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 Chateau 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 Cafe Royal, in Regent Street, discussing a lobster
salad _tete-a-tete_.
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."
"But you really don't take it seriously, do you?" asked the well-known
air-pilot. "Surely it's only a mere suspicion."
"It is fortunate that I succeeded in obtaining for you an impression of
the key of the laboratory," was the girl's reply.
"Yes. It was. Your father never dreams that we know all that is in
progress there. It's a real good stunt of yours to keep in with him,
and stay at Barnes sometimes."
"Well, I've told you what I ascertained the night before last. Ortmann
was there with the others. There's a big _coup_ intended--a dastardly
blow, as I have explained."
And in the girl's eyes there showed a hard, serious expression, as she
drew a long breath. It was quite plain to her lover that she was full
of nervous apprehension, and that what she had related to him was a
fact.
Another deeply-laid plot was afoot, but one so subtle and so daring that
Kennedy, with his cheerful optimism and his high spirits, could not yet
fully realise its nature.
Ella had, an hour before, told him a very remarkable story.
At first, so extraordinary and improbable had it sounded, that he had
been inclined to pooh-pooh the whole affair, but now, amid the clatter
and bustle of that cosmopolitan restaurant, the same to-day as in the
mid-Victorian days, he began to realise that the impression left upon
his well-beloved, by the knowledge she had obtained, had been a
distinctly sinister one.
"Well, dearest," he said, again leaning across the little
_table-a-deux_, "I'll go into the matter at once if you wish it, and
we'll watch and wait."
"Yes, do, Seymour," exclaimed the girl anxiously. "I'll help you.
There is a deeply-laid plot in progress. Of that I'm quite certain--
more especially because Ortmann came to see dad yesterday morning and
went to see him again to-day."
"You overheard some of their conversation--eh?"
"I did," was her open response. "And for that reason I am so full of
fear."
At nine o'clock that same night, in accordance with an appointment, Ella
Drost stood upon the whitewashed kerb in Belgrave Square, at the corner
of West Halkin Street.
Darkness had already fallen. The London streets were gloomy because of
the lighting order, and hardly a light showed from any house in the
Square.
For fully ten minutes she waited until, at last, from out of Belgrave
Place, a car came slowly along, and pulled up at the spot where she
stood.
In a moment Ella had mounted beside her lover who, next second, moved
off in the direction of Knightsbridge.
"It's rather fortunate that we've met here, darling," were his first
words. "Since we were together this afternoon I have been followed
continuously. Had I called at Stamfordham Mansions, Ortmann would have
had his suspicions confirmed. But I've successfully eluded them, and
here we are."
"I know--I feel sure that Ortmann suspects us. Why does he live as Mr
Horton over at Wandsworth Common?"
"Because he is so infernally clever," laughed the air-pilot, in his
cheery, nonchalant way.
Neither of them knew, up to that moment, anything more of Mr Henry
Harberton, of Park Lane, save reading in the papers of his social
distinction. Neither Kennedy nor his charming well-beloved had dreamed
that Ortmann, alias Horton, patriotic Britannia-rule-the-Waves
Englishman, was identical with that meteoric planet in the social
firmament of London, Mr Henry Harberton, whose wealth was such that
even in war-time he could give two-guinea-a-head luncheons to his
friends at one or other of the half-dozen or so London restaurants which
cater for such clients.
Seymour Kennedy was driving the car swiftly, but Ella, nestling beside
him, took no heed of the direction in which they were travelling. The
night-wind blew cold and he, solicitous of her welfare, bent over and
with his left hand drew up the collar of her Burberry.
They were leaving London ere she became aware of it, travelling
westward, branching at Hounslow upon the old road to Bath, the road of
Dick Turpin's exploits in the good old days of cocked-hats,
powder-and-patches, and three-bottle men.
Passing through Slough, they crossed the river at Maidenhead and again
at Henley, keeping on the ever ascending high-road over the Chilterns,
to Nettlebed, until they ran rapidly down past Gould's Grove through
Benson, and past Shillingford where, a short distance beyond, he pulled
up and, opening a gate, placed the car in a meadow grey with mist.
Afterwards the pair, leaving the high-road, turned into a path which led
through the fields down to the river. Reaching it at a point not far
from Day's Lock, they halted.
Before them, between the pathway and the river's brink, there showed a
lighted window obscured by a yellow holland blind, the window of a
corrugated iron bungalow of some river enthusiast, the room being
apparently lit by a paraffin lamp.
Carefully, and treading upon tiptoe, they crept forward without a sound,
and, approaching the square, inartistic window, halted and strained
their ears to listen to the conversation in progress within.
Words in German were being spoken. Ella listened, and recognised her
father's voice. Ortmann was speaking, too, while other voices of
strangers also sounded.
