“Ah! I’ve got it!” he whispered excitedly. “The grenade can be carried in the pocket with perfect safety, until when required it is placed over the handle of the stick and whirled off. As it passes the projections on the stick the time-fuse is set for so many seconds, and the grenade automatically becomes a live one. A very pretty contrivance indeed!—very pretty!” he added with a grin. “This, I must admit, does considerable credit to Ortmann, Drost and Company.”
Ella, who had been standing by, holding the electric torch, stood in wonder at the discovery. Truly, some of her father’s inventions had been diabolical ones.
Kennedy saw that the ash-stick had been finished and was in working order. All was complete, indeed, save the filling of the deadly grenade, the attaching of the fuse, and the painting of the bright tin.
For fully five minutes the air-pilot stood in silence, deeply pondering.
Then, as a sudden idea occurred to him, he said quickly:
“I must take this stick, Ella. I’ll be back again by four o’clock, and will leave it just outside the front door. You take it in, and replace it exactly as we found it.”
He lost no time. In five minutes he had crept from that dark house of mystery and death, and, carrying the stick, returned across Hammersmith Bridge.
At ten minutes to four he was back again in Barnes and had left the suspicious-looking ash-stick against the front door, afterwards going to his rooms to snatch a few hours’ sleep.
Next day happened to be Sunday, but at noon on Monday Mr Merton Mansfield, one of the most active members of the Cabinet, as well as one of the most popular of Cabinet Ministers, presided at the unveiling of a number of captured German guns which had been drawn up in Hyde Park in order that the public might be afforded an opportunity of seeing the trophies of war in Flanders won by British pertinacity and pluck.
Accompanying Merton Mansfield, the people’s idol, the man in whom Great Britain trusted to see that all was well, and who was, at the same time, hated and feared by the Germans, were several other members of the Cabinet.