On that same evening, while Kennedy and Ella were having a light dinner together at the Piccadilly Grill before she went to the theatre, the elusive Ortmann called upon old Theodore Drost at the dark house at Castelnau, on the Surrey side of Hammersmith Bridge. He came in a taxi, and accompanying him was a grey-haired, tall, and rather lean man, who carried a heavy deal box with leather handle.
Drost welcomed them, and all three ascended at once to that long attic, the secret workshop of the maker of bombs. The man who posed as a pious Dutch missionary switched on the light, disclosing upon the table a number of small globes of thin gla.s.s which, at first, looked like electric light bulbs. They, however, had no metal base, the gla.s.s being narrowed at the end into a small open tube. Thus the air had not been exhausted.
"This is our friend, Doctor Meins," exclaimed Ortmann, introducing his companion, who, a few minutes later, unlocked the box and brought out a large bra.s.s microscope of the latest pattern, which he screwed together and set up at the further end of the table.
Meanwhile from another table at the end of the long apartment old Drost, with a smile of satisfaction upon his face, carried over very carefully a wooden stand in which stood a number of small sealed gla.s.s tubes, most of which contained what looked like colourless gelatine.
"We want to be quite certain that the cultures are sufficiently virulent," remarked Ortmann. "That is why I have brought Professor Meins, who, as you know, is one of our most prominent bacteriologists, though he is, of course, naturalised as a good Englishman, and is in general practice in Hampstead under an English name."
The German professor, smiling, took up one of the hermetically sealed tubes, broke it, and from it quickly prepared a gla.s.s microscope-slide, not, however, before all three had put on rubber gloves and a.s.sumed what looked very much like gas-helmets, giving the three conspirators a most weird appearance. Then, while the Professor was engaged in focussing his microscope, Drost, his voice suddenly m.u.f.fled behind the goggle-eyed mask, exhibited to Ortmann one of the gla.s.s bombs already prepared for use.
It was about the size of a fifty-candle-power electric bulb, and its tube having been closed by melting the gla.s.s, it appeared filled with a pale-yellow vapour.
"That dropped anywhere in a town would infect an enormous area," Drost explained. "The gla.s.s is so thin that it would pulverise by the small and almost noiseless force with which it would explode."
"It could be dropped by hand--eh?" asked Ortmann. "And n.o.body would be the wiser."
"No, if dropped by hand it would, no doubt, infect the person who dropped it. The best way will be to drop it from a car."
"At night?"
"No. In daylight--in a crowded street. It would then be more efficacious--death resulting within five days to everyone infected."
"Terrible!" exclaimed the Kaiser"s secret agent--the man of treble personality.
"Yes. But it is according to instructions. See here!" and he took up what appeared to be a small bag of indiarubber--like a child"s air-ball that had been deflated. "This acts exactly the same when filled, only the case is soluble. One minute after touching water or, indeed, any liquid, it dissolves, and thus releases the germs!"
"_Gott_!" gasped Ortmann. "You are, indeed, a dealer in bottled death, my dear Theodore. Truly, you"ve been inventing some appalling things for our dear friends here--eh?"
The man with the scraggy beard, who was a skilled German scientist, though he posed as a Dutch pastor, smiled evilly, while at that moment the man Meins, who had his eye upon the microscope, beckoned both of them forward to look.
Ortmann obeyed, and placing his eye upon the tiny lens, saw in the brightly reflected light colonies of the most deadly bacilli yet discovered by German science--the germs of a certain hitherto unknown disease, against which there was no known remedy. The fifth day after infection of the human system death inevitably resulted.
"All quite healthy!" declared the great bacteriologist from behind his mask. "What would our friends think if they knew the means by which they came into this country--eh?"
Drost laughed, and, crossing to a cupboard, took out a fine Ribston-pippin apple. This he cut through with his pen-knife, revealing inside, where the core had been removed, one of the tiny tubes secreted.
"They came like this from our friends in a certain neutral country," he laughed.
From tube after tube Meins took and examined specimens, finding all the cultures virulent except one, which he placed aside.
Then, turning to Drost, he gave his opinion that their condition was excellent.
"But be careful--most scrupulously careful of yourself, and of whoever lives here with you--your family and servants. The bacteria are so easily carried in the air, now that we have opened the tubes."
"Never fear," replied the m.u.f.fled voice of Ella"s father. "I shall be extremely careful. But what is your opinion regarding this?" he added, showing the professor one of the tiny bags of the soluble substance.
