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.