The Bomb-Makers

The woman obeyed, whereupon Stella Steele commenced to divest herself rapidly of the rich and daring gown. Her one desire was to get away from the theatre as soon as possible.

Mr Farquhar, the stage-manager, came to the door to express regret at her illness, and within a few minutes Miss Lambert, the understudy, was dressing to go on and fulfil her place in the final scene.

Her car took her home to the pretty flat in Stamfordham Mansions, just off Kensington High Street, where she lived alone with Mariette her French maid, and there, in her dainty little drawing-room, she sat silent, almost statuesque, for fully five minutes.

“Is it possible?” she gasped. “Is it really possible that such a dastardly plot is being carried out!” she murmured in agitation.

Her little white hands clenched themselves, and her pretty mouth grew hard. She was sweet and charming, without any stage affectations. Yet, when she set herself to combat the evil designs of her enemy-father she was not a person to be trifled with – as these records of her adventures will certainly show.

“I wonder if Seymour can have been misled?” she went on, rising from her chair as she spoke aloud to herself. “And yet,” she added, “he is always so level-headed!”

Mariette – a slim, dark-eyed girl – entered with a glass tube of solidified eau-de-Cologne which she rubbed upon her mistress’s brow, and then Ella passed into her own room and quickly dismissed the girl for the night.

As soon as Mariette had gone she flung off her dress and took another from her wardrobe, a rough brown tweed golfing-suit, and put on a close-fitting cloth hat to match. Then, getting into a thick blanket-coat, she pulled on her gloves and, taking up a small leather blouse-case, went out, closing the door noiselessly after her.

At nine o’clock on the following evening Ella Drost descended in the lift from the second floor of the Victoria Hotel, in Sheffield, and, wearing her blanket-coat, went to the station platform and bought a ticket to Chesterfield – the town with the crooked spire.

Half-an-hour later she walked out into the station yard where she found her lover, the good-looking Flight-Commander, awaiting her in a big grey car. He no longer wore uniform, but was in blue serge with a thick brown overcoat.

“By Jove, Ella!” he exclaimed in welcome, as he grasped her hand. “I’m jolly glad you’ve come up here! There’s a lot going on. You were perfectly correct when you first hinted at it. I’ve been watching patiently for the past month. Hop in; we’ve no time to lose.”

Next second, Ella was in the seat beside her lover, and the powerful car moved off down the Arkwright Road, a high-road running due eastward, till they joined another well-kept highway which, in the pale light, showed wide and open with its many lines of telegraphs – the road to Clowne.

On through the falling darkness they travelled through Elmton and up the hill to Bolsover, where they suddenly turned off to the left and, passing down some dark, narrow lanes, with which Kennedy was evidently familiar, they at last pulled up at the corner of a thick wood.

“Now,” he said, speaking almost for the first time, and in a low voice, “we’ll have to be very careful indeed.”

He had shut off his engine and switched off his lamps.

“We ought to make quite certain to-night that we are not mistaken,” she said.

“That is my intention,” was her lover’s reply, and then she flung off her coat and crossed the stile, entering the wood after him. He had a pocket flash-lamp, and ever and anon threw its rays directly upon the ground so that they could see the path. The latter was an intricate one, for twice they came to cross-paths, and in both cases Kennedy selected one without hesitation.

At last, however, they began to move down the hill more cautiously, conversing in low whispers, and showing no light until they at last found themselves in the grounds attached to a large, low-built country house, lying in the valley.

“Ortmann is living here as Mr Horton,” Kennedy whispered. “They told me in the village that he took the house furnished about three months ago, from a Major Jackson, who is at the front.”

“But why is he living down here – in a house like this?” she asked.

“That’s just what we want to discover. Many Germans have country houses in England for some mysterious and unknown reason.”

Kennedy, glancing at his luminous wrist-watch, noted that it was nearly two o’clock in the morning. From where they stood at the edge of the wood the house was plainly visible, silhouetted on the other side of a wide lawn.

No light showed in any of the windows, and to all appearances the inmates were asleep.

As the pair stood whispering, a big Airedale suddenly bounded forth, barking angrily as a preliminary to attacking them.

