole, and whom she held in great suspicion.While Ella worked within the factory in order to keep a watchful eye, Seymour Kennedy watched with equal shrewdness outside.The days went past, but nothing suspicious occurred until one night Cole, who was again living at the temperance hotel, joined the munition-workers’ train, being followed by Ella, who found that he had been engaged as an electrician in the power-house.Next day he met the thin-faced young woman, who was known to her fellow-workers as Kate Dexter, and they spent several hours together, at lunch and afterwards at a picture-house. But, friends as they were, when they left the Central Station they took care never to travel in the same carriage. So, to their fellow-workers, they were strangers.One afternoon, at half-past two, Kennedy, who was at the Central Hotel, called at Ella’s lodgings and explained how he had seen her father walking in the street with Cole.“I afterwards followed them,” he added, “and eventually found that your father is at the Grand Hotel.”“Then mischief is certainly intended,” declared the girl, her cheeks turning pale.“No doubt. They mean to execute the plot without any further delay. That’s my opinion. It will require all our watchfulness and resource if we are to be successful.”“Why not warn the police?” suggested the girl.“And, by doing so, you would most certainly send your father to a long term of penal servitude,” was her lover’s reply. “No. We must prevent it, and for your own sake allow your father a loophole for escape, though he certainly deserves none.”Ella had once travelled in the same train as the woman Dexter, but the latter had not recognised her; nevertheless, from inquiries Kennedy had made in London, it seemed that a month before the woman had been living in London, and was a close friend of Cole’s. She had only recently gone north to work on munitions, and had, like Ella, been instructed in the working of the electrical cranes.For three days Theodore Drost remained at the Grand Hotel, where he had several interviews with the electrician Cole, and while Ella kept out of the way by day and went to the works at night, her lover very cleverly managed to maintain a strict watch.More than once Ella had contrived to pass the door of the great power-station with its humming dynamos which gave movement to that huge mass of machinery in the three factories turning out munitions, and had seen the man Cole in his blue dungarees busily oiling the machinery.Once she had watched him using thick machine-oil from cans exactly similar to those she had seen stored beneath the table in her father’s laboratory.Night after night Ella, working there aloft in her crane, waited and wondered. Indeed, she never knew from hour to hour whether the carefully laid plans of the conspirators might not result in some disastrous explosion, in which she herself might be a victim.But Kennedy reassured her that he was keeping an ever-watchful vigil, and she trusted him implicitly. As a matter of fact, one of the London detectives watching the place was a friend of his, and, without telling him the exact object of his visit, he was able to gain entrance to the works.Naturally the detective became curious, but Kennedy, who usually wore an old tweed suit and a seedy cap, promised to reveal all to him afterwards.About half-past one, on a wet morning, Ella had just stopped her crane when, at the entrance end of the building, she caught a glimpse of some one beckoning to her. It was her well-beloved. In a few moments she had clambered down, and, hurrying through the factory, joined him outside.“Did you travel with that woman Dexter to-night?” he inquired eagerly in a low whisper as they stood in the darkness.“Yes.”“Did she carry her attaché-case?”“Yes. She always does.”“She did not have it when she went home yesterday morning, for she left it here—the case which your father prepared,” he said. “She brought the second of the cases with her to-night.”“Then both are here!” exclaimed Ella in excitement.“Both are now in the power-house. I saw her hand over the second one to Cole only a quarter of an hour ago. Let us watch.”Then the pair crept on beneath the dark shadows through the rain to the great square building of red-brick which, constructed six months before, contained some of the finest and most up-to-date electrical plant in all the world.At last they gained the door, which stood slightly ajar. The other mechanics were all away in the canteen having their early morning meal, and the man Cole, outwardly an honest-looking workman, remained there in charge.Together they watched the man’s movements.Presently he came to the door, opened it, and looked eagerly out. In the meantime, however, Kennedy and his companion had slipped round the corner, and were therefore out of view. Then, returning within, Cole went to a cupboard, and as they watched from their previous point of vantage they saw him unlock it, displaying the two little leather attaché-cases within.Close to the huge main dynamo in the centre of the building there stood on the concrete floor six cans of lubricating-oil which, it was proved afterwards, were usually kept at that spot, and therefore were in no way conspicuous.Swiftly the man Cole drew a coil of fine wire from the cupboard, the ends being joined to the two attaché-cases—so that if the mechanism of one failed, the other would act—and with quick, nimble fingers he joined the wire to that already attached to the six inoffensive-looking cans of “oil.”The preparations did not occupy more than a minute. Then, seizing a can of petrol, he placed it beside the cans of high-explosive, in order to add fire to the explosion.Afterwards, with a final look at the wires, and putting his head into the cupboard, where he listened to make certain that the clockwork mechanism was in motion, he glanced at the big clock above. Then, in fear lest he should be caught there, he ran wildly out into the darkness ere they were aware of his intention.“Quick!” shouted Kennedy. “Rush and break those wires, Ella! I’ll watch him!”Without a second’s hesitation, the girl dashed into the power-house and frantically tore the wires from the cupboard and from the fastenings to the deadly attaché-cases, and—as it was afterwards proved—only just in time to save herself, the building, and its mass of machinery from total destruction.Meanwhile, Kennedy had overtaken the man Cole, and closed desperately with him, both of them rolling into the mud.Just as Ella was running towards them a pistol-shot rang out.The fellow had drawn a revolver and in desperation had tried to shoot his captor, but instead, in Kennedy’s strong grip, his hand was turned towards himself, and the bullet had struck his own face, entering his brain.In a few seconds the man Cole lay there dead.Was it any wonder that the Press made no mention of the affair?

A bank of dense fog hung over the Thames early on that December morning. The bell of St. Paul’s Church, at Hammersmith, had struck two o’clock when across the long suspension-bridge a tall man in a black waterproof coat and black plush hat walked with a swing, smoking a cigarette, and passed hurriedly out into the straight broad thoroughfare of Castelnau.

For some distance he proceeded, then suddenly he slackened pace, glanced at the luminous watch upon his wrist, and, a few moments later, halted against some railings, and, looking across the road, waited patiently opposite the house occupied by the pious Dutch pastor, the Reverend Theodore Drost.

The house was in darkness, and there was not a sound in the street save the barking of a dog at the rear of a house in the vicinity.

In patience, Flight-Commander Kennedy, for it was he, waited watchfully. He remained for a full quarter of an hour, ever and anon glancing at his watch, until, of a sudden, the front door opposite was opened noiselessly, and he saw the gleam of a flash-lamp.

In a moment he had crossed the road and, ascending the steps, met his well-beloved. As he met her, he thought how strange it all seemed, what a romance it was. Here was this charming girl, whom the world only knew as a celebrated revue artiste, helping him to frustrate the criminal plans of her German father.

Ella, standing at the door, whispered:

“Hush!”

And without a word Seymour Kennedy, treading tiptoe, slipped within.

The house was familiar to him. He grasped the soft white hand of his well-beloved and, raising it to his lips, kissed it in homage. She was wearing a dainty purple and yellow kimono, her little feet thrust into red morocco Turkish slippers, which were noiseless, and, as she ascended the thickly-carpeted stairs, he followed her without uttering a word.

Up they went, to the top floor. The door which faced them at the head of the stairs she unlocked with a key, and after they were both inside she closed the door and then switched on the light.

The big chemical laboratory, which her father had established in secret in that long attic, presented the same scene as it had when he had visited it before at the invitation of his well-beloved. With such constant demands upon his inventive powers, it was necessary that the Prussian ex-professor should have the place fitted up with all the latest scientific appliances.

“Well, Seymour!” the girl exclaimed at last. “Here you are! What do you think of these?” And, crossing to a side table, she indicated two well-worn attaché-cases in brown leather, each about sixteen inches by eight, and three inches deep.

One of them she opened, revealing a curious mechanism within, part of which was the movement of a cheap American clock. Her tall, good-looking companion, who was a skilled mechanic, examined both these innocent-looking little cases with keen interest, and then exclaimed:

“Ah! I quite understand now! These are no doubt to be used in conjunction with explosives. They run for half an hour only, and then electrical contact is made into the explosive compound.”

“Exactly. See there, that row of tins of lubricating-oil. They are already filled with the high-explosive and in readiness.”

Kennedy bent and then saw, ranged below a bench on the opposite side of the laboratory, six tins of a certain well-known thick lubricating-oil used by motorists.

“There is sufficient there, dear, to blow up the whole of Barnes,” she declared. “Evidently this latest outrage is intended to be a serious one.”

“Ah!” sighed Kennedy. “It is a thousand pities, Ella, that your father is doing all this dastardly secret work for the enemy. Happily you, though his daughter, are taking measures to thwart his plans.”

“I am doing only what is my duty, dear,” replied the girl in the kimono; “and with your aid I hope to upset this latest plot of Ortmann and his friends.”

“Have you seen Ortmann lately?” her lover asked.

“No. He has been away somewhere in Holland—conferring with the German Secret Service, without a doubt. I heard father say yesterday, however, that he had returned to Park Lane.”

“Returned, in order to distribute more German money, I suppose?”

“Probably. He must have spent many hundreds of thousands of pounds in the German cause both before the war and after it,” replied the girl.

The pair stood in the laboratory for some time examining some of the apparatus which old Drost, now sleeping below, had during that day been using for the manufacture of the explosive contained in those innocent-looking oil-cans.

