Chapter Three. The Hyde Park Plot.

Two men sat in a big, handsome dining-room in one of the finest houses in Park Lane. One was Theodore Drost, dressed in his usual garb of a Dutch pastor. A look of satisfaction overspread his features as he raised his glass of choice Château Larose.

Opposite him at the well-laid luncheon table sat his friend, Ernst Ortmann, alias Horton, alias Harberton, the super-spy whose hand was—if the truth be told—“The Hidden Hand” upon which the newspapers were ever commenting—that secret and subtle influence of Germany in our midst in war-time.

Count Ernst von Ortmann was a very shrewd and elusive person. For a number of years he had been a trusted official in the entourage of the Kaiser, and having lived his early life in England, being educated at Oxford, he was now entrusted with the delicate task of directing the advance guard of the German army in this country.

Two years before the war Mr Henry Harberton, a wealthy, middle-aged English merchant from Buenos Ayres, had suddenly arisen in the social firmament in the West End, had given smart dinners, and, as an eligible bachelor, had been smiled upon by many mothers with marriageable daughters. His luncheon-parties at the Savoy, the Ritz, and the Carlton were usually chronicled in the newspapers; he was financially interested in a popular revue at a certain West End theatre, and the rumour that he was immensely wealthy was confirmed when he purchased a fine house half-way up Park Lane—a house from which, quite unsuspected, radiated the myriad ramifications of Germany’s spy system.

With Henry Harberton, whose father, it was said, had amassed a huge fortune in Argentina in the early days, and which he had inherited, money was of no account. The fine London mansion was sombre and impressive in its decoration. There was nothing flamboyant or out-of-place, nothing that jarred upon the senses: a quiet, calm, and restful residence, the double windows of which shut out the sound of the motor-’buses and taxis of that busy thoroughfare where dwelt London’s commercial princes. Surely that fine house was in strange contrast to the obscure eight-roomed one in a long, drab terrace in Park Road, Wandsworth Common, where dwelt the same mysterious person in very humble and even economical circumstances as Mr Horton, a retired tradesman from the New Cross Road.

As Ortmann sat in that big dining-room in Park Lane, a plainly decorated apartment with dead white walls in the Adams style, and a few choice family portraits, his friend, Drost, with his strange triangular face, his square forehead and pointed grey beard, presented a picture of the true type of Dutch pastor, in his rather seedy clerical coat and his round horn-rimmed spectacles.

The pair had been discussing certain schemes to the detriment of the English: schemes which, in the main, depended upon the crafty old Drost’s expert knowledge of high-explosives.

“Ah! my dear Count!” exclaimed the wily old professor of chemistry in German, as he replaced his glass upon the table. “How marvellously clever is our Emperor! How he befooled and bamboozled these silly sheep of English. Listen to this!” and from his pocket-book he drew a large newspaper cutting—two columns of a London daily newspaper dated Wednesday, October 28, 1908.

“What is that?” inquired the Kaiser’s arch-spy, his eyebrows narrowing.

“The interview given by the Emperor to a British peer in order to throw dust into the eyes of our enemies against whom we were rapidly preparing. Listen to the Emperor’s clever reassurances in order to gain time.” Then, readjusting his big round spectacles, he glanced down the columns and read in English the following sentences that had fallen from the Kaiser’s lips: “You English are mad, mad, mad as English hares. What has come over you that you are so completely given over to suspicions unworthy of a great nation? What more can I do than I have done? My heart is set upon peace, and it is one of my dearest wishes to live on the best of terms with England. Have I ever been false to my word? Falsehood and prevarication are alien to my nature. My actions ought to speak for themselves, but you listen not to them, but to those who misinterpret and distort them. This is a personal insult, which I feel and resent!”

Drost replaced the cutting upon the table, and both men burst into hilarious laughter.

“Really, in the light of present events, those printed words must cause our dear friends, the English, considerable chagrin,” declared Ortmann.

“Yes. They now see how cleverly we have tricked them,” said Drost with a grin. “That interview gave us an increased six years for preparation. Truly, our Emperor is great. He is invincible!”

And both men raised their tall Bohemian glasses in honour of the Arch-Murderer of Europe.

That little incident at table was significant of the feelings and intentions of the conspirators.

