Chapter Two.
The Great Tunnel Plot.
“There! Is it not a very neat little toy, my dear Ernst?” asked Theodore Drost, speaking in German, dressed in his usual funereal black of a Dutch pastor, as everyone believed him to be.
Ernst Ortmann, the man addressed, screwed up his eyes, a habit of his, and eagerly examined the heavy walking-stick which his friend had handed to him.
It was a thick bamboo-stump, dark-brown and well-polished, bearing a heavy iron ferrule.
The root-end, which formed the bulgy knob, the wily old German had unscrewed, revealing in a cavity a small cylinder of brass. This Ortmann took out and, in turn, unscrewed it, disclosing a curious arrangement of cog-wheels—a kind of clockwork within.
“You see that as long as the stick is carried upright the clock does not work,” Drost explained. “But,”—and taking it from his friend’s hand he held it in a horizontal position—“but as soon as it is laid upon the ground, the mechanical contrivance commences to work. See!”
And the man Ortmann—known as Horton since the outbreak of war—gazed upon it and saw the cog-wheels slowly revolving.
“By Jove!” he gasped. “Yes. Now I see. What a devilish invention it is! It can be put to so many uses!”