Kennedy realised, by the delicacy of the apparatus, how well versed the grey-haired old Prussian was in explosives, and on again examining the attaché-cases with their mechanical contents, saw the cleverness with which the plot, whatever its object, had been conceived.

What was intended? There was no doubt a conspiracy afoot to destroy some public building, or perhaps an important bridge or railway junction.

This he pointed out to Ella, who, in reply, said:

“Yes. I shall remain here and watch. I shall close up my flat, and send my maid on a holiday, so as to have excuse to remain here at home.”

“Right-ho! darling. You can always get at me on the telephone. You remain here and watch at this end, while I will keep an eye on Ortmann—at least, as far as my flying duties will allow me.”

Thus it was arranged, and the pair, treading noiselessly, closed the door and, relocking it, crept softly down the stairs. In the dark hall Seymour took his well-beloved in his strong arms and there held her, kissing her passionately upon the brow. Then he whispered:

“Good-night, my darling. Be careful that you are not detected watching.”

A moment later he had slipped out of the door and was gone.

Hardly had the door closed when Ella was startled by a movement on the landing at the head of the stairs—a sound like a footstep. There was a loose board there, and it had creaked! Some one was moving.

“Who’s there?” she asked in apprehension.

There was no reply.

“Some one is up there,” she cried. “Who is it?”

Yet again there was no response.

In the house there was the old servant and her father. Much puzzled at the noise, which she had heard quite distinctly, she crept back up the dark stairs and, finding no one, softly entered her father’s room, to discover him asleep and breathing heavily. Then she ascended to the servant’s room, but old Mrs Pennington was asleep.

When she regained her own cosy room, which was, as always, in readiness for her, even though she now usually lived in the flat in Stamfordham Mansions, over in Kensington, she stood before the long mirror and realised how pale she was.

That movement in the darkness had unnerved her. Some person had most certainly trodden upon that loose board, which she and her lover had been so careful to avoid.

“I wonder!” she whispered to herself. “Can there have been somebody watching us?”

If that were so, then her father and the chief of spies, the man Ortmann, would be on their guard. So, in order to satisfy herself, she took her electric torch and made a complete examination of the house, until she came to the small back sitting-room on the ground floor. There she found the blind drawn up and the window open.

The discovery startled her. The person, whoever it could have been, must have slipped past her in the darkness and, descending the stairs, escaped by the way that entrance had been gained.

Was it a burglar? Was it some one desirous of knowing the secrets of that upstairs laboratory? Or was it some person set to watch her movements?

She switched on the electric light, which revealed that the room was a small one, with well-filled bookshelves and a roll-top writing-table set against the open window.

Upon the carpet something glistened, and, stooping, she picked it up. It was a woman’s curb chain-bracelet, the thin safety-chain of which was broken.

Could the intruder have been a woman? Had the bracelet fallen from her wrist in her hurried flight? Or had it fallen from the pocket of a burglar who had secured it with some booty from a house in the vicinity?

Ella looked out into the small garden, but the intruder had vanished. Therefore she closed the window, to find that the catch had been broken by the mysterious visitor, and then returned again to her room, where she once more examined the bracelet beneath the light.

“It may give us some clue,” she remarked to herself. “Yet it is of very ordinary pattern, and bears no mark of identification.”

Next day, without telling her father of her midnight discovery, she met Seymour Kennedy by appointment at the theatre, showed him what she had found, and related the whole story.

“Strange!” he exclaimed. “Extraordinary! It must have been a burglar!”

“Or a woman?”

“But why should a woman break into your house?”

“In order to watch me. Perhaps Ortmann or my father may have suspicions,” replied the actress, arranging her hair before the big mirror.

“I hope not, Ella. They are both the most daring and the most unscrupulous men in London.”

“And it is for us to outwit them in secret, dear,” she replied, turning to him with a smile of sweet affection.

In the days that followed, the mystery of the intruder became further increased by Ella making another discovery. In the garden, upon a thorn-bush against the wall, Mrs Pennington found a large piece of cream silk which had apparently formed part of the sleeve of a woman’s blouse. She brought it to Ella, saying:

“I’ve found this in the garden, miss. It looks as if some lady got entangled in the bush, and left part of ’er blouse behind—don’t it? I wonder who’s been in our garden?”

Ella took it and, expressing little surprise, suggested that it might have been blown into the bush by the wind.

It, however, at once confirmed her suspicion that the midnight visitor had been a woman.

While Ella sang and danced nightly at the theatre, and afterwards drove home to Castelnau, to that house where upstairs was stored all that high-explosive, Seymour Kennedy maintained a watchful vigilance upon Ernst von Ortmann, the chief of enemy spies, and kept that unceasing watch over him, not only at the house at Wandsworth, but also at the magnificent mansion in Park Lane.

To von Ortmann’s frequent dinner-parties in the West End came the crafty and grave-faced old Drost, who there met other men of mysterious antecedents, adventurers who posed as Swiss, American, or Dutch, for that house was the headquarters of enemy activity in Great Britain, and from it extended many extraordinary and unexpected ramifications.

That some great and desperate outrage was intended in the near future Kennedy was confident, as all the apparatus was ready. But of Drost’s intentions he could discover nothing, neither could Ella.

One cold night, while loitering in the darkness beside the railings of the Park, Kennedy saw Ortmann emerge from the big portico of his house and walk to Hyde Park Corner, where he hailed a taxi and drove down Grosvenor Gardens. Within a few moments Kennedy was in another taxi closely following.

They crossed Westminster Bridge and turned to the right, in the direction of Vauxhall. Then, on arriving at Clapham Junction station, Kennedy, discerning Ortmann’s destination to be the house in Park Road, Wandsworth Common, where at times he lived as the humble Mr Horton, the retired tradesman, he dismissed his taxi and walked the remainder of the distance.

When he arrived before the house, he saw a light in Horton’s room, and hardly had he halted opposite ere the figure of a man in a black overcoat and soft felt hat came along and ascended the steps to the door.

It was the so-called Dutch pastor, Theodore Drost.

The latter had not been admitted more than five minutes when another visitor, a short, thick-set bearded man, having the appearance of a workman, probably an engineer, passed by, hesitated, looked at the house inquiringly, and then went up the steps and rang the bell.

He also quickly gained admission, and therefore it seemed plain that a conference was being held there that night.

The bearded man was a complete stranger, hence Kennedy resolved to follow him when he reappeared, and try to establish his identity. Being known to Drost and Ortmann, it was always both difficult and dangerous for him to follow either too closely. But with a stranger it was different.

Before twenty-four hours had passed, the Flight-Commander had ascertained a number of interesting facts. The bearded man was known as Arthur Cole, and was an electrician employed at one of the County Council power-stations. He lived in Tenison Street, close to Waterloo Station, and was a widower.

Next day, on making further inquiry of shops in the vicinity, a woman who kept a newspaper-shop exclaimed:

“I may be mistaken, sir, but I don’t believe much in that there Mr Cole.”

“Why?” asked Kennedy quickly.

“Well, ’e’s lived ’ere some years, you know, and before the war I used to order for ’im a German newspaper—the Berliner-Something.”

“TheBerliner-Tageblattit was, I expect.”

“Yes. That’s the paper, sir,” said the woman. “’E used to be very fond of it, till I couldn’t get it any more.”

“Then he may be German?”

The woman bent over the narrow counter of her small establishment and whispered:

“I’m quite certain ’e is, sir.”

That night Seymour saw his well-beloved in the theatre between the acts, and told her the result of his inquiries. Then he returned to his vigil and watched the dingy house in Tenison Street, one of those drab London streets in which the sun never seems to shine.

For three nights Kennedy remained upon constant vigil. On the fourth night, just as Ella was throwing off her stage dress at the conclusion of the show, she received a telegram which said: “Gone north. Return soon. Wait.”

It was unsigned, but she knew its sender.

Four days she waited in eager expectation of receiving news. On the fifth night, just before she left for the theatre, Ortmann arrived to visit her father. She greeted him merrily, but quickly escaped from that detestable atmosphere of conspiracy, at the same time remembering that mysterious female intruder.

Who could she have been?

In the meantime Seymour Kennedy, who had obtained a few days’ leave, had been living at the Central Hotel in that busy Lancashire town which must here be known as G—. To that town he had followed the man Cole and had constantly watched his movements. Cole had taken up his quarters at a modest temperance hotel quite close to the Central, which was the big railway terminus, and had been daily active, and had made several journeys to places in the immediate manufacturing outskirts of G—.

At last he packed his modest Gladstone bag and returned to London, Kennedy, in an old tweed suit, travelling by the same train.

On their arrival Kennedy took a taxi direct from Euston to the theatre.

When Ella had sent her dresser out of the room upon an errand, he hurriedly related what had occurred.

The man Cole had, he explained, met in G— a thin-faced, dark-haired young woman, apparently of his own social standing, a young woman of the working-class, who wore a brass war-badge in the shape of a triangle. The pair had been in each other’s company constantly, and had been twice out to a manufacturing centre about six miles away, a place known as Rivertown.

Briefly he related what he had observed and what he had discovered. Then he went out while she dressed, eventually driving with her to a snug little restaurant off Oxford Street, where they supped together.

“Do you know, Ella,” he asked in a low voice, as they sat in a corner, “now that we’ve established the fact that the man Cole has visited your father, and also that he is undoubtedly implicated in the forthcoming plot, can it be that this young woman whom he met in G— is the same who entered your father’s house on the night of my visit there?”

