The Bomb-Makers

“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!”

And at his words his three companions laughed merrily as they walked back to the house.

Kennedy and the popular revue artiste – the girl whose name was as a household word, and whose songs were sung everywhere – crouched in silence watching the men until they had disappeared through that long French window opening on to the lawn.

Then, when they were alone, Kennedy said in a low voice:

“There’s more going on here, Ella, than we at first anticipated – much more! I wonder what secret that old shed contains – eh?”

“Let’s investigate!” the girl beside him suggested eagerly.

Five minutes later they emerged from the shadow, and hurrying quickly across the grass, entered the old tumbledown shed, whereupon Kennedy switched on his electric torch, when there became revealed a wide hole in the ground, which sloped away steeply in the darkness.

“Hulloa! Why, here’s a tunnel!” exclaimed Kennedy in surprise. “They’ve been down there, evidently! I wonder where it leads to?”

Then, as they both glanced around, they saw a thin, twisted electric cable containing two wires which led from a cigar-box on the ground in a corner away down into the tunnel. Kennedy lifted the lid of the box, and within found an electric tapping-key with ebonite base and two small dry cells for the supply of the current.

“Now what can this mean, I wonder? Some devil’s work here, without a doubt!” he said. “Let us ascertain.”

Together the pair carefully descended into the narrow tunnel that had been driven into the side of the hill, evidently by expert hands, for its roof had been shored up along the whole length with trees cut from the wood. Away along the narrow passage they groped, finding it so low that they were compelled to bend and creep forward in uncomfortable positions until they came to a sudden turn.

Whoever had constructed it had also succeeded – as was afterwards found – in cleverly disguising the great heap of earth excavated. He had also probably misread his bearings, for at one point the subterranean gallery went away at right angles for about fifty yards, until there – where the atmosphere was heavy and oppressive because of lack of ventilation – stood several petrol-tins. To one of them the end of the cable leading from the unsuspicious cow-shed had been attached.

As they stood staring at the petrol-tins a sudden roar slowly approaching sounded directly overhead – a heavy rumble of wheels. Then it died away again.

“Hark!” gasped Ella. “Isn’t that a train? Why, we are directly under the railway-line running through the tunnel.”

“Yes, dear. A touch upon that key up in the shed and we should be blown out of recognition, and the tunnel, one of the most important on the line of railway communication running east and west across England, would be blocked for months.”

“That is what those devils intend!” Ella declared. “How can we frustrate them?”

Seymour Kennedy reflected for a few seconds, holding his torch so that its rays fell upon those innocent-looking petrol-tins at the end of the cunningly contrived sap. Then he took up one of them and carrying it said:

“Let’s get back, dear. We know the truth now.”

“It is evident that they intend to blow in the tunnel from below,” declared Ella, as they crept back along the narrow gallery.

“Without a doubt,” was her lover’s reply. “Mr Horton, as he is known, took the house with but one object – namely, to cut the railway-line to the coast – the line over which so much war material for the front goes nightly. Truly, the Hun leaves nothing to chance.”

“And my father is actually assisting in this dastardly work?”

“I’m afraid he is, darling. But so long as we remain wary and watchful, I hope we may be able to combat the evil activities of these assassins.”

“I’m ready to help you always, as you know,” was the girl’s ready reply. “But it grieves me that father is so completely German in his actions.”

“It is but natural, Ella. He is a German. If he were English, and lived secretly in Germany, he would act as an Englishman. All enemy aliens should have been interned long ago.”

Ever and anon, on their way back to the opening, they both stumbled upon the wire, while Seymour, carrying the petrol-tin, evidently filled with some heavy explosive, followed his well-beloved, who held the torch.

At last they emerged from the close atmosphere of the long, tortuous gallery that had been secretly driven to a point exactly beneath the railway-line in the very heart of the hill, and once again stood upright in the shed. Their clothes were muddy, and their hands and faces were besmeared with mud.

At last Kennedy put down the square heavy tin, the cap of which he very carefully unscrewed, and then examined it by aid of his torch, smelling it critically.

Taking from his pocket a strong clasp-knife he went back into the tunnel again for about fifty yards. With a swift cut he severed the lead which led away to the concealed tins of explosive, and bringing it back with him to the shed, took the severed end, unravelled the silk insulation of both wires, bared them by scraping them thoroughly with his knife, and with expert hand attached them to a detonator which he had taken from the tins concealed at the end of the gallery.

Having done this he put the detonator into the opening of the petrol-tin which, with its wire lead, he afterwards carefully concealed behind a heap of straw in the corner. He had taken care to replace the cable leading from the cigar-box exactly as he had found it, therefore, to the eye, it looked as though nothing had been touched. The cable ran into the underground passage, it was true, but it returned back again into the cow-shed, and into the tin of high-explosive.

Kennedy, who knew something of mining, had noticed that half-way along the working a quantity of earth had been left for the purpose of tamping the gallery, in order that the force of the explosion should go upward, and not come back along the subterranean passage. Before the Kaiser’s secret agents exploded the mine they would, no doubt, fill up the gallery at that point before completing the electric circuit.

It was evident that on that night the four men had made a final inspection before exploding the mine.

Therefore, quite confident in what they had achieved, Ella and her lover crept back, and away through the wood to where they had left the car.

At six o’clock on the following morning, the Victoria Hotel in Sheffield being always open, Ella entered alone, and ascended to her room.

Next evening at half-past seven she met her lover again in the Ecclesall Road, and he drove her out in the car away through Eckington and Clowne, to the wood from which they had watched on the previous night.

The weather was muggy and overcast, with low, heavy clouds precursory of a thunderstorm.

There was plenty of time. The attempt would probably be made at half-past eleven when the munition train passed through, it being intended to explode the whole train as well as the mine in the heart of the tunnel, so as to produce a terrific upheaval by which the tunnel would be blocked for, perhaps, a mile.

Arrived at the edge of the wood, in sight of the lawn and house beyond, soon after ten o’clock, the lovers sat together upon a fallen tree conversing in whispers, and awaiting the result of the counterplot.

They were, however, in ignorance of what was transpiring within the house.

Truth to tell, Ortmann and Drost were at that moment in one of the servants’ bedrooms upstairs, which had been cleared out, and where, upon a long table, stood a complete wireless set both for receiving and transmission.

“That fellow Kennedy is here! – and with my girl Ella!” gasped old Drost, who had just come into the room. “I’ve been across to the wood. They’re actually here!”

“Kennedy here!” exclaimed Ortmann, his face pale in an instant. “How could he possibly know?”

“Well, he’s here! What shall we do?”

Ortmann stood for a few moments reflecting deeply.

Slowly an evil, sinister grin overspread his countenance.

“Your girl,” he said in German, in a deep voice. “She is your daughter. You wish to protect her – eh?”

“No, she’s English. We are Germans.”

“Excellent. I knew that you were a good Prussian. Then I may act – eh?”

“Entirely as you wish. We must get rid of these watch-dogs,” snarled the old man in a venomous voice.

Ortmann, without further word, descended the stairs and entered the dining-room wherein sat two men, Germans, naturalised as British subjects, by name Bohlen and Tragheim.

To the first-named he gave certain and definite instructions, these being at once carried out.

Kennedy and Ella, both, of course, quite unconscious that their presence had been discovered by the wily Drost, saw a tall man, a stranger, carrying a thick stick, cross the lawn to the gate which gave entrance to the wood, and watched how he remained there for about ten minutes, while presently there emerged a second figure, who crossed to the cow-shed wherein the electric tapping-key remained concealed.

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.