THE POISON FACTORY
Geoffrey Falconer stood at the window of the big old Adams room at
the Savage Club, chatting with a journalist friend, Charles--_alias_
“Doggy”--Wentworth, of the _Daily Mail_.
Before them lay Adelphi Terrace and beyond the Embankment and the
broad grey Thames with its wharves on the Surrey bank, London’s silent
highway.
It was the luncheon hour on a day in early spring. The trees along
the Embankment, and in the Gardens below, wore their fresh bright
green, not yet dulled by the London smoke, while along the Embankment
the trams were rolling heavily between the bridges of Blackfriars and
Westminster.
The room in which they stood was familiar to Bohemian London--the
world of painters, poets, actors, novelists, sculptors, journalists,
and scientists, who lunch and smoke in the same great room with its
portraits, caricatures, and trophies--perhaps the only spot on earth
where a man’s worth is nowadays not judged by his pocket or the
estimation of his own importance. Confined to the professions, it is
a club where as long as a man is a good fellow and has no side he is
popular. But woe betide the member who betrays the slightest leaning
towards egotism.
The members, leaving the little back bar, had already begun to drift in
to take their places at the little tables which occupied half the big
common-room. The unconventional shouts of “Hulloa, Tommie!” “Hulloa,
Jack!” “Hulloa, Max!” were heard on every side--Christian names and
nicknames of men some of whose names were in the homes of England and
America as household words, men of mark whose portraits greeted one
every day in the picture papers.
Just as “Doggy” was about to turn aside with his guest, a friend
of his approached the pair. A tall, lank man with a furrowed face,
“Dicky” Peters, foreign editor of the great London journal, the
_Daily Telephone_, was known to both, as indeed he was known to every
journalist in London.
“Well, Dicky, what’s the latest?” asked Wentworth, a man ten years his
junior, but who was among the most brilliant men in Fleet Street.
“Oh, nothing much,” laughed the other good-humouredly. “Only that
infernal Moscow wireless press. It gets on one’s nerves.”
“How?” asked Geoffrey, at once on the alert.
“Let’s go and feed, and I’ll tell you.”
The trio went past the row of old leather-covered couches from the
“smoking-room” to the “dining-room,” between which there was no
partition, and presently as they discussed a plain English luncheon
which even peers as guests did not disdain--for every one is on
equality in the Savage--Peters began to rail at the wireless reports
from Moscow.
“Well, Falconer’s a Marconi man,” remarked Wentworth. “Perhaps he can
explain.”
“I don’t understand it at all,” Geoffrey said. “Of course I’m on the
engineering side. I don’t know much about the operating side--except in
experimenting.”
“Well, I think the whole thing is most puzzling.”
“How?”
“Well, one day we get the wireless press from Russia and publish it.
Next day we have an entirely different and contradictory version.
And, oh! the Bolshevik propaganda--well, you see it in many papers.
Sub-editors all over the country are using no discretion. We get all
the jumble of facts, fictions, declarations, but I never publish
any. This latest propaganda against Britain is most pernicious. In
America they are publishing all sorts of inflammatory stuff against us
regarding Ireland--all of it emanating from the Third International--or
whatever they call themselves.”
“The Bolshevik press news should be wiped out,” declared “Doggy”
Wentworth. “No sane man who reads it ever believes in the glorious and
prosperous state of Russia under Lenin!”
“I agree,” said Falconer, interested in the conversation between the
two journalists. “I often listen to ‘M.S.K.’ at night and read him,
but his stories are of such a character that I wonder any newspaper
publishes them. We never refer to it in our Marconi Press which we send
out each night to the cross-Atlantic ships.”
“Yes, but how about the revolutionary propaganda regarding Ireland?
We get a pile of it in the office every night,” said Peters. “I never
publish it, but over in America they get it too, and I’m certain it
does Britain incalculable harm.”
It was at a moment when a wave of Bolshevism was sweeping across
Europe, a hostility to culture and to intelligence which had, in
Russia, brought about a terrorism which was assisted by a police system
which left far behind it the ideas and the proceedings of the Tsar’s
secret police. And those responsible for the chaos in Russia were, it
was known, endeavouring to stir up revolution in Great Britain, and
thus assist Germany in her defiant attitude towards the Allies.
That night the young Marconi engineer dined at Mrs. Beverley’s, and sat
beside Sylvia. Only three other guests were present, a well-known peer
and his wife, and a prominent member of the Government, Mr. Charles
Warwick.