What Seymour overheard through the thin wood-and-iron wall of the
riverside bungalow quickly convinced him that Ella's suspicions were
only too well founded. A desperate conspiracy to commit outrage was
certainly being formed--a plot as daring and as subtle as any ever
formed by the Nihilists in Russia, or the Mafia in Italy.
The Germans, _par excellence_ the scientists of Europe, were out to win
the war by frightfulness, just as thousands of years ago the Chinese won
their wars by assuming horrible disguises and pulling ugly faces to
bring bad luck upon their superstitious enemies. The Great War Lord of
Germany, in order to save his throne and substantiate his title of
All-Highest, had set loose his sorry dogs of depravity, degeneracy, and
desolation. And he had planted in our island a clever and unscrupulous
crew, headed by Ortmann, whose mission was, if possible, to wreck the
Ship of State of Great Britain.
The air-pilot listened to the conversation in amazement. He realised
then how Ella had exercised a shrewder watchfulness than he had ever
done, although he had believed himself so clever.
Therefore, when she whispered, "Let's get away, dear, or we may be
discovered," he obeyed her, and crawled off over the strip of gravel to
the grass, after which both made their way back to the footpath.
"Well?" asked the popular actress, as they strode along hand in hand to
where they had left the car. "What's your opinion now--eh? Haven't you
been convinced?"
"Yes, darling. I can now see quite plainly that there is a plot on foot
which, if we are patriots, you and I, we must scotch, at all hazards."
"I agree entirely, Seymour," was the girl's instant reply. "I tried to
warn you a month ago, but you were not convinced. To-day you are
convinced--are you not? I am acting only for my dear dead mother's
country, for, strictly speaking, being the daughter of a German, I am an
alien enemy."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
About two o'clock one morning, about a week later, the dark figure of a
man in a shabby serge suit and golf-cap, treading noiselessly in
rubber-shoes, crossed Hammersmith Bridge in the direction of Barnes and,
passing along that wide open thoroughfare, paused for a moment outside
the house of the Dutch pastor, Mr Drost. Then, finding himself
unobserved, he slipped into the front garden and, bending, concealed
himself in some bushes.
He had waited there for ten minutes or so, watching the dark, silent
house, when, slowly and noiselessly, the front door opened, and next
moment Kennedy and Ella were face to face. The latter wore a pretty
pale-blue dressing-gown, for she had just risen from bed, she having
spent the last two days at her father's house.
With a warning finger upon her lips, and with a small flash-lamp in her
hand, she led her lover up three flights of stairs to the door of that
locked room, which she silently opened with her duplicate key.
"Father and the man Hans Rozelaar have been at work here nearly all
day," she whispered, when at last they halted before the long deal table
upon which stood Drost's chemical apparatus.
Kennedy's shrewd eyes were quick to notice what was in progress in
secret.
With some curiosity he took up a tube of tin about a foot long and four
inches in diameter. On examining it he saw that through the centre was
a second tin tube of about an inch in diameter. Holding it as a
telescope towards the light he could see through the inner tubes and
noticed that near one end of it a small steel catch was protruding.
Further and minute examination revealed that to the catch could be
attached a time-fuse already concealed between the inner and outer
tubes.
"This is evidently some ingenious form of hand grenade," whispered
Kennedy. "It's all ready for filling. But why, I wonder, should a tube
run through the middle in this way?"
He was pondering with it in his hand, when his gaze suddenly fell upon
something else which was lying close to the spot where he found the tin
tube.
It was a thin ash walking-stick. On Kennedy taking it up it presented a
peculiar feature, for as he grasped it there sounded a sharp metallic
click. Then, to his surprise, he discovered that he had inadvertently
released a spring in the handle, this in turn releasing four small steel
points half-way down the stick.
"Curious!" he whispered to his well-beloved, for Drost was sleeping
below entirely unconscious of the intruders in his secret laboratory.
"What connection can the stick have with the grenade--if not for the
purpose of throwing?"
He therefore placed the inner tube over the little knob of the stick,
and found that it just fitted, so that with plenty of play it slid down
as far as the projecting points which, after striking the little steel
catch which would be connected with the fuse, allowed it to pass over
freely and leave the stick.
"Ah! I've got it!" he whispered excitedly. "The grenade can be carried
in the pocket with perfect safety, until when required it is placed over
the handle of the stick and whirled off. As it passes the projections
on the stick the time-fuse is set for so many seconds, and the grenade
automatically becomes a live one. A very pretty contrivance indeed!--
very pretty!" he added with a grin. "This, I must admit, does
considerable credit to Ortmann, Drost and Company."
Ella, who had been standing by, holding the electric torch, stood in
wonder at the discovery. Truly, some of her father's inventions had
been diabolical ones.
Kennedy saw that the ash-stick had been finished and was in working
order. All was complete, indeed, save the filling of the deadly
grenade, the attaching of the fuse, and the painting of the bright tin.
For fully five minutes the air-pilot stood in silence, deeply pondering.
