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Title: Tracked by Wireless

Author: William le Queux

Release Date: May 4, 2019 [EBook #59434]

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

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TRACKED BY WIRELESS




“THE MASTER OF MYSTERY”

WILLIAM LE QUEUX’S NOVELS


“Mr. William Le Queux retains his position as ‘The Master of
Mystery.’... He is far too skilful to allow pause for thought; he
whirls his readers from incident to incident, holding their attention
from the first page to the close of the book.”--=Pall Mall Gazette.=

“Mr. Le Queux is the master of mystery. He never fails to produce the
correct illusion. He always leaves us panting for more--a brilliant
feat.”--=Daily Graphic.=

“Mr. Le Queux is still ‘The Master of Mystery.’”--=Madame.=

“Mr. Le Queux is a most experienced hand in writing sensational
fiction. He never loses the grip of his readers.”--=Publishers’
Circular.=

“Mr. Le Queux always grips his reader, and holds him to the last
page.”--=Bristol Times and Mirror.=

“Mr. Le Queux’s books once begun must be read to the end.”--=Evening
News.=

“There is no better companion on a railway journey than Mr. William Le
Queux.”--=Daily Mail.=

“Mr. Le Queux knows his business, and carries it on vigorously and
prosperously. His stories are always fantastic and thrilling.”--=Daily
Telegraph.=

“Mr. Le Queux is an adept at the semi-detective story. His work is
always excellent.”--=Review of Reviews.=

“Mr. Le Queux is always so refreshing in his stories of adventure
that one knows on taking up a new book of his that one will be
amused.”--=Birmingham Post.=

“Mr. Le Queux’s books are delightfully convincing.”--=Scotsman.=

“Mr. Le Queux’s books are always exciting and absorbing. His mysteries
are enthralling and his skill is world-famous.”--=Liverpool Daily Post.=

“Mr. Le Queux has brought the art of the sensational novel to high
perfection.”--=Northern Whig.=

“Mr. Le Queux is so true to his own style that any one familiar with
his books would certainly guess him to be the author, even if his name
were not given.”--=Methodist Recorder.=

“‘As good wine needs no bush’ so no mystery story by Mr. Le Queux, the
popular weaver of tales of crime, needs praise for its skill. Any novel
with this author’s name appended is sure to be ingenious in design and
cleverly worked out.”--=Bookseller.=

“Mr. Le Queux is always reliable. The reader who picks up any of his
latest novels knows what to expect.”--=Bookman.=

“Mr. Le Queux’s admirers are legion, and the issue of a new novel is to
them one of the most felicitous events that can happen.”--=Newcastle
Daily Chronicle.=

“Mr. Le Queux is the master of the art of
mystery-creating.”--=Liverpool Daily Post.=




  TRACKED BY
  WIRELESS

  BY

  WILLIAM LE QUEUX

  _Member of the Institute of Radio Engineers_

  1922
  MOFFAT, YARD & COMPANY
  NEW YORK




  TO
  MY FRIEND

  MAJOR HUMPHRY MACCALLUM

  WITHOUT WHOSE KIND AID THIS SERIES OF
  WIRELESS ROMANCES WOULD NEVER
  HAVE BEEN WRITTEN


  _Printed in Great Britain. Cinema and translation rights
  reserved._




CONTENTS


  CHAPTER                          PAGE

     I THE SECRET SIGNAL             11

    II THE VOICE FROM THE VOID       31

   III THE CALICO GLOVE              50

    IV THE DEVIL’S OVEN              68

     V THE MYSTERY WIDOW             89

    VI THE CLOVEN HOOF              109

   VII THE POISON FACTORY           128

  VIII THE GREAT INTRIGUE           146

    IX THE THREE BAD MEN            166

     X THE MYSTERY OF BERENICE      185

    XI THE MARKED MAN               204

   XII THE CROW’S CLIFF             223




TRACKED BY WIRELESS.




CHAPTER I

THE SECRET SIGNAL


Geoffrey Falconer removed the wireless telephone receivers from his
ears, and sat back in his wooden chair, staring straight before him,
utterly puzzled.

“Eighteen-and-a-half minutes past seven!” he muttered to himself,
glancing up at the big round clock above the long bench upon which a
number of complicated-looking wireless instruments were set out.

In front of him were half-a-dozen square mahogany boxes with tops of
ebonite and circles of brass studs, with white circular dials and black
knobs and a panel of ebonite with four big electric globes for wireless
transmission. Across the table ran many red, white, and green wires
from a perfect maze of brass terminal screws, while in one oblong box
there burned brightly seven little tube-shaped electric glow-lamps, the
valves of the latest instrument which amplified the most feeble signals
coming in from space from every part of the western world. It was the
newest wireless device for the reception of weak signals and he himself
had made an improvement upon it, a new microphone amplifier which was
at present his own secret.

“Eighteen-and-a-half minutes past seven!” he repeated. “Always at
the same moment that strange signal is repeated three times. And not
Morse--certainly not in the Morse code. It’s a most mysterious note,”
he went on, speaking to himself. “Others must surely hear it--or else
my amplifier is so ultra-sensitive that I alone am able to listen.”

He took from near his elbow a long scribbling-diary, and glancing
through its pages, noted various entries concerning that mysterious
signal which never failed to come each evening at eighteen-and-a-half
minutes past seven.

That small private experimental laboratory in the ground floor room of
a spacious country house on the brow of a low hill in Essex was well
fitted with all kinds of apparatus for wireless telephony, telegraphy,
and the newest invention of direction-finding for the guidance of
aircraft in darkness or fog.

The tall, clean-shaven, dark-eyed young man, whose hair was brushed
back, and whose bearing was distinctly military, had done excellent
service in the wireless department of the Royal Air Force, and had
won his Military Cross. Before the war, at the age of nineteen, he
had been a persevering amateur, keenly interested in the mysteries of
wireless. His knowledge thus gained, with crystal receivers and “spark”
transmitters, stood him in good stead; hence, during the war, he had
held a number of responsible appointments connected with aircraft
wireless.

After demobilisation he had at once taken his degree in Science, and
then joined the research department of the great Marconi organisation,
in which he was showing excellent promise. Quiet and unassuming, he
possessed for his age unusual technical and mathematical knowledge, and
great things were being predicted of him by his superiors at Marconi
House. Already he had made certain improvements in the application of
the telephone to wireless, together with small adjustments and the use
of condensers in certain circuits, technicalities which need not be
referred to here because only the expert could follow their importance.
Suffice it to say that Geoffrey Falconer’s whole heart was in his work.
Though he did wireless all day in the great well-lit laboratory at the
Chelmsford works, he nevertheless spent most of his evenings at his own
private wireless station at his father’s house at Warley, about a mile
from Brentwood, which was about ten miles from Chelmsford and twenty
from London.

Old Professor Falconer’s house, a Georgian one, half-covered with
ivy and surrounded by several giant cedars, stood well back from the
broad high road which runs from Brentwood Station through Great Warley
Street to Upminster. Those who pass it will see a double-fronted
house approached by a curved drive half-hidden from the road by a
high yew hedge. The big gates of wrought iron are as ancient as the
house, which, built in the days of George the First, still retains its
old-world atmosphere of the times when dandified neighbours in wigs and
patches were borne along the drive in their sedans to visit old Squire
Falconer and his wife.

Outwardly the house is the reverse of artistic, but within it is a
charming old place, with oak floors and panelled walls, a great well
staircase leading from the wide square hall, while the furniture is
even to-day mostly in keeping with its restful atmosphere.

The Falconers have lived at Westfield Manor ever since its
construction. Its present owner, John Falconer, had been a famous
Professor of Science at Oxford, until he retired and returned to Warley
to enjoy the evening of his days, while his son Geoffrey, who had been
brought up in an atmosphere of science, and who followed closely the
footsteps of his distinguished father, now lived with him on being
demobilised.

By the elastic licence granted to him as an experimenter by the General
Post Office Geoffrey had been allowed to erect high twin aerial wires
double the length of the official regulation of one hundred feet, and
these, suspended from poles placed in the tops of two of the high
Wellingtonias, were brought across the wide lawn to the rear of the
house, and down into the room in which the young man was seated.

       *       *       *       *       *

“Always the same long drawn-out note at exactly the same time!” he went
on. “Eleven-and-a-half minutes before ‘F.L.’ sends his weather report.
What, I wonder, can it mean?”

From the Eiffel Tower, whose call-letters in the radio-telegraphic
code are “F.L.,” weather reports from western Europe are each evening
sent out upon so powerful a note that they are read on the opposite
side of the Atlantic. Young Falconer, therefore, fell to wondering
whether those strange signals he heard nightly, and which were so
unaccountable, were not in some way connected with the transmission
from Paris.

The eleven-and-a-half minutes passed, and just as the Eiffel Tower
began to call in that peculiar cock-crowing note which all wireless men
know so well, his father entered.

“Hulloa, Geoff! I thought you had gone up to town--it’s Mrs. Beverley’s
dance, is it not?”

“Yes,” replied the young radio-engineer; “but I’ve just been listening.
I’ve tuned in that same strange signal as last night. It is really most
curious.”

“Automatic transmission, perhaps,” replied the alert, white-bearded old
gentlemen. “Did you not say that there were some transmissions at a
hundred words a minute in progress?”

“Yes, Witham and Farnborough. But I have heard them many times during
the past few weeks. I know the note of Farnborough. Besides, his
wave-length is different. This mysterious signal is on eleven hundred
mètres--a continuous wave--above the ships and the Air Ministry.”

“And nobody else hears it except yourself?” asked the lean, deep-eyed
old man, who possessed such wide scientific knowledge, though he
admitted that wireless was a branch with which he was not familiar.
Radio-telegraphy was a new science, fresh discoveries being made daily
by those who, like his son, were engaged in active research work.

“Not so far as I can learn. I’ve asked our people at Poldhu, Carnarvon,
and Witham, and I’ve listened myself at Chelmsford, but nobody hears
it.”

“Your improved amplifier--without a doubt!” his father said, bending
over the long oblong metal case in which the seven little lights were
burning in vacuum tubes about three inches long, and set in a row.
Attached to the amplifier was a double note-magnifier, and an oblong
wooden box--the invention of Geoffrey Falconer.

“Perhaps,” said the young man, whose well-cut, impelling countenance
wore a puzzled look. “But I can’t see any reason why I should be able
to detect signals which are lost to others,” he added. “I know I’ve
got excellent rectification, but not more than the ordinary type of
‘fifty-five amplifier.’ It is only the amplification that is higher.”

“Well, the signals are certainly a mystery,” agreed the Professor.
“When I listened to it last night it seemed like a high winter wind
howling through a crack in a door or window.”

“To you it might. But, you see, I’ve developed the wireless ear, and
sounds that you pass, I recognise.”

“Of course, my boy,” the old gentleman said. “You live for wireless,
just as I now live to complete my great book. We must both persevere in
our own spheres. I am only glad that the war is over, and now that your
poor mother is, alas! dead, you have returned to keep me company in my
loneliness,” and the old man sighed at the remembrance of his dear,
devoted wife, who had died two years before.

“Well, the old place could not be handier for me--close to Chelmsford.
Besides, away here I can continue my research work each night without
disturbance.”

“That’s so. But, surely, you recollect accepting the invitation Mrs.
Beverley so kindly sent us? We really ought to go,” his father urged.
“It isn’t too late--even now.”

Geoffrey smiled within himself.

“Right-o! I suppose we ought,” he replied. “Let’s dress at once. I’ll
take you to the station in the side-car, and we can get a hasty bit of
dinner at the club before we go along to Upper Brook Street.”

Then he turned down the big aerial switch which sent the incoming
currents to earth and acted as a protection to his instruments against
either lightning or “strays.” And closing the door of the room, he went
to put on evening clothes.

When Professor Falconer and his son entered Mrs. Beverley’s fine house
in Upper Brook Street it was nearly half-past nine. As the door opened
there came the strains of an orchestra. Mrs. Beverley was the widow of
a wealthy banker of Buenos Ayres, after whose death she had brought her
daughter Sylvia to London where she had quickly become popular as a
hostess, attracting about her all sorts of men and women who had “done
something.”

When one was invited to Mrs. Beverley’s parties one was certain of
meeting interesting people--lions of the moment--whose faces peered out
at one from all the picture papers--people in every walk of life, but
all distinguished, if even by their vices.

“Hulloa, Geoffrey!” exclaimed a slim, dark-haired young girl in a
flame-coloured dance-frock and a charming hair ornament of gilt leaves.
The dress was sleeveless and cut daringly low in the corsage and the
back. “I thought you’d forgotten us!”

“Well, Sylvia, I’ll confess,” said Geoffrey in a low voice, taking the
hand she held out to him. “As a matter of fact, I really had! The pater
only reminded me of it just in time for us to rush to the station.”

“Ah! Immersed as usual in your mysterious old wireless,” laughed the
pretty daughter of the South American widow. “I heard somebody say at a
lunch at the Ritz the other day that all electrical people inevitably
take to drink or to wireless.”

“Well, I’m glad I haven’t yet taken to the former,” laughed the young
man, and together they went into the fine drawing-room, where a gay
dance was in progress.

A few moments later the young man found his hostess, a stout,
well-dressed woman, who possessed all the impelling manners of the
well-bred South American, and who had hustled into Society until the
newspapers were constantly chronicling her doings, describing her
jewels, and printing her photograph, so that Suburbia knew more of Mrs.
Beverley than even Mrs. Beverley knew herself. She loved Argentina, she
confessed, but she loved London far better. Before her marriage she had
known quite a lot of people in London society, for she had come over
each year, and now, in her widowhood, she had returned, and certainly
she was one of London’s prominent figures, for she entertained Cabinet
Ministers, politicians, authors, painters--in fact, anybody who was
anybody in London life.

Geoffrey had first met her and her daughter while on the voyage from
New York eighteen months before. He had been over on business to the
transatlantic Wireless Station at Belmar--which, by the way, is in
direct communication with Carnarvon by day and night--and on board they
had been introduced, with the result that the widow had invited him to
call upon her “when she settled down.”

The pretty go-ahead Sylvia had attracted him, and when one day he had
received a card at the Automobile Club he lost no time in resuming
the very pleasant acquaintanceship. Indeed, Mrs. Beverley and Sylvia
had motored down to Warley one day a month afterwards, and looked
in at Geoffrey’s experimental laboratory, bewildered at its maze of
instruments, its many little glow-lamps and tangles of wire.

Mother and daughter had listened upon the relay and “loud-speaker” of
the wireless telephone to the Air Ministry at Croydon, Pulham, and
Lympe, and to the Morse signals from Newfoundland, Cairo, Madrid, and
other cities, until the girl, with whom he was secretly in love, had
declared herself quite fascinated by the most modern of sciences.

Indeed, it was this fascination which had first held the two young
people in a common bond. On board the liner, though as an engineer
of the Marconi Company he was constantly in and out of the wireless
cabin because the operator was having some trouble with his spark
transmission, it had never occurred to him to invite the girl in to
listen. It was, indeed, not until a few hours before they reached
Southampton that he had explained his profession to her.

The pair had, on the voyage, fallen very much in love with each other,
and now, thoroughly understanding each other, they were carefully
preserving their secret from Mrs. Beverley, whose great ambition, like
that of many South American mothers, was to marry her daughter into the
British Peerage.

As a matter of fact, the real object of her lavish entertaining at
Upper Brook Street was to find a suitable husband for Sylvia, a peer of
wealth, no matter his age or past record.

In Geoffrey Falconer, Sylvia had found a clever, good-looking,
unassuming man, whose ideals coincided with her own, even though she
naturally viewed England and English ways through South American
spectacles. Yet for three years she had been at school at Versailles,
and mixing with English girls as she had done, she had lost much of her
American intonation of speech.

The pair were genuinely attached to each other. The only third person
who knew of this was the old Professor himself. Though thin and
white-haired he was a genial old fellow, who dearly loved a joke, and
who, when at Oxford, had been regarded by all the undergraduates as a
real good sort. Many of his students had made their name in the world
of politics and law, while one was now Governor of one of Britain’s
most important colonies.

Like father, like son. Geoffrey, though he had for four years been
associated with those young men of the Air Force who, though so many
of them had never flown a yard, considered themselves vastly superior
to all others who trod the earth, had never imitated the “wrist-watch
swank,” nor the drawl of that grey-uniformed genus who, during the war,
brought personal egotism to such a fine art. He was quiet, unassuming,
studious, yet a firm-hearted, bold, and fearless Englishman.

Sylvia, thanks to her mother’s sly machinations, met numbers of
eligible young men, many of whom had great fortunes looming in the
future. But in the whirl of London society, with its dressing, dancing
and dressmakers’ lure, she passed them all by, her only thought being
of the young man whom she had met on board the liner.

That night they had danced together several times, when suddenly, as
they crossed the ballroom, the girl exclaimed:

“Look! Why there’s Mr. Glover! You surely recollect him? He came over
with us. I thought he was in Paris.”

Falconer glanced across to a big, broad-shouldered, round-faced man,
who was clean-shaven, with a lock of fair hair falling across his
forehead, a man with protruding chin, thick lips, a pair of shrewd blue
eyes, who wore an emerald in his shirt-front.

In an instant a crowd of memories flashed across her companion’s
mind. For a second he hesitated. Then he advanced, and greeted his
fellow-traveller across the Atlantic.

“It was awfully kind of your mother to ask me, Miss Beverley,” said the
big, burly fellow to Sylvia as they shook hands. “I took a house near
Maidenhead, but I’ve been in Paris ever since we got over. I only got
to the Ritz three days ago, and received her card through Morgan’s.”

“Well, we’re awfully pleased to see you,” Sylvia declared. “We’ve at
last settled in London, and it’s real good to be here.”

“Yes,” drawled Mr. George Glover. “I usually come over to Europe twice
a year on business, and I always look forward to it. Americans who
haven’t travelled never realise the delights of dear old London, do
they?”

Presently the trio went in to supper together. Quite casually Sylvia
mentioned Geoffrey’s connection with wireless, whereupon Glover
began to discuss some of the newest theories in a manner unusually
intelligent for the uninitiated. This caused Geoffrey’s thoughts to
wander far from that gay crowd by which he was surrounded.

The man seated opposite him was something of a mystery. On the trip
over to Europe, at one o’clock one morning, he had despatched from
the ship a curious wireless message. Geoffrey had happened to be in
the cabin with the chief wireless operator when the message had been
brought in. He was assisting the operator to adjust his spark, which
was slightly out of order. Ships’ wireless sets, like watches, are
sometimes liable to vagaries. Why, nobody can tell.

The message sent in was marked “very urgent,” but the “spark” was poor,
and the range at the moment rather inefficient. As it lay beside the
transmitting key, Geoffrey read it.

He remembered it quite distinctly because, by some strange intuition,
he felt that it was not what it pretended to be. One sometimes
experiences strange suspicions. And in this case Geoffrey wondered.
He knew the sender, and perhaps because of his friendship with Sylvia
and her mother, he had felt a little irritation, for he instinctively
mistrusted the man.

The message was of a commercial character, and read:

  “_Betser, King’s Arms Hotel, Norwich.--Don’t deal directly demand
  delay execute slowly.--Glover._”

Next day he had found himself reflecting upon that message, and
returning to the wireless cabin, he copied it. For a whole day he
puzzled over it, when at last--used as he was to all sorts of ciphers
and codes--he discovered in it a four-figure code. The initial letter
of the first five words was “D”--the fourth letter of the alphabet.
Then “E”--the fifth letter--and “S”--the nineteenth. Hence the message
was no doubt in figure-code, and read “4519.”

From that moment onward he had viewed the man Glover with considerable
suspicion, but on landing at Southampton he had lost sight of him. And
now he was much surprised to find him as guest of the rich widow.

Sight of the thick-set, clean-shaven man had brought that strange
message back to his memory, and the more so because on deck late
one night he had seen the man talking in confidence to a stout,
flashily-dressed woman, yet next day they had passed each other on deck
as strangers!

As the trio sat at supper, Glover was most genial and full of
merriment. That Sylvia liked him was plain, yet whether it was
intuition or jealousy, Geoffrey, as later on he sat with his father in
the last train from Liverpool Street, pondered again and again.

On his return from Chelmsford each evening during the week that
followed, Falconer sat down at a quarter past seven at his own wireless
set, when, without fail, there came that strange, inexplicable and
unreadable signal always at eighteen-and-a-half minutes past seven.

Of operators at the great Marconi stations at Towyn, in Wales, and
Clifden, in Ireland, as well as of several operators whom he knew at
the busy coast stations at the North Foreland, Niton, and Cleethorpes,
he made inquiry as to whether they had heard the same signal. Strangely
enough, all the replies were in the negative.

Indeed, one night he himself listened on the great aerial which is such
a prominent feature in the landscape at Chelmsford, but failed to catch
a single sound.

Therefore, he proved beyond doubt that his own set was supersensitive,
and that his improvement of the multi-valve amplifying detector was a
considerable achievement.

He, however, said nothing. At present it was his own secret. But he was
not so much concerned with the new invention as in the solution of the
mystery. By his research work in the wide field of radio-telegraphy he
had developed a keen interest in anything that was mysterious, and here
was presented an extremely curious problem. That oblong metal box with
its seven little glowing glass tubes was the only instrument which
picked up that inexplicable signal.

A fortnight passed. Each anxious day young Falconer worked hard in
the splendidly-equipped experimental laboratory in that hive of
wireless industry at Chelmsford, where radio apparatus of all kinds
was being constructed for every civilised nation--that triumph of the
Italian inventor who gave to the world a means of instant and reliable
communication unknown before those epoch-making experiments on Monte
Nero, outside the sun-blanched town of Leghorn. Truly the science
of radio-telegraphy has made rapid strides since the days of the
“coherer,” until now, after the war, it is the most advanced in our
human civilisation, and at the same time full of romance. Not a month
passes but something new is discovered in that high-built, well-knit
laboratory, where daily the keenest brains of wireless experimenters
are at work devising, testing, and too often scrapping new instruments,
new circuits, and new devices in order to improve and render less
complicated both the ordinary wireless by Morse, and that modern
marvel, the wireless telephone.

The world has yet to learn what it owes to wireless. Little does it
dream of its aid to commerce in every quarter of the globe; how much
of the news it reads at its breakfast-table had been flashed through
the ether for thousands of miles, or how every hour it outstrips the
choked-up and behind-the-times submarine cable system.

Geoffrey Falconer was very sorely puzzled.

But why was that mysterious signal unheard by others? Further, by what
method was it being transmitted? Being acquainted with every method
of transmission, he guessed, after a number of tests, that it must be
automatic. One day he took his improved microphone amplifier to the
works at Chelmsford, and attaching it to the very complicated apparatus
designed for the reception of signals automatically transmitted--a
piece of apparatus far too technical to here describe--he sat at a
quarter past seven awaiting the usual signal.

With him were two of the research staff, both as deeply interested in
the mystery as himself, though upon their high-up aerial wires they had
been unable to detect the signals in question.

“Hulloa!” cried Boyd, a fair, clean-shaven man of thirty-five, who was
a well-known radio-engineer. “There she goes!”

The receiving apparatus gave a short quick buzz, thrice repeated, and
then there was silence again.

Eagerly Falconer took the record which had been made, and placing it
in another small box, adjusted the head-’phones, and depressing a key,
allowed it to revolve slowly. The message became distinctly readable!

They were figures--_the numerals_ 4519, thrice repeated. It was that
same code-message which the genial Glover had sent from the liner in
mid-Atlantic! What could it mean?

Two facts were now proved--that the amplifier, as improved by Geoffrey,
was a supersensitive instrument, which would, no doubt, have a great
future before it, and bring its inventor both money and fame in the
world of radio-telegraphy. Secondly, that some curious mystery lay
behind the appearance of Mr. George Glover in London society.

That night on arrival home, he told the Professor of his discovery, and
both father and son agreed that it was necessary to make some searching
investigations regarding Mrs. Beverley’s friend.

With that object Geoffrey went up to London on the following day, and
calling upon Sylvia fortunately found her alone.

With difficulty he approached the subject of Glover, because he knew
that the girl suspected him of jealousy. She had, indeed, hinted at it
on the night of the dance. However, in the course of conversation, he
casually referred to the man who had despatched that curious telegram
from the liner.

“Oh, yes!” the girl answered. “We see quite a lot of Mr. Glover now.
Mother likes him immensely. He is enormously rich--has great oil
interests in Roumania and in Baku. He made a great deal of money during
the war, and he knows quite a number of good people in London. He’s
going down to Lady Nassington’s, in Sussex, next week--and we are going
too.”

“You will be fellow-guests then?” Falconer remarked.

“Yes, Geoffrey. But you speak as though you resent it,” laughed the
pretty girl.

“Not at all,” he hastened to assure her. “Only----”

“Only--what?” she asked.

“Well--nothing,” he replied. “At least, nothing at present.”

“You’re awfully mysterious, Geoffrey. What do you really mean?”

“Nothing,” he declared. “What should I mean? I hardly know your friend,
Mr. Glover. Your mother, no doubt, knows him well.”

“Yes--and all about him,” the girl replied. “He’s awfully kind to us.
He took us to Brighton in his big car last Sunday week, and gave us a
topping time there. He claims to be a American but I don’t know if he
is.”

Geoffrey reflected. That strange series of secret signals held him
mystified. So he determined to wait and watch.

Next day, when in the experimental laboratory at Chelmsford, he took
his friend, Frank Boyd, into his confidence regarding the signal they
had tuned in, and also told him of the message sent by Glover late one
night from mid-Atlantic.

Boyd, who stood with the head-’phones in his hand, for he had been
making a test upon a new direction-finding device, listened with great
interest.

“I agree, Falconer, there’s something wrong somewhere,” he remarked.
“But who can have a transmitting-set which sends out messages upon a
wave-length that we can’t get?”

“It may be by the new beam method,” Falconer suggested, “the method
with which we are just now experimenting. Once or twice I’ve thought it
might be a military continuous-wave set.”

“If so--then they are in front of us. That, however, I very much
doubt,” declared Boyd. “The Germans thought themselves top-dogs in
wireless before the war, but we beat them every time on their own
ground--didn’t we?”

“We certainly did. Here, in these works, the inventions were made and
developed for the Army, Navy, and Air Force. It’s up to us--to you and
me personally--to solve this mystery.”

“Yes, Falconer--and we’ll do it,” said the other. “I don’t like the
idea of signals being sent out that we can’t read from our big aerial
here.”

“They are signals from nowhere, yet always the same, and at exactly the
same time. G.M.T. never alters--neither does the signal,” Falconer said.

So the pair agreed to listen still further, and to make investigation
regarding the wealthy man from America, who had so suddenly arisen in
the social firmament of post-war London.

Geoffrey had some few days’ leave due to him, so he took it, and,
unknown to Mrs. Beverley and her daughter, watched the gay house-party
assemble at Nassington Hall, the seat of the Earl of Nassington, not
far from Crowborough, in Sussex.

Now, near Crowborough there was a wireless station, and on the
night of Geoffrey’s arrival at the Beacon Hotel, he called upon the
non-commissioned officer in charge, introduced himself, and was
afforded an opportunity of looking over the apparatus. Naturally the
man in charge was gratified that such an expert as Geoffrey Falconer
should examine their set, and pronounce both transmission and reception
unusually good. Then, soon after ten o’clock, Geoffrey returned to the
Beacon.

That night he sent a note in secret to Sylvia, and in the autumn
afternoon next day they met at the junction of the two roads at
Marden’s Hill.

“I’m down here to have a look at a wireless set close by,” he
explained. “Isn’t it fortunate? I’ll be here for a couple of days, I
expect.”

“You gave me a real surprise,” the girl said. “When Thring brought me
your note with my morning tea I could hardly believe that you were so
close at hand. Why not come in to tea? Mother will introduce you to
Lady Nassington.”

“No,” he replied. “I have, unfortunately, a lot of work to do at the
wireless station. Please excuse me.”

“Ah! I know. You don’t want to meet Mr. Glover,” laughed the girl. “Now
confess it!”

“It isn’t that, I assure you, Sylvia. But I would rather have a walk
and a chat with you than gossip with all those people with whom I have
so very little in common.”

“Yes, Geoffrey, I know. You are engrossed in your wireless inventions,”
she replied, gazing affectionately into his eyes. “And, after all, you
are right. We women enjoy ourselves, but men who serve the world as you
do are nobler if they keep away from all our feminine frivolities.”

“I suppose Glover is merry, as usual--quite a good fellow, isn’t he?”

“Yes. He’s the soul of the house-party. They are all out shooting
to-day. Madame Valdavia, the wife of the Spanish millionaire banker,
arrived last night. She’s quite young and charming. I wish you could
meet her.”

“I can’t. I’m sorry.”

“You can if you will only call on mother to-morrow.”

“But I’m really too busy, Sylvia--so do please excuse me,” he pleaded,
as they walked along the leaf-strewn path through the wood from Friar’s
Gate, where half a mile away towards Lone Oak the shooting party were
giving evidence of good sport.

“We have a fancy dress dinner to-night. Every one is wearing quaint
costumes, and there’s certain to be a lot of fun. The party is really
most enjoyable. I do wish you would call, Geoffrey--do,” she urged.

“No,” said the young man very seriously. “I have reasons which I will
tell you afterwards.”

“You are always so mysterious,” she declared with a pretty pout. “I
believe it is your horrible old wireless which makes you so.”

“No, not horrible,” he protested with a laugh. “Interesting, I
admit--in more senses than one.”

“Well--interesting, then,” she agreed with a nod of her pretty head.
“But I can’t see why you are so very interested in Mr. Glover. Every
one at Lady Nassington’s likes him.”

“So do I, Sylvia.”

“Then why be so mysterious?”

“I’m not mysterious. I happened to have come down to see the wireless
installation here, and you are staying at a country house in the
vicinity. So I just looked you up--that’s all.”

“But why don’t you call? I want to introduce you to them all.”

“And if I called to see you, your friend Glover, knowing of our
friendship, would, in the smoking-room, whisper that I had followed you
down here. No. I prefer that we should preserve our secret, Sylvia. You
surely don’t want to cause your mother annoyance and anxiety? Remember
you are to marry a man of title. At the very thought of your being
engaged to me your mother would faint.”

“Yes,” laughed the girl, dashing aside some dead leaves with her
walking stick. “I really think she would.”

“Then, for the present, let us remain quite quiet,” urged young
Falconer. “I will see you again when you get back to town.”

A few moments later, while they stood on the path beneath the leafless
trees, the young man raised her gloved hand to his lips, and then
they parted, she to hurry on and rejoin the guns, and he to return to
Crowborough.

Falconer was there with a distinct purpose. He walked back to the
Beacon Hotel, ate his dinner, and played billiards until half-past ten
o’clock, when he put on his coat and went out for a moonlight walk. He
pictured to himself the gay scene at Nassington Hall, which he might
easily have joined, yet he hesitated because of the problem he had in
hand.

The white moon shone brightly over the Sussex downs as he walked along
the high road to where the wireless station was installed.

He called there and had another chat with the sergeant on duty. Then he
resumed his walk in the direction of Nassington Hall.

When within a hundred yards of a side gate which gave entrance to a
short cut from the hall to the railway station, he drew back under a
huge thorn-bush and lit a cigarette.

He wondered whether he was not making a fool of himself. From where
he stood he could see in the distance the many lighted windows of the
Hall. No doubt, scenes of merriment were taking place within.

The clock of Crowborough Church chimed the hour of one--half-past--then
two o’clock. The distant windows were still lit, and finding a fallen
tree, he sat down to contemplate.

Soon after two o’clock the lights in the distant windows died away, one
after another. The fun was over. The wind blew cold, and even in his
thick overcoat he shivered. Yet when he was putting a theory to the
test in wireless or otherwise, he never begrudged sleepless hours.

Just after four in the morning, while he still remained patiently at
his post, Geoffrey’s quick ear suddenly heard the sound of approaching
footsteps. Drawing back, he watched a dark figure coming hurriedly from
the direction of the Hall, until, when it passed close by him, he saw
in the dull half-light that it was a middle-aged countryman, evidently
a local farmer who was up and about betimes.

In chagrin he drew back into his place of concealment, but a few
seconds after the man had passed a fresh thought suddenly occurred to
him. So, noiselessly, he followed the passer-by in the direction of
the station. The man, however, did not go to the railway, but at a
short distance from it he drew back into a hedge, in order, no doubt,
to wait for the first train in the morning.

Geoffrey watched for a further half-hour, then withdrew and hastened
to the wireless station, whence he called up a friend of his named
Hemmington, who lived in Hampstead, and had an amateur wireless station
there.

He had not repeated the amateur’s call-signal three times before he
received an answering signal, after which his hand rapidly tapped the
keys. Then a few seconds later he received the signal, “O.K.”

Afterwards he returned to the Beacon Hotel, arriving there just as the
sleepy servants were astir.

He breakfasted early, but scarcely had he finished when he was called
by the waiter to the telephone.

It was Sylvia who spoke. In a state of greatest agitation she told
him that burglars had broken into the Hall in the early hours and had
stolen her mother’s rope of pearls, worth over twenty thousand pounds,
and also nearly the whole of Madame Valdavia’s fine jewels, which she
had worn at the fancy dress dinner.

“We are all horrified, Geoffrey,” she went on. “Mr. Glover has just
gone out in the car to tell the police. What can we do? Can you come up
here? Mother wants to see you.”

“I’m awfully sorry,” was Falconer’s reply. “Please excuse me, as I’m
terribly busy to-day. But tell your mother, in strict secrecy, that I
have a notion that she will get her pearls back again.”

“What do you mean, Geoffrey?” asked the girl’s high-pitched voice.

“What I’ve said, Sylvia. Remain patient. I have to go up to town at
once. I’ll telephone you again at two o’clock this afternoon. To-morrow
I shall not be so busy on wireless, and I’ll run down and see you
all--and also meet Mr. Glover,” he added with a laugh.

“But--but----”

He only laughed, and put up the receiver.

The truth was that, owing to Geoffrey’s message to the wireless amateur
in Hampstead, the bucolic-looking individual from Crowborough had been
detained by the police when he had stepped out of the early train at
Victoria, and upon him there had been found the whole of the stolen
property.

Owing to what Geoffrey was able to disclose to the Criminal
Investigation Department, a very curious state of things became
revealed.

It was found that the genial George Glover--who, by the way, was
promptly arrested and subsequently extradited to Paris--was none
other than the notorious Henry Harberson, head of a great gang of
International crooks and jewel thieves, who had recently established
their temporary headquarters in London, and who had as receiver an old
Dutchman at Utrecht named Van Hoover.

Thanks to Falconer’s patient investigations, extending over a further
period of some weeks, it was also rendered clear that Harberson had,
with the latest refinement of criminality, actually established
wireless communication with each of the six members of his gang in
England, by means of a very ingenious transmitter, the signals of which
were unreadable save under certain conditions. A man named Jensen of
Copenhagen had devised it, and that mysterious signal of four numerals
had been sent out daily just before half-past seven in order to inform
each member all was safe, and that no police inquiry was being made.

The jewels had been stolen from Nassington Hall by the pretended
wealthy man, whose oil interests in Roumania were bogus, and handed
out of the conservatory window to a confederate from New Orleans named
Blades, who was dressed for the occasion as a Sussex farmer.

Both men, with two of their accomplices, who were found in possession
of secret receiving sets, were sent over to France, and at the time
of writing they are all serving long terms of imprisonment for three
sensational jewel robberies committed there.

Mrs. Beverley was, however, naturally delighted to be again in
possession of her pearls, while in Geoffrey Falconer’s private
laboratory there is to-day Harberson’s very up-to-date secret
wireless set which the police seized at the pretty house which, as
George Glover, he rented on the Thames, not far from Maidenhead. In
construction it is, after all, only a variation upon a set previously
devised in the research department at Chelmsford, yet there are two
factors in it which, to Geoffrey, established a new theory, and which,
as will later on be apparent, were destined to be of distinct advantage
to him in his experiments and investigations into the romance of
wireless.




CHAPTER II

THE VOICE FROM THE VOID


One afternoon about a month after the curious Affair of the Secret
Signal, while Geoffrey was busy conducting some experiment in the
research laboratory at Chelmsford, a tall, well-dressed young foreigner
entered, and advancing to where he was seated, placed his hand upon his
shoulder.

“Well!” gasped Geoffrey starting, his face lighting with pleasure.
“Why, my dear Enrico! Wherever have you sprung from?”

“They’ve sent me over from Coltano about some new apparatus, and I
heard you were in here. I arrived in London a week ago,” explained
the dark, smooth-haired young fellow, who was one of the engineers at
the powerful wireless station belonging to the Italian Government,
and whose messages, prefixed by the call-signal, “I.C.I.,” are so
well-known to all wireless men.

Enrico Rossi, the son of a distinguished Italian general, had spent
many years in England. He had met Falconer during the war, when they
had become fast friends. Rossi had been attached to the Intelligence
Branch of the Italian Army, his duty being the interception of enemy
messages. Then, after peace, the young man had resumed his responsible
post at the great wireless station in Tuscany.

Falconer took off his head-’phones, and learning that his friend was
returning to London at half-past five, agreed to accompany him, so that
they might dine together at the club.

This they did, and afterwards Geoffrey took his friend along to Mrs.
Beverley’s in Upper Brook Street. He had often spoken of Enrico to
Sylvia--hence he was anxious to introduce him. The South American widow
was one of those many enthusiasts who had fallen beneath the lure of
Italy, therefore both mother and daughter made the young man most
welcome.

“We are thinking of going to Italy very soon, Mr. Rossi,” said Mrs.
Beverley, in the course of their chat in the big, elegant drawing-room.
“It is five years since I was there.”

“Oh if you come, please do not fail to let me know,” said the
good-looking young fellow, whose elegance of manner was so typically
Italian. “I am frequently at our wireless station at San Paolo, outside
Rome, and no doubt you will go to the Eternal City.”

“To Florence first, I think, mother,” Sylvia said. “I want to see the
Pitti and the Uffizi.”

“Better still,” exclaimed Enrico. “I am within a couple of hours of
Firenze--or, as we call it--Firenze la Bella.”

“We are beginning to know quite a lot about wireless through Mr.
Falconer,” declared the popular South American hostess. “It is all so
intensely fascinating.”

“Yes,” replied the young Italian in very good English. “We are
constantly making fresh discoveries. The most wonderful and important
nowadays is, of course, telephony through space.”

“We should have all been burned as wizards had we lived a few hundred
years ago,” laughed Geoffrey. “The world would have declared us capable
of working miracles--heat, motion, light and sound--created out of
nothing!”

The young men remained smoking until Geoffrey was compelled to scurry
to catch his last train, while Enrico Rossi left him at Liverpool
Street Station to go back to his hotel.

“I’ll be down at Chelmsford again to-morrow,” he said on parting.
“We’ve got a lot of trouble with our five-kilowatt telephone set, and
we want your people to help us out of it.”

“No doubt we can,” laughed Geoffrey. “We can fit you up with most
things in wireless at Chelmsford.”

“Right-o!” said the Italian. “I’ll be down in the morning. _Buona
notte!_”

And he turned and left his friend as the train moved off.

Now, on Geoffrey’s return home, he found the Professor busy writing
in his study, at work on the great book which was to be the crowning
distinction of his splendid career.

The courtly old man put aside his pen, and filling his pipe,
listened to his son’s account of the unexpected arrival of Enrico,
of whom he had so often spoken since the war, and whose talents as a
radio-engineer he always praised so highly.

“I’ll ask him over to dine to-morrow night,” said Geoffrey when at last
they rose, for it was then past one o’clock in the morning, and the
Professor was about to retire.

Before going to bed, Geoffrey passed into the room which he had
converted into an experimental laboratory. It was his habit--as is
the habit of most wireless experimenters--to switch on the aerial and
listen for a few moments before going to bed.

The long-distance traffic to and from America and Europe is always
clearer and of greater interest in the small hours of the morning than
in the daytime, for at night the electric waves carry farther, and are
converted into signals much louder and more distinct than during the
hours of light.

So he took up the telephones, drew down the aerial switch, thus
connecting the high twin wires across the lawn to the instruments, and
by means of another switch put into circuit his long-wave set--the
apparatus upon which the chief high-power European stations were
received.

The first he heard was Moscow sending out its usual Bolshevik
propaganda--of which nobody takes any notice--then, turning the
condenser slowly, he heard Nantes sending to Budapest. Another slight
turn and he listened to “F.L.,” (the Eiffel Tower) transmitting upon
its continuous wave--or “C.W.,” as it is known to wireless men--to
Sarajevo, in Bosnia, and at the same time Madrid was in communication
with Poldhu, in Cornwall.

Strange, indeed, is the medley of messages which flash through the
ether in the starlight, unseen, unfelt, and undetected, save by the
delicate apparatus with its row of little illuminated vacuum tubes such
as Geoffrey Falconer had there before him.

He was just about to lay down the telephone when, as he turned the
knob of the condenser, he suddenly heard an unusual howl--the strong,
high-pitched whistle of a continuous-wave valve. He knew by the sound
that it was the wave of a wireless telephone, therefore he waited and
listened.

In a few seconds he heard a voice, deep, but not unmusical, exclaim
in Italian with great clearness--almost as clear as that from the
experimental telephone set at Chelmsford:

“Hulloa! Hulloa! Hulloa! I am calling I.C.I.! Hulloa, I.C.I.! Can you
hear me? I.C.I.! I.C.I.!” the voice kept repeating, calling Coltano, in
Italy.

Geoffrey was greatly mystified. The note was quite clear and distinct,
though the voice was apparently distorted. The modulation was a little
faulty. But, as an expert, he knew the great difficulties of telephony
without wires, and the thousand and one trivial things which are
necessary for success. A loose terminal screw; the disconnection
of a single strand of wire no thicker than a human hair; a failing
accumulator, or a “soft” valve, all too frequently undetectable, makes
the difference between failure and success.

There was an interval of half a minute.

The operator, whoever he was, who wanted Coltano, the station a
thousand miles away from Essex, was no doubt making some adjustment.

At last the voice came again with startling clearness.

“Hulloa! Hulloa! Hulloa, Coltano! Hulloa, I.C.I.! Are you on duty,
Nicola? Hulloa, Nicola! Nicola? Nicola? Or is it Tozzoni on duty?
Tozzoni? Tozzoni? _Tanti saluti_,” the voice continued. “Listen,
Nicola. Here is Enrico Rossi!”

Falconer held his breath. The speech was weird, and quite unusual.

“Rossi calling I.C.I.--calling Nicola. Listen, Nicola, _caro mio_!
Rossi speaking. Rossi speaking. Can you hear me?” continued the
distorted voice.

There was a pause. Then again over the carrier-wave of electricity ran
the words:

“Listen, Coltano! Listen, Nicola--or Tozzoni! Both of you are my dear
friends. Enrico speaking. I am in London--in London! With Falconer, of
Chelmsford. Can you hear that?” he shouted in a shriller voice. “With
Falconer, of Chelmsford! You know him--both of you. Well, I’m over here
in England. But I am not coming back to Italy. My message to you is
that I am not returning. I have other plans in America.”

Then there was another pause, during which Falconer listened, silent
and breathless.

“Nicola, _caro mio_! I have other plans in America, so I shall not
return to you. _Tanti saluti, caro mio._ Will you reply? Please reply
on six thousand five hundred mètres. I will listen. Rossi, changing
over!”

Falconer strained his ears to listen to the reply to that amazing
message sent by his friend whom only two and a half hours before, he
had left at Liverpool Street Station.

But though Madrid, Poldhu, Leafield, Cleethorpes, and Aberdeen were
busy to various European stations, he could detect no reply. For quite
ten minutes he listened, until, suddenly, the powerful station at
Leafield, near Oxford, sent out the words in Morse code:

“Understood--Rossi to Coltano. Good telephony. Cannot hear Coltano.”

Next second another station, which he took to be Aberdeen, sent a
message:

“Have understood Rossi to Coltano. What is the mystery? Have not heard
Coltano’s reply. Waiting for Coltano.”

But though the young experimenter listened intently the station in
Central Italy remained silent.

Suddenly, however, he heard the well-known note of the great Italian
radio-station, which tapped out in Morse, after giving his call-signal,
“I.C.I.,” the letters “Q.R.A.”--the conventional sign for the question:
“What is the name of your station?”

To this there was no reply. Half-a-dozen times the request came from
Italy, apparently for the name of the station working telephony, though
even that was not clear. Yet, no doubt, a hundred pairs of ears were
listening in England alone. At the moment several stations were jamming
each other so badly that it became extremely difficult to pick out the
words from Coltano.

Again, with almost startling distinctness, the strong, continuous wave
of electricity was heard in the telephones, and the same voice spoke:

“This is 2.C.Q., calling I.C.I. Rossi speaking. Glad you got my
message. _Addio!_”

The voice with its foreign accent sounded to Geoffrey much like that of
his friend, but being distorted, recognition was not easy.

The whole circumstance was most puzzling, to say the least, and
Geoffrey ascended to his room wondering not so much why Enrico had so
suddenly made up his mind not to return to Italy as to the identity of
the station from which he had transmitted that telephone message across
Europe.

The call-signal, “2.C.Q.,” showed it to be an experimental station,
but he knew of none so powerful as to be able to transmit telephony to
Central Italy.

The whole affair was a complete enigma.

Next day he awaited the arrival of his friend at Chelmsford, but though
the hours passed, he did not appear. The following day went by, but
he neither came nor wrote. The department at the works with which the
station had been doing business was equally puzzled. He had ordered on
behalf of the Coltano station a quantity of new apparatus for wireless
telephony, and it was being constructed in all haste, yet though a
whole week went by, he never returned to inspect it.

To his friend, Frank Boyd, Falconer told the story of that mysterious
telephone message in the night. At first Boyd hardly gave it credence,
but it was corroborated by the operators at Poldhu, who had been on
watch at the time.

“Well, we must find out who ‘2.C.Q.’ is. They have a list of
experimenters and their call-signals at Marconi House,” Boyd said.
“Let’s ring up and see.”

They did, and the reply received was that the station, 2.C.Q.,
belonged to a retired naval officer living near Epsom Downs, a man who
had experimented in wireless for some years, but whose station was
certainly not equipped for long-distance telephony.