Over the dinner table, in consequence of some serious reports in that
night’s newspaper concerning the advance of the Red Army in the south
of Russia, the conversation turned upon the situation, Mr. Warwick
expressing an opinion that half the news concerning the Red successes
was incorrect.
“I agree,” declared Falconer. “Only this morning I was discussing the
same subject with two journalists in the Savage Club. It seems that
Lenin and his friends are sending out by wireless all sorts of untruths
concerning our rule in Ireland--allegations calculated to incense other
countries against us.”
“Well, if that’s so, Geoffrey, why don’t you wireless people try to
suppress them?” remarked Sylvia.
“An excellent suggestion!” laughed the smooth-haired young fellow.
“But I’m afraid it would be impossible to stop the wireless waves they
send out from Moscow each evening. When you press a wireless key the
waves radiate in every direction, and reach far and wide. There is
no invention yet to suppress wireless signals, except to jam them
by sending out stronger ones upon the same wave-length. That can, of
course, be done, but it would interfere with all wireless traffic.”
“Somebody really ought to blow up the Moscow wireless station,”
declared Lord Cravenholme, an elderly blunt man, whose wife was many
years his junior.
“Yes,” agreed Warwick. “The sooner somebody puts an end to their
lie-factory the better.”
“Britain’s enemies are always ready enough to believe any fiction
alleged against her. And, of course, the crafty Germans are behind all
these attempts to stir strife,” his lordship declared, poising his
hock-glass in his hand.
“Well,” exclaimed Sylvia, “I really think there’s an excellent chance
for you, Geoffrey.” And she laughed merrily.
“Yes,” added her mother, “If you could manage to stop it all, you would
certainly be a public benefactor, Mr. Falconer. I read in the American
papers I get over some very nasty things about you here--all of it
emanating, no doubt, from enemy and revolutionary sources.”
“Ah! Mrs. Beverley,” exclaimed the young Marconi man, “I’m afraid
that such a task is beyond me. In the first place, nobody can get
into Russia just now. Again, if the station were wrecked, Lenin’s
people would soon rig up another. So I fear that we are suggesting the
impossible.”
Later that evening, when Geoffrey and Sylvia were alone together
in the morning-room--the others being in the big upstairs
drawing-room--the girl mentioned that the odious fortune-hunter, Lord
Hendlewycke, was to take them by car on the following day to tea at the
Burford Bridge Hotel, at Box Hill.
“Oh, how I detest him!” said the pretty girl with a sigh. “And yet
mother is for ever asking him here. I’m sick of it all. Wherever we go
he turns up.”
“Because your mother has set her mind upon your becoming Lady
Hendlewycke,” he said in a low, intense voice. “Why is she in
London--except to marry you to somebody with a title? I know it’s a
very horrid way of putting it, dearest, but nevertheless it is the
truth.”
“I know,” she sighed. “But I hate the fellow--I hate him! I’m for ever
having headaches, and pretending a chill in order to avoid meeting him.
But he is so horribly persistent.”
He took her in his strong arms and kissed her fondly, saying:
“Never mind. Be patient, dearest. He will grow weary very soon. Be
patient--_for my sake_!”
But at that moment the footman entered, and springing apart, they
rejoined the others upstairs.
Geoffrey could only remain for half an hour, as he had to catch his
train from Liverpool Street. He was back at Warley just before eleven.
His sombre old home was all quiet, for the servants had retired, and
his father was busy writing in his study when Geoffrey entered.
Together they smoked for about a quarter of an hour, after which his
father extinguished his oil reading-lamp and retired.
Geoffrey, as was his habit before turning in, entered his wireless room
wherein he had fitted that most up-to-date set--a bewildering array of
apparatus--chief among which was his improved amplifier and a double
note magnifier of his own design.
He placed the telephones over his ears, and having switched on the
seven little glow lamps or valves of the amplifier, and the two others
of the magnifier, tuned-in one or two stations.
“G.F.A.A.G.”--a great airship to wireless men--was out upon a night
cruise from Pulham, in Norfolk, over England. He soon picked her up,
and heard her taking her bearings from the direction-finding station at
Flamborough, on the Yorkshire coast. After which she spoke by wireless
telephony to her base at Pulham, and then to Croydon, Lympe, near
Folkestone, and to St. Inglevert in France.
