Kennedy bent and then saw, ranged below a bench on the opposite side of the laboratory, six tins of a certain well-known thick lubricating-oil used by motorists.
“There is sufficient there, dear, to blow up the whole of Barnes,” she declared. “Evidently this latest outrage is intended to be a serious one.”
“Ah!” sighed Kennedy. “It is a thousand pities, Ella, that your father is doing all this dastardly secret work for the enemy. Happily you, though his daughter, are taking measures to thwart his plans.”
“I am doing only what is my duty, dear,” replied the girl in the kimono; “and with your aid I hope to upset this latest plot of Ortmann and his friends.”
“Have you seen Ortmann lately?” her lover asked.
“No. He has been away somewhere in Holland—conferring with the German Secret Service, without a doubt. I heard father say yesterday, however, that he had returned to Park Lane.”
“Returned, in order to distribute more German money, I suppose?”
“Probably. He must have spent many hundreds of thousands of pounds in the German cause both before the war and after it,” replied the girl.
The pair stood in the laboratory for some time examining some of the apparatus which old Drost, now sleeping below, had during that day been using for the manufacture of the explosive contained in those innocent-looking oil-cans.
Kennedy realised, by the delicacy of the apparatus, how well versed the grey-haired old Prussian was in explosives, and on again examining the attaché-cases with their mechanical contents, saw the cleverness with which the plot, whatever its object, had been conceived.