The Bomb-Makers

“Yes. They believe you to be soundly asleep, I suppose?”

“I locked my door, and have the key in my pocket,” replied his well-beloved with a light laugh.

And she, putting her ready lips to his, sat with him in the car at the foot of the long suspension-bridge, waiting for any person to cross.

They remained there for perhaps half-an-hour, ever eager and watchful. Several taxis passed, but otherwise all was quiet in the night. Now and then across the sky fell the big beams of searchlights seeking enemy aircraft, and these they were watching, when, suddenly, a powerful, dark-painted car approached.

“Look!” cried Ella. “Why, that’s that fellow Benyon’s car – he’s a friend of Dad’s!”

Next moment it flashed past, and beneath the dim light at the head of the bridge they both caught a glimpse of two men within, one of whom was undoubtedly Theodore Drost.

“Quick!” cried Ella. “Let’s follow them! Fortunately you have to-night another car, unknown to them!”

In an instant Seymour Kennedy had started his engine, and slowly he drew out across the bridge, speeding after the retreating car over the river, along Bridge Road to Hammersmith Broadway and through Brook Green, in a direction due north.

Through the London streets it was not difficult at that hour to follow the red tail-light of the car in which Drost sat with his bosom friend George Benyon, a mysterious person who seemed to be an adventurer, and who lived somewhere in York or its vicinity.

“I wonder if they are going up to York?” Ella asked, as she sat in the deep seat of the coupé at her lover’s side.

“We’ll see. If they get on to the North Road we shall at once know their intentions,” was her lover’s reply.

Half-an-hour later the pseudo-Dutch pastor and his companion, driven by rather a reckless young fellow, were on the main Great North Road, and Kennedy, possessing a lighter and superior car, had no misgivings as to overtaking them whenever he wished.

On through the night they went, passing Barnet, Hatfield, Hitchin, the cross-roads at Wansford, and up the crooked pebbled streets of Stamford, until in the grey of morning they descended into Grantham, with its tall spire and quaint old Angel and Crown Hotel.

It was there that Drost and his companion breakfasted, while Ella and her lover waited and watched.

Some devilish plot of a high-explosive nature was in progress, but of its true import they were in utter ignorance. Yet their two British hearts beat quickly in unison, and both were determined to frustrate the outrage, even at the sacrifice of their own lives.

At three o’clock in the afternoon Drost and Benyon drew up at the Station Hotel at York, and there took lunch, while Ella and her lover ate a very hurried and much-needed meal in the railway-buffet in the big station adjoining.

Then, after they had watched the departure of the big mud-spattered car which contained the two conspirators, they were very quickly upon the road again after them.

Out of the quiet old streets of York city, past the Minster, they turned eastward upon that well-kept highway which led towards the North Sea Coast.

An hour’s run brought them to the pleasant town which I must not, with the alarming provisions of the Defence of the Realm Act before me, indicate with any other initial save that of J – .

The town of J – , built upon a deep and pretty bay forming a natural harbour with its breakwater and pier, was, in the pre-war days, a popular resort of the summer girl with her transparent blouses and her pretty bathing costumes, but since hostilities, it was a place believed to be within the danger zone.

As they descended, by the long, winding road, into the town, they could see, in the bay, a big grey four-funnelled first-class cruiser lying at anchor, the grey smoke curling lazily from her striped funnels – resting there no doubt after many weeks of patrol duty in the vicinity of the Kiel Canal.

Indeed, as they went along the High Street, they saw a number of clear-eyed liberty men – bluejackets – bearing upon their caps the name H.M.S. Oakham.

The car containing Ella’s father and his companion pulled up at the Palace Hotel, a big imposing place, high on the cliff, therefore Kennedy, much satisfied that he had thus been able to follow the car for over two hundred miles, went on some little distance to the next available hotel.

This latter place, like the Palace, afforded a fine view of the bay, and as they stood at a window of the palm-lined lounge, they could see that upon the cruiser lights were already appearing.

Kennedy called the waiter for a drink, and carelessly asked what was in progress.

“The ship – the Oakham– came in the day before yesterday, sir,” the man replied. “There’s a party on board this evening, they say – our Mayor and corporation, and all the rest.”

Ella exchanged glances with her lover. She recollected that khaki-covered despatch-box. Had her father brought with him that terrible death-dealing machine which he and Nystrom had constructed with such accursed ingenuity?