Afterwards she carried on a conversation with the air stations at
Renfrew and Castle Bromwich. She was told by Flamborough that her
position was thirty miles due north of Cardiff, going westward.
Such was one of the wonders of wireless.
His thoughts, however, were elsewhere. He was still pondering over
those budgets of lies sent out from Moscow four of five times each
twenty-four hours.
He placed his hand upon the knob of his “tuner,” and raised his
wave-length to five thousand mètres. Other stations were transmitting,
but he heard nothing of “M.S.K.”--the call-letters assigned to Moscow.
Higher he raised the wave-length until, on seven thousand six hundred
mètres, he found that high-pitched continuous-wave note, which he
recognised as the lying voice from the ether.
He took up a pencil and began to write down rapidly in French a most
scurrilous and untrue allegation against British rule in Ireland,
intended for the anti-British press in America.
Halfway through he flung down the pencil with an exclamation of
disgust, and removing the “Brown” head-’phones, switched off, and went
upstairs to bed.
Next day, at the Marconi Works at Chelmsford, he discussed with several
of his fellow-engineers the scandal of the Moscow Bolshevik propaganda,
but each of them declared that nothing could be done to suppress it.
Lenin and Trotsky ruled Red Russia, and certainly the tide of lies sent
out broadcast into space could not be stemmed.
Sylvia’s words constantly recurred to him. She had urged him to do
something to stifle the pernicious propaganda against law and order in
Great Britain. But how?
Many days went by. He was busy in the experimental laboratory up at
Marconi House, and had but little time to devote to anything except the
highly scientific problem which he was assisting three great wireless
experts to try to solve.
About three weeks had passed when one afternoon he happened to be
in the great airy apartment at Chelmsford where various instruments
were being subjected to severe tests before being passed as
“O.K.”--note-magnifiers, direction-finders, calling-devices,
amplifiers, and all the rest--when, with the telephones on his ears,
he heard Moscow sending out “C.Q.”--or a request for all to listen.
Then again came that never-ending praise of Soviet Russia, which, under
the absolute rule of a little group of men, mostly Russian or German
Jews obeying the orders of Lenin--the new Ivan the Terrible--and his
war minister, Trotsky, was, it was said, converting Russia into a
terrestrial paradise. On the contrary, it was well known that Russia
was a terrestrial hell, where torture was deliberately being used on
a great scale, and with a cruelty that had never been surpassed, even
by the Spanish Inquisition. The recapture of Kharkoff by Deniken had
revealed a most terrible state of affairs, atrocities of which even the
terrible Turks would have been ashamed. And yet the Moscow wireless
was inviting the people of Britain and America to rise and establish a
similar régime!
As Geoffrey listened attentively, his ear trained to the variations of
the sound of the signals of different stations, it suddenly occurred to
him that the “note” was slightly different from that which he had heard
and discarded on so many occasions.
He called across to one of the technical assistants, and he also
agreed.
“It’s probably due to some atmospheric interference,” the latter
remarked.
Again the young radio-engineer listened. But it seemed to him to be
a different note, though the wave-length was about the same. It was
higher pitched, and just a little more difficult to tone.
When any problem arose, of whatever nature, Geoffrey Falconer
never rested until he had solved it. That was how he had invented
his improved amplifier. He had all the patience, the disregard of
disappointment, the dogged perseverance, and the refusal to accept
failure which characterises the great inventor. In the days long past
most inventors died in poverty. Now in the days of stringent patent
laws, fortunes are sometimes made out of a new safety-pin, or a
sweet-smelling hair wash.
Though he carried on the important experiments both at Marconi
House and at Chelmsford, and also at another station which had been
established in secret not far from London, he nevertheless each night
when at home listened in for “M.S.K.,” and diligently took down all the
wilful perversions of the truth sent out by Soviet Russia.
On four different occasions, while listening upon his own set at
Warley, he became convinced that some new station had been set up in
Moscow for the deliberate purpose of circulating the most glaring
untruths concerning events in Ireland. The text of all the messages was
now much more bitter than before.
Time after time he sat back in his chair, utterly puzzled.
Here was a dastardly and insidious attack being made upon the country
by disseminating false news by wireless, and yet nobody was able to
suppress it.
