The Bomb-Makers

“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