“Your girl Ella is still very active, and that fellow Kennedy seems ever-watchful,” Ortmann remarked presently in a decidedly apprehensive tone. “I know, of course, that your daughter would do nothing to harm you personally; but remember that Kennedy is a British naval officer, and that he might—from patriotic motives—well—”

“Kill his prospective father-in-law—eh?” chimed in the Dutch pastor, with a light laugh.

The Count hesitated for a second. Then he said:

“Well, perhaps not exactly kill you, but he might make things decidedly unpleasant for us both, if he got hold of anything tangible.”

“Bah! Rest assured that he’ll never get hold of anything,” declared Drost. “I’ve had him out to Barnes to dinner once or twice lately, but he’s quite in the dark.”

“Are you absolutely certain that he knows nothing of what is in progress in your laboratory upstairs!” queried Ortmann. “Are you absolutely certain that Ella has told him nothing?”

“Quite—because she herself knows nothing.”

“If she knows nothing, then why are we both watched so closely by Kennedy?” asked Ortmann dubiously.

“Bah! Your fancy—mere fancy!” declared the professor of chemistry. “I know you’ve been unduly suspicious for a long time, but I tell you that Ella and her lover are far too much absorbed in their own affairs to trouble about our business.” Ortmann shrugged his shoulders. He did not tell his friend Drost the true extent of his knowledge, for it was one of his main principles never to confide serious truths to anybody. By that principle he had risen in his Emperor’s service to the high and responsible position he now occupied—the director of The Hidden Hand.

As such, he commanded the services of many persons of both sexes in the United Kingdom. Some were persons who, having accepted German money or German favours in the pre-war days, were now called upon to dance as puppets of Germany while the Kaiser played the tune. Many of them, subjects of neutral countries, had been perfectly friendly to us, but since the war the relentless thumbscrew of blackmail had been placed upon them by Ernst von Ortmann, and they were compelled to do his bidding and act against the interests of Great Britain.

Over the heads of most of them, men and women—especially the latter—the wily Ortmann and his well-organised staff held documentary evidence of such a damning character that, if handed to the proper quarter, would either have caused their arrest and punishment, or, in the case of the fair sex, cause their social ostracism. Hence Ortmann held his often unwilling agents together with an iron hand which was both unscrupulous and drastic. Woe betide either man or woman who, having accepted Germany’s good-will and favours before the war, now dared to refuse to do her dirty work.

Truly, the Hidden Hand was that of the “mailed-fist” covered with velvet, full of double cunning and irresistible influence in quite unsuspected quarters.

Old Theodore Drost was but a pawn in Germany’s dastardly attack upon England, but a very valuable one, from his intimate knowledge of explosives. Moreover, as an inventor of death-dealing devices, he certainly had no equal in Europe.

In order to discuss in secret a daring and terrible plot, the pair had lunched in company at Park Lane.

At that same hour, on that same day, Flight-Commander Seymour Kennedy, in his naval uniform with the “pilot’s wings,” was on leave from a certain air-station on the South-East coast, and was seated opposite Ella Drost in the Café Royal, in Regent Street, discussing a lobster salad tête-à-tête.

It was one of the favourite luncheon places of Drost’s daughter.

The revue in which she had been appearing and in which, by the way, Ortmann was financially interested in secret, had finished its season, and the theatre had closed its doors for the summer. Consequently Ella had taken a tiny riverside cottage near Shepperton-on-Thames, though she still kept open her pretty flat in Stamfordham Mansions, her faithful French maid, Mariette, being in charge.

“You seem worried, darling,” Kennedy whispered, as he bent across the table to her. “What’s the matter?”

“I’ve already told you.”

“But you really don’t take it seriously, do you?” asked the well-known air-pilot. “Surely it’s only a mere suspicion.”

“It is fortunate that I succeeded in obtaining for you an impression of the key of the laboratory,” was the girl’s reply.

“Yes. It was. Your father never dreams that we know all that is in progress there. It’s a real good stunt of yours to keep in with him, and stay at Barnes sometimes.”

“Well, I’ve told you what I ascertained the night before last. Ortmann was there with the others. There’s a big coup intended—a dastardly blow, as I have explained.”

And in the girl’s eyes there showed a hard, serious expression, as she drew a long breath. It was quite plain to her lover that she was full of nervous apprehension, and that what she had related to him was a fact.

Another deeply-laid plot was afoot, but one so subtle and so daring that Kennedy, with his cheerful optimism and his high spirits, could not yet fully realise its nature.

Ella had, an hour before, told him a very remarkable story.