One day, being up in London, he was re-entering Marconi House by the
back way in Aldwych, and waiting for the lift, when suddenly an idea
crossed his brain. It was only a vague suggestion, yet that night in
the rural quiet of his home at Warley he listened in for Moscow, and
succeeded in determining the wave-length accurately. It was neither
the five thousand mètre “spark” transmission, nor the seven thousand
six hundred mètre, but lower--four thousand seven hundred, to be exact.
Evidently Lenin had established an entirely new lie-factory for Britain
only.
Night after night Falconer, after his return from the works, listened
for Moscow--at seven o’clock and at nine-thirty on “spark,” and at
ten-fifteen on continuous-wave. The latter was, however, absent. It had
apparently been cut off, and the new anti-British station substituted.
Though Geoffrey saw Sylvia constantly, he said nothing to her regarding
the problem. Often when up at Marconi House he met her at half-past
five and they had tea at the Savoy or the Carlton, after which he
caught his train back into Essex, there to spend the evening in
calculating and devising all sorts of new “gadgets,” with the object
of improving wireless telephony--the science which must, in the near
future, revolutionise commercial communication.
The difference in the strength of signals from the new station of
Soviet Russia, as heard in his telephones, puzzled him intensely.
As an expert he felt that there was something unusual--hence, to an
experimenter, of outstanding interest.
Therefore, he set to work to determine, if possible, the exact location
of Lenin’s latest wireless station. With that object he one evening
travelled to Lowestoft, and at the direction-finding wireless station
there beside the sea, had a long chat with the engineer-in-charge. The
station is normally used by aircraft to locate their position if in any
difficulty with fog while passing between the terminal aerodrome at
Croydon to Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, or other Continental cities. The
two direction-finding stations worked in conjunction, one at Chelmsford
and one at Pevensey, on the marshes between Eastbourne and Hastings--a
triangle between which the sources of a wireless call can be plotted,
and exactly determined.
For an hour Geoffrey discussed the problem with Mr. Finlay, the
engineer, who at once volunteered to assist. Then Falconer left, and
two days later arrived at the Pevensey station, down upon the pebbly
beach. Here, too, the engineer-in-charge was eager to render assistance.
Geoffrey and he were walking over the beach at the edge of the sea,
smoking their pipes in the afternoon sunshine.
“I’ll call you up from Chelmsford on Thursday night--if the mysterious
station is transmitting then,” Falconer said. “Listen, and you will no
doubt hear him on about four thousand seven hundred mètres--a rather
high-pitched note. If he is going I will call you up on Morse and
signal ‘Forty-four.’ I’ll do the same to Lowestoft. Then you can plot
with Chelmsford where he is located.”
“He may not be in Moscow at all,” remarked Finlay. “It may be some
disguised station.”
“That’s exactly my own idea. But we can, no doubt, locate him, wherever
he may be.”
So on the following Thursday night at about nine o’clock Falconer sat
in the direction-finding station at the Works long after every one had
left, listening intently upon the four thousand seven hundred mètre
wave-length. He had waited in patience for about twenty-five minutes
when at last there sounded a long shrill whistle, and the Bolshevik
station began to poison the ether with its lies.
For five minutes he listened. Then placing his hand upon the
transmitting switch, he drew it over and spoke over the wireless
telephone to both Lowestoft and Pevensey, giving the code-word,
“Forty-four.”
“O.K.” came the answer from both operators, and at once they began to
make measurements upon the big maps in front of them.
All three direction-finding stations, at Chelmsford, at Pevensey, and
at Lowestoft were now engaged, by working with each other in turn, in
determining the exact position of the Bolshevik lie-factory.
In each station shrewd, clever young men, with the telephones over
their ears, worked the big ebonite handles of the direction-finder--a
piece of wonderful apparatus in a square box with sloping top, and
several dials upon which minute scales were drawn.
The operator at Pevensey and the one at Lowestoft exchanged
conversations in a jumble of numerals. Then Lowestoft called
Chelmsford, and within ten minutes the position of the mysterious
station was measured out upon the map, and Geoffrey, bending eagerly,
found that it had been located at a point somewhere in the centre of
Copenhagen, and not in Moscow at all!
The anti-British station was still working on, as it did every evening;
therefore, three times its bearings were taken, and each result came
out the same.
“Thanks, Lowestoft! Thanks, Pevensey! Much obliged!” Geoffrey said over
the wireless telephone. “Switching off!”
