Chapter Eleven.The House of Mystery.In an instant Roddy recovered himself. He saw that if he repeated the story of finding the girl in Welling Wood he would not be believed. And if Mr Sandys did not believe the strange truth, he would likewise not believe in hisbona fidesconcerning the hoped-for concession in Morocco. He therefore pursued a rather injudicious policy of evasion.“I know no girl named Edna Manners,” he replied.The old gentleman moved uneasily and grunted in dissatisfaction.“You did not tell me the truth last night concerning your disappearance,” he said severely. “Why?”“The less known about my strange adventure the better, Mr Sandys,” was the young man’s reply.“Then you did have a curious adventure, eh? I’ve heard some rather strange rumours.”“Rumours which I suppose are more or less true,” Roddy admitted. “But, pardon me, Mr Sandys, the affair is now all over. I was ill at the time, but now I am quite well again, and I have no desire to recall the past. It upsets me. Therefore I know that you will forgive me.”“Certainly, certainly, my dear young friend. I quite understand. I’ve heard that you’ve been suffering—well—from a nervous breakdown, they say. Denton had a specialist down to see you. Of course I’m wrong in trying to question you when you are not in a fit state. I admit it. It is I who should ask your forgiveness, Homfray.” The young man smiled, glad to have extricated himself from a rather delicate situation.“There is nothing to forgive,” he answered. “But one day, and very soon perhaps, I shall require your assistance, Homfray,” the grey-bearded financier said, looking at him very earnestly. “I shall want you to help me to discover what has become of that young girl. You tell me you don’t know. But perhaps you may be aware of facts which may give us a clue to what actually happened to her.”Those words of his made it clear that it was not Elma who had told him about the tragic discovery in Welling Wood. He had learnt it from some other source—possibly from the current village gossip. In any case, Elma had not told her father the strange truth, and for that Roddy was indeed thankful.Those words of Purcell Sandys’, however, struck him as very strange; certainly they showed that his questioner believed that he knew more about the mysterious Edna Manners—whoever she had been—than he had admitted.“I take it that you are deeply interested in the young lady who is missing?” Roddy remarked, hoping to elicit something concerning the girl, especially as Elma had the girl’s photograph in her possession.“Yes, I am,” was the other’s abrupt reply. “She must be found—and at all hazards, for much depends upon it.”“Where was she last seen?”“On the platform at Waterloo Station on a Sunday morning—the day when you also disappeared. She was with a gentleman whose description I have, and whom we must find. I have already a very reliable firm of private inquiry agents at work, and that much they have already discovered. Whether the pair took train from Waterloo is not known.” And taking a paper from a drawer which he unlocked he read a minute description of a middle-aged, clean-shaven, well-dressed man, to which Roddy listened.“Ah!” he said at last. “I know of nobody who answers to that description.” And he spoke the truth.The fact, however, that Elma’s father had engaged detectives was rather perturbing. They might discover the secret of his love for Elma! That secret both were determined, for the present, to conceal.Half an hour later Roddy walked back along Lombard Street, that bustling thoroughfare of bankers and financiers, full of grave reflections. If he could only recollect what had happened during that period of half-oblivion, then he would be able to act with fearlessness and come to grips with his enemies.He remembered that on the previous night he had learnt where Freda Crisp lived—a house called Willowden, on the high road beyond Welwyn. Therefore after a sandwich at the refreshment bar at King’s Cross station he took train, and half an hour later alighted at Welwyn station.Directed by a butcher’s boy, he walked for about a mile along the broad high road until he came to the house—a large old-fashioned one standing back amid a clump of high fir trees, with a tennis lawn and large walled garden on the left. The green holland blinds were down, and apparently the place was temporarily closed, a fact which gave him courage to approach nearer.As he did so the chords of his memory began to vibrate. He could remember at last! He recollected quite distinctly walking on the lawn. In a flash it all came back to him! There was a gate which led into a small rose garden. He looked for it. Yes! There it was! And the grey old sundial! He recollected the quaint inscription upon it: “I mark ye Time; saye Gossip dost thou so.” Yes, the weather-beaten old dial was there beside a lily pond with a pretty rock garden beyond.He stood peering eagerly through a crack in the old moss-grown oak fence, his vista being limited. But it sufficed to recall to his be-dimmed memory some details, sharp and outstanding, of the interior of that old Georgian house, its plan and its early Victorian furnishings. In the days he had spent there he had wandered aimlessly in and out. He knew that the two French windows, which he could see, opening on to a veranda and giving out upon the leaf-strewn lawn, were those of the drawing-room. The old-fashioned furniture he remembered was covered with glazed chintz with a design of great red roses and green peacocks. In the centre was a large settee upon which the Woman of Evil had often sat beside him, holding his hand and talking to him in domineering tones, while her elderly male companion sat in a high-backed “grandfather” chair beside the fire, smoking and smiling.Mostly, however, he had spent his time in an upstairs room which had once been a nursery, for it had iron bars at the window. His eyes sought that window—and he found it!Ah! in that room he had spent many dreary hours; his mind filled with weird and horrible visions—shadowy pictures which seemed bent on driving him to insanity.For fully a quarter of an hour he remained in the vicinity, his eyes strained on every side, and gradually recovering his normal memory.When, however, he tried to recall that night when he had acted under the overbearing influence of the woman Crisp he, alas! failed—failed utterly. Perhaps if he could get sight of the interior of the room in which he was victimised he might remember, but strive how he would all he could recall was but misty and unreal.At last he turned from the house, half-fearful lest his presence there might be known, yet gratified that the place was shut up.Had the woman and her companion left? Had they taken fright and flown?He walked back to the station, but ere he had arrived at King’s Cross he found that his recollection was becoming fainter, until it was just as hazy as before. Only when his eyes were fixed upon the scene of his mysterious bondage did his memory return to him.Yet he had satisfactorily cleared up one important point. He had fixed the house to which he had been secretly conveyed. Had the girl Edna Manners been taken there also? Perhaps her body had afterwards been concealed. Recollection of his mysterious discovery caused him to shudder. The girl’s appeal to him to save her still sounded in his ears, while the vision of that pale, still countenance often rose before him.Next day, and the next, he was busy purchasing the wireless set which he had promised to obtain for Mr Sandys—a seven-valve Marconi set with a “double note-magnifier,” a microphone relay and a loud-speaking telephone. This, with coils taking every wavelength from one hundred to twenty-five thousand metres, completed one of the best and most sensitive sets that had been invented.Adjoining the morning-room in the east wing of Farncombe Towers was a small ante-room, and into this he proceeded to instal the apparatus, aided of course by Elma. Mr Sandys had gone to Paris to consult with his partner, therefore the young pair had the place to themselves.The local builder at Roddy’s orders put up a mast upon the tower immediately above the room they had chosen, and the young man having constructed the double-line aerial a hundred feet long and put many insulators of both ebonite and porcelain at each end, the long twin wires were one morning hoisted to the pole, while the other end was secured in the top of a great Wellingtonia not far from the mansion. The lead-in cable, known to naval wireless men as the “cow-tail,” was brought on to a well-insulated brass rod which passed through the window-frame and so on to the instruments, which Roddy set up neatly in an American roll-top desk as being convenient to exclude the dust.Making a wireless “earth” proved an amusing diversion to both. Elma, who had read a book about wireless, suggested soldering a wire to the water tap; but Roddy, who had bought his experience in wireless after many months and even years of experiment, replied:“Yes. That’s all very well for an amateur ‘earth,’ but we’ve put up a professional set, and we must make a real ‘earth.’”The real “earth” consisted, first, of digging three deep holes about four feet deep and three feet long under the aerial. This necessitated the use of a pickaxe borrowed from the head gardener, for they had to dig into chalk.Elma proved herself an enthusiastic excavator and very handy with the shovel, and after a heavy afternoon’s work she wheeled a barrowful of coke from the palm-house furnace, and Roddy carefully placed a zinc plate in a perpendicular position into each hole and surrounded it with coke which, absorbing the moisture, would always keep the zinc damp, and hence make a good earth connexion. These three plates having been put in directly beneath the aerial wires, they were connected by soldered wires, and before darkness set in the earth-wire was brought in and connected up to the set.Afterwards, in order to make certain of his “earth”—usually one of the most neglected portions of a wireless installation, by the way—he took a large mat of fine copper gauze which he had bought in London, and soldering a lead to it spread it across the grass, also beneath the aerial.Elma watched it all in wonderment and in admiration of Roddy’s scientific knowledge. She had read the elementary book upon wireless, but her lover, discarding the directions there set down, had put in things which she did not understand.“And now will it really work?” asked the girl, as together they stood in the little room where upon the oak writing-desk the various complicated-looking pieces of apparatus had been screwed down.“Let’s try,” said Roddy, screwing two pairs of head-’phones upon two brass terminals on one of the units of the apparatus.Elma took one pair of telephones, while Roddy placed the others over his ears. His deft fingers pulled over the aerial switch, whereupon the nine little tubular electric lights instantly glowed, each of them three inches long and about the size of a chemical test-tube. They gave quite a pretty effect.“Thanks, Cox!” came a voice, loud and distinct. “I could not get you clearly until now. I understand that your position is about half-way across the Channel and that visibility is rather bad. Le Bourget reported when you left. Righto! Croydon, switching off!”“Splendid!” Elma cried. “Just fancy, within a day you have fitted up wireless for us, so that we can actually hear telephony on the Paris airway!”“That was my friend Luger talking to the Paris-London mail-plane. Probably we’ll have Tubby next.”