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 

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