He looked for a long time at the map, and with the officer-in-charge of
direction-finding he discussed the matter for a long time.
“In Copenhagen it should be easy to spot the whereabouts of the secret
station. Indeed, upon a large-scale map of Denmark almost the very spot
could be determined,” the direction-finding officer said.
Geoffrey lost no time next day when in London in obtaining a
large-scale map of Denmark, as well as one of the city of Copenhagen,
from a shop in Fleet Street, and a fortnight later, with the aid of
an eminent geographer--a friend of his father--he was able, by making
careful measurements, to locate the secret Soviet station as being in
the Raadhus-Plads.
A week later, having been granted leave of absence from the Marconi
Works at Chelmsford upon another pretext, he travelled to the
Danish capital, where he put up at the Hôtel d’Angleterre, in the
Kongens-Nytorv. In his luggage he carried his own supersensitive
receiving set, all of which he had constructed himself.
To the hotel personnel he made it known frankly that he was a wireless
engineer, and on a table in the corner of his bedroom overlooking the
square he set up his instruments, after hiring from a local garage an
accumulator for his valve-filaments--namely, to light up the seven
little cylindrical vacuum-tubes of his supersensitive amplifier.
On the night of his arrival in Copenhagen, after dining alone in the
big white-and-gold _salle-à-manger_, he ascended to his room and sat
there all the evening with the telephones over his ears. He could
hear the British Admiralty working to Malta; Paris working to Warsaw;
Carnarvon working to Belmar, and Bordeaux transmitting across the
Atlantic. On that starlit night the ether was alive with messages by
“spark” and continuous-wave being sent across the seven seas.
For over five hours he listened attentively, but all he heard was the
usual commercial messages, most of them in code of various kinds. Then
he took off the telephones and went out for a stroll along the Bredgade
as far as the Esplenade, in order to refresh himself after his long and
unsuccessful vigil.
Next day he wandered about the clean busy streets of the Danish
capital, idling before the shops in the Ostergade, the Kjobmager
Gade, and the Amargertov, or reading newspapers in the cafés, the
Continental, the Bristol, or Otto’s. In spring Copenhagen is always
bright and lively, and he found the city quite charming.
At night, however, he returned to his vigilant watch, for the secret
Bolshevik station was not now working every night.
For five nights in succession he waited patiently, hour after hour,
but though he listened to thousands of messages, yet “M.S.K.” remained
silent on its new wave-length.
Geoffrey Falconer was, however, quite unaware that the adjoining room
was occupied by a grey-haired, undersized little man, who had been
on the _quai_ at Antwerp when he landed, and having followed him to
Copenhagen by way of Kiel, had taken up his abode in the next room.
In the hotel the two men passed each other frequently, but Geoffrey was
entirely unsuspicious that his movements were being so closely watched.
He, however, as is the practice of most case-hardened cosmopolitans,
always kept the key of his room in his pocket, contrary to the hotel
rule of leaving it in the key-office. When one is at a hotel and keeps
one’s key in one’s pocket, only the chambermaid’s or the manager’s
master-key opens the door. Hence intruders are debarred.
On the eighth night of Falconer’s stay his suspicions became aroused
because he suddenly found the little old man keeping him under
observation. At first he was in a quandary, but presently, after due
consideration, he resolved to act with greater discretion.
The Raadhus-Plads, as those who know Copenhagen are well aware, is
in the centre of the city, and the focus of the network of tramways,
just as is the Piazza del Duomo in Milan. Time after time Geoffrey
had passed backwards and forwards across the spacious square, but he
could detect no aerial wires such as would be necessary to transmit the
anti-British propaganda into the ether.
Each night he wandered into the square and gazed up at the many
illuminated sky-signs upon the shops around, until he began to conclude
that the bearings taken at Chelmsford must have been inaccurate.
He had been in Copenhagen ten days when one night, while seated in his
bedroom at about ten o’clock with the telephones over his ears, he
heard the mysterious station start up, calling “C.Q.,” namely, asking
everybody to listen.
And then on a pure musical note there was tapped out a message,
alleging that Britain was doing serious injustice in Ireland--a message
calculated to inflame public opinion.
That it was close by Geoffrey detected at once. The signals were too
loud on the “second intensity” of his double note magnifier, so he cut
it out, and read it loudly from one “Q”--or detector valve.