Next day Geoffrey came to London, and then went down to Epsom, full
of eagerness to solve the mystery. The retired naval commander, a man
named Kent, received him, but at once assured him that no telephony had
been transmitted from there. He only possessed the ordinary amateur’s
set, which he showed his visitor--a limited power of ten watts for
continuous-wave transmission. His range of transmission was probably
not more than over a ten-mile radius.

“Have you any knowledge of a young Italian named Enrico Rossi?” asked
Geoffrey, as he stood in Mr. Kent’s wireless room.

“None whatever. To my knowledge I have never heard the name before,”
was the reply.

So Geoffrey was compelled to return to London, where, on arrival, he
called at the hotel near Charing Cross which Enrico had given as his
address, but to his surprise was informed at the bureau that no person
of that name had been staying there!

Indeed, Falconer examined the register of visitors himself, but found
no entry of the name of Rossi, either in the account-books of the hotel
or the register which all visitors signed when engaging rooms.

The mystery of Enrico’s disappearance was, in view of that remarkable
wireless message, most curious. Why had the Italian used a false
call-signal? Again, from what station had he transmitted that message
of farewell?

Having obtained permission, Falconer’s next action was to ask Coltano
whether they had received the telephonic message from their engineer on
the night in question. The message was sent from Poldhu, while Geoffrey
himself, seated at Chelmsford, listened on the big aerial to its
dispatch, and then, a quarter of an hour later, heard the reply, which
read as follows:

  “Poldhu from Coltano. Understood your query. We have heard no
  telephony and received no message whatever from Enrico Rossi. Why do
  you ask? Kindly reply.--Director Coltano Radio.”

From that it was instantly plain that the message purporting to be
sent to Coltano was upon a low-power set somewhere in the vicinity of
London, and not, as Geoffrey had believed, upon apparatus which would
transmit two thousand or more miles. The Admiralty wireless station at
Cleethorpes heard it, and so had Aberdeen, but there was no proof that
it had been heard outside Britain.

The mystery increased hourly. The London police were informed, and
inquiries were made concerning the missing Italian.

To Sylvia, Geoffrey had told the whole story, and the girl had become
keenly excited concerning the disappearance of the good-mannered young
man, who was her lover’s friend.

“If I can help you, Geoffrey, I do hope you will allow me,” she urged.
“I believe the poor fellow has met with foul play, and if so, we ought
to discover the culprits.”

“That, I regret to say, is my suspicion,” was Falconer’s reply. “I
have a keen intuition that there is something very radically wrong
somewhere. Why should he announce his departure for America?”

“But he has not sailed, I suppose?”

“The police have been busy examining the list of sailings, but his name
does not appear anywhere,” Geoffrey said. “Again,” he went on, “why
should he deceive me as to where he was staying?”

“I cannot think why he was not frank and open with you. What had he to
fear?” Sylvia remarked.

“That’s just it! Perhaps he went in fear of something, and for that
reason kept his whereabouts a secret,” said her lover as they stood
together in the pretty morning-room looking out into Upper Brook
Street. “Anyhow it’s a mystery which I intend to solve--if possible,”
he added.

In order to try to solve it he obtained leave from the works, and
travelled first to Pisa, the old marble-built city famous for its
cathedral and leaning tower, and then on to Coltano.

The director, a tall, dark-haired, rather handsome man, received him
warmly in his private office attached to the long row of buildings
which form the power-house and operating rooms of the station.

When he heard the story, he exclaimed in Italian--a language which
Geoffrey knew very well:

“All this is most amazing--incredible!” he cried. “Signor Rossi was
sent to Chelmsford to obtain certain new apparatus, and in his last
report, ten days ago, he wrote that all was in hand, and that he hoped
to be back in a fortnight’s time. Why should he go to America?” asked
the director, shrugging his shoulders significantly. “I cannot believe
it! We can only leave it to the police. He has a brother living in
Firenze.”

“Ah, yes!” exclaimed Geoffrey. “I have heard him speak of him. He is an
advocate, I think.”

“Yes. A very nice fellow. He lives in the Via Giotto.”

“I will go and see him,” the young Englishman said, and that same night
he left for the Lily City.

Next day he called upon the advocate, and made inquiry regarding his
brother. Signor Rossi, however, replied that he had heard nothing of
him since his departure for London.

Then Falconer retold the strange story of the amazing farewell message,
and his subsequent disappearance.

“Can you offer any suggestion concerning the extraordinary precaution
he took to mislead me as to where he was staying in London?” inquired
Geoffrey.

The advocate reflected.

“He may have been in fear of some enemy or other.”

“Then he had enemies?” asked the Englishman quickly.

“Ah! That I cannot tell. If he had, he never mentioned them to me.”

“Neither did he to me,” Falconer said. “But he was the last man in the
world to have enemies, I should have thought. The police have taken
up the inquiry, and one of the reasons I am here is to obtain his
photograph--if you have one.”

“Fortunately I have a recent one. He sent it to me from Rome six months
ago,” answered Enrico’s brother, who produced from a drawer a good
cabinet portrait.

“Excellent!” exclaimed Falconer. “We will reproduce it and circulate
it as soon as I get back to London. Poor Enrico! There can be no doubt
that he has fallen a victim of some very cleverly-conceived plot. I
only hope I shall be successful in unravelling it.”

“I sincerely hope so too, signore,” said the advocate, and later on
Falconer left him, departing that same day for London, travelling by
way of Milan and the Gothard.

On opening the London newspaper, which he bought on Folkestone Pier
when he landed, his eyes met a startling headline, and he sat in
his corner seat in the boat-train, aghast as he read the amazing
announcement.

On the previous day, it was stated, three men from a well-known
furniture depository went with the key to a flat in Longton Mansions,
Bayswater, to remove the furniture into storage, its owner, Mrs.
Priestley, having gone to Buenos Ayres for a year to join her husband,
who had an appointment out there.

On entering the flat, they first commenced removing the furniture from
the drawing-room and dining-room. Then they cleared out two bedrooms,
when one of the men, unlocking the door of a small box-room, the key of
which was in the door, was startled at finding a man huddled up inside!
A few seconds sufficed to show that he was dead--and had no doubt been
dead some days!

At once the police had been called, care being taken to hide the
gruesome discovery from other tenants of the flats. The body was
brought out, and the detective-inspector of the Division, on seeing
it, identified the body as that of a young man named Enrico Rossi, an
Italian engineer, who had been reported missing. The report concluded
with the usual cryptic assurance that the police had the matter in hand.

Geoffrey sat staggered. His worst fears were now realised. His friend
Enrico had, no doubt, been done to death!

On arrival at Victoria Station, he drove at once to Scotland Yard,
where he interviewed Superintendent Ransley, the same official with
whom the affair of the Secret Signals had brought him into contact.
And to him he gave the photograph of the dead man, which he had
brought from Italy.

“Yes, Mr. Falconer, the whole circumstances are an enigma,”
the superintendent told him as they sat together in the rather
barely-furnished room. “We are now in search of the woman named
Priestley. Yet as far as I can gather, she is a most respectable
lady. Her husband has recently obtained a post as vice-consul at San
Cristobal, and she stored her furniture in order to join him.”

“But where is she now?”

“On her way to Buenos Ayres perhaps. I hope to know to-morrow if she
has sailed. But whether she has or not, we shall no doubt eventually
find her.”

“And arrest her?”

“Yes--providing the coroner’s jury bring in a verdict of wilful murder.
And they must, for he was struck a heavy blow on the head by a piece of
iron piping.”

Later Falconer stood by the body of his friend, who was dressed just as
he had been when they parted at Liverpool Street. Indeed he was still
wearing his light overcoat, showing that he had been killed either on
arrival at the flat or upon his departure.

Naturally Geoffrey was greatly perturbed, and eager to discover the
woman in whose apartment Enrico had been assassinated. Next day the
motive of the crime was established--robbery. His wallet was missing!
That he had carried one Geoffrey knew, because he had produced it to
pay for his railway-fare from Chelmsford to London. It was a dark-red
one, and seemed well-filled with Treasury notes.

In due course, the inquest was held, and though Geoffrey gave evidence
of identification, he refrained, at the suggestion of Superintendent
Ransley, from telling the jury of that remarkable telephonic message of
farewell to which he had listened. The jury returned their verdict, and
left the police to solve the mystery and arrest the woman Priestley.

But though they made every inquiry, no trace could be found of her.
The firm of furniture removers stated that she had called one day and
asked them to remove her furniture and store it, handed the key of the
flat to the clerk, showed him a receipt for the last quarter’s rent,
and gave him a cheque for fifty pounds on account. She told him that
she was going abroad, and would probably be away for a year at least. A
receipt was given, and the men, going to carry out the work of removal,
made the sensational discovery.

About a month went by. The body of poor Enrico had been buried at
Geoffrey’s expense, and though the latter continued his research work
at Chelmsford, his thoughts were ever centred upon the mysterious Mrs.
Priestley.

One day Superintendent Ransley received information that an
Englishwoman named Priestley, who answered the description of the
missing woman, was staying at the Hôtel des Indes at the Hague. A few
hours later a detective-inspector armed with a request for arrest and
extradition, left London on his way to Holland _via_ Harwich, and six
days later Mrs. Priestley was at Bow Street Police Station, where she
was interrogated by Superintendent Ransley, who, of course, first
cautioned her that whatever she might say would be taken down and might
be used as evidence against her.

The charge that she had been guilty of murdering Enrico Rossi had, it
seemed, from the first staggered her. She had protested her innocence
over and over again.

“You knew this Signor Enrico Rossi?” said the superintendent, looking
up from the pocket-book in which he had been writing.

“Certainly I did--in Italy long ago,” was her reply. “I was born in
Italy, though my parents were English, and I first knew him in Ancona
when quite a girl.”

“He called to visit you at Longton Mansions?”

“He wrote saying he would call, and asked me to name a day. But I was
much engaged, and neglected to write to him. He, therefore, never
visited me.”

“Then how came he to be found murdered in your flat?” asked the
superintendent coldly.

“Ah! That I cannot tell. It is a mystery.”

“Yes,” grunted Ransley, “I agree--it is! But it would not be a mystery
if you told me the truth, Mrs. Priestley. You surely cannot expect us
to give credence to your denial?”

“I have told the truth,” was the woman’s firm reply. “I have never set
eyes upon Enrico Rossi since a month before the war. I then met him in
Pisa.”

“Was anyone else in your flat on the night in question?”

“Nobody. My maid, Axford, had gone home to Taunton three days before.”

“What time did you return home on that night?”

“I had been to a dance, and it must have been nearly three o’clock
before I got back. Now that I recollect, I am horrified to think that
I actually slept in the flat within a few feet of the dead body of the
man I had known so well.”

“Yes,” remarked Ransley in his curious cold tone of disbelief. “Quite
naturally.”

Then a few minutes later the woman who had denied all knowledge of the
affair was sent back to her cell, and the superintendent gave orders
for her to be brought before the magistrate next morning and charged
with the murder of Enrico Rossi.

This was done, and the evening newspapers were full of the sensational
affair, though, owing to certain circumstances, it was not deemed wise
by the authorities to let the public know the exact problem. Hence
the case was camouflaged. There were certain interests at stake which
apparently puzzled even the Home Office.

Eva Priestley, represented by a well-known Bow Street solicitor, who
offered no defence, was remanded. Her husband was communicated with,
but he knew nothing, and was, no doubt, astounded at the discovery, and
mystified regarding the young man Rossi.

A week later the prisoner, a tall, fair-haired woman, whose photograph,
in due course, appeared in all the picture-papers, and whom readers
of this present narrative must well remember under another name, was
committed for trial at the Old Bailey upon the capital charge, the
Public Prosecutor alleging that she had enticed the young fellow to her
flat, and had murdered him for the contents of his wallet.

Geoffrey Falconer agreed with Superintendent Ransley and with the
eminent King’s Counsel who prosecuted. The admission of Mrs. Priestley
that she and Enrico were old friends was surely most damning evidence.

Not until several days after Mrs. Priestley had been sent for trial
was a curious fact noticed concerning the blue serge jacket which poor
Enrico wore at the time he lost his life. Inside the collar the tab,
bearing the name of the tailor in Rome who had made the suit, had been
hastily cut aside, and beneath it a slit had been made, apparently with
a sharp knife. But whether this had been done during Rossi’s lifetime
or after death could not be established.

One of the strangest features of the affair, however, was that weird
message by radio-telephone--a message spoken, no doubt, by one aware
of the fact that Enrico had been done to death. The police inquiries,
however, failed to elicit any proof that the woman suspected of the
crime had any connection with anybody acquainted with wireless, even in
its most amateur form.

Obsessed by the mystery, Geoffrey had many conversations concerning it
with Sylvia, who believed in Mrs. Priestley’s innocence notwithstanding
the chain of circumstantial evidence and the fact that the body had
been hidden in her flat. But if Mrs. Priestley had not murdered the
young man, who had? asked the Public Prosecutor.

The day fixed for the trial of the alleged murderess was approaching,
when one afternoon Geoffrey, revisiting unexpectedly the scene of the
tragedy as he had done several times, chanced to pass on the stairs
a short, lean, white-haired little man who was ascending to the flat
above. Their eyes met, and the old man, turning his head, quickened his
pace.

Geoffrey recollected having met him before in those days when Venice
was seriously threatened by the Austrian advance. His name was Nocera,
and he was a banker in Venice--a man of considerable repute. Why,
Geoffrey wondered, was he living at Longton Mansions?

Of the hall-porter he later on learnt that Mr. Nocera and his wife had
occupied the flat above Mrs. Priestley’s for about three months. They
came from Italy and took it furnished. After a month they had as guest
a Mr. Zuccari, described by the hall-porter as a tall, thin, athletic
man, with a black moustache and very bald head.

“He was something of a mystery, and I was very glad when he left,” the
man declared. “One day, indeed, I found him trying the door of Mrs.
Priestley’s flat with the latchkey of the flat above. I caught him
unexpectedly, and he certainly did not like it, for three days later he
left, and I haven’t seen him since.”

“That’s curious,” Falconer remarked. “Very curious! Was he really
trying to get into her flat?”

“It seemed to me that he was. But, of course, my presence prevented
him.”

Later that evening Geoffrey related to Superintendent Ransley what he
had learnt, but strangely enough the Venice banker and his wife left
early next morning, taking with them two good-sized trunks. To the
porter they remarked that they were going to Edinburgh, but the man
was pretty wide awake, and giving the taxi-driver a quiet hint, heard
from him an hour later that he had driven them to Victoria, to the
Continental train.

Quickly observation was kept upon the pair, and at Folkestone the
passport which they presented as Italian subjects was declared by the
passport officer to be out of order, a fact which necessitated them
both returning to London, though quite unconscious that they were under
suspicion.

At the same time, after closely questioning the hall-porter,
Superintendent Ransley gave instructions that active search should be
made for the bald-headed guest who had been tampering with the lock
of Mrs. Priestley’s flat. Then there was a further surprise, and Mrs.
Priestley herself, questioned in prison, admitted she knew the people
in the flat above, and being Italians, they had once or twice visited
her. At once the police, aided by Geoffrey, redoubled their efforts,
Falconer being at last successful in obtaining a further piece of
curious evidence. He had taken the key of Mrs. Priestley’s flat to a
number of locksmiths in order to ascertain if they had been asked to
make a similar key, but in vain. Of a sudden, however, he recollected
having seen a barrow full of old keys and rusty locks in Lower Marsh,
Lambeth, and upon it a notice bearing the words: “Keys cut at shortest
notice.”

To the owner of the barrow he showed the key. The man--an artist in his
profession--examined it long and carefully, until he found scratched
upon it in tiny figures a number. He referred to a book, and then
replied:

“Yes, I cut a duplicate of this for a tall, thin gentleman. He was a
foreigner, I remember.” And he gave the date, three days before the
disappearance of Enrico Rossi.

This was a very valuable link in the chain of fresh evidence, and the
police very wisely allowed the supposed Venice banker and his wife to
leave for Paris, entirely unsuspicious of the fact that they were being
closely watched. The day came for the trial of Mrs. Priestley, but it
was postponed.

Meanwhile two English detectives were in Paris watching Nocera and his
wife, information from Venice concerning the “banker” having been the
reverse of reassuring.

Within three weeks Superintendent Ransley’s expectations were rewarded.
The man Zuccari visited them at their hotel in the Rue Castiglione!

From that moment Zuccari was never left, and four days later all three
were arrested in the street near the Opera by six agents of the Sûreté.

Madame Nocera was released, but her husband, in order to save himself,
made a statement to Inspector Peyron when taken to the bureau of
police. In a great state of agitation he admitted that, while posing
as a banker in Venice, the money he possessed belonged to the Austrian
Government--in fact, he was the paymaster of the spies of Austria
scattered through northern Italy during the war. He declared that he
had had no hand whatever in the assassination of Enrico Rossi.

The French police were, however, far from satisfied with this
statement, and pressed him, under threats, for further information. It
then became apparent that Nocera and Zuccari had quarrelled over their
share of the spoils, and in the end Nocera explained the ingenious plot
to Inspector Peyron and the two men from Scotland Yard.

It had become known to Zuccari that Enrico Rossi was to be sent on
business from the Coltano wireless station to England, and that he
intended to call upon Mrs. Priestley, his old friend. The flat above
the latter’s being to let furnished, the Noceras took it, and succeeded
in cultivating friendly relations with the lady below. Then Zuccari
arrived from Italy, and on one of his visits with Nocera to Mrs.
Priestley, he succeeded in getting hold of the latchkey of the flat
used by the servant. Of this he had a duplicate made in Lower Marsh,
and then he waited in patience.

Enrico arrived in London and wrote to Mrs. Priestley. She quite
innocently mentioned this fact to Nocera, and said that she could not
see him as she was going away.

This was their opportunity. Entering the flat in Mrs. Priestley’s
absence, Zuccari discovered Enrico’s letter, and his address at a small
private hotel at Kensington.

He ascertained that Mrs. Priestley would be out at a dance on a certain
evening; therefore he telegraphed in the lady’s name asking Enrico to
call at half-past ten o’clock for supper.

After leaving Falconer at Liverpool Street station, Enrico had
therefore taken a taxi direct to Longton Mansions, where Zuccari was
already in Mrs. Priestley’s flat awaiting him. On entering there the
unsuspecting young Italian was struck down, his wallet taken and his
jacket removed. From a little pocket behind the silk address-tab of the
tailor, Something was extracted--a tiny book of thin India paper.

That Something was of the greatest value to the murderer, and was the
motive of the crime, for it contained the secret wireless code of the
Italian Government, both military and diplomatic, and would be of
inestimable value to the Austrians and Germans, even though peace had
now been declared.

Having secured that for which he had cunningly plotted, Zuccari had
replaced the coat upon the inert body of the man he had beaten to death
with a piece of iron piping, put on his overcoat, and then locked him
in the small box-room, afterwards leaving the flat. Three hours or so
later Mrs. Priestley returned, all unconscious of the tragedy, and
slept there for the last night before her departure abroad.

The London police, two days after the true facts had been ascertained
in Paris and Mrs. Priestley had been released, visited the flat
occupied by Nocera, for, on inquiry, they had elicited the fact that,
as secret agent of Austria in Venice, he had had much technical
instruction in the use of wireless.

In the flat was found quite a powerful generating plant, with a very
up-to-date telephone set, and a most ingenious aerial arrangement by
which one could transmit upon quite a long wave-length. Why this had
originally been installed was obscure, but it was believed to be one of
the powerful secret sets used by German spies in London during the war.

In any case, it was proved that the reason Enrico had not given his
correct address was because he had apprehensions of some sinister
attempt. It was also proved that Zuccari had, after the tragedy,
spoken into the microphone that weird message to which Geoffrey had
listened, and which proved such a remarkable feature of the affair.
The message of farewell had apparently been the curious fancy of the
unscrupulous assassin.

The stolen code-book was recovered three days after Zuccari’s arrest
from his baggage at the left-luggage office at Brussels, whence it was
his intention to convey it to Germany. The Italian Government, who had
two years before issued warrants for the arrest of both Zuccari and the
traitor Nocera, at once claimed their extradition, and both men are
now serving a sentence of solitary confinement for life--a doom worse,
indeed, than the gallows.




CHAPTER III

THE CALICO GLOVE


Mrs. Beverley, who, on account of her reckless expenditure, had been
nicknamed “The Wild Widow” by a certain set in Society, had gone up to
Perthshire to join a gay house-party at a shooting lodge near Crieff,
leaving Sylvia at home at Upper Brook Street.

After the girl there was dangling a Peer of the Realm, twice her age,
in the person of Viscount Hendlewycke, a penniless man, whose family
tree ran back to the days of Richard Coeur de Lion, and who, in his
youth, had been distinguished by his two appearances in the Divorce
Court as co-respondent.

Hendlewycke, with his bald head and his pretence to golf, was the
best fish that Mrs. Beverley had captured as the prospective husband
of Sylvia. Hendlewycke Castle, near Alnwick, in Northumberland, was a
magnificent old place, now let by the Viscount’s trustee in Bankruptcy
to a Lancashire cotton-waste dealer who aspired to a baronetcy, and
Mrs. Beverley, with her acuteness and her wealth, saw that she could
easily reinstate “Roddy,” as he was known in society, providing he made
Sylvia Lady Hendlewycke.

Such an event would be the crowning of her great social ambitions in
London.

Sylvia, however, was not blind. Neither was Geoffrey Falconer. Geoffrey
had met “Roddy” several times. In him the young man found a degenerate
_roué_, who, having run through his fortune, had also so lost his
self-respect that he would borrow a “fiver” from all and sundry, and
in most cases forget to pay it back. Of club and hotel servants he had
been driven to borrow money, and to a dozen butlers in country houses
he was indebted for “just a couple of quid for my railway fare. I’ll
send it back to you when I get up to town.”

To men at White’s, the Wellington, Wells’, the Devonshire, and Boodles,
“Roddy” Hendlewycke was known as “a bad egg.” Why “The Wild Widow” from
Argentina had taken him under her wing, nobody could imagine--except,
of course, she wanted an old title for her daughter.

Sylvia was compelled to tolerate him in order not openly to offend
her mother, but she was heartily sick of him, and was seen as little
as possible in his company. With Geoffrey she was perfectly frank,
and they entirely understood each other. Therefore, it was not at all
surprising that one day, her mother being absent, she suggested to the
young man that he should drive her out for the day in her mother’s big
cream-coloured Rolls-Royce.

The suggestion was at once adopted, and on the Saturday morning the
pair left London for a day’s outing.

The car had scarcely left the garage at the rear of South Audley
Street, where, with others belonging to people in the neighbourhood, it
was kept, when a well-dressed man of about forty entered the yard and
approaching the man in charge, exclaimed:

“I see Mrs. Beverley’s Royce has just gone out. Did you get to know
what I want?”

“Yes, sir,” replied the man. “Young Mr. Falconer is driving Miss
Beverley down to Hastings. They’re lunching at the Queen’s.”

“You’re sure?”

“Quite sure, sir,” was the reply, whereupon the stranger placed a
Treasury note into the hand of his informant.

Then, re-entering a taxi in which he had been seated, apparently
watching Falconer drive out Mrs. Beverley’s car, he sped along to a
garage in Knightsbridge, where another large open car awaited him,
and even before Sylvia and her lover had left Upper Brook Street the
mysterious watcher was well on his way out of London.

The day was a lovely one in early autumn, and the drive through Kent
was delightful. Geoffrey and Sylvia came along the sea-front at St.
Leonard’s just before noon, and, continuing, pulled up at the back
entrance of the Queen’s Hotel, where they ordered lunch. Then, after a
wash, they strolled out into the autumn sunshine beside the sea.

As they left by that door with its wide glass porch which leads out
upon the terrace before the sea, they passed a man seated in one of the
wicker lounge chairs, smoking a good cigar.

He was the mysterious individual who had been so keen to ascertain the
destination of the pair. But as they passed he was gazing thoughtfully
out upon the sea, taking no notice of them.

After they had gone along towards the Pier, he returned to the lounge,
where he scribbled a telegram. Having done so, he apparently desired to
alter it, so he tore it into tiny fragments, half of which he tossed
into the waste-paper basket, and the other half he placed in the pocket
of his grey tweed jacket. That action showed him first to be a man of
method, and secondly that the message was one which he did not wish to
be read by anyone who might perhaps be watching.

He wrote a second telegram, and that he took across to the post-office
and dispatched.

Later, when Geoffrey and Sylvia, having eaten their luncheon in the big
upstairs room, had descended to the little lounge on the terrace to
take their coffee, they found the same man there, smoking a cigar in
the same abstracted manner.

Coffee was brought to the pair who were chattering merrily, when the
stranger, suddenly rising to pass back into the lounge, struck the
little table accidentally and the coffee was spilled.

“Oh!” he exclaimed, with exquisite politeness, in a well-modulated and
refined voice. “Do please forgive me! It was most clumsy of me, and I
apologise to you both.”

Then seeing the waiter in the vicinity, he ordered two more coffees in
the same breath.

“Nothing!” laughed Falconer. “It was only an accident! These tables are
all gingerbread things. They are always very shaky.”

“Well,” said the stranger, “my sole consolation is that none of it went
on the lady’s dress. Coffee stains badly, you know.”

“No. It’s quite all right!” declared Sylvia pleasantly.

And then they began to chat. The stranger told them that he had motored
down from London just for a breath of air.

“I’m going abroad--to China--in about a month’s time. I expect to be
away several years. So I want to see all I can of our dear old England
before I go.”

For half an hour they gossiped of motors, of good and indifferent
roads, and of hotels as known by motorists within a couple of hundred
miles of London.

At half-past three Sylvia suggested they should start back home;
therefore, they parted from their pleasant chance acquaintance, leaving
him still smoking in the porch-like lounge.

“I somehow don’t like that man, Geoffrey,” the girl said as soon as she
was seated beside him and the car turned out into the busy Hastings
street. “He seemed so inquisitive.”

“I thought so, too. But probably he wanted to know who we were,”
laughed Falconer. “Though he got no change out of me.”

“Did you notice that he wore, even at lunch, a glove upon his left
hand? I think it is to cover some deformity. It seemed to be of
unbleached calico, and covered with some kind of flesh-coloured paint.”

“Yes. I noticed it. But by his manner and speech he seems a
gentleman--and a thorough cosmopolitan, without a doubt. He has
apparently been half over the world,” he replied, and then the
conversation dropped as he quickened speed to overtake a tram-car.

That same night the stranger, who wore the flesh-coloured calico glove,
attired in a dinner-jacket, lounged about the entrance-hall of the
Piccadilly Grill for about a quarter of an hour, until at last he was
joined by the person for whom he had been waiting, a smartly-dressed
French girl, who possessed all the _chic_ and mannerisms of the true
Parisienne. Having left her cloak, the pair went in and dined at a
_table à deux_, which had been reserved for them in a corner.

The waiter, apparently knowing them both as regular patrons of the
place, served them well. Over the table the man in a low tone related
the coffee incident at Hastings, and the girl seemed to regard the
adventure as huge fun.

“Oh! Teddy, I do wish I had been with you!” the girl said in rather
broken English. “_Mon Dieu!_ I’ve had a dull, miserable day! I went up
to Hampstead to see George, but he has gone away, and his landlady says
she has no idea when he will be back.”

“That’s sudden,” exclaimed the man, knitting his brows. “I wonder if
anything has happened? George was not due to leave London till next
Saturday morning--and then he was going over to Stockholm on a very
important little bit of business. I arranged it all only yesterday. And
now he’s gone!”

“Yes. And the old woman did not seem to know anything. Mr. Jordon had,
she said, left very hurriedly with only a suit-case. And he left no
message either for you or for myself.”

“Looks a bit fishy, Gabrielle,” the man remarked, staring at the
tablecloth.

“No. There’s no fear, my dear Teddy,” laughed the girl. “If anything
were wrong we should know. Bad news travels fast.”

“I don’t like George Jordon leaving suddenly like that--without a word.
The other business in Stockholm is a pretty big one.”

“Why did you fix Saturday?”

“I fixed any Saturday--the Saturday when we may find it most convenient
to all parties concerned,” he said with a mysterious grin.

“I hope neither Falconer nor the girl suspects,” the girl said
apprehensively.

“What can they suspect?” asked the man. “You have only to carry out
your part of the contract, and the whole thing is easy--big money
awaits both of us,” he whispered across the table.

“Yes,” the girl replied, her voice lost in the strains of the
orchestra. She looked across the spacious restaurant dreamily. “Yes,”
she repeated, “but somehow I don’t like this business at all. George
may have smelt a rat and bolted.”

“He may have done, but, recollect, he would not have disappeared
without first sending me warning. Remember all that it means to
him--and to us both,” exclaimed the man who was known in the haunts
about Piccadilly Circus as Teddy Tressider, or Everard, as was his real
name.

“On any Saturday,” repeated the pretty young French girl, as she sipped
her wine and then leaned her bare elbows upon the table, looking
straight at the man before her. “George has arranged to be ready to get
across to Sweden, on any Saturday--eh?”

“Exactly. And look here, Gabrielle!” exclaimed the keen-eyed man, whose
attitude suddenly altered to one of menace, “I don’t want you at the
last moment to become chicken-hearted or--or, by Heaven! if there’s a
failure, you’ll pay dearly for it.”

The girl remained silent. The expression upon her face showed that she
resented the man’s threat. Her delicate lips compressed, and her dark
eyes flashed back at him viciously. But she was a clever girl, for at
that moment of her anger rising she controlled her tongue, and, instead
of expressing any resentment, she only gave vent to a half-idiotic
laugh, and after a pause lifted her glass again, and answered:

“Really, my dear Teddy, you are very funny to-night. Come back to
earth, my dear friend!”

The man with the calico glove snapped a word in reply and ordered
liqueurs, after which he took her in a taxi to a big dancing-hall out
at Hammersmith, where, after a number of dances, they parted upon the
kerb outside.

“Remember, Gabrielle, if you fail me in this, I’ll tell what I know.
And you surely fully realise where you will be,” he said distinctly in
her ear as they awaited a taxi. “I have no wish for us to be enemies.
But, gad! if you hold back, then I shall treat you as an enemy, and I
shall tell all I know.”

The girl drew a long breath.

“You--you--!”

But the words died upon her lips. With her woman’s innate cleverness
she made resolution at that moment that she would combat the plans of
the man who held her future in his hands.

She recollected all the past, and she shuddered.

Next second, however, she laughed saucily, and as the taxi drew up, she
replied in French:

“Oh! my dear old friend, why make all this trouble? You are very
amusing to-night! This little affair will come out all right, never
fear. Now that you know Monsieur Falconer, surely the trouble is half
over? The rest is so very easy. Discretion and caution are all that is
necessary. And then, when the deed is done, George will slip over to
Stockholm and every one will be happy--except Monsieur Falconer!”

And she stepped into the taxi and drove away.

About this time Geoffrey Falconer was busy each evening in devising
improvements in his new seven-valve amplifier, with the object of
applying for a patent. In the world of wireless there were many rumours
that Falconer’s improvement of the “saturation device” and other things
would revolutionise the present method of the reception of wireless
signals. What it exactly was only the clever young inventor himself
knew. He had shown it to his father, and also to Sylvia, but they
were not sufficiently acquainted with the mysteries of wireless to
understand its true import.

So busy was Geoffrey, both at the Works at Chelmsford, and at his own
home each evening, that during the fortnight that followed he only went
to London once, to do business at Marconi House and afterwards to see
Sylvia.

That evening, Mrs. Beverley being out of town, he took her daughter
out to dinner at the Carlton, and afterwards to the theatre.
During the _entr’acte_ he left her in the stalls while he went out
to smoke a cigarette. He chanced to be standing in the crowded
lounge when suddenly he saw a young man named Hugh Carew, who had
been a brother-officer with him in France. With him was a pretty,
smartly-dressed girl with dark hair and wonderful eyes, and wearing a
dress of emerald green.

Carew greeted his friend warmly, and then, turning to his companion,
said:

“Let me introduce you to Mr. Falconer--Mademoiselle Juvanon.”

The girl started, held her breath, glanced furtively into Falconer’s
face, and then expressed in French her great pleasure at meeting her
companion’s brother-officer.

As for Geoffrey he said but little. After a few moments’ conversation,
however, Carew excused himself, saying that he wanted to get a drink,
and begged Falconer to look after the girl for a moment.

The instant he had gone to the bar, Falconer bent to the girl, and in a
low, hard voice, said in French:

“When last I had the pleasure of meeting mademoiselle, both her
nationality and her name were--well--slightly different--eh?”

From her pretty lips rang out a ripple of merry laughter, while over
her face spread a saucy look.

“I freely admit it, M’sieur Falconer,” she responded. “But I had no
idea we should meet here. Or I should not have come--I confess to you.”

“Ah! Mademoiselle, beauty such as yours cannot be concealed,” said the
young man laughing.

“Why do you flatter me?--You?”

“Surely I may be permitted to admire you--even though I am aware of the
truth--of who and what you really are!”

“But--but you will not give me away to Hugh--will you, M’sieur
Geoffrey?” she asked quickly, her face instantly pale in alarm. “_I--I
love him. I swear I do!_”

“If you play the straight game with him, Gabrielle, I will remain
silent,” Falconer promised. “After we had met in Paris three years ago,
I learnt the truth about you, mademoiselle,” he added; “and I confess
that the revelation was an extremely unpleasant one. I believed in you,
but I found that you were playing a very crooked game.”

As the words left his lips, Hugh Carew returned. The curtain had rung
up, therefore Geoffrey bowed to mademoiselle, and at once rejoined
Sylvia.

The remainder of the play did not interest him. As he sat by Sylvia’s
side a flood of bitter memories overtook him--how he had first been
introduced to Gabrielle while taking a morning _apératif_ at the Pré
Catalan, in Paris; of his friendship with her, and of the subsequent
discovery that, instead of being what she had represented herself to
be, she was actually the decoy of thieves! In Paris he had known her as
Gabrielle Valeri, a native of Palermo, in Sicily. Now that she was in
London, the friend of Hugh Carew, her name had become Juvanon, and she
was French.

What deep game was being played?

He made a point of finding Carew at his club three days later, when
he turned the conversation to her. Hugh at once became enthusiastic.
It was quite apparent that he was over head and ears in love with the
pretty young French girl. He had, it seemed, first met her in Rouen
during the war, and had again encountered her six months ago by pure
accident while walking along Kensington High Street. To a man in love
it is useless to give warning, and Falconer, realising this, hesitated
to say anything to the girl’s detriment.

He had warned her in all seriousness that if she played a crooked game
he would expose her. And he now recollected that the expression in her
eyes when she had confessed her love for Hugh was one of true honesty
and frankness.

Carew was, of course, in entire ignorance that his friend was
acquainted with the girl whose beauty had cast a spell over him, and
Geoffrey, on his part, remained silent.

His interview over a whisky-and-soda at the Wellington Club that
afternoon proved that the pair were genuinely in love with each other.
But Falconer, recollecting Gabrielle’s position, was wondering what
could be behind it all. Hugh Carew was heir to a baronetcy, the elder
son of a very wealthy man, and he wondered whether those mysterious
international thieves behind Gabrielle were not scheming blackmail.
Indeed, the future extortion of money seemed to be at the root of it
all.

That night, after calling at Upper Brook Street for half an hour,
Geoffrey went back to Warley full of grave apprehensions concerning his
brother-officer, and, before turning in, he sat down to further test
his improved amplifier by which signals from both low and high-power
stations came in with almost double strength.

“Hitherto there have been three grades of amplifiers,” he muttered to
himself, as he sat with the low-resistance telephones over his ears.
“They have never yet invented an amplifying detector to cover all
wave-lengths from three hundred to seventeen thousand. We constructed
one which was equally effective on all commercial wave-lengths, but
complications had to be introduced which rendered the instrument
entirely unsuitable for ordinary practical use. Yet here I have, I
hope, a device which increases the amplitude of the oscillations over
all wave-lengths, both for ‘spark’ or ‘continuous waves.’”

He listened on the telephones to the usual traffic of the night. Many
of the messages passing and re-passing across the Atlantic were in
code--messages of mystery all of them. The rapidity of the exchange
of communications by wireless--both private and commercial--has long
out-distanced the old-fashioned cables, with their long delay and
deliberate methods. Truly, the world is now beginning to realise that
it can send messages across the seven seas and receive replies by
wireless in half the time occupied by the submarine cables.

Geoffrey remained with the telephones over his ears for quite an hour,
making delicate adjustments here and there, his new instrument being so
sensitive that he could hear many amateurs in London working on their
ten watts and one hundred and eighty mètres to which the General Post
Office restricts them. Then he switched off and retired to bed.

Four days went by--strenuous days--for at Chelmsford important tests
were being made upon the great high-power wireless telephone set
with its huge panel with globular glass valves, each the size of a
football--the set which the collective brains of the Marconi Company
had devised in order to exchange actual speech with stations across the
Atlantic. Geoffrey was one of the engineers engaged in these tests,
hence he had little time for anything else. He snatched his lunch
hastily each day in the comfortable upstairs dining-room of the heads
of departments, and under the chief telephone engineer, whose clear,
deliberate voice is known to all wireless men, devoted every moment to
his particular sphere in the perfection of the new apparatus which was
to supersede the dot-and-dash of Morse’s invention.

One evening, after leaving Chelmsford, he went on to London, and having
dressed at the club, dined at Upper Brook Street. Mrs. Beverley was
giving a small dance in honour of a French Minister of State and his
wife, and Sylvia had pressed him to come. Hence he spent an enjoyable
evening, in which the only jarring note was the presence of the
ineffable Lord Hendlewycke, to whom, of course, Sylvia was forced to be
polite.

Falconer left Liverpool Street station by the last train, arriving home
at about one o’clock in the morning. Contrary to his habit, he did
not go into his wireless room, but went straight up to bed, for the
Professor had already retired, and the old house was in darkness.

At seven o’clock the next morning the maid, a country girl, rapped
loudly upon his door, crying:

“Mr. Geoffrey! The house has been broken into! Your wireless room is
all in disorder!”

Falconer sprang up, slipped on his dressing-gown, and dashed down.

The room was turned upside down. The window had been forced and was
open, so that whoever entered had had easy access to the place. No
second glance was needed to show that whoever had entered had been
there for one purpose only--in order to possess himself of the secret
of the improved amplifier!

A number of wires had been disconnected, while on the table lay a piece
of that paper ruled in small squares and used by engineers to draw
diagrams.

A diagram of the circuit had apparently been made, but as the
instruments were still intact, Falconer was relieved to think that
whoever had been prying about had been disturbed before he had had time
to discover his secret.

Upon the floor lay the telephone, discarded; the aerial switch had been
left down just as the intruder had listened, and several connections
had been pulled away from the terminal screws.

The person who had done it was, no doubt, some one skilled in wireless.
That was apparent by the changing over of one or two connections which
only the eye of an expert would detect. That the intruder had been
there through the hours of the night, and had gone deliberately into
everything aided by his own expert knowledge was apparent.

But Geoffrey smiled within himself. He knew that any intruder could not
gain full knowledge of his device unless he had taken that small box
which was attached to the amplifier. Whoever had been there had been
prying about--but had been foiled!

He closed the window that had been forced open, and then set about
replacing the wires which had been disconnected, making up the circuit
to its original design.

The Professor, who had been told that burglars had been in, entered the
room excitedly, but Geoffrey reassured him.

“Somebody has been pottering about here. Lots of people know of my
device, and I suppose somebody is out to try to discover it. But they
haven’t done so. They’ve made a horrible mess of things, but they
don’t know the whole truth, because they haven’t examined the new
saturation device. If they had taken that away they would have found
out everything.”

“Very fortunate, Geoff!” exclaimed the old Professor. “Most fortunate!
Evidently some person wants to filch your invention from you!”

“Of course. But they don’t seem to have done it--unless----?” And the
young man crossed eagerly to a big cupboard in the room, the door of
which stood unlocked.

From it he withdrew a small, green-enamelled, steel dispatch-box.

“By Heavens!” he gasped. “They’ve got it!” And his father saw that the
box had been ripped open.

“I kept the diagram and specification of the windings in there!”
Geoffrey cried in dismay. “And they have taken it. They know
everything--and it is not patented!”

“But who are the thieves?” queried the old man. “Who could come here
into this house, and deliberately steal your invention?”

“Ah! There are hundreds of unscrupulous persons who have heard of it.
They know how much it would be worth to the world in the near future,
and I can only suppose that some plot has been formed to secure it. And
they’ve been successful! They have abstracted the diagram from that box
which I believed to be practically thief-proof. It had a complicated
lock, but they have opened it with steel cutters.”

“So the thieves know your secret, Geoff--the secret which you have been
so long perfecting?”

“Yes, they do,” replied the young engineer, setting his jaws firmly.
“They have outwitted me! And instead of being a rich man, as I had
anticipated, I am just where I was! I did my best to secure to the
world a better mode of amplification of wireless signals, but they have
stolen my invention. _Stolen it!_”

And he stared wildly at his father as a man desperate.

An hour later Geoffrey was in the office of the Chief Constable of
Essex, and there related to him the whole circumstances. Two detectives
went over to Warley in a car, and examined the premises. That entry
had been made in a very ingenious manner was quite clear, and it was
equally clear that the object was solely to get sight of the improved
amplifier, and to secure the diagrams and specifications for which
Geoffrey was about to apply for patent rights.

There was no clue to the thief, but whoever it was certainly knew
something of wireless. No ordinary burglar had committed the theft.

The examination of the room by the police took place at about eleven
o’clock, but at five that evening a sensational discovery was made by a
farm labourer near Ardleigh Green, about two miles away on the Romford
Road. The man was on his way home from work when, crossing a field
near the high road, he came across the body of a well-dressed man.

He was startled to find that he was dead--having been shot in the chest.

At once he informed the Romford police by telephone, and they, on
examining the body, declared it to be a case of murder.

Late that night, after Falconer had returned from Chelmsford, he
received a visit from a police inspector from Romford, who produced
some documents.

“These,” he said, “we found on the body of the stranger who was
apparently murdered last night. They appear to us to be wireless
diagrams, and we wonder if they may, by any chance, be yours?”

Geoffrey seized them eagerly.

“By Jove!” he gasped. “Why they’re mine--the stolen plans of my
invention!”

“Then it seems as though the thief, after committing the robbery, was
murdered,” the inspector said.

“So it appears. But who can he be--and who killed him?”

“That’s what we’ve got to find out, sir. Perhaps you’ll come into
Romford with me and view the body? You may know the man. He seems
well-dressed, and we found on him about forty pounds in Treasury notes
and several letters. But none of the latter give any clue as to who he
may be. The envelopes have all been destroyed.”

An hour later Geoffrey Falconer was shown the body as it lay, pale and
still, awaiting the coroner’s inquiry.

“Why, I recognise him!” gasped the young engineer the moment his eyes
fell upon the dead man’s face. “That’s a man with whom I chatted at the
Queen’s Hotel, at Hastings, some weeks ago. I remember his face quite
well. And his hand. He is still wearing that flesh-coloured calico
glove!”

“Was he alone?” asked the police inspector.

“Yes, as far as I know,” Geoffrey replied, and then in a flash it
occurred to him how the stranger, now dead, had managed to strike up
a conversation by the overturning of the coffee. He recollected, too,
Sylvia’s instinctive dislike of the fellow.

But if the mysterious man had evil intentions, why should he have taken
all those pains to meet him?

In any case he had the satisfaction of having regained possession of
his precious diagram which in the night had been filched from his
dispatch-box.

He was shown the Treasury notes found in the dead man’s wallet, and
also the letters--four of them--all in a woman’s hand. They were in
French, dated simply from Marlotte, a little village on the edge of
the Forest of Fontainebleau, cold, purely formal letters, but signed
“Gabrielle.”

Geoffrey Falconer knew that signature! He possessed letters in the same
handwriting. The writer was the pretty decoy of thieves, the girl who
was now in love with his brother-officer, Hugh Carew.

The whole situation became intensely puzzling. The man, whoever he was,
had evidently stolen the diagrams, but on making his way to Romford
station had been waylaid and shot by an unknown hand. That was the
theory held by Geoffrey, and also by the police. The motive of the
theft was, no doubt, in order to sell the invention abroad to some
rival radio company in Germany, or in America, for new wireless devices
have always a ready market to the rich corporations who--after the
Marconi Company--attempt to control the world’s communications through
space.

Very naturally Geoffrey did his level best to keep out of the papers
what really had been stolen from his father’s house. There were several
interests at stake. Hence, in the newspapers, the world read that the
thief had abstracted certain “papers” from the Professor’s house, and
these were found upon the dead man by the police, and returned to their
owner.

Those who read these lines will, no doubt, recollect having read a
bald and very unconvincing report of the affair. They certainly never
dreamed of the drama and romance which lay behind it all.

At the inquest Geoffrey Falconer, who was called to identify his
“property,” and tell the court of his meeting with the deceased at
Hastings, was very guarded in his evidence. He, of course, said nothing
of the pretty young girl whom he had met in Paris as an Italian,
and who was now in London under another name and posing as French.
The letters signed “Gabrielle” were shown to the jury, but to them
they conveyed nothing. The twelve worthy tradesmen of Romford had no
suspicion whatever that “Gabrielle” was a decoy of a clever thief, the
man into the circumstances of whose death they were called upon to
inquire.

Who had killed the thief there was no evidence whatever to show. As far
as Geoffrey was concerned he had little interest in the matter. The man
had taken a great risk, but had failed to dispose of the diagrams, and
thus filch from him a very considerable sum. That the stranger’s death
was due to vengeance seemed quite feasible, and the jury could only
arrive at one conclusion in face of the fact that no weapon had been
found near the spot--namely, that wilful murder had been “committed by
some person or persons unknown.”

Next day the diagrams of the improved amplifier were placed in the
bank, and the body of the deceased was buried at the expense of the
county of Essex.

The affair, however, filled Geoffrey’s mind mainly because of the
pretty Gabrielle’s association with his friend Carew.

Though he remained silent, the suggestion occurred to him about ten
days afterwards to go to London and meet Carew.

On calling at the club he found Hugh in the smoking-room, and at once
it became apparent that his appearance was the reverse of welcome.

Carew seemed highly nervous and perturbed. They sat over their
cigarettes for half an hour chatting over trivialities, when Geoffrey
suddenly remarked:

“I suppose you read in the papers what a lot of trouble I’ve had--a
robbery at our house?”

