“And it is for us to outwit them in secret, dear,” she replied, turning to him with a smile of sweet affection.
In the days that followed, the mystery of the intruder became further increased by Ella making another discovery. In the garden, upon a thorn-bush against the wall, Mrs Pennington found a large piece of cream silk which had apparently formed part of the sleeve of a woman’s blouse. She brought it to Ella, saying:
“I’ve found this in the garden, miss. It looks as if some lady got entangled in the bush, and left part of ’er blouse behind—don’t it? I wonder who’s been in our garden?”
Ella took it and, expressing little surprise, suggested that it might have been blown into the bush by the wind.
It, however, at once confirmed her suspicion that the midnight visitor had been a woman.
While Ella sang and danced nightly at the theatre, and afterwards drove home to Castelnau, to that house where upstairs was stored all that high-explosive, Seymour Kennedy maintained a watchful vigilance upon Ernst von Ortmann, the chief of enemy spies, and kept that unceasing watch over him, not only at the house at Wandsworth, but also at the magnificent mansion in Park Lane.
To von Ortmann’s frequent dinner-parties in the West End came the crafty and grave-faced old Drost, who there met other men of mysterious antecedents, adventurers who posed as Swiss, American, or Dutch, for that house was the headquarters of enemy activity in Great Britain, and from it extended many extraordinary and unexpected ramifications.
That some great and desperate outrage was intended in the near future Kennedy was confident, as all the apparatus was ready. But of Drost’s intentions he could discover nothing, neither could Ella.
One cold night, while loitering in the darkness beside the railings of the Park, Kennedy saw Ortmann emerge from the big portico of his house and walk to Hyde Park Corner, where he hailed a taxi and drove down Grosvenor Gardens. Within a few moments Kennedy was in another taxi closely following.
They crossed Westminster Bridge and turned to the right, in the direction of Vauxhall. Then, on arriving at Clapham Junction station, Kennedy, discerning Ortmann’s destination to be the house in Park Road, Wandsworth Common, where at times he lived as the humble Mr Horton, the retired tradesman, he dismissed his taxi and walked the remainder of the distance.