“Absolutely nothing. I have arranged to carry out our plans as soon as possible, to-morrow night, or the night after. Bohlen and Tragheim are both assisting.”
“Excellent! I congratulate you, my dear Drost, upon your clever contrivance. Truly, you are a good son of the Fatherland, and I will see that you receive your due and proper reward when our brave brothers have landed upon English soil.”
“You are the eyes and brains of Germany in England,” declared Drost to his friend. “I am only the servant. You are the organiser. Yours is the Mysterious Hand which controls, and controls so well, the thousands of our fellow-Teutons, all of whom are ready for their allotted task when the Day of Invasion comes.”
“I fear you flatter me,” laughed Mr Horton, whom none suspected to be anything else than a patriotic Englishman.
“I do not flatter you. I only admire your courage and ingenuity,” was the quiet reply.
And then the two alien enemies, standing in that long, low-ceilinged laboratory, containing as it did sufficient high-explosives to blow up the whole of Hammersmith and Barnes, bent over the long deal table upon which stood a long glass retort containing some bright yellow crystals that were cooling.
Theodore Drost, being one of Germany’s foremost scientists, had been sent to England before the war, just as a number of others had been sent, as an advance guard of the Kaiser’s Army which the German General Staff intended should eventually raid Great Britain. Truly, the foresight, patience, and thoroughness of the Hun had been astounding. The whole world’s history contained nothing equal to the amazing craft and cunning displayed by those who were responsible for Germany’s Secret Service—that service known to its agents under the designation of “Number Seventy, Berlin.”
It was fortunate that there was hardly a person in the whole of London who knew of the relationship between Stella Steele, the clever revue artiste, whose songs were the rage of all London and whose photographs were in all the shop-windows, and the venerable Dutch pastor. With his usual craft, Drost, knowing how thoroughly English was his daughter, had always posed to her as a great admirer of England and English ways. To judge by his protestations, he was a hater of the Kaiser and all his Satanic works.
If, however, Ella—to give Stella her baptismal name—could have looked into that long, low attic, which her father always kept so securely locked, she would have been struck by the evil gloating of both men.
Ortmann—whom she always held in suspicion—had conceived the plot a month ago—a foul and dastardly plot—and old Drost, as his paid catspaw, was about to put it into execution forthwith.