Thus the purchase of electrical appliances was entirely accounted for.
Once again I returned to London. They seemed, by the electrical accessories that had been delivered, to be fitting up a second factory in their house in Sydenham.
That, being a private house, seemed somewhat mysterious.
They had become friendly also with a tall, rather well-dressed Englishman named Fowler, who had the appearance of a superior clerk, and who resided in a rather nice house in Hopton Road, Streatham Hill.
Fowler had become a frequent visitor at their house, while, on several occasions, he dined with Dubois at De Keyser's Hotel, facing Blackfriars Bridge.
In consequence of some conversation I one evening overheard--a conversation in English, which the Belgian spoke fluently--I judged Fowler to be an electrician, and it seemed, later on, very much as though he had been, or was about to be, taken into partnership with them.
As far as we could discover, however, he had been told nothing about the factory in Hull. More than once I suspected that the two foreigners were swindlers, who intended to "do" the Englishman out of his money. This was impressed I upon me the more, because one evening a German woman was introduced to their newly-found friend as Frau Gessner, who had just arrived from Wiesbaden.
Whether she was really Gessner's wife I doubted. It was curious that, on keeping observation that evening, I found that the lady did not reside at Sydenham, but at a small hotel in Bloomsbury, not a stone's-throw from my own rooms.
There was certainly some deep game in progress. What could it be?
Vera had watched Fowler on several occasions, but beyond the fact that he was an electrical engineer, occupying a responsible position with a well-known telegraph construction company, we could discover nothing.
After nearly three weeks in London, Dubois and Gessner returned to Hull, where, while living at the Station Hotel, they spent each day at their "works." They engaged no assistant, and were bent apparently upon doing everything by themselves. They were joined one day by a shrivelled-up old man of rather seedy appearance, and typically German. His name was Busch, and he lived in lodgings out on the Beverley Road. He was taken to the works, and remained there all day.