“Yes,” his friend replied. “I--I’ve got an appointment out in South
Africa, Geoffrey, but--but before I go I want to tell you something.”

“What?” asked his friend.

“Come upstairs to the private room,” said Carew, and both ascended the
great old staircase, and passing along a corridor, entered a small
rather ill-lit room where private conversation between members could be
indulged in.

When Hugh Carew had closed the door, he faced his friend, and said in a
low, tremulous voice:

“An explanation is due to you, Geoffrey. I know that you must have been
much mystified over the occurrence at Warley, and the narrow escape you
had of your invention passing into the hands of foreigners. I confess
that I prevented it.”

“You! How?”

“Well, I discovered that Gabrielle was held beneath the thrall of that
blackguard, Edward Everard, a thief of the most unscrupulous type where
women were concerned. The girl confessed to me. She told me how she had
been compelled to aid him in his plans in Paris and elsewhere, and how
Everard was plotting to obtain the secret of your wireless invention
in order to dispose of it to some people in Brussels. I induced her to
tell me the whole plot--a most ingenious one--and then----”

And he paused.

“Yes, go on,” said Geoffrey, looking into the other’s pale, hard-drawn
face.

“Well--I followed him on that night,” he said in a low, intense voice.
“I watched him break into your room and cut open the dispatch-box.
I saw him leave and go along the road, and--and in order to save
Gabrielle from him and save your invention from falling into the hands
of others, I--_I shot him_!”

“You did?” gasped Falconer, astounded.

“Yes. And now you can give me up to the police. I don’t care. I love
Gabrielle, and I have saved her from that fiend who wore a glove to
conceal a deformity by which he could have been easily identified.”

“Where is Gabrielle now?”

“She sailed for Cape Town last Tuesday, and will await me there. We
arranged to be married on my arrival.”

Falconer paused. A long silence fell between the two men.

At last Geoffrey spoke, his voice trembling with emotion:

“Go and meet her in Cape Town, Hugh. I shall regard your confession
as sacred. You saved the girl from further dishonour, and you saved
to me the fruits of my labours. It was murder, I admit. But now that
I know the dead man’s name, I am aware that he was guilty of the same
crime--the robbery and murder of a wealthy old lady near Marseilles two
years ago--a woman to whom he had forced Gabrielle to act as maid.”

“And you will say nothing--not a word will pass your lips?” asked Hugh
Carew eagerly.

“Not a word--I swear! The man has met with his just deserts.”

“Thank you, Geoffrey,” was the other’s reply, and both left the dull,
half-dark room without further word.




CHAPTER IV

THE DEVIL’S OVEN


The calm summer morning broke gloriously over the entrance to the
English Channel between Land’s End and the Lizard. The sea was blue,
with only a faint ripple.

Mrs. Beverley had been induced by Geoffrey to leave Upper Brook Street
to spend a few weeks in Cornwall, taking Sylvia with her.

Indeed, it was Sylvia who pressed her mother to go to Cornwall because
Geoffrey was compelled to go down to the Marconi wireless station at
Poldhu, near Mullion, where some alterations were being carried out.

The widow and her daughter had, three days before, taken up their
quarters at the Poldhu Hotel, which is situated high upon the cliff
within a stone’s throw of the high-power wireless station, which, at
stated times by day and by night, transmits messages to ships across
the Atlantic. Geoffrey had also taken up his quarters there, and from
the hotel windows a wide and beautiful view could be obtained of
the rugged Cornish coast, the picturesque Poldhu Cove and the wild
Halzaphron Cliff standing out to sea, a rough granite headland.

Being summer, the hotel was full. The crowd was of a refined class the
blatant profiteer with his bejewelled wife being happily absent. In the
grounds of the hotel was a path which led to a small gate whereon was a
notice--“Private. No Admittance”--the entrance to the wireless station.
Beyond that gate no person was allowed to go, save by special authority
from the head office at Marconi House, though most of the summer
visitors longed to pass beyond and learn the secrets of that wonderful
station--the first that Senatore Marconi established for communication
with America.

Geoffrey had breakfasted at seven, and had crossed to the long,
low-built buildings situated beneath those high, spidery aerial wires,
with their tall, slender masts which withstand so well the fierce
winter gales of the Atlantic. There for over an hour he had been busy
making some adjustments upon the new eight-kilowatt wireless telephone
which was being set up for the transmission of speech to Madrid. Then,
at last, he had emerged from the power-house and walked along the
gravelled path in the direction of the hotel, for he knew that Sylvia,
after breakfasting with her mother, would be outside to enjoy the
morning sunshine.

He was not long before he caught sight of her, a fresh, smiling figure
in a summer blouse and cream serge skirt. She wore no hat, and in her
face showed that health given by the sunshine and sea air.

“Hulloa, Geoff!” she cried as she met the young fellow. “Up and busy
already?”

“Yes,” he answered. “We’re still troubled over the set. Can’t get it
working properly yet.”

“What’s going on just now?” the girl asked, for during the three days
she had been there she had been an unofficially privileged visitor to
the wireless station on account of her friendship with Falconer. She
had begun to know some of the routine of the traffic.

Her lover glanced at his watch.

“Just twenty past nine,” he remarked. “In ten minutes they will be
sending the Admiralty weather forecast to the ships. Come over and
watch it going out,” he suggested, and, as she at once agreed, he
turned back with her.

Already, as they approached, they could hear the dull roar of huge
dynamos set in motion to test in preparation for the powerful spark
transmission, and as they passed into the power-room, Geoffrey said:

“You’d better hold your fingers in your ears when they try the spark.
Come, let’s have a look at the Devil’s Oven.”

And he conducted her past a number of huge condensers made of glass
plates, and complicated looking machinery, to a big chamber built of
brick, like a baker’s oven, through which all the messages passed out.

The door was open, and inside she saw a big rotary disc with copper
points which the busy, bustling engineer in charge was examining prior
to its use.

“Why is it called the ‘Devil’s Oven’?” asked the girl.

“Wait--and you’ll see,” he laughed, introducing her to the engineer,
who was at work with his eye upon the clock, for at all hazards each
day the forecast has to go out to time.

The pair stood together watching, until, a few moments later, the
engineer closed the door of the spark-chamber and passed along to the
great switch-board.

“You had better hold your fingers in your ears, Miss Beverley,” he
said briskly, in passing. This she did, and a second later when he
pulled over the big switch, a terrific noise was set up, almost enough
to break the drums of the unaccustomed ear. Then, passing to a little
room, the engineer rang a bell to the transmission-room in a building a
little distance away.

Next moment there came three short and one long crashes in the Devil’s
Oven--electric discharges which showed blood-red through the square
pane of glass in the door, though they were really intensely blue,
while close by, upon a heavily insulated and protected plate, two great
blue sparks were being quenched by a strong forced draught of air.

Again three short crashes followed by one long--the letter “V,” the
testing letter of the alphabet.

The engineer watched the spark, and at last, deciding that it was
efficient to reach to every ship across the Atlantic and far north and
south across land and sea for three thousand miles, went again to the
little room and rang the bell to the operator signifying “O.K.”

Next moment the crashes in the Devil’s Oven became continuous as across
the ocean there was sent forth the signal “C.Q.”--the general call for
all to listen--followed by the signal letters of Poldhu, “M.P.D.,” and
a message from the Admiralty telling captains of ships what weather
they might expect for the next twenty-four hours, followed by a storm
warning.

So deafening were the heavy discharges that the girl was glad to get
outside.

“Fancy!” she said. “Every ship at sea is listening to the storm
warning!”

“Yes,” he replied. “Let us go and see it being sent by the key.”

They crossed to a small building which was divided into two rooms. In
one were the operators on the land telegraph line to Marconi House, and
in the other sat the wireless operator, a smart-looking, dark-eyed man
with the telephones over his ears, tapping out the message in silence,
his chin resting upon his hand. There only a slight clicking could be
heard, the actual discharge being effected by a relay.

He was repeating the message he had at first sent, making, by dots and
dashes, signals as set out by the message written down upon a form
before him which had come over the land-wire from the Admiralty ten
minutes previously.

When he had finished, he rose and wished Sylvia good-morning, for they
had met on the previous day.

“I’m just off to bed, Miss Beverley,” he laughed. “I’ve been on duty
all night, and we’ve had unusual traffic with Madrid. First a lot of
press, and then a host of commercial messages. There’s some financial
trouble in Spain, I think.”

And as the young man said this, Leonard Hamilton, the
engineer-in-charge, entered the room on his morning inspection.

“Well, Cator,” he asked, addressing the operator after he had shaken
hands with Sylvia, “has the forecast gone out?”

The young man replied in the affirmative, and then handed the telephone
to another man, rather slimmer and fair-haired, who had just come on
duty; at the same time he signed the log-book, pointing to an entry
recording the fact that at seven forty-seven he had called up Madrid on
the continuous-wave set, and they had not yet replied.

“Ah, the same old dodge!” declared Mr. Hamilton, himself a youngish,
good-looking man. “They pretend they can’t get our ‘C.W.,’ and always
want us to send on spark just because it is easier for them. They
really aren’t playing the game over there. Try them again at ten, and
every fifteen minutes afterwards. Is there much to go?”

“Eighteen messages.”

“You’ll get them away soon, no doubt,” the chief engineer said.
“They’ve done the same old trick before. They bang over all their
traffic in a bunch to us, and then tell us to stand by for half an
hour.”

“They did that early this morning,” Cator said. “They ended their
transmission at four, and at once told us to stand by till five.
Fortunately we cleared all our traffic to them then.”

Hamilton, a most genial and delightful man, who was loved by all the
staff in that outlandish corner of England, and who was one of the best
known Marconi engineers, smiled, and remarked:

“I know them, Cator--I know only too well!”

And he bent to glance at the log that had been kept during the night.

When outside in the glorious morning sunshine, Geoffrey turned to
the pretty girl at his side as together they walked back past the
direction-finding building along the path down to the hotel, and said:

“I’m still puzzled over that affair I told you about last night, dear.
It’s most mysterious. I’m certain that the man I met in the hall of
the Polurrian Hotel last night was the same man. I telephoned at eight
o’clock this morning, but they tell me that Mr. Martin--which was the
name he gave--has left. He had a car to Gwinear Road station last
night, and caught the sleeper to Paddington.”

“Because he knew that you had recognised him--eh?”

“I sincerely hope he doesn’t suspect that I recognised him,” said
Falconer. “But at any rate it is, to say the least, strange that he
should be down here.”

“It is,” the girl agreed. “Probably you’ll learn something further
about him soon.” Then she added: “Mother wants you to come with us this
afternoon to Kynance Cove. She is asking Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton and two
other ladies from the hotel; we are going to picnic there.”

He began to protest that he had work to do, but later, when he
consulted Hamilton, the pair decided to finish early and join the
ladies at half-past three. This they did, and while Hamilton, brisk and
burly, drove his wife in his own grey car, Geoffrey, in a hired car,
accompanied Sylvia and her mother, and the two other ladies with whom
Mrs. Beverley was slightly acquainted.

The drive was a beautiful one through one of the wildest and remotest
parts of Cornwall, over the fresh breezy hills, through the old-world
village of Mullion, with its narrow, crooked streets, thence up the
hill to Penhale, and over the high-up straight road which leads to
Lizard Town. Before reaching the town, however, they turned to the
right just after passing the Travellers’ Rest, and presently found
themselves down in the Kynance Cove, one of the most celebrated and
most romantic spots on that rugged granite coast.

They descended in the little bay beyond which rose from the sea the
Gull Rock and Asparagus Island, with its cave known as the Devil’s
Throat, and walked upon the silvery sand beneath the high cliffs of
beautifully veined and coloured serpentine.

“Perfectly lovely!” declared Mrs. Beverley. “Just to think that they
issue a storm-warning on such a glorious day!”

“Storms at sea often brew when the weather is brightest--just as they
do in our own lives, Mrs. Beverley,” Geoffrey remarked.

“Ah, you’re always so horribly philosophical,” laughed the American
woman. “I suppose it’s your profession that makes you so.” Together
they had mounted to the top of a grass-grown cliff, and with their
picnic basket, sat down to tea, which Mrs. Beverley poured out from
Thermos flasks.

From where the party sat there spread a magnificent panorama of sea
and rugged coast. Before them were the two granite islands around
which thousands of gulls were swooping, while eastward lay the Venton
Hill and the many rocks around the Lizard--the most southerly point in
England--truly a wonderful scene, so weird, rugged, and remote.

Presently, after tea, Sylvia, looking very sweet in her summer gown,
wandered away with the man she loved, leaving Hamilton with the four
ladies to stroll and chatter. The pair took a rocky path which ascended
higher up the hill, and as they went along, Mrs. Beverley shouted after
them:

“Remember, dear, we leave at six o’clock!”

The girl smiled back, waved her hand, and then went on with her
companion.

Perhaps Mrs. Beverley was not altogether pleased with the situation,
for her secret intention had all along been to marry Sylvia into the
peerage. Had she not come to London for that purpose? Yet, after all,
Geoffrey Falconer was a charming and highly-intelligent young fellow,
whose several discoveries in wireless were, she had been told, likely
to bring him a considerable fortune in the future.

As the pair halted on the top of the hill, Sylvia suddenly paused, and
said:

“Do you know, Geoffrey, I can’t help thinking about that strange man
you saw in the Polurrian last night.”

“Yes,” he said. “Somehow I, too, can’t forget him. I first met him in
the _wagon-restaurant_ of the express from Paris to Calais about three
weeks ago. He sat at the next table, and though he was reading the
_Matin_ between the courses at lunch, I noticed that he seemed to be
watching me.”

“Not another Edward Everard, I hope,” said the girl, whose hair was
being blown across her face by the sea breeze which was just springing
up.

“I hope not,” laughed her merry lover. “But he seems to have followed
me so persistently. Why I cannot tell. Possibly he may have learnt my
profession, and of my post in the Marconi service.”

“And if he has, then, what motive has he for following you? One thing
is reassuring. Your secret diagrams are now in a safe place. When did
you see him again after meeting him in the train?”

“On the boat, crossing to Dover. Then I lost sight of him, until one
morning, when I arrived by train at Chelmsford as usual, I saw him
lounging downstairs in the booking-hall. At first I did not recognise
him, but after I had passed and was walking along that path which is
the short cut to the Works, I recollected the incident on the Calais
express. Then it all passed from my mind again until I encountered him
accidentally in the lounge of the Polurrian. Why was he here?”

“Perhaps to spend a week by the sea!” laughed Sylvia.

“Hardly that!” Falconer said. “He was down here for some distinct
purpose. And that purpose I mean to discover. I intend to establish why
he came down here so near the Poldhu station and stayed the night as
Mr. Martin. Remember, only the other day he was at Chelmsford, and now
he had been to Poldhu, and left hurriedly after seeing me.”

“Perhaps he never expected you were here.”

“That’s exactly my opinion. Probably my presence has frightened him
off. I only hope it has. Nevertheless I don’t like the situation.
Something is amiss somewhere--and I intend to fathom it.”

“The man is not English, you told me. Why should he go under the name
of Martin?”

“Martin is a name not unknown in France,” Falconer remarked. “He may be
French. Indeed, I recollect when I first saw him in the train I put him
down as a Parisian.”

Both Sylvia and her lover were much puzzled. It certainly was annoying
to be watched as Falconer had evidently been.

That evening they drove back over the Cornish hills with the sun
setting away across the Atlantic. But already the breeze was
increasing. The storm prophecy of early morning was being fulfilled.

Together they dined pleasantly in that long room at the Poldhu Hotel
which overlooks the pretty cove, Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton dining with
them. Afterwards they all went across the wide grounds of the wireless
station to the Hamiltons’ pretty bungalow, where they spent the
remainder of the evening.

Hamilton was a typical Marconi man, burly, easy-going, and refined.
An expert wireless engineer, he had worked stations in India, South
America, and other places, and ran a secret station during the
war--a station which had to its credit the destroying of many German
submarines. With his charming, dark-haired, cosmopolitan wife who that
night was hostess to the wealthy South American widow, he had lived in
all sorts of outlandish places in the shadow of wireless aerials, ever
on duty day and night with the alarm-bell at his bedside in case of a
breakdown.

Of wireless troubles he had many. Yet he was one of those easy-going
golfers whom nothing disturbed. He was devoted to his wife; he led an
ideal life in his picturesque, roomy bungalow in that wild, windswept
spot overlooking the Atlantic, and he smoked his pet pipe, and never
allowed anything to upset him. With all the public schoolboy spirit,
he was devoted to his duty, and though severe and just, was yet highly
popular with his whole staff.

In that bungalow the Hamiltons led a charming existence, though, if
judged by life in London, it might be voted terribly dull. So it was in
winter when there were no summer visitors at the hotel. But even then
they had the society of the little colony of Marconi men who lived in
other bungalows and down in Mullion or in Cury.

Sylvia was delighted with Mrs. Hamilton’s outspoken cosmopolitanism.
She had been in half-a-dozen different lands with her husband, and her
bungalow life suited her, even though servants were, perhaps, hard to
keep in that remote spot. But her house was well-ordered, and furnished
with great taste, a fact upon which Mrs. Beverley commented.

In the long drawing-room where the furnishings showed souvenirs of
travel far afield, the chief engineer and Geoffrey smoked their
cigarettes, while the ladies gossiped. Presently the two men left and
entered the dining-room for a drink before parting. Then Geoffrey, as
they sat near the table together, told his colleague of the strange
movements of the visitor to the Polurrian Hotel.

“Very funny!” agreed Hamilton, who at that moment was lighting his
beloved briar. “What can he be doing down here? Of course, we have lots
of people trying to pry around the station. But I always take a very
firm hand. Nobody sees anything except by signed order from the head
office. It wouldn’t do to take strangers into the transmitting room
where they could read any of the messages.”

“Of course not,” Geoffrey said. “But I intend to follow up the fellow
and see what his game is. I don’t like being spied upon like this.”

“Yes, try to solve the mystery,” replied the engineer-in-charge.

Next day Geoffrey was early astir. At six o’clock he was already out
and over at the wireless station, making some tests upon the new gear,
and at nine, after a hurried breakfast at the hotel, he walked over
to the Polurrian, where, from the hall-porter, he learned several
facts. The visitor, Mr. Martin, had arrived by the evening train from
London, had dined, and had gone out for about an hour on foot in the
evening light--across the cliffs in the direction of Pradanack, he
believed. Then he came back and went early to bed. All next day he
had lounged about the hotel, chatting with several of the ladies.
Just before dinner he had suddenly ordered a car and told them at the
office to ring up the stationmaster at Penzance and secure a sleeper to
Paddington, and that he would join the train at Gwinear Road.

Later in a hired car Geoffrey drove to the little town of Helston,
and took train to the terminus of that winding branch-line which ends
at Gwinear Road, on the main line from Penzance to Paddington. From
the stationmaster there he learnt that Martin had joined the night
mail to Paddington. He also learnt something further--namely, that he
had despatched a telegram to a person named Meyer at an address in
Hertford Road, Bayswater. The words were: “Thursday at eleven.”

At once Geoffrey decided to return to London. Therefore, he telephoned
to Hamilton at Poldhu asking him to tell Mrs. Beverley that he was
called to town, and promising to be back very soon.

An hour later he was in the slow train for Plymouth, and that night,
the night of Wednesday, he was back in London.

At midnight he passed the house in Hertford Road, Bayswater. It was in
darkness, but was evidently a place where apartments were let, quite a
respectable house of the usual Bayswater type.

He slept at the Great Western Hotel at Paddington, without even a clean
collar, be it said, and just before eleven o’clock next day he stood
looking idly into a shop window in Westbourne Grove, at the corner of
Hertford Road, pretending not to be interested in any passer-by.

At about a minute before eleven the mysterious Mr. Martin,
smartly-dressed and walking jauntily, turned the corner behind
Falconer, and passing up Hertford Road, rang at the door of the house
which the young wireless engineer had examined on the previous night.

In a few seconds the door was opened by a maid, and Mr. Martin
disappeared within.

A girl of about eighteen, who looked like a dressmaker from one of the
several establishments in “The Grove,” was the only person in the road
at the moment. Geoffrey noticed her. She was rather poorly-dressed, and
seemed to be searching for some house, the description of which she did
not recognise.

Gaining the corner of Westbourne Grove, she was met by a
quietly-dressed, middle-aged man, to whom she spoke a few words
hurriedly. The man replied, apparently telling her something. Then with
a smile they parted, the girl going in the direction of Queen’s Road,
and the man, who seemed to be an idler, calmly filling his pipe and
lighting it as he stood at the junction of the two thoroughfares.

Geoffrey saw all this, but it did not strike him as in any way
peculiar. In London many men meet girls at the corners of streets,
speak a few words to them, and then pass on. There was nothing really
unusual about the girl’s action.

Falconer’s chief concern at the moment was not to be recognised by the
man who had, no doubt, watched him when coming over from Paris, where
he had been on business for his company--the man who had taken alarm
on seeing him down at Poldhu. For over an hour carefully he watched
the door of that house in Hertford Road, taking every precaution that
he was not observed from the windows. If anything sinister was in
progress, then, no doubt, somebody would look forth to see that all was
clear and that there was no watcher.

Half an hour after noon the door suddenly opened, when the mysterious
Martin emerged, and passing out of the gate, turned back in the
direction where Falconer was watching.

Fortunately he drew back in time to escape recognition, and to watch
Martin enter a taxi and drive away. Another taxi was near the kerb,
therefore in it he followed the foreigner away to North London, to
a small, rather dingy shop where electrical appliances were sold--a
shop well known to wireless experimenters who are in search of odd and
second-hand apparatus and bargains of every description.

The man remained in the place for nearly half an hour, but so blocked
up was window and door that the passer-by in Chalk Farm Road could not
get a glimpse within. The establishment was one of the most antique
in London, and patronised widely by amateurs as well as the greatest
scientists in that city.

Presently he came forth bearing a good-sized wooden box, which he put
on the front of the taxi, and then drove to the Hotel Russell, where he
entered and dismissed the taxi.

A judicious chat with the hall-porter revealed the fact that the name
under which the stranger was known was Mr. Charles Lazarus. And he
declared himself as a French subject.

With this knowledge Geoffrey engaged a room at the hotel and started to
keep strict surveillance upon the stranger. The man’s movements were
most mysterious. That same evening he met three other men, palpably
foreigners, at the Café Royal, where they dined together expensively,
and afterwards all four drove in a taxi to a big double-fronted house
in Maresfield Gardens, Hampstead.

Some time after they had been inside, Geoffrey managed to slip into the
small front garden, and, approaching stealthily one of the lower bay
windows, listened. He distinguished men’s voices, though he could not
hear what words were being uttered. He thought they were speaking in
French.

Suddenly he heard a sharp metallic clicking. Instantly he recognised it
as the tick of a Morse telegraph “sounder.” The letters of the alphabet
were being sent both rapidly and well. There was no message--merely
the letters A to Z, followed quickly by the numbers 0 to 9. They were
evidently testing some apparatus.

He looked about to see any telegraph wires around the house, but the
night was too dark and overcast to enable him to distinguish anything.

What was happening within, he wondered? The sound was certainly that of
either a post-office telegraph transmitter or receiving “inker.” The
click was too familiar and too pronounced for him to be mistaken.

Fearing discovery he withdrew, and then he waited in a dark doorway
for the reappearance of the man upon whom he was keeping observation.
Martin came out very soon after eleven o’clock, and walking down to
Swiss Cottage station, took train, and made his way back to the hotel.

Falconer became more than ever puzzled. What was the connection
between this Frenchman’s visit to Poldhu and the tapping of that Morse
key? Of some sinister plot he felt convinced. Why should the stranger
have watched him so closely in the train to Calais, and then flown on
being recognised at the Polurrian Hotel?

Next morning after breakfast he went to the hall-porter of the Hotel
Russell, and casually inquired whether he had seen Mr. Lazarus.

“The gentleman left at seven-thirty, sir,” was the man’s prompt reply.
“I put his luggage on a taxi, and I heard him tell the man to drive to
Paddington.”

Paddington! Had the man of mystery returned to Cornwall? That was
Falconer’s thought.

Quickly he drove in a taxi to Paddington, where he ascertained from the
booking-clerk that four first-class return tickets had been issued to
Truro that morning. He described the man Martin as the person who had
paid for them. Eager not to lose sight of the four foreigners, Falconer
hurried to Marconi House, and was soon on the private land-telegraph
line which connects the head office with the wireless station at remote
Poldhu--the line over which all the messages are sent to and from
London.

Seated at the telegraph-key, Falconer was soon talking by Morse to one
of the assistant-engineers named Benfield, Mr. Hamilton having gone
into Helston to see after the delivery of some overdue machinery which
had been sent from the works at Chelmsford.

To Benfield he described Martin and his companions, and asked him to
motor over to Truro, meet them on arrival, and watch where they went.
He added that he should take the next train down to Truro, where he
would, on arrival, meet Benfield at the Red Lion. He also sent a
message through Benfield to Sylvia telling her of his movements.

At noon he was in the express due to reach Truro three hours after
the arrival of the mysterious four. At seven o’clock that evening he
entered the old-world Red Lion Hotel, and found Benfield awaiting him
with disappointing news.

No men answering the description of the four foreigners had arrived at
Truro by the London express which had left Paddington at ten-thirty and
had previously arrived.

Geoffrey was nonplussed. His plans had gone entirely wrong! That some
mischief was intended he felt assured. His intuition told him that
Martin and his companions should be watched, but evidently they had
very cleverly evaded pursuit.

They might have purposely broken their journey at Exeter or at
Plymouth. Therefore, he met three other possible trains from London,
yet each time he was doomed to disappointment. That they had taken
tickets to Truro was no evidence that they intended to alight there.
They might have got out at some wayside station.

So after the arrival of the half-past ten train that night there was
nothing to do but hire a car, and, accompanied by Benfield, he returned
to Poldhu, arriving there half an hour after midnight.

The wireless station was brilliantly lit. The great generators were
going, ready for the commencement of the night’s heavy traffic, for
real work commences there at one o’clock in the morning, because,
as all wireless men know, daylight interferes with the strength of
wireless signals, so most of the cross-Atlantic traffic and that to
distant ships is carried on from that remote corner of England between
nightfall and dawn.

Falconer, after a chat with Hamilton, went back to the hotel, where he
slept till six, and then, after an early breakfast, drove by car back
to the Red Lion at Truro. For three days he remained there, eagerly
watching the arrival of every train, but he saw nothing of the men who
had so cleverly evaded his watchfulness. It now became quite evident
that Truro was not the real destination of Martin and his companions.

On the fourth day, however, at sundown, as he was passing out of the
smoking-room of the old-fashioned hotel through the lounge into the
busy street, it being market day, he chanced to glance to the left
at the crowd of farmers standing at the public bar, when suddenly he
caught sight of a man whom he instantly recognised as having been one
of Martin’s companions at the Café Royal. In broken English the man was
inquiring of the barmaid the way to Tregoney, and she was telling him
that it was about six miles out on the Plymouth road, and that he could
get a taxi at the garage opposite the hotel.

Falconer held his breath, and paused.

It was evident that the stranger had only just arrived in Truro.
Tregoney--the young man recollected the name. Ten minutes later he
learnt that the place was a small village on the main road to Plymouth,
between Truro and St. Austell. So he allowed the foreigner to go, and
waited in impatience till night fell, when he hired a car, and, with a
little flash-lamp in his pocket, drove to the outskirts of the remote
village. There he ordered the taxi-driver to wait for an hour, and then
went on to seek what information he could.

Halfway along the village street, where lights showed in the windows
of most of the cottages, he came to a small inn, which he entered and
ordered some cold beef and a bottle of beer. Landlords of inns are
proverbially talkative to their good customers, and from the burly
Cornish host Geoffrey, as he ate his meal, was not long in ascertaining
that a strange foreign gentleman, whose description tallied exactly
with Martin, had taken a large house at the farther end of “the town.”
He was a stranger who had come over to England for his health, and he
had rented the place furnished from old Miss Trethowen, who had gone to
live in London for six months.

The foreign gentleman had only arrived three days before, and as far as
the landlord knew had not yet engaged any servants, except a deaf old
woman named Grey, who had acted as Miss Trethowen’s caretaker. Nobody
in the village had ever seen the foreign gentleman before. He had
arrived with a companion, a tall, thin-faced young man, and they had
but little luggage except two large wooden boxes.

Having ascertained these facts, Geoffrey finished his meal and walked
along the high road until he came to a large, old-fashioned house,
standing back in the darkness from the road, along which ran many
telegraph wires. A carriage-drive led up to the place, which seemed
very lonely and neglected.

In a window of the first floor there showed a light. Geoffrey, treading
softly, entered the gate and silently crossed the rough grass towards
the house. Scarcely had he reached the short flight of steps before the
front door, being very cautious because a house dog might be about,
when he heard a familiar click-click-clickety-click--the noise of a
Morse “sounder.”

It was again the same sound he had heard in Hampstead. Why? Had they,
he wondered, been testing some instruments there--instruments bought of
the dealer in Chalk Farm Road?

In the darkness he strained his ears. What he read by those dots and
dashes amazed him. He stood aghast for a few moments.

Then, having listened intently to make quite certain that his discovery
was an absolute fact, he stole quietly away, and walking back through
the village, re-entered the taxi and drove back over to Poldhu.

His suspicions had been confirmed! Though it was very late when he
arrived, he found Hamilton in his pretty bungalow, and told him of his
strange discovery.

“You’ll take every precaution in secret, won’t you?” urged Falconer.
“Nobody must know of this.”

“Trust me,” replied the engineer-in-charge, at once eager and ready.

“We’ve only to wait and be very watchful. There’s some clever game
afoot, without a doubt,” Falconer said, and presently he went along the
path to the hotel, and to bed, while Hamilton, even at that late hour,
crossed to the transmission room for a final look round before retiring.

Next day Geoffrey, who confided his suspicions to Sylvia, became very
active. Several hours he spent in the transmission room, where Cator,
with the “Brown receivers” over his head, was very busy transmitting
and receiving acknowledgments. Falconer was watching every message, and
also spent much of his time in the adjoining room, where the land-line
from Marconi House was constantly working.

A dozen times that morning he was in close consultation with Hamilton.
Then, at about five o’clock in the afternoon, both drove in Hamilton’s
car into Truro.

Till about half-past nine they waited at the hotel, when they drove
out to Tregoney, and, leaving the car at the little inn, they both
walked along to the village post-office, where, even though so late,
they saw the postmaster and explained that they were awaiting an urgent
telephone message from the wireless station at Poldhu. Hamilton having
made himself known, the postmaster at once agreed to send along to the
inn--only a few yards distant--and call them when they were wanted.

Then the pair returned to the inn and ordered supper. Scarcely were
they halfway through it when the postmaster himself hurried in and
announced that Poldhu was on the line.

Hamilton rose instantly and dashed out. Five minutes later he returned.

“All right!” he said breathlessly. “It’s just what you expected,
Falconer. Henway, the chief constable of Truro, and four of his men are
awaiting us just down the road.”

Together the pair went out into the darkness, and at the end of the
village the chief constable came out from the shadows to join them.
After a few words from Hamilton, the police official whistled softly,
and from nowhere, apparently, four of his assistants appeared.

Then whispering softly all went along to Miss Trethowen’s house, and
slipping one after the other into the garden, they surrounded it. This
effected, Henway rang boldly at the door, but received no answer. There
was no sign of the clicking of the Morse instrument. All was quiet.
Thrice he rang, when at last the bolts were drawn, and the thin man,
whom Falconer had seen in the Red Lion in Truro, cautiously opened the
door.

Next second the police rushed in. Henway and Falconer were first
inside, and turning into a room on the left of the hall, which was Miss
Trethowen’s dining-room, they saw upon the table a most up-to-date
Morse telegraph instrument with wires attached to it trailing along the
red Turkey carpet and out of the window.

The commotion caused by the entry of the police was great. All four
occupants of the house were utterly staggered when Henway ordered
their arrest on a charge of tapping telegraph wires, the property of
the Postmaster-General, and with the interference of the secrecy of
messages.

The man Martin instantly showed fight, firing three revolver shots
point-blank at Falconer, none of which, very fortunately, took effect.
The fellow was, however, quickly overpowered, and all four were later
on conveyed to Truro police-station and placed in the cells.

To cut short this narrative of the romance of wireless, it is
sufficient to explain that, as was afterwards discovered, the man
who called himself Martin was an expert French bank thief, who had
committed many great swindles both in Europe and America. In this
particular case he had succeeded in obtaining, under threats of
blackmail from a hard-up bank-clerk in Madrid, a copy of the secret
code used by the London office of the Estremadura Bank--a great Spanish
banking corporation--when ordering telegraphic payments to be made from
the head office in Madrid.

With his three associates, one of whom was an ex-telegraphist of the
post-office at Aranjuez, near Madrid, Martin had come to England,
having purposely followed Falconer from Paris, knowing him by repute as
a Marconi engineer.

His movements had at first been closely followed, for the Metropolitan
police had been warned of Martin’s arrival, and he had been shadowed to
Hertford Road by a girl in the employ of Scotland Yard. But afterwards,
so honest did the man appear, that the surveillance had been dropped,
and it had remained to Geoffrey to investigate the plot.

Martin had, as it was afterwards proved, bought in Chalk Farm Road
certain component parts of a very sensitive and up-to-date appliance
for tapping the land-line from London to Poldhu, which runs from
Plymouth to St. Austell, and past Miss Trethowen’s house to Truro and
Poldhu.

By tapping the trunk telegraph wire that night Martin had been able,
by a very ingenious arrangement which Falconer afterwards examined,
to despatch an urgent message to Poldhu just as though it had been
received over the counter in the office in Fenchurch Street, in London,
and tapped out from Marconi House. Thus the conspirators had been able
to interpose a false message which they intended should be sent by
wireless from Poldhu to Madrid.

The whole plot was extremely cleverly conceived, for on that night,
just before Hamilton rang up Poldhu, they had sent instructions in code
presumably from the London office in Lombard Street to the head office
in Madrid ordering the bank to pay to a certain Señor Alfonso Fonesca,
living in the Calle Zorilla, in Madrid, the sum of thirteen thousand
five hundred and eighty pounds sterling at the current rate of exchange.

Needless to record, the false message which had been so cleverly
imposed upon the land-wire was never dispatched from Poldhu, for that
night all messages had been suspect, and the one in question was held
back.

At the time of writing, Martin--who at the Court Assizes at Bodmin was
proved to be a Swiss subject--is serving a term of seven years’ penal
servitude, as well as his three companions, all of whom were Belgians.

Happily the bogus message they sent from Tregoney did not, as they
hoped, pass through the “Devil’s Oven” and out into Space. So the bank
was saved a theft of nearly fourteen thousand pounds.




CHAPTER V

THE MYSTERY WIDOW


“Isn’t it a horrid nuisance, Geoffrey, Lord Hendlewycke has arrived!”
exclaimed Sylvia Beverley as she stood with her lover on the terrace
before the luxurious Hôtel Royal, at Dinard.

“Hendlewycke here!” exclaimed the young Marconi engineer in surprise.
“Then I suppose it means that I’d better get back to London,” he said
rather grimly.

“Isn’t it too bad of mother? She’s just told me that she wrote to
the fellow asking him to join us on our motor trip to Touraine,” the
pretty, dark-haired girl said petulantly. “I shall decline to go.”

“But you know the reason, dearest, just as I do,” said Falconer. “Your
mother disapproves of us being so much together, and intends that you
shall become Lady Hendlewycke.”

“I obey mother in all things--but I won’t marry Hendlewycke,” declared
the girl decisively. “Of course he’s awfully useful to us socially.
Through him we’ve got to know some of the very best people in London.
Mother likes all that sort of thing, but personally he bores me.”

After Mrs. Beverley’s stay at Poldhu she had taken Sylvia on a motor
tour. They had landed at Boulogne from Folkestone, and had had a
beautiful run to Dinard, where Geoffrey, with three weeks’ leave due to
him, had joined them a few days before.

Both mother and daughter were delighted with Dinard. It is a place
which in summer appeals to the wealthy, with its luxurious hotels and
gay casino, its smart world of bathing and dancing, and its expensive
shops, most of them branches of the best establishments in Paris.
There, in the Casino, on the _plage_ or in the hotels, the _haut-monde_
loves to rub shoulders with the _demi-monde_, and in these days it is,
_par excellence_, the resort of the blatant war-profiteer and his fat,
uncouth wife.

It was noon. The gay, cosmopolitan idlers of both sexes were either
bathing or taking their _apératif_, or else wandering about the
scrupulously clean streets and inspecting the shops.

Sylvia, in her cream summer gown and large hat, presented a delightful
figure as, at her lover’s side, she wandered presently along the Rue
du Casino, in order to buy some flowers for the table of their private
sitting-room at the hotel.

The weather was glorious. It was warmer on what the French term the
Emerald Coast than it had been in Cornwall, while the life and society
was, indeed, a change from the rural quietude of Poldhu Cove.

Just as the pair were passing the entrance to the Casino, a stout,
middle-aged, very smartly-dressed woman halted and spoke to Sylvia.

“Well, Madame Claudet!” the girl cried. “Why--how long have you been
over in Europe?”

“About four months,” she replied, speaking broken English with a strong
French accent. “My husband died, you know.”

“What?” exclaimed Sylvia. “Mr. Claudet dead!”

And for the first time she noticed that the lady was in mourning.

“He died of heart failure, suddenly--in the street in New York,”
the rather handsome widow said. Then when Sylvia had expressed her
condolence, she turned and introduced Geoffrey.

“I’m at the Hôtel des Terrasses,” Madame Claudet said to the girl.
“Where are you staying?”

Sylvia told her, and begged her to call upon her mother that afternoon.

“We shall be so very delighted to see you again,” she added. “Mother
has often spoken of you, and recalled our gay days together at Palm
Beach.”

Madame promised to call, and then, when Sylvia and Geoffrey walked on,
the girl said:

“Poor Madame Claudet! I’m so sorry! Her husband was a very wealthy man.
They had a lot of valuable property, I believe, in Brazil. We knew her
in Florida. I’m so glad we’ve come across her. I shall ask mother to
invite her to go with us to Touraine.”

At luncheon Geoffrey met Lord Hendlewycke, whom, of course, he had
known in London. All the men who went up and down St. James’s Street
knew Hendlewycke as a very hard-up peer, who was glad to get dinners
and luncheons at other people’s expense. How he lived nobody exactly
knew, for he was believed not to possess the proverbial “bean.” Yet
he was a bright optimist, with a fund of amusing anecdotes, and very
popular with hostesses of all sorts.

In the afternoon the French widow called upon Mrs. Beverley, and was
received with great enthusiasm. At tea Geoffrey met her again, and
afterwards agreed with Sylvia that she was a most charming person. She
had been born in the Alpes Maritimes, but had been taken to America
by her parents when she was about eighteen, and had married a Mr.
Claudet, an American, whose father had been French. Hence she possessed
all the natural _chic_ of the Frenchwoman, combined with the go-ahead
characteristics of the American.

Next day, notwithstanding Sylvia’s appeal, Geoffrey left Dinard for
London in response to a telegram he pretended had come from Marconi
House. Mrs. Beverley, at heart, did not regret his departure, because
she hoped that during the motor tour through the Côtes du Nord,
Morbihan, and the Maine-et-Loire, which she had arranged, his lordship
might propose to Sylvia.

Back again at the Marconi Works at Chelmsford, Geoffrey became immersed
in his patient research into further wonders of wireless. He was
engaged with others upon a new idea.

One day he had occasion to go from Chelmsford over to Witham, where
there had just been established the new wireless station in direct
communication with Paris. Witham is nine miles from Chelmsford, and,
although messages from France are received upon the aerial wires there,
the transmission is effected from the great aerial at the Chelmsford
Works.

On that particular morning he had been in the transmission room at
Chelmsford, watching the huge panel with its big array of great
illuminated globes--the transmission-valves for continuous waves--and
chatting with Mr. Drew, the shrewd, dark-haired engineer in grey
tweeds, who was, perhaps, the world’s greatest expert in wireless
telephony. In the big hall, full of wonderful apparatus and huge
condensers--the result of many scientific brains--the pair had been
watching the relay work, the rapid dots and dashes from the key at
Witham, and then, in consultation, they had agreed upon a still further
diagram that might perhaps give better results.

In consequence, Falconer had gone over to Witham, leaving the
ever-watchful Mr. Drew with his powerful transmission-set, with which
he had a short time before spoken across the Atlantic, and to Senatore
Marconi while on board his yacht in the Mediterranean--the set which he
regarded with as much tenderness as though it were his own child--as,
indeed, it really was.

That wonderful display of apparatus was but the germ of a revolution
in the transmission of speech. It was purely experimental, and was now
being used, not for long-distance telephony, but for the exchange of
Morse signals with Paris--sent automatically at such a speed as to be
unreadable by any listener.

The inner room was a hive of industry. Upon the operating bench was a
“siphon recorder”--a delicate instrument which was actually writing,
by means of a kind of fountain pen, upon the paper “tape” the dots and
dashes sent automatically at a speed of one hundred words a minute. The
pen never left the paper, but rose up and down, making short or long
strokes in violet ink on the upper side of the paper, and was one of
the latest marvels of delicate wireless instruments.

Geoffrey glanced at it casually. It clicked on continuously night and
day in response to the automatic hand of the transmitter in Paris
tapping his key.

“The Frenchmen are keeping us very busy,” Graham remarked. “Look! We’re
overwhelmed, but up at the Fenchurch Street office it must be worse.”

Geoffrey nodded For some seconds he watched the “recorder” at work, and
then presently he and Graham sat down at the receiving set and began to
discuss where an improvement would possibly be made. They were seated
close to the “recorder,” when presently, through mere force of habit,
Geoffrey, even while chatting with Graham, found himself reading the
incoming messages. Suddenly there became recorded on the tape in that
curious crooked writing the words, “Marguerite Claudet.”

Claudet? In a moment he recollected that it was the name of the wealthy
widow to whom Sylvia had introduced him in Dinard. He took the tape,
and reading back, found that the message, which had been dispatched
from Paris half an hour before, was addressed to a person named
Mildmay, apparently living in chambers in Ryder Street, London, and
that it was in code--a jumble of figures and letters.

At first, the origin of the message being Paris, Geoffrey merely
smiled within himself at the similarity of the name, and recollected
the seal of secrecy regarding all messages. But a few moments later,
he recollected that Mrs. Beverley had addressed her friend as “dear
Margot.” For aught he knew the lady was motoring with Mrs. Beverley on
their trip to the ancient châteaux on the Loire.

Before leaving Dinard, Sylvia had given him the Hôtel de l’Univers, at
Tours, as their central address while in Touraine. At that time Madame
Claudet, though invited to join the motoring party, had not decided
whether to accept. In Falconer’s presence she had declared that she
would be compelled to go to Paris to see her bankers upon some matter
of business from South America.

The message to Mildmay was evidently a private prearranged jumble of
figures and letters, the whole perhaps meaning but one word, “yes” or
“no.” Such codes are by far the most difficult to decipher.

Next day, so interested did he become in the message through space,
which had, of course, been delivered to the addressee, that he
telegraphed to Sylvia at Tours asking whether Madame Claudet was with
them, but begging that she should not be told of his inquiry.

The reply came in due course. Madame Claudet had been on business to
Paris, and had just rejoined them at Tours. Naturally, Sylvia asked the
reason of his inquiry, to which he replied by wire that he would tell
her when next they met.

He had, however, established the fact that the rich widow had been in
Paris, and it certainly seemed as if the message he had noticed upon
the green recording tape was really from her.

For the next few days he was extremely busy over at Witham, assisting
in getting the London-Paris service going more smoothly. The most
delicate adjustment of the instruments is necessary in wireless
stations when at first fitted, for the apparatus is so often liable
to unaccountable freaks and interruptions, each of which must be
methodically overcome until the service is brought to perfection.

The apparatus at Witham, having at last been tuned up to the highest
pitch, Geoffrey suddenly received orders to go down and make some
adjustments at the big transatlantic station high up above Carnarvon,
in North Wales.

For two days he remained there, and then returned to Warley, where the
Professor was still busy upon his monumental book.

Alone with his private wireless set at one o’clock in the morning, the
puzzle of that curious cipher message from the widow obsessed him. He
wore the low-resistance telephones over his ears, and was listening to
Poldhu sending out the day’s news to ships at sea. It was better than
reading the evening papers, for here one had news in tabloid form, the
news which was printed next morning upon all the transatlantic liners.

“By Jove, I will!” he exclaimed aloud to himself, after listening to
a declaration made by Mr. Lloyd George to M. Briand, and reported by
the Paris _Matin_. He removed the head-’phones, and then muttered to
himself:

“I wonder who this man Mildmay can be? I’ll find out. It will be
interesting--if nothing else. Yet somehow--why, I don’t know--I took an
instinctive dislike to Madame Claudet. Yet there was really no reason
for it as far as I could see, and she appeared to be quite charming.”

And he switched off, and retired to bed.

Two days later, having occasion to go up to Marconi House, he snatched
an hour and went to Ryder Street. As he anticipated, the place was a
set of bachelor’s chambers. The liftman became communicative after a
ten-shilling note had been pressed into his hand.

“Well, sir,” he said in a low voice, “the fact is that I don’t know
very much about Mr. Mildmay. Lord Bamford let his rooms to him about
six months ago, and he seems to be away quite a lot. I forward his
letters to Paris, Vienna, Rome, and other places. He is a constant
traveller. He must have business abroad, I think.”

“Does he have any lady friends calling upon him?”

“No. Never to my knowledge, sir. He’s simply a gay, irresponsible sort
of man. Dines out every night either with people in smart society or at
one of the expensive restaurants. A bit of a mystery, I think.”

“Why a mystery? What do you suspect?” asked Geoffrey eagerly as they
stood together conversing in low tones against the lift.

“Well, about a week ago a little old man--a foreigner with a grey
beard--came here and questioned me closely. At first I refused to tell
him anything. He went away. Later in the evening he called again, and
together we went round into the Haymarket and we had a drink or two. I
told him what I knew, and--well!--he seemed much interested--very much
interested.”

“In what way?” asked Falconer.