At first, so extraordinary and improbable had it sounded, that he had been inclined to pooh-pooh the whole affair, but now, amid the clatter and bustle of that cosmopolitan restaurant, the same to-day as in the mid-Victorian days, he began to realise that the impression left upon his well-beloved, by the knowledge she had obtained, had been a distinctly sinister one.

“Well, dearest,” he said, again leaning across the little table-à-deux, “I’ll go into the matter at once if you wish it, and we’ll watch and wait.”

“Yes, do, Seymour,” exclaimed the girl anxiously. “I’ll help you. There is a deeply-laid plot in progress. Of that I’m quite certain—more especially because Ortmann came to see dad yesterday morning and went to see him again to-day.”

“You overheard some of their conversation—eh?”

“I did,” was her open response. “And for that reason I am so full of fear.”

At nine o’clock that same night, in accordance with an appointment, Ella Drost stood upon the whitewashed kerb in Belgrave Square, at the corner of West Halkin Street.

Darkness had already fallen. The London streets were gloomy because of the lighting order, and hardly a light showed from any house in the Square.

For fully ten minutes she waited until, at last, from out of Belgrave Place, a car came slowly along, and pulled up at the spot where she stood.

In a moment Ella had mounted beside her lover who, next second, moved off in the direction of Knightsbridge.

“It’s rather fortunate that we’ve met here, darling,” were his first words. “Since we were together this afternoon I have been followed continuously. Had I called at Stamfordham Mansions, Ortmann would have had his suspicions confirmed. But I’ve successfully eluded them, and here we are.”

“I know—I feel sure that Ortmann suspects us. Why does he live as Mr Horton over at Wandsworth Common?”

“Because he is so infernally clever,” laughed the air-pilot, in his cheery, nonchalant way.

Neither of them knew, up to that moment, anything more of Mr Henry Harberton, of Park Lane, save reading in the papers of his social distinction. Neither Kennedy nor his charming well-beloved had dreamed that Ortmann, alias Horton, patriotic Britannia-rule-the-Waves Englishman, was identical with that meteoric planet in the social firmament of London, Mr Henry Harberton, whose wealth was such that even in war-time he could give two-guinea-a-head luncheons to his friends at one or other of the half-dozen or so London restaurants which cater for such clients.

Seymour Kennedy was driving the car swiftly, but Ella, nestling beside him, took no heed of the direction in which they were travelling. The night-wind blew cold and he, solicitous of her welfare, bent over and with his left hand drew up the collar of her Burberry.

They were leaving London ere she became aware of it, travelling westward, branching at Hounslow upon the old road to Bath, the road of Dick Turpin’s exploits in the good old days of cocked-hats, powder-and-patches, and three-bottle men.

Passing through Slough, they crossed the river at Maidenhead and again at Henley, keeping on the ever ascending high-road over the Chilterns, to Nettlebed, until they ran rapidly down past Gould’s Grove through Benson, and past Shillingford where, a short distance beyond, he pulled up and, opening a gate, placed the car in a meadow grey with mist.

Afterwards the pair, leaving the high-road, turned into a path which led through the fields down to the river. Reaching it at a point not far from Day’s Lock, they halted.

Before them, between the pathway and the river’s brink, there showed a lighted window obscured by a yellow holland blind, the window of a corrugated iron bungalow of some river enthusiast, the room being apparently lit by a paraffin lamp.

Carefully, and treading upon tiptoe, they crept forward without a sound, and, approaching the square, inartistic window, halted and strained their ears to listen to the conversation in progress within.

Words in German were being spoken. Ella listened, and recognised her father’s voice. Ortmann was speaking, too, while other voices of strangers also sounded.

What Seymour overheard through the thin wood-and-iron wall of the riverside bungalow quickly convinced him that Ella’s suspicions were only too well founded. A desperate conspiracy to commit outrage was certainly being formed—a plot as daring and as subtle as any ever formed by the Nihilists in Russia, or the Mafia in Italy.

The Germans, par excellence the scientists of Europe, were out to win the war by frightfulness, just as thousands of years ago the Chinese won their wars by assuming horrible disguises and pulling ugly faces to bring bad luck upon their superstitious enemies. The Great War Lord of Germany, in order to save his throne and substantiate his title of All-Highest, had set loose his sorry dogs of depravity, degeneracy, and desolation. And he had planted in our island a clever and unscrupulous crew, headed by Ortmann, whose mission was, if possible, to wreck the Ship of State of Great Britain.