“I wonder!” she exclaimed. “Why should she go there?”

“Out of curiosity, perhaps. Who knows? She’s evidently on friendly terms with this electrician. Cole, who, if my information is correct, is no Englishman at all—but a German!”

Ella reflected deeply. Then she answered:

“Perhaps both the man and woman came there for the purpose either of robbery—or—”

“No. They were probably suspicious of your father’s manner, and came to examine the house.”

“But if they did not trust my father surely they would not be in active association with him, as you say they are,” the girl argued.

“True. But they might, nevertheless, have had their curiosity aroused.”

“And by so doing they may have seen us,” she declared apprehensively. “I hope not.”

“And even if they did, they surely would not recognise us again,” he exclaimed. “But,” he added, “no time must be lost. You must take another brief holiday from the theatre, and see what we can do.”

“Very well,” was the dancer’s reply. “I’ll see Mr Pettigrew to-morrow, and get a rest. It will give my understudy a chance.”

Over a fortnight went by.

It was half-past five o’clock on a cold January evening when a trainful of merry-faced girl munition workers stood at the Central Station at G— ready to start out to Rivertown to work on the night shift in those huge roaring factories where the big shells were being made.

Each girl wore a serviceable raincoat and close-fitting little hat, each carried a small leather attaché-case with her comb, mirror, and other little feminine toilet requisites, and each wore upon her blouse the brass triangle which denoted that she was a worker on munitions.

Peering out from the window of one of those dingy third-class compartments was a young girl in a rather faded felt hat and a cheap navy-blue coat, while upon the platform, apparently taking notice of nobody, stood a tallish young man in a brown overcoat. The munition-girl was Ella Drost, and the man her lover, Seymour Kennedy.

As the train at last moved out across the long bridge over the river, the pair exchanged glances, and then Ella, with her brass triangle on her blouse, sat back in the crowded carriage in thought, her little attaché-case upon her knees, listening to the merry chat of her fellow-workers.

Arrived at the station, she followed the crowd of workers to the huge newly-erected factory close by, a great hive of industry where, through night and day, Sunday and weekday, over eight thousand women made big shells for the guns at the front.

At the entrance-gate each girl passed singly beneath the keen eyes of door-keepers and detectives, for no intruder was allowed within, it being as difficult for strangers to gain admission there as to enter the presence of the Prime Minister at Downing Street.

The shifts were changing, and the day-workers were going off. Hence there was considerable bustle, and many of those lathes drilling and turning the great steel projectiles were, for the moment, still.

Presently the night-workers began to troop in, each in her pale-brown overall with a Dutch cap, around the edge of which was either a red or blue band denoting the status of the worker, while the forewomen were distinctive in their dark-blue overalls.

Some of the girls had exchanged their skirts for brown linen trousers. Those were the girls working the travelling cranes which, moving up and down the whole length of the factory, carried the shells from one lathe to another as they passed through the many processes between drilling and varnishing. Ella was among these latter, and certainly nobody who met her in her Dutch cap with its blue band, her linen overall jacket with its waistband, and her trousers, stained in places with oil, would have ever recognised her as the star of London revue.

Lithely she mounted the straight steep iron ladder up to her lofty perch on the crane, and, seating herself, she touched the switch and began to move along the elevated rails over the heads of the busy workers below.

The transfer of a shell from one lathe to another was accomplished with marvellous ease and swiftness. A girl below her lifted her hand as signal, whereupon Ella advanced over her, and let down a huge pair of steel grips which the lathe-worker placed upon the shell, at the same time releasing it from the lathe. Again she raised her hand, and the shell was lifted a few yards above her head and lowered to the next machine, where the worker there placed it in position, and then released it to undergo its next phase of manufacture.

Such was Ella’s work. In the fortnight she had been there she had become quite expert in the transfer of the huge shells, and, further, she had become much interested in her new life and its unusual surroundings In that great place the motive force of all was electricity. All those whirring lathes, drills, hammers, saws, cutting and polishing machines, cranes, everything in that factory, as well as the two other great factories in the near vicinity, were driven from the great electrical power-station close by.

Now and then, as the night hours passed, though within all was bright and busy as day, Ella would give a glance at the woman working the crane opposite hers, a thin-faced, dark-haired young woman, who was none other than the mysterious friend of the man Cole, and whom she held in great suspicion.

While Ella worked within the factory in order to keep a watchful eye, Seymour Kennedy watched with equal shrewdness outside.

The days went past, but nothing suspicious occurred until one night Cole, who was again living at the temperance hotel, joined the munition-workers’ train, being followed by Ella, who found that he had been engaged as an electrician in the power-house.

Next day he met the thin-faced young woman, who was known to her fellow-workers as Kate Dexter, and they spent several hours together, at lunch and afterwards at a picture-house. But, friends as they were, when they left the Central Station they took care never to travel in the same carriage. So, to their fellow-workers, they were strangers.

One afternoon, at half-past two, Kennedy, who was at the Central Hotel, called at Ella’s lodgings and explained how he had seen her father walking in the street with Cole.

“I afterwards followed them,” he added, “and eventually found that your father is at the Grand Hotel.”

“Then mischief is certainly intended,” declared the girl, her cheeks turning pale.

“No doubt. They mean to execute the plot without any further delay. That’s my opinion. It will require all our watchfulness and resource if we are to be successful.”

“Why not warn the police?” suggested the girl.

“And, by doing so, you would most certainly send your father to a long term of penal servitude,” was her lover’s reply. “No. We must prevent it, and for your own sake allow your father a loophole for escape, though he certainly deserves none.”

Ella had once travelled in the same train as the woman Dexter, but the latter had not recognised her; nevertheless, from inquiries Kennedy had made in London, it seemed that a month before the woman had been living in London, and was a close friend of Cole’s. She had only recently gone north to work on munitions, and had, like Ella, been instructed in the working of the electrical cranes.

For three days Theodore Drost remained at the Grand Hotel, where he had several interviews with the electrician Cole, and while Ella kept out of the way by day and went to the works at night, her lover very cleverly managed to maintain a strict watch.

More than once Ella had contrived to pass the door of the great power-station with its humming dynamos which gave movement to that huge mass of machinery in the three factories turning out munitions, and had seen the man Cole in his blue dungarees busily oiling the machinery.

Once she had watched him using thick machine-oil from cans exactly similar to those she had seen stored beneath the table in her father’s laboratory.

Night after night Ella, working there aloft in her crane, waited and wondered. Indeed, she never knew from hour to hour whether the carefully laid plans of the conspirators might not result in some disastrous explosion, in which she herself might be a victim.

But Kennedy reassured her that he was keeping an ever-watchful vigil, and she trusted him implicitly. As a matter of fact, one of the London detectives watching the place was a friend of his, and, without telling him the exact object of his visit, he was able to gain entrance to the works.

Naturally the detective became curious, but Kennedy, who usually wore an old tweed suit and a seedy cap, promised to reveal all to him afterwards.

About half-past one, on a wet morning, Ella had just stopped her crane when, at the entrance end of the building, she caught a glimpse of some one beckoning to her. It was her well-beloved. In a few moments she had clambered down, and, hurrying through the factory, joined him outside.

“Did you travel with that woman Dexter to-night?” he inquired eagerly in a low whisper as they stood in the darkness.

“Yes.”

“Did she carry her attaché-case?”

“Yes. She always does.”

“She did not have it when she went home yesterday morning, for she left it here—the case which your father prepared,” he said. “She brought the second of the cases with her to-night.”

“Then both are here!” exclaimed Ella in excitement.

“Both are now in the power-house. I saw her hand over the second one to Cole only a quarter of an hour ago. Let us watch.”

Then the pair crept on beneath the dark shadows through the rain to the great square building of red-brick which, constructed six months before, contained some of the finest and most up-to-date electrical plant in all the world.

At last they gained the door, which stood slightly ajar. The other mechanics were all away in the canteen having their early morning meal, and the man Cole, outwardly an honest-looking workman, remained there in charge.

Together they watched the man’s movements.

Presently he came to the door, opened it, and looked eagerly out. In the meantime, however, Kennedy and his companion had slipped round the corner, and were therefore out of view. Then, returning within, Cole went to a cupboard, and as they watched from their previous point of vantage they saw him unlock it, displaying the two little leather attaché-cases within.

Close to the huge main dynamo in the centre of the building there stood on the concrete floor six cans of lubricating-oil which, it was proved afterwards, were usually kept at that spot, and therefore were in no way conspicuous.

Swiftly the man Cole drew a coil of fine wire from the cupboard, the ends being joined to the two attaché-cases—so that if the mechanism of one failed, the other would act—and with quick, nimble fingers he joined the wire to that already attached to the six inoffensive-looking cans of “oil.”

The preparations did not occupy more than a minute. Then, seizing a can of petrol, he placed it beside the cans of high-explosive, in order to add fire to the explosion.

Afterwards, with a final look at the wires, and putting his head into the cupboard, where he listened to make certain that the clockwork mechanism was in motion, he glanced at the big clock above. Then, in fear lest he should be caught there, he ran wildly out into the darkness ere they were aware of his intention.

“Quick!” shouted Kennedy. “Rush and break those wires, Ella! I’ll watch him!”

Without a second’s hesitation, the girl dashed into the power-house and frantically tore the wires from the cupboard and from the fastenings to the deadly attaché-cases, and—as it was afterwards proved—only just in time to save herself, the building, and its mass of machinery from total destruction.

