“This place smells of cloves—doesn’t it?” whispered Seymour.
“Yes, darling. I’ve smelt the same smell for some days. Father said he had upset a bottle of oil of cloves.”
“This is certainly a most curious apparatus!” Kennedy whispered, holding the needle in his hand. “See, this box is not a bomb. It is perforated to allow some perfume—or, more likely, a poison-gas—to escape. The needle is certainly an explosive one!”
Further search revealed a small clockwork movement not much larger than that of a good-sized watch, together with a small bag of bird’s sand.
Having made a thorough search, they replaced things exactly as they had found them, and then Kennedy crept forth again into the broad thoroughfare called Castelnau.
“Those devils mean mischief again!” he muttered to himself as he hurried across Hammersmith Bridge. “That explosive needle is, I can quite see, a most diabolical invention. Drost surely has the inventive brains of Satan himself!”
At that same hour the young man Schrieber was seated with Ortmann in Park Lane, listening to certain instructions, until at last he rose to go.
“And, remember—trust in nobody!” Ortmann urged. “If you perform this service successfully, our Fatherland will owe you a very deep debt of gratitude—one which I will personally see shall not be forgotten.”
At midday on Thursday Kennedy and Ella left St. Pancras station for G—, arriving there three hours later, and taking rooms at the Central Hotel.
As soon as Ella entered hers, she was astonished to see upon the mantelshelf a pair of the same blue-and-white vases as those her father had asked her to match!