The Bomb-Makers

Kennedy glanced at his wrist-watch.

The munition train was almost due to enter the tunnel, therefore the stranger Tragheim, one of Ortmann’s poor, miserable dupes, had been sent forward to depress the key as soon as he heard the second bell ring in the signal-box at the exit of the tunnel – all the signal bells being distinctly heard in the night from the door of the shed.

The ringing of that second bell would announce that the train was passing over the exact point in the line under which the mine had been laid.

The man Bohlen, seeing his companion come out, moved away from the gate across the lawn back to the house, whereupon Kennedy crept up to the spot where the German had been standing, and whence they could obtain a good view of the shed from which the dastardly attempt was to be made.

Beside the gate they found a walking-stick – a thick one made of bamboo.

“That fellow has forgotten his stick,” remarked Kennedy, taking it up, all unconscious of the peril.

From one of the darkened windows of the house Ortmann was watching his action, and chuckled.

Of a sudden, however, a fierce blood-red flash lit up the whole country-side, and with a deafening roar, the shed was hurled high into the air, together with the shattered remains of the man who had pressed the key.

Instead of exploding the mine under the railway tunnel, as was intended, he had exploded the tinful of picric acid derivative which Kennedy had concealed beneath the straw!

Then, a few seconds later, the heavy train laden with munitions for the British front emerged from the tunnel in safety, its driver all unconscious of the desperate attempt that had been made by the enemy in our midst.

Kennedy, having witnessed the consummation of his well-laid plan to blow up any conspirator who touched the key, cast the walking-stick to the ground and, taking Ella’s arm, retraced his steps through the woods.

But they had not gone far ere a second explosion, a sharp concussion which they felt about them, came from somewhere behind them.

“Funny!” he remarked to his well-beloved. “I wonder what that second noise was, dearest?”

“I wonder,” said Ella, and they both hurried back to their car.

Chapter Three.

The Hyde Park Plot

Two men sat in a big, handsome dining-room in one of the finest houses in Park Lane. One was Theodore Drost, dressed in his usual garb of a Dutch pastor. A look of satisfaction overspread his features as he raised his glass of choice Château Larose.

Opposite him at the well-laid luncheon table sat his friend, Ernst Ortmann, alias Horton, alias Harberton, the super-spy whose hand was – if the truth be told – “The Hidden Hand” upon which the newspapers were ever commenting – that secret and subtle influence of Germany in our midst in war-time.

Count Ernst von Ortmann was a very shrewd and elusive person. For a number of years he had been a trusted official in the entourage of the Kaiser, and having lived his early life in England, being educated at Oxford, he was now entrusted with the delicate task of directing the advance guard of the German army in this country.

Two years before the war Mr Henry Harberton, a wealthy, middle-aged English merchant from Buenos Ayres, had suddenly arisen in the social firmament in the West End, had given smart dinners, and, as an eligible bachelor, had been smiled upon by many mothers with marriageable daughters. His luncheon-parties at the Savoy, the Ritz, and the Carlton were usually chronicled in the newspapers; he was financially interested in a popular revue at a certain West End theatre, and the rumour that he was immensely wealthy was confirmed when he purchased a fine house half-way up Park Lane – a house from which, quite unsuspected, radiated the myriad ramifications of Germany’s spy system.

With Henry Harberton, whose father, it was said, had amassed a huge fortune in Argentina in the early days, and which he had inherited, money was of no account. The fine London mansion was sombre and impressive in its decoration. There was nothing flamboyant or out-of-place, nothing that jarred upon the senses: a quiet, calm, and restful residence, the double windows of which shut out the sound of the motor-’buses and taxis of that busy thoroughfare where dwelt London’s commercial princes. Surely that fine house was in strange contrast to the obscure eight-roomed one in a long, drab terrace in Park Road, Wandsworth Common, where dwelt the same mysterious person in very humble and even economical circumstances as Mr Horton, a retired tradesman from the New Cross Road.

As Ortmann sat in that big dining-room in Park Lane, a plainly decorated apartment with dead white walls in the Adams style, and a few choice family portraits, his friend, Drost, with his strange triangular face, his square forehead and pointed grey beard, presented a picture of the true type of Dutch pastor, in his rather seedy clerical coat and his round horn-rimmed spectacles.

The pair had been discussing certain schemes to the detriment of the English: schemes which, in the main, depended upon the crafty old Drost’s expert knowledge of high-explosives.

“Ah! my dear Count!” exclaimed the wily old professor of chemistry in German, as he replaced his glass upon the table. “How marvellously clever is our Emperor! How he befooled and bamboozled these silly sheep of English. Listen to this!” and from his pocket-book he drew a large newspaper cutting – two columns of a London daily newspaper dated Wednesday, October 28, 1908.

“What is that?” inquired the Kaiser’s arch-spy, his eyebrows narrowing.