“Who’s Tubby?”“Oh! The one-time boy scout who is an operator in the hut at Croydon aerodrome and who climbs the masts, fits the switch-board, and does all the odd jobs. Sometimes the jobs are very odd, for he makes the wheels go round when other people give it up. Listen again. The hour has just struck. Tubby may now come on duty.”Again they placed the telephones over their ears, but beyond a few faint dots and dashes—“spark” signals from ships at sea and “harmonies” at that—there was nothing. The mysterious voice of Croydon was silent.Suddenly they heard a kind of wind whistle in the telephones, and another voice, rather high-pitched, said:“Hulloa! G.E.A.Y.! Hulloa, Cox! Croydon calling. Please give me your position. Croydon over.”“That’s Tubby,” laughed Roddy. “I thought he’d come on duty for the last watch.”“Marvellous!” declared the pretty girl, still listening intently.Then she heard a faint voice reply:“Hulloa, Croydon! G.E.A.Y. answering. I am just over Boulogne; visibility much better. Thanks, Tubby! Switching off.”Roddy removed the telephones from his ears, and remarked:“I hope your father will be interested.”“He will, I’m certain. It’s topping,” the girl declared, “but it’s rather weird though.”“Yes—to the uninitiated,” he replied. Then, glancing at his wrist-watch, he said: “It’s time that New Brunswick began to work with Carnarvon. Let us see if we can get the American station.”He changed the small coils of wires for ones treble their size, and having adjusted them, they both listened again.“There he is!” Roddy exclaimed. “Sending his testing ‘V’s’ in Morse. Do you hear them—three shorts and one long?”In the ’phones the girl could hear them quite plainly, though the sending station was across the Atlantic.Then the signals stopped. Instantly the great Marconi station gave the signal “go.” And Roddy, taking up a pencil, scribbled down the first message of the series, a commercial message addressed to a shipping firm in Liverpool from their New York agent concerning freights, followed, with scarce a pause, by a congratulatory message upon somebody’s marriage—two persons named Gladwyn—and then a short Press message recording what the President had said in Congress an hour before.“They’ll keep on all night,” remarked Roddy, with a smile. “But so long as the set works, that’s all I care about. I only hope your father will be satisfied that I’ve tried to do my best.”“Really the marvels of wireless are unending!” Elma declared, looking into her lover’s strong, manly face. “You said that the broadcast would come on at eight. Stay and have something to eat, and let us listen to it.”“Ah! I’m afraid I’d—”“Afraid! Of course not!” she laughed merrily, and ringing the bell she told Hughes, who answered, that “Mr Homfray would stay to dinner.”The latter proved a cosy tête-à-tête meal at which the old butler very discreetly left the young couple to themselves, and at eight they were back in the newly fitted wireless-room where, on taking up the telephones, they found that the concert broadcasted from London had already begun. A certain prima donna of world-wide fame was singing a selection fromIl Trovatore, and into the room the singer’s voice came perfectly.Roddy turned a switch, and instead of the music being received into the ’phones it came out through the horn of the “loud speaker,” and could be heard as though the singer was actually in the house and not forty-five miles away.And they sat together for yet another hour enjoying the latest wonders of wireless.
In an instant Roddy recovered himself. He saw that if he repeated the story of finding the girl in Welling Wood he would not be believed. And if Mr Sandys did not believe the strange truth, he would likewise not believe in hisbona fidesconcerning the hoped-for concession in Morocco. He therefore pursued a rather injudicious policy of evasion.
“I know no girl named Edna Manners,” he replied.
The old gentleman moved uneasily and grunted in dissatisfaction.
“You did not tell me the truth last night concerning your disappearance,” he said severely. “Why?”
“The less known about my strange adventure the better, Mr Sandys,” was the young man’s reply.
“Then you did have a curious adventure, eh? I’ve heard some rather strange rumours.”
“Rumours which I suppose are more or less true,” Roddy admitted. “But, pardon me, Mr Sandys, the affair is now all over. I was ill at the time, but now I am quite well again, and I have no desire to recall the past. It upsets me. Therefore I know that you will forgive me.”
“Certainly, certainly, my dear young friend. I quite understand. I’ve heard that you’ve been suffering—well—from a nervous breakdown, they say. Denton had a specialist down to see you. Of course I’m wrong in trying to question you when you are not in a fit state. I admit it. It is I who should ask your forgiveness, Homfray.” The young man smiled, glad to have extricated himself from a rather delicate situation.
“There is nothing to forgive,” he answered. “But one day, and very soon perhaps, I shall require your assistance, Homfray,” the grey-bearded financier said, looking at him very earnestly. “I shall want you to help me to discover what has become of that young girl. You tell me you don’t know. But perhaps you may be aware of facts which may give us a clue to what actually happened to her.”
Those words of his made it clear that it was not Elma who had told him about the tragic discovery in Welling Wood. He had learnt it from some other source—possibly from the current village gossip. In any case, Elma had not told her father the strange truth, and for that Roddy was indeed thankful.
Those words of Purcell Sandys’, however, struck him as very strange; certainly they showed that his questioner believed that he knew more about the mysterious Edna Manners—whoever she had been—than he had admitted.
“I take it that you are deeply interested in the young lady who is missing?” Roddy remarked, hoping to elicit something concerning the girl, especially as Elma had the girl’s photograph in her possession.
“Yes, I am,” was the other’s abrupt reply. “She must be found—and at all hazards, for much depends upon it.”
“Where was she last seen?”
“On the platform at Waterloo Station on a Sunday morning—the day when you also disappeared. She was with a gentleman whose description I have, and whom we must find. I have already a very reliable firm of private inquiry agents at work, and that much they have already discovered. Whether the pair took train from Waterloo is not known.” And taking a paper from a drawer which he unlocked he read a minute description of a middle-aged, clean-shaven, well-dressed man, to which Roddy listened.
“Ah!” he said at last. “I know of nobody who answers to that description.” And he spoke the truth.
The fact, however, that Elma’s father had engaged detectives was rather perturbing. They might discover the secret of his love for Elma! That secret both were determined, for the present, to conceal.
Half an hour later Roddy walked back along Lombard Street, that bustling thoroughfare of bankers and financiers, full of grave reflections. If he could only recollect what had happened during that period of half-oblivion, then he would be able to act with fearlessness and come to grips with his enemies.
He remembered that on the previous night he had learnt where Freda Crisp lived—a house called Willowden, on the high road beyond Welwyn. Therefore after a sandwich at the refreshment bar at King’s Cross station he took train, and half an hour later alighted at Welwyn station.
Directed by a butcher’s boy, he walked for about a mile along the broad high road until he came to the house—a large old-fashioned one standing back amid a clump of high fir trees, with a tennis lawn and large walled garden on the left. The green holland blinds were down, and apparently the place was temporarily closed, a fact which gave him courage to approach nearer.
As he did so the chords of his memory began to vibrate. He could remember at last! He recollected quite distinctly walking on the lawn. In a flash it all came back to him! There was a gate which led into a small rose garden. He looked for it. Yes! There it was! And the grey old sundial! He recollected the quaint inscription upon it: “I mark ye Time; saye Gossip dost thou so.” Yes, the weather-beaten old dial was there beside a lily pond with a pretty rock garden beyond.
He stood peering eagerly through a crack in the old moss-grown oak fence, his vista being limited. But it sufficed to recall to his be-dimmed memory some details, sharp and outstanding, of the interior of that old Georgian house, its plan and its early Victorian furnishings. In the days he had spent there he had wandered aimlessly in and out. He knew that the two French windows, which he could see, opening on to a veranda and giving out upon the leaf-strewn lawn, were those of the drawing-room. The old-fashioned furniture he remembered was covered with glazed chintz with a design of great red roses and green peacocks. In the centre was a large settee upon which the Woman of Evil had often sat beside him, holding his hand and talking to him in domineering tones, while her elderly male companion sat in a high-backed “grandfather” chair beside the fire, smoking and smiling.
Mostly, however, he had spent his time in an upstairs room which had once been a nursery, for it had iron bars at the window. His eyes sought that window—and he found it!
Ah! in that room he had spent many dreary hours; his mind filled with weird and horrible visions—shadowy pictures which seemed bent on driving him to insanity.
For fully a quarter of an hour he remained in the vicinity, his eyes strained on every side, and gradually recovering his normal memory.
When, however, he tried to recall that night when he had acted under the overbearing influence of the woman Crisp he, alas! failed—failed utterly. Perhaps if he could get sight of the interior of the room in which he was victimised he might remember, but strive how he would all he could recall was but misty and unreal.
At last he turned from the house, half-fearful lest his presence there might be known, yet gratified that the place was shut up.
Had the woman and her companion left? Had they taken fright and flown?
He walked back to the station, but ere he had arrived at King’s Cross he found that his recollection was becoming fainter, until it was just as hazy as before. Only when his eyes were fixed upon the scene of his mysterious bondage did his memory return to him.
Yet he had satisfactorily cleared up one important point. He had fixed the house to which he had been secretly conveyed. Had the girl Edna Manners been taken there also? Perhaps her body had afterwards been concealed. Recollection of his mysterious discovery caused him to shudder. The girl’s appeal to him to save her still sounded in his ears, while the vision of that pale, still countenance often rose before him.
Next day, and the next, he was busy purchasing the wireless set which he had promised to obtain for Mr Sandys—a seven-valve Marconi set with a “double note-magnifier,” a microphone relay and a loud-speaking telephone. This, with coils taking every wavelength from one hundred to twenty-five thousand metres, completed one of the best and most sensitive sets that had been invented.
Adjoining the morning-room in the east wing of Farncombe Towers was a small ante-room, and into this he proceeded to instal the apparatus, aided of course by Elma. Mr Sandys had gone to Paris to consult with his partner, therefore the young pair had the place to themselves.