Meanwhile, Kennedy had overtaken the man Cole, and closed desperately with him, both of them rolling into the mud.

Just as Ella was running towards them a pistol-shot rang out.

The fellow had drawn a revolver and in desperation had tried to shoot his captor, but instead, in Kennedy’s strong grip, his hand was turned towards himself, and the bullet had struck his own face, entering his brain.

In a few seconds the man Cole lay there dead.

Was it any wonder that the Press made no mention of the affair?

Chapter Six.The Silent Death.In the yellow sunshine of a bright and cloudless autumn afternoon, Ella Drost descended from her motor-cycle at a remote spot where four roads crossed at a place called Pittsgate, about a mile and a half out from Goudhurst, in Kent, having travelled from London by way of Tunbridge Wells.In leather cap, leggings, mackintosh, and leather belt she presented a charming type of the healthy English sports-girl. Indeed, in that very garb one could buy picture postcards of her all over the kingdom, those who purchased them little dreaming that Stella Steele, who had for so many nights been applauded by the khaki crowds in the theatre, where she merrily danced in the revue “Half a Moment!” was the daughter of old Theodore Drost, the sworn enemy of Great Britain, the man who had for so long succeeded in misleading the alien authorities into the belief that he was a pious pastor of the Dutch Church.Certainly the man who posed as an ex-missionary from Sumatra, and who wore the shabby, broad-brimmed clerical hat and horn-rimmed glasses, had never once been suspected of treasonable acts, save by his daughter Ella and Seymour Kennedy.It was to meet Kennedy that Ella had motored down from London that day. The roads were rather bad, and both machine and rider were splashed with mud. Yet for that she cared nothing. Her mind was too full of the investigations upon which they were engaged.She took out a large scale map, unfolded it, and studied it carefully, apparently tracing a route with her finger. Then glancing at her wristlet-watch, she looked eagerly down the long, straight road upon her left—the road which led up from Eastbourne, through Mayfield and Wadhurst.Nobody was in sight, therefore she consoled herself with a cigarette which she took from her case, and again studied her map until, at last, she suddenly heard the pop-pop-pop of a motor-cycle approaching and saw Seymour, his body bent over the handles, coming up the hill at a rattling pace.In a few minutes he had pulled up, and, taking her in his arms, kissed her fondly, expressing regret if he were late.“Eastbourne is further off than I expected, darling,” he added. “Well?” he asked eagerly.“Nothing particular has happened since we parted on Thursday,” replied the girl. “Father has been several times to see Mr Horton in Wandsworth, and last night dined with Mr Harberton in Park Lane.”“Ah! What would the public think if they knew that Count Ernst von Ortmann, who pulls the fingers of the Hidden Hand in our midst, Henry Harberton of Park Lane, and Mr Horton of Wandsworth, were one and the same person, eh?” exclaimed the man, who, though not in uniform, revealed his profession by his bearing.“One day it will be known, dear,” said the girl. “And then there will be an end to my father. The Count will believe that my father has betrayed him.”“Why do you anticipate that?”“Because only the night before last, when Ortmann called, I overheard him remark to my father that he was the only person who knew his secret, and warning him against any indiscretion, and of the fate which Germany would most certainly meet out to him if anycontretempsoccurred.”“Yes,” remarked the air-pilot reflectively. “I suppose that if the authorities really did arrest the inoffensive and popular Mr Harberton, the latter would, no doubt, revenge himself most bitterly upon your father.”“Of that I’m perfectly certain, dear. Often I am tempted to relinquish my efforts to combat the evil they try to work against England, and yet the English are my own people—and also yours.”“You’re a thorough brick, Ella. There’s not a girl in all the kingdom who has run greater risks than your dear self, or been more devoted to the British cause. Why, a dozen times you’ve walked fearlessly into danger, when you might have been blown to atoms by their infernal bombs.”“No, no,” she laughed. “Don’t discuss it here. I’ve only done what any other girl in my place would have done. Come,” she added. “Let’s get on and carry out the plan we arranged.”“Right-ho!” he replied. “That’s the road,” he added, pointing straight before him. “According to the map, there’s a wood a little way up, where the road forks. We take the left road, skirt another wood past a farm called Danemore, then over a brook, and it’s the first house we come to on the right—with another wood close behind it.”“Very well,” answered the girl. “You’ll have a breakdown close to the house—eh?”“That’s the arrangement,” he laughed, and next minute he was running beside his machine, and was soon away, followed by his mud-bespattered well-beloved.Off they both sped, first down a steep slope, and then gradually mounting through a thick wood where the brown leaves were floating down upon the chilly wind. They passed the farm Kennedy had indicated, crossed the brook by a bumpy, moss-grown bridge, and suddenly the man threw up his hand as a signal that he was pulling-up, and, slowing down, alighted, while his engine gave forth a report like a pistol-shot.Ella, too, dismounted, and saw they were before a good-sized, well-kept farmhouse, which stood a short distance back from the road, surrounded by long red-brick outbuildings.The report had brought out an old farm-hand—a white-bearded old fellow, who was scanning them inquisitively.Both Ella and her lover were engaged in intently examining the latter’s machine, looking very grave, and exchanging exclamations of despair. Kennedy opened a bag of tools and, with a cigarette in his mouth, commenced an imaginary repair, with one eye upon the adjacent house. This lasted for about a quarter-of-an-hour. In the meantime a woman, evidently the farmer’s wife, had come out to view the strangers, and had returned indoors.“I think it’s now about time we might go in,” the air-pilot whispered to his companion, whereupon both of them entered the gate and passed up the rutty drive to the house.“I wonder if you could lend me a heavy hammer?” asked the motor-cyclist in distress of the pleasant, middle-aged woman who opened the door.“Why, certainly, sir. Would the coal-hammer do?” she asked.“Fine!” was the man’s reply. “I’m so sorry to trouble you, but I’ve broken down, and I’m on my way to London.”“I’m very sorry, sir,” exclaimed the woman, who fetched a heavy hammer from her kitchen. “Would the young lady care to come in and wait?”“Oh, thanks. It’s awfully good of you,” said Ella. “The fact is I am a little fagged, and if I may sit down I shall be so grateful.”“Certainly, miss. Just come in both of you for a moment,” and she led the way into a homely well-furnished room with a great open hearth where big logs were burning with a pleasant smell of smouldering beech.“What a comfortable room you have here!” Kennedy remarked, looking at the thick Turkey carpet upon the floor, and the carved writing-table in the window.“Yes, sir. This is a model dairy-farm. It belongs to Mr Anderson-James, who lives in Tunbridge Wells, and who comes here for week-ends sometimes, and for the shooting. I expect him here to-night. My husband farms for him, and I look after the place as housekeeper.”“A model farm!” exclaimed Ella. “Oh! I’d so much like to see it. I wonder if your husband would allow me?”“He’d be most delighted, miss.”“Stevenson is my name, and this is my friend Mr Kershaw,” Ella said, introducing herself.“My name is Dennis,” replied the comely farmer’s wife with a pleasant smile. “This is called Furze Down Farm, and Mr Anderson-James is a solicitor in Tunbridge Wells. So now you know all about us,” and the woman, in her big white apron, laughed merrily.Kennedy and the girl exchanged glances.“Well,” he said, “I’ll go out and try to put the machine right. It won’t take very long, I hope. If I can’t—well, we must go back by train. Where’s the nearest station, Mrs Dennis?”“Well—Paddock Wood is about two miles,” was her reply. “If you can’t get your motor right my husband will put it into a cart and drive you over there. It’s the direct line to London.”“Thanks so much,” he said, and went out, leaving Ella to rest in the cosy, well-furnished room which the solicitor from Tunbridge Wells occupied occasionally through the week-ends.“Mr Anderson-James keeps this place as a hobby. He’s retired from practice,” the woman went on, “and he likes to come here for fresh air. When you’ve rested I’ll show you round the houses—if you’re interested in a dairy-farm.”“I’m most interested,” declared the girl. “I don’t want to rest. I’d rather see the farm, if it is quite convenient to you to show it to me.”“Oh, quite, miss,” was the woman’s prompt response. She came from Devonshire, as Ella had quickly detected, and was an artist in butter-making, the use of the mechanical-separator, and the management of poultry.The pair went out at once and, passing by clean asphalt paths, went to the range of model cowhouses, each scrupulously clean and well-kept. Then to the piggeries, the great poultry farm away in the meadows, and, lastly, into the white-tiled dairy itself, where four maids in white smocks and caps were busy with butter, milk, and cream.Ranged along one side of the great dairy were about thirty galvanised-iron chums of milk, ready for transport, and Ella, noting them, asked their destination.“Oh! They go each night to the training-camp at B—. They go out in two lots, one at midnight, and one at two o’clock in the morning.”“Oh, so you supply the camp with milk, do you?”“Yes. Before the war all our milk went up to London Bridge by train each night, but now we supply the two camps. There are fifty thousand men in training there, they say. Isn’t it splendid!” added the woman, the fire of patriotism in her eyes. “There’s no lack of pluck in the dear old country.”“No, Mrs Dennis. All of us are trying to do our bit,” Ella said. “Does the Army Service Corps fetch the milk?”“No, miss. They used to, but for nearly six weeks we’ve sent it in waggons ourselves. The camp at B— is ten miles from here, so it comes rather hard on the horses. It used to go in motor-lorries. Old Thomas, the man bending down over there,” and she pointed across the farm-yard, “he drives the waggon out at twelve, and Jim Jennings—who only comes of an evening—does the late delivery.”“But the road is rather difficult from here to the camp, isn’t it?” asked the girl, as though endeavouring to recollect.“Yes. That’s just it. They have to go right round by Shipborne to avoid the steep hill.”Five minutes later they were in the comfortable farm-house again, and, after a further chat, Ella went forth to see how her companion was progressing.The repair had been concluded—thanks to the coal-hammer! Ella took it back, thanked the affable Mrs Dennis, and, five minutes later, the pair were on their way to London, perfectly satisfied with the result of their investigations.On that same evening, while Kennedy and Ella were having a light dinner together at the Piccadilly Grill before she went to the theatre, the elusive Ortmann called upon old Theodore Drost at the dark house at Castelnau, on the Surrey side of Hammersmith Bridge. He came in a taxi, and accompanying him was a grey-haired, tall, and rather lean man, who carried a heavy deal box with leather handle.Drost welcomed them, and all three ascended at once to that long attic, the secret workshop of the maker of bombs. The man who posed as a pious Dutch missionary switched on the light, disclosing upon the table a number of small globes of thin glass which, at first, looked like electric light bulbs. They, however, had no metal base, the glass being narrowed at the end into a small open tube. Thus the air had not been exhausted.“This is our friend, Doctor Meins,” exclaimed Ortmann, introducing his companion, who, a few minutes later, unlocked the box and brought out a large brass microscope of the latest pattern, which he screwed together and set up at the further end of the table.Meanwhile from another table at the end of the long apartment old Drost, with a smile of satisfaction upon his face, carried over very carefully a wooden stand in which stood a number of small sealed glass tubes, most of which contained what looked like colourless gelatine.“We want to be quite certain that the cultures are sufficiently virulent,” remarked Ortmann. “That is why I have brought Professor Meins, who, as you know, is one of our most prominent bacteriologists, though he is, of course, naturalised as a good Englishman, and is in general practice in Hampstead under an English name.”The German professor, smiling, took up one of the hermetically sealed tubes, broke it, and from it quickly prepared a glass microscope-slide, not, however, before all three had put on rubber gloves and assumed what looked very much like gas-helmets, giving the three conspirators a most weird appearance. Then, while the Professor was engaged in focussing his microscope, Drost, his voice suddenly muffled behind the goggle-eyed mask, exhibited to Ortmann one of the glass bombs already prepared for use.It was about the size of a fifty-candle-power electric bulb, and its tube having been closed by melting the glass, it appeared filled with a pale-yellow vapour.“That dropped anywhere in a town would infect an enormous area,” Drost explained. “The glass is so thin that it would pulverise by the small and almost noiseless force with which it would explode.”“It could be dropped by hand—eh?” asked Ortmann. “And nobody would be the wiser.”