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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.