The local builder at Roddy’s orders put up a mast upon the tower immediately above the room they had chosen, and the young man having constructed the double-line aerial a hundred feet long and put many insulators of both ebonite and porcelain at each end, the long twin wires were one morning hoisted to the pole, while the other end was secured in the top of a great Wellingtonia not far from the mansion. The lead-in cable, known to naval wireless men as the “cow-tail,” was brought on to a well-insulated brass rod which passed through the window-frame and so on to the instruments, which Roddy set up neatly in an American roll-top desk as being convenient to exclude the dust.
Making a wireless “earth” proved an amusing diversion to both. Elma, who had read a book about wireless, suggested soldering a wire to the water tap; but Roddy, who had bought his experience in wireless after many months and even years of experiment, replied:
“Yes. That’s all very well for an amateur ‘earth,’ but we’ve put up a professional set, and we must make a real ‘earth.’”
The real “earth” consisted, first, of digging three deep holes about four feet deep and three feet long under the aerial. This necessitated the use of a pickaxe borrowed from the head gardener, for they had to dig into chalk.
Elma proved herself an enthusiastic excavator and very handy with the shovel, and after a heavy afternoon’s work she wheeled a barrowful of coke from the palm-house furnace, and Roddy carefully placed a zinc plate in a perpendicular position into each hole and surrounded it with coke which, absorbing the moisture, would always keep the zinc damp, and hence make a good earth connexion. These three plates having been put in directly beneath the aerial wires, they were connected by soldered wires, and before darkness set in the earth-wire was brought in and connected up to the set.
Afterwards, in order to make certain of his “earth”—usually one of the most neglected portions of a wireless installation, by the way—he took a large mat of fine copper gauze which he had bought in London, and soldering a lead to it spread it across the grass, also beneath the aerial.
Elma watched it all in wonderment and in admiration of Roddy’s scientific knowledge. She had read the elementary book upon wireless, but her lover, discarding the directions there set down, had put in things which she did not understand.
“And now will it really work?” asked the girl, as together they stood in the little room where upon the oak writing-desk the various complicated-looking pieces of apparatus had been screwed down.
“Let’s try,” said Roddy, screwing two pairs of head-’phones upon two brass terminals on one of the units of the apparatus.
Elma took one pair of telephones, while Roddy placed the others over his ears. His deft fingers pulled over the aerial switch, whereupon the nine little tubular electric lights instantly glowed, each of them three inches long and about the size of a chemical test-tube. They gave quite a pretty effect.
“Thanks, Cox!” came a voice, loud and distinct. “I could not get you clearly until now. I understand that your position is about half-way across the Channel and that visibility is rather bad. Le Bourget reported when you left. Righto! Croydon, switching off!”
“Splendid!” Elma cried. “Just fancy, within a day you have fitted up wireless for us, so that we can actually hear telephony on the Paris airway!”
“That was my friend Luger talking to the Paris-London mail-plane. Probably we’ll have Tubby next.”
“Who’s Tubby?”
“Oh! The one-time boy scout who is an operator in the hut at Croydon aerodrome and who climbs the masts, fits the switch-board, and does all the odd jobs. Sometimes the jobs are very odd, for he makes the wheels go round when other people give it up. Listen again. The hour has just struck. Tubby may now come on duty.”
Again they placed the telephones over their ears, but beyond a few faint dots and dashes—“spark” signals from ships at sea and “harmonies” at that—there was nothing. The mysterious voice of Croydon was silent.
Suddenly they heard a kind of wind whistle in the telephones, and another voice, rather high-pitched, said:
“Hulloa! G.E.A.Y.! Hulloa, Cox! Croydon calling. Please give me your position. Croydon over.”
“That’s Tubby,” laughed Roddy. “I thought he’d come on duty for the last watch.”
“Marvellous!” declared the pretty girl, still listening intently.
Then she heard a faint voice reply:
“Hulloa, Croydon! G.E.A.Y. answering. I am just over Boulogne; visibility much better. Thanks, Tubby! Switching off.”
Roddy removed the telephones from his ears, and remarked:
“I hope your father will be interested.”
“He will, I’m certain. It’s topping,” the girl declared, “but it’s rather weird though.”
“Yes—to the uninitiated,” he replied. Then, glancing at his wrist-watch, he said: “It’s time that New Brunswick began to work with Carnarvon. Let us see if we can get the American station.”
He changed the small coils of wires for ones treble their size, and having adjusted them, they both listened again.
“There he is!” Roddy exclaimed. “Sending his testing ‘V’s’ in Morse. Do you hear them—three shorts and one long?”
In the ’phones the girl could hear them quite plainly, though the sending station was across the Atlantic.
Then the signals stopped. Instantly the great Marconi station gave the signal “go.” And Roddy, taking up a pencil, scribbled down the first message of the series, a commercial message addressed to a shipping firm in Liverpool from their New York agent concerning freights, followed, with scarce a pause, by a congratulatory message upon somebody’s marriage—two persons named Gladwyn—and then a short Press message recording what the President had said in Congress an hour before.
“They’ll keep on all night,” remarked Roddy, with a smile. “But so long as the set works, that’s all I care about. I only hope your father will be satisfied that I’ve tried to do my best.”
“Really the marvels of wireless are unending!” Elma declared, looking into her lover’s strong, manly face. “You said that the broadcast would come on at eight. Stay and have something to eat, and let us listen to it.”
“Ah! I’m afraid I’d—”
“Afraid! Of course not!” she laughed merrily, and ringing the bell she told Hughes, who answered, that “Mr Homfray would stay to dinner.”
The latter proved a cosy tête-à-tête meal at which the old butler very discreetly left the young couple to themselves, and at eight they were back in the newly fitted wireless-room where, on taking up the telephones, they found that the concert broadcasted from London had already begun. A certain prima donna of world-wide fame was singing a selection fromIl Trovatore, and into the room the singer’s voice came perfectly.
Roddy turned a switch, and instead of the music being received into the ’phones it came out through the horn of the “loud speaker,” and could be heard as though the singer was actually in the house and not forty-five miles away.
And they sat together for yet another hour enjoying the latest wonders of wireless.
Chapter Twelve.Rex Rutherford’s Prophecy.At the Rectory Roddy sat in his own wireless-room until far into the night, fitting a complete wireless receiving-set into a small cigar-box. The one he had fitted into a tin tobacco-box was efficient in a sense, but the detector being a crystal it was not sufficiently sensitive to suit him.The one he was constructing was of his own design, with three valves—as the little wireless glow-lamps are called—the batteries and telephones being all contained in the box, which could easily be carried in the pocket together with a small coil of wire which could be strung up anywhere as an aerial, and as “earth” a lamp post, a pillar-box, or running water could be used.It was nearly three o’clock in the morning before he had finished assembling it, and prior to fixing it in the box he submitted it to a test. Opening the window of his wireless-room he threw the end of the coil of wire outside. Then going out into the moonlight, he took the ball insulator at the end of the wire and fixed it upon a nail he had driven in the wall of the gardener’s potting-shed some time before.Then, having stretched the wire taut to the house, he went back and attached it to one of the terminal screws of the little set upon which he had been working for many days. The earth-wire of his experimental set he joined up, and then putting on the ’phones listened intently.Not a tick!He slowly turned the ebonite knob of the condenser, but to no avail. Raising the wavelength brought no better result. Was it yet another failure? As an experimenter in radio he was used to failures, so it never disheartened him. Failure in prospecting was the same as failure in wireless. He received each rebuff complacently, but with that air of dogged perseverance of which success is ever born.“Strange!” he remarked aloud. “It certainly should give signals.”Then he examined the underside of the sheet of ebonite on which the various units were mounted, valves, condensers, etc, when at last he discovered a faulty connexion on the grid-leak. The latter will puzzle the uninitiated, but suffice it to say that so delicate is wireless receiving that over a line drawn by a lead pencil across paper or ebonite with a two-inch scratch in it filled with pencil dust the electric waves will travel. The connexion was not complete at one end. He tightened the little terminal, and suddenly came the expected high-pitched dots and dashes in the Morse code.“Ah! Stonehaven!” he remarked. Then, by turning the knob of the condenser, a sharp rippling sound was brought in—the automatic transmission from Cologne to Aldershot at seventy words a minute.Backwards and forwards he turned the condenser, and with a second knob altered the wavelength of his reception, first tuning in ships in the Channel signalling to their controlling station at Niton, in the Isle of Wight, or the North Foreland; then Leafield, in Oxfordshire, could be heard transmitting to Cairo, while Madrid was calling Ongar, and upon the highest wavelength the powerful Marconi station at Carnarvon was sending out a continuous stream of messages across the Atlantic.Suddenly, as he reduced his wavelength below six hundred metres, he heard a man’s deep voice call:“Hulloa, 3.V.N. Hulloa! This is 3.A.Z. answering. What I said was the truth. You will understand. Tell me that you do. It is important and very urgent. 3.A.Z. changing over.”Who 3.A.Z. was, or who 3.V.N., Roddy did not at the moment know without looking up the call-letters in his list of experimental stations. The voice was, however, very strong, and evidently high power was being used.He listened, and presently he heard a voice much fainter and evidently at a considerable distance, reply:“Hulloa, 3.A.Z. This is 3.V.N. answering. No, I could not get you quite clearly then. Remember, I am at Nice. Kindly now repeat your message on a thousand metres. 3.V.N. over.”Quickly Roddy increased his wavelength to a thousand metres, which he swiftly tested with his wave-metre, a box-like apparatus with buzzer and little electric bulb. Suddenly through the ether came the words even more clearly than before:“Hulloa, 3.V.N. at Nice! Hulloa! This is 3.A.Z. repeating. I will repeat slowly. Please listen! 