For the next four days I heard nothing until suddenly, at eight o'clock one morning, Ray entered my bedroom before I was up.
"I've found out one thing about those Johnnies!" he exclaimed. "They've been buying, in Clerkenwell, a whole lot of electrical appliances—coils of wire, insulators, and batteries. Some of it has been sent direct to the place they've taken here, and the rest has been sent to their house down in Sydenham."
"What can they want that for?" I queried.
"Don't know, my dear chap. Let's wait and see."
"Perhaps, after all, they are about to set up in business," I said. "Neither of them has struck me as being spies. Save that they've visited Hartmann once or twice, their movements have not been very suspicious. Many foreigners are setting up factories in England, owing to the recent change in our patent laws."
"I know," said my friend. "Yet their confidential negotiations with Hartmann have aroused my suspicions, and I feel confident we shall discover something interesting before long. They came back by the same train as I travelled."
After breakfast, we both strolled round to the factory. The ground it covered was not much, and it was surrounded by a wall about twelve feet high, so that no one could see within the courtyard. It had, at one time, been a lead-mill, but for the past eight years had, we learned, been untenanted.
Even as we loitered near, we saw the builder's men bringing long ladders for the inspection of the chimney.
We watched for a whole week, but as each day passed, I became more confident that we were upon a false scent.
The chimney had been inspected, the ladders taken down again, and once more the German and the Belgian had returned south to that pleasant London suburb.