William Le Queux

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 manœuvre, and by dint of some swift athletic turns he succeeded in swinging round his adversary until the latter had his back to the precipice. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”