To the first-named he gave certain and definite instructions, these being at once carried out.
Kennedy and Ella, both, of course, quite unconscious that their presence had been discovered by the wily Drost, saw a tall man, a stranger, carrying a thick stick, cross the lawn to the gate which gave entrance to the wood, and watched how he remained there for about ten minutes, while presently there emerged a second figure, who crossed to the cow-shed wherein the electric tapping-key remained concealed.
Kennedy glanced at his wrist-watch.
The munition train was almost due to enter the tunnel, therefore the stranger Tragheim, one of Ortmann’s poor, miserable dupes, had been sent forward to depress the key as soon as he heard the second bell ring in the signal-box at the exit of the tunnel—all the signal bells being distinctly heard in the night from the door of the shed.
The ringing of that second bell would announce that the train was passing over the exact point in the line under which the mine had been laid.
The man Bohlen, seeing his companion come out, moved away from the gate across the lawn back to the house, whereupon Kennedy crept up to the spot where the German had been standing, and whence they could obtain a good view of the shed from which the dastardly attempt was to be made.
Beside the gate they found a walking-stick—a thick one made of bamboo.
“That fellow has forgotten his stick,” remarked Kennedy, taking it up, all unconscious of the peril.
From one of the darkened windows of the house Ortmann was watching his action, and chuckled.
Of a sudden, however, a fierce blood-red flash lit up the whole country-side, and with a deafening roar, the shed was hurled high into the air, together with the shattered remains of the man who had pressed the key.