“Well, I may as well be frank with you. He offered me twenty pounds if
I would loan him the duplicate key of the flat which my wife has in
order to go in and out to see to things for him. He has no meals here,
but his bedroom has to be seen to each day.”

“Twenty pounds! Then the little old foreigner was very eager to see
inside. I wonder why?”

“Yes. That’s in my mind. I haven’t accepted the money, and I don’t know
that I shall. Mr. Mildmay treats me as a gentleman, and I don’t see why
I should go behind his back--especially with a foreigner. He must be a
gentleman, or Lord Bamford would never have let his rooms to him.”

“Does Mr. Mildmay have many visitors?”

“Only two or three men who are intimate friends. I think he may be an
inventor--or an electrical engineer.”

“What makes you think so?”

“Because sometimes when I go past the door at night, I hear the whirr
of the little motor in the flat.”

“Oh! There’s an electric motor there--is there?”

“Yes, in the scullery--it’s run off the electric light current.”

“Do you ever hear any metallic clicks or sharp fizzles and noises?”
Falconer asked.

“No. Nothing--only the motor. A little half-horse affair run off the
house current. When I was in the army I had a lot to do with small
dynamos.”

“What can it be used for?”

“Ah! I can’t tell. He keeps his sitting-room always closed. He’s put a
Yale lock on it. And my missus is always wondering why.”

Geoffrey Falconer scented mystery.

“What does he want a motor in his flat for?”

“That I can’t tell you. He’s a generous man. I’ll give him credit for
that. But somehow I don’t like his mysterious electric plant.”

Half an hour later the liftman’s wife, on pretence of going to
Mildmay’s room to see that all was straight, admitted Falconer, who had
a good look round. He examined the half-horse electric motor, and found
to it attached two high-tension wires through the wall into the locked
room.

“That’s his lordship’s dining-room,” said the stout, youngish woman. “I
can’t think why Mr. Mildmay keeps it locked up so securely. Sometimes I
think I smell a funny smell, like paint, but I’m not quite certain. It
may be my fancy. Mr. Mildmay is out golfing at Berkhampstead to-day.”

Falconer passed into the sitting-room, when the first object that
greeted him was a cabinet photograph of Madame Claudet!

He had not been mistaken. What connection could the rich Chicago widow
have with the man who kept his dining-room locked with a Yale latch?

The mystery deepened. A problem was presented which to Geoffrey
Falconer was fascinating. Madame was rich and well known in society.
What possible connection could she have with that man in England--the
man to whom she had sent a message in cipher. Cipher telegrams are
quite admissible in official correspondence, and also in business, but
when used for private communication are always suspect--except perhaps
between lovers.

“I’d like to see Mr. Mildmay,” Geoffrey told the porter, who, in reply,
declared that the gentleman usually came home about six o’clock,
dressed, and then went out to his club for dinner.

So just before six o’clock Falconer returned to Ryder Street and
watched the entrance of the chambers. He had waited for ten minutes
or so when a well-dressed fair-haired man of about forty, in golf
clothes, alighted from a taxi and, carrying his clubs, went inside.
Then, a second later, the liftman appeared in the doorway, and gave the
arranged signal that he was the person Falconer desired to see.

There was certainly nothing suspicious about Mr. Mildmay’s appearance.
He was an ordinary man of leisure, who had been out in the country
golfing.

Day by day, Geoffrey’s work taking him to Witham, he was able from time
to time to glance at the rapidly moving pen of the “recorder.” He was
wondering if any more messages of mystery would come through from the
American widow. Each day he looked at the register of wireless messages
received from Paris, but the name of Mildmay did not appear. He told
nobody of the suspicion which had arisen in his mind. As a servant of
the Marconi Company, he, like servants of the Post-Office, was sworn to
preserve the secrecy of messages, and this he did. He merely watched
and waited, even without telling his father.

Yet somehow--why, he could not himself tell--he felt that he would
like to see more of the widow’s mysterious friend. With that object he
one night put on his dinner clothes, and waited in Ryder Street until
Mildmay appeared, when he followed him unseen to a small and cosy
restaurant in Jermyn Street. Scarcely had Mildmay taken his seat at a
table against the wall when Geoffrey also entered and took a seat near
him, pretending, of course, to take no interest in anything further
than the _menu_ which the waiter handed him.

Mildmay apparently told the waiter that he was expecting friends, for
the man swiftly laid two extra places, and he had hardly finished
when two middle-aged men entered, greeted their friend, and took
their seats. Their appearance surprised Falconer, for they were
flashily-attired, and evidently not of the same class as himself.

In a few moments all three were bending towards each other. One of the
new-comers was apparently relating something in a low, confidential
tone, and when he had finished, the trio burst into loud, triumphant
laughter. Then it did not take long to realise that they were
celebrating some occasion, for champagne was soon upon the table and
they commenced an expensive meal.

Time after time Falconer endeavoured to catch some word of the
conversation, but failed. Yet, whoever the men were, he felt
instinctively that they were West End undesirables. After their dinner,
they strolled together into St. James’s Street, where Mildmay parted
from them and turned towards Pall Mall, while the pair went on into
Piccadilly. After walking some distance they entered a bar in Vine
Street; yet Geoffrey dare not go in after them for fear of being
recognised. Nevertheless, he had ascertained that Mr. Mildmay kept
rather curious company.

A couple of days later Falconer, glancing at the register of messages
passing between Paris and London, saw that during the night another
message for Mildmay had been received. He referred to the tape record,
and found that it was in code, as before, rather longer, that it had
been dispatched from Tours, and was signed by the initials “M. C.”

That same evening he called again upon the liftman in Ryder Street, and
inquired if the electric motor had been running.

“I haven’t heard it for quite a fortnight now, sir,” replied the man.
“Last night Mr. Mildmay had two friends here: one man in grey, and the
other in a blue suit. Both were middle-aged.”

Geoffrey at once described the two men who had dined with Mildmay in
Jermyn Street.

“Yes. That’s them, sir. Shady customers, I should take ’em to be.”

“Just my own opinion,” declared Falconer. “But I’d dearly love to know
why the dining-room is kept locked, and the reason that half-horse
power motor is there.”

“So would I, sir,” laughed the man. “But, after all, I expect the
explanation would be quite simple. I’ve wondered whether he’s
experimenting with something or other. At one place I was at we had the
same mysteriously locked room. But it turned out that the tenant was
a doctor, and was experimenting with the culture of the bacteria of
deadly diseases. And that was why he kept the door locked.”

“This case we shall find different,” Falconer remarked. “I don’t at all
like the appearance of Mr. Mildmay’s friends. I shall probably come and
see you again very soon,” he added, as, pressing a Treasury note into
the man’s hand, he turned and left.

On the following Friday, in response to a letter he received from
Sylvia saying that Lord Hendlewycke had gone suddenly to Switzerland,
and telling him her mother would much like to see him to accompany
them in the car on their return journey across France to Boulogne, he
obtained a week’s leave, and duly arrived at the Hôtel de l’Univers, at
Tours.

On alighting the concierge informed him that the ladies were out
motoring, but an hour later he met them on their return, and received
a warm welcome. His main object in travelling to Touraine was to meet
again Madame Claudet.

“Ah, Mr. Falconer!” she exclaimed, with her pretty French accent, as
they shook hands. “Sylvia expected you yesterday. We’ve been having,
oh!--such a delightful time.”

“Yes. It has been real interesting,” said Mrs. Beverley. “We’ve been
all over Brittany, and now we’ve seen nearly everyone of the châteaux
of the Loire.” Then turning to Madame, she said: “Come on, Margot,
dear. It’s time we got upstairs to dress.”

From the first Geoffrey realised that the two ladies were on most
affectionate terms. They, indeed, addressed each other by their
Christian names. And he wondered.

Madame Claudet looked strikingly handsome as she sat that night at
dinner, dressed in a very smart, low-cut black gown trimmed with
silver, with a silver ornament in her hair. Sylvia, too, looked
charming, in a flimsy dance frock of pale-grey.

As they sat together Mrs. Beverley explained their programme, namely,
to return by way of Blois, Orleans and Fontainebleau, to see the forest
and the château, and thence skirting Paris by Versailles, Beauvais,
Abbeville, and Boulogne. That was agreed upon, and later in the evening
Geoffrey went out with Sylvia for a stroll beneath the trees in the
pleasant Boulevard Heurteloup.

“I had a dreadful time with Hendlewycke,” the girl said as they
strolled together. “He bored me to death, and I fear I became very rude
to him in the end. That’s why he made an excuse and went off in a huff
to Switzerland. Of course,” she added, “mother was furious, but now
she’s getting over it. I believe we shall never see him again.”

“Don’t make too sure, dearest,” her lover said. “Remember, he’s after
money, and he thinks he’ll get it through you. Lady Hendlewycke! How
very nice it would sound!” he added tantalisingly.

“Geoff, you’re horrid!” declared the girl, pouting.

“I suppose you find Madame Claudet a very pleasant companion?” Falconer
went on, walking slowly, for the evening was bright, and under the
trees many people were enjoying the cool air after the heat of an
oppressive day.

“Yes. She’s so awfully jolly.”

“Has she been with you all the time since I left you?”

“Except when she went to Paris. She left Dinard suddenly, and was only
away about fifteen hours. She’s such a rapid traveller. I fancy I
should have been half dead with fatigue if I had done such a journey in
that time. She could have had only about a couple of hours in Paris to
do the business.”

“With her bankers--was it not?”

“Yes--with the Paris agent of her bank. She’s been selling some
property in Brazil. She’s such a thoroughgoing cosmopolitan--and mother
is charmed with her. She is coming to stay with us in London.”

“Excellent!” the young man exclaimed, reflecting, however, upon those
strange messages to that mysterious man in Ryder Street. “Your mother
seems devoted to madame,” he went on.

“Yes. But she’s really awfully good fun. Besides, speaking French as
she does, she’s been most useful to us on our tour. I really don’t know
what we should have done without her.”

“And yet you only knew her slightly.”

“Yes. But we knew a lot about her. Wasn’t it strange that we met her
at Dinard? We shall have a lovely run across to Boulogne. I suppose it
will take us a week or more,” the girl went on. “To-morrow we are going
to take you to see the Château of Chinon. You recollect in one of your
letters you said you would like to see it. We were there last Wednesday
week. So we’re going again to-morrow.”

She went on to ask him the reason he had wired about Madame Claudet,
but Falconer successfully evaded her many inquiries.

On the following morning, with the three ladies, Geoffrey was driven
along the thirty miles or so of delightful road to the ancient and
obscure little town, with its narrow crooked streets, the pretty Vienne
river, the historic, old-world place dominated by its three wonderful
châteaux: that of St. Georges, built by Henry II of England, the
Milieu, and the Coudray, in which lived Joan of Arc--the three forming
one great fortress.

The guardian took them around the three castles, to the three towers
of Boissy, with its fine _Salle des Gardes_, and lastly to the
three-storeyed prison tower, of which so many terrible stories of
mediæval tortures are told. Afterwards they lunched at the old Boule
d’Or, down on the Quai Jeanne d’Arc, and then drove to Chenonceux on
the road back to Tours, to visit the charming little château--one of
the most unique of all Touraine, and which at that moment was in the
possession of a well-known American who had bought it from the French
Government.

Next day the four set out on the return journey to London. Before
leaving the Univers, however, a very unpleasant incident occurred.
Geoffrey had paid his bill with a thousand-franc note which he had
obtained from the bank in London before his departure and had received
the change. Just, however, as he was entering the car to leave, the
manager came to him hurriedly and asked him to step into the bureau for
a moment. There the note he had given was shown him, and declared to be
counterfeit!

Geoffrey stood stupefied, while the manager waxed very angry, declaring
that since the war France had been flooded by spurious money brought
there and changed by foreigners. Falconer declared his innocence,
apologised, and was about to take back the note, when the manager in
fury retained it to forward to the Bank of France for destruction. So
he was compelled to pay his bill a second time, and also to lose forty
pounds or so.

Then, feeling very crestfallen, he rejoined the ladies, without,
however, letting them know what had occurred.

That night they stopped at the Hôtel Moderne, at Orleans, and after
dinner Geoffrey, without telling them of the incident at Tours, warned
them to be on their guard against spurious French bank notes.

“Oh, yes,” said Madame Claudet. “I have heard that recently great
quantities of forged notes have been passed all over France. Somebody
told me they are being made in Spain. One has to be always on the
look-out for them. It would be so annoying to pass one in innocence.”

“Indeed, one could very easily fall into the hands of the police,”
exclaimed Mrs. Beverley. “I had a most unpleasant time in Dinard.
I bought that little butterfly brooch at a jeweller’s close to the
casino, and paid for it, when, to my horror, the man said that one of
the notes--one for five hundred francs--was a forgery.”

“What did you do, my dear?” asked madame.

“Do? Well, I felt a perfect fool. I tore the note up and gave the man
another.”

“You never told me that, mother,” Sylvia remarked.

“No, dear. I felt too angry about it. So I didn’t tell anyone. It
occurred four days before we left Dinard.”

It was upon the tip of Geoffrey’s tongue to relate his own experience
at Tours, but he hesitated.

The run next day to Fontainebleau was glorious, and indeed the whole
trip across to Boulogne was in most delightful weather, and they all
thoroughly enjoyed it. At Boulogne they left the car to be brought to
London by the chauffeur, and caught the next boat across to Folkestone
and so on to London.

Geoffrey’s leave was up, so he had to be at the Works at Chelmsford on
the following day. He seized the opportunity to run over to Witham, and
there discovered that during his absence Mr. Mildmay had received two
further cipher telegrams, one sent from Fontainebleau, and one from
Beauvais, both signed “M. C.”

Now in his many conversations with the handsome widow she had never
mentioned that she had any friend in London. On the contrary, on the
night they had stopped at Abbeville, while they were dining at the old
Tête de Boeuf, she had exclaimed across the table to Mrs. Beverley:

“It really is most sweet of you, dear, to put me up in London. I know
nobody there nowadays. I’ve been away so long.”

She made no mention of the man who occupied those expensive chambers
in Ryder Street, and as far as Geoffrey knew the pair had never met.
Naturally, the young wireless engineer was often at Mrs. Beverley’s
house, and his own observations, combined with what Sylvia told him,
made it apparent to him that Madame Claudet was a most extravagant
woman.

“We are out every night somewhere,” the girl said. “And madame will
never allow us to pay a farthing. She must be very rich, for she’s
ordered eight new frocks from Lucille’s.”

“She has no friends in London, has she?” Falconer asked casually.

“She didn’t have any when she arrived, but, of course, she now knows
one or two people to whom we’ve introduced her.”

On the following day another curious telegram came through the wireless
station at Witham. Dispatched from Marseilles, it had been sent across
by wireless from Paris, and was addressed to Mildmay. It was in plain
language, and read: “Urgent that Marguerite should come over. The
change would do her good.--Jules.”

This puzzled Geoffrey more than ever. Why was madame wanted urgently at
Marseilles, and what hidden meaning was contained in the declaration
that the change would do her good? He was very anxious to ascertain if
she ever met the mysterious Mildmay, and for that purpose he went to
London one evening and again saw his friend the liftman.

No lady had visited Mr. Mildmay to his knowledge. She certainly might
have called when he was off duty.

Hence Falconer determined to watch again, and after the lapse of
several weary evenings, he one night followed Mildmay to the Savoy,
where, just before supper-time, he took a seat in the lounge and idly
lit a cigarette.

Ten minutes later Geoffrey saw standing at the head of the short flight
of stairs the familiar figure of Madame Claudet, wearing a gorgeous
theatre wrap. Her quick eye recognised Mildmay; therefore she went to
take off her wrap, and a few moments later joined him.

From a distance Falconer watched them closely. Mildmay’s greeting
appeared the reverse of cordial, for on his face was an angry,
morose expression. After a brief conversation, they passed into the
supper-room, where, in order to escape recognition, Geoffrey was
forced to leave them. But he had established the fact of their secret
friendship.

Next evening when he went to Upper Brook Street he found Sylvia alone,
her mother having gone to the theatre with madame.

“Isn’t it a shame!” she remarked. “Madame Claudet has to go to Paris
the day after to-morrow--on some of her horrid banking business again.
Mother has introduced her to her bank in Pall Mall, so that she has an
account in London, therefore these journeys will be avoided in future.”

Geoffrey, who had not allowed either Mrs. Beverley or her daughter to
suspect his doubt concerning the handsome widow, agreed, and expressed
a hope that the lady would soon return.

Next day, having to be at Marconi House, he snatched off a few hours
in the afternoon, and succeeded in watching madame leave Upper Brook
Street alone, and following her to Ryder Street, where she called upon
Mildmay. It was very apparent, by the timid way she slipped into the
doorway of the chambers, that she feared being watched. Why?

She remained there for about half an hour, when, emerging, the liftman
hailed a taxi for her and she drove to Upper Brook Street.

Geoffrey was perplexed why the mysterious Jules in Marseilles should be
so concerned regarding madame’s health. Hence he determined to watch
her movements closely until she should leave Victoria. That night he
did not return to Warley, but slept at his club, and at ten o’clock
next morning idled unseen at the corner of Upper Brook Street, in case
she should come forth. He had ascertained that she was leaving Victoria
at midday.

At about half-past ten madame came out alone, carrying her handsome
gold-mounted handbag, and in Grosvenor Square she hailed a taxi, in
which she drove to a bank in Pall Mall, in order, no doubt, to obtain
money for her journey.

She remained within about ten minutes or so, then, re-entering the
taxi, she drove back to her hostess’s house.

A quarter of an hour later Geoffrey called to wish the gay widow au
revoir, and Mrs. Beverley invited him to stay to luncheon. At about
half-past eleven madame left for Victoria, her hostess going in the car
to the station to see her off. Hence Sylvia and her lover were left
together.

Geoffrey Falconer had become disappointed and ill at ease, for the
mystery concerning the widow still remained unsolved.

Mrs. Beverley returned, and they had luncheon together, the young
wireless engineer remaining all the afternoon.

Just as they were seated at tea, Shaw, the footman, brought a card to
his mistress, who glanced at it, and said:

“Oh! It’s Mr. Elton! I wonder why he wants to see me? Ask him in here.”

The man bowed, and a few moments later a tall, clean-shaven business
man was ushered in. In a second it was plain that he was considerably
perturbed.

“Mrs. Beverley,” he said, glancing at Sylvia and Geoffrey, “I am very
sorry to disturb you with a most unpleasant matter. May I see you
alone?”

“Unpleasant matter!” gasped the South American woman. “What do you
mean? Whatever you have to say can be said right here.”

“You have a Madame Claudet staying with you. You introduced her to me,
and she opened a small account at our bank,” he said. “Well--I may as
well tell you that I have the police outside, and I am here to give her
into custody!”

Mrs. Beverley stood open-mouthed.

“Custody!” she gasped. “For what?”

“She called at the bank this morning, and changed seventy-four thousand
five-hundred francs in French notes for English notes. These were, at
noon, sent along to the head office in Lombard Street, where they have
been found to be marvellously clever forgeries!”

“Impossible!” declared Mrs. Beverley, utterly staggered.

“Alas! it is only too true. The bank has lost nearly three thousand
pounds.”

Then Mrs. Beverley, having explained how her late guest had left for
Paris that morning, refused to believe that she could be guilty of any
such fraud.

Here Geoffrey interrupted, and related how he had unconsciously
endeavoured to pass a forged note at Tours, and he recalled to her
mind the incident at the jewellers in Dinard. Both those circumstances
pointed to the fact that the woman had taken from the purses of both
Geoffrey and her hostess real notes, substituting false ones, with the
idea of watching whether they would be passed or not.

“I would like a word with the police,” Geoffrey added, and with the
bank manager he left the ladies to recover from their sudden shock.

In the library he saw the detective-inspector, and briefly related the
mysterious messages received by Mr. Mildmay, and the circumstance of
the electric motor and the locked room.

Within half an hour a priority telegram had been sent by wireless
by Scotland Yard to the commissary of police at the Gare du Nord,
in Paris, to arrest madame on her arrival, while a visit to Mr.
Mildmay’s chambers revealed in the locked room a perfect plant for the
reproduction of French and Spanish bank notes of various denominations,
the most scientific and complete ever found in the possession of
bank-note forgers.

Two hours later, when Mildmay returned, he found himself suddenly in
the hands of the police, and both he and madame--who was not a widow at
all, but his wife who had been distributing forged French and Spanish
notes all over Europe, and reaping a rich harvest--later on received
exemplary sentences at the Old Bailey.




CHAPTER VI

THE CLOVEN HOOF


“It should be quite a pleasant trip for you, Falconer,” remarked the
little, middle-aged, well-dressed man who was one of his superiors, as
they sat together in a room in the Engineering Section at Marconi House
on a bright October afternoon. “The plant went out from the works at
Chelmsford three months ago, and we have been advised that it has all
arrived in Hungary, or I suppose they call it Czecho-Slovakia now, and
it is lying at the station at Arad.”

“I will do my best,” replied Geoffrey, greatly delighted at the
instructions he had just been given, namely, to proceed to Hungary to
erect two complete one-and-a-half kilowatt stations for continuous-wave
telegraphy and telephony. “I have never been in Hungary, and it will,
no doubt, be interesting.”

“It will. I’d dearly like to go with you,” laughed Mr. Millard,
one of the best-known of wireless engineers. “The sets have been
purchased by the Baron de Pelzel, on behalf of the new Government of
Czecho-Slovakia, and one of the conditions of the contract provides
that we should send out an engineer to erect the stations.”

“Will anyone go with me?” asked Geoffrey.

“No. There is, I think, no need. I myself looked through the
instruments before they were packed. All is in order. You can employ
local labour. There are surely some quite good electricians in Hungary.
The first station is to be erected somewhere near Arad--wherever that
may be--and the other in some other part of Hungary. We thought you
would like an opportunity to go abroad.”

Geoffrey thanked the chief of his department, and then, after receiving
a number of other instructions, he went down in the lift and out into
the busy Strand.

Half an hour later he was at Mrs. Beverley’s.

“Hulloa, Geoff!” cried Sylvia as he entered the room. “Where have
you sprung from? I thought of you down at Chelmsford with your
uncomfortable old telephones on your ears, turning little handles very
slowly, and listening! Oh, Geoff, you look so funny sometimes when you
listen! You look as if your whole life depended upon it,” added the
girl chaffingly.

“And so it does, dear. At least my bread-and-cheese depends upon it.”

“Why, the other day Colonel Maybury, of the Air Ministry, told me that
your improved amplifier will probably bring you a comfortable fortune
in royalties!”

The keen, smooth-haired young fellow shrugged his shoulders, and
replied:

“I only hope it will. We wireless men are never optimists, you know.
We always look for failure first. Success surprises us, and bucks us
up. When one is dealing with a science which is in its infancy one must
first look for failure.”

“My dear Geoffrey, as I’ve said before, you are so horribly philosophic
about things,” she declared with a laugh.

At that moment her mother entered, and invited Geoffrey to stay to
dinner _en famille_. The ladies, however, put on dance frocks, for they
were due at Lady Waterden’s at nine o’clock. So about that hour, after
Falconer had told them of his impending journey to Hungary, he saw them
into the car and then walked to the corner of Grosvenor Square, where
he took a taxi to Liverpool Street and caught the train to Warley.

At the Works at Chelmsford next day he was handed a copy of a letter
from the Baron de Pelzel, who had purchased the installations on behalf
of the Government of Czecho-Slovakia. It was a private letter dated
from the Schloss Nyék, in Transylvania, recalling the fact that all the
plant had already arrived at Arad, and asking the Marconi Company to
send their engineer to Budapest as soon as possible, where he would
meet him at the Ritz Hotel and consult with him.

A week later Falconer left London--after an affectionate farewell to
Sylvia--and travelling by the Orient express by way of Paris, Wels, and
Vienna, duly arrived at the Hungarian capital. The moment he entered
the taxi to drive to the Ritz--that _hôtel de luxe_ overlooking the
Danube--a great change was apparent in what was once the gayest city in
Europe. The war had brought disaster upon the unfortunate Hungarians,
who, owing to the terribly low rate of exchange, and the difficulty of
food imports, were now half-starving.

As in the late afternoon Geoffrey went from the station along the wide
handsome street half the shops were closed, and the passers-by were
mostly thin-faced, ill-dressed and shabby.

At the hotel a brave show of luxury was made, and naturally the charges
were high--in Austrian coinage. The price asked for a room with
bathroom adjoining was enormous, but when he calculated it in English
money at the current rate of exchange it was about two shillings and
sixpence a night!

He inquired at the bureau if the Baron de Pelzel had arrived, and
received an affirmative reply. The Baron and his niece had gone out
motoring to Szajol, a place on the River Tisza, and would return about
six. He had left that message for Geoffrey.

About half-past six a waiter came to Falconer’s room asking him to go
along to the Baron’s sitting-room, which was on the same floor. This he
did, and there met a tall, well-built, very elegant, brown-bearded man
of about forty, with a round, merry, fresh-complexioned face and a pair
of dark, humorous eyes.

He welcomed Falconer in very good English and at once introduced him
to his niece, Françoise Biringer, a tall, rather slim, dark-eyed girl,
very smartly attired, who spoke to him in French. Apparently she knew
but very little English.

Then when the girl had gone to dress for dinner, the two men sat down
and discussed the business in hand.

The Baron seemed an extremely affable and cultured man, as so many
Hungarians are. He lived mostly in Paris, he explained, but since the
war he had assisted his Government in various matters.

“I hope you will have an enjoyable time, Mr. Falconer,” he went on.
“When I was at Marconi House they told me they would send out an expert
engineer to fit both stations and get them going. How far do you think
I can speak over the set they have sent me?”

“Speech should carry from seven hundred to nine hundred miles--perhaps
more under favourable conditions, but Morse signals will carry very
much further.”

The Baron seemed highly satisfied.

“You see, my Government is greatly interested in certain mining
enterprises, and it is my plan to set up two wireless stations on
either side of Hungary, so that we can conduct rapid business from
one zone of operation to the other, and also with Budapest when we so
desire. But,” he added, “it is annoying that the plant should have been
sent to Arad. There must have been some mistake. I went to Arad last
week and saw the railway people there. It has already been passed on
to its proper destination. But I do not expect it will arrive for a
week or even ten days, so during that time I hope you will honour me
by being my guest here, as well as during the time you are engaged in
fitting the installation.”

“I shall require assistance,” Geoffrey said. “Do you happen to know of,
say, two good electricians whom I could engage as assistants?”

“I will inquire,” replied the Baron. “No doubt we can find two good men
who, during the war, were engaged in radio-telegraphy.”

Afterwards Geoffrey, well-impressed by the genial Baron, returned to
dress for dinner, and later on took a perfectly cooked meal with his
elegant and courteous host and his niece. The young man found the
pretty Françoise extremely interesting. They discussed many things at
table, new books, new plays, and, of course, the terrible havoc of the
war.

The Baron was pro-British in all his remarks. He deplored the
ridiculous weakness of the poor old doddering Emperor Franz-Josef, who,
as every one knew, was beneath the thumb of a wily adventuress, and
with vehemence declared: “We were always Britain’s friends. We should
never have opposed her. Look at our poor Hungary now! Only ruin and
starvation! Until we can recover ourselves we shall be at the mercy
of any of the petty Powers who make themselves so conspicuous and
obnoxious at the eternal _pourparlers_ presided over by your Premier.
We want peace, Mr. Falconer,” cried the Baron furiously. “Peace,
and with it renewed prosperity. But there!” he added. “Pardon me! I
apologise. Françoise knows that this constant casting of dust in the
eyes of our poor starving people goads me to the point of fury.”

Even though Hungary was in such evil case, and half the population were
starving, yet at that hotel people--many of them war-profiteers as in
London--dined expensively, danced, and thoroughly enjoyed themselves.
To them it mattered not how freely the bones of the poor rattled, or
how many children died daily of sheer starvation. They had money--and
with it they bought merriment and “life.”

After dinner the Baron’s car took them down the Nagy-Korut--the Great
Boulevard--to the Folies Caprice, where they spent the evening at an
excellent variety performance.

That night when Geoffrey retired to his room he was fully satisfied
with the warm reception and generosity of the Baron, and charmed with
the chic and verve of his pretty niece Françoise, who seemed to have
spent most of her life in Paris, where her father had an apartment
close to the Étoile.

Next day the Baron invited the young radio-engineer to have a run in
the Mercedes, and the rather morose Frenchman, Lebon, who drove, took
them out to Tepla, a very beautiful spot with warm springs that have
been visited for centuries by the Hungarian nobility. They lunched at
the Sina-haz, one of the many excellent hotels, and ran back through
Trencsen, where they pulled up to find the “Lovers’ Well.”

After an inquiry from the Baron, who alone spoke the Hungarian tongue,
they discovered it just outside the village, within the confines of the
ruin of a Roman castle--a well dug in the rock.

The Baron and the peasant who conducted them to it had a short chat.
Then Françoise’s uncle turned to them, and explained in French:

“A most curious story this good man tells. It seems that centuries ago
a young Turk of high rank and family offered a large ransom for his
bride, who was in captivity in this castle. But the lord of the castle,
Stephen Zapolya, demanded as the price of her release that her lover
should dig a well through the rock. After seven years’ hard work the
well was completed, and the spring is to this day called the ‘Lovers’
Well.’”

With Françoise, Geoffrey peered down into the pitch darkness, and saw
that it was really cut in the rock. As they did so, their hands came
into contact. Indeed, she grasped his instinctively as they stood
together at the edge of the deep well.

Then she withdrew her hand quickly with a word of apology, and ten
minutes later they were in the car back upon the broad highway which
led to Budapest.

The autumn days passed very pleasantly. Living so much in Paris, as
he had done of late, the Baron, apparently, had but few friends in
Budapest. He, however, had much business to attend to in the daytime on
behalf of his Government, hence Falconer and the Baron’s pretty niece
were thrown constantly into each other’s society.

She was a smart girl, full of a keen sense of humour, and possessing
all the verve of the true Parisienne. She knew Budapest, of course, and
acted as Geoffrey’s guide in the city, but her heart was always in
Paris. She regarded the Hungarians as an uncouth race.

Her mother had been French, she told him one day. She had, alas! died
two years ago. But she had induced her father to take the flat in Paris
rather than remain in the wilds of Hungary.

More than once Falconer wrote to Sylvia telling her of the society
junketings in Budapest, while the city starved. Each night they dined
expensively and went either to the opera, or to the Vigszinhas to see
comedy; to the Fortress, or the People’s Theatre. They also went to the
Arena in the Town Park, the performances at which were quite as good as
in pre-war days.

One evening as Geoffrey sat in the palm court of the Ritz with
Françoise, she exclaimed suddenly in French: “I think we go to-morrow
or the next day. My uncle was with Count Halmi this afternoon, and they
were speaking of it. All the wireless apparatus has arrived at Zenta.”

“Zenta? Where is that?” asked Geoffrey, removing his cigarette, for
the pair were alone together in a corner of the lounge. Françoise
looked very pretty in a jade-coloured dance frock, for a dance to weird
Tsigane music was to commence in the great ballroom in half an hour.

“Zenta! Why, don’t you know? Has not the Baron told you? It is his
estate right away on the other side of Hungary--near the Russian
frontier. I confess that it is out of the world, and I do hope you will
not be bored to death there!”

“No doubt I shall not; I have my work to do,” laughed the well-set-up
young Englishman, for he was really having a most enjoyable time.

Hence he was not surprised when two days later his host, the Baron,
departed for the Schloss Zenta.

In the express between Budapest and Debrechen, on the line which leads
out to the Polish frontier, the Baron, lolling lazily in the corner of
the first-class compartment, remarked in English:

“I hope, Mr. Falconer, you have not been disappointed with Budapest.
Unfortunately I have had so many official affairs to attend to. We
shall be at home at Zenta to-night. I fear it may be very dull for you,
as it is far away up in the mountains. I only yesterday received word
that all your apparatus has arrived there.”

“What height is it?” Geoffrey asked, as he was concerned with the
height of his aerial wires.

“I hardly know,” the Baron laughed. “I’ve never tested it with an
aneroid. No doubt you will. It is high, and that is why I thought it
would suit you, because I’ve always understood that aerial wires for
wireless are best on a hill.”

“Certainly they are,” said Falconer, gazing out upon the beautiful
panorama of stream and mountain through which they were passing. They
were entering the most remote, but most beautiful, district in all
Hungary, that which lies between the High Tatra--a lovely mountain
district known so little to English travellers, save those familiar
with the Carpathians--and the Roumanian frontier.

At evening they arrived at a small, picturesque town called
Nagy-Károly, the capital of the Szatmas country, nestling between the
mountains, and at once a powerful car took them for about thirty miles
up higher and higher into a wild remote district, the very name of
which was unknown to Geoffrey. Presently, just as the night was drawing
in, the pretty Françoise pointed to a high-up château perched on the
edge of a steep rocky precipice, and said:

“Look! There is Zenta--at last!”

It looked, as indeed it was, one of those ancient strongholds of the
Hungarian barons who had for ages resisted the repeated invasions of
the Turks.

Later, when they arrived and the Baron showed him round before dressing
for dinner, he found that it was a splendid old fortress, full of rare
antiques and breathing an air of days long gone by, while at the same
time it was also the comfortable home of a very wealthy man.

That night as they sat at dinner in the long panelled dining-room
adorned with many heads of stags and bears, trophies of the chase, the
Baron raised his glass of Imperial Tokay and welcomed his guest beneath
his roof.

“Here,” he said, “you have a very historic old place which you
are going to fit with the latest invention of wireless--the
radio-telephone. A strange combination, is it not? All your boxes have
arrived, and they are in the back courtyard. I am sorry that I was not
able to arrange for expert assistance for you, Mr. Falconer, but I have
two very good electricians arriving to-morrow. My agent in Vienna is
sending them.”

And at the same moment Karl, the Magyar servant, in his brown velvet
dress and big buttons of silver filigree, helped him to a succulent
dish of paprika lamb, which followed the _halaszle_, that famous fish
soup which is served nightly in all the wealthier houses in Hungary.

“Have the engines and all the other plant arrived?” Geoffrey inquired.

“Everything. Twenty-eight packages in all,” answered the brown-bearded
man, while Françoise, with her bare elbows on the table, glanced across
at the young Marconi engineer, and remarked in French:

“I suppose you will be horribly busy now--eh, M’sieur Falconer?”

“Yes, mademoiselle,” he replied. “I have lost more than a fortnight
already. But it has, I confess, been most enjoyable.” Then turning to
the Baron, he asked:

“Have you engaged any operators to work the set?”

The question, put so suddenly to De Pelzel, nonplussed him. He was
compelled to hesitate for a few seconds--a fact which did not escape
the alert Geoffrey.

“Oh! how very foolish of me!” the Baron exclaimed in his suave, easy
manner. “I have been so terribly busy of late, and also rectifying the
blunder of sending the boxes to Arad, that I quite forgot the necessity
of a staff to work the installation when it is complete. I will at once
see about getting some ex-radio military men from Vienna.”

For half an hour after dinner a gipsy orchestra, four swarthy-faced
men in brown velvet, with dark, piercing eyes, and lank black hair,
gave some wonderful music with their violins. Then, when near midnight,
the man-servant Karl showed Geoffrey to his room--a big, gloomy,
dispiriting place, lit only by two candles in ancient silver holders.

When Karl had shut the door, Geoffrey instantly experienced a curious
feeling of impending evil. Why, he knew not. He was there upon business
for his company in that remote, out-of-the-world place, and his host,
the Baron, was most kind and affable, while his niece was quite
charming. Yet somehow as he lay awake the greater part of the night he
became consumed by a strange apprehension.

At the Ritz, in Budapest, and also in the train, he had noticed on
several occasions a curious exchange of glances between uncle and
niece--or was it only his fancy?

Was anything amiss? He lay listening to the owls hooting in the great
forest which surrounded the castle on three sides, and reflected
deeply. Françoise, he remembered, had during the past few days
questioned him very cleverly, yet very closely, concerning himself and
his family. Could there be any motive in that? In the silent hours
of that night he became haunted by dark suspicions, but next morning
when he awoke refreshed and went out in the autumn sunshine along the
terrace, which gave a magnificent view of the great Hungarian plain for
many miles, all his apprehensions were quickly dispelled.

Inwardly he laughed heartily at his own misgivings.

At eleven o’clock he drove with the Baron about three miles into the
forest to a large high-up clearing--the spot which De Pelzel suggested
should be the site of the new station. Indeed, two new log huts were
already built for the transmitting and receiving gear, with a remote
control to the generator plant.

Geoffrey, looking round upon the dense firs which screened them on
every side save to the east, was surprised that such a site should have
been chosen. But next second he recollected that the Baron knew nothing
of wireless requirements.

“To tell you the truth,” Geoffrey said frankly, “I do not favour this
spot at all. Results would be far better if we fitted the station
somewhere else, for instance, near the terrace at the Schloss.”

“I quite imagine it, Mr. Falconer,” replied the eminently polite
Baron. “But, unfortunately, my Government is desirous of possessing a
confidential means of conversation between the two mining zones, and I
have granted them permission to establish it here on my estate.”

“And the corresponding station?” asked Geoffrey.

“I will explain the situation of that later--when we have decided upon
this.”

Falconer was disappointed. He saw that the aerial would be far too
directional for the best results.

“This evening,” the Baron went on, “I hope your two assistants will be
here. This car will then be at your disposal to take you backwards and
forwards from the castle.”

To protest against such a site was, apparently, useless. All that
Geoffrey could do was to warn the Baron that the results were not
likely to be too good.

“Well,” he laughed, “I’ve bought the plant, and if I choose to erect
it anywhere, I suppose I am at liberty to do so. You, Mr. Falconer,
with your expert knowledge, will, no doubt, be able to make it work all
right!” he said good-humouredly.

“Well--I’ll try,” Geoffrey replied, and on his return to Zenta he sat
down and wrote a long letter to Sylvia, telling her his whereabouts,
and how the material had been addressed to Arad wrongly, of his life
with the Baron, and of the rather unsatisfactory site that had been
chosen.

He wrote four closely-filled pages, and having finished took it to one
of the small rooms where Françoise was sitting reading a French novel.

“The post goes out every night at seven o’clock,” she said. “If you
will put it in the rack by the front entrance Karl will see that it is
put with the others this evening. Ludwig goes in the light car, and
takes the letters into Deva. They go by road to Nagy-Károly to-morrow
morning, and on by rail.”

Next day two shrewd-looking Austrian engineers presented themselves as
Geoffrey’s assistants. Both spoke French, and when Falconer questioned
them he discovered that the elder of the pair knew a good deal about
radio-telephony.

They therefore set to work to open the huge boxes of apparatus which
had been over three months on their way from Chelmsford. Each was
marked, and they, of course, only unpacked one complete set, together
with the aerial masts and wires. This work took three days, after which
the whole of the plant was carried up by horses through the forest to
the clearing which had been made near the top of the mountain.

Day by day Geoffrey was out there with his two assistants, first
erecting the aerial--one of the newest type--and then making an “earth”
by sinking three-foot copper plates edgewise in the form of a ring, and
connecting all of them to a central point. Each evening he was back at
the castle, where he spent many pleasant hours with the Baron and his
charming niece. The latter, indeed, took him on several occasions to
see the most delightful pieces of mountain scenery while the Baron,
hearty and full of _bonhomie_, was keenly interested to watch Geoffrey
at work fitting the complicated-looking apparatus.

Yet, curiously enough, Geoffrey’s strange feeling of apprehension had
not passed. He could not rid himself of that creepy feeling which had
stolen over him on the night of his arrival at the castle of Zenta.
Why, he could not tell.

He was surprised that he had no answer to his three letters to Sylvia
since he had been there, but he recollected that Mrs. Beverley had
spoken of going to Paris for a fortnight or so, to do some shopping,
hence it was quite possible that mother and daughter had left London.

It struck him, too, as somewhat strange that the Baron’s pretty niece
should evince so much inquisitiveness concerning his affairs. When they
were together she frequently turned the conversation very cleverly, and
questioned him about his friends in England.

“I’m terribly bored here,” she declared in French one night after
dinner, as she sat with a cigarette between her fingers and yawned. “At
last I’ve persuaded my uncle to let me go back to Paris. I shall return
very soon.”

“Will you?” asked Falconer. “I expect to be here quite another
fortnight before we can get going. Then I have to erect the other
station. Have you any idea where that is to be?”

“No,” she said. “Uncle has never told me. But, no doubt, it will be a
long way from here.”

The secrecy concerning the position of the corresponding station also
puzzled the young fellow. The Baron had, however, promised to let him
know in due course, so he continued his work out in the forest, and
gradually he assembled the engine, generator, and all the apparatus
necessary for radio-telegraphy and telephony.

One afternoon he returned to the castle unusually early, and was
surprised to discover the Baron--who had not seen him--emerge from his
bedroom and slip down the stairs. On examining his suit-case a few
moments later he saw that the lock had been tampered with, and all his
papers had been overhauled!

What object, he wondered, could his genial host have in prying into his
private affairs?

By day the two Austrians working under his direction were ever
diligent--both being excellent fellows, and very careful and precise in
their work, which is most necessary in setting up a wireless station.
At night they remained at the castle in quarters which the Baron had
provided.

So far from everywhere was the castle that the Baron seldom had
visitors except on two occasions, when two gentlemen, one a short,
stout, thick-set man, probably an Austrian, and the other a middle-aged
Russian who seemed something of a cosmopolitan, arrived, and after
spending the night, drove away again.

From Françoise he understood that the Austrian, whose name was
Koblitz, was a Government undersecretary, and the Russian’s name was
Isaakoff, and that their visits were upon official matters concerning
Czecho-Slovakia.

At last, one day when Doctor Koblitz had unexpectedly arrived alone,
the new wireless station in the forest was completed, and Geoffrey
thoroughly tested the reception side, which he found gave highly
satisfactory results, considering the screening from the trees. Both
the Baron and Doctor Koblitz, together with Françoise, took the
telephones and listened to the signals from Elvise, Rome, Warsaw,
Carnarvon, Arlington, Lafayette, Lyons, and other of the “long-wave”
stations. Indeed, during the whole afternoon Geoffrey entertained them
by tuning-in messages and copying them from dots and dashes of the
Morse code.

Both the Baron and Koblitz expressed their delight; therefore that
evening Geoffrey ventured to ask where the second station was to be
erected, for quite ten days before all the remaining cases had been
despatched to a destination of which he had been kept in ignorance.

“My Government have not yet decided,” was his reply. “The boxes have
been sent to Versec, close to the Serbian frontier. No doubt to-morrow
or next day we shall hear what is decided. You said this afternoon that
you have finished, and that all is in order to transmit--as well as to
receive?”

“Yes,” Geoffrey replied, “all is ready. I have only now to put up the
corresponding station.”

“Could you, for instance, send off a message for me to-morrow--say at
noon?”

“Certainly,” said Falconer. “We are ready to run and give a test
whenever you like.”

“Excellent. Then we will go over in the car to-morrow and send out the
test message--eh, Monsieur Koblitz?” was the genial, brown-bearded
man’s reply.

That night Geoffrey failed to sleep. Five weeks had passed since he
left London, and though he had written to Sylvia several times, he had
received no word of reply. If she had been in Paris, she was surely at
Upper Brook Street again!

He was ignorant of the significant fact that each letter he had left
for Ludwig to post had been taken by Françoise and handed to her uncle,
who had opened it and read it in conjunction with Karl, the faithful
man-servant. Afterwards each letter had been burned. This had been
repeated each time Geoffrey had written a letter, either to Marconi
House, to his father at Warley, or to any other person.

On Sylvia’s part she was still writing to the Ritz, at Budapest, whence
she had had a letter from her lover, and they were retaining the
letters expecting the young English engineer to return, as the Baron,
unknown to Geoffrey, had promised.

Next morning broke chill and misty over the Carpathians, and at
half-past eleven the Baron, accompanied by Falconer, Françoise, and
Koblitz, drove to the newly completed wireless station.

Inside the transmission hut as they stood together, the Baron took out
a slip of thin paper which he carefully unfolded and handed to his
companion, saying:

“The call-signal will not be found in the official book.” Then added:
“As you see, the message is seven-figure code.”

Geoffrey looked and saw that the call-letters written upon the slip of
paper were C.H.X.R., followed by a jumble of figures interspersed with
letters of the alphabet.

The initial letter of the call showed that the station wanted was
either in Spain, Portugal, Morocco, or Roumania. No doubt it was in the
latter country.

“The call-signal allotted to this station is the letters O.S.R.U.,” the
Baron said, after referring to his pocket-book.

So the young radio-engineer at once sat down to the key and tapped out
the usual preliminary call, followed by his own call and the call of
the unknown station he wanted.

“Get them first by telegraphy, and then I will telephone to them,”
urged the Baron excitedly.

Within ten minutes Geoffrey obtained a response, and after sending the
code message by telegraph, he switched on the telephone transmitter,
and handed the microphone to the Baron.

“Hullo! Hullo! Hullo! Petresco? Petresco?” he called, holding the
transmitter close to his lips. Then in English he went on: “Can you
hear me? Is speech all right? This is a test to you. Please tell me
whether you have heard me distinctly. Hullo! Petresco? Hullo! Petresco?
This is O.S.R.U. calling--calling C.H.X.R.”

And he handed the microphone to Geoffrey, who at once repeated the
query, and concluded it with the words always used in wireless
telephony: “O.S.R.U., changing over.”

In a few moments there came a clear voice evidently at a considerable
distance, saying:

“Hullo! O.S.R.U.? Hullo! Your signals are quite O.K. Your modulation
quite good. Congratulations!”

He handed the head-’phones to the Baron, who, with great satisfaction,
heard the speech repeated. They were certainly in touch with the
mysterious station in Roumania.

While the test was in progress Françoise stood in the narrow little
room watching intently.

“Really marvellous!” Mademoiselle declared when she herself put on
the telephones and heard the reply again repeated in a clear, rather
musical voice.

Then, after another ten minutes, the Baron asked Falconer to switch
off the generator and close down, as they would be late for luncheon.

“It does you very great credit,” declared the owner of the great estate
of Zenta. “I never dreamed that we should be in such complete touch so
quickly.” And the man Koblitz also tendered his congratulations upon
the achievement.