“No, if dropped by hand it would, no doubt, infect the person who dropped it. The best way will be to drop it from a car.”“At night?”“No. In daylight—in a crowded street. It would then be more efficacious—death resulting within five days to everyone infected.”“Terrible!” exclaimed the Kaiser’s secret agent—the man of treble personality.“Yes. But it is according to instructions. See here!” and he took up what appeared to be a small bag of indiarubber—like a child’s air-ball that had been deflated. “This acts exactly the same when filled, only the case is soluble. One minute after touching water or, indeed, any liquid, it dissolves, and thus releases the germs!”“Gott!” gasped Ortmann. “You are, indeed, a dealer in bottled death, my dear Theodore. Truly, you’ve been inventing some appalling things for our dear friends here—eh?”The man with the scraggy beard, who was a skilled German scientist, though he posed as a Dutch pastor, smiled evilly, while at that moment the man Meins, who had his eye upon the microscope, beckoned both of them forward to look.Ortmann obeyed, and placing his eye upon the tiny lens, saw in the brightly reflected light colonies of the most deadly bacilli yet discovered by German science—the germs of a certain hitherto unknown disease, against which there was no known remedy. The fifth day after infection of the human system death inevitably resulted.“All quite healthy!” declared the great bacteriologist from behind his mask. “What would our friends think if they knew the means by which they came into this country—eh?”Drost laughed, and, crossing to a cupboard, took out a fine Ribston-pippin apple. This he cut through with his pen-knife, revealing inside, where the core had been removed, one of the tiny tubes secreted.“They came like this from our friends in a certain neutral country,” he laughed.From tube after tube Meins took and examined specimens, finding all the cultures virulent except one, which he placed aside.Then, turning to Drost, he gave his opinion that their condition was excellent.“But be careful—most scrupulously careful of yourself, and of whoever lives here with you—your family and servants. The bacteria are so easily carried in the air, now that we have opened the tubes.”“Never fear,” replied the muffled voice of Ella’s father. “I shall be extremely careful. But what is your opinion regarding this?” he added, showing the professor one of the tiny bags of the soluble substance.Meins examined it closely. Obtaining permission, he cut out a tiny piece with scissors and placed it beneath his powerful microscope.Presently he pronounced it excellent.“I see that it is impervious. If it is soluble, as you say, then you certainly need have no fear of failure,” he said, with a benign smile. Then he set to work to reseal the tubes he had opened, while Drost, with a kind of syringe, sprayed the room with some powerful germ-destroyer.Ten minutes later the pair had descended the stairs, while old Drost had switched off the light and locked the door of the secret laboratory wherein reposed the germs of a terrible disease known only to the enemies of Great Britain—a fatal malady which Germany intended to sow broadcast over the length and breadth of our land.For an hour they all three sat discussing the diabolical plot which would disseminate death over a great area of the United Kingdom, for Germany had many friends prepared to sacrifice their own lives for the Fatherland, and it was intended that those glass and rubber bombs should be dropped in all quarters to produce an epidemic of disease such as the world had never before experienced.Old Theodore Drost, installed in his comfortable dining-room again, opened a long bottle of Berncastler “Doctor”—a genuine bottle, be it said, for few who have sipped the “Doctor” wine of late have taken the genuine wine, so many fabrications did Germany make for us before the war.“But I warn you to be excessively careful,” the professor said to Drost. “Your daughter comes here sometimes, does she not? Do be careful of her. Place powerful disinfectants here—all over the house—in every room,” he urged; “although I have plugged the tubes with cotton wool properly treated to prevent the escape of the infection into the air, yet one never knows.”“Ella is not often here,” her father replied. “She is still playing in ‘Half a Moment!’; besides, she is rehearsing a new revue. So she, happily, has no time to come and see me.”“But, for your own safety, and your servant’s, do be careful,” Meins urged. “To tell you the honest truth, I almost fear to remove my mask—even now.”“But there’s surely no danger down here?” asked Drost eagerly.“There is always danger with such a terribly infectious malady. It is fifty times more fatal than double pneumonia. It attacks the lungs so rapidly that no remedy has any chance. Professor Steinwitz, of Stettin, discovered it.”“And is there no remedy?”“None whatsoever. Its course is rapid—a poisoning of the whole pulmonary system, and it’s even more contagious than small-pox.”Then they removed their masks and drank to “The Day” in their German wine.Six nights later Stella Steele had feigned illness—a strain while on her motor-cycle, and her understudy was taking her part in “Half a Moment!” much to the disappointment of the men in khaki, who had seated themselves in the stalls to applaud her. Among the men on leave many had had her portrait upon a postcard—together with a programme in three-colour print—in their dug-outs in Flanders, for Stella Steele was “the rage” in the Army, and among the subalterns any who had ever met her, or who had “known her people,” were at once objects of interest.In the darkness on a road with trees on either side—the road which runs from Tonbridge to Shipborne, and passes between Deene Park and Frith Wood—stood Kennedy and Ella. They had ridden down from London earlier in the evening and placed their motorcycles inside a gate which led into the forest on the left side of the road.They waited in silence, their ears strained, but neither uttered a word. Kennedy had showed his well-beloved the time. It was half-past one in the morning.Of a sudden, a motor-car came up the hill, a closed car, which passed them swiftly, and then, about a quarter-of-a-mile further on, came to a halt. Presently they heard footsteps in the darkness and in their direction there walked three men. The moon was shining fitfully through the clouds, therefore they were just able to distinguish them. The trio were whispering, and two of them were carrying good-sized kit-bags.They came to the gate where, inside, Ella and Kennedy had hidden their cycles, and there halted.That they were smoking Kennedy and his companion knew by the slight odour of tobacco that reached them. For a full quarter-of-an-hour they remained there, chatting in low whispers.“I wonder who they are?” asked Ella, bending to her lover’s ear.“Who knows?” replied the air-pilot. “At any rate, we’ll have a good view from here. You were not mistaken as to the spot?”“No. I heard it discussed last night,” was the girl’s reply.Then, a moment later, there was a low sound of wheels and horses’ hoofs climbing the hill from the open common into that stretch of road darkened by the overhanging trees. Ella peered forth and saw a dim oil lamp approaching, while the jingling of the harness sounded plain as the horses strained at their traces.Onward they came, until when close to the gate where the three men lay in waiting, one of the latter flashed a bright light into the face of the old man who was driving the waggon, and shouted:“Stop!Stop!”The driver pulled up in surprise, dazzled by the light, but the next second another man had flung into his face a mixture of cayenne pepper and chemicals by which, in an instant, he had become blinded and stupefied, falling back into his seat inert and helpless.Then Ella and Kennedy, creeping up unnoticed by the three in their excitement, saw that they had mounted into the waggon, which was loaded with milk-churns—the waggon driven nightly from Furze Down Farm to the great camp at B—, carrying the milk for the morning.Upon these chums the three set swiftly to work, opening each, dropping in one of those soluble bombs, and closing them. The bombs they took from the two kit-bags they had carried from the car.They were engaged in carrying out one of the most dastardly plots ever conceived by Drost and his friends—infecting the milk supply of the great training-camp!Kennedy was itching to get at them and prevent them, but he saw that, by knowledge gained, he would be in a position to act more effectively than if he suddenly alarmed them. Therefore the pair stood by until they had finished their hideous work of filling each chum with the most deadly and infectious malady known to medical science.Presently, when they had finished, the old driver, still insensible, was lifted from his seat, carried into the wood, and there left, while one of the conspirators—who they could now see was dressed as a farm-hand, and would no doubt pose as a new labourer from Furze Down—took his place and drove on as though nothing had happened, leaving the other two to make their way back to the car.When the red rear-light of the waggon was receding, Kennedy and Ella followed it, for it did not proceed at much more than walking pace.They walked along in silence till they saw the two men re-enter the car, leaving their companion to deliver the milk at the camp. Evidently a fourth man had been waiting in the car for, as soon as they were in, the man who drove turned the car, which went back in the direction it had come, evidently intending to meet the second waggon, which was due to come up an hour afterwards. No doubt the same programme would be repeated, and the fourth man would drive the second car to the adjacent camp.As soon, however, as the car had got clear away, Kennedy and his well-beloved ran to their motorcycles, mounted them, and in a short time had passed in front of the milk-waggon ere it could get down into Shipborne village.Putting their motors against a fence, they waited until the waggon came up, when Kennedy stepped into the road, and flashing an electric lamp on to the driver’s face, at the same time fired a revolver point-blank at him.This gave the fellow such a sudden and unexpected scare that he leaped down from the waggon and, next moment, had disappeared into the darkness, while Ella rushed to the horses’ heads and stopped them.“That’s all right!” laughed Kennedy. “Have you got your thick gloves on?”“Yes, dear.”“Well, be careful that not a drop of milk goes over your hands or feet. There’s lots of time to pitch it all out on the roadway.”Then climbing into the waggon the pair, by a pre-arranged plan, began to open the chums and turn their contents out of the waggon until the whole wet roadway was white with milk, which soaked into the ground and ran into the gutters and down the drains: for, fortunately, being near Shipborne, the footpaths on either side were drained, and by that any chance of infection later would, they knew, be minimised.Each chum they turned upon its side until not a drain of milk remained within, and then, leading the horses to graze on the grass at the roadside, the pair sped swiftly back along the road in the direction the car had taken.About five miles away they found the conspirators’ car upon the side of the road without any occupant. They were waiting for the second waggon.Without ado, Kennedy mounted into it, started it, and drew it out into the middle of the road, which at that point was upon a steep gradient.Then, taking a piece of blind-cord from his pocket, he swiftly tied up the steering-wheel and, jumping out, started the car down the hill.Away it flew at furious speed, gathering impetus as it went. For a few moments they could hear it roaring along until, suddenly, there was a terrific crash.“That’s upset their plans, I know,” he laughed to Ella.“We’ll go and investigate in a moment, and watch the fun.”This they did later on, finding the car turned turtle at the bottom of the hill, with three men standing around it in dismay.Kennedy inquired what had happened, but neither would say much.Yet, while they stood there, the second milk-laden waggon approached, passed, and went onward, its sleepy driver taking no notice of the five people at the roadside.For half-an-hour Kennedy and Ella remained there in pretence of endeavouring to right the car, until they knew that the waggon, with its contents, was well out of harm’s way.Then they remounted and returned to London, having, by their ingenious investigations and patient watching, saved the lives of thousands of Great Britain’s gallant boys in khaki.Two days later Theodore Drost was taken suddenly ill with symptoms which puzzled his local doctor at Barnes. He spoke to Ortmann over the telephone, but the latter dared not risk a visit to Castelnau. Ella also heard from her father over the telephone when, that night, she returned to Stamfordham Mansions at the end of the “show.” She, knowing all she did, regarded a visit there as too dangerous, but rang up Kennedy at his air-station and guardedly informed him of the situation.Five days later Theodore Drost lay dead of a malady to which the bespectacled doctor at Barnes gave a name upon his certificate, but of which he was really as ignorant as his own chauffeur.But the curious part of the affair was that while Drost lay dead in the house, and the night before his burial, a mysterious fire broke out which gutted the place, a fact which no doubt must have been a great mystery to Ortmann and his friends.The Metropolitan Fire Brigade still entertain very grave suspicions that it was due to an incendiary because of its fierceness; yet who, they ask themselves, could have had any evil design upon the property of the poor dead Dutch pastor?The End.

