“Exactly, my dear friend,” laughed the supposed Dutch pastor, crossing the secret room in the roof of his house at Barnes.
It was afternoon, and the sunlight streaming through the skylight fell upon the place wherein the bomb-makers worked in secret. The room contained several deal tables whereon stood many bottles containing explosive compounds, glass retorts, test-tubes, and glass apothecaries’ scales, with all sorts of other apparatus used in the delicate work of manufacturing and mixing high-explosives.
“You see,” Drost went on to explain, as he indicated a large mortar of marble. “I have been treating phenol with nitric acid and have obtained the nitrate called trinitrophenol. I shall fill this case with it, and then we shall have an unsuspicious-looking weapon which will eventually prove most useful to us—for it can be carried in perfect safety, only it must not be laid down.”
Ortmann laughed. He saw that his friend’s inventive mind had produced an ingenious, if devilish, contrivance. He had placed death in that innocent-looking walking-stick—certain death to any person unconscious of the peril.
Indeed, as Ortmann watched, his friend carefully filled the cavity in the brass cylinder with the explosive substance, and placed within a very strong detonator which he connected with the clockwork, winding it to the full. He then rescrewed the cap upon the fatal cylinder, replacing it in the walking-stick and readjusting the knob, which closed so perfectly that only close inspection would reveal anything abnormal in the stick.
“The other stuff is there already, I suppose?”
“I took it down there the night before last in four petrol-tins.”
“The new stuff?”
“Yes. It is a picric acid derivative, and its relative force is twice as great as that of gun-cotton,” was the reply of the grey-haired man. He spoke with knowledge and authority, for had he not been one of the keenest explosive experts in the German arsenal at Spandau before he had assumed the rôle of the Dutch pastor in England?
“It will create some surprise there,” remarked Ortmann, with an evil grin upon his sardonic countenance. “Your girl knows nothing, I hope?”