Читать книгу The Voice from the Void: The Great Wireless Mystery - Le Queux William - Страница 5

“Hush! You infernal idiot! What did I tell you? What the deuce are you doing?” cried the man, tearing the telephone from the woman’s hand and throwing over a switch upon the roll-top desk at which she was seated.

The low hum of an electric generator ceased and the current was cut off.

“You fool!” cried the short, middle-aged, clean-shaven man in a dinner-jacket, and with a cigar stuck in the corner of his mouth.

“Will you never learn common sense, Freda, after all I’ve told you! It’s fortunate I came in at this moment! Do you want to be jugged? It seems so!”

Freda Crisp, in a gorgeous Paquin evening gown, turned deliberately in her chair and, coldly surveying the man who had just entered, said:

“Well, my dear Gordon, and what’s upset your digestion to-night? Things said over this wireless telephone – broadcasted over five hundred miles of space from your cosy rooms here – can be said without anybody being the wiser as to who uttered them. I look upon this wireless box of tricks as a priceless joke. You turn over a switch, and into thousands of ears you speak all over the kingdom, and across into Holland and France and even Scandinavia. The great Marconi is, you’ll admit, dear old thing, a wonderful nut!”

“Bah! You’re not serious, Freda! You laugh at perils. And a peril now faces us.”

“Ah! My dear Gordon, this is the first time I’ve ever heard such an admission from you – you, of all men! Peril? It’s in the dictionary, but not in your vocabulary – or mine, my dear boy. I’ve faced danger, and so have you – nasty troublous moments with detectives hanging around – but we’ve generally been able to wriggle out by the back door, or the window, or – ”

“Or else bluff it out, Freda!” interrupted Gray. “Yes, you’re right! But to deliberately ask after the health of Roderick Homfray over the wireless telephone – well, it’s simply courting trouble.”

“Why?”

“Well, don’t you know that there’s an apparatus invented by two clever Italians, Bellini and Tosi, which is called a direction-finder?” asked her rather good-looking companion, as he removed his cigar from his lips. “That apparatus is in use all over the country. That’s how they find aircraft lost in fogs – and that’s how they could find to a yard exactly the position of this secret set of ours from which you spoke those silly jeering words. Gad! you’re a fool, Freda! Shut up – and don’t meddle with this wireless transmitter in future! Remember, I’ve got no official licence. This room,” – and he swept his hand around the small apartment filled with a marvellous collection of wireless apparatus – “is our secret. If the authorities discovered it – well, it would, no doubt, be the end for both of us – the Old Bailey and – well, just jug for both of us. I know something about wireless, and as you know it bears us in good stead. We’ve profited thousands on the stunt – you and I, Freda – and – ”

“And Roderick Homfray also knows something about wireless, my dear old thing,” laughed the handsome woman, lazily taking a cigarette from her gold case, tapping it and lighting it.

“That’s just it! You’re a priceless fool to have taken such a risk as to speak broadcast as you did. What did you say?”

“I only asked how 3.X.Q. Roddy Homfray of Little Farncombe was getting on, and gave my name as Freda!”

“Fool!” yelled Gordon Gray in fury. “It may be reported to the old sky-pilot! Young Homfray is in oblivion. We know that he’s been picked up off the Thames towing-path, damp and unconscious, but in all probability he’ll never recover from the dope we gave him. We sincerely hope not, eh? I expected he’d die in the night.” The handsome woman hesitated.

“No, Gordon, we hope he will recover. If he doesn’t, then it’s murder once again; and, after all, that’s an infernally ugly word. It would mean more than jug!”

The short, rather stout, beady-eyed man, the huge cigar still in his mouth, made a gesture of impatience, and crossing to the big roll-top writing-table, upon which was a high-power transmission set of wireless telephone capable of projecting the human voice clearly to any point in the British Isles, he turned over another switch and placed the telephones over his ears.

As he did so he turned an ebonite knob with a brass pointer upon a semicircular scale of ivory – one of many before him – just a sixteenth of an inch. He touched it with infinite care.

“Just listen, Freda,” he said, in a hard voice. “Now just listen here, how by your accursed foolishness you’ve brought danger upon us. Listen, you madwoman?”

