Having made a thorough search, they replaced things exactly as they had found them, and then Kennedy crept forth again into the broad thoroughfare called Castelnau.
"Those devils mean mischief again!" he muttered to himself as he hurried across Hammersmith Bridge. "That explosive needle is, I can quite see, a most diabolical invention. Drost surely has the inventive brains of Satan himself!"
At that same hour the young man Schrieber was seated with Ortmann in Park Lane, listening to certain instructions, until at last he rose to go.
"And, remember--trust in n.o.body!" Ortmann urged. "If you perform this service successfully, our Fatherland will owe you a very deep debt of grat.i.tude--one which I will personally see shall not be forgotten."
At midday on Thursday Kennedy and Ella left St Pancras station for G--, arriving there three hours later, and taking rooms at the Central Hotel.
As soon as Ella entered hers, she was astonished to see upon the mantelshelf a pair of the same blue-and-white vases as those her father had asked her to match!
When, ten minutes later, she rejoined Kennedy in the lounge, she told him of her discovery.
"Yes," was his reply. "They are the same in all the rooms--one of the fads of the proprietor. But," he added, "you must not be seen here. We don"t know who is coming from London by the next train."
For that reason Ella retired to her room and did not leave it for some hours, not indeed till her lover came to tell her that all was clear.
By that time Mr Merton Mansfield had arrived, eaten a frugal dinner, and had gone to the meeting.
"That young man Schrieber has arrived also," Kennedy told her. "He"s never seen me, so he suspects nothing. He has also gone to the meeting, therefore we can go down and have something to eat."
That night at eleven o"clock Mr Merton Mansfield returned, was cheered loudly by a huge crowd gathered outside the hotel, and waited below chatting for nearly half-an-hour before he retired to his room.
The room was numbered 146--the best room of a suite on the first floor-- and to this room the young German, the catspaw of Ortmann, had gone about a quarter past eleven, gaining admission through the private sitting-room next door.
On entering he, quick as lightning, took down one of the vases from the mantelshelf and replaced it by another exactly similar which he drew from beneath the light coat thrown over his arm. Then, carrying the vase with him concealed by his coat, he slipped quickly out again un.o.bserved, not, however, before he had poured into the other vase some bird-sand so as to make them both of equal weight when the maid came to dust them on the morrow. The conspirators left nothing to chance.
In that innocent-looking vase he had brought was one of the most diabolical contrivances ever invented by man"s brain. To the explosive needle the tiny clock had been attached and set to strike at half-past two, an hour when the whole hotel would be wrapped in slumber. The effect of striking would be to explode the needle and thus break a thin gla.s.s tube of a certain liquid and set over a piece of sponge saturated by a second liquid. The mixing of the two liquids would produce that terribly deadly poison-gas which, escaping through the perforation, must cause almost instant death to any person sleeping in the room.
Truly, it was a most diabolical death-trap.
Ten minutes later Mr Merton Mansfield, quite unsuspicious, entered the room and retired to bed, an example followed by the a.s.sa.s.sin Schrieber, who had a room on the same corridor a little distance away.
At nine o"clock next morning Seymour Kennedy, bright and spruce in his uniform, descended to the hall and inquired of the head-porter if Mr Merton Mansfield had left.
"Mr Mansfield is an early bird, sir. He went away to London by the 6:47 train."
The air-pilot turned upon his heel with a sigh of relief.
Two hours later, however, while seated in the lounge with Ella, prior to returning to London, Kennedy noticed that there was much whispering among the staff. Of the porter he inquired the reason.
"Well, sir," the man replied, "it seems that a maid on the first floor, on going into one of the rooms this morning, found a visitor dead in bed--Mr Sommer, a Swiss gentleman who arrived last night. The place smells strongly of cloves, and the poor girl has also been taken very ill, for the fumes in the place nearly asphyxiated her."
Seymour again returned to Ella and told her what had occurred.
"But how did you manage it?" she asked in a low whisper.