Later in the afternoon Mademoiselle Françoise left for Paris, and
Geoffrey shook her hand as she entered the car. After dinner Falconer
smoked with the Baron and his friend until about eleven o’clock,
when he put down his cigar and wished them both good-night. It had
become apparent that the pair wished to be rid of him for some reason.
Therefore he retired.

Back in his great, gloomy bedroom he stood for some time at the window,
gazing out upon the gorgeous scene of moonlit mountain and silent
Carpathian forest. The attitude of the two men during that evening had
become suspicious--the more so because the Baron had so constantly
evaded his question as to the site of the second wireless station, and
also the identity of the mystery station, “C.H.X.R.” Who, too, was
Petresco? It was apparently a Roumanian name. Once again a strange
intuition crept over him--a premonition of impending evil.

A quarter of an hour later he removed his evening shoes and crept back
again down the great oak staircase to the door of the room wherein the
two men were in consultation.

Bending he could hear their voices speaking low and confidentially. But
they were speaking in Hungarian, hence he could not understand a single
word. Probably it was only politics they were discussing; therefore,
after waiting ten minutes, all the time in fear of the approach of
Karl, he was about to return to his room when, of a sudden, he heard a
few words in French.

Koblitz was speaking.

“Yes, I quite agree,” he said. “Your plan is excellent. The wireless
station must remain a complete secret. This young fellow’s lips must
be closed. The two men we have here are both good wireless men, and
are affiliated to our cause. Hence they can be trusted completely.
Falconer we cannot trust--even if we attempted to bribe him, for he is
an Englishman and would accept nothing.”

“I am glad you agree, _mon cher_,” the Baron replied. “At the wireless
station to-morrow he will accept a drink from my flask--and then--well,
the forest will an hour later hold its secret,” he remarked meaningly.

Geoffrey held his breath. Could it be possible that their plan was to
poison him, and bury him in the forest, now that he had completed his
work?

It was quite apparent that the station he had erected was a secret one,
established for some illicit purpose.

He listened again, but Koblitz was only congratulating his friend upon
the success of what he termed “the great scheme.”

Silently Geoffrey crept back up to his room. His mind was made up. By
his natural intuition of impending peril he had been forewarned. Hence
putting on a pair of strong walking boots, he assumed his overcoat
and let himself out of the great rambling place by a door he knew.
In the moonlight he ascended the steep winding path which led to the
wireless huts, and on arrival there, unlocked the house in which the
transmission panel was erected. Then, switching on the light, he took
up a hammer and deliberately smashed every one of the big glass valves.

Not content with that, he also smashed every spare valve, and then
destroyed the insulation upon two transformers of the receiving set,
thus putting the whole station out of action.

Afterwards he relocked the door and made his way back past the castle
and out upon the high road which led down to Nagy-Károly. Through the
greater part of the night he walked, until at a small mountain village
he was able to induce a peasant to harness a horse and drive him into
the town.

Before nine o’clock that morning he called upon the chief of police,
and through a man who spoke French, gave him a description of the
secret wireless set, and of the dastardly plot to kill him and dispose
of his body by burying it in the forest.

At once the police official was on the alert, for the Schloss Zenta, he
said, belonged to a certain young Count Böckh, who was a minor, and at
the university of Budapest. He had never heard of the Baron, who had,
no doubt, established himself there unknown to its rightful owner, but
pretending to the servants that he had rented it furnished. This was
later on ascertained to be a fact.

Within an hour urgent telegrams were exchanged between the Ministry
of Police in Budapest and the chief at Nagy-Károly, so that at noon,
when the Baron and Koblitz put in an appearance at the railway
station--intending to fly after finding that Falconer had gone and that
the secret wireless station had been put out of action--they were at
once arrested and sent by the next train under escort to Budapest.

Later, after much inquiry, the police discovered that the
pseudo-Baron--whose real name was Franz Haynald, a well-known
revolutionist--had, with Koblitz and a number of others, formed a great
and widespread political plot, financed by Germany, to effect a union
with Hungary and Bavaria. Austria was to be overthrown, Vienna occupied
jointly by Bavarian and Hungarian troops, and Czecho-Slovakia was to be
blindfolded by creating a revolution in Jugo-Slavia. The idea was, with
the aid of Tzarist Russia, to establish a great “New Germany,” which
was to be more powerful than ever, and become mistress of the world.

This certainly would have been attempted--for the erecting of that
powerful wireless station was one of the first steps--had not Geoffrey
Falconer acted with such boldness and decision.

Haynald, with Françoise--who was the daughter of the man
Koblitz--Koblitz himself, the servant Karl, and twenty others are all
now undergoing long sentences of imprisonment.




CHAPTER VII

THE POISON FACTORY


Geoffrey Falconer stood at the window of the big old Adams room at
the Savage Club, chatting with a journalist friend, Charles--_alias_
“Doggy”--Wentworth, of the _Daily Mail_.

Before them lay Adelphi Terrace and beyond the Embankment and the
broad grey Thames with its wharves on the Surrey bank, London’s silent
highway.

It was the luncheon hour on a day in early spring. The trees along
the Embankment, and in the Gardens below, wore their fresh bright
green, not yet dulled by the London smoke, while along the Embankment
the trams were rolling heavily between the bridges of Blackfriars and
Westminster.

The room in which they stood was familiar to Bohemian London--the
world of painters, poets, actors, novelists, sculptors, journalists,
and scientists, who lunch and smoke in the same great room with its
portraits, caricatures, and trophies--perhaps the only spot on earth
where a man’s worth is nowadays not judged by his pocket or the
estimation of his own importance. Confined to the professions, it is
a club where as long as a man is a good fellow and has no side he is
popular. But woe betide the member who betrays the slightest leaning
towards egotism.

The members, leaving the little back bar, had already begun to drift in
to take their places at the little tables which occupied half the big
common-room. The unconventional shouts of “Hulloa, Tommie!” “Hulloa,
Jack!” “Hulloa, Max!” were heard on every side--Christian names and
nicknames of men some of whose names were in the homes of England and
America as household words, men of mark whose portraits greeted one
every day in the picture papers.

Just as “Doggy” was about to turn aside with his guest, a friend
of his approached the pair. A tall, lank man with a furrowed face,
“Dicky” Peters, foreign editor of the great London journal, the
_Daily Telephone_, was known to both, as indeed he was known to every
journalist in London.

“Well, Dicky, what’s the latest?” asked Wentworth, a man ten years his
junior, but who was among the most brilliant men in Fleet Street.

“Oh, nothing much,” laughed the other good-humouredly. “Only that
infernal Moscow wireless press. It gets on one’s nerves.”

“How?” asked Geoffrey, at once on the alert.

“Let’s go and feed, and I’ll tell you.”

The trio went past the row of old leather-covered couches from the
“smoking-room” to the “dining-room,” between which there was no
partition, and presently as they discussed a plain English luncheon
which even peers as guests did not disdain--for every one is on
equality in the Savage--Peters began to rail at the wireless reports
from Moscow.

“Well, Falconer’s a Marconi man,” remarked Wentworth. “Perhaps he can
explain.”

“I don’t understand it at all,” Geoffrey said. “Of course I’m on the
engineering side. I don’t know much about the operating side--except in
experimenting.”

“Well, I think the whole thing is most puzzling.”

“How?”

“Well, one day we get the wireless press from Russia and publish it.
Next day we have an entirely different and contradictory version.
And, oh! the Bolshevik propaganda--well, you see it in many papers.
Sub-editors all over the country are using no discretion. We get all
the jumble of facts, fictions, declarations, but I never publish
any. This latest propaganda against Britain is most pernicious. In
America they are publishing all sorts of inflammatory stuff against us
regarding Ireland--all of it emanating from the Third International--or
whatever they call themselves.”

“The Bolshevik press news should be wiped out,” declared “Doggy”
Wentworth. “No sane man who reads it ever believes in the glorious and
prosperous state of Russia under Lenin!”

“I agree,” said Falconer, interested in the conversation between the
two journalists. “I often listen to ‘M.S.K.’ at night and read him,
but his stories are of such a character that I wonder any newspaper
publishes them. We never refer to it in our Marconi Press which we send
out each night to the cross-Atlantic ships.”

“Yes, but how about the revolutionary propaganda regarding Ireland?
We get a pile of it in the office every night,” said Peters. “I never
publish it, but over in America they get it too, and I’m certain it
does Britain incalculable harm.”

It was at a moment when a wave of Bolshevism was sweeping across
Europe, a hostility to culture and to intelligence which had, in
Russia, brought about a terrorism which was assisted by a police system
which left far behind it the ideas and the proceedings of the Tsar’s
secret police. And those responsible for the chaos in Russia were, it
was known, endeavouring to stir up revolution in Great Britain, and
thus assist Germany in her defiant attitude towards the Allies.

That night the young Marconi engineer dined at Mrs. Beverley’s, and sat
beside Sylvia. Only three other guests were present, a well-known peer
and his wife, and a prominent member of the Government, Mr. Charles
Warwick.

Over the dinner table, in consequence of some serious reports in that
night’s newspaper concerning the advance of the Red Army in the south
of Russia, the conversation turned upon the situation, Mr. Warwick
expressing an opinion that half the news concerning the Red successes
was incorrect.

“I agree,” declared Falconer. “Only this morning I was discussing the
same subject with two journalists in the Savage Club. It seems that
Lenin and his friends are sending out by wireless all sorts of untruths
concerning our rule in Ireland--allegations calculated to incense other
countries against us.”

“Well, if that’s so, Geoffrey, why don’t you wireless people try to
suppress them?” remarked Sylvia.

“An excellent suggestion!” laughed the smooth-haired young fellow.
“But I’m afraid it would be impossible to stop the wireless waves they
send out from Moscow each evening. When you press a wireless key the
waves radiate in every direction, and reach far and wide. There is
no invention yet to suppress wireless signals, except to jam them
by sending out stronger ones upon the same wave-length. That can, of
course, be done, but it would interfere with all wireless traffic.”

“Somebody really ought to blow up the Moscow wireless station,”
declared Lord Cravenholme, an elderly blunt man, whose wife was many
years his junior.

“Yes,” agreed Warwick. “The sooner somebody puts an end to their
lie-factory the better.”

“Britain’s enemies are always ready enough to believe any fiction
alleged against her. And, of course, the crafty Germans are behind all
these attempts to stir strife,” his lordship declared, poising his
hock-glass in his hand.

“Well,” exclaimed Sylvia, “I really think there’s an excellent chance
for you, Geoffrey.” And she laughed merrily.

“Yes,” added her mother, “If you could manage to stop it all, you would
certainly be a public benefactor, Mr. Falconer. I read in the American
papers I get over some very nasty things about you here--all of it
emanating, no doubt, from enemy and revolutionary sources.”

“Ah! Mrs. Beverley,” exclaimed the young Marconi man, “I’m afraid
that such a task is beyond me. In the first place, nobody can get
into Russia just now. Again, if the station were wrecked, Lenin’s
people would soon rig up another. So I fear that we are suggesting the
impossible.”

Later that evening, when Geoffrey and Sylvia were alone together
in the morning-room--the others being in the big upstairs
drawing-room--the girl mentioned that the odious fortune-hunter, Lord
Hendlewycke, was to take them by car on the following day to tea at the
Burford Bridge Hotel, at Box Hill.

“Oh, how I detest him!” said the pretty girl with a sigh. “And yet
mother is for ever asking him here. I’m sick of it all. Wherever we go
he turns up.”

“Because your mother has set her mind upon your becoming Lady
Hendlewycke,” he said in a low, intense voice. “Why is she in
London--except to marry you to somebody with a title? I know it’s a
very horrid way of putting it, dearest, but nevertheless it is the
truth.”

“I know,” she sighed. “But I hate the fellow--I hate him! I’m for ever
having headaches, and pretending a chill in order to avoid meeting him.
But he is so horribly persistent.”

He took her in his strong arms and kissed her fondly, saying:

“Never mind. Be patient, dearest. He will grow weary very soon. Be
patient--_for my sake_!”

But at that moment the footman entered, and springing apart, they
rejoined the others upstairs.

Geoffrey could only remain for half an hour, as he had to catch his
train from Liverpool Street. He was back at Warley just before eleven.
His sombre old home was all quiet, for the servants had retired, and
his father was busy writing in his study when Geoffrey entered.

Together they smoked for about a quarter of an hour, after which his
father extinguished his oil reading-lamp and retired.

Geoffrey, as was his habit before turning in, entered his wireless room
wherein he had fitted that most up-to-date set--a bewildering array of
apparatus--chief among which was his improved amplifier and a double
note magnifier of his own design.

He placed the telephones over his ears, and having switched on the
seven little glow lamps or valves of the amplifier, and the two others
of the magnifier, tuned-in one or two stations.

“G.F.A.A.G.”--a great airship to wireless men--was out upon a night
cruise from Pulham, in Norfolk, over England. He soon picked her up,
and heard her taking her bearings from the direction-finding station at
Flamborough, on the Yorkshire coast. After which she spoke by wireless
telephony to her base at Pulham, and then to Croydon, Lympe, near
Folkestone, and to St. Inglevert in France.

Afterwards she carried on a conversation with the air stations at
Renfrew and Castle Bromwich. She was told by Flamborough that her
position was thirty miles due north of Cardiff, going westward.

Such was one of the wonders of wireless.

His thoughts, however, were elsewhere. He was still pondering over
those budgets of lies sent out from Moscow four of five times each
twenty-four hours.

He placed his hand upon the knob of his “tuner,” and raised his
wave-length to five thousand mètres. Other stations were transmitting,
but he heard nothing of “M.S.K.”--the call-letters assigned to Moscow.
Higher he raised the wave-length until, on seven thousand six hundred
mètres, he found that high-pitched continuous-wave note, which he
recognised as the lying voice from the ether.

He took up a pencil and began to write down rapidly in French a most
scurrilous and untrue allegation against British rule in Ireland,
intended for the anti-British press in America.

Halfway through he flung down the pencil with an exclamation of
disgust, and removing the “Brown” head-’phones, switched off, and went
upstairs to bed.

Next day, at the Marconi Works at Chelmsford, he discussed with several
of his fellow-engineers the scandal of the Moscow Bolshevik propaganda,
but each of them declared that nothing could be done to suppress it.
Lenin and Trotsky ruled Red Russia, and certainly the tide of lies sent
out broadcast into space could not be stemmed.

Sylvia’s words constantly recurred to him. She had urged him to do
something to stifle the pernicious propaganda against law and order in
Great Britain. But how?

Many days went by. He was busy in the experimental laboratory up at
Marconi House, and had but little time to devote to anything except the
highly scientific problem which he was assisting three great wireless
experts to try to solve.

About three weeks had passed when one afternoon he happened to be
in the great airy apartment at Chelmsford where various instruments
were being subjected to severe tests before being passed as
“O.K.”--note-magnifiers, direction-finders, calling-devices,
amplifiers, and all the rest--when, with the telephones on his ears,
he heard Moscow sending out “C.Q.”--or a request for all to listen.
Then again came that never-ending praise of Soviet Russia, which, under
the absolute rule of a little group of men, mostly Russian or German
Jews obeying the orders of Lenin--the new Ivan the Terrible--and his
war minister, Trotsky, was, it was said, converting Russia into a
terrestrial paradise. On the contrary, it was well known that Russia
was a terrestrial hell, where torture was deliberately being used on
a great scale, and with a cruelty that had never been surpassed, even
by the Spanish Inquisition. The recapture of Kharkoff by Deniken had
revealed a most terrible state of affairs, atrocities of which even the
terrible Turks would have been ashamed. And yet the Moscow wireless
was inviting the people of Britain and America to rise and establish a
similar régime!

As Geoffrey listened attentively, his ear trained to the variations of
the sound of the signals of different stations, it suddenly occurred to
him that the “note” was slightly different from that which he had heard
and discarded on so many occasions.

He called across to one of the technical assistants, and he also
agreed.

“It’s probably due to some atmospheric interference,” the latter
remarked.

Again the young radio-engineer listened. But it seemed to him to be
a different note, though the wave-length was about the same. It was
higher pitched, and just a little more difficult to tone.

When any problem arose, of whatever nature, Geoffrey Falconer
never rested until he had solved it. That was how he had invented
his improved amplifier. He had all the patience, the disregard of
disappointment, the dogged perseverance, and the refusal to accept
failure which characterises the great inventor. In the days long past
most inventors died in poverty. Now in the days of stringent patent
laws, fortunes are sometimes made out of a new safety-pin, or a
sweet-smelling hair wash.

Though he carried on the important experiments both at Marconi
House and at Chelmsford, and also at another station which had been
established in secret not far from London, he nevertheless each night
when at home listened in for “M.S.K.,” and diligently took down all the
wilful perversions of the truth sent out by Soviet Russia.

On four different occasions, while listening upon his own set at
Warley, he became convinced that some new station had been set up in
Moscow for the deliberate purpose of circulating the most glaring
untruths concerning events in Ireland. The text of all the messages was
now much more bitter than before.

Time after time he sat back in his chair, utterly puzzled.

Here was a dastardly and insidious attack being made upon the country
by disseminating false news by wireless, and yet nobody was able to
suppress it.

One day, being up in London, he was re-entering Marconi House by the
back way in Aldwych, and waiting for the lift, when suddenly an idea
crossed his brain. It was only a vague suggestion, yet that night in
the rural quiet of his home at Warley he listened in for Moscow, and
succeeded in determining the wave-length accurately. It was neither
the five thousand mètre “spark” transmission, nor the seven thousand
six hundred mètre, but lower--four thousand seven hundred, to be exact.

Evidently Lenin had established an entirely new lie-factory for Britain
only.

Night after night Falconer, after his return from the works, listened
for Moscow--at seven o’clock and at nine-thirty on “spark,” and at
ten-fifteen on continuous-wave. The latter was, however, absent. It had
apparently been cut off, and the new anti-British station substituted.

Though Geoffrey saw Sylvia constantly, he said nothing to her regarding
the problem. Often when up at Marconi House he met her at half-past
five and they had tea at the Savoy or the Carlton, after which he
caught his train back into Essex, there to spend the evening in
calculating and devising all sorts of new “gadgets,” with the object
of improving wireless telephony--the science which must, in the near
future, revolutionise commercial communication.

The difference in the strength of signals from the new station of
Soviet Russia, as heard in his telephones, puzzled him intensely.
As an expert he felt that there was something unusual--hence, to an
experimenter, of outstanding interest.

Therefore, he set to work to determine, if possible, the exact location
of Lenin’s latest wireless station. With that object he one evening
travelled to Lowestoft, and at the direction-finding wireless station
there beside the sea, had a long chat with the engineer-in-charge. The
station is normally used by aircraft to locate their position if in any
difficulty with fog while passing between the terminal aerodrome at
Croydon to Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, or other Continental cities. The
two direction-finding stations worked in conjunction, one at Chelmsford
and one at Pevensey, on the marshes between Eastbourne and Hastings--a
triangle between which the sources of a wireless call can be plotted,
and exactly determined.

For an hour Geoffrey discussed the problem with Mr. Finlay, the
engineer, who at once volunteered to assist. Then Falconer left, and
two days later arrived at the Pevensey station, down upon the pebbly
beach. Here, too, the engineer-in-charge was eager to render assistance.

Geoffrey and he were walking over the beach at the edge of the sea,
smoking their pipes in the afternoon sunshine.

“I’ll call you up from Chelmsford on Thursday night--if the mysterious
station is transmitting then,” Falconer said. “Listen, and you will no
doubt hear him on about four thousand seven hundred mètres--a rather
high-pitched note. If he is going I will call you up on Morse and
signal ‘Forty-four.’ I’ll do the same to Lowestoft. Then you can plot
with Chelmsford where he is located.”

“He may not be in Moscow at all,” remarked Finlay. “It may be some
disguised station.”

“That’s exactly my own idea. But we can, no doubt, locate him, wherever
he may be.”

So on the following Thursday night at about nine o’clock Falconer sat
in the direction-finding station at the Works long after every one had
left, listening intently upon the four thousand seven hundred mètre
wave-length. He had waited in patience for about twenty-five minutes
when at last there sounded a long shrill whistle, and the Bolshevik
station began to poison the ether with its lies.

For five minutes he listened. Then placing his hand upon the
transmitting switch, he drew it over and spoke over the wireless
telephone to both Lowestoft and Pevensey, giving the code-word,
“Forty-four.”

“O.K.” came the answer from both operators, and at once they began to
make measurements upon the big maps in front of them.

All three direction-finding stations, at Chelmsford, at Pevensey, and
at Lowestoft were now engaged, by working with each other in turn, in
determining the exact position of the Bolshevik lie-factory.

In each station shrewd, clever young men, with the telephones over
their ears, worked the big ebonite handles of the direction-finder--a
piece of wonderful apparatus in a square box with sloping top, and
several dials upon which minute scales were drawn.

The operator at Pevensey and the one at Lowestoft exchanged
conversations in a jumble of numerals. Then Lowestoft called
Chelmsford, and within ten minutes the position of the mysterious
station was measured out upon the map, and Geoffrey, bending eagerly,
found that it had been located at a point somewhere in the centre of
Copenhagen, and not in Moscow at all!

The anti-British station was still working on, as it did every evening;
therefore, three times its bearings were taken, and each result came
out the same.

“Thanks, Lowestoft! Thanks, Pevensey! Much obliged!” Geoffrey said over
the wireless telephone. “Switching off!”

He looked for a long time at the map, and with the officer-in-charge of
direction-finding he discussed the matter for a long time.

“In Copenhagen it should be easy to spot the whereabouts of the secret
station. Indeed, upon a large-scale map of Denmark almost the very spot
could be determined,” the direction-finding officer said.

Geoffrey lost no time next day when in London in obtaining a
large-scale map of Denmark, as well as one of the city of Copenhagen,
from a shop in Fleet Street, and a fortnight later, with the aid of
an eminent geographer--a friend of his father--he was able, by making
careful measurements, to locate the secret Soviet station as being in
the Raadhus-Plads.

A week later, having been granted leave of absence from the Marconi
Works at Chelmsford upon another pretext, he travelled to the
Danish capital, where he put up at the Hôtel d’Angleterre, in the
Kongens-Nytorv. In his luggage he carried his own supersensitive
receiving set, all of which he had constructed himself.

To the hotel personnel he made it known frankly that he was a wireless
engineer, and on a table in the corner of his bedroom overlooking the
square he set up his instruments, after hiring from a local garage an
accumulator for his valve-filaments--namely, to light up the seven
little cylindrical vacuum-tubes of his supersensitive amplifier.

On the night of his arrival in Copenhagen, after dining alone in the
big white-and-gold _salle-à-manger_, he ascended to his room and sat
there all the evening with the telephones over his ears. He could
hear the British Admiralty working to Malta; Paris working to Warsaw;
Carnarvon working to Belmar, and Bordeaux transmitting across the
Atlantic. On that starlit night the ether was alive with messages by
“spark” and continuous-wave being sent across the seven seas.

For over five hours he listened attentively, but all he heard was the
usual commercial messages, most of them in code of various kinds. Then
he took off the telephones and went out for a stroll along the Bredgade
as far as the Esplenade, in order to refresh himself after his long and
unsuccessful vigil.

Next day he wandered about the clean busy streets of the Danish
capital, idling before the shops in the Ostergade, the Kjobmager
Gade, and the Amargertov, or reading newspapers in the cafés, the
Continental, the Bristol, or Otto’s. In spring Copenhagen is always
bright and lively, and he found the city quite charming.

At night, however, he returned to his vigilant watch, for the secret
Bolshevik station was not now working every night.

For five nights in succession he waited patiently, hour after hour,
but though he listened to thousands of messages, yet “M.S.K.” remained
silent on its new wave-length.

Geoffrey Falconer was, however, quite unaware that the adjoining room
was occupied by a grey-haired, undersized little man, who had been
on the _quai_ at Antwerp when he landed, and having followed him to
Copenhagen by way of Kiel, had taken up his abode in the next room.

In the hotel the two men passed each other frequently, but Geoffrey was
entirely unsuspicious that his movements were being so closely watched.

He, however, as is the practice of most case-hardened cosmopolitans,
always kept the key of his room in his pocket, contrary to the hotel
rule of leaving it in the key-office. When one is at a hotel and keeps
one’s key in one’s pocket, only the chambermaid’s or the manager’s
master-key opens the door. Hence intruders are debarred.

On the eighth night of Falconer’s stay his suspicions became aroused
because he suddenly found the little old man keeping him under
observation. At first he was in a quandary, but presently, after due
consideration, he resolved to act with greater discretion.

The Raadhus-Plads, as those who know Copenhagen are well aware, is
in the centre of the city, and the focus of the network of tramways,
just as is the Piazza del Duomo in Milan. Time after time Geoffrey
had passed backwards and forwards across the spacious square, but he
could detect no aerial wires such as would be necessary to transmit the
anti-British propaganda into the ether.

Each night he wandered into the square and gazed up at the many
illuminated sky-signs upon the shops around, until he began to conclude
that the bearings taken at Chelmsford must have been inaccurate.

He had been in Copenhagen ten days when one night, while seated in his
bedroom at about ten o’clock with the telephones over his ears, he
heard the mysterious station start up, calling “C.Q.,” namely, asking
everybody to listen.

And then on a pure musical note there was tapped out a message,
alleging that Britain was doing serious injustice in Ireland--a message
calculated to inflame public opinion.

That it was close by Geoffrey detected at once. The signals were too
loud on the “second intensity” of his double note magnifier, so he cut
it out, and read it loudly from one “Q”--or detector valve.

He put down his ’phones, switched off, and leaving the hotel, walked
again to the Raadhus-Plads. Around the square the well-lit electric
trams were circulating slowly, while all around were the illuminated
advertisements of motor-tyres, mineral waters, cocoa, and soap, a
picturesque night scene beneath the clear starlit sky.

Watching him unseen was his little grey-haired neighbour from the
adjoining room in the Angleterre. The old fellow was, no doubt, a very
clever watcher. As a matter of fact, he was Ivan Stromoff, one of the
most astute officers of the secret police under the régime of the last
Tsar Nicholas, now, of course, pressed into Lenin’s service.

The secret police of Russia were ever corrupt, and they had now been
suborned by the Bolsheviks to act in the interests of the Soviets as
they had previously done in the interests of the Monarch.

While passing across the Kongens-Nytorv--the King’s new market--the
fashionable centre of Copenhagen, Geoffrey again realised that the
little old man was following him. So during the following day he walked
the streets of the Danish capital with the sole purpose of drawing
on the old fellow who was keeping such strict surveillance upon his
movements. Everywhere he went the little old fellow shadowed him.

Therefore, at about ten o’clock on that evening he managed to elude
the watchful old man, and taking a taxi, drove to the central bureau
of police. He was taken at once to Marius Lund, the director of the
police, and when alone with him, explained the object of his visit
to Denmark, and asked that he might be given assistance in order to
unearth the secret wireless station of the revolutionaries.

Lund, a broad-shouldered, fair-haired Dane, at once became sympathetic,
promising all the assistance he could render.

“We in Denmark are always anxious to support the Allies against the
machinations of Germany and Russia. So I will give you whatever help
you may require. Already we have been advised of your presence here,
Mr. Falconer, and I confess it has aroused some suspicion, because you
had in your baggage some wireless apparatus.” And he laughed.

Falconer explained all the circumstances, how the bearings taken in
England had shown that the Bolshevik transmission set was not in Russia
at all, but somewhere in the neighbourhood of the Raadhus-Plads in that
city.

“But had we not better obtain the aid of one of the engineers at the
radio-telegraph station here? Mr. Petersen, the chief engineer, I know
quite well,” the head of the Copenhagen police suggested.

In consequence an introduction was next day effected between the two
wireless engineers, who sat together in the big wireless station at
Lyngby, outside Copenhagen, the note of which with its call-signal,
“O.X.A.,” is well-known to every wireless man. There they thoroughly
discussed the whole matter.

“We experience no interference,” said the Danish engineer. “But we use
the six-hundred mètre wave in transmission, while you say ‘M.S.K.’ is
under five thousand mètres. Anyhow it is highly interesting, and we
will certainly investigate it.”

Together they strolled around the big busy square at noon, but their
expert eyes could detect no sign of aerial wires. If a wireless station
existed in that vicinity it was certainly extremely well disguised.

Yet upon them both the little old man, who occupied the bedroom next to
Geoffrey’s, kept active vigilance, though that morning he was followed
by a detective. It was apparent that by some means or other the
Bolsheviks knew of Falconer’s journey and its object. That he was being
watched was proof in itself that the station, though well concealed,
certainly existed somewhere or other in the city.

At the suggestion of Marius Lund, both radio-engineers remained
inactive during the following three days, for the first point towards
success would be, he said, to get rid of the silent watcher, without
allowing him to suspect that he in turn was being watched.

So the police called one morning at the hotel, and finding a fault with
the old man’s passport, ordered him to return to Hamburg, whence he had
come. This he did with ill-suppressed chagrin.

Hence the investigators were free to watch. One evening while Geoffrey
could plainly read upon his own set in his bedroom at the Angleterre
the messages sent out by “M.S.K.,” yet at the radio station, a couple
of miles away, they could not be heard by the operator on duty, merely
because of the difference of the wave-lengths employed.

That night Geoffrey Falconer and his Danish friend sat outside the
Bristol Café in the great square, for the night was quite warm and
bright. As they gazed around at the brilliantly lit Place, the busy
centre of Denmark’s capital, they were more than ever mystified.

Only on the previous day Geoffrey had received from the
engineer-in-charge of the direction-finding station at Lowestoft a
report of a further test, and the bearings had not altered in the
slightest. That secret wireless station, which was endeavouring to do
so much harm to British interests and Britain’s prestige abroad, was
somewhere near them--but where?

His companion confessed himself utterly perplexed as just before
midnight they strolled homeward.

Yet as soon as Geoffrey entered his room and switched on his receiving
loop-aerial--a wooden frame three feet square, upon which was wound
a number of turns of wire, and which took the place of wires out of
doors--he heard the Bolshevik’s message being sent out strongly across
the North Sea to England!

On the following night the young Marconi engineer determined to watch
alone. He dozed upon his bed until midnight, then rising and putting on
his overcoat, he went forth to the Raadhus-Plads, which was at that
hour almost deserted.

He took a seat outside the Bristol, and idled over coffee and a
cigarette until one o’clock, when the establishment closed. Then he got
up and wandered around the square, not meeting more than half a dozen
persons, for the trams had ceased running, and only now and then there
passed a taxi on its way home.

Rain began to fall in a slight unpleasant drizzle; therefore, turning
up his coat collar, he drew into a doorway in order to keep as dry as
possible.

Suddenly, just after two o’clock in the morning, two men and a woman
emerged from a small café close by, that had been closed for a couple
of hours. One man was carrying a suit-case which seemed very heavy
for its size, and as the trio passed, Geoffrey overheard them talking
together. They spoke in Russian!

Having realised this, Geoffrey followed them at a respectable distance
through the deserted streets, past the Tivoli Gardens to the Central
Railway Station, where the suit-case was deposited in the _consigne_.
Geoffrey noted the case well. It was of dark-brown leather, and bore
the initials, “G.E.K.”

Then the young woman left her companions and went in the direction
of the Lange Bridge, while the men retraced their steps back to the
obscure little café.

Early next morning Geoffrey sought Marius Lund and related what he
had seen, whereupon they both went to the railway station, and having
interviewed the stationmaster, the bag was obtained, and on opening
it with a skeleton key, it was found to contain several portions of
apparatus for wireless transmission.

“Well,” remarked Geoffrey, when he examined the contents of the
suit-case, “I can’t see how they can transmit from that café. They have
no aerial.”

“We will investigate before long,” said the police director, closing
the bag and relocking it.

Within an hour Geoffrey accompanied him to the café, a dingy little
place to which no one apparently went. They had previously discovered
that it was kept by a man named Vedel, whose nationality was inscribed
upon the municipal register as German.

As they entered, leaving four police agents in plain clothes outside,
the man Vedel came forth, and behind him the second man whom Geoffrey
had seen during the night.

The police director demanded to know where their secret wireless
station was situated, but they at once denied possessing one.

“We shall search this place,” said Marius Lund. “You may as well tell
us the truth at once.”

“Search--and welcome,” was Vedel’s defiant reply.

Hence, while the pair were prevented from leaving the premises, they
searched the whole house and went out upon the roof, but found not the
slightest trace of a wireless installation.

They had drawn blank!

In chagrin Geoffrey began to wonder what the police thought of the
mare’s nest he had discovered, when Vedel, believing that he was about
to be arrested, gave himself away by drawing a revolver and firing a
shot point blank at Geoffrey, narrowly missing him.

In a flash the police agents secured and disarmed him, while Lund also
ordered the immediate arrest of his companion--who gave the name of
Köbke--and both were hurried off to the police bureau.

The wireless engineer, Petersen, was at once telephoned for, and
together they made a second examination of the premises, when after
nearly an hour they found in the cellar a concealed door which led into
a second cellar beneath a courtyard behind the house, wherein stood a
small printing office.

In this subterranean chamber beneath the printing office they found a
fine continuous-wave transmission set of one-and-a-half kilowatt power,
together with its generator. Apparently the printing office had been
established as a blind, so that the neighbours should believe the noise
to be that of printing machinery.

Then they searched for the aerial wires, but it was a long time ere
they discovered them. At last, to their great surprise, they found
them very cunningly concealed behind and about an enormous sky-sign
which, illuminated at night, advertised the merits of a certain brand
of cocoa, a sign which Geoffrey had noticed nightly, never dreaming, of
course, that the secret lay hidden up there.

The two prisoners who were proved to be dangerous emissaries of the
Moscow Bolsheviks, were convicted, and sentenced to long terms of
imprisonment for establishing secret wireless against the laws of
Denmark, the result being that the world has ever since been spared the
dissemination of the poisonous Bolshevik propaganda.

And the credit of its suppression was certainly entirely due to
Geoffrey Falconer.




CHAPTER VIII

THE GREAT INTRIGUE


“Hulloa? Hulloa? Hulloa? Hulloa, Croydon? Brussels calling!” cried
Geoffrey Falconer one afternoon over the wireless telephone at the
aerodrome just outside Brussels. “It’s Falconer speaking. Changing
over.”

“Hulloa, Falconer? Yes,” came a clear voice through the ether.
“Changing over.”

“Oh, it’s you, Heddon. Would you please ask Dennis to speak to me if
he’s there?” said Falconer.

“Right-o! Stand by, and I’ll try and get him. Switching off.”

Falconer, seated at the operating bench in the small wireless office,
the window of which commands an extensive view of the aerodrome,
with the city of Brussels in the distance, still retained the
head-telephones, and waited.

About five minutes later he heard the strong continuous-wave sent out
by Croydon, and a moment later another voice exclaimed:

“Hulloa, Brussels? Hulloa, Brussels? Croydon calling. Dennis speaking.
Dennis speaking. Over.” Falconer drew over the transmitting switch and
then asked Dennis, the pilot, whether he was bringing over the air mail
in the morning. Receiving an affirmative reply, Falconer said:

“Do me a favour, old chap, and bring over two or three things for me.
You can get them put on passenger train to-night if you’ll telephone to
the Works at Chelmsford for them. I want them very urgently to-morrow.”
And then he gave descriptions of two air condensers and a double note
magnifier and a microphone, adding that the tests he was making at the
new wireless station he had just fitted near Dinant, on the Meuse, were
satisfactory, but he hoped to still improve them.

Dennis, having written down the list, promised to bring them over
by air next day, adding that he would be at Brussels just about one
o’clock.

Then Geoffrey rose, handed the telephones to the Belgian operator, and
switched off.

He had been nearly two months in Belgium, and had had quite a pleasant
time. The Marconi Company were fitting the new aerodrome at Bouvignes,
opposite old-world Dinant, with a one-and-a-half kilowatt telegraph
and telephone set of exactly the same pattern as the new one they had
installed at Croydon. Bouvignes had been adopted as the centre of
Belgian civil aviation, air lines having been arranged to perform daily
services to Paris, Copenhagen, Berlin, Milan, and other cities; hence
it was necessary to be in wireless communication with the aerodromes at
those places.

Only three weeks before Mrs. Beverley had brought Sylvia over to see
Brussels, as she had never been there, and Geoffrey had for a week
acted as their guide and shown them the sights of the pleasant little
Belgian capital. Of course, during the greater part of the day he was
away at Bouvignes, but he returned to Brussels each evening, and the
lovers spent many happy hours together.

Now, however, mother and daughter had gone on to Paris, leaving the
young engineer to complete his work in preparation for the official
tests before the new station was taken over by the Belgian authorities.

So next day about one o’clock Geoffrey returned to the aerodrome
outside Brussels, and asked the Belgian wireless operator the
whereabouts of the Handley-Page.

“She was over Ghent when I spoke to her five minutes ago. She ought to
be in quite shortly,” was the reply in French.

So Geoffrey went outside and strained his eyes to the south-west until
he at last saw a speck in the distance which each moment increased,
until the giant machine approaching came gradually lower, and after
making a turn of the aerodrome, landed gracefully against the wind.

“Hulloa, Falconer!” cried Dennis, a round-faced, boyish-looking fellow,
as in his leather suit and helmet he climbed out of the machine. “I’ve
got your gear all right.”

They waited for the passengers to land, five of them, and chatted the
while. Then from among the sacks of mail from England he pulled out a
small wooden box, saying: “I went up to Liverpool Street and got it
early this morning.”

The customs officer asked what the box contained, whereupon Falconer,
who was known to him, chaffingly said it contained cigars. The
good-humoured Belgian only laughed, and shrugging his shoulders chalked
it as “passed.”

That afternoon, having an unexpected appointment at the Ministry
of Posts and Telegraphs, Geoffrey resolved to remain the night in
Brussels. Therefore, he had taken a room at Wiltshire’s Hotel up on the
Avenue Louise, rather than at the Grand or the Palace, for in summer,
both being down in the city, they are unpleasantly hot. He kept his
appointment at five, and then walking back to the hotel, dined, and
set out for an evening stroll back down the steep hill into the city,
where at one of the little tables set on the pavement before the Café
Métropole, in the Place de Brouckère, he took his _café noir_.

Unknown to him, however, a slightly-built, thin-faced young man, who
had been watching outside the hotel for nearly two hours, had followed
him, and taken a seat unobtrusively near the table Geoffrey had
selected, but inside the café in such a position that he could remain
and watch.

There is always light, movement, and gaiety on a summer’s night at that
point of the Belgian capital, for along the broad pavement passes a
perfect panorama of Belgian life.

Geoffrey had been seated for about a quarter of an hour, and was idly
smoking a cigarette when suddenly a tall, well-dressed, rather elderly
man who was passing, caught sight of him, halted, and crossing to him,
exclaimed in excellent English:

“Well, my dear Monsieur Falconer! Fancy finding you here--in Brussels!”

Geoffrey sprang to his feet, for instantly he recognised in the
stranger a Frenchman named Henri Amelot, a radio-engineer like himself,
who was attached to the powerful wireless station at Croix d’Hins,
near Bordeaux, which the Americans erected during the war for direct
wireless communication between the American army and Washington, and
which had now been taken over by the French Government.

He had met Amelot at Bordeaux about three months before, and he had
been of considerable service to him, hence their meeting was a most
cordial one, and they sat together for a long time, until darkness fell
and the great arc lamps shone above them. And all the time the silent
watcher sat idling over the _Independance_, but glancing at the pair
furtively ever and anon.

Amelot told Geoffrey that he was in Brussels in connection with some
newly-invented apparatus which they were about to test at Croix d’Hins,
while the young Englishman explained the object of his visit to
Belgium.

“Then your new Marconi set at Croydon gives wonderful results,” Amelot
was saying. “Your Air Ministry ought to be greatly pleased with
it. I was listening to it at Le Bourget the other day. Speech was
marvellously clear.”

“Yes,” replied Geoffrey. “It is an exactly similar set that we are
fitting at Bouvignes. My only regret is that Monsieur Marvaut, the
Director of Civil Aviation, is absent from Brussels. He’s been away all
the time I’ve been here, and there’s no sign of his returning yet--so
his lady secretary, Mademoiselle Levie, tells me.”

“Marvaut was in Paris,” said the French radio-engineer. “I saw him
about a month ago. He went afterwards to Marseilles. But you mentioned
his lady secretary. I did not know he had one. His secretary, Charles
Roosen, is with him.”

“But Mademoiselle Odille Levie called upon me on the first day of my
arrival in Brussels, and conveyed Monsieur Marvaut’s regrets at his
absence,” said Geoffrey.

“Ah!” remarked Amelot. “Then I suppose she is another secretary.” And
the subject dropped. Later, Falconer walked with his friend to his
hotel, the Palace, and then continued his way alone up the boulevard to
the Avenue Lousie, being followed by the silent watcher who had sat so
patiently in the café reading the _Independance Belge_.

Next morning at ten o’clock a waiter brought to Geoffrey the card of
Mademoiselle Levie, and on entering the lounge a pretty, dark-haired,
extremely chic young lady rose and greeted him merrily.

“I heard from Dinant that you were here, M’sieur Falconer,” the girl
said. “Last night I had a message from Monsieur le Directeur to say
that he is returning to his country château on Tuesday next, and asking
whether you could make it convenient to visit him on that evening. He
is rather unwell, it seems, and his doctor has forbidden him to come to
the Ministry at present.”

“Where is his château?” asked Geoffrey.

“The Château de Rochehaut, in the Semois, not very far from Dinant,”
the girl replied. “He has asked me to get his official car from the
Ministry and take you there.”

“It is very kind of Monsieur Marvaut,” Falconer said. “Please tell him
I shall be delighted to visit him. I hope the wireless station will be
ready for the official tests by Wednesday.”

“Very well,” she said. “I have the car outside now. If you are
returning to Dinant I can take you as far as Namur--for I am going
there. The morning is delightful.”

Nothing loth, Geoffrey quickly packed his suit-case, paid his bill, and
putting into the car the box of instruments which had come over from
London by air, got in beside his extremely handsome companion.

But the driver of the car, a smart chauffeur, though Falconer was
ignorant of the fact, was the same man who had so closely watched his
movements at the Café Métropole on the previous night. The morning
was indeed glorious, and the run out to Etterbeek, and through the
beautiful forest of Soignes to Groenendael, and on by way of Ottignies
and Gembloux to Namur, thirty miles distant from Brussels, was most
enjoyable.

Mademoiselle, bright and vivacious, was in excellent mood. Several
times she had come from Brussels with messages from the director, and
called upon him at the Tête d’Or Hotel, in Dinant, where he had taken
up his quarters. Yet more than once it had struck Geoffrey as curious
that the messages had always been verbal ones. And now it seemed
strange that the invitation to visit Monsieur Marvaut had come through
her, and not in the form of a personal letter.

As they were speeding along into Namur, Mademoiselle suddenly turned,
saying:

“I expect you may have to wait for a train to take you on to Dinant. I
have plenty of time--so I’ll take you on to your destination.”

Hence he asked her to lunch at the Tête d’Or on their arrival, and they
took their meal at a little table out on the veranda which overlooks
the rock-girt river, a corner well shaded, where, seated opposite to
each other, they both chatted and laughed merrily.

“I saw you one night about three weeks ago at the Opera, in Brussels,
M’sieur Falconer,” the girl exclaimed, laughing. “You were in a box
with two ladies, one was elderly, and the other was probably her
daughter--eh? You seemed very attentive to them--especially to the
younger one.”

Geoffrey smiled mysteriously.

“Well--I did not know that you were watching, mademoiselle,” he said
laughing. “They were friends of mine.”

“Your _fiancée_--eh?”

“How absurd!” he exclaimed. “Whatever makes you think that?”

“Oh!--well--from your careful attention to her,” said mademoiselle,
raising her wine-glass. “When a man is engaged he always has it written
across his back. Women can conceal their love, but a man seldom.”

“Just as, I suppose, women delight in tears--eh?”

“Ah! don’t let us be too philosophical. The weather is too good. Let’s
keep that for a dark and rainy day,” she laughed, leaving her companion
surprised and puzzled that she should have been watching him on that
night when he took Mrs. Beverley and her daughter to the Théâtre de la
Monnaie.

From the first this very smart girl had puzzled him. In the midst of
his work over at the aerodrome on the opposite side of the river she
had come to him once or twice with messages of unimportance.

Suddenly, as they sat together over their dessert and liqueurs,
Geoffrey recollected Amelot’s words, and asked:

“Where is Monsieur Roosen?”

“Roosen?” she echoed in rather a blank voice, gazing at her companion
across the table. He noticed that her countenance changed. But it was
only for a moment. “Oh! you mean the--the other secretary who always
travels with Monsieur le Directeur. Ah! I do not know, m’sieur. He is
away.”

Her confused attitude when he had unexpectedly mentioned Roosen’s
name struck him as distinctly curious. Mademoiselle Odille was very
charming, it was true, but she was somewhat of an enigma.

Presently she put on her gloves, and rose.

“Thank you, monsieur, for a very excellent _déjeuner_,” she said. “And
now I must leave you to your wires and bewildering apparatus, and get
back to Namur and on to Brussels.”

“You must come and see the official tests on Wednesday, mademoiselle.
No doubt you will like to hear the wireless telephone,” he said.

“I shall. I’m intensely interested,” she declared. “But remember on
Tuesday I will meet you here at about seven and take you over to the
Château de Rochehaut.”

And she got into the car and drove away.

Geoffrey telephoned over to the aerodrome to send the service car over
for the box of apparatus, and when it arrived, he drove across the
river and through the ancient village of Bouvignes. The old place,
surmounted by the ancient ruins of Crêve Coeur, the castle where the
Three Ladies of Crêve Coeur, sole survivors of the garrison besieged
by the Duc de Nevers in 1554, hurled themselves from the tower to death
in the eyes of their French conquerors, was quiet and out of the world.
But Geoffrey was much preoccupied as the car tore through the dusty
village and away up to the plain, where the great new aviation ground
was being constructed.

On one side stood the row of up-to-date hangars, with all the latest
inventions of British and French aviation, while on the other, facing
it, rose the aerial wires on eighty-feet poles temporarily erected, for
the lattice masts were in process of manufacture.

In two long army huts, situated a short distance from each other, the
wireless office had been established. One of them housed the generator
and transmitting gear, while in the other was the operating key and
reception set. To the latter hut Geoffrey went, and there, with the
assistance of a Belgian wireless operator, he unpacked the double-note
magnifier and condensers which had travelled by air from Croydon.

