The traveller in Birmingham jewellery remained silent for a few minutes.
“I suppose they have a mechanic there?”
“Yes—a Mr. Collins. He comes in sometimes with Mr. Sheppard, the butler. He was butler to the Colonel’s old father, you know.”
“And this Mr. Collins lives at the house, I suppose?”
“No. He sleeps in the place where the new aeroplane is kept.”
Mr. Bean smiled, but made no comment. Knowledge of that fact was, to him, important. He lit another pipe, and, while Miss Joyce went away to lay the table for his lunch in the adjoining room, he stretched his legs and thought deeply.
Hans Leffner, alias George Bean, was the son of a German who, forty years before, had emigrated from Hamburg to Boston. Born in America he was, nevertheless, a true son of the Fatherland. He had been educated in Germany, and returned to Boston about a year before war broke out.
Suddenly he had been called up for confidential service, and within a month had found himself despatched to London, the bearer of an American passport in the name of Henry Lane, commercial traveller, of St. Louis. Upon a dozen different secret matters he had been employed, until knowledge of the existence of “The Hornet” having reached the spy-bureau in Berlin, he received certain secret instructions which he was carrying out to the letter.
Hans Leffner had been taught at his mother’s knee to hate England, and he hated it with a most deadly hatred. He was a clever and daring spy, as his masquerade in the Royal Flying Corps uniform clearly proved; moreover, he was an aviation expert who had once held a post of under-director in “Uncle” Zeppelin’s aircraft factory.
For some weeks he had dogged the footsteps of Ronald and Beryl, and they, happy in each other’s affection, had been quite ignorant of how the wandering American had been unduly attracted towards them.