Meins examined it closely. Obtaining permission, he cut out a tiny piece with scissors and placed it beneath his powerful microscope.
Presently he p.r.o.nounced it excellent.
"I see that it is impervious. If it is soluble, as you say, then you certainly need have no fear of failure," he said, with a benign smile.
Then he set to work to reseal the tubes he had opened, while Drost, with a kind of syringe, sprayed the room with some powerful germ-destroyer.
Ten minutes later the pair had descended the stairs, while old Drost had switched off the light and locked the door of the secret laboratory wherein reposed the germs of a terrible disease known only to the enemies of Great Britain--a fatal malady which Germany intended to sow broadcast over the length and breadth of our land.
For an hour they all three sat discussing the diabolical plot which would disseminate death over a great area of the United Kingdom, for Germany had many friends prepared to sacrifice their own lives for the Fatherland, and it was intended that those gla.s.s and rubber bombs should be dropped in all quarters to produce an epidemic of disease such as the world had never before experienced.
Old Theodore Drost, installed in his comfortable dining-room again, opened a long bottle of Berncastler "Doctor"--a genuine bottle, be it said, for few who have sipped the "Doctor" wine of late have taken the genuine wine, so many fabrications did Germany make for us before the war.
"But I warn you to be excessively careful," the professor said to Drost.
"Your daughter comes here sometimes, does she not? Do be careful of her. Place powerful disinfectants here--all over the house--in every room," he urged; "although I have plugged the tubes with cotton wool properly treated to prevent the escape of the infection into the air, yet one never knows."
"Ella is not often here," her father replied. "She is still playing in `Half a Moment!"; besides, she is rehearsing a new revue. So she, happily, has no time to come and see me."
"But, for your own safety, and your servant"s, do be careful," Meins urged. "To tell you the honest truth, I almost fear to remove my mask-- even now."
"But there"s surely no danger down here?" asked Drost eagerly.
"There is always danger with such a terribly infectious malady. It is fifty times more fatal than double pneumonia. It attacks the lungs so rapidly that no remedy has any chance. Professor Steinwitz, of Stettin, discovered it."
"And is there no remedy?"
"None whatsoever. Its course is rapid--a poisoning of the whole pulmonary system, and it"s even more contagious than small-pox."
Then they removed their masks and drank to "The Day" in their German wine.
Six nights later Stella Steele had feigned illness--a strain while on her motor-cycle, and her understudy was taking her part in "Half a Moment!" much to the disappointment of the men in khaki, who had seated themselves in the stalls to applaud her. Among the men on leave many had had her portrait upon a postcard--together with a programme in three-colour print--in their dug-outs in Flanders, for Stella Steele was "the rage" in the Army, and among the subalterns any who had ever met her, or who had "known her people," were at once objects of interest.
In the darkness on a road with trees on either side--the road which runs from Tonbridge to Shipborne, and pa.s.ses between Deene Park and Frith Wood--stood Kennedy and Ella. They had ridden down from London earlier in the evening and placed their motorcycles inside a gate which led into the forest on the left side of the road.
They waited in silence, their ears strained, but neither uttered a word.
Kennedy had showed his well-beloved the time. It was half-past one in the morning.
Of a sudden, a motor-car came up the hill, a closed car, which pa.s.sed them swiftly, and then, about a quarter-of-a-mile further on, came to a halt. Presently they heard footsteps in the darkness and in their direction there walked three men. The moon was shining fitfully through the clouds, therefore they were just able to distinguish them. The trio were whispering, and two of them were carrying good-sized kit-bags.
They came to the gate where, inside, Ella and Kennedy had hidden their cycles, and there halted.
That they were smoking Kennedy and his companion knew by the slight odour of tobacco that reached them. For a full quarter-of-an-hour they remained there, chatting in low whispers.
"I wonder who they are?" asked Ella, bending to her lover"s ear.
"Who knows?" replied the air-pilot. "At any rate, we"ll have a good view from here. You were not mistaken as to the spot?"
"No. I heard it discussed last night," was the girl"s reply.
Then, a moment later, there was a low sound of wheels and horses" hoofs climbing the hill from the open common into that stretch of road darkened by the overhanging trees. Ella peered forth and saw a dim oil lamp approaching, while the jingling of the harness sounded plain as the horses strained at their traces.