The air-pilot listened to the conversation in amazement. He realised then how Ella had exercised a shrewder watchfulness than he had ever done, although he had believed himself so clever.

Therefore, when she whispered, “Let’s get away, dear, or we may be discovered,” he obeyed her, and crawled off over the strip of gravel to the grass, after which both made their way back to the footpath.

“Well?” asked the popular actress, as they strode along hand in hand to where they had left the car. “What’s your opinion now—eh? Haven’t you been convinced?”

“Yes, darling. I can now see quite plainly that there is a plot on foot which, if we are patriots, you and I, we must scotch, at all hazards.”

“I agree entirely, Seymour,” was the girl’s instant reply. “I tried to warn you a month ago, but you were not convinced. To-day you are convinced—are you not? I am acting only for my dear dead mother’s country, for, strictly speaking, being the daughter of a German, I am an alien enemy.”

About two o’clock one morning, about a week later, the dark figure of a man in a shabby serge suit and golf-cap, treading noiselessly in rubber-shoes, crossed Hammersmith Bridge in the direction of Barnes and, passing along that wide open thoroughfare, paused for a moment outside the house of the Dutch pastor, Mr Drost. Then, finding himself unobserved, he slipped into the front garden and, bending, concealed himself in some bushes.

He had waited there for ten minutes or so, watching the dark, silent house, when, slowly and noiselessly, the front door opened, and next moment Kennedy and Ella were face to face. The latter wore a pretty pale-blue dressing-gown, for she had just risen from bed, she having spent the last two days at her father’s house.

With a warning finger upon her lips, and with a small flash-lamp in her hand, she led her lover up three flights of stairs to the door of that locked room, which she silently opened with her duplicate key.

“Father and the man Hans Rozelaar have been at work here nearly all day,” she whispered, when at last they halted before the long deal table upon which stood Drost’s chemical apparatus.

Kennedy’s shrewd eyes were quick to notice what was in progress in secret.

With some curiosity he took up a tube of tin about a foot long and four inches in diameter. On examining it he saw that through the centre was a second tin tube of about an inch in diameter. Holding it as a telescope towards the light he could see through the inner tubes and noticed that near one end of it a small steel catch was protruding. Further and minute examination revealed that to the catch could be attached a time-fuse already concealed between the inner and outer tubes.

“This is evidently some ingenious form of hand grenade,” whispered Kennedy. “It’s all ready for filling. But why, I wonder, should a tube run through the middle in this way?”

He was pondering with it in his hand, when his gaze suddenly fell upon something else which was lying close to the spot where he found the tin tube.

It was a thin ash walking-stick. On Kennedy taking it up it presented a peculiar feature, for as he grasped it there sounded a sharp metallic click. Then, to his surprise, he discovered that he had inadvertently released a spring in the handle, this in turn releasing four small steel points half-way down the stick.

“Curious!” he whispered to his well-beloved, for Drost was sleeping below entirely unconscious of the intruders in his secret laboratory. “What connection can the stick have with the grenade—if not for the purpose of throwing?”

He therefore placed the inner tube over the little knob of the stick, and found that it just fitted, so that with plenty of play it slid down as far as the projecting points which, after striking the little steel catch which would be connected with the fuse, allowed it to pass over freely and leave the stick.

“Ah! I’ve got it!” he whispered excitedly. “The grenade can be carried in the pocket with perfect safety, until when required it is placed over the handle of the stick and whirled off. As it passes the projections on the stick the time-fuse is set for so many seconds, and the grenade automatically becomes a live one. A very pretty contrivance indeed!—very pretty!” he added with a grin. “This, I must admit, does considerable credit to Ortmann, Drost and Company.”

Ella, who had been standing by, holding the electric torch, stood in wonder at the discovery. Truly, some of her father’s inventions had been diabolical ones.

Kennedy saw that the ash-stick had been finished and was in working order. All was complete, indeed, save the filling of the deadly grenade, the attaching of the fuse, and the painting of the bright tin.

For fully five minutes the air-pilot stood in silence, deeply pondering.

Then, as a sudden idea occurred to him, he said quickly:

“I must take this stick, Ella. I’ll be back again by four o’clock, and will leave it just outside the front door. You take it in, and replace it exactly as we found it.”

He lost no time. In five minutes he had crept from that dark house of mystery and death, and, carrying the stick, returned across Hammersmith Bridge.