Then, as a sudden idea occurred to him, he said quickly:
"I must take this stick, Ella. I'll be back again by four o'clock, and
will leave it just outside the front door. You take it in, and replace
it exactly as we found it."
He lost no time. In five minutes he had crept from that dark house of
mystery and death, and, carrying the stick, returned across Hammersmith
Bridge.
At ten minutes to four he was back again in Barnes and had left the
suspicious-looking ash-stick against the front door, afterwards going to
his rooms to snatch a few hours' sleep.
Next day happened to be Sunday, but at noon on Monday Mr Merton
Mansfield, one of the most active members of the Cabinet, as well as one
of the most popular of Cabinet Ministers, presided at the unveiling of a
number of captured German guns which had been drawn up in Hyde Park in
order that the public might be afforded an opportunity of seeing the
trophies of war in Flanders won by British pertinacity and pluck.
Accompanying Merton Mansfield, the people's idol, the man in whom Great
Britain trusted to see that all was well, and who was, at the same time,
hated and feared by the Germans, were several other members of the
Cabinet.
The crowd outside the wire fence, within which stood the shrouded guns,
was a large one, for some patriotic speeches were expected. Ella and
Kennedy were among the spectators eagerly watching the movements of a
thin-faced, well-dressed, middle-aged man, who wore an overcoat, in the
left-hand pocket of which was something rather bulky, and who carried in
his hand an ash-stick.
The man's name was Hans Rozelaar, known to his friends by the English
name of Rose. By the fellow's movements it was plain that he was quite
unsuspicious of the presence of the daughter of his fellow-conspirator,
Theodore Drost.
Gradually he had worked himself through the crowd until he stood in the
front row behind the wire which fenced off the guns with the Cabinet
Ministers and their friends, and within ten yards or so of where stood
Mr Merton Mansfield.
Kennedy was beside Ella some distance away, watching breathlessly. It
had been his first impulse to go to Scotland Yard and reveal what they
had discovered, but after due consideration he saw that the best
punishment for the conspirators was the one he had devised.
But if it failed? What if that most deadly grenade was exploded in the
group of Great Britain's leaders--the men who were working night and
day, and working with all their might and intelligence, to crush the Hun
effectively, even though so slowly.
A roar of applause rose from the crowd as Merton Mansfield removed his
hat preparatory to speaking. The short, stout, round-faced Cabinet
Minister who, in the days of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman's Premiership,
had been so unpopular with the working-class, yet who had now come to
the forefront as the saviour of our dear old England, smiled with
pleasure at his hearty reception.
The little group of England's greatest men, Cabinet Ministers and
well-known politicians, with a sprinkling of men in khaki, clustered
round him, as he commenced to address the assembly, to descant upon the
heroic efforts of "French's contemptible little Army," of their great
exploits, of their amazing achievements, and the staggering organisation
of Lord Kitchener.
"Here, before you, you have some small souvenirs--some small idea of the
weapons which the unscrupulous fiends who are our enemies are using
against our gallant troops. They, unfortunately, are not gallant
soldiers, these Huns in modern clothing--they are pirates with the skull
and crossbones borne upon the helmets of their crack regiments. Yet we
shall win--I tell you that we shall win, be the time long or short, be
the sacrifice great or small--we shall win because Right, Truth, and
God's justice are with us! And I will here give you a message from the
Prime Minister--who would have been here, if it were not for the fact
that he is at this moment having audience of His Majesty the King."
A great roar of applause greeted this announcement, when, suddenly, a
loud explosion sounded, startling everyone and causing women to scream.
The lovers, who had kept their eyes upon the man in the overcoat, saw a
red flash, and saw him reel and fall to earth with his face blown away.
They had seen how he had placed the grenade over his ash-stick, and how,
a second later, he had sharply slung it across from right to left,
intending the deadly bomb to land at Mr Merton Mansfield's feet.
Instead, with its fuse set by the little points of steel protruding from
the stick, it had, nevertheless, failed to pass from the stick, because
of the small piece of thin wire which Seymour Kennedy had driven through
just above the ferrule, on that night when he had afterwards left the
stick at old Drost's front door. His quick intelligence had shown him
that the empty grenade had already been tried upon the stick, and that
when filled, and the fuse attached, it certainly would not be tested
again.
Hans Rozelaar had slung the grenade just as old Theodore Drost had
instructed him, but it had remained fast at the end of the stick, and
ere he could release it, it had exploded, blowing both his hands off and
his features out of all recognition, though, very fortunately, injuring
no one else.
"Come, darling. We have surely seen enough!" whispered Seymour Kennedy
softly to Ella, as they watched the great sensation caused by the
self-destruction of the conspirator, and the hurry of the police towards
the dead man. "The Ministers will very soon discover for themselves how
narrowly they have escaped."
And as they both turned away, Ella, looking fondly into her lover's
face, remarked in a low voice: "Yes, indeed, Seymour. They certainly
owe their safety to you!"