The Bomb-Makers

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.”