The Bomb-Makers

"Do get rid of the girl! Can't you see that she's highly dangerous!" whispered the tall, rather overdressed man as he glanced furtively across the small square shop set with little tables, dingy in the haze of tobacco-smoke. It was an obscure, old-fashioned little restaurant in one of London's numerous byways--a resort of Germans, naturalised and otherwise, "the enemy in our midst," as the papers called them.

"I will. I quite agree. My girl may know just a little too much--if we are not very careful."

"Ah! she knows far too much already, Drost, thanks to your ridiculous indiscretions," growled the dark-eyed man beneath his breath. "They will land you before a military court-martial--if you are not careful!"

"Well, I hardly think so. I'm always most careful--most silent and discreet," and he grinned evilly.

"True, you are a good Prussian--that I know; but remember that Ella has, unfortunately for us, very many friends, and she may talk--women's talk, you know. We--you and I--are treading very thin ice. She is, I consider, far too friendly with that young fellow Kennedy. It's dangerous--distinctly dangerous to us--and I really wonder that you allow it--you, a patriotic Prussian!"

And, drawing heavily at his strong cigar, he paused and examined its white ash.

"Allow it?" echoed the elder man. "How, in the name of Fate, can I prevent it? Suggest some means to end their acquaintanceship, and I am only too ready to hear it."

The man who spoke, the grey-haired Dutch pastor, father of Ella Drost, the smartly-dressed girl who was seated chatting and laughing merrily with two rather ill-dressed men in the farther corner of the little smoke-dried place, grunted deeply. To the world of London he posed as a Dutchman. He was a man with a curiously triangular face, a big square forehead, with tight-drawn skin and scanty hair, and broad heavy features which tapered down to a narrow chin that ended in a pointed, grey, and rather scraggy beard.

Theodore Drost was about fifty-five, a keen, active man whose countenance, upon critical examination, would have been found to be curiously refined, intelligent, and well preserved. Yet he was shabbily dressed, his long black clerical coat shiny with wear, in contrast with the way in which his daughter--in her fine furs and clothes of the latest mode--was attired. But the father, in all grades of life, is usually shabby, while his daughter--whatever be her profession--looks smart, be it the smartness of Walworth or that of Worth.

As his friend, Ernst Ortmann, had whispered those warning words he had glanced across at her, and noting how gaily she was laughing with her two male friends, a cigarette between her pretty lips, he frowned.

Then he looked over to the man who had thus urged discretion.

The pair were seated at a table, upon which was a red-bordered cloth, whereon stood two half-emptied "bocks" of that light beer so dear to the Teuton palate. They called it "Danish beer," not to offend English customers.

The girl whose smiles they were watching was distinctly pretty. She was about twenty-two, with a sweet, eminently English-looking face, fair and quite in contrast with the decidedly foreign, beetle-browed features of the two leering loafers with whom she sat laughing.

Theodore Drost, to do him justice, was devoted to his daughter, who, because of her childish aptitude, had become a dancer on the lowest level of the variety stage, a touring company which visited fifth-rate towns. Yet, owing to her discovered talent, she had at last graduated through the hard school of the Lancashire "halls," to what is known as the "syndicate halls" of London.