In the yellow sunshine of a bright and cloudless autumn afternoon, Ella Drost descended from her motor-cycle at a remote spot where four roads crossed at a place called Pittsgate, about a mile and a half out from Goudhurst, in Kent, having travelled from London by way of Tunbridge Wells.

In leather cap, leggings, mackintosh, and leather belt she presented a charming type of the healthy English sports-girl. Indeed, in that very garb one could buy picture postcards of her all over the kingdom, those who purchased them little dreaming that Stella Steele, who had for so many nights been applauded by the khaki crowds in the theatre, where she merrily danced in the revue “Half a Moment!” was the daughter of old Theodore Drost, the sworn enemy of Great Britain, the man who had for so long succeeded in misleading the alien authorities into the belief that he was a pious pastor of the Dutch Church.

Certainly the man who posed as an ex-missionary from Sumatra, and who wore the shabby, broad-brimmed clerical hat and horn-rimmed glasses, had never once been suspected of treasonable acts, save by his daughter Ella and Seymour Kennedy.

It was to meet Kennedy that Ella had motored down from London that day. The roads were rather bad, and both machine and rider were splashed with mud. Yet for that she cared nothing. Her mind was too full of the investigations upon which they were engaged.

She took out a large scale map, unfolded it, and studied it carefully, apparently tracing a route with her finger. Then glancing at her wristlet-watch, she looked eagerly down the long, straight road upon her left—the road which led up from Eastbourne, through Mayfield and Wadhurst.

Nobody was in sight, therefore she consoled herself with a cigarette which she took from her case, and again studied her map until, at last, she suddenly heard the pop-pop-pop of a motor-cycle approaching and saw Seymour, his body bent over the handles, coming up the hill at a rattling pace.

In a few minutes he had pulled up, and, taking her in his arms, kissed her fondly, expressing regret if he were late.

“Eastbourne is further off than I expected, darling,” he added. “Well?” he asked eagerly.

“Nothing particular has happened since we parted on Thursday,” replied the girl. “Father has been several times to see Mr Horton in Wandsworth, and last night dined with Mr Harberton in Park Lane.”

“Ah! What would the public think if they knew that Count Ernst von Ortmann, who pulls the fingers of the Hidden Hand in our midst, Henry Harberton of Park Lane, and Mr Horton of Wandsworth, were one and the same person, eh?” exclaimed the man, who, though not in uniform, revealed his profession by his bearing.

“One day it will be known, dear,” said the girl. “And then there will be an end to my father. The Count will believe that my father has betrayed him.”

“Why do you anticipate that?”

“Because only the night before last, when Ortmann called, I overheard him remark to my father that he was the only person who knew his secret, and warning him against any indiscretion, and of the fate which Germany would most certainly meet out to him if anycontretempsoccurred.”

“Yes,” remarked the air-pilot reflectively. “I suppose that if the authorities really did arrest the inoffensive and popular Mr Harberton, the latter would, no doubt, revenge himself most bitterly upon your father.”

“Of that I’m perfectly certain, dear. Often I am tempted to relinquish my efforts to combat the evil they try to work against England, and yet the English are my own people—and also yours.”

“You’re a thorough brick, Ella. There’s not a girl in all the kingdom who has run greater risks than your dear self, or been more devoted to the British cause. Why, a dozen times you’ve walked fearlessly into danger, when you might have been blown to atoms by their infernal bombs.”

“No, no,” she laughed. “Don’t discuss it here. I’ve only done what any other girl in my place would have done. Come,” she added. “Let’s get on and carry out the plan we arranged.”

“Right-ho!” he replied. “That’s the road,” he added, pointing straight before him. “According to the map, there’s a wood a little way up, where the road forks. We take the left road, skirt another wood past a farm called Danemore, then over a brook, and it’s the first house we come to on the right—with another wood close behind it.”

“Very well,” answered the girl. “You’ll have a breakdown close to the house—eh?”

“That’s the arrangement,” he laughed, and next minute he was running beside his machine, and was soon away, followed by his mud-bespattered well-beloved.

Off they both sped, first down a steep slope, and then gradually mounting through a thick wood where the brown leaves were floating down upon the chilly wind. They passed the farm Kennedy had indicated, crossed the brook by a bumpy, moss-grown bridge, and suddenly the man threw up his hand as a signal that he was pulling-up, and, slowing down, alighted, while his engine gave forth a report like a pistol-shot.

Ella, too, dismounted, and saw they were before a good-sized, well-kept farmhouse, which stood a short distance back from the road, surrounded by long red-brick outbuildings.

The report had brought out an old farm-hand—a white-bearded old fellow, who was scanning them inquisitively.