Then throughout the remainder of the afternoon the keen young engineer
was engaged in setting them up upon the operating bench. With many
patient tests he listened-in constantly for various stations of between
nine hundred and sixteen hundred mètres. The small oblong box, on the
ebonite top of which were fixed two little vacuum tubes which shone
brightly when current was passed through them--the piece of apparatus
used in conjunction with the seven-valve amplifier--magnified the
weakest signal to such an extent that the telephones could hardly be
borne upon his ears.

He had another there, but it somehow did not give such good results as
the one he had just requisitioned from Chelmsford. As a matter of fact,
it was one of a rather newer design, for wireless apparatus is every
week improving. And so rapid is the advance of radio discoveries that
much of the latest experimental apparatus to-day will six months hence
be relegated to the scrap-heap.

Through the whole afternoon he worked on patiently, joining up the
receiving circuit of many wires, the transmission side being already
in running order. Only three days before he had spoken over the
radio-telephone to Croydon, Lympe, Pulham in Norfolk, Le Bourget, and
Cologne. Each test gave excellent results, even though the atmospheric
conditions were none too good.

So he had every hope of the official tests being satisfactory. As a
loyal and trusted servant of that wonderful organisation, the Marconi
Company, he had worked hard and done his level utmost to make the
Bouvignes station a credit to his employers. Hence he was most anxious
that on the great day when the final tests were made everything
should go right, and that signals by continuous-wave telegraphy,
direction-finding, and radio-telephony should be equally satisfactory.

He was listening to Paris transmitting to Bucharest, reading the
commercial messages, and gazing through the small window of the Army
hut away across the grass-covered aerodrome to where, below, the
winding Meuse lay bathed in the soft evening light. Still listening,
he raised his wave-length until he heard the peculiar arc note of
N.S.S.--which is Annapolis in the United States--sending its time
signals, for it wanted a minute to five o’clock. Having compared
the time with the big round clock above the bench he reduced his
wave-length to one thousand mètres, when suddenly he heard the shrill
high-pitched note of a continuous-wave transmitter which sounded as
though it were in the near vicinity.

It was calling S.R.4. repeatedly, without giving its own call-sign. But
as the wireless station being called did not appear in the official
register at his elbow, he took it to be some private station and
disregarded it.

At that moment Captain Hanateau, who was in charge of the new
aerodrome, entered the hut, saying in good English:

“Here is a telegram for you, Meester Falconer.”

Geoffrey thanked him, tore open the message, but as he read it, he held
his breath in anxiety and astonishment. His heart stood still.

It was from Mrs. Beverley, dated from the Grand Hotel, in Paris, asking
whether Sylvia was with him. Four days before she had suddenly packed
a small dressing-case during her mother’s absence, and left the hotel,
leaving behind a note stating that in consequence of an urgent telegram
from Geoffrey she had gone back to Brussels and would write.

Geoffrey had sent no telegram! What could have happened?

The Captain saw that the news distressed the young radio-engineer, and
expressed his regret if the message was disconcerting.

“Yes, it is,” replied the young man as he removed the telephones from
his ears and re-read the long message. “Is the car in use? I must go to
Brussels at once.”

“You can have it, of course. I’ll go and order it for you.”

Therefore, a quarter of an hour later Geoffrey was speeding back over
the dusty road to Brussels. On arrival his first inquiry was at the
Palace Hotel, where Sylvia had stayed with her mother. Nobody, however,
had seen her there since her departure for Paris. He drove up the
boulevard to Wiltshire’s, and there made similar inquiry, but to no
purpose. To other places he went that night, making diligent inquiry
everywhere, and then he drove out to the aerodrome, for she had been
with him there once or twice. But no trace could he discover of her.

So at eleven o’clock he sent a telegram to her mother saying that he
had not seen her, and that apparently she had not come to Brussels. He
added that he had sent her no telegram.

Sylvia, to whom he was so devoted, was missing! But why?

Just before midnight, so perturbed had he become, that he went to
the Bureau of Police, and there saw Monsieur Guiette, the well-known
Belgian _chef de la Sûreté_. To him he told the story, after explaining
who he was. The official heard him patiently, and promised to have some
inquiries made. He suggested, however, that inquiries should be also
made in Paris, as perhaps the young lady had not left for Brussels
after all.

“She may have gone to London with some motive known only to herself,”
Monsieur Guiette suggested.

“But the telegram which purported to have been sent by me must have
been despatched from Brussels,” urged Falconer.

“Agreed, monsieur, but that telegram does not appear to have been seen.
The young lady herself says that she received a message from you. She
evidently did not leave it for her mother to see.”

At two o’clock next morning Geoffrey was in the express for Paris,
where he arrived at breakfast time, and in frantic haste sought Mrs.
Beverley.

“I can’t think what can have happened,” she said in great distress.
“The other morning I went out to Armenonville with my friend, Mrs.
Bridges, but Sylvia could not come, as she had an appointment at her
dressmaker, Martin’s, in the Rue de la Paix. When we returned at one
o’clock we found that she had gone, leaving this note.”

Geoffrey read the scribbled note of his well-beloved, which explained
how soon after her mother had gone she received a wire from him urging
her to come to Brussels at once, as he was in a great difficulty, so
she had caught the next train.

Falconer stood staggered. He had sent no telegram, and he certainly was
in no difficulty.

“It is curious that she did not leave the telegram for you to see,”
remarked the young radio-engineer.

“She forgot it, I suppose,” replied the mother.

“True, but it may be that she did not go to Brussels at all! The police
will probably assist us, though they are never very anxious to help
when people leave home of their own accord.”

“Oh, do go and see them, Geoffrey. Do go!” Mrs. Beverley implored,
for she was in a terribly agitated state of mind. She had inquired of
the servants at Upper Brook Street, but they had seen nothing of Miss
Sylvia.

Geoffrey, spurred to activity by his deep affection for the girl,
took a taxi at once to the Prefecture of Police, and a detective
was detailed to go with him to the Gare du Nord and there prosecute
inquiries. From the stationmaster they learnt that the person who had
booked passengers by the Brussels express on the morning of Sylvia’s
departure was a certain Mademoiselle Le Grelle. She was also on duty
at the booking-office at that moment; therefore, they at once sought
her, and the detective closely questioned her as to whether the young
English lady, whom Geoffrey described, had taken a ticket for Brussels
on the morning in question.

Mademoiselle reflected for a few moments, and then said:

“Yes, I recollect quite well. A young English lady asked me the
quickest route to Brussels. I told her that the quickest was
by Maubeuge, but the direct, without change, was by Amiens and
Valenciennes. She chose the later route. The lady I mean wore a long
pale-grey cloak and a small hat trimmed with blue. She was the only
girl from Paris by that train.”

“It was Sylvia!” gasped Falconer. “She has a grey cloak. Then she did
go to Brussels--after all!”

“Apparently, m’sieur,” remarked the detective. “It is certainly for the
Brussels police to inquire at once whether she arrived there.”

Back at the Grand Hotel he related to Mrs. Beverley Mademoiselle
Le Grelle’s statement, her description of her dress, and the small
dressing-case she carried.

“Well, Geoffrey,” exclaimed the anxious widow “I’m at my wits’ ends to
know what to do, or how to act. My girl has disappeared. Surely she had
no secret appointment with anybody?”

“I feel certain she had not,” declared Falconer. “There’s some deep
plotting at work somewhere. Of that I’m absolutely convinced. But we
now have the first clue to her, and we must follow it up without a
moment’s delay.”

“Yes, I agree,” said Mrs. Beverley, standing at the window of her
private sitting-room, which looked out upon the busy boulevard. “We at
least know that she actually left for Brussels. And if she did--then
she went there to meet you.”

“But I sent her no urgent telegram! I wrote to her about a week ago
saying that I expected to be back home in ten days--after the official
tests were through.”

It was then about one o’clock, so Falconer ate a hurried lunch with
Sylvia’s mother down in the big restaurant, and at three o’clock
returned to Brussels. He was not a man to allow the grass to grow under
his feet, for again before eleven o’clock--while Mrs. Beverley elected
to wait for news of her daughter in Paris--he was closeted once more
with the famous detective, Monsieur Guiette.

The astute, bald-headed little man heard him through, nodding ever and
anon, until at last, he exclaimed:

“_Bien!_ M’sieur Falconer. I will have every inquiry made to-morrow,
and will send you word to--where?”

Geoffrey hesitated. He was in the midst of the serious wireless tests,
and had arranged with other stations to listen-in for his speech.

“Oh, it will be best to telephone to me at the Tête d’Or at Dinant, or
to the new aerodrome at Bouvignes,” he said.

And then he took his hat, and departing, ascended the hill to the
Avenue Louise, where he spent a sleepless night at the hotel.

Sylvia, his beloved Sylvia, was missing! Had she fallen victim to
some evil and cleverly conceived plot? In the dark hours of the night
he became seized by all sorts of terrible apprehensions. That false
telegram sent from Belgium showed a distinct malice aforethought, She
had, without doubt, fallen into the hands of enemies.

But where?

Unable to sleep, he rose, opened the window, and gazed forth upon the
well-lit leafy avenue, so gay and brilliant by day, but now entirely
silent save for the soft rustling of the leaves. It was three o’clock
in the morning, and he had travelled many miles to and fro to France
since last he had slept.

Sylvia’s disappearance was a mystery, deep and inscrutable.

Without some strong motive, such as the receipt of the telegram of
distress, she would certainly never have left her mother and travelled
so hastily back to Brussels.

For over an hour he sat at the open window trying to solve the
problem, and hoping that Monsieur Guiette’s inquiries would have some
result. She would certainly have to show her passport at the frontier,
where a register would be kept.

Day broke, but he did not return to bed. At five he dressed, and then,
after his coffee, he strolled anxiously down the Montagne de la Cour in
the morning sunshine towards the Bourse, waiting for midday, when he
had arranged to call again at the Prefecture, and hear the result of
the inquiries at the frontier.

Noon came at last, and he again sat in Monsieur Guiette’s dull drab
room.

“Well, m’sieur,” exclaimed the bald-headed little official, “it seems
that mademoiselle, the South Américaine, left Paris as you allege,
travelled by the train you mention, and showed her passport at the
frontier. She told the passport officer that she was going to the
Palace Hotel here, but evidently on arrival changed her mind. Then,” he
added, “she was noted by the police at the barrier when she arrived,
and was seen to be met by somebody--a woman.”

“Met by a woman?”

“Yes. Here our information becomes a little hazy,” replied the great
detective. “One witness says that the woman outside the barrier rushed
up to her and gave her some message, while another witness, the
collector of tickets, declares that it was a little old man who speaks
English, and sometimes acts as guide, who met her.”

“But what happened then?” exclaimed Geoffrey bewildered.

“Both persons tell the same story, that a car was in waiting, and that
the young lady entered it very hurriedly, apparently much upset at what
had been told her, and was driven away.”

“Driven away into the unknown--eh?”

“Exactly, m’sieur.”

“And how shall we now follow her?”

Monsieur Guiette raised his shoulders, and after a moment’s silence,
answered:

“The young lady has simply disappeared. We have had in the years of
my service, both before the war and since, a number of such cases
of English and American ladies being lost in Belgium. But such
cases are always difficult to deal with. Girls have lovers--secret
lovers--so very often. And when at last traced they are always highly
indignant--and never tell us the truth. Ah! m’sieur, when one deals
with love one is always mystified.”

“But in the present case I am convinced that Miss Beverley has fallen
victim to some plot. She received a telegram purporting to have come
from myself, whereas I sent her no message. She obeyed my wish, and
on arrival here was given a false message, to which she instantly
responded.”

“Yes, m’sieur; I quite agree. But we cannot go further. How can we?”
asked the famous commissary.

“I certainly think we ought to. A lady has been enticed to Brussels by
a false telegram, and it is the duty of the police to follow up the
clue which I have supplied!” exclaimed Geoffrey in indignation at the
apparent reluctance of Guiette to carry the inquiry further.

“Please, do not be distressed,” said the famous detective pleasantly.
“I have already given orders that the inquiries are to be pushed
forward in every quarter. The case interests me personally. And,” he
added, “I entirely agree with you. There is some very deep-laid plot,
otherwise that urgent telegram would never have been forged.”

Geoffrey was now torn between love and duty. From the Prefecture he at
once walked to the Place de la Monnaie, and from the central telegraph
office despatched a long message to the missing girl’s mother. He urged
her to wait in patience, as Sylvia was known to be in Belgium, and all
inquiries were being instituted.

Afterwards he lunched at the Taverne Joseph, close to the Bourse, and
later was compelled to take train back to Dinant, leaving the further
inquiries in the hands of the Brussels police.

That evening, with faint heart, he returned to the wireless office
at the aerodrome and tried to continue his work, tuning up the
wireless set ready for the official tests. But it was in vain. He was,
very naturally, thinking more of Sylvia than of the elaborate and
highly-efficient apparatus under his care, notwithstanding the fact
that it represented the latest development of the Marconi Company’s
system of instant communication, and was, therefore, of special
interest.

Next day was Tuesday. At first he resolved not to keep his appointment
with Mademoiselle Levie, who was to take him to see Monsieur Marvaut at
his country house on the Semois. Yet Marvaut was the director of the
civil aviation, and it was his duty to the Company to see him, if only
for an hour. He had told Monsieur Guiette this, and promised to be back
in Bouvignes for the test next morning, so that he could be rung up
from Brussels.

Torn by stress of apprehension he managed to control himself
sufficiently to meet Mademoiselle Odille when about seven o’clock in
the evening she drove up before the Tête d’Or, in Dinant to keep her
appointment. The thin-faced watcher was again driving. Meeting Geoffrey
she laughed merrily, and asked:

“Could we have a more glorious evening? It has been perfect ever since
we left Brussels.”

“Won’t you come in for a moment, mademoiselle?” Falconer asked.

“No, thanks. We’re late now,” she said. “I promised monsieur to get you
to the château before dark. Come, get in.”

So Falconer got in beside her, and a few moments later they were
speeding along the narrow, old-world streets of Dinant, past the tall
Roche-à-Bayard, a rock in the riverside road, and on through the
charming little village of Anseremme. Then by the winding road through
beautiful country they went by way of Malvoisin and Monceau, down into
the Semois valley, one of the most picturesque spots in southern
Belgium, that country now remote and still undisturbed as it was before
the Hun invader swept through it with fire and sword on his way to
Brussels.

They had left the river and passed through a great dark forest when, in
the falling darkness, the young man who drove the car--the same person
who had watched Geoffrey in the Café Métropole--suddenly turned into a
well-kept side road which led to a large country mansion, the Château
de Rochehaut.

The door stood open as they pulled up, and on alighting, mademoiselle
conducted him through a large but well-lit entrance-hall, upstairs to
a small, well-furnished room on the first floor, where she left him,
saying that she would go and fetch Monsieur Marvaut. The heavy curtains
of purple silk damask were drawn, and the place presented a more cosy
aspect than is usual in Belgian houses.

Suddenly the door reopened and Geoffrey stood amazed, for he met Sylvia
face to face!

Both uttered exclamations of intense surprise, and both asked questions
at the same moment.

“How came you here, dear?” asked Falconer eagerly. “Why, the police are
hunting for you everywhere.”

“I know,” exclaimed a big, thick-set man who had followed the girl into
the room, and was grinning evilly. “And the police will never find
either of you.”

“Who are you--and what do you mean?” Geoffrey demanded quickly.

“I mean what I say!” was the man’s defiant reply.

“I have met you somewhere before,” remarked Falconer much puzzled,
while the girl, who seemed half dead with fright, clung to her lover’s
arm.

“Yes,” was the fellow’s response; “we met at the Castle of Zenta,
in Hungary, where not only did you escape, but you were the means of
sending our brave leader, Franz Haynald, and Koblitz and Françoise to
prison. I have come from Hungary in order to carry out what has been
decided in consequence.”

“And what is that, pray?” inquired Falconer.

“We succeeded in bringing your _fiancée_ here so that you may both
share the same fate--_death_!” he said in a low, hard voice, his eyes
full of the fierce fire of vengeance.

“Stand aside!” shouted Geoffrey. “Let us pass!”

A second later the young engineer found himself cornered with a heavy
automatic pistol.

“Move, and I’ll fire!” hissed the man whom he now recognised as a
revolutionist named Stadler, who had visited the pseudo-Baron at the
great castle in the Carpathians.

Then swift as lightning the fellow slipped out of the door, banged it
after him, and ere Geoffrey could reach it, he had bolted it on the
outside.

Both realised that they were caught like rats in a trap.

Geoffrey in an instant dashed to the window, only, however, to find to
his dismay that it was closely shuttered and barred from the outside.
Precautions had been taken to prevent their escape!

“Ah!” cried the fellow from the other side of the door, “let the police
search! They will never find either of you now. You see the stove? Go
across--and open it.”

They both glanced across the room and noticed a round iron stove about
five feet in height, used for burning charcoal in winter.

Falconer crossed, and on opening it, saw within what seemed to be a
steel cylinder.

“You’ve seen it--eh?” asked the voice mockingly. “That cylinder
contains poison-gas! I will give you two minutes before I turn on your
lethal draught--two minutes to wish each other a long farewell,” and
the brute laughed heartily in his fiendish triumph.

Sylvia gave vent to a loud piercing shriek when she realised the
horrible fate in store for them, and then she fell fainting into her
lover’s arms. He bent and pressed his lips to hers for a second.
Afterwards he placed her in a chair, and taking up another and heavier
chair, began to attack the door furiously, smashing the chair in his
efforts.

“The two minutes are up!” cried that mocking voice with a low, exultant
laugh. “Good-bye!”

Next second a loud hissing came from the stove as the deadly gas,
released suddenly, filled the room. Geoffrey caught a whiff of it, and
instantly sank to the ground, inert and unconscious.

When they recovered consciousness they both found themselves in
hospital wards, attended by doctors, and both learned later that it was
Sylvia’s shriek which saved them.

Monsieur Guiette had fortunately suspected that Sylvia had met with
foul play, and wondering whether some mishap might not occur to
Geoffrey, had ordered his men to keep strict observation, unknown
to the young Englishman, with the result that in the very nick of
time they had been able to rescue both of them from that fatal room,
and unearth a desperate and widespread plot. They also arrested the
dangerous Hungarian revolutionist, Hermann Stadler--who had rented the
château furnished--as well as the young motor driver, and the pretty
girl, Stadler’s niece, who had so cleverly posed as the secretary to
the Director of Civil Aviation. In a wood at the back of the château
they found in a secluded spot an open grave ready for the reception of
the victims!

The wireless tests at Bouvignes were delayed for two days until
Falconer recovered, but at them Monsieur Marvaut--who had just returned
from France--was present, and all went off most satisfactorily,
the results being declared to be greatly to the credit of Geoffrey
Falconer.




CHAPTER IX

THE THREE BAD MEN


Geoffrey Falconer, Mrs. Beverley, and Sylvia were spending a week-end
at Tansor, in Northamptonshire, with George Barclay, a friend of the
South American widow, who rented a hunting-box and rode regularly with
the Fitzwilliam Hounds.

On the night of their arrival when they sat down to dinner with Barclay
and his go-ahead wife and the latter’s cousin, a pretty girl named May
Farncombe, all were full of expectation of some good runs. To Geoffrey,
who had recently returned from a mission abroad, the fine English
country house, with its old-world atmosphere, its old oak, old silver,
and air of solidity, was delightful after the flimsy gimcracks of
foreign life. The young radio-engineer had earned praise from Marconi
House for the manner in which certain missions abroad had been carried
out, and he was rapidly advancing in the world of wireless.

That evening proved an extremely pleasant one, and both Geoffrey and
Sylvia were attracted by the chic of May Farncombe, who was tall
and dark, about twenty-two or so, with a remarkable figure shown to
advantage by a smart dinner-frock. She talked well, sang well, and was
most enthusiastic over hunting.

The meet next morning was at Wansford, that one-time hunting centre
beside the River Nene, and as Geoffrey rode with Sylvia and May, he
noticed what a splendid horsewoman was the latter. She rode astride,
her dark hair coiled tightly, her bowler hat with its broad brim suited
her face admirably, while her habit fitted as though it had been
moulded to her figure. Tied in her mare’s tail was a tiny piece of red
silk, a warning that she was a kicker.

Hounds met opposite the Haycock, once a coaching-inn, but now a
private house, and the gathering became a large one. From the great
rambling old house servants carried glasses of sloe gin for all and
sundry who cared to partake of the old English hunting hospitality.
Geoffrey’s host introduced him to the Master, while the crowd of horses
and cars became more congested every minute, and everywhere greetings
were being exchanged.

Presently Barnard, the huntsman, drew his hounds together, the word was
given, and all went leisurely up to draw first cover.

The morning was a damp cold one in mid-February; the frost had given,
and every one expected a good run for the scent would be excellent.

The first cover was, however, drawn blank, but from the second a
fox went away straight for Elton, and soon the pace became fast and
furious. After a couple of miles more than half the field were left
behind; still Geoffrey kept on, and while Sylvia remained far behind,
yet May Farncombe was considerably in front of him. Suddenly, without
any effort, the girl took a high hedge, and was cutting across the
pastures ere he was aware that she had left the road. That she was a
straight rider was quickly apparent, but Geoffrey preferred the gate to
the hedge and ditch which she had taken so clearly.

Half an hour later the kill took place near Haddon, and of the
half-dozen in at the death May Farncombe was one.

When Geoffrey came up five minutes later, she rode forward, crying:

“What a topping run, Mr. Falconer! I have enjoyed it thoroughly!” Her
face was flushed with hard riding, yet her hair was in no way awry, and
she presented a really fine figure of the up-to-date athletic girl.

Just, however, as Geoffrey and his companion sat watching Barnard
cut off the brush, a tall, rather good-looking, fair-haired man rode
up, having apparently been left behind, as he had. As he approached,
Geoffrey noticed that he gave his handsome companion a strange look
almost of warning, while she, on her part, turned away her head. It was
as though he had made her some secret sign which she had understood.

That May Farncombe knew him was apparent. The slight quiver in the
man’s eyelids, and the almost imperceptible curl of the lips had not
passed him unnoticed. There was some secret between them, of what
nature he, of course, knew not.

“I wonder who that man is?” Geoffrey remarked quite casually, as soon
as he was out of hearing.

“I don’t know,” was her prompt reply. “He’s often out with the hounds.”

Falconer smiled within himself. He saw that she did not intend to admit
that she had any knowledge of him. Like all women, she was a clever
diplomat. But the man had made a sign to her--a sign of secrecy.

And at that moment Sylvia rode up with their host, George Barclay, and
joined them, crying:

“Oh! what a run! I was left quite out of it. You were both at the kill,
I suppose?”

That night Geoffrey sat alone with his host after the others had
retired, and from him learnt that Mr. Farncombe, his wife’s uncle, had
lived a long time in Marseilles as agent of a great English shipping
company, and that May had been born in France. Falconer then mentioned
the stranger who had exchanged those meaning glances with the girl, to
which Barclay replied:

“I often see the fellow hunting. He comes from London, and stays at the
George, at Stamford, I have heard.”

The days passed. Geoffrey managed to obtain an extension of his leave,
and with Sylvia and May went to several meets--at King’s Cliffe,
at Laxton Park, and also at Castor Hanglands. On each occasion the
stranger from London was there. His name, Geoffrey found out from the
George, at Stamford, was Ralph Phillips, but who or what he was nobody
knew. So long as he paid a generous subscription to the Fitzwilliam
pack, nobody cared.

That May Farncombe in denying all knowledge of the man had deliberately
told an untruth, was quite plain. Geoffrey, however, kept his own
counsel, and while spending many happy hours with Sylvia--Lord
Hendlewycke being away at Cannes staying with an aunt--he nevertheless
made no mention of his discovery.

How far Geoffrey was justified in watching the girl’s movements is no
concern of the writer. But he did so, for he had unexpectedly alighted
upon certain suspicions, and was determined to elucidate them.

Late one afternoon, Mrs. Beverley and her daughter having gone with
Mrs. Barclay to make a call at Burghley, Geoffrey went for a stroll
alone. While passing along the footpath from Tansor to Fotheringhay, he
was skirting the edge of a big wood, when he caught sight of a flash of
red among the bare black trees. It was May Farncombe.

He drew back instantly and watched. She was standing with the
mysterious Mr. Phillips, who was speaking in a low, earnest tone.
He seemed to be giving her directions, while she appeared to be
remonstrating with him in an appealing attitude.

Fearing discovery, the young radio-engineer turned, and treading softly
over the dead leaves--which were fortunately wet--crept away.

He met her next at the dinner-table, when he noticed how pale
and anxious she was, apparently entirely changed from her usual
light-hearted self. She, of course, said nothing of the clandestine
meeting, but made pretence of being interested in wireless, asking him
many questions concerning its present development and its possibilities.

“Are many fresh discoveries being made?” she presently inquired.

“Discoveries!” echoed Sylvia. “Why, Geoffrey and his friends are making
marvellous discoveries and improvements every day. But he won’t tell
you anything, my dear,” she added; “so it’s no use asking.”

“I could tell you a good deal,” Falconer said laughing “only I’m not
allowed. The patents of many of our fresh discoveries are not yet quite
safe.”

“Ah! then I understand,” said the dark-haired girl at his side. “But
wireless is such a bewildering puzzle,” she went on. “Somebody was
telling me the other day some most extraordinary things--that a ship,
for instance, could be guided through a tortuous channel by means of
a cable laid in the channel, and that on the way they could actually
signal through the water to the end of the cable.”

Geoffrey smiled, and asked who had told her.

She tried to recollect. It was at a dance in London--a man she met who
was connected with some wireless firm. She had forgotten his name. She
had danced with him twice, and had then seen no more of him.

“Well, Miss Farncombe, you will be a little surprised to hear that
system you speak of was invented no less than twenty years ago! It
depends on a simple principle well known to scientists, but has been
of no practical use until comparatively recently, when the wonderful
Thermionic Valve enabled us to enormously increase the sensitiveness
of the apparatus. The Americans got some kudos in connection with the
laying of a ‘leader’ cable, as it is called, at the entrance to New
York Harbour recently, but it is not generally known that we had the
system working over here during the war.”

“Ah! Geoffrey,” laughed Sylvia, “it all seems so simple to you, no
doubt, but to me it is wonderful. I am glad to hear the British were
not so behind as so many would have us believe. You are such a modest
old thing--I feel sure you had something to do with the development of
this invention. Come, tell me now.”

“Oh! really nothing at all, Sylvia,” he replied, “except perhaps
to design an amplifier which was used with the first leader cable
at--well, one of our naval bases.”

“I thought so,” said the girl whom he loved so dearly.

“But how about the long-distance telephone?” asked May Farncombe.

“What do you know about such a telephone?” Geoffrey asked in surprise,
as the girl had referred to a technical point which only a man versed
in wireless could understand.

For a few seconds the girl seemed rather confused. Then she said in a
rather faltering voice, as she took up her wine-glass: “Oh! I don’t
know anything about wireless, you know. Somebody told me of some
wonderful results in telephoning over long distances.”

Those words caused Geoffrey Falconer to ponder.

He dropped the subject. Loyal as he was to the great Marconi Company,
he refused to discuss any of its confidences over a dinner-table. And
he was relieved when the general chatter became concerned with a dance
which was to be given at Peterborough on the following evening.

Next morning, about eleven o’clock, Sylvia and Geoffrey went out for a
walk together on the high road which leads into the quiet little town
of Oundle. Sylvia in a thick grey coat and a canary-coloured scarf, and
carrying a stiff ash stick, went along with true golfing stride.

Strangely enough, she was the first to mention the girl Farncombe.

“I can’t fathom May at all,” she said. “To me she’s a mystery.”

“Why?” asked her lover, pretending ignorance.

“I don’t know, but she knows so little of you--and yet she knows so
much!”

“How?”

“Well--her knowledge of wireless last night was extraordinary. She
seems to know things that are entirely confidential. How? I don’t like
such people, Geoff. They’re a bit uncanny!”

“Yes,” he laughed. “She’s somewhat of a mystery. But when one goes to
a house-party one is sure to meet people who are mysterious. Yet they
may be, after all, the most ordinary persons. It is one’s own point of
view that often creates mystery. That’s my opinion.”

With that Sylvia agreed. Yet, of course, her lover had become more than
ever puzzled over their fellow-guest, and was glad when Sylvia let the
subject drop.

Sylvia and he were lovers, it was true, but he was so plain,
straightforward, and honest, that he could not bring himself to reveal
to the girl he loved the facts which had come within his knowledge.

If May Farncombe had a secret lover, what business was it of his?
True, her undue knowledge of wireless inventions was somewhat strange,
but what was most probable was that some friend of hers, perhaps the
fair-haired man who had met her clandestinely, had given her just a
little superficial knowledge--just as so many people possess.

Geoffrey bade farewell to his host and hostess three days later,
and left for Warley, Mrs. Beverley and her daughter remaining for a
few days longer. Sylvia had become very friendly with May, and Mrs.
Beverley had asked her to stay with them for a fortnight or so in Upper
Brook Street in about a month’s time.

Back at the Works at Chelmsford, Geoffrey continued his research
work, assisting two well-known engineers in some highly interesting
experiments. Privately he was experimenting with the amplification
and magnification of wireless signals as applied to a new automatic
call-device for use at sea. One had recently been perfected by young
Falconer privately, but at present it was a secret, and not yet
patented, for a slight point about it was not to his satisfaction.

Each night at his own private experimental laboratory at Warley he
spent hours upon hours in trying to devise some means of removing the
one slight defect of his new apparatus. Several automatic call-devices
had been invented, and the Marconi one for use on ships had proved
extremely satisfactory. Yet Falconer, true experimenter that he was,
was never satisfied with results. He always endeavoured to make further
improvements.

The calling-device, it may here be explained, is a piece of apparatus
which will only ring an alarm bell when the call-signal of a
ship--three or four letters of the alphabet--or the distress signal,
“S.O.S.” is sent, and even then it is so arranged that the letters to
which it is set to respond must be repeated before the alarm rings.
The object of such a device is to enable small ships to work with one
operator, who need not keep constant watch. As a rule passenger boats
of any size carry three operators, who keep constant watch for calls
day and night. But Geoffrey hoped that, by an improvement of the new
device, a greater perfection still could be arrived at.

His hope, indeed, was to so devise a scheme that any message sent out
to the call-signal to which it was set, would be printed in Morse
automatically upon a tape instrument, so that even if the operator
were not within call, the message would be recorded. Such achievement,
however, was fraught with many technical difficulties of wave-length
and other things, as all wireless men will quickly foresee. Still he
worked hard and patiently each evening after his return from the Works.

Now and then he went to London and spent the evening in Upper Brook
Street. Once or twice he dined out with Sylvia and her mother, and went
to one or two dances in Mayfair, but the greater part of his spare
time was occupied with his wireless calling-device. His superiors
at Marconi House knew the trend of his experiments, and encouraged
him, for Marconi apparatus is always being developed, improved, and
again improved, until absolute perfection is at last arrived at. The
calling-device in use was perfect, but if the incoming message could
be recorded, then the improvement would be of immense benefit to both
shipowners and shipmasters.

One day when he called at Mrs. Beverley’s, he found that May Farncombe
had arrived upon her promised visit, and he sat in the drawing-room
chatting for a long time with Sylvia and her friend.

“Geoffrey has actually torn himself away from his horrible old
wireless,” Sylvia remarked. “For nearly a fortnight we’ve hardly seen
him.”

“I’ve been awfully busy on a new gadget,” the young man replied with a
laugh. Then, turning to May, he added: “Sylvia is always poking fun at
me because I happen to be enthusiastic over my work.”

“Well, I don’t mean anything, my dear old boy,” laughed the girl. “You
know that. What I think is that you apply yourself far too closely
to it--at the Works all day and then continuing your work at home,
sometimes into the early hours. You’ll injure your health if you don’t
take care.”

“What are you particularly interested in discovering just now?” asked
May.

In reply he explained, and found that she listened quite intelligently.

After an early dinner he took them both out to a theatre, but was
unable to see them home, having to leave before the performance was
over in order to catch the last train.

As he came out of the theatre a man in evening dress was standing upon
the step, leisurely smoking a cigarette as though waiting for some one.
As Geoffrey brushed past him, he glanced round, and was surprised to
recognise in him the mysterious stranger of the hunting-field--the man
known at the George, at Stamford, as Mr. Ralph Phillips. An omnibus
going direct to Liverpool Street was passing at the moment, and
Geoffrey jumped upon it.

The encounter was a strange one. Was it by mere accident that they
had met? Or was the man Phillips awaiting May Farncombe? The incident
sorely puzzled him. The pair might be lovers in secret, but their
attitude when he had found them together certainly negatived such a
supposition.

Back at Warley that night Geoffrey found that his father had gone to
bed, so he sat in his wireless room for a long time trying some new
adjustments upon the piece of apparatus he was bent upon improving.
But recollections of the man Phillips kept running through his
brain, so that at last he went to a drawer, and taking out some small
snapshot photographs, selected one which he carried to the light and
carefully examined. It was a photograph of Phillips which he had
taken surreptitiously in the hunting-field. The man in hunting pink
had dismounted and was leading his horse, while close beside him May
Farncombe could be seen mounted, chatting with Sylvia, who was riding
at her side.

“I wonder?” he muttered to himself. “I wonder what it all means? Why
does he haunt the girl so? Why do they in public appear as strangers? I
wonder?”

And he placed the photograph in his wallet, and turning out the lights,
ascended to his room.

About ten days went by, when one evening, being in London with Maurice
Peterson, one of the engineers from the Works, they looked in at
the Palace Theatre after dinner. The performance was excellent, as
usual, and later when they strolled into the bar the first person they
encountered was the mysterious Phillips, well-dressed, and wearing a
smartly-cut grey overcoat.

In a moment Peterson greeted him warmly, and said:

“Falconer, let me introduce you to my friend, Mr. Paget.”

The two men shook hands. Paget! Then Phillips was not the man’s real
name, Geoffrey thought.

“I think we met in Northamptonshire--didn’t we?” asked the man who
called himself Paget.

“Oh, you’ve met before--eh?” asked Peterson.

“Yes; in the hunting-field,” Falconer said vaguely, and then all three
had drinks together, and Falconer and his friend were afterwards
compelled to leave.

“Who is that man Paget?” Geoffrey asked as soon as they were in the
taxi.

“Oh, quite a nice fellow. I met him one day in the train as I was
coming back from Carnarvon. He seemed to know something about wireless,
and he gave me his card. So we met once or twice afterwards. He has
rooms in Half Moon Street.”

“And he’s fond of hunting,” Falconer said. “Have you ever seen him with
a tall, dark, very good-looking girl?”

“A girl with a mole on her left cheek? Oh, yes. One afternoon about
a week ago I called on him and found her having tea at his rooms. I
didn’t catch her name. She was dressed in brown, and had a beautiful
set of furs.”

It was May Farncombe!

“I know the young lady. She’s a friend of mine,” Falconer said briefly,
more puzzled than ever. “But do you really know anything about Paget?”

“Only that he seems to be a man of considerable means, very generous,
and quite a good sort.”

Geoffrey remained silent. He was thinking deeply. It seemed that
May Farncombe’s knowledge of wireless--and she quite unconsciously
had betrayed a fairly wide grasp of the science and its latest
developments--had been derived from the man whom she had pretended was
a stranger to her.

Paget’s attitude towards Geoffrey’s friend had been most affable. He
had even called him by his Christian name, and had reminded him of an
appointment for dinner two days later.

Before they left the stranger added: “I hope, Mr. Falconer, that we
shall meet again very soon.”

They did meet, and once under rather curious circumstances.

Geoffrey each night worked hard at his new design for the
calling-device, to which he was attaching apparatus to record upon the
tape the signals received. He met with failure after failure until at
last, one night, he set his calling-device to receive signals from the
efficient station of a Dutch amateur at Amsterdam--known in the world
of wireless as “P.Y.N.” In wireless both in America and England, people
and places are known by their call-signal, rather than by their names.
He knew that on that particular evening “P.Y.N.” would call by Morse
before sending telephony and music to English amateurs.

So having set his instrument attached to the “inker,” he waited.
Suddenly at nine o’clock the Morse sounder gave two or three sharp
clicks. He switched on the tape, and out upon it came a printed message
from Amsterdam to certain stations in England.

His invention was complete!

With natural pride and excitement he called the Professor, and the
pair stood watching the narrow green tape roll forth from the square
brass “recorder” mounted upon its mahogany base--the strip bearing the
message clearly printed. The calling-device had only responded to the
one signal, “P.Y.N.”

“Congratulations, my boy,” said the old man, well pleased. “You deserve
success after all that experimenting and the many hours you have given
to it. I only hope it will bring you advancement and money,” he added.
“It certainly should.”

“I hope so,” laughed the young man. “I was told at Marconi House only
the other day that if I were successful the invention would be of
inestimable value. And now it really works!”

Next day when he arrived at Chelmsford he told Peterson of his success,
and that morning in the large, well-appointed luncheon-room at the
Works--that bright apartment wherein the heads of the departments take
their midday meal, and gossip--young Falconer was the recipient of many
congratulations.

“Of course you’ll patent it at once,” said one engineer seated next to
him--a man whose name is a household word in wireless.

“Yes,” laughed Geoffrey. “I suppose I ought to do so.”

“Ought to? Why, of course. It is a wonderful advance in wireless,” said
another man a little further down the table.

That night he was again at Upper Brook Street, and naturally told
Sylvia and her friend of his great achievement.

May Farncombe instantly grew interested, and put to him a number
of questions. More than ever the clever girl showed a remarkable
intelligence concerning wireless.

Mrs. Beverley had a small party that night; therefore, there was
dancing, and the evening was most enjoyable. “The Wild Widow” had been
a great social success in London, and to her parties flocked the people
of the very best set. The penurious Lord Hendlewycke had fallen beneath
a cloud, much to Sylvia’s delight, and now her mother seemed keenly on
the alert for some rather better match for her daughter--with a man of
title, of course. She desired at all hazards to return to Buenos Ayres
as the mother-in-law of an English peer.

Geoffrey looked on amusedly at it all. With Sylvia he had a perfect
understanding. She had promised him, time after time, that if she
ever married he was to be her husband. The rest did not matter. Hence
he remained perfectly content, devoting his days--and his nights--to
scientific research.

One day Peterson told him that he was dining with Paget that night at
the Bath Club, and that his host had telephoned asking him to bring
him along. At first Geoffrey hesitated. Next moment he saw that if he
became friendly with the mysterious fox-hunter he might learn the truth
concerning certain facts which had so sorely puzzled him.

Therefore he accepted.

He found Paget a most genial host. While at table they spoke of
wireless, and Peterson made mention of his fellow-guest’s important
invention. At once Paget became interested, but Geoffrey merely
laughed, and with his usual modesty, turned the conversation into
another channel. Afterwards they went to a theatre and concluded a
merry evening.

May Farncombe’s stay with Mrs. Beverley was almost at an end. She was
joining her aunt in Paris, and then going with her down to Cap Martin.
Somehow Geoffrey could not put it out of his mind that something was
wrong. There was a secret between the girl and the affable man known
at Stamford as Phillips, and in Half Moon Street as Paget. As the
looker-on sees most of the game, he resolved to watch at Half Moon
Street. This he did on several afternoons, wondering whether the girl,
escaping from Upper Brook Street on pretence of shopping, would call
there.

On the third afternoon, as he lingered in the vicinity, very careful
to remain out of observation from the man’s windows, she came, neatly
and quietly dressed, and, unseen, Geoffrey watched her enter the house
where Paget lived.

She remained nearly an hour and a half, while he still waited against
the Park railings on the other side of Piccadilly from where he had
a clear view of Half Moon Street. At last she emerged, and gaining
Piccadilly, turned in the direction of Hyde Park Corner. Noting this,
Geoffrey slipped into a passing taxi and followed, thus getting in
front of her unnoticed in the traffic. At Apsley House he got out, paid
the man, and mingling with the hurrying crowd, walked in the direction
she was coming.

At last, as though quite unexpectedly, they met. She started as though
he were some apparition. For a moment she seemed too upset to be able
to speak. Indeed, Geoffrey detected that she had been crying, for her
eyes were swollen, and her cheeks showed traces of tears.

He was about to remark upon it, but refrained. Evidently her interview
with the fellow Paget had been the reverse of pleasant, and her
attitude set him further wondering. She, of course, had no idea that he
had watched her go to Paget’s rooms.

He turned and walked with her up Park Lane, amazed to notice how
nervous and unstrung she seemed.

“I’ve been out to a scent shop in Regent Street,” she explained.
“Sylvia and her mother have gone to tea at Lady Burford’s, and I’m busy
preparing to go over to Paris.”

“When do you leave?”

“About next Wednesday, I think. My aunt is coming from Bordeaux, and I
meet her at the Hôtel Bristol.”

The mystery of her interview with Paget, and its effect upon her,
caused him to ponder as he walked to Upper Brook Street, where he left
her at Mrs. Beverley’s door, asking her to give a message to Sylvia
that he had been compelled to get back to Warley.

In order to further endeavour to probe the mystery surrounding the
man Paget, Geoffrey next afternoon, after leaving Marconi House at a
quarter past five, called unexpectedly upon him at his chambers.

Paget, who was seated before the fire in the ease of a black velvet
lounge coat, jumped up, greeted him warmly, and bade him be seated in
the deep cosy arm-chair opposite, expressing delight that he had called.

“We’ll dine together,” he said, as he passed him the cigarette-box.
“Seen Peterson to-day?”

“No. I haven’t been at Chelmsford to-day,” Falconer replied.

“I met another of your fellows from the Works the day before
yesterday--a friend of Peterson. He tells me that your printing device
is most wonderful--and there’s a lot of money in it. I hope you’ve
patented it.”

“Not yet,” replied the young fellow frankly, “but I mean to do so in a
day or so--when I get the circuits drawn out.”

“It’s your own invention, I take it? Nothing to do with the
Company--eh?”

“At present--no. But the Company controls all wireless patents that are
worth anything at all. They will control mine,” was Geoffrey’s reply.

“Well, I hope yours will bring you in a lot of money. It certainly
must be of the greatest use in the merchant service, and you are to be
heartily congratulated.”

Geoffrey turned the conversation to the Fitzwilliam Hunt, and the
several runs in which both had taken part, hoping that he might mention
May Farncombe. But he refrained. Indeed, he seemed to have no wish to
recall his stay at Stamford. Perhaps it was because he had suspicion
that Geoffrey knew that the name he had gone under at the George Hotel
was not the one he was now using.

That night they had a pleasant dinner at Jules’, but more than ever it
became impressed upon Geoffrey’s mind that the man had some sinister
influence over the girl, hence her tears on the previous afternoon.
There was a mystery somewhere, but what it was he was utterly unable to
solve. Still, no man could have been more genial and light-hearted than
that man who, leading a life of luxury, seemed to be surrounded by many
friends.

On the following Tuesday night Falconer was again at Mrs. Beverley’s
to bid May Farncombe good-bye, as she was leaving for Paris on the
following morning. At dinner she seemed anxious to get away from
London, and Geoffrey guessed the reason. She longed to extricate
herself from some invisible net which the man Paget had cast about her.
Apparently, for some secret reason, she was entirely in his power.

“Well, Miss Farncombe,” he said, as they stood together in the hall
just before he departed, “I wish you _bon voyage_, and I hope we shall
see you back in London again very soon.”

At that moment they were alone in the big wide hall.

“Hush!” she whispered. “I shall pretend to go to Paris--but I
shall only go as far as Dover. Where can you see me alone--in
secret--to-morrow night?”

“Anywhere you like,” he replied, much surprised.

“Then let us say in the lounge of the Hôtel Russell at eight o’clock.
But not a soul must know!” she whispered.

Then aloud she said cheerily, just as Sylvia came out of the
morning-room:

“Well, good-bye, Mr. Falconer, good-bye!”

And they shook hands, and a few moments later he was walking towards
Grosvenor Square more than ever perplexed.

Next evening he was again in London, and in great anxiety arrived at
the hotel in Russell Square where, passing through the hall, he saw May
Farncombe awaiting him in the lounge. She had on her hat and coat, and
rose to meet him, pale-faced and anxious.

“You see I’m back!” she said with a faint smile. “We can’t talk here.
Somebody may overhear us! Let us walk around the Square--eh?”

This they did. They walked together slowly four times round the Square,
though the night was very cold and windy. Neither thought of the
weather, for the girl was too perturbed and excited, and the man too
annoyed and astounded at what she revealed to him.

The facts which, in desperation she disclosed, staggered him. He
promised to assist her, while she, on her part, thanked him profusely
and revealed certain extraordinary circumstances which held him
dumbfounded and fiercely angry.

At last they turned back into the hotel, and after sitting with her
in the lounge for some time, he rose, and gripping her gloved hand,
thanked her for her confidence.

“I shall really go to Paris to-morrow morning,” she said. “But remember
all that I have said, and respect my confidence--won’t you, Mr.
Falconer?”

“I certainly will, Miss Farncombe. Good-bye. You have all my sympathy,
I assure you. But keep a stout heart, for I hope in the end all will be
well,” he said reassuringly.

“But my secret!” she exclaimed.

“Leave that to me. Good-bye,” he repeated, and turning he left her.

A week later Geoffrey received a note from Paget asking him to dine
with him at the Bath Club, an invitation which he accepted. Another
and rather older man named Owen, to whom he had been introduced about
a fortnight before, dined with them. Afterwards they went round to
Paget’s rooms for an hour, and later Geoffrey left by ’bus to catch
his train from Liverpool Street.

He was walking along the platform and about to enter the train when
Owen, accompanied by a tall, clean-shaven man, came up breathlessly.

“This is the man!” Owen cried, pointing to Falconer. “I give him into
custody for stealing my pocket-book! He must have stolen it while we
were at the club!”

“What!--what do you mean?” gasped the young radio-engineer, turning
upon him aghast.

“I mean that you have my pocket-book upon you--a brown _suède_ one,
with sixty pounds in Treasury notes.”

“It’s untrue!” declared Geoffrey. “I know nothing of your pocket-book.
But look!” he exclaimed, utterly confounded. “A crowd is collecting.
Let’s go somewhere and argue it out.”