3.A.Z. repeating a message. Andrew Barclay leaves London to-morrow for Marseilles, where he will meet Mohamed Ben Azuz at the Hôtel Louvre et Paix. Will you go to Marseilles? Please reply. 3.A.Z. over.”Roddy held his breath. Who could possibly be warning somebody in the south of France of his friend Barclay’s departure from Victoria to interview the Moorish Minister of the Interior regarding the concession?Again he listened, and yet again came the far-off voice, faint, though yet distinct:“3.V.N. calling 3.A.Z.! Thanks, I understand. Yes. I will go by next train to Marseilles. Is Freda coming? 3.V.N. over.”“Yes. Freda will come if you wish it,” replied the loud, hard voice. “3.A.Z. calling 3.V.N. Over.”“Hulloa, 3.A.Z. From 3.V.N. Thanks. Shall expect Freda, but not by same train. Tell Jimmie to be on the alert. I’ll explain to Freda when I see her. Good-night, old man. Good-bye. 3.V.N. closing down.”Quickly Roddy searched his list of amateur call-signs, but he could not find either 3.A.Z. or 3.V.N. They were evidently false signs used by pre-arrangement, but by persons who, strangely enough, knew of his friend Barclay’s journey on the morrow!And Freda? Could it be Freda Crisp who had been indicated? Why was she going south also—but not by the same train?After an hour’s sleep young Homfray, much mystified, rose, dressed, and taking out his motorcycle, started up the long high road to London.On the platform at Victoria as early as half-past eight o’clock he awaited his friend Barclay. Presently he came, a ruddy, round-faced, rather short little man of fifty, who was a thoroughgoing cosmopolitan and who had dabbled in concessions in all parts of the world.“Hulloa, Homfray!” he exclaimed, looking at the muddy condition of his friend’s motor clothes. “I didn’t expect you to come to see me off.”“No,” replied the young man rather hesitatingly, “but the fact is I have come here to warn you.”“Warn me! Of what?” asked his friend in surprise.Then Roddy explained, and repeated what the mysterious voice from the void had said.“Both speaker and listener were disguised under false call-signs,” he went on. “Hence it is highly suspicious, and I felt it my duty to tell you.”Andrew Barclay was puzzled. The porter was placing his bags in a first-class compartment of the boat train, which was crowded with people going holiday-making abroad. Loud-voiced society women commanded porters, and elderly men stalked along to the carriages following their piles of baggage. The eight-forty Paris service is usually crowded in summer and winter, for one gets to Paris by five, in time for a leisurely dinner and the series of trains which leave the Gare de Lyon in the region of nine o’clock.“Just repeat all you said, Roddy, will you?” asked the man in the heavy travelling coat.The young fellow did so.“Freda? That’s a rather unusual name. Has it anything to do with that woman Freda Crisp you told me about? What do you think?”“I believe it has.”Barclay was aware of all the strange experiences of the shrewd young mining engineer. Only three days after his return to Little Farncombe he had gone down to the quiet old country rectory and listened to his friend’s story.In this concession to work the ancient mines in the Wad Sus he was equally interested with his young friend in whom he believed so implicitly, knowing how enthusiastic and therefore successful he had been in his prospecting expeditions up the Amazon.The big portable luggage-vans—those secured by wire hawsers which are slung on to the mail-boat and re-slung on to the Paris express—had been locked and sealed with lead, as they always are. The head guard’s whistle blew, and Barclay was about to enter the train, when Roddy said:“Do take care! There’s more in this than either of us suspect. That woman Crisp! Beware of her. You will see her in due course at your hotel. Be careful. Good-bye—and good luck!”The train moved out around the bend. The young fellow in his wet, muddy overalls stood for a moment gazing at the rear van. Should he watch for the departure of the woman? No. She might see him. Better that he should remain in apparent ignorance. So he went out, remounted his cycle, and headed away back over Putney Bridge and through crooked Kingston, Cobham, and down the steep hill in Guildford towards home.Freda! That name was burned into his brain like the brand of a red-hot iron. Freda—the woman who had held him beneath her strange, inexplicable spell during his bondage at the remote old country house near Welwyn.But why? Why should his father have warned him against her? His father, a most honest, upright, pious man to whom he had always looked for leadership—the road-builder to the perfect life, as he had always regarded him. No man in the world is perfect, but Norton Homfray had, to say the least, tried to live up to the standard laid down by the Holy Writ.Had he had faults in his past life, his son wondered? Every man has faults. Were those faults being concealed by his father—the “pater” upon whom he doted and to whom when away he wrote so regularly, with all his most intimate news, though mails might leave very intermittently, as they do from the back of beyond, where prospectors carry on their work with hammer and microscope.Then, as he rode along in the grey, damp winter morning, he reflected.The whole situation was most puzzling. He loved Elma with a fierce all-consuming affection. She was his only beacon in his eager, strenuous life.A week went by. He anxiously awaited news from Andrew Barclay, but the latter sent no word. He was, without doubt, negotiating with the Moorish Minister of the Interior, who was at that moment visiting France, and who was his personal friend.But Roddy could not rid himself of the recollection of that strange conversation by radio-telephone—the request that Freda should go south. He had taken another journey out to Welwyn in order to ascertain if the woman was still at Willowden, but had found the house still closed and apparently without a caretaker. Had he been able to get a view of the back of the premises he would, no doubt, have noticed the well-constructed wireless aerial, but it was completely hidden from the road, and as during his enforced sojourn in the place he had never seen it, he remained in ignorance of its existence.At Farncombe Towers Mr Sandys, when he returned home, had expressed himself highly delighted with the wireless set which the rector’s son had installed, and on two successive evenings sat with Elma intensely interested in listening to broadcasted concerts and news.Three nights later Elma and her father, having been to the first night of a new revue, had had supper at the Savoy, and passing into the lounge, sat down to their coffee, when an elderly, clean-shaven, rather tall man, accompanied by a well-dressed, shorter, but good-looking companion, both in well-cut evening clothes, suddenly halted.“Hulloa, Harrison!” exclaimed the grey-bearded financier to the man who bowed before Elma and greeted her.“Not often we see you here, Mr Sandys!” replied the man, evidently surprised. Then he begged leave to introduce his companion, Mr Rex Rutherford.Elma smiled as the stranger expressed delight at meeting her father and herself.“Your name is very well known to me, as to everybody, Mr Sandys,” said the dark-eyed man pleasantly, as they both took chairs which the financier offered them, at the same time ordering extra coffee. “Though I’m an American, I live mostly in Paris, and I met your partner, Sir Charles, there quite recently.”“I shouldn’t have thought you were an American,” remarked Elma. “We in England expect every United States citizen to speak with an accent, you know.”“Well, Miss Sandys, I suppose I’m one of the exceptions. My father and mother were British. Perhaps that accounts for it,” he laughed, lighting a cigar.“Mr Rutherford is more of a Parisian than American, Miss Sandys,” declared the man, Bertram Harrison. And then they began to chat about the new revue, which Elma described enthusiastically as a great success, while Rex Rutherford sat listening to her, evidently filled with admiration of her sweetness and remarkable beauty.Elma presently inquired of Mr Harrison if he had seen Mrs Crisp lately.“No. She’s gone to Switzerland,” was his reply.“I’m thinking of going across to Florida very soon to spend the winter at Palm Beach. I was there last year,” remarked Rutherford. “Ever been there, Mr Sandys?”“Never,” replied Elma’s father. “I must try it one winter. I’ve heard so much about it. Are you in London for long?”“Only for a week or so on a matter of business. I’m at the Carlton, but I expect very soon to get back to Paris again.”And so the conversation drifted on, both men well-bred and of charming manner, until the lights were lowered as sign that the restaurant was closing.The pair saw Mr Sandys and his daughter into their limousine, and then walked together along the Strand.“Well, how did it work?” asked the man Harrison eagerly.“Excellent,” declared Gordon Gray, for it was he who had been introduced as Rex Rutherford. “We’ve taken a step in the right direction to-night. It only shows you what can be done by watchfulness. But, oh! the girl! Lovely, isn’t she?”“Yes, but I hope, my dear Gordon, you’re not going to lose your head to a woman! We’ve other fish to fry with the old man—remember!”“Lose my head to a woman!” cried Gray, halting beneath the street lamp and looking at him with his dark eyes. “No, my dear fellow, I never do that. It’s the woman who loses her head to me! You told me once that she dances well, didn’t you? Well, the day will come when she will dance to any tune that I choose to play!”
At the Rectory Roddy sat in his own wireless-room until far into the night, fitting a complete wireless receiving-set into a small cigar-box. The one he had fitted into a tin tobacco-box was efficient in a sense, but the detector being a crystal it was not sufficiently sensitive to suit him.
The one he was constructing was of his own design, with three valves—as the little wireless glow-lamps are called—the batteries and telephones being all contained in the box, which could easily be carried in the pocket together with a small coil of wire which could be strung up anywhere as an aerial, and as “earth” a lamp post, a pillar-box, or running water could be used.
It was nearly three o’clock in the morning before he had finished assembling it, and prior to fixing it in the box he submitted it to a test. Opening the window of his wireless-room he threw the end of the coil of wire outside. Then going out into the moonlight, he took the ball insulator at the end of the wire and fixed it upon a nail he had driven in the wall of the gardener’s potting-shed some time before.
Then, having stretched the wire taut to the house, he went back and attached it to one of the terminal screws of the little set upon which he had been working for many days. The earth-wire of his experimental set he joined up, and then putting on the ’phones listened intently.