The hotel was deserted, as east coast hotels within the danger zone usually were in those war days, remaining open only for the occasional traveller and for the continuity of its licence. The great revue star had sent a telegram to her manager, asking that her understudy should play that night, and the devoted pair now stood side by side watching how, in the rapidly falling night, the twinkling electric lights on board the fine British cruiser became more clearly marked against the grey background of stormy sea and sky.

“I wonder what their game can really be?” remarked the young flying-officer reflectively as, alone with Ella, his strong arm crept slowly around her neat waist.

From where they stood they were afforded a wide view of the broad road which led from the town down to the landing-stage, from which the cruiser’s steam pinnace and picket-boat were speeding to and fro between ship and shore. A dozen or so smart motor-cars had descended the road, conveying the guests of the captain and officers who, after their long and unrelaxing vigil in the North Sea, certainly deserved a little recreation. Then, as the twilight deepened and the stars began to shine out over the bay, it was seen that the procession of guests had at last ended.

“I think, Ella, that we might, perhaps, go down to the landing-stage,” said Kennedy at last – “if you are not too tired, dear.”

“Tired? Why, of course not,” she laughed, and after he had helped her on with her coat, they both went out, passing down to the harbour by another road.

For fully an hour they idled about in the darkness, watching the swift brass-funnelled pinnace which, so spick and span, and commanded by a smart lad fresh from Osborne, was making the journey regularly between ship and quay. Away in the darkness the lights on the cruiser’s quarter-deck reflected into the sea, while ever and anon the high-up masthead signal-lamp winked in Morse code to the coastguard station five miles distant across the bay.

While they were watching, the pinnace came in again, whereupon the smart figure of a naval officer in his topcoat appeared within the zone of light, and descended the steps, shouting in an interrogative tone:

“Oakham?”

“Ay, ay, sir!” came a cheery voice from the pinnace.

“Look!” gasped Ella, clinging to her lover’s arm. “Why – it’s Benyon – dressed as a naval lieutenant! He’s going on board, and he’s carrying that despatch-box with him!”

Indeed, he had handed the heavy box to one of the men, and was at that moment stepping into the pinnace.

“Off to the ship – as quick as you can!” they heard him order, while, next moment, the boat was cast loose and the propeller began to revolve.

“We haven’t a second to lose!” whispered Kennedy who, as soon as the pinnace was around the pier-head, called out “Boat!” In an instant half-a-dozen men, noticing that he was a naval officer, were eagerly crowding around him.

“I want to follow that pinnace – quick!” he said. “Three men – and you can sail out there. The wind’s just right.”

In a few moments a boat came alongside the steps, and into it the pair stepped, with three hardy North Sea boatmen.

Quickly sail was set and, favoured by a fresh breeze, the boat slowly heeled over and began to skim across the dark waters.

Already the light on the pinnace showed far away, it having nearly reached the ship. Therefore Kennedy, in his eagerness, stirred the three men to greater effort, so that by rowing and sailing by turns, they gradually grew nearer the long, dark war-vessel, while Ella sat clasping her well-beloved’s hand in the darkness, and whispering excitedly with him.

Those were, indeed, moments of greatest tension, away upon that dark wintry sea beyond the harbour, that wide bay which, on account of its unusual depth and exposed position, was never considered a very safe anchorage.

Their progress seemed at a snail’s pace, as it always seems upon the sea at night. They watched the pinnace draw up, and they knew that the man, Benyon, who, though German-born, had lived in London the greater part of his life – was on board carrying that terrible instrument of death that had been cleverly prepared in such official guise.

At last – after an age it seemed – the boat swung in beside the lighted gangway against the pinnace, and Kennedy, stepping nimbly up, said to the sentry on board:

“Let nobody pass up or down, except this lady.” Then, seeing the officer on duty, he asked if a lieutenant had arrived on board with a despatch-box.

“Yes. I’ve sent him down to the captain,” was the reply.

“Take me to the captain at once, please,” Kennedy said in a calm voice. “There’s no time to lose. There’s treachery on board!”

In a second the officer was on the alert and ran down the stern gangway which led direct to the captain’s comfortable cabin, with its easy-chairs covered with bright chintzes like the small drawing-room of a country house.

Kennedy followed with Ella, but the captain was not there. The sentry said he was in the ward-room, therefore the pair waited till he came forward eagerly.

“Well,” asked the grey-haired captain with some surprise, seeing an officer and a lady. “What is it?”

“Have you received any despatches to-night, sir?” Kennedy inquired.

“No. What despatches?” asked the captain.

Then, in a few brief words, Kennedy explained how he had watched a man in naval uniform come off in the pinnace, carrying a heavy despatch-box. The man had passed the sentry and been directed below by the officer on duty. But he had never arrived at the captain’s cabin.

