“Yes, dear,” was my well-beloved’s reply. “At all hazards, no spy of Germany must be allowed to wrest this secret from us.”
“But they are clever—devilishly cunning and entirely unscrupulous. The Invisible Hand, well provided with money, lurks everywhere, ready to grasp what it can in the interest of our octopus enemies,” I declared warningly. “Therefore let us be ever on the alert—ever watchful and mindful, in order to avert the relentless talons with which this unknown and Invisible Hand is furnished.”
Chapter Five.
The Raid on London.
It was the night of the fourteenth of October, in the year 1915.
Sir Herbert and Lady Lethmere, with Roseye—who looked charming in pink—were dining en famille in Cadogan Gardens. The only two guests were Lionel Eastwell and myself.
“Terrible—is it not?” Lady Lethmere remarked to me, as I sat on her right. “We were at the Lyric Theatre when the Zeppelins came last night. We heard the guns firing. It was most alarming. They must have caused damage in London somewhere. Isn’t it too awful?”
“And at other places, I fear,” remarked Sir Herbert, a fine outspoken, grey-haired, rather portly man, who had crowned his career as a Sheffield steel manufacturer by receiving a knighthood. He spoke with the pleasant burr of the north country.