eagerly examined the heavy walking-stick which his friend had handed to him.

It was a thick bamboo-stump, dark-brown and well-polished, bearing a heavy iron ferrule.

The root-end, which formed the bulgy knob, the wily old German had unscrewed, revealing in a cavity a small cylinder of brass. This Ortmann took out and, in turn, unscrewed it, disclosing a curious arrangement of cog-wheels—a kind of clockwork within.

“You see that as long as the stick is carried upright the clock does not work,” Drost explained. “But,”—and taking it from his friend’s hand he held it in a horizontal position—“but as soon as it is laid upon the ground, the mechanical contrivance commences to work. See!”

And the man Ortmann—known as Horton since the outbreak of war—gazed upon it and saw the cog-wheels slowly revolving.

“By Jove!” he gasped. “Yes. Now I see. What a devilish invention it is! It can be put to so many uses!”

“Exactly, my dear friend,” laughed the supposed Dutch pastor, crossing the secret room in the roof of his house at Barnes.

It was afternoon, and the sunlight streaming through the skylight fell upon the place wherein the bomb-makers worked in secret. The room contained several deal tables whereon stood many bottles containing explosive compounds, glass retorts, test-tubes, and glass apothecaries’ scales, with all sorts of other apparatus used in the delicate work of manufacturing and mixing high-explosives.

“You see,” Drost went on to explain, as he indicated a large mortar of marble. “I have been treating phenol with nitric acid and have obtained the nitrate called trinitrophenol. I shall fill this case with it, and then we shall have an unsuspicious-looking weapon which will eventually prove most useful to us—for it can be carried in perfect safety, only it must not be laid down.”

Ortmann laughed. He saw that his friend’s inventive mind had produced an ingenious, if devilish, contrivance. He had placed death in that innocent-looking walking-stick—certain death to any person unconscious of the peril.

Indeed, as Ortmann watched, his friend carefully filled the cavity in the brass cylinder with the explosive substance, and placed within a very strong detonator which he connected with the clockwork, winding it to the full. He then rescrewed the cap upon the fatal cylinder, replacing 

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