Another thorough search was made into every corner of the vessel, whereupon the stranger in uniform was at last discovered in one of the stokeholds. Two stokers rushed across to seize him, but with a quick movement he felled both with an iron bar. Then he ran up the ladder with the agility of a cat, and sped right into the arms of Ella and Kennedy. "Curse you--I was too late!" he shrieked in fierce anger, on recognising them, and then seeing all retreat cut off, he suddenly sprang over the side of the vessel, intending, no doubt, to swim ashore. At once the pinnace went after him, but in the darkness he could not be discovered, though the searchlights began to slowly sweep the dark swirling waters. That he met a well-deserved fate, however, was proved by the fact that at dawn next day his body was picked up on the other side of the bay. Yet long before, Theodore Drost, suspecting that something was amiss by his fellow spy's non-return, had left by train for London. Seymour Kennedy was next day called to the Admiralty and thanked for his keen vigilance, but he only smiled and kept a profound secret the active part played by his particular friend, the popular actress--Miss Stella Steele. CHAPTER TWO. THE GREAT TUNNEL PLOT. "There! Is it not a very neat little toy, my dear Ernst?" asked Theodore Drost, speaking in German, dressed in his usual funereal black of a Dutch pastor, as everyone believed him to be. Ernst Ortmann, the man addressed, screwed up his eyes, a habit of his, and 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.