Disappointment overspread the girl’s face, but a second later she declared:
“In that case I shall go and stay with father over at Barnes, and endeavour to discover what is intended.”
Therefore, that night, after her work at the theatre, she went to Theodore Drost’s house at Barnes, instead of returning to the flat at Kensington. As she always kept her room there and her visits seemed to delight old Drost, she was always able to keep in touch with Kennedy and so help to frustrate the evil machinations of her father.
As the days passed she became more than ever confident that another deep-laid plot was in progress. Nor was she mistaken, for, truth to tell, Ortmann was having many long interviews with his clever catspaw, the man who posed as the plain and pious pastor of the Dutch Church, old Theodore Drost.
An incident occurred about a week later which showed the trend of events. The old pastor called one day at that modest, dreary little house close by Wandsworth Common, where Count Ernst von Ortmann, the man who secretly directed the agents of Germany in England, lived as plain Mr Horton whenever he grew tired of his beautiful house in Park Lane. Leading, by the fact of his occupation a dual existence, it was necessary for his nefarious purposes that he should frequently disappear into South London, away from the fashionable friends who knew him as Mr Henry Harberton.
The pair were seated together that evening, smoking and discussing the cause of the failure of Rozelaar and the reason of his death by his own bomb.
“Ah! my dear Theodore,” exclaimed the Count, in German, throwing himself back in the old wicker armchair in that cheaply furnished room. “Your machine was too elaborate.”
“No, you are mistaken, it was simplicity itself,” Drost declared.
“Could anybody have tampered with it, do you think?”
“Certainly not. Nobody knew—nobody saw it except ourselves and Rozelaar,” Drost said.