He put down his ’phones, switched off, and leaving the hotel, walked
again to the Raadhus-Plads. Around the square the well-lit electric
trams were circulating slowly, while all around were the illuminated
advertisements of motor-tyres, mineral waters, cocoa, and soap, a
picturesque night scene beneath the clear starlit sky.
Watching him unseen was his little grey-haired neighbour from the
adjoining room in the Angleterre. The old fellow was, no doubt, a very
clever watcher. As a matter of fact, he was Ivan Stromoff, one of the
most astute officers of the secret police under the régime of the last
Tsar Nicholas, now, of course, pressed into Lenin’s service.
The secret police of Russia were ever corrupt, and they had now been
suborned by the Bolsheviks to act in the interests of the Soviets as
they had previously done in the interests of the Monarch.
While passing across the Kongens-Nytorv--the King’s new market--the
fashionable centre of Copenhagen, Geoffrey again realised that the
little old man was following him. So during the following day he walked
the streets of the Danish capital with the sole purpose of drawing
on the old fellow who was keeping such strict surveillance upon his
movements. Everywhere he went the little old fellow shadowed him.
Therefore, at about ten o’clock on that evening he managed to elude
the watchful old man, and taking a taxi, drove to the central bureau
of police. He was taken at once to Marius Lund, the director of the
police, and when alone with him, explained the object of his visit
to Denmark, and asked that he might be given assistance in order to
unearth the secret wireless station of the revolutionaries.
Lund, a broad-shouldered, fair-haired Dane, at once became sympathetic,
promising all the assistance he could render.
“We in Denmark are always anxious to support the Allies against the
machinations of Germany and Russia. So I will give you whatever help
you may require. Already we have been advised of your presence here,
Mr. Falconer, and I confess it has aroused some suspicion, because you
had in your baggage some wireless apparatus.” And he laughed.
Falconer explained all the circumstances, how the bearings taken in
England had shown that the Bolshevik transmission set was not in Russia
at all, but somewhere in the neighbourhood of the Raadhus-Plads in that
city.
“But had we not better obtain the aid of one of the engineers at the
radio-telegraph station here? Mr. Petersen, the chief engineer, I know
quite well,” the head of the Copenhagen police suggested.
In consequence an introduction was next day effected between the two
wireless engineers, who sat together in the big wireless station at
Lyngby, outside Copenhagen, the note of which with its call-signal,
“O.X.A.,” is well-known to every wireless man. There they thoroughly
discussed the whole matter.
“We experience no interference,” said the Danish engineer. “But we use
the six-hundred mètre wave in transmission, while you say ‘M.S.K.’ is
under five thousand mètres. Anyhow it is highly interesting, and we
will certainly investigate it.”
Together they strolled around the big busy square at noon, but their
expert eyes could detect no sign of aerial wires. If a wireless station
existed in that vicinity it was certainly extremely well disguised.
Yet upon them both the little old man, who occupied the bedroom next to
Geoffrey’s, kept active vigilance, though that morning he was followed
by a detective. It was apparent that by some means or other the
Bolsheviks knew of Falconer’s journey and its object. That he was being
watched was proof in itself that the station, though well concealed,
certainly existed somewhere or other in the city.
At the suggestion of Marius Lund, both radio-engineers remained
inactive during the following three days, for the first point towards
success would be, he said, to get rid of the silent watcher, without
allowing him to suspect that he in turn was being watched.
So the police called one morning at the hotel, and finding a fault with
the old man’s passport, ordered him to return to Hamburg, whence he had
come. This he did with ill-suppressed chagrin.
Hence the investigators were free to watch. One evening while Geoffrey
could plainly read upon his own set in his bedroom at the Angleterre
the messages sent out by “M.S.K.,” yet at the radio station, a couple
of miles away, they could not be heard by the operator on duty, merely
because of the difference of the wave-lengths employed.
That night Geoffrey Falconer and his Danish friend sat outside the
Bristol Café in the great square, for the night was quite warm and
bright. As they gazed around at the brilliantly lit Place, the busy
centre of Denmark’s capital, they were more than ever mystified.
Only on the previous day Geoffrey had received from the
engineer-in-charge of the direction-finding station at Lowestoft a
report of a further test, and the bearings had not altered in the
slightest. That secret wireless station, which was endeavouring to do
so much harm to British interests and Britain’s prestige abroad, was
somewhere near them--but where?