Both Ella and her lover were engaged in intently examining the latter’s machine, looking very grave, and exchanging exclamations of despair. Kennedy opened a bag of tools and, with a cigarette in his mouth, commenced an imaginary repair, with one eye upon the adjacent house. This lasted for about a quarter-of-an-hour. In the meantime a woman, evidently the farmer’s wife, had come out to view the strangers, and had returned indoors.

“I think it’s now about time we might go in,” the air-pilot whispered to his companion, whereupon both of them entered the gate and passed up the rutty drive to the house.

“I wonder if you could lend me a heavy hammer?” asked the motor-cyclist in distress of the pleasant, middle-aged woman who opened the door.

“Why, certainly, sir. Would the coal-hammer do?” she asked.

“Fine!” was the man’s reply. “I’m so sorry to trouble you, but I’ve broken down, and I’m on my way to London.”

“I’m very sorry, sir,” exclaimed the woman, who fetched a heavy hammer from her kitchen. “Would the young lady care to come in and wait?”

“Oh, thanks. It’s awfully good of you,” said Ella. “The fact is I am a little fagged, and if I may sit down I shall be so grateful.”

“Certainly, miss. Just come in both of you for a moment,” and she led the way into a homely well-furnished room with a great open hearth where big logs were burning with a pleasant smell of smouldering beech.

“What a comfortable room you have here!” Kennedy remarked, looking at the thick Turkey carpet upon the floor, and the carved writing-table in the window.

“Yes, sir. This is a model dairy-farm. It belongs to Mr Anderson-James, who lives in Tunbridge Wells, and who comes here for week-ends sometimes, and for the shooting. I expect him here to-night. My husband farms for him, and I look after the place as housekeeper.”

“A model farm!” exclaimed Ella. “Oh! I’d so much like to see it. I wonder if your husband would allow me?”

“He’d be most delighted, miss.”

“Stevenson is my name, and this is my friend Mr Kershaw,” Ella said, introducing herself.

“My name is Dennis,” replied the comely farmer’s wife with a pleasant smile. “This is called Furze Down Farm, and Mr Anderson-James is a solicitor in Tunbridge Wells. So now you know all about us,” and the woman, in her big white apron, laughed merrily.

Kennedy and the girl exchanged glances.

“Well,” he said, “I’ll go out and try to put the machine right. It won’t take very long, I hope. If I can’t—well, we must go back by train. Where’s the nearest station, Mrs Dennis?”

“Well—Paddock Wood is about two miles,” was her reply. “If you can’t get your motor right my husband will put it into a cart and drive you over there. It’s the direct line to London.”

“Thanks so much,” he said, and went out, leaving Ella to rest in the cosy, well-furnished room which the solicitor from Tunbridge Wells occupied occasionally through the week-ends.

“Mr Anderson-James keeps this place as a hobby. He’s retired from practice,” the woman went on, “and he likes to come here for fresh air. When you’ve rested I’ll show you round the houses—if you’re interested in a dairy-farm.”

“I’m most interested,” declared the girl. “I don’t want to rest. I’d rather see the farm, if it is quite convenient to you to show it to me.”

“Oh, quite, miss,” was the woman’s prompt response. She came from Devonshire, as Ella had quickly detected, and was an artist in butter-making, the use of the mechanical-separator, and the management of poultry.

The pair went out at once and, passing by clean asphalt paths, went to the range of model cowhouses, each scrupulously clean and well-kept. Then to the piggeries, the great poultry farm away in the meadows, and, lastly, into the white-tiled dairy itself, where four maids in white smocks and caps were busy with butter, milk, and cream.

Ranged along one side of the great dairy were about thirty galvanised-iron chums of milk, ready for transport, and Ella, noting them, asked their destination.

“Oh! They go each night to the training-camp at B—. They go out in two lots, one at midnight, and one at two o’clock in the morning.”

“Oh, so you supply the camp with milk, do you?”

“Yes. Before the war all our milk went up to London Bridge by train each night, but now we supply the two camps. There are fifty thousand men in training there, they say. Isn’t it splendid!” added the woman, the fire of patriotism in her eyes. “There’s no lack of pluck in the dear old country.”

“No, Mrs Dennis. All of us are trying to do our bit,” Ella said. “Does the Army Service Corps fetch the milk?”

“No, miss. They used to, but for nearly six weeks we’ve sent it in waggons ourselves. The camp at B— is ten miles from here, so it comes rather hard on the horses. It used to go in motor-lorries. Old Thomas, the man bending down over there,” and she pointed across the farm-yard, “he drives the waggon out at twelve, and Jim Jennings—who only comes of an evening—does the late delivery.”

“But the road is rather difficult from here to the camp, isn’t it?” asked the girl, as though endeavouring to recollect.

“Yes. That’s just it. They have to go right round by Shipborne to avoid the steep hill.”

Five minutes later they were in the comfortable farm-house again, and, after a further chat, Ella went forth to see how her companion was progressing.

The repair had been concluded—thanks to the coal-hammer! Ella took it back, thanked the affable Mrs Dennis, and, five minutes later, the pair were on their way to London, perfectly satisfied with the result of their investigations.

On that same evening, while Kennedy and Ella were having a light dinner together at the Piccadilly Grill before she went to the theatre, the elusive Ortmann called upon old Theodore Drost at the dark house at Castelnau, on the Surrey side of Hammersmith Bridge. He came in a taxi, and accompanying him was a grey-haired, tall, and rather lean man, who carried a heavy deal box with leather handle.

Drost welcomed them, and all three ascended at once to that long attic, the secret workshop of the maker of bombs. The man who posed as a pious Dutch missionary switched on the light, disclosing upon the table a number of small globes of thin glass which, at first, looked like electric light bulbs. They, however, had no metal base, the glass being narrowed at the end into a small open tube. Thus the air had not been exhausted.

“This is our friend, Doctor Meins,” exclaimed Ortmann, introducing his companion, who, a few minutes later, unlocked the box and brought out a large brass microscope of the latest pattern, which he screwed together and set up at the further end of the table.

Meanwhile from another table at the end of the long apartment old Drost, with a smile of satisfaction upon his face, carried over very carefully a wooden stand in which stood a number of small sealed glass tubes, most of which contained what looked like colourless gelatine.

“We want to be quite certain that the cultures are sufficiently virulent,” remarked Ortmann. “That is why I have brought Professor Meins, who, as you know, is one of our most prominent bacteriologists, though he is, of course, naturalised as a good Englishman, and is in general practice in Hampstead under an English name.”

The German professor, smiling, took up one of the hermetically sealed tubes, broke it, and from it quickly prepared a glass microscope-slide, not, however, before all three had put on rubber gloves and assumed what looked very much like gas-helmets, giving the three conspirators a most weird appearance. Then, while the Professor was engaged in focussing his microscope, Drost, his voice suddenly muffled behind the goggle-eyed mask, exhibited to Ortmann one of the glass bombs already prepared for use.

It was about the size of a fifty-candle-power electric bulb, and its tube having been closed by melting the glass, it appeared filled with a pale-yellow vapour.

“That dropped anywhere in a town would infect an enormous area,” Drost explained. “The glass is so thin that it would pulverise by the small and almost noiseless force with which it would explode.”

“It could be dropped by hand—eh?” asked Ortmann. “And nobody would be the wiser.”

“No, if dropped by hand it would, no doubt, infect the person who dropped it. The best way will be to drop it from a car.”

“At night?”

“No. In daylight—in a crowded street. It would then be more efficacious—death resulting within five days to everyone infected.”

“Terrible!” exclaimed the Kaiser’s secret agent—the man of treble personality.

“Yes. But it is according to instructions. See here!” and he took up what appeared to be a small bag of indiarubber—like a child’s air-ball that had been deflated. “This acts exactly the same when filled, only the case is soluble. One minute after touching water or, indeed, any liquid, it dissolves, and thus releases the germs!”

“Gott!” gasped Ortmann. “You are, indeed, a dealer in bottled death, my dear Theodore. Truly, you’ve been inventing some appalling things for our dear friends here—eh?”

The man with the scraggy beard, who was a skilled German scientist, though he posed as a Dutch pastor, smiled evilly, while at that moment the man Meins, who had his eye upon the microscope, beckoned both of them forward to look.

Ortmann obeyed, and placing his eye upon the tiny lens, saw in the brightly reflected light colonies of the most deadly bacilli yet discovered by German science—the germs of a certain hitherto unknown disease, against which there was no known remedy. The fifth day after infection of the human system death inevitably resulted.

“All quite healthy!” declared the great bacteriologist from behind his mask. “What would our friends think if they knew the means by which they came into this country—eh?”

Drost laughed, and, crossing to a cupboard, took out a fine Ribston-pippin apple. This he cut through with his pen-knife, revealing inside, where the core had been removed, one of the tiny tubes secreted.

“They came like this from our friends in a certain neutral country,” he laughed.

From tube after tube Meins took and examined specimens, finding all the cultures virulent except one, which he placed aside.

Then, turning to Drost, he gave his opinion that their condition was excellent.

“But be careful—most scrupulously careful of yourself, and of whoever lives here with you—your family and servants. The bacteria are so easily carried in the air, now that we have opened the tubes.”

“Never fear,” replied the muffled voice of Ella’s father. “I shall be extremely careful. But what is your opinion regarding this?” he added, showing the professor one of the tiny bags of the soluble substance.

Meins examined it closely. Obtaining permission, he cut out a tiny piece with scissors and placed it beneath his powerful microscope.