The “owner,” as the captain of a cruiser is often called by his brother officers, was instantly on the alert. The alarm was given, and the ship was at once thoroughly searched, especially the ammunition stores, where, in the flat close to the torpedoes on the port side, the deadly box was discovered. The guests knew nothing of this activity on the lower deck, but the two men who found the box heard a curious ticking within, and without a second’s delay brought it up and heaved it overboard.

Then again the boatswain piped, and every man, as he stood at his post, was informed that a spy who had attempted to blow up the ship was still on board. Indeed, as “Number One,” otherwise the first lieutenant, was addressing them a great column of water rose from an explosion deep below the surface, and much of it fell heavily on deck.

Another thorough search was made into every corner of the vessel, whereupon the stranger in uniform was at last discovered in one of the stokeholds. Two stokers rushed across to seize him, but with a quick movement he felled both with an iron bar. Then he ran up the ladder with the agility of a cat, and sped right into the arms of Ella and Kennedy.

“Curse you – I was too late!” he shrieked in fierce anger, on recognising them, and then seeing all retreat cut off, he suddenly sprang over the side of the vessel, intending, no doubt, to swim ashore.

At once the pinnace went after him, but in the darkness he could not be discovered, though the searchlights began to slowly sweep the dark swirling waters.

That he met a well-deserved fate, however, was proved by the fact that at dawn next day his body was picked up on the other side of the bay. Yet long before, Theodore Drost, suspecting that something was amiss by his fellow spy’s non-return, had left by train for London.

Seymour Kennedy was next day called to the Admiralty and thanked for his keen vigilance, but he only smiled and kept a profound secret the active part played by his particular friend, the popular actress – Miss Stella Steele.

Chapter Two.

The Great Tunnel Plot

“There! Is it not a very neat little toy, my dear Ernst?” asked Theodore Drost, speaking in German, dressed in his usual funereal black of a Dutch pastor, as everyone believed him to be.

Ernst Ortmann, the man addressed, screwed up his eyes, a habit of his, and eagerly examined the heavy walking-stick which his friend had handed to him.

It was a thick bamboo-stump, dark-brown and well-polished, bearing a heavy iron ferrule.

The root-end, which formed the bulgy knob, the wily old German had unscrewed, revealing in a cavity a small cylinder of brass. This Ortmann took out and, in turn, unscrewed it, disclosing a curious arrangement of cog-wheels – a kind of clockwork within.

“You see that as long as the stick is carried upright the clock does not work,” Drost explained. “But,” – and taking it from his friend’s hand he held it in a horizontal position – “but as soon as it is laid upon the ground, the mechanical contrivance commences to work. See!”

And the man Ortmann – known as Horton since the outbreak of war – gazed upon it and saw the cog-wheels slowly revolving.

“By Jove!” he gasped. “Yes. Now I see. What a devilish invention it is! It can be put to so many uses!”

“Exactly, my dear friend,” laughed the supposed Dutch pastor, crossing the secret room in the roof of his house at Barnes.

It was afternoon, and the sunlight streaming through the skylight fell upon the place wherein the bomb-makers worked in secret. The room contained several deal tables whereon stood many bottles containing explosive compounds, glass retorts, test-tubes, and glass apothecaries’ scales, with all sorts of other apparatus used in the delicate work of manufacturing and mixing high-explosives.

“You see,” Drost went on to explain, as he indicated a large mortar of marble. “I have been treating phenol with nitric acid and have obtained the nitrate called trinitrophenol. I shall fill this case with it, and then we shall have an unsuspicious-looking weapon which will eventually prove most useful to us – for it can be carried in perfect safety, only it must not be laid down.”

Ortmann laughed. He saw that his friend’s inventive mind had produced an ingenious, if devilish, contrivance. He had placed death in that innocent-looking walking-stick – certain death to any person unconscious of the peril.

Indeed, as Ortmann watched, his friend carefully filled the cavity in the brass cylinder with the explosive substance, and placed within a very strong detonator which he connected with the clockwork, winding it to the full. He then rescrewed the cap upon the fatal cylinder, replacing it in the walking-stick and readjusting the knob, which closed so perfectly that only close inspection would reveal anything abnormal in the stick.

“The other stuff is there already, I suppose?”

“I took it down there the night before last in four petrol-tins.”

“The new stuff?”

“Yes. It is a picric acid derivative, and its relative force is twice as great as that of gun-cotton,” was the reply of the grey-haired man. He spoke with knowledge and authority, for had he not been one of the keenest explosive experts in the German arsenal at Spandau before he had assumed the rôle of the Dutch pastor in England?