Not a tick!
He slowly turned the ebonite knob of the condenser, but to no avail. Raising the wavelength brought no better result. Was it yet another failure? As an experimenter in radio he was used to failures, so it never disheartened him. Failure in prospecting was the same as failure in wireless. He received each rebuff complacently, but with that air of dogged perseverance of which success is ever born.
“Strange!” he remarked aloud. “It certainly should give signals.”
Then he examined the underside of the sheet of ebonite on which the various units were mounted, valves, condensers, etc, when at last he discovered a faulty connexion on the grid-leak. The latter will puzzle the uninitiated, but suffice it to say that so delicate is wireless receiving that over a line drawn by a lead pencil across paper or ebonite with a two-inch scratch in it filled with pencil dust the electric waves will travel. The connexion was not complete at one end. He tightened the little terminal, and suddenly came the expected high-pitched dots and dashes in the Morse code.
“Ah! Stonehaven!” he remarked. Then, by turning the knob of the condenser, a sharp rippling sound was brought in—the automatic transmission from Cologne to Aldershot at seventy words a minute.
Backwards and forwards he turned the condenser, and with a second knob altered the wavelength of his reception, first tuning in ships in the Channel signalling to their controlling station at Niton, in the Isle of Wight, or the North Foreland; then Leafield, in Oxfordshire, could be heard transmitting to Cairo, while Madrid was calling Ongar, and upon the highest wavelength the powerful Marconi station at Carnarvon was sending out a continuous stream of messages across the Atlantic.
Suddenly, as he reduced his wavelength below six hundred metres, he heard a man’s deep voice call:
“Hulloa, 3.V.N. Hulloa! This is 3.A.Z. answering. What I said was the truth. You will understand. Tell me that you do. It is important and very urgent. 3.A.Z. changing over.”
Who 3.A.Z. was, or who 3.V.N., Roddy did not at the moment know without looking up the call-letters in his list of experimental stations. The voice was, however, very strong, and evidently high power was being used.
He listened, and presently he heard a voice much fainter and evidently at a considerable distance, reply:
“Hulloa, 3.A.Z. This is 3.V.N. answering. No, I could not get you quite clearly then. Remember, I am at Nice. Kindly now repeat your message on a thousand metres. 3.V.N. over.”
Quickly Roddy increased his wavelength to a thousand metres, which he swiftly tested with his wave-metre, a box-like apparatus with buzzer and little electric bulb. Suddenly through the ether came the words even more clearly than before:
“Hulloa, 3.V.N. at Nice! Hulloa! This is 3.A.Z. repeating. I will repeat slowly. Please listen! 3.A.Z. repeating a message. Andrew Barclay leaves London to-morrow for Marseilles, where he will meet Mohamed Ben Azuz at the Hôtel Louvre et Paix. Will you go to Marseilles? Please reply. 3.A.Z. over.”
Roddy held his breath. Who could possibly be warning somebody in the south of France of his friend Barclay’s departure from Victoria to interview the Moorish Minister of the Interior regarding the concession?
Again he listened, and yet again came the far-off voice, faint, though yet distinct:
“3.V.N. calling 3.A.Z.! Thanks, I understand. Yes. I will go by next train to Marseilles. Is Freda coming? 3.V.N. over.”
“Yes. Freda will come if you wish it,” replied the loud, hard voice. “3.A.Z. calling 3.V.N. Over.”
“Hulloa, 3.A.Z. From 3.V.N. Thanks. Shall expect Freda, but not by same train. Tell Jimmie to be on the alert. I’ll explain to Freda when I see her. Good-night, old man. Good-bye. 3.V.N. closing down.”
Quickly Roddy searched his list of amateur call-signs, but he could not find either 3.A.Z. or 3.V.N. They were evidently false signs used by pre-arrangement, but by persons who, strangely enough, knew of his friend Barclay’s journey on the morrow!
And Freda? Could it be Freda Crisp who had been indicated? Why was she going south also—but not by the same train?
After an hour’s sleep young Homfray, much mystified, rose, dressed, and taking out his motorcycle, started up the long high road to London.
On the platform at Victoria as early as half-past eight o’clock he awaited his friend Barclay. Presently he came, a ruddy, round-faced, rather short little man of fifty, who was a thoroughgoing cosmopolitan and who had dabbled in concessions in all parts of the world.
“Hulloa, Homfray!” he exclaimed, looking at the muddy condition of his friend’s motor clothes. “I didn’t expect you to come to see me off.”
“No,” replied the young man rather hesitatingly, “but the fact is I have come here to warn you.”
“Warn me! Of what?” asked his friend in surprise.
Then Roddy explained, and repeated what the mysterious voice from the void had said.
“Both speaker and listener were disguised under false call-signs,” he went on. “Hence it is highly suspicious, and I felt it my duty to tell you.”
Andrew Barclay was puzzled. The porter was placing his bags in a first-class compartment of the boat train, which was crowded with people going holiday-making abroad. Loud-voiced society women commanded porters, and elderly men stalked along to the carriages following their piles of baggage. The eight-forty Paris service is usually crowded in summer and winter, for one gets to Paris by five, in time for a leisurely dinner and the series of trains which leave the Gare de Lyon in the region of nine o’clock.
“Just repeat all you said, Roddy, will you?” asked the man in the heavy travelling coat.
The young fellow did so.
“Freda? That’s a rather unusual name. Has it anything to do with that woman Freda Crisp you told me about? What do you think?”
“I believe it has.”
Barclay was aware of all the strange experiences of the shrewd young mining engineer. Only three days after his return to Little Farncombe he had gone down to the quiet old country rectory and listened to his friend’s story.
In this concession to work the ancient mines in the Wad Sus he was equally interested with his young friend in whom he believed so implicitly, knowing how enthusiastic and therefore successful he had been in his prospecting expeditions up the Amazon.
The big portable luggage-vans—those secured by wire hawsers which are slung on to the mail-boat and re-slung on to the Paris express—had been locked and sealed with lead, as they always are. The head guard’s whistle blew, and Barclay was about to enter the train, when Roddy said:
“Do take care! There’s more in this than either of us suspect. That woman Crisp! Beware of her. You will see her in due course at your hotel. Be careful. Good-bye—and good luck!”
The train moved out around the bend. The young fellow in his wet, muddy overalls stood for a moment gazing at the rear van. Should he watch for the departure of the woman? No. She might see him. Better that he should remain in apparent ignorance. So he went out, remounted his cycle, and headed away back over Putney Bridge and through crooked Kingston, Cobham, and down the steep hill in Guildford towards home.
Freda! That name was burned into his brain like the brand of a red-hot iron. Freda—the woman who had held him beneath her strange, inexplicable spell during his bondage at the remote old country house near Welwyn.
But why? Why should his father have warned him against her? His father, a most honest, upright, pious man to whom he had always looked for leadership—the road-builder to the perfect life, as he had always regarded him. No man in the world is perfect, but Norton Homfray had, to say the least, tried to live up to the standard laid down by the Holy Writ.
Had he had faults in his past life, his son wondered? Every man has faults. Were those faults being concealed by his father—the “pater” upon whom he doted and to whom when away he wrote so regularly, with all his most intimate news, though mails might leave very intermittently, as they do from the back of beyond, where prospectors carry on their work with hammer and microscope.
Then, as he rode along in the grey, damp winter morning, he reflected.
The whole situation was most puzzling. He loved Elma with a fierce all-consuming affection. She was his only beacon in his eager, strenuous life.
A week went by. He anxiously awaited news from Andrew Barclay, but the latter sent no word. He was, without doubt, negotiating with the Moorish Minister of the Interior, who was at that moment visiting France, and who was his personal friend.
But Roddy could not rid himself of the recollection of that strange conversation by radio-telephone—the request that Freda should go south. He had taken another journey out to Welwyn in order to ascertain if the woman was still at Willowden, but had found the house still closed and apparently without a caretaker. Had he been able to get a view of the back of the premises he would, no doubt, have noticed the well-constructed wireless aerial, but it was completely hidden from the road, and as during his enforced sojourn in the place he had never seen it, he remained in ignorance of its existence.
At Farncombe Towers Mr Sandys, when he returned home, had expressed himself highly delighted with the wireless set which the rector’s son had installed, and on two successive evenings sat with Elma intensely interested in listening to broadcasted concerts and news.
Three nights later Elma and her father, having been to the first night of a new revue, had had supper at the Savoy, and passing into the lounge, sat down to their coffee, when an elderly, clean-shaven, rather tall man, accompanied by a well-dressed, shorter, but good-looking companion, both in well-cut evening clothes, suddenly halted.
“Hulloa, Harrison!” exclaimed the grey-bearded financier to the man who bowed before Elma and greeted her.
“Not often we see you here, Mr Sandys!” replied the man, evidently surprised. Then he begged leave to introduce his companion, Mr Rex Rutherford.
Elma smiled as the stranger expressed delight at meeting her father and herself.
“Your name is very well known to me, as to everybody, Mr Sandys,” said the dark-eyed man pleasantly, as they both took chairs which the financier offered them, at the same time ordering extra coffee. “Though I’m an American, I live mostly in Paris, and I met your partner, Sir Charles, there quite recently.”
“I shouldn’t have thought you were an American,” remarked Elma. “We in England expect every United States citizen to speak with an accent, you know.”
“Well, Miss Sandys, I suppose I’m one of the exceptions. My father and mother were British. Perhaps that accounts for it,” he laughed, lighting a cigar.