Presently he pronounced it excellent.

“I see that it is impervious. If it is soluble, as you say, then you certainly need have no fear of failure,” he said, with a benign smile. Then he set to work to reseal the tubes he had opened, while Drost, with a kind of syringe, sprayed the room with some powerful germ-destroyer.

Ten minutes later the pair had descended the stairs, while old Drost had switched off the light and locked the door of the secret laboratory wherein reposed the germs of a terrible disease known only to the enemies of Great Britain—a fatal malady which Germany intended to sow broadcast over the length and breadth of our land.

For an hour they all three sat discussing the diabolical plot which would disseminate death over a great area of the United Kingdom, for Germany had many friends prepared to sacrifice their own lives for the Fatherland, and it was intended that those glass and rubber bombs should be dropped in all quarters to produce an epidemic of disease such as the world had never before experienced.

Old Theodore Drost, installed in his comfortable dining-room again, opened a long bottle of Berncastler “Doctor”—a genuine bottle, be it said, for few who have sipped the “Doctor” wine of late have taken the genuine wine, so many fabrications did Germany make for us before the war.

“But I warn you to be excessively careful,” the professor said to Drost. “Your daughter comes here sometimes, does she not? Do be careful of her. Place powerful disinfectants here—all over the house—in every room,” he urged; “although I have plugged the tubes with cotton wool properly treated to prevent the escape of the infection into the air, yet one never knows.”

“Ella is not often here,” her father replied. “She is still playing in ‘Half a Moment!’; besides, she is rehearsing a new revue. So she, happily, has no time to come and see me.”

“But, for your own safety, and your servant’s, do be careful,” Meins urged. “To tell you the honest truth, I almost fear to remove my mask—even now.”

“But there’s surely no danger down here?” asked Drost eagerly.

“There is always danger with such a terribly infectious malady. It is fifty times more fatal than double pneumonia. It attacks the lungs so rapidly that no remedy has any chance. Professor Steinwitz, of Stettin, discovered it.”

“And is there no remedy?”

“None whatsoever. Its course is rapid—a poisoning of the whole pulmonary system, and it’s even more contagious than small-pox.”

Then they removed their masks and drank to “The Day” in their German wine.

Six nights later Stella Steele had feigned illness—a strain while on her motor-cycle, and her understudy was taking her part in “Half a Moment!” much to the disappointment of the men in khaki, who had seated themselves in the stalls to applaud her. Among the men on leave many had had her portrait upon a postcard—together with a programme in three-colour print—in their dug-outs in Flanders, for Stella Steele was “the rage” in the Army, and among the subalterns any who had ever met her, or who had “known her people,” were at once objects of interest.

In the darkness on a road with trees on either side—the road which runs from Tonbridge to Shipborne, and passes between Deene Park and Frith Wood—stood Kennedy and Ella. They had ridden down from London earlier in the evening and placed their motorcycles inside a gate which led into the forest on the left side of the road.

They waited in silence, their ears strained, but neither uttered a word. Kennedy had showed his well-beloved the time. It was half-past one in the morning.

Of a sudden, a motor-car came up the hill, a closed car, which passed them swiftly, and then, about a quarter-of-a-mile further on, came to a halt. Presently they heard footsteps in the darkness and in their direction there walked three men. The moon was shining fitfully through the clouds, therefore they were just able to distinguish them. The trio were whispering, and two of them were carrying good-sized kit-bags.

They came to the gate where, inside, Ella and Kennedy had hidden their cycles, and there halted.

That they were smoking Kennedy and his companion knew by the slight odour of tobacco that reached them. For a full quarter-of-an-hour they remained there, chatting in low whispers.

“I wonder who they are?” asked Ella, bending to her lover’s ear.

“Who knows?” replied the air-pilot. “At any rate, we’ll have a good view from here. You were not mistaken as to the spot?”

“No. I heard it discussed last night,” was the girl’s reply.

Then, a moment later, there was a low sound of wheels and horses’ hoofs climbing the hill from the open common into that stretch of road darkened by the overhanging trees. Ella peered forth and saw a dim oil lamp approaching, while the jingling of the harness sounded plain as the horses strained at their traces.

Onward they came, until when close to the gate where the three men lay in waiting, one of the latter flashed a bright light into the face of the old man who was driving the waggon, and shouted:

“Stop!Stop!”

The driver pulled up in surprise, dazzled by the light, but the next second another man had flung into his face a mixture of cayenne pepper and chemicals by which, in an instant, he had become blinded and stupefied, falling back into his seat inert and helpless.

Then Ella and Kennedy, creeping up unnoticed by the three in their excitement, saw that they had mounted into the waggon, which was loaded with milk-churns—the waggon driven nightly from Furze Down Farm to the great camp at B—, carrying the milk for the morning.

Upon these chums the three set swiftly to work, opening each, dropping in one of those soluble bombs, and closing them. The bombs they took from the two kit-bags they had carried from the car.

They were engaged in carrying out one of the most dastardly plots ever conceived by Drost and his friends—infecting the milk supply of the great training-camp!

Kennedy was itching to get at them and prevent them, but he saw that, by knowledge gained, he would be in a position to act more effectively than if he suddenly alarmed them. Therefore the pair stood by until they had finished their hideous work of filling each chum with the most deadly and infectious malady known to medical science.

Presently, when they had finished, the old driver, still insensible, was lifted from his seat, carried into the wood, and there left, while one of the conspirators—who they could now see was dressed as a farm-hand, and would no doubt pose as a new labourer from Furze Down—took his place and drove on as though nothing had happened, leaving the other two to make their way back to the car.

When the red rear-light of the waggon was receding, Kennedy and Ella followed it, for it did not proceed at much more than walking pace.

They walked along in silence till they saw the two men re-enter the car, leaving their companion to deliver the milk at the camp. Evidently a fourth man had been waiting in the car for, as soon as they were in, the man who drove turned the car, which went back in the direction it had come, evidently intending to meet the second waggon, which was due to come up an hour afterwards. No doubt the same programme would be repeated, and the fourth man would drive the second car to the adjacent camp.

As soon, however, as the car had got clear away, Kennedy and his well-beloved ran to their motorcycles, mounted them, and in a short time had passed in front of the milk-waggon ere it could get down into Shipborne village.

Putting their motors against a fence, they waited until the waggon came up, when Kennedy stepped into the road, and flashing an electric lamp on to the driver’s face, at the same time fired a revolver point-blank at him.

This gave the fellow such a sudden and unexpected scare that he leaped down from the waggon and, next moment, had disappeared into the darkness, while Ella rushed to the horses’ heads and stopped them.

“That’s all right!” laughed Kennedy. “Have you got your thick gloves on?”

“Yes, dear.”

“Well, be careful that not a drop of milk goes over your hands or feet. There’s lots of time to pitch it all out on the roadway.”

Then climbing into the waggon the pair, by a pre-arranged plan, began to open the chums and turn their contents out of the waggon until the whole wet roadway was white with milk, which soaked into the ground and ran into the gutters and down the drains: for, fortunately, being near Shipborne, the footpaths on either side were drained, and by that any chance of infection later would, they knew, be minimised.

Each chum they turned upon its side until not a drain of milk remained within, and then, leading the horses to graze on the grass at the roadside, the pair sped swiftly back along the road in the direction the car had taken.

About five miles away they found the conspirators’ car upon the side of the road without any occupant. They were waiting for the second waggon.

Without ado, Kennedy mounted into it, started it, and drew it out into the middle of the road, which at that point was upon a steep gradient.

Then, taking a piece of blind-cord from his pocket, he swiftly tied up the steering-wheel and, jumping out, started the car down the hill.

Away it flew at furious speed, gathering impetus as it went. For a few moments they could hear it roaring along until, suddenly, there was a terrific crash.

“That’s upset their plans, I know,” he laughed to Ella.

“We’ll go and investigate in a moment, and watch the fun.”

This they did later on, finding the car turned turtle at the bottom of the hill, with three men standing around it in dismay.

Kennedy inquired what had happened, but neither would say much.

Yet, while they stood there, the second milk-laden waggon approached, passed, and went onward, its sleepy driver taking no notice of the five people at the roadside.

For half-an-hour Kennedy and Ella remained there in pretence of endeavouring to right the car, until they knew that the waggon, with its contents, was well out of harm’s way.

Then they remounted and returned to London, having, by their ingenious investigations and patient watching, saved the lives of thousands of Great Britain’s gallant boys in khaki.

Two days later Theodore Drost was taken suddenly ill with symptoms which puzzled his local doctor at Barnes. He spoke to Ortmann over the telephone, but the latter dared not risk a visit to Castelnau. Ella also heard from her father over the telephone when, that night, she returned to Stamfordham Mansions at the end of the “show.” She, knowing all she did, regarded a visit there as too dangerous, but rang up Kennedy at his air-station and guardedly informed him of the situation.

Five days later Theodore Drost lay dead of a malady to which the bespectacled doctor at Barnes gave a name upon his certificate, but of which he was really as ignorant as his own chauffeur.

But the curious part of the affair was that while Drost lay dead in the house, and the night before his burial, a mysterious fire broke out which gutted the place, a fact which no doubt must have been a great mystery to Ortmann and his friends.

The Metropolitan Fire Brigade still entertain very grave suspicions that it was due to an incendiary because of its fierceness; yet who, they ask themselves, could have had any evil design upon the property of the poor dead Dutch pastor?

The End.

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