The woman took up the second pair of head-’phones, twisted the steel band and, instead of placing the ’phones over her head, put the ear pieces to her ears with the arched band towards her face – a favourite attitude with women who listen to wireless telephony.

As the delicate receivers came to her ears she drew a long breath, the colour dying from her face.

The little room wherein the fine expensive experimental set was installed was on the ground floor of a good-sized, old-fashioned house called “Willowden,” which stood behind a broad lawn just off the Great North Road between Hatfield and Welwyn, twenty-five miles from London, a distance which was as nothing to Gordon Gray with his up-to-date Rolls.

From the Automobile Club in Pall Mall he could easily reach home in half an hour, even though the traffic through North London was usually bad. That night he had taken Freda to the theatre, and they had had supper at Ciro’s afterwards, and it was now only one o’clock in the morning.

“Listen, old thing?” she urged, as she again adjusted the telephones on her ears. “What’s that?”

Gordon Gray listened attentively.

A deep harsh voice was heard – a Voice from Nowhere – which asked slowly and very distinctly:

“Who was that who is interested in 3.X.Q.? This is 3.A.X. at Carlisle calling. Who are you, Freda? Please tell me who you are! Roddy Homfray, 3.X.Q., is well, but I fear he may not be listening. Can I relay any message, Freda?” asked the voice.

“Curse you!” cried the man. “You’ve actually given your name broadcast over the whole country! What the devil do you mean?” he cried, glaring at her. “All wireless amateurs know 3.X.Q. as old Homfray’s son. They will inquire after Freda, and then old Homfray will know! Gad! You’ve made an unholy mess of things now! Put those ’phones down and be quiet!” he added.

Then, as she disentangled the head-’phones from her hair, he pulled over the transmitting switch, and as the generator began to gather speed until it hummed pleasantly and the two big globular valves being aglow, he said, in a forced, unnatural voice:

“Hulloa, 3.A.X.? Hulloa, Carlisle. Hulloa, 3.A.X. 3.A.X.? This is 3.B.T. at Birmingham calling. I heard your message about 3.X.Q. at Little Farncombe and about Freda. It wasn’t Freda – a woman – but Freeman – Freeman. Do you hear? I heard it as Freeman. I heard 3.X.Q. speaking an hour ago. He said he could not transmit to-night, but will do so to-morrow night at 20:00 o’clock G.M.T. Have you got that, 3.A.X.? 3.B.T. changing over!”

And he flung back the switch so that in a few seconds the generator was silent, and all became quiet save for the ticking of the round-faced yacht’s clock which bore in large capitals G.M.T. – meaning Greenwich Mean Time.

Both took up the receiving ’phones and listened. A few moments later there sounded the peculiar whistle of a wireless carrier wave, and next second the same deep voice called in the jargon of wireless:

“Hulloa, 3.B.T.? Hulloa, Birmingham? Hulloa, 3.B.T. This is 3.A.X. at Carlisle calling. I heard your message O.K. I understand that it was Freeman – not Freda. I thought it was a lady inquiring after our friend 3.X.Q. Many thanks. I will listen for 3.X.Q.’s transmission to-morrow night. Sorry I worried you about Freda. Thanks, 3.B.T. Thanks, O.M. 3.A.X. switching off!”

The O.M. stood for “old man,” a familiar greeting between wireless experimenters unknown to each other, and who only meet through the ether.

“I hope nobody has put a direction-finder upon me!” said Gray a moment later.

“Really you are very slick, Gordon,” laughed the handsome woman. “That change-over to Freeman is excellent! But as you said you were an amateur in Birmingham, and here we are at Crane Hill, you are quite right in fearing that somebody might spot us.”

“Ah! I replied quickly, and gave them no time, you see,” laughed the elusive crook, for such he was.

His accomplice laughed merrily. They were a refined, good-looking pair. Freda passed herself off to most people as Gray’s sister. The good people of Hatfield knew the tenants of the old-fashioned house as Mr Gray and his widowed sister, Mrs Crisp. The latter – a smart, go-ahead woman – often drove her own little aluminium-bodied A.C. car up to London and back. Indeed, brother and sister lived mostly in London where they had a flat in Kensington, but the week-ends they usually spent at Willowden, where Gray’s old servant, Claribut, and his wife ran the house together.