“Mr Rutherford is more of a Parisian than American, Miss Sandys,” declared the man, Bertram Harrison. And then they began to chat about the new revue, which Elma described enthusiastically as a great success, while Rex Rutherford sat listening to her, evidently filled with admiration of her sweetness and remarkable beauty.
Elma presently inquired of Mr Harrison if he had seen Mrs Crisp lately.
“No. She’s gone to Switzerland,” was his reply.
“I’m thinking of going across to Florida very soon to spend the winter at Palm Beach. I was there last year,” remarked Rutherford. “Ever been there, Mr Sandys?”
“Never,” replied Elma’s father. “I must try it one winter. I’ve heard so much about it. Are you in London for long?”
“Only for a week or so on a matter of business. I’m at the Carlton, but I expect very soon to get back to Paris again.”
And so the conversation drifted on, both men well-bred and of charming manner, until the lights were lowered as sign that the restaurant was closing.
The pair saw Mr Sandys and his daughter into their limousine, and then walked together along the Strand.
“Well, how did it work?” asked the man Harrison eagerly.
“Excellent,” declared Gordon Gray, for it was he who had been introduced as Rex Rutherford. “We’ve taken a step in the right direction to-night. It only shows you what can be done by watchfulness. But, oh! the girl! Lovely, isn’t she?”
“Yes, but I hope, my dear Gordon, you’re not going to lose your head to a woman! We’ve other fish to fry with the old man—remember!”
“Lose my head to a woman!” cried Gray, halting beneath the street lamp and looking at him with his dark eyes. “No, my dear fellow, I never do that. It’s the woman who loses her head to me! You told me once that she dances well, didn’t you? Well, the day will come when she will dance to any tune that I choose to play!”
Chapter Thirteen.The Hidden Ear.“No, Dick! A trifle farther this way,” whispered Freda Crisp, who with a piece of string had been measuring the blank wall of the sparely-furnished hotel sitting-room.“Do you think so? I don’t,” replied a lean, well-dressed, rather striking-looking man of middle-age, who held in his hand a steel gimlet, nearly two feet in length, such as is used by electricians to bore holes through walls and floors to admit the passage of electric-lighting wires.“Slip out and measure again,” urged the woman, who was wearing a simple blouse and a navy-blue skirt which looked rather shabby in the grey afternoon light. “It won’t do to be much out.”The man, whom she had addressed as Dick, carefully opened the door of the room a little way, peered out into the corridor, and waited. There being no sign of anyone stirring—for hotels are usually most quiet at about half-past three in the afternoon—he slipped out. He took the string and, stooping to the floor, measured from the lintel of the door to the dividing wall of the next room.Twice he did so, and then made a knot in the string, so that there should be no further mistake.On creeping back to where the woman awaited him, he said:“You were quite right, Freda. Now let’s get to work.”So saying, he again measured the distance from the door, being on his knees the while. Then, still on his knees and taking the long gimlet, he screwed it into the plaster and worked hard until the steel slowly entered the wall, driving a small hole through it and at the same time throwing out a quantity of white dust upon the floor.“It’s through?” he exclaimed presently, and withdrawing the tool, placed his eye to the small round hole.“Excellent. Now we’ll take the wires through.”Again the man, Dick Allen, opened the door noiselessly, and creeping out with a coil of twin wires, unrolled it from his hand and, as he went down the corridor, placed it beneath the edge of the strip of thick green carpet, and into a sitting-room four doors along.He laid the two twisted wires still beneath the carpet, and carrying them behind a heavy settee, he took from his pocket what looked like a good-sized nickel-plated button. The front of it was, however, of mica, a tiny brass screw set in the centre. To it he carefully attached the fine silk-covered wires, tightening the screw securely. Then, taking a big safety-pin from his pocket, he attached the button to the back of the settee, where it was completely hidden.The microphone-button hung there as a hidden ear in that luxuriously-furnished room.When he returned to his companion he found that she had already driven in a tin-tack, around which she had twisted the two wires. To pass the wires beneath the door was impossible, as they would have to run over a long stretch of stone and somebody might trip over them.Afterwards she put on her hat and fur coat, and the pair left the big Hôtel du Parc and strolled down the wide, bustling boulevard, the Rue Noailles, in that great city of commerce, Marseilles. The hotel they had left was not so large nor so popular as the great Louvre et Paix, which is perhaps one of the most cosmopolitan in all the world, but it was nevertheless well patronised. At the Louvre most travellers passing to and from India and the Far East stay the night, after landing or before embarking, so that it is an establishment with a purely cosmopolitan clientèle. But the Parc was a quieter, though very aristocratic hotel, patronised by British peers and wealthy Americans on their way to the Riviera or the East, and also by foreign potentates when landing in Europe.The truth was that when the Moorish Minister of the Interior—the white-bearded old Moslem who had come over on an informal visit to the French President—arrived in Marseilles accommodation could not be found for him at the Louvre et Paix. So he had naturally gone to the Parc, where the best suite had been placed at his disposal by the officials at the Quai d’Orsay.News of this had reached Dick Allen on his arrival from Nice, and Freda, posing as an English society woman, had taken another suite for the purpose of keeping observation upon the old Moorish Minister, whom his English friend Barclay had arrived in Marseilles to visit.Already it was nearly five o’clock, so the woman Crisp and her companion strolled along to the big Café de l’Univers in the Cannebière, where they sat outside over theirapéritifs, well satisfied with their preparations.“When I dined at the Louvre et Paix last night I sat close to Barclay. The old Moor was with him, and I distinctly heard Barclay say that he would call at the Parc at nine to-night. The old Moor looks very picturesque in his native costume with his turban and his white burnous.”“Marseilles is so cosmopolitan that one meets almost as many costumes here in the Cannebière as on the Galata Bridge at Constantinople,” laughed Freda. “Nobody here takes any notice of costume. Besides, all the Arab business men from Algeria and Tunis who come over wear the same Arab dress. In any other city they would be conspicuous, but not here.”Dick Allen, a clever crook, by the way, who had been in many intricate little “affairs” as the accomplice of Gordon Gray, Porter, Claribut and Freda, remained silent for a moment or two.“A Moorish costume would be a jolly good disguise one day, wouldn’t it? I’ve never thought of that before, Freda,” he said.“Providing you knew a few words of Arabic and could speak French fairly well,” the woman answered.“The first I could easily pick up. The second I can already do fairly well. Just a little staining of the face, hands and hair, and the transformation would be complete. I’ll remember that for the future.”“Yes, my dear Dick. One day it might be very handy—if the police were very hot on the track. You could pose as an Algerian fruit merchant, or something of the sort, while they’d be looking for the Englishman, Dick Allen?”Both laughed. Each had their reminiscences of being hard pressed and having to exercise their keenest wits to elude their pursuers.“What you’ve told me about that old parson in England rather worries me,” said the man. “What can he know about Hugh?”“Nothing, my dear Dick. Don’t worry. It’s all bluff! Leave it to Gordon. He directs everything. He wriggled out in the past, and he’ll do it again.”“That’s all very well. But I tell you I’m not so sure. Jimmie wrote to me the other day. The butler stunt at your house at Welwyn is all very well, but the game must be blown sooner or later. Believe me, Freda, it must?”“I know. But we’re not staying at Willowden always.”“But Gordon has his radio-telephone there. He talked to me on it to Nice the other night.”“Yes. But we shall clear out at a moment’s notice—when it becomes desirable, and the little local police sergeant—no, I beg his pardon, he’s fat and red-faced and goes about on a push-bike—will be left guessing why the rich tenants of the big house have gone away on holidays. We’ve departed upon lots of holidays—haven’t we, Dick? And we’ll go once more! Each holiday brings us money—one holiday more or one less—what matters? And, after all, we who live with eyes skinned on people with money deserve all we get. England has now changed. Those stay-at-home cowards of the war have all the money, and poor people like ourselves deserve to touch it, if we can manage to lead them up the garden, eh?”And the handsome adventuress laughed merrily.“But surely our present game is not one against war profits?” the man remarked, during a lull in the blatant café orchestra.“No. We’re up against saving ourselves—you and I and Gordon and Jimmie. Don’t you realise that not a word must ever leak out about young Willard? Otherwise we shall all be right in the cart—jugged at once!”“I hope old Homfray knows nothing. What can he know?”“He may, of course, know something, Dick,” the woman said in an altered voice. “If I had known what I do now I would never have been a party to taking his son Roddy away.” She paused for a moment and looked straight at him. “We made a silly mistake—I’m certain of it. Gordon laughs at me. But Jimmie is of my opinion.”“But can’t we close the old man’s mouth and trust to luck with his son? He’ll become an idiot.”“Gordon is bent upon getting this concession. So are you. So let us do what we can. The installation of that delicate microphone into the old Moor’s room is a mark up to you.”“It usually works. I’ve used it once or twice before. But let’s hope for the best—eh, Freda?”