“The interview given by the Emperor to a British peer in order to throw dust into the eyes of our enemies against whom we were rapidly preparing. Listen to the Emperor’s clever reassurances in order to gain time.” Then, readjusting his big round spectacles, he glanced down the columns and read in English the following sentences that had fallen from the Kaiser’s lips: “You English are mad, mad, mad as English hares. What has come over you that you are so completely given over to suspicions unworthy of a great nation? What more can I do than I have done? My heart is set upon peace, and it is one of my dearest wishes to live on the best of terms with England. Have I ever been false to my word? Falsehood and prevarication are alien to my nature. My actions ought to speak for themselves, but you listen not to them, but to those who misinterpret and distort them. This is a personal insult, which I feel and resent!”

Drost replaced the cutting upon the table, and both men burst into hilarious laughter.

“Really, in the light of present events, those printed words must cause our dear friends, the English, considerable chagrin,” declared Ortmann.

“Yes. They now see how cleverly we have tricked them,” said Drost with a grin. “That interview gave us an increased six years for preparation. Truly, our Emperor is great. He is invincible!”

And both men raised their tall Bohemian glasses in honour of the Arch-Murderer of Europe.

That little incident at table was significant of the feelings and intentions of the conspirators.

“Your girl Ella is still very active, and that fellow Kennedy seems ever-watchful,” Ortmann remarked presently in a decidedly apprehensive tone. “I know, of course, that your daughter would do nothing to harm you personally; but remember that Kennedy is a British naval officer, and that he might – from patriotic motives – well – ”

“Kill his prospective father-in-law – eh?” chimed in the Dutch pastor, with a light laugh.

The Count hesitated for a second. Then he said:

“Well, perhaps not exactly kill you, but he might make things decidedly unpleasant for us both, if he got hold of anything tangible.”

“Bah! Rest assured that he’ll never get hold of anything,” declared Drost. “I’ve had him out to Barnes to dinner once or twice lately, but he’s quite in the dark.”

“Are you absolutely certain that he knows nothing of what is in progress in your laboratory upstairs!” queried Ortmann. “Are you absolutely certain that Ella has told him nothing?”

“Quite – because she herself knows nothing.”

“If she knows nothing, then why are we both watched so closely by Kennedy?” asked Ortmann dubiously.

“Bah! Your fancy – mere fancy!” declared the professor of chemistry. “I know you’ve been unduly suspicious for a long time, but I tell you that Ella and her lover are far too much absorbed in their own affairs to trouble about our business.” Ortmann shrugged his shoulders. He did not tell his friend Drost the true extent of his knowledge, for it was one of his main principles never to confide serious truths to anybody. By that principle he had risen in his Emperor’s service to the high and responsible position he now occupied – the director of The Hidden Hand.

As such, he commanded the services of many persons of both sexes in the United Kingdom. Some were persons who, having accepted German money or German favours in the pre-war days, were now called upon to dance as puppets of Germany while the Kaiser played the tune. Many of them, subjects of neutral countries, had been perfectly friendly to us, but since the war the relentless thumbscrew of blackmail had been placed upon them by Ernst von Ortmann, and they were compelled to do his bidding and act against the interests of Great Britain.

Over the heads of most of them, men and women – especially the latter – the wily Ortmann and his well-organised staff held documentary evidence of such a damning character that, if handed to the proper quarter, would either have caused their arrest and punishment, or, in the case of the fair sex, cause their social ostracism. Hence Ortmann held his often unwilling agents together with an iron hand which was both unscrupulous and drastic. Woe betide either man or woman who, having accepted Germany’s good-will and favours before the war, now dared to refuse to do her dirty work.

Truly, the Hidden Hand was that of the “mailed-fist” covered with velvet, full of double cunning and irresistible influence in quite unsuspected quarters.

Old Theodore Drost was but a pawn in Germany’s dastardly attack upon England, but a very valuable one, from his intimate knowledge of explosives. Moreover, as an inventor of death-dealing devices, he certainly had no equal in Europe.

In order to discuss in secret a daring and terrible plot, the pair had lunched in company at Park Lane.

At that same hour, on that same day, Flight-Commander Seymour Kennedy, in his naval uniform with the “pilot’s wings,” was on leave from a certain air-station on the South-East coast, and was seated opposite Ella Drost in the Café Royal, in Regent Street, discussing a lobster salad tête-à-tête.

It was one of the favourite luncheon places of Drost’s daughter.

The revue in which she had been appearing and in which, by the way, Ortmann was financially interested in secret, had finished its season, and the theatre had closed its doors for the summer. Consequently Ella had taken a tiny riverside cottage near Shepperton-on-Thames, though she still kept open her pretty flat in Stamfordham Mansions, her faithful French maid, Mariette, being in charge.

“You seem worried, darling,” Kennedy whispered, as he bent across the table to her. “What’s the matter?”

“I’ve already told you.”