“Yes,” Owen agreed, turning to the detective. “Let’s go back to
Mr. Paget’s rooms, and then you can take him to the police-station
afterwards.”

Geoffrey naturally became indignant, but in the taxi the detective put
his hand into the inner pocket of the young fellow’s dinner-jacket and
drew forth the missing wallet!

“See!” exclaimed the man; “here is the missing property--found upon
you! You can’t make any excuse, can you?” Then turning to Owen he said:
“It’s very fortunate, sir, that you came to Vine Street at once--or he
would have thrown the case away.”

Geoffrey could not utter a word. He knew that he was the victim of some
foul plot, from which it seemed impossible to extricate himself.

Back at Half Moon Street, a prisoner in the hands of the police, he
stood with the three men, utterly dumbfounded. He protested that the
wallet must have been purposely placed in his pocket when he had taken
off his jacket in order to wash his hands. But all three laughed at
this lame explanation.

“And what do you intend to do?” asked Falconer.

“To prosecute you for theft,” answered Owen. “And it will be a nice end
to your very promising career as a wireless engineer!”

Geoffrey bit his lip in dismay.

“Is there no other way out of it?” he asked in a low, hard voice.

“Yes,” answered Paget, “there is.” And he asked the detective to retire
into the next room. Then when the door was closed, the man Paget
exclaimed:

“I propose, Owen, that if this young fellow gives us the diagrams
of his new device for printing automatic wireless signals from the
call-device, that we say nothing about it. It would only be a _quid pro
quo_--eh?”

“Yes. But he might give us false diagrams,” Owen remarked, shaking his
head dubiously.

“Make him write a statement that the money has been found upon him, and
in order to avoid arrest and scandal he undertakes to hand over to us
to-night his diagrams, and also his working apparatus. We will motor
down with him to Warley for that purpose.”

To this course the two men agreed. Therefore Paget drew up a confession
and undertaking which, under compulsion, Geoffrey signed, rather than
be brought before the magistrates next day.

Afterwards all four descended together and went out into the street,
where the taxi was still awaiting them.

Just as they were about to enter it Geoffrey slipped a police whistle
from his vest pocket and blew it, when instantly four constables
and a man in plain clothes closed upon them, and Geoffrey gave all
three in charge! The man who had posed as a detective was one of the
blackmailing gang!

The faces of the trio were a study. Their plot had been a clever one,
but the counterplot which Geoffrey had laid for them had been complete.

The man Paget and his two friends appeared in due course at the Old
Bailey, and all three returned to penal servitude, thus freeing poor
May Farncombe--whom they had compelled to be their accomplice.
They had held her in their power by first compelling her to sign a
confession of theft in a similar manner, and then holding over her
threats of exposure to her family and her friends.

The plot which the girl revealed to Falconer was a deeply-laid and
cleverly-conceived one in order to obtain the secret of his invention,
which they had planned to sell to some German firm in New York for a
very considerable sum.

Indeed, Paget had already booked his passage across the Atlantic, and
would have sailed from Liverpool on the following day had not Geoffrey
laid his plans to entrap the unscrupulous trio.

Needless to say that on the day following their arrest steps were taken
to patent the new device--which is now safe from infringement.




CHAPTER X

THE MYSTERY OF BERENICE


Over the picturesque Welsh mountains the wind blew fresh, even though
the afternoon was a brilliant one in August.

Outside the great Marconi wireless station high up at Ceunant, midway
between Carnarvon and Llanberis, Geoffrey stood with Sylvia and her
mother, explaining the huge aerial system with its ten masts, each
four hundred feet high, placed around the cluster of white buildings
comprising the power-house, transmission rooms, and other departments.
The tall masts dwarfed the buildings beneath them, and both mother and
daughter gazed up at them wonderingly when Falconer explained that from
them messages had actually been sent through the ether and received
clearly at Sydney, a distance of twelve thousand miles.

They had spent a most interesting afternoon watching the commercial
messages, most of them in code, being transmitted to Belmar, on the
opposite side of the Atlantic, and now the car was waiting to take
them back to Carnarvon where they were staying the night at the Royal
Hotel. They had all three travelled down by the Irish Mail from Euston
to Holyhead, arriving there in the morning, and after breakfast at the
hotel the car had taken them out to Ceunant, where they had lunched
with the engineer-in-charge, and Geoffrey had afterwards acted as their
guide, making full explanation of all they witnessed.

“Wonderful!” declared Sylvia as they entered the car. “The public speak
airily of wireless, yet they little know to what marvellous perfection
it is being brought.”

“That’s so, dear,” replied the South American widow. “I’m sure we’re
awfully obliged to Geoffrey for showing us the station. It is a
privilege accorded to very few.”

“Well,” laughed Geoffrey, “the company certainly do not encourage
the merely curious. Otherwise all our stations would be overrun with
visitors.”

The drive back through Llanrug to old-world Carnarvon was delightful,
and after tea Sylvia and her lover took a stroll through the town as
far as the great mediæval fortress which is washed on two sides by the
waters of the Menai Straits and the Seiont. They were shown the Eagle
Tower, where the first Prince of Wales was born; the Queen’s Tower, and
the other historic portions of the fine old castle, and then returned
to the hotel to rejoin Mrs. Beverley.

Later on, while they were at dinner, a tall, good-looking, dark-haired
young man entered and glanced around to find a seat.

Instantly Geoffrey recognised him as Jack Halliday, an old schoolfellow
at Shrewsbury, who was now a mining engineer, and was rapidly rising
in his profession. The men greeted each other warmly, and on being
introduced to the two ladies, the newcomer was invited to a vacant seat
at their table.

“When I last met you, Jack, you were just going out to Peru,” Geoffrey
said.

“Yes, that was a couple of years ago--wasn’t it? I did some prospecting
in the Andes, and was quite successful,” replied the young man. “Now
I’m off to Egypt for a trip.”

“How lovely!” remarked Sylvia. “I wish you’d go to Egypt, mother.”

“Mine will not be a very comfortable journey,” said the young man. “I’m
going prospecting.”

“In search of mines?” asked Sylvia.

“Yes. There is believed to be a rich deposit of gold at a spot a little
to the south of the ancient city of Berenice, on the west coast of the
Red Sea, not far from Cape Ras Benas. I have obtained from the Egyptian
Government a permit to prospect.”

“How extremely interesting!” remarked Mrs. Beverley. “What makes you
think that gold is there?”

“Well, it appears that after Pharaoh Ptolemy II founded the port about
three centuries before the Christian era, gold was discovered in
considerable quantities about eight miles off. For several centuries
the mines were worked, until, with the destruction of the city, they
were also obliterated,” was Halliday’s reply. “Quite recently, however,
my friend, Professor Harte, the well-known Egyptologist, has been
exploring the ruins, and among the hieroglyphic inscriptions there, he
found mention of the mines and of their richness. Therefore, it is my
intention to endeavour to locate them.”

“I wish you every success, Jack,” exclaimed Geoffrey. “You certainly
deserve it, for you’re always on the move.”

“And you meet with a good many adventures when you are on prospecting
expeditions, I suppose?” remarked the widow.

“Well--a few,” he answered modestly. “It is a pretty rough life
sometimes, but one gets used to it,” and his bronzed face relaxed into
a merry smile.

The party spent an enjoyable evening together, and while Geoffrey
gossiped with the rich widow, his friend Jack had a long chat with
Sylvia.

They all retired to bed early, and were up betimes to the usual country
hotel bacon-and-egg breakfast, the habit from which the Englishman,
however cosmopolitan, can never break himself. In northern Europe they
eat cheese for breakfast, in the south the horse-shaped roll with
coffee, but the Briton must ever have his eggs-and-bacon in no matter
what climate.

On arrival at Euston that evening they parted, and Geoffrey went
back to his work in the research department at Chelmsford. He was
experimenting with the four-electrode valve, the latest and most
scientific invention applied to wireless reception.

Hour after hour, and day after day, with his telephones clamped over
his ears, he experimented with new circuits, new inductances, and new
condensers, the main object being the application of wireless telephony
to commercial and household requirements in opposition to the heavy
cost of construction and maintenance of land lines.

Many of the experiments in that great, well-lit room had given
marvellous results, which when made public, would cause amazement
throughout the world.

One afternoon, ten days later, Geoffrey met Jack Halliday in London.
The latter was busy preparing his outfit for the expedition to recover
the mine of the ancient Egyptians. Falconer was walking along the
Strand not far from Marconi House when they accidentally came face
to face. With Halliday was a man of about forty, smartly-groomed and
well-set-up, apparently an ex-officer, with a well-dressed and rather
pretty young woman. The man’s name was Gilbert Farrer, and the girl’s
Miss Beryl Hessleton.

“We’re just going along to the Carlton to tea,” Jack said. “Come with
us.”

Geoffrey accepted the invitation, and they all took tea in the
palm-court.

Farrer struck Geoffrey as quite a good fellow--a man who had knocked
about the world a good deal, no doubt. His companion seemed a smart,
go-ahead woman, who smoked her after-tea cigarette in a long amber
holder, and seemed to thoroughly enjoy it.

It was soon apparent from the conversation that they were new
acquaintances of Jack’s. He had met Miss Hessleton on a steamer between
Bergen and Hull a few weeks before, and they had met again by chance at
Ciro’s. Then she had introduced him to her friend, Farrer.

After tea, while the orchestra played softly, the conversation
naturally turned upon Jack’s expedition, for he had mentioned it to
Beryl Hessleton on the trip across the North Sea.

“Well,” said Farrer, “I wish you every good luck on your venture.
There’s no doubt that there’s gold in Egypt--and a good deal of it. I
recollect when I was at Oxford reading up a lot about the mines of the
ancient Egyptians. The workings have, I suppose, during the ages, been
buried in the desert sand?”

“Yes,” replied Jack. “The sands are always shifting, and no doubt when
the ancient city was destroyed and abandoned before the advance of the
enemy, the Egyptians took good care to obliterate their mines.”

“I expect you’ll have some difficulty in finding it,” remarked the
smart young lady between puffs of her cigarette. “Oh! how I wish I were
a man, so that I could travel and prospect. I’d love it! You’ve got
nothing to do, Gilbert. Why don’t you have a trip out to the Red Sea?”

“Ah!” laughed Halliday. “I fear you would soon wish yourself back in
London.”

Three evenings later Geoffrey, who had dined at Mrs. Beverley’s, walked
round to his club to get his letters before returning home to Warley,
when in the hall he found Jack Halliday. The latter had just looked in
to leave him a note of farewell, as he was leaving the following day
for Egypt.

“Come with me round to Bevin’s and have a bit of supper,” he urged.
“It’s my last night in town. And you can get a train home and on to
Chelmsford early in the morning.”

“Chelmsford!” laughed Geoffrey. “I can’t very well turn up at the Works
in a dinner-jacket!”

But thus pressed, he nevertheless accepted his old schoolfellow’s
invitation, and went round to Bevin’s, the smart night club close to
Portman Square.

The scene there was one of gay abandon, of reckless expenditure, and
somewhat questionable morals. Alas! how the West End has degenerated
since the war! Yet these adventures of Geoffrey Falconer have no
concern with the morals of Underground London.

Beryl Hessleton and Gilbert Farrer were there, and all four had supper,
during which Halliday told them that he hoped to win a fortune upon the
information which his friend, the famous Egyptologist, had derived from
the ancient monuments in the colossal ruins of Berenice, some of which
were quite as wonderful as those at Thebes.

“If I find this mine, I have a first-class firm into whose hands I can
easily place the concession,” he said to Falconer across the table,
amid all the gay laughter and irresponsible chatter of the assembled
company. The West End to-day only emulates the Montmartre of yesterday,
with its “Heaven,” “Hell,” and “The Red Windmill,” without counting the
“Dead Rat.”

The war has passed, but your cosmopolitan of any nation is just the
same easy-going Bohemian traveller, a gipsy whose laughing boast is
that when his hat is on his roof is on.

Such a man was Jack Halliday.

Geoffrey next day saw him off from Victoria Station with an array of
green canvas bags--long bags like those of cricketers. And with him
upon the platform stood Beryl Hessleton. The young mining engineer had
been pleasant to her, but he was rather surprised that she should take
the trouble to see him off. Geoffrey noted it, but made no comment.

About six weeks went by. One evening, having worked late in the
research laboratory at Marconi House, Geoffrey walked westward to his
club. On the way he met a middle-aged man-about-town named Franks,
whose acquaintance he had formed at Mrs. Beverley’s, and after a brief
chat, Geoffrey invited him to dine at the Grill of the Piccadilly Hotel.

While they were eating their meal a stout, white-haired man entered,
accompanied by the handsome Beryl Hessleton, who, recognising the young
radio-engineer, waved her hand across at him and smiled.

“Hulloa! Do you know her?” asked Franks with some surprise.

“Slightly,” was Geoffrey’s reply.

“H’m!” grunted the other. “A pretty cute crowd she’s in with.”

“How?” inquired Falconer.

“Oh--well. That old chap she’s with is old Daddy Whittaker--a friend of
a fellow named Farrer. The whole crowd are international crooks, so be
careful if you happen to know them.”

Geoffrey was surprised at this. But, as usual, he kept his own counsel.
It seemed that his old school chum, Jack, had got mixed up with a very
queer set. But in the West End there are queer sets on every hand, the
dancing and drug-taking degenerates of both sexes who live upon their
wits, and live very well, too. In certain circles within a mile of
Piccadilly Circus, thieves and blackmailing vampires hobnob with young
and pretty women of title, while innocent persons of both sexes fall
into the vortex of vice and gaiety.

Presently Geoffrey asked, glancing across at Beryl:

“What do you really know about her? She’s rather fond of a great pal of
mine.”

“Then I pity your pal, my dear Falconer,” was the elderly man’s reply.
Franks was a member of Wells’ and the Bachelors’, and he moved in a
very fast, go-ahead set.

“Why?” asked the young radio-engineer.

“Because of the past record of the crowd of which she is the
decoy-duck. That’s all,” was his friend’s reply. “Daddy Whittaker, who
is sitting yonder with her, is an old gaol-bird who still directs the
nefarious operations of a dozen men and women. And woe betide anyone
who falls into that girl’s net.”

Falconer, full of thought, went on with his dinner. They were out of
hearing of the girl and her companion. At last the young fellow related
how he had been at Bevin’s Club with his old schoolfellow, Halliday,
where Beryl and Gilbert Farrer had also been.

“Well, all I hope is that your friend Halliday will keep clear of that
unholy organisation,” said his companion. “They’ll stick at nothing.
But why are they friendly with your old schoolfellow? What is the
motive--eh?”

“I don’t know. He’s a mining engineer, and has just gone to the Red Sea
prospecting for a gold mine of the ancient Egyptians.”

“Ah! Then he should beware. There’s no doubt some very subtle plot
afoot. You should warn your friend to have a care.”

“I can’t get at him. He’s gone out to Cape Ras Benas, and, like all
prospectors, has not left an address.”

“That’s a pity. But when you get in touch with him again, warn him at
once to avoid Daddy and his crowd as he would a poison bowl. They’re
dangerous--very dangerous. I heard from my old friend, Superintendent
Tarrant, of Scotland Yard, all about them. You recollect the Alleyn
scandals in the papers about nine months ago? Well, old Whittaker and
the girl yonder were at the bottom of it all. They escaped prosecution
for blackmail, but they had netted over ten thousand pounds out of old
Mr. Alleyn.”

Falconer now grew suspicious of Beryl’s acquaintance with his chum. Why
had she seen him off so affectionately?

“I wonder where Farrer is to-night?”

“Farrer! Why, he’s a bird of passage--the kind of man who eats his
breakfast in London, dines in Paris, and lunches next day beyond
the Mont Cenis tunnel. He’s one of the cleverest thieves in all
Europe--with Daddy’s brain, of course, behind him,” was Franks’ reply.

Falconer looked across the crowded room to where the old man and the
girl were eating their dinner together. To others they appeared to be
father and daughter. The man had an evening paper, and now and then
glanced at it when the courses were finished.

When Geoffrey and Franks rose, the former looked across and bowed as he
went out, full of wonder and suspicion.

The days that followed proved busy days for Geoffrey. An entirely new
circuit for wireless telephony had been devised by the well-known
radio-expert, Captain Meredith, at the Works, and it was being
tested--low voltage on the anode of the valves and a high amperage on
the aerial--an achievement which had been attempted for a year with
little success. Here, however, the combined brains of the Marconi
_personnel_ were again persevering towards perfection, and it had
fallen upon Geoffrey to assist in some of the most delicate and
intricate experiments.

Hence he had but little time to go up to London to see Sylvia.

One day, about three months later, as he sat down to luncheon in
the bright, airy “officers’ mess” at the Works, one of his fellow
engineers, named Davies, seated opposite him, exclaimed:

“There’s a big find of gold just made at a mine worked by the Pharaohs
in Egypt. By Jove!” he added with a sigh, “mining seems to be more
profitable than wireless!”

Geoffrey, pricking up his ears, instantly asked:

“Where is the mine situated?”

“Somewhere on the Red Sea, close to the ruins of an ancient city--I
forget the name of the place.”

“Is it Berenice?”

“Yes--that’s the name of the place. How do you know? I was told in
London yesterday, and I was told in confidence,” Davies said.

“By whom?”

“By a fellow I know named Farrer. He’s been out there and got a
concession from the Egyptian Government. And he’s no doubt made a
fortune. I wish I were in his shoes!”

Geoffrey held his breath.

“Is your friend Farrer a mining engineer?” he asked.

“Not at all. He’s a speculator--bought the concession off somebody, I
suppose. A lucky speculation. I met him the night before last at the
Palais de Danse. He had with him a very pretty girl he called Beryl.”

“And I suppose you met an old white-haired man named Whittaker?”

“Oh, yes--‘Daddy,’ they called him,” was the reply.

“And perhaps you met them at Bevin’s night club--eh?” asked Falconer.

“How did you know that?” inquired his friend.

“Well--because I guessed it.”

“Then you also know Farrer?”

“Yes,” Geoffrey replied briefly, for the conversation had increased his
wonder and suspicion. Along the table the conversation turned, as it
always does, upon wireless research and the business of the Company,
interspersed with personal chaff. At Chelmsford there is a daily
reunion of heads of departments at luncheon, where the interchange
of ideas is always intellectual, for gathered there are men of the
greatest scientific knowledge, mostly young, all enthusiastic, and all
experts in their own branches of radio-telegraphy.

Later that day young Falconer went into the testing department where
Davies was busily engaged, and returned to the conversation they had
had at luncheon.

“Is Farrer an intimate friend of yours?” asked Geoffrey.

“Not intimate. I know Beryl, his pretty little friend. I’ve dined once
or twice with him in town.”

“Have you ever met a fellow named Jack Halliday?”

“No. Never heard the name. Why?”

“Well, because Halliday, who is an old schoolfellow of mine, is
prospecting for gold on the Red Sea coast.”

“Ah! Then no doubt Farrer has bought his secret.”

“Perhaps he’s stolen it,” Geoffrey suggested.

“No,” declared his friend. “Farrer is a real good fellow, most generous
to his friends, and one of the most upright men I’ve ever met.”

Geoffrey, reflecting upon what his friend Franks had told him, became
more mystified.

Where was Jack Halliday?

Next day Geoffrey, being in London, called at the address in Bayswater,
which Jack had given him.

The landlady said it was true that he had rooms there, but she had
not seen him since he left for Egypt. About three weeks ago, however,
she received a telegram from him, and this she produced. It had been
dispatched from Alexandria three weeks before, and asked Mrs. Gibbons
to send through Pickford’s by _grande vitesse_ his big black trunk
addressed to Cook’s baggage department at Marseilles, adding that he
was unable to return to London at present, as he was sailing for Cuba.

“And you have sent the trunk?” asked Geoffrey of the pleasant,
round-faced woman.

“It went on the day after I received the message. Pickford’s collected
it,” replied the landlady.

“What did the trunk contain?”

“Oh! of that I have no idea, except that I think Mr. Halliday kept
most of his business papers in it,” she said. “Once it was open in his
bedroom, and I saw in it a lot of papers tied up with pink tape, like
lawyers use.”

Falconer paused. Why had it been sent to Marseilles when his friend had
these rooms as his _pied-à-terre_ in London?

They were standing in Jack Halliday’s little sitting-room at the time,
and he glanced around. Mrs. Gibbons pointed to one or two souvenirs
of travel upon the walls, and a few curios upon a side-table which
she kept carefully dusted in the eager expectation of her wandering
lodger’s return.

Geoffrey Falconer left Bayswater with a distinct impression that
something was radically wrong. He could not understand why Jack, if
he were called from his prospecting upon the Red Sea coast to go
to Cuba, should have wanted his private papers sent to Cook’s at
Marseilles--that great baggage organisation through which passes half
the luggage of those going to India and the Far East.

That night he spoke to Sylvia, telling her the whole facts.

“I believe with you, Geoff, that something is wrong. Why should Mr.
Farrer, who is not an expert mining engineer like your friend Halliday,
be in possession of the secret of the Berenice Mine?”

“I mean to make it my business to inquire,” replied the young fellow.
“Jack shall not suffer if I can help it.”

Falconer did not allow the grass to grow beneath his feet, for next
day he was on the alert. The telegram had been sent by the Eastern
Company’s cable from Alexandria, but at ten o’clock that morning he
inquired of S.U.H. (Ras-el-Tin), the radio station at Alexandria,
whether the Englishman, Mr. Halliday, could be found in that city.

Half an hour later there came back a reply that inquiry had been made
at the chief post-office at Alexandria, but nobody of that name was
known there.

The next message Falconer sent was to the engineer-in-charge at Port
Sudan, on the Red Sea, south of Cape Ras Benas, asking him if he had
heard anything of the young mining prospector, Jack Halliday.

The answer by wireless was “Wait--wait--wait: for two hours.”

Geoffrey waited. Two hours later Port Sudan replied that nothing was
known of Mr. Halliday, and suggested that inquiry be made of Cairo. But
the high-power station at Abu Zabal, outside Cairo, later on answered
as follows to the experimental call-signal he had used:

“2.A.Z. from S.U.S. Reply to your inquiry _re_ mining engineer
Halliday, can obtain no knowledge of him here except that he was at Ras
Benas two months ago.”

That night Falconer went up to London, and with apparent idleness,
he lounged into Bevin’s night club. The place was crowded, and the
supper-room full after the theatre. It was not, however, long before he
espied the man he sought.

“Hulloa, Farrer!” he cried in warm welcome, and a moment later he bent
over the hand of his well-dressed companion, Beryl Hessleton. “Why, I
thought you were abroad!” exclaimed Geoffrey.

“Gilbert got back some time ago,” replied Beryl. “He’s had a lovely
time in Egypt. I only wish I had been there.”

“Yes,” said the smartly-groomed man in evening clothes, “I really had
a tophole time in Cairo. And afterwards I went up the Nile to Assouan.
There I met your friend Halliday. He’s found that ancient mine, and
I’ve bought it from him. He’s gone to Cuba.”

“Did you buy it?” asked Geoffrey in surprise. “Then I suppose Halliday
will soon be back in town again--eh?”

“No, I don’t think so. He’s been engaged by some big firm of American
mining engineers to prospect for iron in Cuba, I believe. Anyhow, when
we met at the Cataract Hotel, in Assouan, he was full of it. He didn’t
seem to think that the mine in Berenice was worth very much--worked out
centuries ago, he said. So he sold it to me with the concession--lock,
stock, and barrel.”

“And you will re-sell it to a company, I suppose?”

“Perhaps. I don’t quite know yet. I’ve one or two people in the city
ready to take it up.”

“But if the mine is worked out, of what use is it?”

“I don’t think that Halliday really explored it very much. He found it,
but just at the moment he received the tempting offer from America; so
he was glad to get rid of it. I went over to Ras Benas before I bought
it, and looked into the hole in the sand which gave entrance to the
ancient workings.”

“Well, I hope you will find that it is still a rich mine. Gold is sadly
wanted now that America holds all that we had before the war.”

“That’s just it,” said the smartly-dressed man. “Old Julius Evenden
used that selfsame argument yesterday when I put the prospect before
him.”

“Then you’ve offered it to Evenden?” asked Falconer, naming one of the
greatest financial houses in the city.

“Yes, and I believe he’ll take it up. If so, it will mean a fortune for
me.”

“Oh! you always were terribly lucky, Gilbert!” laughed Beryl. “Let’s
go across and have a drink. I’m sure Mr. Falconer wants to wish you
good-luck!”

And the trio passed along to the little bar just off the dancing-room.

A Marconigram sent from Fenchurch Street to Marseilles next day by
Falconer elicited the fact, from Cook’s Agency, that the black trunk
received from London addressed to Mr. Halliday had been claimed three
days after its arrival.

Again Geoffrey inquired by wireless for a description of the man who
had claimed it, but the reply was that he was “an elderly Englishman”!

Though Geoffrey was very full of work, experimenting upon the new
circuit for wireless telephony, nevertheless he devoted all his spare
time to solving the whereabouts of his old school chum. And in this
Sylvia gladly assisted him.

By constantly spending his evenings amid the gay crowd at Bevin’s he
was able to watch Gilbert Farrer pretty closely. He often met the
sprightly Beryl, who was never loth to dance with him, Geoffrey being
an unusually good dancer, and good-looking into the bargain. So by
being on friendly terms with the girl Falconer was enabled to keep
Farrer under observation.

Farrer knew, of course, of Geoffrey’s friendship with the mining
engineer, but that fact did not concern him now that he had purchased
his interest in the re-discovered mine of the Pharaohs.

At Bevin’s, late one night, Geoffrey had been dancing with Beryl,
Farrer being absent. He had not looked in all night, and it was already
three o’clock in the morning. Geoffrey was about to return to his
club when a white-haired, benevolent-looking old gentleman, whom he
at once recognised as “Daddy” Whittaker, the notorious crook, came in
and advanced to meet the girl, who, in turn, introduced him to her
companion.

“Seen Gilbert to-night?” asked old Mr. Whittaker eagerly of Beryl.

“No; I haven’t seen him all day. He promised to take me to lunch at the
Pall Mall, but he never turned up--and he didn’t ‘’phone’.”

“Ah! he’s busy,” replied the old man in a low voice. “He fixed up that
little matter with Evenden this afternoon. They are sending out two
experts to Egypt at the end of the week.”

“What!” cried the girl. “The Berenice Mine sold! Then Gilbert’s made
his fortune! He always was a lucky fellow.”

“Yes; but he doesn’t want it known yet,” the old fellow went on
confidentially. “So say nothing about it.”

“Farrer told me about his purchase of the mine,” Geoffrey remarked
quite casually. “It’s most interesting--is it not? My friend, Jack
Halliday, re-discovered it after the secret of its existence had been
lost for two thousand years.”

At mention of Halliday the white-haired old man glanced at him quickly,
but his manner did not alter in the least.

“Yes; I believe Gilbert bought it from a man named Halliday, together
with the concession which he’s got from the Egyptian Government. Anyhow
this mine could not be in better hands than those of Evenden. Of course
it may be exhausted. But the experts they are sending out will soon
decide that.”

“In any case a company will be formed to run it, I suppose?” asked
Beryl, whereupon the crafty old man smiled knowingly, as he remarked:

“An ancient gold mine always attracts subscribers.”

Two days later Geoffrey Falconer sat in the old-fashioned room of Mr.
Julius Evenden, the world-famous financier, and made inquiry regarding
the Berenice Gold Mine.

At first the head of the great financial house, whose dealings were
world-wide, was inclined to resent undue intrusion into his business
dealings with Gilbert Farrer, until the young fellow explained that
his old schoolfellow had, owing to Professor Harte’s discovery of the
hieroglyphics, gone to the ruins of the ancient Egyptian city for the
purpose of searching for the long-forgotten mine.

“I never heard Professor Harte’s name in connection with the
affair,” said old Mr. Evenden. “Of course, he is one of our greatest
Egyptologists. Perhaps he is on the telephone,” and he rang his bell
and gave his clerk instructions to endeavour to get through to the
Professor.

Ten minutes later Mr. Evenden was speaking with the Professor, who
lived at Wimbledon, and urged him, if possible, to call at Great
Winchester Street that afternoon.

The hour fixed was four o’clock, and Geoffrey was present at the
interview.

When Mr. Evenden informed the great Egyptologist that he had purchased
all interest in the re-discovered mine from Gilbert Farrer, he stood
amazed.

“But surely my friend Halliday, to whom I gave a copy of the
inscription upon the ruins of the Temple of Isis at Berenice, and whom
I trust implicitly, would never have parted with his interest in the
mine without first consulting me!” he cried.

“Here is the transfer,” replied Mr. Evenden, handing the Professor a
document. “It was signed before a French Notary-Public in Alexandria
you will see.”

The old Professor adjusted his pince-nez, and after reading the
document carefully, examined the signature.

“That is forged!” he declared at once. “I know Jack Halliday’s
signature extremely well. I have some of his most recent letters here,”
and he took several letters from his pocket. These all three examined
very closely. Some were signed “Jack,” others “J. Halliday.” But in
no case did the signature on the document exactly correspond with the
signature on the letters!

“You see the last letter was dated from Alexandria six weeks ago, and
speaks of his success, and his intention of coming straight home,” the
Professor remarked.

“Then where is he now--and why has his luggage been sent so urgently to
Marseilles and claimed?” asked Falconer.

Mr. Evenden thereupon became suspicious, and related his dealings with
Gilbert Farrer, and how he had already paid him a considerable sum on
account, until the reports of the engineers he was sending to Egypt
should be forthcoming.

“There is no doubt that Halliday has re-discovered the workings,” said
the Professor. “But where is he now! He seems to have mysteriously
disappeared.”

“The only man who knows his whereabouts is Gilbert Farrer,” declared
Geoffrey decisively. “For what reason was that trunk containing his
private papers sent so hurriedly to Marseilles?”

“That we must discover,” declared Mr. Evenden. “Our policy must be to
act without arousing Farrer’s suspicions,” he added.

Thereupon the three sat down and evolved a plan.

The first step was taken by Geoffrey, who, through Beryl, discovered
the whereabouts of “Daddy” Whittaker. Next day he met him by
appointment in the Park, and as they were walking together, Sylvia, who
was dressed as a tourist, took a secret snapshot of them as they passed.

This photograph was quickly developed, and that same night Falconer
left with it for Marseilles.

Two days later he showed it to the employé at Cook’s baggage depôt,
who at once, and without hesitation, declared the elder man to be the
person who claimed the trunk addressed to Mr. Halliday. The trunk had
been signed for and taken away on a taxi-cab. The signature in the book
was that of “J. Halliday.” But it certainly was not Jack’s!

Geoffrey took the _rapide_ back to Paris that night, sorely puzzled.
What had become of his old chum? Marconigrams were sent broadcast in
search of him. The passenger lists of six ships sailing from Marseilles
to Cuba were examined, but in no case was there any trace of any such
person in the lists.

Early in the morning, as the express halting at Laroche awakened him,
it suddenly crossed his mind that Jack’s identity was being obliterated
by some clever combination of the crooks. In Paris he would go to the
Bureau of the Sûreté and make inquiries.

At noon he was in the dull, drab office of the famous French detective,
Gaston Meunier, to whom he told the story, and asked whether he thought
his friend had met with foul play.

The little bald-headed official raised his shoulders and replied that,
in view of the fact that the trunk had been sent to Marseilles, it was
quite possible that Monsieur Halliday had returned from Egypt to France.

Then they went into dates. Afterwards the great detective rose, and
left him. Ten minutes later he reappeared, having a number of police
photographs of persons who had been found dead, suicides, and those
wilfully murdered, whom the police both in Paris and in the Departments
had failed to identify.

The period covered was six months.

With great eagerness Geoffrey Falconer examined one after another--many
of them pictures of recovered bodies, a terrible, gruesome
collection--when at last he came across the picture of a man lying face
upward on the grass.

“That’s Jack!” he exclaimed wildly. “I have no hesitation in
identifying him!”

Monsieur Meunier turned to the back of the large unmounted photograph,
and read what was written there as follows:

  “An unknown. Supposed to be English. Discovered at 7.10 a.m., on
  October 28th, behind a small pottery factory, a mile from the village
  of St. Uze, close to Valence, Department of the Drôme. The medical
  examination showed the person to have died from some vegetable
  poison. It is believed that he was deposited at the spot during the
  night from a passing car. No arrest has been made. Any details of
  identification to be sent to the Prefect of the Drôme.”

Three days later Geoffrey arrived at Charing Cross accompanied by an
agent of the Paris Sûreté, who at once applied for the arrest and
extradition of the adventurer, Gilbert Farrer.

This took place when Farrer called at Mr. Evenden’s office next
day--and two months later, at his trial before the Assizes of the
Seine, the clever assassin who had stolen poor Jack Halliday’s secret
was sentenced to penal servitude for life.

At the present moment he is still in the convict prison at Lyons, while
his friend Beryl and “Daddy” Whittaker, who were both deeply implicated
in the plot, were each sentenced to fifteen years’ penal servitude at
the Old Bailey.

The great Berenice Gold Mine is being worked with huge success, but the
profits which should have been poor Jack’s are being paid regularly to
his widowed mother, who lives in seclusion in Pembrokeshire, deeply
mourning the loss of one of the finest and bravest of Englishmen.




CHAPTER XI

THE MARKED MAN


The military wireless station at Aldershot had just finished sending
the usual extracts from the press to the headquarters of the Rhine Army
at Cologne, when Geoffrey Falconer, with the telephones still over his
ears, lowered the wave-length of his reception set, and began to listen
to the strains of an orchestra being played at The Hague.

It was a Sunday afternoon, and “the Dutch Concert,” to which all
wireless men in England listen so eagerly, was in progress.

Seated in his own experimental laboratory at Warley he leaned his
elbows upon the operating-bench and listened.

Who would have dreamed a couple of years ago that a concert given at
The Hague could be heard with distinctness by wireless in every corner
of the United Kingdom! A cornet solo at the moment being played was
loud and perfectly clear. He turned a switch, when from the black
trumpet of the loud-speaker telephone on the table the sound became so
amplified that the instrument could be heard in any part of the house.

During the day he had been engaged upon some highly interesting
experiments upon a crystal producing oscillations, audible frequency
currents being obtained by two metal electrodes dipped into the powder
of a certain crystal. The matter was extremely technical, and would not
be understood by any but radio experimenters; therefore, I need not
further describe it. Suffice it to say that all the time Geoffrey could
spare from the Works at Chelmsford he devoted to research in his own
laboratory at home.

Mrs. Beverley and Sylvia were away in the Trossachs, hence he seldom
went to London save when duty took him up to Marconi House.

Geoffrey listened to several songs from The Hague, and then put down
the head-’phones, switched his aerial wires to earth, and went out into
the pleasant old-world garden to smoke a cigarette. The afternoon was
clear and bright, and along the grass path of the long rose walk he
strolled, his mind full of the scientific problems which he had been
endeavouring all the morning to solve. He wandered to the lawn and sat
down in the summer-house awaiting the Professor, for always about that
hour he, too, came forth from his study to enjoy a cigar. Suddenly,
however, the housemaid appeared saying that he was wanted on the hand
telephone.

He hastened to the instrument in the hall, when he found himself
speaking to one of his fellow-engineers, named Jerrold, who lived at
Witham, and who had a private wireless station similar to his own not
far from the Marconi station there.

“I say, Falconer,” he exclaimed, “have you been listening lately?”

“Yes. Till about twenty minutes ago.”

“Ah! Then you didn’t hear that message to you--did you?”

“No. What message?” asked Geoffrey.

“Oh, somebody on the wireless ’phone about sixteen hundred mètres
wave-length, called you by name, Geoffrey Falconer, Warley, Essex,
England.”

“Yes. What did he say?”

“I don’t know whether it was a man’s voice or a woman’s. If a man’s it
was unusually high-pitched. The modulation was not very good, though I
heard the words quite distinctly, and wondered if you also heard them.
It was a kind of warning to you.”

“Warning!” echoed the young Marconi engineer. “In what way?”

“Well, whoever was calling you evidently did not know your call-signal,
so called your name. And then he went on to warn you _not to go East_.
If you do, you go at your peril!”

“Not to go East! How strange!” Geoffrey remarked.

“Yes; it’s a bit uncanny--isn’t it? He repeated it several times, and
then added the words: ‘Anyone hearing this urgent message, will they
kindly give it to Geoffrey Falconer at Warley, Essex, England?’”

“Some silly ass having a joke,” laughed Falconer. “I heard the other
day that some horrible spook message was given by a practical joker
over the radiophone, and the fellow who heard it, being a spiritualist,
nearly died of fright. Perhaps it’s the same fellow up to his tricks
again!”

“Perhaps. We’ll listen again for him, and if he gives any more warnings
we’ll put the direction-finders on him, and he’ll very soon have his
license taken away--if he has one,” said Jerrold.

“Well, it’s curious,” exclaimed Geoffrey laughing. “I wonder why I’m
forbidden to go East, and what peril is in store for me?”

“Ah! that I don’t know. The message was given at twenty-eight minutes
past three. So we’ll listen to-morrow at the same time, and on the same
wave-length.”

“Right-o!” said Falconer, hanging up the receiver and then strolling
back into the garden, wondering what the message really meant.

He had no intention of going East, save that he had a week before
received instructions to proceed to Lucerne, where, close by, on the
Tomlishorn, the highest peak of the Pilatus, above Alpnachstad, the
Marconi Company were erecting a one-and-a-half kilowatt telephone and
telegraph set ordered by the Swiss Government, the set used at the
meeting of the League of Nations at Geneva having proved such a great
success.

Lane, one of the engineers, was already out there, and he had been
ordered to follow him and superintend the fitting and testing of
the station before it was handed over to the Swiss authorities.
Switzerland certainly lay to the East, but what mysterious peril
awaited him there was certainly obscure. At first he grew a trifle
anxious in view of his previous adventures, but later that evening he
decided that it was some amateur who, having learned of his impending
departure, was playing a practical joke. Yet curiously enough only
about three or four people at the Marconi Works knew of the order he
had received.

At dinner that night he mentioned the incident to the Professor, but
both decided that it was only some silly joke.

On the following Thursday he left Charing Cross for Lucerne, where, at
the Schweizerhof, that well-known hotel facing the lake, Lane, who had
come by boat from Alpnach, came to meet him. Next day they ascended to
the famous Hôtel Pilatuskulm, where they took up their quarters, only
half an hour’s walk by a good path to the site of the new wireless
station.

Already the two one-storeyed buildings, and the aerial upon masts
of steel lattice, were erected. The material had all come out from
England, and the contractors had finished their work on the masts.
Indeed, Lane and his colleagues from Chelmsford had already commenced
their work of fitting the apparatus.

The wireless station which the Swiss Government had ordered was
situated high upon the wild rocky mountains, and was intended for the
communication of post-office messages with Rome, Vienna, and Paris, the
apparatus being the last word in Marconi invention.

The two great buildings which comprise the hotel were full
to overflowing, as it usually is in the autumn season, a gay
cosmopolitan crowd, who dined and danced and went on excursions either
mountaineering or along the great blue lake to Kussnacht to see Tell’s
Chapel, to Vitznau, Brunnen, or Fluelen. From the verandas there spread
a wonderful panorama of lake and mountain with the various peaks, with
the names of which the visitor so soon becomes familiar.

Geoffrey was standing alone on the veranda early one morning admiring
the wonderful view in the morning light. There was passing along a very
feeble, white-haired, white-bearded old man, accompanied by a handsome
dark-haired, well-dressed young woman, who, from the attention she paid
him, was palpably his daughter. The old fellow walked decrepitly as one
of advanced age, and ever and anon he halted to take in the wondrous
scene.

As they passed by they spoke in a tongue with which Geoffrey was
unfamiliar. But the young woman, he saw, wore a wedding ring.

Their eyes met, and in hers he noted a strange, appealing look--an
expression which, being quite unusual, caused him to ponder. He was
rapidly becoming a cosmopolitan after his various missions abroad on
behalf of the Marconi Company.

All that day he spent in the wireless hut high upon the bare, rocky
mountain, carefully fitting the instruments which were to give such a
wide range of telegraphy and speech--the very latest devices that had
been invented in the research department at Chelmsford, for, after all,
the real brains of wireless are centred in that old-fashioned Essex
town.

That night he was back with Lane at the big hotel, and dined in the
great _salle à manger_, amid the gay laughter and chatter.

Across in a corner sat the white-bearded old man with his married
daughter. He seemed rather deaf, for ever and anon she bent to speak
with him. And as she did so, he saw that she was most solicitous of his
welfare, as only a daughter could be.

Later that night, there being the usual dance in the big ballroom,
Geoffrey went in, and being attracted by her, invited her to dance with
him, and she accepted.

She was alone. The old man had retired to bed.

Geoffrey’s interest was purely one of curiosity. The girl-wife seemed
to be carrying out her duty to her father, and was terribly bored in
doing so.

Before they parted that night he learned that she had come from
Serbia, and that her name was Marya Pavlovitch. She had married a state
official a year and a half before. Her father’s name was Colonel Yovan
Vanoff, a well-known officer of the King’s Guard at Belgrade, who had
fought valiantly against the Turks in the first Balkan war, and had
gained distinction at the decisive Battle of Kumanovo.

“My husband is in England,” she told Geoffrey, speaking English well.
“He is attached to the Serbian Mission. So I am here with my father,
who, alas! is becoming daily more feeble.”

Next evening they met again--and the next. The old man was most
affable, and day after day they had long chats in French, in which Lane
often joined.

One afternoon Geoffrey went by boat along to Lucerne, eager and
anxious. Mrs. Beverley and Sylvia had arrived at the Schweizerhof,
that great hotel which overlooks the lake. They had tired of the
Trossachs, and also of dusty London, so in accordance with young
Falconer’s suggestion, they had arrived to spend a couple of weeks in
“lovely Lucerne”--that town in which, before the war, one could spend a
week under the wing of any tourist company for the modest sum of five
guineas, railway fare included.

Geoffrey met Sylvia and her mother, and after half an hour in the
great lounge of the hotel they dined together. The “Wild Widow” was
charmed with the hotel and its outlook, while Sylvia, delighted at the
retirement of the penurious Lord Hendlewycke, who now no longer visited
them, contrived to snatch a few moments alone with her lover.

“Do you remember, Geoffrey, what you told me--that mysterious message
by wireless telephone warning you not to go East?” she said anxiously,
as they sat in the corridor after dinner, while her mother had gone
upstairs.

“Yes,” he replied. “But really the whole thing was so ridiculous. It
was, I’m convinced, only some amateur playing a practical joke.”

“Perhaps. But you should take no risks, dear,” she replied. “I don’t
like the situation. Remember all that has passed.”

“Why are you so anxious?” he asked.

“Well,” she answered, glancing around, “you are, no doubt, a marked
man, Geoff. You have been able to upset the plans of various
conspirators, and they, no doubt, seek their revenge. Hence, be
careful--do be very careful.”

Geoffrey laughed. He ridiculed the idea that any vengeance should be
attempted upon him.

“I have only done my duty, my dear Sylvia!” he laughed. “My duty to the
company and my duty to the Nation. Everybody surely understands that.”

“No,” the girl replied; “everybody does not understand. You, as an
honest man, are at enmity with a certain revolutionary section of
society. They know it. And they may lay their plans accordingly,” she
said warningly. “I, of course, have no knowledge of any such plot--but
I do urge you, Geoffrey, to keep very wide awake. I have some strange
intuition that something may happen to you. Why--I can’t tell you!”

“My dear Sylvia, I hope I am always wide awake,” he laughed, kissing
her clandestinely in the shadows, while a few moments later Mrs.
Beverley reappeared.

Next morning mother and daughter went up by the railway from Alpnach
to the Pilatuskulm, where they lunched with the young engineer and his
friend Lane, and afterwards ascended to the newly constructed wireless
station. It was not yet in working order, but Sylvia was highly
interested, for she had by that time quite a good superficial knowledge
of the apparatus and the power-plant, which, by the way, was almost a
replica of the set which Geoffrey had installed at Bouvignes Aerodrome,
in Belgium.

In the evening they went down again to Lucerne, but not until the
following evening did Geoffrey again see the girl with whom he was so
deeply in love. As soon as he had finished his work in that high-up
spot on the Tomlishorn, he returned to the hotel, and after changing
his clothes, descended to Lucerne and dined with the South American
widow and her daughter.

Afterwards he went out with Sylvia on to the veranda. The night was a
glorious one, the full moon rendering the lake and mountains a scene
fairy-like and beautiful such as is presented perhaps nowhere else in
the world. The view from the Schweizerhof on a moonlit night is always
superb.

Again Sylvia returned to the strange warning from the ether which
Geoffrey had received. She again confessed that she somehow felt
uncomfortable about it. But her lover only pooh-poohed the affair,
telling her that it was not the first time that jokes had been played
by wireless.

“Why, not long ago,” he said, “the operator at one of the aerodromes
for civil flying was spoken to over the wireless telephone by the Air
Minister himself, who explained that he was flying from Scotland in a
certain machine, and that in half an hour he intended to descend at
that aerodrome. There was a great bustle at the news, but though they
waited till dark the Minister never arrived. And not until next day did
they learn that it was a hoax played by one of the pilots.”

The girl laughed, but still she urged Geoffrey to take care.

“You really cannot be too careful,” she declared. “I tell you I have
once or twice experienced a strange presage of evil.”

“Oh, you make me feel quite nervy!” he declared, and then, as the air
was cold, they returned to the palm-court, where Mrs. Beverley was
seated.

The widow and her daughter remained in Lucerne for a fortnight, and
then leaving Geoffrey to complete his work, went on by way of the
Gothard to Milan.

Meanwhile Marya Pavlovitch and her father remained at the Hôtel
Pilatuskulm, and both Geoffrey and Lane frequently met them. The
girl-wife was most devoted to her father, who was often in a grumpy
mood, as is usual with men of advanced age and slight infirmity. Young
Madame Pavlovitch was naturally filled with curiosity concerning the
new wireless station--for to ladies wireless is usually an enigma to be
studied as part of Nature’s half-revealed problem--and several times,
leaving her father, she had ascended the steep rock-girt road to the
higher heights where, upon a little grass-grown plateau, the two new
huts had been built.

Three weeks passed. Geoffrey completed his work, and made tests. The
results were perfectly satisfactory. The telephony was reported as
“R.9” over the Alps as far as Genoa, and to Marseilles, Coltano in
Italy, Munich, Paris, and other places.