“Yes,” laughed the handsome woman carelessly—the adventuress who was so well known each winter at Cannes or at Monte Carlo, or in summer at Aix or Deauville. In the gayer cosmopolitan world Freda Crisp was known wherever smart society congregated to enjoy itself.The pair of crooks afterwards dined at that well-known restaurant the Basso-Brégaillon, on the Quai de la Fraternité, a place noted for its “bouillabaisse”—that thick fish soup with the laurel leaves and onions and coloured with saffron, which is the great delicacy of the city. Both Freda and her companion had been in Marseilles before upon other adventurous missions. Dick lived in Nice, and was really a secret agent for the blackmailing exploits of others concerning those who played at Monte Carlo when they were supposed to be at home attending to business or politics; or the wives of men who were detained by their affairs in Paris, New York, or London.Mr Richard Allen lived very quietly and respectably in his little white villa on the Corniche road. He was known everywhere along the Riviera from Hyères to Mentone. That he was a wireless amateur many people also knew. But of his real and very lucrative profession of blackmail nobody ever dreamed. Yet of the women who flock to the Riviera each year who dreams that the nice amiable, middle-aged man whom one meets at hotels or at the Casino, and who may offer to dance, is a blackmailer? Ah! How many hundreds of the fair sex have in these post-war days been misled and, bemuddled by liqueurs, fallen into the clever trap laid for them by such blackguards?Blackmailers stand around thetapis-verton the Riviera in dozens. Nobody suspects them. But their victims are many, and their failures few. And of the vampires of the Côte d’Azur, Allen was one of the most successful—allied as he was with Gordon Gray, who, when necessity arose, supplied the sinews of war.Soon after half-past eight they were back in the private sitting-room at the hotel, and having locked the door, Allen set to work. Upon the table was a small dispatch-case, and from it he took a flat dry battery, such as is used in flash-lamps, and a pair of wireless telephone receivers. The battery and telephones being carefully attached to the wires, the man took one of the receivers and listened. The ticking of the clock in the adjoining room, hardly discernible to anyone even a few yards away, was now distinctly audible.No word was exchanged between the pair, for they were unaware whether anyone was already in the room.Suddenly Allen raised his finger and motioned to his companion to take the other receiver. This she did eagerly, when she heard the rustling of a newspaper, followed by a man’s deep cough. The old Moor was already there, awaiting the Englishman.By means of the delicate microphone-button every sound was now magnified and conveyed from His Excellency’s sitting-room to the ears of the listeners. The clock had already struck nine when presently the door opened and two men entered, greeting the Moorish Minister in French. One, who spoke French very badly, was Barclay.The conversation which ensued, believed by the three men to be in strictest secrecy, was highly interesting to the pair of listeners four rooms away. Little did they dream that behind that soft silk-covered settee hung the tiny transmitting-button, that little contrivance by which Allen had listened to private conversations many times before, conversations which had resulted in large sums being paid to him to ensure silence.The man who had accompanied the Englishman, Barclay, appeared from their deliberations to be the Kaid Ahmed-el-Hafid, one of the most powerful officials at Fez, and their discussion concerned the granting of the concession to prospect for precious stones in the Wad Sus valley.“And the name in which the concession is to be granted?” inquired His Excellency huskily in French.“The name is Roderick Charles Homfray,” said Barclay. “I have it here written down. If your Excellency will have the document drawn up and sealed, my friend the Kaid will come over and meet me here or in Paris, or even in London.”“In London,” the Kaid suggested. “I have business there next month.”“And it is distinctly understood that if gems be found and a company formed that I get one-eighth share?” asked the wily old Minister.“I have already assigned that to your Excellency,” replied Barclay. “I think you and the Kaid know me well enough to trust me.”“Of course we do, Monsieur Barclay,” declared the Minister with a laugh. “Very well. It is fixed. I will, immediately on my return, grant the concession to this Monsieur—Monsieur Homfray, and hand it to the Kaid to bring to you.” Then, after a pause, the patriarchal old Moor added in his hoarse voice: “Now that we have arrived at terms I have something here which will greatly facilitate Monsieur Homfray’s search.”“Have you?” cried Barclay eagerly. “What’s that?”“When you sent me word in confidence some months ago about the ancient mines in the Wad Sus, I sent a trusty agent, one Ben Chaib Benuis, there to make secret inquiry. He is one of the Touareg—the brigands of the desert—and from his fellow-marauders he discovered the exact spot where the ancient workings are situated—a spot only known to those veiled nomads. They preserve the secret from the Arabs. Indeed, here I have not only a map giving the exact spot—roughly drawn though it is, yet giving the exact measurements and direction from the oasis of Raffi—but also one of the emeralds which my agent himself discovered. You see, it is still rough and uncut, yet is it not magnificent in size?”Both men drew deep breaths. The listeners could hear their surprise as the old Minister exhibited to them proof of the continued existence of the gems at the spot marked upon the map.“Now,” went on the old man, “I will give you this map, Monsieur Barclay, but I will keep the emerald to repay myself for the expenses of my agent—eh? Be extremely careful of the map, and take all precautions for its safety, I beg of you. I have brought it over with me rather than trust it to others, Monsieur Barclay.”“I thank your Excellency. It shall not leave my possession until I hand it, together with the concession, to young Homfray—who, I may say, is enthusiastic, resourceful and daring—just the go-ahead young man we require for such a hazardous venture.”“And you will form a company in London to work the mines—eh?” the Kaid remarked.“That is our intention. We can find the money easier in London than in Paris, I think.”“Yes, London,” urged His Excellency. “I would prefer London. But,” he added, “be careful of that map, Monsieur Barclay! It will be of greatest use to our young friend, whom I hope one day to see in Fez. I will then introduce him to Ben Chaib, who will obtain for him a safe conduct among the Touareg because they are always dangerous for strangers.”“Even to ourselves,” laughed the Kaid, and then added: “I will be in London on the tenth of next month. But I will write to you, Monsieur Barclay, giving you notice of my arrival.”A quarter of an hour later the three men went forth together, while Freda, opening the door stealthily, saw their figures disappearing down the corridor. The Kaid was a tall, spare man in European clothes, but the Moorish Minister of the Interior was wearing his turban and flowing white burnous which spread about him as he walked.“Quick!” she whispered to her companion. “Slip in and get out the wires, while I detach them on this side.”This he did, and, save the small hole through the wall, all traces of their ingenuity were swiftly removed.
“No, Dick! A trifle farther this way,” whispered Freda Crisp, who with a piece of string had been measuring the blank wall of the sparely-furnished hotel sitting-room.
“Do you think so? I don’t,” replied a lean, well-dressed, rather striking-looking man of middle-age, who held in his hand a steel gimlet, nearly two feet in length, such as is used by electricians to bore holes through walls and floors to admit the passage of electric-lighting wires.
“Slip out and measure again,” urged the woman, who was wearing a simple blouse and a navy-blue skirt which looked rather shabby in the grey afternoon light. “It won’t do to be much out.”
The man, whom she had addressed as Dick, carefully opened the door of the room a little way, peered out into the corridor, and waited. There being no sign of anyone stirring—for hotels are usually most quiet at about half-past three in the afternoon—he slipped out. He took the string and, stooping to the floor, measured from the lintel of the door to the dividing wall of the next room.
Twice he did so, and then made a knot in the string, so that there should be no further mistake.
On creeping back to where the woman awaited him, he said:
“You were quite right, Freda. Now let’s get to work.”
So saying, he again measured the distance from the door, being on his knees the while. Then, still on his knees and taking the long gimlet, he screwed it into the plaster and worked hard until the steel slowly entered the wall, driving a small hole through it and at the same time throwing out a quantity of white dust upon the floor.
“It’s through?” he exclaimed presently, and withdrawing the tool, placed his eye to the small round hole.
“Excellent. Now we’ll take the wires through.”
Again the man, Dick Allen, opened the door noiselessly, and creeping out with a coil of twin wires, unrolled it from his hand and, as he went down the corridor, placed it beneath the edge of the strip of thick green carpet, and into a sitting-room four doors along.
He laid the two twisted wires still beneath the carpet, and carrying them behind a heavy settee, he took from his pocket what looked like a good-sized nickel-plated button. The front of it was, however, of mica, a tiny brass screw set in the centre. To it he carefully attached the fine silk-covered wires, tightening the screw securely. Then, taking a big safety-pin from his pocket, he attached the button to the back of the settee, where it was completely hidden.
The microphone-button hung there as a hidden ear in that luxuriously-furnished room.
When he returned to his companion he found that she had already driven in a tin-tack, around which she had twisted the two wires. To pass the wires beneath the door was impossible, as they would have to run over a long stretch of stone and somebody might trip over them.
Afterwards she put on her hat and fur coat, and the pair left the big Hôtel du Parc and strolled down the wide, bustling boulevard, the Rue Noailles, in that great city of commerce, Marseilles. The hotel they had left was not so large nor so popular as the great Louvre et Paix, which is perhaps one of the most cosmopolitan in all the world, but it was nevertheless well patronised. At the Louvre most travellers passing to and from India and the Far East stay the night, after landing or before embarking, so that it is an establishment with a purely cosmopolitan clientèle. But the Parc was a quieter, though very aristocratic hotel, patronised by British peers and wealthy Americans on their way to the Riviera or the East, and also by foreign potentates when landing in Europe.
The truth was that when the Moorish Minister of the Interior—the white-bearded old Moslem who had come over on an informal visit to the French President—arrived in Marseilles accommodation could not be found for him at the Louvre et Paix. So he had naturally gone to the Parc, where the best suite had been placed at his disposal by the officials at the Quai d’Orsay.
News of this had reached Dick Allen on his arrival from Nice, and Freda, posing as an English society woman, had taken another suite for the purpose of keeping observation upon the old Moorish Minister, whom his English friend Barclay had arrived in Marseilles to visit.
Already it was nearly five o’clock, so the woman Crisp and her companion strolled along to the big Café de l’Univers in the Cannebière, where they sat outside over theirapéritifs, well satisfied with their preparations.
“When I dined at the Louvre et Paix last night I sat close to Barclay. The old Moor was with him, and I distinctly heard Barclay say that he would call at the Parc at nine to-night. The old Moor looks very picturesque in his native costume with his turban and his white burnous.”