It was an exciting moment. But in that instant Ella recognised the bark as that of her father’s dog.

“Jack!” she said, in a low voice of reproof. “Be quiet, and come here.”

In a moment the dog, which Drost had evidently lent to his friend Ortmann as watch-dog, bounded towards his mistress and licked her hand.

It was evident that the occupiers of the lonely place did not desire intruders.

Fearing lest the barking of “Jack” might have alarmed the inmates, they remained silent for a full quarter-of-an-hour, and then again creeping beneath the shadows of the hedges and trees, they managed to cross the lawn and the gravelled path, until they stood together beneath the front of the house.

“Listen!” gasped Kennedy, grasping the girl’s arm. “Do you hear anything?”

“Yes – a kind of muffled crackling noise.”

“That’s a wireless spark!” her lover declared. “So they have wireless here!”

Creeping along, they passed the main entrance and gained the other side of the house where, quite plainly, there could be heard the whir of a dynamo supplying the current.

But though Kennedy’s keen eyes searched for aerial wires, he could discover none in that dim light, the moon having now disappeared entirely. So he concluded that they were so constructed that they could be raised at night and lowered and concealed at daybreak, or perhaps even disguised as a portion of wire fencing.

“As the wireless is working – sending information to the enemy without a doubt – then our friend Ortmann is most probably at home,” whispered the flying-man. “As the motor is still running it will drown any noise, and we might get inside without being heard. Are you ready to risk it?”

“With you, dear, I’ll risk anything that may be for my country’s benefit,” she declared. Then he pressed her soft hand in his, stooping till his lips met hers.

As they stood there in that single blissful moment, there came the sound of a train suddenly emerging from a long tunnel in the side of the hill in the near vicinity, and with the light of the furnace glaring in the darkness it sped away eastward. Its sound showed it to be a goods train – one of the many which, laden with munitions from the Midlands, went nightly towards the coast on their way to the British front.

Only then did they realise that the railway-line ran along the end of the grounds, and that the mouth of the great G – Tunnel was only five hundred yards or so from where they stood. Kennedy took from his pocket a small jemmy in two pieces, which he screwed together, and then began to examine each of the French windows which led on to the lawn. All were closed, with their heavy wooden shutters secured.

The shutters of one, however, though closed, had, he saw by the aid of his flash-lamp, not been fastened. The dog, Jack, following his mistress, was sniffing and assisting in the investigation.

Examining the long window minutely, they saw that it had been closed hurriedly and, hence, scarcely latched. The room, too, was in darkness.

Suddenly, just as Kennedy was about to make an attempt to enter, the electric light was switched on within the room, and the pair had only time to slip round the corner of the house, when the French window opened, and four men stepped forth upon the lawn, conversing in whispers as they walked on tiptoe together across the gravel on to the grass.

“I wonder what’s up!” whispered Kennedy to Ella. “Let us follow and see.”

This they did, keeping always in the dark shadows, and retracing their footsteps to the edge of the wood close to where the railway ran.

As they watched they saw that, having crossed the lawn, the four men entered a meadow adjoining, and they then recognised the figures of Drost and Ortmann with two strangers. They all walked straight to the corner where stood an old cow-shed, and into this they all four disappeared.

For a full half-hour they remained there, Kennedy and his well-beloved crouching beneath a bush in wonder at what there could be in the cow-shed to detain them so long.

The shed was at the base of a high wooded hill. Away, at some distance on the left, the railway-line entered the great tunnel which pierced the hill, and through it ran one of the most important railways from the Midlands to the East Coast.

The reason of their long absence in that tumbledown cow-shed was certainly mysterious. The lovers strained their ears to listen, but no sound reached them.

“Very curious!” whispered Kennedy. “What, I wonder, should detain them so long? There is some further mystery here, without a doubt. Something of interest is in progress.”

Suddenly, all four men emerged from the shed laughing and chatting in subdued tones. Drost was carrying his hat in his hand.

They passed within ten yards of the lovers, and as they went by they overheard Drost say in German: “To-morrow night at 11:30 a heavy munition train will come through the tunnel. Then we shall see!”