At ten minutes to four he was back again in Barnes and had left the suspicious-looking ash-stick against the front door, afterwards going to his rooms to snatch a few hours’ sleep.

Next day happened to be Sunday, but at noon on Monday Mr Merton Mansfield, one of the most active members of the Cabinet, as well as one of the most popular of Cabinet Ministers, presided at the unveiling of a number of captured German guns which had been drawn up in Hyde Park in order that the public might be afforded an opportunity of seeing the trophies of war in Flanders won by British pertinacity and pluck.

Accompanying Merton Mansfield, the people’s idol, the man in whom Great Britain trusted to see that all was well, and who was, at the same time, hated and feared by the Germans, were several other members of the Cabinet.

The crowd outside the wire fence, within which stood the shrouded guns, was a large one, for some patriotic speeches were expected. Ella and Kennedy were among the spectators eagerly watching the movements of a thin-faced, well-dressed, middle-aged man, who wore an overcoat, in the left-hand pocket of which was something rather bulky, and who carried in his hand an ash-stick.

The man’s name was Hans Rozelaar, known to his friends by the English name of Rose. By the fellow’s movements it was plain that he was quite unsuspicious of the presence of the daughter of his fellow-conspirator, Theodore Drost.

Gradually he had worked himself through the crowd until he stood in the front row behind the wire which fenced off the guns with the Cabinet Ministers and their friends, and within ten yards or so of where stood Mr Merton Mansfield.

Kennedy was beside Ella some distance away, watching breathlessly. It had been his first impulse to go to Scotland Yard and reveal what they had discovered, but after due consideration he saw that the best punishment for the conspirators was the one he had devised.

But if it failed? What if that most deadly grenade was exploded in the group of Great Britain’s leaders—the men who were working night and day, and working with all their might and intelligence, to crush the Hun effectively, even though so slowly.

A roar of applause rose from the crowd as Merton Mansfield removed his hat preparatory to speaking. The short, stout, round-faced Cabinet Minister who, in the days of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman’s Premiership, had been so unpopular with the working-class, yet who had now come to the forefront as the saviour of our dear old England, smiled with pleasure at his hearty reception.

The little group of England’s greatest men, Cabinet Ministers and well-known politicians, with a sprinkling of men in khaki, clustered round him, as he commenced to address the assembly, to descant upon the heroic efforts of “French’s contemptible little Army,” of their great exploits, of their amazing achievements, and the staggering organisation of Lord Kitchener.

“Here, before you, you have some small souvenirs—some small idea of the weapons which the unscrupulous fiends who are our enemies are using against our gallant troops. They, unfortunately, are not gallant soldiers, these Huns in modern clothing—they are pirates with the skull and crossbones borne upon the helmets of their crack regiments. Yet we shall win—I tell you that we shall win, be the time long or short, be the sacrifice great or small—we shall win because Right, Truth, and God’s justice are with us! And I will here give you a message from the Prime Minister—who would have been here, if it were not for the fact that he is at this moment having audience of His Majesty the King.”

A great roar of applause greeted this announcement, when, suddenly, a loud explosion sounded, startling everyone and causing women to scream.

The lovers, who had kept their eyes upon the man in the overcoat, saw a red flash, and saw him reel and fall to earth with his face blown away.

They had seen how he had placed the grenade over his ash-stick, and how, a second later, he had sharply slung it across from right to left, intending the deadly bomb to land at Mr Merton Mansfield’s feet.

Instead, with its fuse set by the little points of steel protruding from the stick, it had, nevertheless, failed to pass from the stick, because of the small piece of thin wire which Seymour Kennedy had driven through just above the ferrule, on that night when he had afterwards left the stick at old Drost’s front door. His quick intelligence had shown him that the empty grenade had already been tried upon the stick, and that when filled, and the fuse attached, it certainly would not be tested again.

Hans Rozelaar had slung the grenade just as old Theodore Drost had instructed him, but it had remained fast at the end of the stick, and ere he could release it, it had exploded, blowing both his hands off and his features out of all recognition, though, very fortunately, injuring no one else.

“Come, darling. We have surely seen enough!” whispered Seymour Kennedy softly to Ella, as they watched the great sensation caused by the self-destruction of the conspirator, and the hurry of the police towards the dead man. “The Ministers will very soon discover for themselves how narrowly they have escaped.”

And as they both turned away, Ella, looking fondly into her lover’s face, remarked in a low voice: “Yes, indeed, Seymour. They certainly owe their safety to you!”