His companion confessed himself utterly perplexed as just before
midnight they strolled homeward.
Yet as soon as Geoffrey entered his room and switched on his receiving
loop-aerial--a wooden frame three feet square, upon which was wound
a number of turns of wire, and which took the place of wires out of
doors--he heard the Bolshevik’s message being sent out strongly across
the North Sea to England!
On the following night the young Marconi engineer determined to watch
alone. He dozed upon his bed until midnight, then rising and putting on
his overcoat, he went forth to the Raadhus-Plads, which was at that
hour almost deserted.
He took a seat outside the Bristol, and idled over coffee and a
cigarette until one o’clock, when the establishment closed. Then he got
up and wandered around the square, not meeting more than half a dozen
persons, for the trams had ceased running, and only now and then there
passed a taxi on its way home.
Rain began to fall in a slight unpleasant drizzle; therefore, turning
up his coat collar, he drew into a doorway in order to keep as dry as
possible.
Suddenly, just after two o’clock in the morning, two men and a woman
emerged from a small café close by, that had been closed for a couple
of hours. One man was carrying a suit-case which seemed very heavy
for its size, and as the trio passed, Geoffrey overheard them talking
together. They spoke in Russian!
Having realised this, Geoffrey followed them at a respectable distance
through the deserted streets, past the Tivoli Gardens to the Central
Railway Station, where the suit-case was deposited in the _consigne_.
Geoffrey noted the case well. It was of dark-brown leather, and bore
the initials, “G.E.K.”
Then the young woman left her companions and went in the direction
of the Lange Bridge, while the men retraced their steps back to the
obscure little café.
Early next morning Geoffrey sought Marius Lund and related what he
had seen, whereupon they both went to the railway station, and having
interviewed the stationmaster, the bag was obtained, and on opening
it with a skeleton key, it was found to contain several portions of
apparatus for wireless transmission.
“Well,” remarked Geoffrey, when he examined the contents of the
suit-case, “I can’t see how they can transmit from that café. They have
no aerial.”
“We will investigate before long,” said the police director, closing
the bag and relocking it.
Within an hour Geoffrey accompanied him to the café, a dingy little
place to which no one apparently went. They had previously discovered
that it was kept by a man named Vedel, whose nationality was inscribed
upon the municipal register as German.
As they entered, leaving four police agents in plain clothes outside,
the man Vedel came forth, and behind him the second man whom Geoffrey
had seen during the night.
The police director demanded to know where their secret wireless
station was situated, but they at once denied possessing one.
“We shall search this place,” said Marius Lund. “You may as well tell
us the truth at once.”
“Search--and welcome,” was Vedel’s defiant reply.
Hence, while the pair were prevented from leaving the premises, they
searched the whole house and went out upon the roof, but found not the
slightest trace of a wireless installation.
They had drawn blank!
In chagrin Geoffrey began to wonder what the police thought of the
mare’s nest he had discovered, when Vedel, believing that he was about
to be arrested, gave himself away by drawing a revolver and firing a
shot point blank at Geoffrey, narrowly missing him.
In a flash the police agents secured and disarmed him, while Lund also
ordered the immediate arrest of his companion--who gave the name of
Köbke--and both were hurried off to the police bureau.
The wireless engineer, Petersen, was at once telephoned for, and
together they made a second examination of the premises, when after
nearly an hour they found in the cellar a concealed door which led into
a second cellar beneath a courtyard behind the house, wherein stood a
small printing office.
In this subterranean chamber beneath the printing office they found a
fine continuous-wave transmission set of one-and-a-half kilowatt power,
together with its generator. Apparently the printing office had been
established as a blind, so that the neighbours should believe the noise
to be that of printing machinery.
Then they searched for the aerial wires, but it was a long time ere
they discovered them. At last, to their great surprise, they found
them very cunningly concealed behind and about an enormous sky-sign
which, illuminated at night, advertised the merits of a certain brand
of cocoa, a sign which Geoffrey had noticed nightly, never dreaming, of
course, that the secret lay hidden up there.
The two prisoners who were proved to be dangerous emissaries of the
Moscow Bolsheviks, were convicted, and sentenced to long terms of
imprisonment for establishing secret wireless against the laws of
Denmark, the result being that the world has ever since been spared the
dissemination of the poisonous Bolshevik propaganda.
And the credit of its suppression was certainly entirely due to
Geoffrey Falconer.