The range of speech was even further than what had been anticipated
at the Works at Chelmsford. Other wireless systems had been tried by
the Swiss Government, and had not come up to the standard required.
But here the Marconi Company had scored another success over its
competitors.

Since Sylvia’s departure, Geoffrey had often met young Madame
Pavlovitch, sometimes on the boat between Alpnach and Lucerne, and
sometimes in the streets of Lucerne, for she went there nearly every
other day to obtain medicines for her father, she explained. On two
occasions he had seen her enter a large detached private house in
the Bruchstrasse, not far from the Synagogue. She had not, however,
seen him, and he had not mentioned the matter. Yet it seemed apparent
that the reason of her visits to Lucerne was to call at the house in
question. And further, she always seemed annoyed whenever he met her on
the way backwards or forwards along the lake.

One day Geoffrey had returned from the wireless station, and was taking
his tea in the lounge, when the hotel manager came to him hurriedly and
mentioned that the Colonel had been taken suddenly unwell, and that his
daughter could not be found. She had gone to Lucerne after luncheon, he
believed.

As the matter seemed one of urgency, and as the young Englishman was
going to spend the evening in Lucerne, he resolved while on board the
boat to go to the house in the Bruchstrasse, see whether Marya was
there, and inform her of her father’s illness.

This he did. A rather tall, elderly man-servant opened the door, and
when he inquired for Madame Pavlovitch he ushered him into a cosy,
beautifully-furnished room, and without inquiring his name, closed the
door and left him.

The room was divided from the adjoining apartment by long
white-enamelled folding doors which stood slightly ajar. The
man-servant must have forgotten to inform madame of his presence there,
for he had been in the room hardly half a minute when into the next
room, a big place decorated in white and gold, there came several men
who looked like officers in mufti, accompanied by three women, one of
whom was little Madame Pavlovitch.

He could not fail to hear what they were earnestly discussing in
French. He stood aghast. They were planning the assassination of Andra
Nikolitch, the well-known Serbian statesman, who was now President
of the Council, and was at the moment staying with the Serbian Crown
Prince at the Luzerner-Hof!

The terms in which the matter was being discussed admitted of no doubt
that the Colonel’s pretty daughter was at its head, and that the
attempt was to be made one morning when the statesman took his usual
walk under the trees of the Schweizerhof-Quai.

Geoffrey stood astounded at his discovery. From their conversation
it was also plain that at the same time other Ministers were to be
murderously attacked in Belgrade.

Suddenly the serious fact dawned upon the young fellow that if he were
discovered there he would not be allowed to leave that house alive.
Balkan conspirators are not to be trifled with. They hold human life of
but little account.

Falconer saw that his only chance of safety was to face the situation
boldly. He placed his hand upon his hip-pocket to reassure himself
that his revolver was there. Then, suddenly, he stepped forth into
the big room and stood before those who had assembled to discuss their
dastardly plans.

His appearance caused a sensation almost electrical.

“Why!” gasped the dark-eyed Marya. “It is M’sieur Falconer!”

Next second he was surrounded by the angry company, and in more than
one hand he saw an automatic pistol. He was besieged by questions. What
could he reply?

He attempted to explain the situation, declaring that he was simply a
victim of circumstances, adding:

“I confess I have overheard your most interesting discussion!”

“The Englishman has been spying upon us!” cried a tall, rather elegant
man in a dark suit. “If he is not silenced--and at once--he will tell
the police! Remember, comrades, he is our enemy!”

“Yet M’sieur Falconer is also my friend!” declared the pretty Marya,
springing forward boldly. “I, however, had no idea that he was in this
house!”

Geoffrey tried to explain, but the clamour of the others was too
great. He told madame that her father was ill, but they only
laughed--declaring it to be an excuse. Hence he saw that unwittingly he
had entered a veritable hornets’ nest, and that retreat was impossible.
If he valued his life he would be compelled to stay and face the music.

He defied them, daring them to lay a finger upon him. But at madame’s
urgent request he withdrew his words.

“This house is closely guarded,” she explained, “but the servant,
Boris, having seen us together at the hotel and at other places, no
doubt believed you to be one of us.”

“And you must become one!” declared an elderly man who seemed to be
in authority over the rest. “You know our secret! So you will join
us--to-night--now! From this moment you will be watched night and day.
If you attempt to warn the authorities you will pay for it with your
life!”

Geoffrey protested, but in vain.

Then he was sworn in English and in French.

Afterwards, Marya Pavlovitch turned to the young wireless engineer, and
said:

“I will now tell you the truth, M’sieur Falconer. I told you that
my husband is in England with the Serbian Mission, but the fact is
that he was recalled to Belgrade two months ago, and on arrival he
was immediately arrested by order of his enemy, the President of the
Council, Andra Nikolitch. A false charge of treason was brought against
him, and he was tried in secret and shot,” and her voice trembled with
emotion. “He was entirely innocent. Of that I know. Hence we have
resolved to rid our country of certain of its unjust rulers.”

“Then you are a widow, madame,” Falconer remarked. “And what is
intended is your revenge--eh? My silence will cost Andra Nikolitch and
others their lives!” he added very slowly.

“Yes,” said the man who had urged his companions to kill him there and
then. “Understand, it is either your life--or theirs!”

The young engineer did not reply.

“You are now one of us,” the man went on in a deep, hard voice. “From
this moment you will be closely watched, and any attempt you make to
reveal what you know to any person will be followed immediately by
death. Please do not forget that!”

“I must now hurry back to my father,” said madame. “The meeting is at
an end.”

And Falconer left the house with her and returned to Alpnach.

He could now understand Marya’s wild, bitter hatred of the man who
had sent her innocent husband to his death. On the way back he again
mentioned it, but she seemed disinclined to discuss the tragedy.

“When is the blow to be dealt!” he asked in a low whisper in order not
to be overheard.

“I do not know,” was her answer, “The time is not fixed.”

“But I do not like the idea of being constantly watched,” he said. “It
will really be most irritating.”

“If you had not submitted you would not have left that house alive,”
replied the pretty, dark-eyed young woman.

“I have to thank you, madame,” he replied. “Yet the knowledge I have
gained has upset me considerably.”

“And do you not think that these fiends who murdered my husband richly
deserve the fate we have in store for them?” she asked.

Upon that point, however, Falconer refused to express an opinion.

As they entered the lounge of the hotel, he was surprised to see a
thin-faced, elderly man seated in a chair pretending to read a paper.
Instantly he recognised him as one of the group of plotters he had met
in Lucerne. He had already reached the Pilatuskulm, and was undoubtedly
there in order to keep observation upon him. Indeed he found that the
man, who had given the name of Vulkovitch at the bureau, had engaged
the room adjoining his own.

He had hardly entered his room when there was a low tap on the door and
Vulkovitch entered, with a word of apology.

“I need not tell you, M’sieur Falconer, why I am here. The object of my
visit is to impress upon you the necessity for complete secrecy. It was
all the fault of Boris, who, believing you to be one of us, admitted
you, but as you have now become associated with us, you must conform to
the rules already laid down. If you breathe a single word of what is in
progress, then I shall use this!”

And he produced from his inner pocket a large silver cigar-case.

“This is not so harmless as it may appear,” he went on. “It contains
an explosive so powerful that if thrown down it would wreck half the
hotel.”

“And incidentally blow you to pieces,” remarked Falconer, regarding the
case with interest.

The man smiled, and replied quietly.

“If I have occasion to use it I shall myself take certain precautions.
Only you would suffer, m’sieur.”

“Well, I hope it won’t be necessary for you to send me into the next
world,” laughed the young man. “But certainly the situation is a
decidedly unpleasant one--for me.”

“And equally for me,” the Serbian replied. “I regret that I am selected
for this not over-pleasant duty, and I only hope you will thoroughly
understand what my friends have decided. So I wish you good-night,” and
bowing politely he left the room.

Geoffrey Falconer obtained but little sleep that night. The whole
thing seemed like a nightmare--the oath of secrecy which he had taken,
madame’s tragic story, and her fierce revenge. It seemed that she was
paying all the expenses of that group of wild, political extremists
from Belgrade.

Next day everywhere Geoffrey went he was followed silently and
unobtrusively by the man Vulkovitch. He had a chat with Lane, but
within hearing of the man, and pleading being unwell, he did not go up
to the wireless station, but remained in the hotel all day in sight of
the silent watcher.

He spent the afternoon with the little widow, whose father had
recovered, but had not yet left his room.

After tea they went for a stroll together along the mountain path, and
Vulkovitch, noticing that he was with her, relaxed his vigilance.

When alone she told him a great deal. She had been passionately fond
of her late husband, who, before the war, had been assistant private
secretary to King Peter of Serbia. Afterwards he had entered the
diplomatic service, serving at the Legation in Paris. Then, when war
broke out, he joined his regiment and fought valiantly against the
Austrians until the terrible retreat. After the Peace he had been
appointed to the Serbian Mission sent to London. But for the past six
months, because he had discovered scandals concerning certain of the
Serbian Ministers, he had been a marked man, and had eventually fallen
the victim of a deliberate plot to close his lips by death.

Her father, however, knew nothing of what was in progress. She withheld
the truth of her widowhood from him on account of his weak state of
health.

“I am greatly annoyed at being constantly watched as I am,” Geoffrey
declared frankly. “I am unable to continue my work at the wireless
station because your friends fear that I may reveal the truth to
somebody. The situation is most unpleasant.”

“Yes; I quite understand, M’sieur Falconer,” she said. “It was quite
by accident that Boris admitted you. You thought to perform a friendly
action towards me, and instead you stepped into our group. But I beg
of you to have patience. I feared last night that they might kill you.
They are all desperate persons, I assure you.”

“Did you form the complot?” asked the young radio-engineer.

“No. They did. They came to me and told me my husband had been tried by
secret court-martial and executed, and then suggested revenge.”

Geoffrey reflected a moment.

“They came to you suggesting that you should bear the expenses of the
plot?”

“Yes. I inherited a considerable fortune from my aunt, and they
suggested that I should take this patriotic step, for by avenging the
death of my poor husband I should rid Serbia of her enemies who are
posing as her friends.”

Geoffrey pointed out that there could be no excuse for assassination,
but she instantly became angry, declaring that she demanded blood for
blood.

Two days passed. Wherever Falconer went the silent Vulkovitch watched
him until it got upon his nerves. He scarcely dared to exchange words
with Lane, who naturally grew curious as to his colleague’s change
of manner, for he had suddenly become quite morose. And naturally,
for were not the lives of several Serbian statesmen in his hands? He
longed to warn the Serbian Premier of his peril. But how?

He longed to leave Switzerland and fly back to England--but he knew the
consequences. Those plotters would follow him, and he would share the
same fate as that intended for Andra Nikolitch and certain members of
his Cabinet.

The third day was a Wednesday, and he had learnt that on Friday a
meeting was to be held in Lucerne to fix for the following day the
attempt upon the well-known statesman.

He was beside himself in agony of mind. These men--men whom he had
never met--were to be murdered in cold blood. Yet he was powerless
to raise a finger to save them. King Alexander and his Queen Draga
had long ago fallen victims of secret assassins, while more than one
Minister in Serbia had died under suspicious circumstances. Both
Serbia and Bulgaria--where the poor Prime Minister, Stambuloff, and
his successor, Petroff, had both been assassinated--were hotbeds of
political intrigue.

Geoffrey, though a threat of death was held over him, had during those
two days acted with caution. On the Friday morning he met Lane in
the lounge where the silent watcher was standing, and handed him a
cigarette from his case, at the same time saying that he had to go into
Lucerne, hence he could not go to the wireless station that day.

Then he whispered a few quick words that caused his friend to start.

Lane struck a match, but made only pretence of lighting his cigarette.

Instead, he said:

“Very well. Cheerio! I’ll see you here to-night. The station is on test
now. You really must come up and see it to-morrow.” And then he turned
away.

Two minutes later Lane was back in his bedroom alone, carefully
examining his cigarette. Unrolling it, he found upon the paper a
message written in an almost microscopical hand telling him of the
meeting of the conspirators at Lucerne that evening and its object,
and urging him to take the paper at once to the Lucerne police.

Lane contrived to get to Lucerne, where he saw the Prefect of Police
and showed him the paper. It bore the address in the Bruchstrasse;
therefore, police agents at once kept observation upon the place, a
fact which in secret Lane communicated to Falconer by a meaning glance
at the luncheon table, for Falconer always sat at a little table with
madame and her father, while Lane sat with two other men close by. One
of the men was the silent watcher.

Falconer, though young, was a man of quick initiative. He was in a
cleft stick and surrounded by unscrupulous enemies. Therefore he had
set his brains to outwit them.

The final meeting of the plotters, before the Minister was to be
assassinated by a bomb, was fixed for nine o’clock that night. At six
o’clock he watched for madame, who was, he knew, going to Lucerne to
be present. She came down, smartly dressed, and as she went out, he
hastened and overtook her.

“Madame Pavlovitch,” he whispered, “I want a word with you--a serious
word.”

She stopped suddenly, and then they strolled across the gravelled drive.

“I know you are going to Lucerne. But I warn you not to go!”

“Why not?” she asked, surprised.

“Because if you do you will be arrested for conspiracy,” he replied
firmly. “Further, you are only being made a tool of by a band of
anarchists who are using your money for their own personal ends.”

“What do you mean?” she demanded resentfully. “Have you betrayed us?”

“I have betrayed the men who have betrayed you,” was his answer. “Let
us walk along, and I’ll tell you the truth,” he added.

Utterly amazed at the risk which the young Englishman had taken, she
strolled at his side and listened eagerly.

“Those people have lied to you,” he said. “They are hoping to carry
out a scheme by which certain of your Ministers are to be killed from
motives of personal vengeance.”

“How?”

“They have told you a lurid story concerning your husband--that he has
been executed. Instead he is in prison at Belgrade for six months. Next
week he will be liberated!”

“Alive!” she gasped. “Is Danilo alive? He has never written to me!”

“Because your friends the conspirators have intercepted his letters.
The man Vulkovitch was taken away from here directly after lunch,
and since then I have been in secret wireless communication with the
Minister of Justice in Belgrade, from whom I have discovered the true
facts concerning your husband.”

She paused.

“But I must go to Lucerne to-night,” she said, somewhat disinclined to
give credit to his story.

“If you go there it will be at your peril. A raid will be made upon the
house, and all will be arrested.”

“Are you fooling me, M’sieur Falconer?” she asked, facing him.

“I certainly am not,” he replied. “Keep away from Lucerne, and you will
find the whole of the men, who have been posing as your friends and
taking your money under false pretences, in the hands of the police.”

At first she was undecided, but he repeated that if she went to Lucerne
it was at her own risk.

He had denounced the plotters, and thus saved the lives of innocent
men--but he had given no information concerning her, he said.

“Instead of going to Lucerne, leave Switzerland forthwith, madame,” he
urged. “Get away--now there is yet time. Within a week I guarantee that
your husband will be free.”

The dark-haired young woman took Falconer’s advice, and two hours
later, accompanied by her father, she left the hotel. Meanwhile the
Lucerne police that night arrested the whole group, and found in the
house bombs, firearms, and correspondence which proved beyond doubt the
truth of what the young Englishman had written upon the cigarette-paper.

With the exception of madame, the whole desperate group subsequently
appeared before the Assize Court of Lucerne, and were all sent to long
terms of imprisonment.

But before the trial took place Geoffrey had received a letter from
Marya, dated from Paris, telling him that her husband had reappeared as
though from the grave, and that they were again united.

And now the most curious part of the whole affair is to be related.

Let it be told in Sylvia Beverley’s own words, as she told it to her
lover in the drawing-room at Upper Brook Street a week later.

“My dear Geoff,” she said, “as I told you, I had a curious presage of
evil concerning you. Why, I can’t tell. Something seemed to impress
upon my mind the fact that if you went East you would be in peril.
Days--weeks went on until I became obsessed by the feeling that
something was about to happen to you. Perhaps it was an intuition
because we love each other so dearly. Yet the fact remains, I was in
fear. And because of that, I went to an amateur wireless experimenter
whom I know--a man at Folkestone--and I got him to speak that
mysterious message to you over the radio-telephone--that message of
warning!”

He took her hand in his, and their lips met in a long, passionate
caress.




CHAPTER XII

THE CROW’S CLIFF


Mrs. Beverley was giving one of her usual dinner-parties at Upper Brook
Street. Among the guests were two Cabinet Ministers and their wives,
for money can always command guests, the names of whom will be duly
recorded in the society column of the _Morning Post_ next day.

Money buys publicity, and without the latter nowadays one may as well
live in suburbia, or in the peace of a country village.

When the hostess and her guests went to the drawing-room, Geoffrey--who
had just come back from making some adjustments at the wireless station
at Renfrew--managed to snatch a quarter of an hour with Sylvia in the
cosy little sitting-room next to the library.

The young engineer had been telling her of his work up in Scotland,
and of a pleasant Saturday he had spent up Loch Lomond, when the girl
suddenly asked:

“How do you like Mrs. Mapleton, whom you took into dinner?”

“Oh, very nice,” he replied. “I suppose she’s a new friend of your
mother?”

“No. We met her and her husband a year ago when we were at Hyères.
They live near Madrid, and have asked us to go and stay with them for
a month at their villa outside the city. Mother has accepted. Didn’t I
hear you say that you might be sent out on business to Madrid?”

“Yes. There was some mention of it the other day,” Geoffrey replied.
“They were having trouble with their valve-panel at the wireless
station at Aranjuez, which belongs to the Compania Naçional, and I
heard that it was proposed that I should go out to see what I can make
of it.”

“How splendid if we are in Madrid together--eh?” exclaimed the girl
enthusiastically. “I do hope we shall manage it. The Mapletons go back
in six weeks’ time, and we go with them. He’s an English banker in
Madrid.”

Just at that moment one of the guests entered the room, so the lovers
were forced to return to the drawing-room, where a little later
Geoffrey found himself talking to the rather handsome young woman
who had sat beside him at dinner. She was dark, with a very clear
complexion and great black eyes, a graceful figure, and a sweet and
winning smile. Her husband, to whom she introduced him, was some ten
years her senior, a tall, rather spare man with an aquiline face
somewhat bronzed by the southern sun.

They chatted together, whereupon Mrs. Mapleton mentioned that Mrs.
Beverley and her daughter were travelling with them to Madrid. Then
Geoffrey remarked that he would, in all probability, be in the Spanish
capital at the same time, and explained the reason of his journey.

“Well, if you are in Madrid, Mr. Falconer, you won’t fail to come and
see us--will you?” urged the lady. “We live out at El Pardo--only half
an hour from Madrid.”

Geoffrey thanked her, and promised that if he went to Spain he would
certainly call upon her.

Two months later he found himself at the old-fashioned Hôtel de Pastor
at Aranjuez, which is thirty miles from the capital, and not far from
the great wireless station. After remaining there two days making his
preliminary investigations of the work he had in hand, he one day took
train to Madrid, and went out in a taxi along the terribly dusty road
to El Pardo.

He found the house without any difficulty--a great country mansion in
the Spanish style--surrounded by beautiful grounds. The door was opened
by an elderly English butler, who showed him in and took his card at
once to his mistress. In a few seconds Sylvia, who had been eagerly
watching her lover’s arrival, rushed forward and greeted him warmly,
while almost at the same moment their hostess appeared and gladly
welcomed the young fellow.

It was just before luncheon, so Geoffrey, after being shown the
glorious gardens and the views, was compelled to remain, and sat down
with Mrs. Mapleton, her husband, the South American widow, and Sylvia.
The meal was served with considerable pomp by the butler, Martin, the
whole staff of servants being English. Mrs. Mapleton, when Martin was
out of the room, remarked that she had become tired of the slovenly
ways of Spanish servants, and therefore she had engaged English ones,
all of them having been in service with English families in France or
Italy.

“Martin is, of course, our mainstay,” she added. “He speaks Spanish
well, which is a great thing, as we naturally have many Spanish
visitors.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Mapleton; “Martin is a real treasure for a busy man
like myself. He was in the service of the Marquis de Borja, secretary
to Queen Marie Christine, and only left after his master’s death.”

“Then you are very lucky to get him,” remarked Mrs. Beverley. “I know
what it is to have a butler upon whom one can rely. A widow like myself
is very handicapped in that respect. I am no judge of wine. I leave it
all to my man, and I trust him implicitly.”

“Just as we trust Martin,” said the banker’s good-looking wife, and
then the entrance of the sedate and respectful servant put an end to
further discussion.

Luncheon over, Mrs. Mapleton proposed a run in the car over to El
Escorial, the favourite summer resort of the Madrileños, where they
visited the wonderful Royal Monastery of San Lorenzo del Escorial, the
huge pile of whitish granite, destitute of ornament, and broken by
small windows; one of the most remarkable edifices of all time which
seems to rise out of the stony sides of the great Guadarrama Mountains,
and resembles, except in its majestic façade, a fortress or a prison.

“How wonderful!” exclaimed Sylvia, as they were conducted into the
magnificent church built on the model of the original plan of St.
Peter’s in Rome, with its forty-eight altars, each containing a
valuable painting, its magnificent frescoes, and the immense high altar
of valuable marbles and exquisitely gilded bronzes, before which many
candles were burning. They were shown the Sacristia, the Panteén de
los Reyes, or burial vault of the Spanish monarchs, the Library, and
afterwards the Royal Palace.

Later they motored back along a road below which, in the gorgeous
Spanish sunset, lay the plain of New Castile and Madrid on the one
hand, and the Guadarrama Mountains on the other.

Next evening Geoffrey again returned to El Pardo, and as he stood with
Sylvia and Mrs. Mapleton upon the terrace of the villa, the banker’s
wife pointed across to a towering rock upon the edge of the mountains.

“Over there is the Crow’s Cliff,” she said. “From it, through many
centuries, those guilty of murder were hurled. Indeed, even during the
past few years battered bodies of men and women have been found beneath
it, victims of those who have taken justice into their own hands.”

“How horrible!” exclaimed the smart young South American girl. “When
was the last body found?”

“About a year ago--a labourer in a vineyard close by, on going to work
one morning, found the body of a well-dressed young woman. She was
believed to be English by her clothes, but she was never identified.
The police have abandoned their inquiries, as it is a complete mystery.”

“She was purposely pushed over the Cliff, I suppose?” remarked Geoffrey.

“Perhaps,” replied his hostess. “But it is believed that there have
been cases where the guilty have been condemned and executed by their
fellows in order to suppress any scandal. More than one person moving
in the highest circles has been found dead beneath the Crow’s Cliff.”

“Couldn’t we go up there and see it?” suggested Geoffrey.

“Certainly you could,” she replied. “There is a good road, though
rather hilly, and a path which takes you close to the edge of the
Cliff.”

So all three went to see the Crow’s Cliff.

The road proved badly kept and shadeless, as are most of the roads
in Spain, and the path was rocky and crooked as they ascended to the
summit of the Peña Grajera--the Crow’s Cliff.

At last all three walked to the edge of the precipice, where through
the ages so many of the guilty ones had been hurled to destruction.

“That story about the young Englishwoman haunts me!” Geoffrey said to
Sylvia as they approached the place and peered down upon the river
winding across the plain below, which stretched away into the evening
mist. “I wonder who she was?”

“Nobody will ever know,” declared Mrs. Mapleton. “Here in Spain many
murders are committed on account of jealousy or revenge. No doubt the
motive was either one or the other.”

“Terrible!” exclaimed Sylvia, shuddering at the thought of being flung
over upon the crags below.

“Yes. In Spain they regard death at the Crow’s Cliff as the most
ignominious end any person can suffer,” remarked her hostess. “I’ve
heard all sorts of weird stories about the place, which was a place
of execution long before the days of the Inquisition. The peasantry
believe that on certain nights the ghosts of black-robed and masked
executioners haunt this road.”

The girl laughed.

“Of course the ignorant country folk would naturally invent all sorts
of horrible stories.”

“Well, it’s a horrible spot altogether,” declared Falconer. And the
party walked back to El Pardo together, where they dined late, and it
was past midnight before Geoffrey arrived back at Aranjuez.

While during the next few days he continued his work at the great
wireless station there--the station known to all wireless men as
“E.A.A.,” and which works so regularly with Poldhu--Sylvia and her
mother were taken about the country by their hostess to see old-world
Toledo, Villarrubia, Talavera, and the Tetas de Viana.

A bald-headed Spanish doctor named Garcia, with his wife, a very
handsome woman, had arrived from Burgos, and were also guests of the
Mapletons. The Garcias had lived in Madrid for several years, and were
great friends of the Mapletons.

Indeed the truth was that when Dr. Garcia had found himself in serious
financial difficulties three years before, the banker had secretly
assisted him. Hence the doctor was considerably in his debt.

One evening, a fortnight later, the party had been out to dinner at
a neighbouring house, and on their return Mrs. Mapleton was suddenly
taken very unwell. Her husband and the others became greatly alarmed,
and the faithful Martin, who, in turn, became full of apprehension,
called Dr. Garcia, who had already retired to bed.

The doctor, when he examined the lady and noted the symptoms, came to
the conclusion that she was suffering from acute indigestion, to which,
apparently, she was subject. Something she had eaten at dinner had no
doubt affected her, for by three o’clock in the morning she was much
easier, and by next day the attack had passed.

Indeed they motored into Madrid in the afternoon, where they visited
the wonderful private collection of pictures belonging to the Duke
of Alba, and the Prado Museum, afterwards enjoying that wonderful
view from the Campillo de las Vistillas. Yet on the same evening Mrs.
Mapleton was again taken unwell, and the same remedy which Dr. Garcia
had prescribed was resorted to, with the result that two hours later
she was quite herself again.

Next day when at breakfast, Mrs. Mapleton said to Madame Garcia:

“These attacks of indigestion are most annoying. Time after time I get
them badly--and then I recover just as suddenly as I am attacked. The
first time I had one was a year ago--and I was terribly ill for three
days.”

“But the doctor has put you upon special diet,” was madame’s reply. “If
you keep to that you will certainly be all right.”

Martin, who chanced to enter the room at the moment, eagerly asked
after his mistress’s health.

That same afternoon Sylvia had an appointment with Geoffrey in Madrid.
Her lover had been out at Aranjuez, busily engaged all day trying
to improve the continuous-wave panel, and was in ignorance of Mrs.
Mapleton’s indisposition. They, however, met as she had arranged, in
the palm-court of the great Ritz Hotel in the Plaza de Cànovas, and sat
down to a pleasant tea.

While chatting together the girl suddenly became very serious, saying:

“There’s something on my mind, Geoffrey--and--well, I hardly know what
to say to you.”

“On your mind!” he echoed. “Why, what about?”

“Well, about Mrs. Mapleton. She’s had two sudden and serious attacks on
successive nights. Dr. Garcia, whom you met at El Pardo, put it down to
indigestion, but--well, I don’t think it is,” said the girl.

“You seem worried about your hostess,” he remarked.

“Yes. The fact is I’m suspicious of that woman, Madame Garcia.”

“Oh! Why?”

“Well, strictly between ourselves, Geoffrey, very late the other night
when every one was asleep I heard Mr. Mapleton quarrelling with his
wife, and the doctor’s wife was mentioned by our hostess, who is, no
doubt, jealous of her, though she will not show it in public.”

“Oh! Then Mrs. Mapleton is jealous of madame--eh?”

“Yes. And this knowledge has aroused my suspicion. If Mr. Mapleton
admires madame, there may be some subtle plot to get Mrs. Mapleton out
of the way!” she said.

Geoffrey looked at her open-mouthed.

“Do you really believe that?” he asked quickly.

“I most certainly do. I haven’t mentioned anything to mother,” said the
girl. “But I shall be very glad to get away from the place. I’m going
to urge mother to make an excuse and cut short our visit.”

“No. Don’t do that,” he answered quickly. “If evil is intended, as you
surmise, then your place is there to watch carefully and report to me.
Our duty is to save the lady and expose the plot.”

“Spaniards are experts with poisons,” Sylvia remarked.

“I know. Therefore we should both act warily, and await the next
development. In the meantime I will make some inquiries regarding the
Garcias, who are so well-known here in Madrid.”

What Sylvia had suggested at once aroused Geoffrey’s curiosity, and
that evening he took his idol back to the Mapletons at El Pardo, where
he was invited to remain to dinner.

He watched Mr. Mapleton and the doctor’s wife very carefully, but
he could not detect any sign of undue admiration. Indeed the banker
scarcely took any notice of her, being much more attentive to Mrs.
Beverley, his guest, while the bald-headed Dr. Garcia was most affable
to Geoffrey himself.

The dinner was a merry meal, and every one was chatting about the
lovely motor-run they had made during the warm afternoon out to
Sonseca, in the Mountains of Toledo, while Martin, grave-faced and
urbane, served his master’s guests in eloquent silence.

Falconer, sorely puzzled, left early to get back to Aranjuez. He could
now fully understand the suspicions of Sylvia, yet he felt inclined to
dismiss them, for he could discover nothing unusual in the Mapleton
_ménage_.

Next evening, however, after his work was over, he went into Madrid in
order to institute the inquiries he had promised Sylvia to make.

Of several persons whom he had met since his arrival from England
he made inquiry regarding Dr. Garcia. From an old Spaniard, who was
manager of an antique shop in the Calle de Don Pedro, and whom he had
met out at Aranjuez with one of the wireless operators, he learned a
few interesting facts concerning the bald-headed doctor.

“Oh, yes,” replied the old fellow in broken English, “Dr. Garcia is
very well known in Madrid. He married a woman from Burgos, Carolina
Almagro, about five years ago. She was previously engaged to marry the
English banker, Señor Mapleton.”

“What?” gasped Geoffrey. “Was Madame Garcia once engaged to marry Mr.
Mapleton?”

“Oh, yes, señor. Every one in Madrid knows that.”

Geoffrey Falconer held his breath, and remained silent for a few
moments.

“But how long has Mr. Mapleton been married?”

“Oh, about four years--not more. He married an English lady--and a very
nice lady she is. Once or twice she has bought old furniture here.”

“But Dr. Garcia and his wife have left Madrid,” Geoffrey remarked as
they sat together in the dark little shop, surrounded by all sorts of
curios.

“Yes. He sold the practice to Dr. Salcedo soon after his marriage, and
went away. I don’t know where he is now.”

“But tell me,” urged Geoffrey. “How is it that the lady, being engaged
to the banker, married the doctor?”

The old man grinned, while his black eyes twinkled.

“There was a whisper of some scandal. They say that is the reason why
the doctor and his wife left Madrid.”

All that was being told to Falconer went to establish the motive why
a secret attempt should be made upon Mrs. Mapleton’s life. It was all
news to Geoffrey. He had believed that Mapleton had been married fully
ten years.

In other quarters he prosecuted inquiries, but the result was always
the same--the story of the sudden marriage of the English banker’s
Spanish fiancée, and the gossip which ensued.

Several further days passed, and then one evening Geoffrey, having been
to the Eslava Theatre, was leaving in order to return to Aranjuez,
when, to his surprise, he saw walking along the dark street in front
of him the familiar figure of Mr. Mapleton, and at his side was Madame
Garcia!

They had evidently been to the theatre together. He followed them
unseen, and saw them enter the car, and drive back to El Pardo together.

This, indeed, further aroused his suspicions concerning Mrs. Mapleton’s
repeated seizures.

Next afternoon he went to El Pardo again with the express purpose of
keeping his eyes open, and also of telling Sylvia in confidence what he
had learnt.

The pair while walking in the garden agreed that there was distinct
suspicion that either Mr. Mapleton might be plotting to get rid of
his wife, or that the handsome Spanish woman might be endeavouring
to poison her rival through motives of jealousy. As Sylvia pointed
out, Mapleton was very rich, while Madame Garcia was the wife of a
poor professional man in financial difficulties. The woman could not
obtain the luxuries, smart dresses, and sojourns at Aix, Dinant, or San
Sebastian, for which she longed.

“She is always deploring the fact that she leads such a humdrum life,”
the girl went on. “Only yesterday she told me that she envied us,
travelling about as we do.”

“Well, personally, I don’t like madame,” her lover said. “Her eyes are
cruel and vindictive, and she seems to bear an entirely false affection
for her hostess.”

“Mrs. Mapleton is charming,” declared Sylvia as they halted on the
terrace, from which a beautiful view of Madrid could be seen across
the plain. “I wonder if her husband has any suspicion? Surely Dr.
Garcia could discover whether those mysterious attacks are due to
indigestion--or to foul play?”

“The doctor’s wife would never let her husband into her guilty secret,”
Geoffrey said. Then after a pause, he added: “Of course if the banker
himself had experienced similar seizures one could discern in them a
motive--namely, that the doctor being deeply in his debt wanted to get
rid of him, for by his death he would get out of his heavy liabilities.
But the affair concerns only the banker’s wife.”

“It’s a complete mystery, Geoff,” declared the girl. “I watch them all
closely day after day, but I become more and more mystified. I long
to tell mother, but I have acted upon your advice, and kept my own
counsel. Only to-day at breakfast Mrs. Mapleton, who, of course, is
all unsuspecting, invited the Garcias to remain for another fortnight.
After that they are going to Granada. And a week later the Mapletons go
to Barcelona, where he has a branch of his bank, while we go back to
London.”

“Then during the next fortnight we must be very watchful,” Falconer
said, and as at that moment Mrs. Mapleton, walking with the handsome
Madame Garcia, came along the terrace, they dropped the subject, and
Falconer became most enthusiastic regarding the glorious view.

Next morning at about ten o’clock Geoffrey Falconer was busy re-wiring
part of the powerful transmitting apparatus at the wireless station at
Aranjuez, when one of the operators handed him a telegram which had
just been received over the land line from Madrid.

It was open, upon a form, just as it had been received. The words he
read were:

  “_Another seizure. Unconscious for three hours. Just recovered. Meet
  me at the Ritz in Madrid at four this afternoon._--SYLVIA.”

Geoffrey realised the extreme gravity of the situation. He had been
making many secret inquiries. The mystery of it all had not only
fascinated him, but it had placed him upon his mettle. Sylvia, the girl
whom he loved so passionately, had, by her woman’s shrewd keenness,
first aroused the suspicion which had daily grown stronger until the
grave peril of the banker’s charming wife obsessed him.

On five different occasions, from that complicated-looking apparatus
of the high-power wireless station, with which at the moment he was
surrounded, he had sent out with great difficulty and very weakly in
the Marconi International Code, long messages to M.P.D.--or Poldhu in
Cornwall--inquiries concerning Mapleton and others--which next day had
been answered in the same code.

These answers, unknown to Sylvia, had opened up an entirely new channel
of inquiry. That telegram from El Pardo confirmed certain suspicions
which had come to him during the past two days.

That there was a deliberate and desperate attempt to get rid of Mrs.
Mapleton had become an established fact. It only lay with Sylvia and
her lover to save the unfortunate victim, to lay bare the plot, and to
bring the guilty person or persons to their just punishment.

When at four o’clock Sylvia met Geoffrey in the Ritz, her first words
were:

“Poor Mrs. Mapleton had a terribly narrow escape last night! Dr. Garcia
grew very alarmed, and at two o’clock this morning telephoned to Madrid
to Dr. Figueroa, who, I believe, is one of the most distinguished
pathologists in Spain. He arrived at about half-past four, and in
consultation agreed with Garcia that it was acute indigestion.
Fortunately, an hour afterwards Mrs. Mapleton was quite well again.”

“And what was the attitude of Madame Garcia?” asked Geoffrey eagerly.

“Oh, very agitated and fussy, of course, all of it well assumed. She’s
a most wonderful actress. All the women of the South are the same.”

“But does Garcia know?”

“I feel sure he is in complete ignorance. I watch them all every
hour--every minute--but I can find no tangible evidence against anyone.
The only motive that there can be is Madame Garcia’s jealousy.”

“Then she must be the culprit,” Falconer said. “It is evident that she
must somehow doctor her hostess’s food--eh? But surely that must be
difficult.”

“No doubt, but it is being accomplished somehow, for how is it that
none of us suffer from any ill-effects?” said the girl.

“Because you are not subject to ‘acute indigestion’ as Mrs. Mapleton
is,” was his reply as he smiled meaningly. “The attacks are certainly
curious. They seem to occur after eating, just as indigestion would
occur,” Falconer went on. “But how is it possible that this Spanish
woman can tamper with her hostess’s food alone, unless she is in league
with the cook, and that is quite inconceivable. The whole history of
both Garcia, and his wife, and Mapleton and Mrs. Mapleton certainly
points to but one motive--Madame Garcia’s jealousy!”

“But do you think that Mr. Mapleton can have no knowledge of what is in
progress?” asked the girl to whom the young wireless engineer was so
devoted.

“No; I’m convinced that he has not. His friend the doctor has diagnosed
the complaint as indigestion, hence he has no suspicions, and does not
seek a further medical opinion.”

“That is so. Mother only yesterday suggested to him in private that he
should ask for another doctor to see his wife, but he declared that he
had the greatest confidence in Dr. Garcia’s judgment.” Then she added:
“It was Dr. Garcia himself who sent into Madrid for another doctor this
morning.”

“Then we can do no more, save to still prosecute inquiries, and watch
the progress of events.”

During the next two days young Falconer was very busy making some tests
with Poldhu. From the “Devil’s Oven,” far away on the rocky Cornish
coast, they at first sent him replies on “spark” in response, but after
twenty hours of hard work, during which they constantly disturbed the
ether by sending long and numerous series of “V’s”--namely, three dots
and a dash--the letter of the alphabet used in wireless for testing
purposes, his transmission was at last declared by Poldhu to be “good,”
but not anything really great--in fact “R.7.,” as Poldhu put it.

There was still a fault somewhere, and amid that tangle of wires, the
mass of up-to-date apparatus, and the great vacuum glass globes--huge
balls of light when transmission was in progress--he stood dismayed
and puzzled. A fault in wireless transmission is often most difficult
to trace, and it was so in this case. The two engineers at Aranjuez
had failed to discover it, and for that reason young Falconer had been
sent over as an expert to find and remedy it. It was the more baffling
because after re-wiring it the first time, he was able to communicate
with Poldhu about Dr. Garcia and Mapleton. Then a slight fault had
necessitated an alteration, and now it was again wrong.

As he stood there that morning gazing into the big valve-panel,
undecided as to what test next to apply, one of the operators, a young
Spaniard, handed him a message form, saying that it had just come in
from Poldhu. It was in the International Code; therefore Falconer went
to the adjoining room, and taking down the big book which gives a
“figure” and “letter” code in all the principal commercial languages,
including Japanese, he soon succeeded in de-coding the message.

When he did so he sat back aghast. The truth was now apparent.

His inquiries in London regarding the Mapletons were slowly throwing a
light upon a most dramatic situation.

That day he felt justified in leaving his work early, and in the
evening he travelled to the far north of Spain to San Sebastian,
that gay seaside resort which is the favourite summer resort of the
Madrileños. He arrived there in the early morning, having spent
the night in the so-called “express.” He took his coffee at the
old-fashioned Hôtel Ezcurra, in the Paseo de la Zurriola, and then he
went round to the Prefecture of Police.

To the rather lazy underling whom he found there he made an
explanation, and at ten o’clock he was shown into the bureau of the
chief of police himself, an elderly, alert little man, who listened to
the young Englishman very attentively. As he proceeded with his story,
and as he related what had been sent by wireless from England, the
official’s interest grew.

For two hours Geoffrey Falconer remained there, examining documents,
and questioning four Spanish detectives by the aid of the official
interpreter.

“And now, Señor Falconer,” said the chief of police at last, “the
best line of action for you is to return and keep a secret and strict
watch. You know all I have told you, and what are my suspicions. It is
fortunate, very fortunate, that your young lady friend has detected
what is in progress. On my part I will send by to-night’s mail a report
to the police of Madrid, who will be on the alert for any developments.
They will place our great pathologist, Professor Barrera, at your
disposal, should any analysis be required. We are at the moment quite
powerless to act, but we look to you for such information as shall save
the lady’s life.”

About noon on the following day Falconer called at the Mapleton’s house
in El Pardo as though upon a casual visit. As soon as he met Sylvia,
the girl called him aside, and whispered:

“I’m so glad you are here, Geoffrey. Mrs. Mapleton had another attack
last night, but is better now. She is in the habit of eating but very
little dinner, and taking some patent invalid food just before going to
bed. I managed to save a little of it before Martin cleared it away.
I’ve got it in a bottle upstairs.”

“Excellent. I will take it at once to Professor Barrera,” replied
Falconer. “He will analyse it, and see whether it has been doctored.”

The young Englishman remained to luncheon, and then, without telling
anyone of his journey to San Sebastian, he went back to Madrid, and
there saw the Professor, who had already been warned by the police.

Next day, when Falconer called upon Professor Barrera, he was told
that into the invalid food had been introduced the juice of a certain
poisonous mushroom which produced the exact symptoms of acute
indigestion, and which, when absorbed by the human body, was almost
impossible to detect. It was one of the most subtle and dangerous
poisons known to modern toxicologists.

“The mushroom is a large dark-grey fungus with scarlet spots and grows
on the mountains. It is found often in the Guadarrama,” he said.
“Whoever is using it must be an expert poisoner.”

With that knowledge, and the other knowledge he now possessed, Falconer
waited until evening, and then returned to El Pardo, where he was
asked to remain to dinner, and to sleep, as a motor excursion had been
arranged for the following day.

He dined, but though he went to his room, he could not sleep. The night
was moonlit, and from his window he had a good view of the white road
outside. Instead of undressing, he watched that road through the night
hours until the first streak of dawn. It slowly became light at about
four o’clock, when suddenly he saw the figure of a man going out upon a
brisk walk.

Without a second’s hesitation he took his hat, and creeping silently
down the stairs, let himself out.

By that time the man, whose figure he had recognised as Martin’s, was
far ahead. The morning mist was thick as, leaving the highway, he
ascended the steep hill-path, Geoffrey, whose rubber-soled boots made
but little noise, following swiftly.

The rough winding way led to the summit of the Crow’s Cliff, until
Martin at last reached the top.

Then Geoffrey saw the butler bending down, eagerly, examining a patch
of grass near the edge of the Cliff He was searching for that deadly
grey fungus with the scarlet spots, which, when gathered at dawn, was
most dangerous to human life!

Falconer, modest in his scientific achievements, but bold when faced
with an alternative, saw the man in the act of picking one of the
mushrooms, and suddenly sprang upon him.

“At last, Martin!” he cried. “So it is you who are trying to poison
your mistress! Now I know the truth!”

The fellow, his face blanched, flung himself free.

“What do you mean?” shouted the exemplary butler in wild defiance.

“I mean that you are not Mrs. Mapleton’s servant at all! You are
her rightful husband, and moreover you were a partner with her in
certain shady transactions. You and she ran a private gaming-house in
Bayswater, and afterwards at San Sebastian. From the profits of the
place Mrs. Mapleton derived her private income, unknown to Mapleton,
who believes it is from Consols. Four years ago one Paul Berton, a
rich French landowner, was robbed and died mysteriously in that house
in San Sebastian--killed in circumstances which left no doubt in your
wife’s mind that you were the assassin.”

“It’s quite untrue!” protested Martin.

“Let me go on,” said Falconer. “Your wife hated you, because you were
a murderer. She fell in love with Mapleton, and under threats of
disclosing your crime to the police, she compelled you to remain aside,
and she married the man she loved. Then you persecuted the unfortunate
woman, who believed that she was safely out of your clutches. You
compelled her to engage you as her butler. Why? Your first idea was to
poison Mapleton, so that you should get his money through his wife. But
when she saw through your plot and threatened to expose you, you sought
to secretly poison her, and thus close her lips--at the same time
throwing suspicion upon the jealous woman, Madame Garcia!”

“A lie--an absolute lie!”

“No, it is the truth, Mr. Sharman--_alias_ Barnes--_alias_ half a
dozen other names. Your record is at Scotland Yard, together with your
finger prints. I have them in my pocket. Truly, yours is a dastardly
and ingenious game. You poisoned poor Berton with the same decoction of
mushroom-juice that you are now using on your wife!”

Without a second’s delay the man Martin sprang at Geoffrey, who was
close to the edge of the Crow’s Cliff--the execution place of the
Middle Ages. Next moment the young radio-engineer, feeling himself
gripped suddenly and rushed to the edge of the precipice, executed, to
save his life, a very clever manoeuvre, and by dint of some swift
athletic turns he succeeded in swinging round his adversary until the
latter had his back to the precipice.

The two men fought for life, there upon the very brink of the grave!
Martin was determined to silence his accuser.

But Geoffrey, who at Oxford had learnt the Japanese system of
self-defence, suddenly gripped the assassin by the waist, and rushing
him backwards to the cliff, flung him from him with force, crying:

“That is your fate--the same that every secret poisoner deserves!”

There was a scream, and next instant the scoundrel struck a pointed
rock just below. Then he fell heavily from crag to crag until, a few
seconds later, he lay deep down in the undergrowth at the cliff foot,
mangled and dead--his fate being indeed a just one.

Next day the _Imparçial_, in Madrid, printed a long account of the
tragic discovery, with a photograph of the dead English servant. The
paper called it “The Mystery of the Crow’s Cliff.” But even to-day Mr.
Mapleton with the doctor and Mrs. Garcia naturally regard the whole
affair as a tragic mystery, for they still aver that the butler Martin
was one of the most trustworthy of servants, and believe that he must
have met with foul play at the hands of some low-born enemy. Mrs.
Mapleton alone suspects the truth!

Three months after the affair Geoffrey Falconer, who had been paid
a very considerable sum for the rights of his improved microphone
amplifier and for several improvements in wireless calling devices,
asked Mrs. Beverley for her daughter’s hand.

The “Wild Widow” admired him, and after a long discussion,
gave her consent. So six months ago they were married at St.
Martin’s-in-the-Fields, and at the wedding nearly half the engineering
staff from the Marconi Works at Chelmsford attended.

Truly the guilty secrets of many men and women have been detected by
means of wireless, that science which daily reveals its further wonders
to those persevering experimenters who seek so patiently to penetrate
its mysteries.


THE END




_Cahill & Co., Ltd., London, Dublin, and Drogheda._




TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:


  Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

  Emboldened text is surrounded by equals signs: =bold=.

  Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

  Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.







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