"No. He has been away somewhere in Holland--conferring with the German Secret Service, without a doubt. I heard father say yesterday, however, that he had returned to Park Lane."
"Returned, in order to distribute more German money, I suppose?"
"Probably. He must have spent many hundreds of thousands of pounds in the German cause both before the war and after it," replied the girl.
The pair stood in the laboratory for some time examining some of the apparatus which old Drost, now sleeping below, had during that day been using for the manufacture of the explosive contained in those innocent-looking oil-cans.
Kennedy realised, by the delicacy of the apparatus, how well versed the grey-haired old Prussian was in explosives, and on again examining the attache-cases with their mechanical contents, saw the cleverness with which the plot, whatever its object, had been conceived.
What was intended? There was no doubt a conspiracy afoot to destroy some public building, or perhaps an important bridge or railway junction.
This he pointed out to Ella, who, in reply, said:
"Yes. I shall remain here and watch. I shall close up my flat, and send my maid on a holiday, so as to have excuse to remain here at home."
"Right-ho! darling. You can always get at me on the telephone. You remain here and watch at this end, while I will keep an eye on Ortmann-- at least, as far as my flying duties will allow me."
Thus it was arranged, and the pair, treading noiselessly, closed the door and, relocking it, crept softly down the stairs. In the dark hall Seymour took his well-beloved in his strong arms and there held her, kissing her pa.s.sionately upon the brow. Then he whispered:
"Good-night, my darling. Be careful that you are not detected watching."
A moment later he had slipped out of the door and was gone.
Hardly had the door closed when Ella was startled by a movement on the landing at the head of the stairs--a sound like a footstep. There was a loose board there, and it had creaked! Some one was moving.
"Who"s there?" she asked in apprehension.
There was no reply.
"Some one is up there," she cried. "Who is it?"
Yet again there was no response.
In the house there was the old servant and her father. Much puzzled at the noise, which she had heard quite distinctly, she crept back up the dark stairs and, finding no one, softly entered her father"s room, to discover him asleep and breathing heavily. Then she ascended to the servant"s room, but old Mrs Pennington was asleep.
When she regained her own cosy room, which was, as always, in readiness for her, even though she now usually lived in the flat in Stamfordham Mansions, over in Kensington, she stood before the long mirror and realised how pale she was.
That movement in the darkness had unnerved her. Some person had most certainly trodden upon that loose board, which she and her lover had been so careful to avoid.
"I wonder!" she whispered to herself. "Can there have been somebody watching us?"
If that were so, then her father and the chief of spies, the man Ortmann, would be on their guard. So, in order to satisfy herself, she took her electric torch and made a complete examination of the house, until she came to the small back sitting-room on the ground floor.
There she found the blind drawn up and the window open.
The discovery startled her. The person, whoever it could have been, must have slipped past her in the darkness and, descending the stairs, escaped by the way that entrance had been gained.
Was it a burglar? Was it some one desirous of knowing the secrets of that upstairs laboratory? Or was it some person set to watch her movements?
She switched on the electric light, which revealed that the room was a small one, with well-filled bookshelves and a roll-top writing-table set against the open window.
Upon the carpet something glistened, and, stooping, she picked it up.
It was a woman"s curb chain-bracelet, the thin safety-chain of which was broken.
Could the intruder have been a woman? Had the bracelet fallen from her wrist in her hurried flight? Or had it fallen from the pocket of a burglar who had secured it with some booty from a house in the vicinity?
Ella looked out into the small garden, but the intruder had vanished.
Therefore she closed the window, to find that the catch had been broken by the mysterious visitor, and then returned again to her room, where she once more examined the bracelet beneath the light.
"It may give us some clue," she remarked to herself. "Yet it is of very ordinary pattern, and bears no mark of identification."
Next day, without telling her father of her midnight discovery, she met Seymour Kennedy by appointment at the theatre, showed him what she had found, and related the whole story.
"Strange!" he exclaimed. "Extraordinary! It must have been a burglar!"
"Or a woman?"
"But why should a woman break into your house?"
"In order to watch me. Perhaps Ortmann or my father may have suspicions," replied the actress, arranging her hair before the big mirror.
"I hope not, Ella. They are both the most daring and the most unscrupulous men in London."
"And it is for us to outwit them in secret, dear," she replied, turning to him with a smile of sweet affection.
In the days that followed, the mystery of the intruder became further increased by Ella making another discovery. In the garden, upon a thorn-bush against the wall, Mrs Pennington found a large piece of cream silk which had apparently formed part of the sleeve of a woman"s blouse. She brought it to Ella, saying:
"I"ve found this in the garden, miss. It looks as if some lady got entangled in the bush, and left part of "er blouse behind--don"t it? I wonder who"s been in our garden?"
Ella took it and, expressing little surprise, suggested that it might have been blown into the bush by the wind.
It, however, at once confirmed her suspicion that the midnight visitor had been a woman.
While Ella sang and danced nightly at the theatre, and afterwards drove home to Castelnau, to that house where upstairs was stored all that high-explosive, Seymour Kennedy maintained a watchful vigilance upon Ernst von Ortmann, the chief of enemy spies, and kept that unceasing watch over him, not only at the house at Wandsworth, but also at the magnificent mansion in Park Lane.
To von Ortmann"s frequent dinner-parties in the West End came the crafty and grave-faced old Drost, who there met other men of mysterious antecedents, adventurers who posed as Swiss, American, or Dutch, for that house was the headquarters of enemy activity in Great Britain, and from it extended many extraordinary and unexpected ramifications.
That some great and desperate outrage was intended in the near future Kennedy was confident, as all the apparatus was ready. But of Drost"s intentions he could discover nothing, neither could Ella.
One cold night, while loitering in the darkness beside the railings of the Park, Kennedy saw Ortmann emerge from the big portico of his house and walk to Hyde Park Corner, where he hailed a taxi and drove down Grosvenor Gardens. Within a few moments Kennedy was in another taxi closely following.
They crossed Westminster Bridge and turned to the right, in the direction of Vauxhall. Then, on arriving at Clapham Junction station, Kennedy, discerning Ortmann"s destination to be the house in Park Road, Wandsworth Common, where at times he lived as the humble Mr Horton, the retired tradesman, he dismissed his taxi and walked the remainder of the distance.
When he arrived before the house, he saw a light in Horton"s room, and hardly had he halted opposite ere the figure of a man in a black overcoat and soft felt hat came along and ascended the steps to the door.
It was the so-called Dutch pastor, Theodore Drost.
The latter had not been admitted more than five minutes when another visitor, a short, thick-set bearded man, having the appearance of a workman, probably an engineer, pa.s.sed by, hesitated, looked at the house inquiringly, and then went up the steps and rang the bell.
He also quickly gained admission, and therefore it seemed plain that a conference was being held there that night.