"Well, after watching Schrieber put the vase in the room, I entered after him and replaced it by the vase you had bought, afterwards taking the one with the explosive needle to Schrieber"s room and carrying away the superfluous one. The man must have glanced at the pair of vases on his mantelshelf before sleeping, but he, of course, never dreamed that he was gazing upon the infernal contrivance that he had placed in the Minister"s room with his own hand."
"I see," exclaimed Ella. "And, surely, he richly deserved his fate!"
The deadly contrivance was found when the room was searched, but the police of G--still regard the affair as a complete and inexplicable mystery.
CHAPTER FIVE.
THE BRa.s.s TRIANGLE.
A bank of dense fog hung over the Thames early on that December morning.
The bell of St Paul"s Church, at Hammersmith, had struck two o"clock when across the long suspension-bridge a tall man in a black waterproof coat and black plush hat walked with a swing, smoking a cigarette, and pa.s.sed hurriedly out into the straight broad thoroughfare of Castelnau.
For some distance he proceeded, then suddenly he slackened pace, glanced at the luminous watch upon his wrist, and, a few moments later, halted against some railings, and, looking across the road, waited patiently opposite the house occupied by the pious Dutch pastor, the Reverend Theodore Drost.
The house was in darkness, and there was not a sound in the street save the barking of a dog at the rear of a house in the vicinity.
In patience, Flight-Commander Kennedy, for it was he, waited watchfully.
He remained for a full quarter of an hour, ever and anon glancing at his watch, until, of a sudden, the front door opposite was opened noiselessly, and he saw the gleam of a flash-lamp.
In a moment he had crossed the road and, ascending the steps, met his well-beloved. As he met her, he thought how strange it all seemed, what a romance it was. Here was this charming girl, whom the world only knew as a celebrated revue artiste, helping him to frustrate the criminal plans of her German father.
Ella, standing at the door, whispered:
"Hush!"
And without a word Seymour Kennedy, treading tiptoe, slipped within.
The house was familiar to him. He grasped the soft white hand of his well-beloved and, raising it to his lips, kissed it in homage. She was wearing a dainty purple and yellow kimono, her little feet thrust into red morocco Turkish slippers, which were noiseless, and, as she ascended the thickly-carpeted stairs, he followed her without uttering a word.
Up they went, to the top floor. The door which faced them at the head of the stairs she unlocked with a key, and after they were both inside she closed the door and then switched on the light.
The big chemical laboratory, which her father had established in secret in that long attic, presented the same scene as it had when he had visited it before at the invitation of his well-beloved. With such constant demands upon his inventive powers, it was necessary that the Prussian ex-professor should have the place fitted up with all the latest scientific appliances.
"Well, Seymour!" the girl exclaimed at last. "Here you are! What do you think of these?" And, crossing to a side table, she indicated two well-worn attache-cases in brown leather, each about sixteen inches by eight, and three inches deep.
One of them she opened, revealing a curious mechanism within, part of which was the movement of a cheap American clock. Her tall, good-looking companion, who was a skilled mechanic, examined both these innocent-looking little cases with keen interest, and then exclaimed:
"Ah! I quite understand now! These are no doubt to be used in conjunction with explosives. They run for half an hour only, and then electrical contact is made into the explosive compound."
"Exactly. See there, that row of tins of lubricating-oil. They are already filled with the high-explosive and in readiness."
Kennedy bent and then saw, ranged below a bench on the opposite side of the laboratory, six tins of a certain well-known thick lubricating-oil used by motorists.
"There is sufficient there, dear, to blow up the whole of Barnes," she declared. "Evidently this latest outrage is intended to be a serious one."
"Ah!" sighed Kennedy. "It is a thousand pities, Ella, that your father is doing all this dastardly secret work for the enemy. Happily you, though his daughter, are taking measures to thwart his plans."
"I am doing only what is my duty, dear," replied the girl in the kimono; "and with your aid I hope to upset this latest plot of Ortmann and his friends."
"Have you seen Ortmann lately?" her lover asked.