“It will create some surprise there,” remarked Ortmann, with an evil grin upon his sardonic countenance. “Your girl knows nothing, I hope?”

“Absolutely nothing. I have arranged to carry out our plans as soon as possible, to-morrow night, or the night after. Bohlen and Tragheim are both assisting.”

“Excellent! I congratulate you, my dear Drost, upon your clever contrivance. Truly, you are a good son of the Fatherland, and I will see that you receive your due and proper reward when our brave brothers have landed upon English soil.”

“You are the eyes and brains of Germany in England,” declared Drost to his friend. “I am only the servant. You are the organiser. Yours is the Mysterious Hand which controls, and controls so well, the thousands of our fellow-Teutons, all of whom are ready for their allotted task when the Day of Invasion comes.”

“I fear you flatter me,” laughed Mr Horton, whom none suspected to be anything else than a patriotic Englishman.

“I do not flatter you. I only admire your courage and ingenuity,” was the quiet reply.

And then the two alien enemies, standing in that long, low-ceilinged laboratory, containing as it did sufficient high-explosives to blow up the whole of Hammersmith and Barnes, bent over the long deal table upon which stood a long glass retort containing some bright yellow crystals that were cooling.

Theodore Drost, being one of Germany’s foremost scientists, had been sent to England before the war, just as a number of others had been sent, as an advance guard of the Kaiser’s Army which the German General Staff intended should eventually raid Great Britain. Truly, the foresight, patience, and thoroughness of the Hun had been astounding. The whole world’s history contained nothing equal to the amazing craft and cunning displayed by those who were responsible for Germany’s Secret Service – that service known to its agents under the designation of “Number Seventy, Berlin.”

It was fortunate that there was hardly a person in the whole of London who knew of the relationship between Stella Steele, the clever revue artiste, whose songs were the rage of all London and whose photographs were in all the shop-windows, and the venerable Dutch pastor. With his usual craft, Drost, knowing how thoroughly English was his daughter, had always posed to her as a great admirer of England and English ways. To judge by his protestations, he was a hater of the Kaiser and all his Satanic works.

If, however, Ella – to give Stella her baptismal name – could have looked into that long, low attic, which her father always kept so securely locked, she would have been struck by the evil gloating of both men.

Ortmann – whom she always held in suspicion – had conceived the plot a month ago – a foul and dastardly plot – and old Drost, as his paid catspaw, was about to put it into execution forthwith.

Next night, just about half-past ten, Stella Steele gay, laughing, with one portion of her lithe body clothed in the smartest of ultra costumes by a famous French couturière, the remainder of her figure either silk-encased or undraped, bounded off the stage of the popular theatre near Leicester Square, and fell into the arms of her grey-haired dresser.

It was Saturday night, and the “house,” packed to suffocation, were roaring applause.

“Lights up!” shouted the stage-manager, and Stella, holding her breath and patting her hair, staggered against the scenery, half-fainting with exhaustion, and then, with a fierce effort, tripped merrily upon the stage and smilingly bowed to her appreciative and enthusiastic audience.

The men in khaki, officers and “Tommies,” roared for an encore. The revue had “caught on,” and Stella Steele was the rage of London. Because she spoke and sang in French just as easily as she did in English, her new song, in what was really a very inane but tuneful revue – an up-to-date variation of musical comedy – had already been adopted in France as one of the marching songs of the French army.

From paper-seller to Peer, from drayman to Duke: in the houses of Peckham and Park Lane, in Walworth and in Wick, the world hummed, sang, or drummed out upon pianos and pianolas that catchy chorus which ran:

        Dans la tranchée…        La voilà, la joli’ tranche:Tranchi, trancho, tranchons le Boche;La voilà, la joli’ tranche aux Boches,        La voilà, la joli’ tranche!

As she came off, a boy handed her a note which she tore open and, glancing at it, placed her hand upon her chest as though to stay the wild beating of her heart.

“Say yes,” was her brief reply to the lad, who a moment later disappeared.

She walked to her dressing-room and, flinging herself into the chair, sat staring at herself in the glass, much to the wonder of the grey-haired woman who dressed her.

“I’m not at all well,” she said to the woman at last. “Go and tell Mr Farquhar that I can’t go on again to-night. Miss Lambert must take my place in the last scene.”

“Are you really ill, miss?” asked the woman eagerly.

“Yes. I’ve felt unwell all day, and the heat to-night has upset me. If I went on again I should faint on the stage. Go and tell Mr Farquhar at once.”

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.