Indeed Gray, a moment later, touched the bell, and old Claribut – a very respectable-looking, white-haired man – appeared. Surely none who called there would suspect such an outwardly perfect servant to be a crook like his master.

“Jim, we’re going back to town to-night,” Gray said. “If anybody calls I’m in Paris. But I don’t expect that anyone will. Tell that to your wife, and to-morrow go over to Pangbourne, stay at the Elephant Hotel there, and find out what is doing concerning young Homfray. He’s at the Cottage Hospital there. You know all the facts.”

“All right!” replied the clean-shaven old butler, whose aristocratic appearance always bore him in such good stead. He often posed as a benevolent philanthropist, and could impose upon most people. His was a long criminal record at Parkhurst and Sing-Sing, and he was a man who, having spent nearly half his life in jail, had brought crookdom to a fine art, truly a worthy associate of Gordon Gray, alias Gordon Tresham, Ralph Fane, Major Hawes Jackson, Commander Tothill, R.N., and a dozen other names which had risen and faded upon the phosphorescence of his elusive life.

Gordon Gray lived – and he lived well – at other people’s expense. He had caught the habit of hanging on to the edge of the wealthy man’s garment, and wealthy war-profiteers were, he found, so very easily gulled when they wanted to get on, and by political manoeuvring to make their wives titled “ladies.”

The fact was that Gordon Gray was a dealer in big things. Trumpery theft, burglary or suchlike offences, were beneath him. He could manipulate big deals in the City, could “arrange” a knighthood at a price, and sometimes, when he and Freda had suddenly arrived in London from New York, he would actually entertain English politicians with names of world-wide repute at elaborate dinners at the Ritz.

Though a crook he was a philosopher, and his favourite remark when things went badly was: “Bah! it is no use blowing against the wind!”

That night he felt himself blowing against the wind. Though he said nothing to the handsome woman at his side, he regretted that Roddy Homfray had not been placed in the river Thames as he had first suggested, instead of upon the bank opposite that beautiful riverside house with its glorious lawns and gardens at the other side of Whitchurch Bridge. If Roddy’s unconscious form had been pitched over the bank it would have been found down at Mapledurham, and believed to be a case of suicide. He had been a fool, he declared within himself. He had hoped that the young man would be found dead in the morning. But he had not!

“I’ll go over to Pangbourne,” said the elderly man he had addressed so familiarly as Jim. “And I’ll report all I can gather. Anything else?” he asked, crossing to a box of cigars and helping himself without being invited.

“No. Get back here. And tell your wife to keep the wireless securely locked up. There’s a Yale lock on this door. Nobody comes in. You hear!”

“Of course. It wouldn’t do, Gordon, would it? That wireless is going to be a big use to us in the near future, eh?” laughed the white-haired old man.

“It will be, if we’re cute. But we shall have to have our eyes skinned. Have you paid all the tradesmen’s books?”

“Yes.”

“Then send to the chemist in Hatfield for a big bottle of eau-de-cologne – the biggest he’s got. Pay a pound for it, or more, and say that I want it to put into my bath. It gives the guys here a shock and impresses them.”

“Good idea!” laughed Jim. “You’re always brimming over with them. But look here, Gordon,” he said, as he bit off the end of the cigar and started to light it. “First, I don’t like this furnished house of ours, with the inquisitive landlady; and I don’t like the wireless.”

“Why?”

“Well, what I’m afraid of is, that though we’ve got the aerial wires well concealed from the roadway, some boy scout of an errand boy may come in and twig it, and tell some other boy scout that we’ve got an aerial up. See?”

“Yes, I see,” replied Gordon. “But the risk is small. If a boy discovers it, let the boy listen in, and tell him to keep dark about it. We’re inventors, and we have discovered something regarding wireless telephony which will soon startle the whole world. The boy, whoever he is, will be startled and hold his tongue – till we decide how to deal with him. Oh! how simple you are, Jim! You’re getting chicken-hearted in your old age!”

And Freda, who was standing by, laughed outright.