“Marseilles is so cosmopolitan that one meets almost as many costumes here in the Cannebière as on the Galata Bridge at Constantinople,” laughed Freda. “Nobody here takes any notice of costume. Besides, all the Arab business men from Algeria and Tunis who come over wear the same Arab dress. In any other city they would be conspicuous, but not here.”
Dick Allen, a clever crook, by the way, who had been in many intricate little “affairs” as the accomplice of Gordon Gray, Porter, Claribut and Freda, remained silent for a moment or two.
“A Moorish costume would be a jolly good disguise one day, wouldn’t it? I’ve never thought of that before, Freda,” he said.
“Providing you knew a few words of Arabic and could speak French fairly well,” the woman answered.
“The first I could easily pick up. The second I can already do fairly well. Just a little staining of the face, hands and hair, and the transformation would be complete. I’ll remember that for the future.”
“Yes, my dear Dick. One day it might be very handy—if the police were very hot on the track. You could pose as an Algerian fruit merchant, or something of the sort, while they’d be looking for the Englishman, Dick Allen?”
Both laughed. Each had their reminiscences of being hard pressed and having to exercise their keenest wits to elude their pursuers.
“What you’ve told me about that old parson in England rather worries me,” said the man. “What can he know about Hugh?”
“Nothing, my dear Dick. Don’t worry. It’s all bluff! Leave it to Gordon. He directs everything. He wriggled out in the past, and he’ll do it again.”
“That’s all very well. But I tell you I’m not so sure. Jimmie wrote to me the other day. The butler stunt at your house at Welwyn is all very well, but the game must be blown sooner or later. Believe me, Freda, it must?”
“I know. But we’re not staying at Willowden always.”
“But Gordon has his radio-telephone there. He talked to me on it to Nice the other night.”
“Yes. But we shall clear out at a moment’s notice—when it becomes desirable, and the little local police sergeant—no, I beg his pardon, he’s fat and red-faced and goes about on a push-bike—will be left guessing why the rich tenants of the big house have gone away on holidays. We’ve departed upon lots of holidays—haven’t we, Dick? And we’ll go once more! Each holiday brings us money—one holiday more or one less—what matters? And, after all, we who live with eyes skinned on people with money deserve all we get. England has now changed. Those stay-at-home cowards of the war have all the money, and poor people like ourselves deserve to touch it, if we can manage to lead them up the garden, eh?”
And the handsome adventuress laughed merrily.
“But surely our present game is not one against war profits?” the man remarked, during a lull in the blatant café orchestra.
“No. We’re up against saving ourselves—you and I and Gordon and Jimmie. Don’t you realise that not a word must ever leak out about young Willard? Otherwise we shall all be right in the cart—jugged at once!”
“I hope old Homfray knows nothing. What can he know?”
“He may, of course, know something, Dick,” the woman said in an altered voice. “If I had known what I do now I would never have been a party to taking his son Roddy away.” She paused for a moment and looked straight at him. “We made a silly mistake—I’m certain of it. Gordon laughs at me. But Jimmie is of my opinion.”
“But can’t we close the old man’s mouth and trust to luck with his son? He’ll become an idiot.”
“Gordon is bent upon getting this concession. So are you. So let us do what we can. The installation of that delicate microphone into the old Moor’s room is a mark up to you.”
“It usually works. I’ve used it once or twice before. But let’s hope for the best—eh, Freda?”
“Yes,” laughed the handsome woman carelessly—the adventuress who was so well known each winter at Cannes or at Monte Carlo, or in summer at Aix or Deauville. In the gayer cosmopolitan world Freda Crisp was known wherever smart society congregated to enjoy itself.
The pair of crooks afterwards dined at that well-known restaurant the Basso-Brégaillon, on the Quai de la Fraternité, a place noted for its “bouillabaisse”—that thick fish soup with the laurel leaves and onions and coloured with saffron, which is the great delicacy of the city. Both Freda and her companion had been in Marseilles before upon other adventurous missions. Dick lived in Nice, and was really a secret agent for the blackmailing exploits of others concerning those who played at Monte Carlo when they were supposed to be at home attending to business or politics; or the wives of men who were detained by their affairs in Paris, New York, or London.
Mr Richard Allen lived very quietly and respectably in his little white villa on the Corniche road. He was known everywhere along the Riviera from Hyères to Mentone. That he was a wireless amateur many people also knew. But of his real and very lucrative profession of blackmail nobody ever dreamed. Yet of the women who flock to the Riviera each year who dreams that the nice amiable, middle-aged man whom one meets at hotels or at the Casino, and who may offer to dance, is a blackmailer? Ah! How many hundreds of the fair sex have in these post-war days been misled and, bemuddled by liqueurs, fallen into the clever trap laid for them by such blackguards?
Blackmailers stand around thetapis-verton the Riviera in dozens. Nobody suspects them. But their victims are many, and their failures few. And of the vampires of the Côte d’Azur, Allen was one of the most successful—allied as he was with Gordon Gray, who, when necessity arose, supplied the sinews of war.
Soon after half-past eight they were back in the private sitting-room at the hotel, and having locked the door, Allen set to work. Upon the table was a small dispatch-case, and from it he took a flat dry battery, such as is used in flash-lamps, and a pair of wireless telephone receivers. The battery and telephones being carefully attached to the wires, the man took one of the receivers and listened. The ticking of the clock in the adjoining room, hardly discernible to anyone even a few yards away, was now distinctly audible.
No word was exchanged between the pair, for they were unaware whether anyone was already in the room.
Suddenly Allen raised his finger and motioned to his companion to take the other receiver. This she did eagerly, when she heard the rustling of a newspaper, followed by a man’s deep cough. The old Moor was already there, awaiting the Englishman.
By means of the delicate microphone-button every sound was now magnified and conveyed from His Excellency’s sitting-room to the ears of the listeners. The clock had already struck nine when presently the door opened and two men entered, greeting the Moorish Minister in French. One, who spoke French very badly, was Barclay.
The conversation which ensued, believed by the three men to be in strictest secrecy, was highly interesting to the pair of listeners four rooms away. Little did they dream that behind that soft silk-covered settee hung the tiny transmitting-button, that little contrivance by which Allen had listened to private conversations many times before, conversations which had resulted in large sums being paid to him to ensure silence.
The man who had accompanied the Englishman, Barclay, appeared from their deliberations to be the Kaid Ahmed-el-Hafid, one of the most powerful officials at Fez, and their discussion concerned the granting of the concession to prospect for precious stones in the Wad Sus valley.
“And the name in which the concession is to be granted?” inquired His Excellency huskily in French.
“The name is Roderick Charles Homfray,” said Barclay. “I have it here written down. If your Excellency will have the document drawn up and sealed, my friend the Kaid will come over and meet me here or in Paris, or even in London.”
“In London,” the Kaid suggested. “I have business there next month.”
“And it is distinctly understood that if gems be found and a company formed that I get one-eighth share?” asked the wily old Minister.
“I have already assigned that to your Excellency,” replied Barclay. “I think you and the Kaid know me well enough to trust me.”
“Of course we do, Monsieur Barclay,” declared the Minister with a laugh. “Very well. It is fixed. I will, immediately on my return, grant the concession to this Monsieur—Monsieur Homfray, and hand it to the Kaid to bring to you.” Then, after a pause, the patriarchal old Moor added in his hoarse voice: “Now that we have arrived at terms I have something here which will greatly facilitate Monsieur Homfray’s search.”
“Have you?” cried Barclay eagerly. “What’s that?”
“When you sent me word in confidence some months ago about the ancient mines in the Wad Sus, I sent a trusty agent, one Ben Chaib Benuis, there to make secret inquiry. He is one of the Touareg—the brigands of the desert—and from his fellow-marauders he discovered the exact spot where the ancient workings are situated—a spot only known to those veiled nomads. They preserve the secret from the Arabs. Indeed, here I have not only a map giving the exact spot—roughly drawn though it is, yet giving the exact measurements and direction from the oasis of Raffi—but also one of the emeralds which my agent himself discovered. You see, it is still rough and uncut, yet is it not magnificent in size?”
Both men drew deep breaths. The listeners could hear their surprise as the old Minister exhibited to them proof of the continued existence of the gems at the spot marked upon the map.
“Now,” went on the old man, “I will give you this map, Monsieur Barclay, but I will keep the emerald to repay myself for the expenses of my agent—eh? Be extremely careful of the map, and take all precautions for its safety, I beg of you. I have brought it over with me rather than trust it to others, Monsieur Barclay.”
“I thank your Excellency. It shall not leave my possession until I hand it, together with the concession, to young Homfray—who, I may say, is enthusiastic, resourceful and daring—just the go-ahead young man we require for such a hazardous venture.”
“And you will form a company in London to work the mines—eh?” the Kaid remarked.
“That is our intention. We can find the money easier in London than in Paris, I think.”
“Yes, London,” urged His Excellency. “I would prefer London. But,” he added, “be careful of that map, Monsieur Barclay! It will be of greatest use to our young friend, whom I hope one day to see in Fez. I will then introduce him to Ben Chaib, who will obtain for him a safe conduct among the Touareg because they are always dangerous for strangers.”
“Even to ourselves,” laughed the Kaid, and then added: “I will be in London on the tenth of next month. But I will write to you, Monsieur Barclay, giving you notice of my arrival.”
A quarter of an hour later the three men went forth together, while Freda, opening the door stealthily, saw their figures disappearing down the corridor. The Kaid was a tall, spare man in European clothes, but the Moorish Minister of the Interior was wearing his turban and flowing white burnous which spread about him as he walked.
“Quick!” she whispered to her companion. “Slip in and get out the wires, while I detach them on this side.”
This he did, and, save the small hole through the wall, all traces of their ingenuity were swiftly removed.