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Chapter Five
Through the Ether

“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.

Chapter Six
Mists of Memory

Three days after Roddy Homfray had regained consciousness Doctor Maynard, on visiting him, declared that though his mental condition was not yet quite satisfactory, he was well enough to travel home. Therefore he took him in his own two-seater car from the Cottage Hospital at Pangbourne, by way of Wokingham and Godalming to Little Farncombe, where the old rector welcomed back his son and secretly returned thanks to his Maker for his safety.

The quiet old doctor only remained long enough to have a drink – unprofessional, perhaps, but refreshing – for he had to get back to his patients.

After he had gone, Roddy sat before the fire in the little study, his left hand upon his brow, for his head ached badly. It seemed that around his skull was a band of iron. Never for an instant since he had become conscious of things about him had that excruciating pain ceased. It was only when worn out by it that he slept, and thus became free.

“Well, now, my boy, tell me exactly what occurred on that Sunday night,” urged the old clergyman, standing before him and looking down at the crouched figure with eager curiosity.

“I – well, I really don’t know,” was the young man’s reply. “As I told you, in the darkness I found a girl just off the path in Welling Wood. She appealed to me to save her, and a few moments later she died in my arms. Then I rushed across here to raise the alarm, when, all of a sudden, I saw a bright red flash, and I knew no more till I awoke in the little hospital at Pangbourne.”

“But, my dear Roddy, the police searched the wood to find you – searched every inch of it – but there was no girl there. If she were dead she would surely have been found.”

“I was taken away unconscious. If so, what could have prevented the assassin and his friends – for there must have been more than one person – removing the evidence of their crime?”

“Assassin!” gasped the old man, drawing a deep breath. Thoughts of Gordon Gray and the handsome Freda crossed his mind. But what hand could they have had in the death of an unknown girl in the woods at the rear of the Rectory?

No. He decided that Roddy, in his unbalanced state of mind, was filled with wild imaginings. The description of the red ball of fire was sufficient in itself to show how disordered was his brain. The poor boy was suffering from hallucinations, he decided, so he humoured him and listened as he repeated his incredible story.

“You would recognise the girl again, Roddy?” asked his father, puffing at his pipe.

“Recognise her! Of course I should. I’d know her anywhere!” And once again he went into a long and detailed description of her face, her eyes, her hair, and her dress.

The short December afternoon was drawing in and the light was fading.

“I think, Roddy, that if I were you I’d go and lie down,” said his father softly. “Your poor head worries you – I know, my dear boy.”

“It does. But I can think now – think quite clearly,” was the young man’s reply. “At the hospital the matron regarded me as a half-dazed idiot, I believe, and the nurse listened to me as she might listen to a baby’s babbling. But I tell you, father, I’m now perfectly in my right mind. You may believe, or you may disbelieve my story, but Roddy, your son, has told you the truth, and he repeats every word he has said.”

For a few moments the rector was silent, his pipe still in his mouth and his hands in the pockets of the easy old black jacket he wore in the house. He was not a man who made any outward show, and, like most scholars, cared little for dress now that, alas! his wife, who had looked after him so tenderly, was dead. Old Norton Homfray was of simple tastes and few wants. His whole soul was in the welfare of his parish, and in consequence the parish held him up as a real fine old fellow.

“Well, Roddy, what you’ve told me is, of course, most astounding – almost incredible. On that night you walked home with Miss Sandys – eh? She came here and told me so herself.”

“She came here! Elma here!” cried Roddy, quickly stirring himself from his chair and becoming alert. “What did she say?”

“She heard that you were missing, and she came to tell me of her walk home to the Towers with you.”

“Yes. And – and what did she say about me?” the young man asked with quick eagerness.

“Nothing. Only she seemed greatly surprised and upset,” his father replied. “But – well – ”

And he hesitated.

“Well – go on,” the young man said.

“Well, look here, Roddy, after leaving Miss Sandys, did you meet anyone else – a man in the Guildford road?”

“A man? No. Why? Haven’t I told you I walked straight home? What are you trying to make out?”

“You are quite certain that you did not stop and speak with any stranger in the Guildford road?”

“I am quite certain that I did not. I spoke to nobody till I found the girl dying in Welling Wood.”

“And – well, now let me at once be frank with you, Roddy: have you ever in your life heard the name of Gordon Gray?”

“Never. Who is he?”

“No matter. Recollect the name, and if you ever hear it, avoid him – avoid him, my boy, as you would Satan himself. And his woman friend Freda Crisp.”

“Freda Crisp? Oh! I fancy I’ve met her – been introduced to her somewhere or other about a year ago. In South America, I believe, but I really can’t remember. A fine handsome woman, who always dresses beautifully, and who is a topping dancer. Always has lots of men about her. Yes. I have a recollection of her, but I don’t just now recall where we met. In travelling I meet so many people, dad, as you know.”

“Yes, of course, my boy; but if you ever meet her again, remember my words.”

“That Miss Sandys should come and see you, dad, is peculiar. Why did she come? What interest can she possibly have in me, except – well, perhaps it is the wireless. She told me she was very interested in it, and possibly she has heard that I’m an experimenter – eh?”

“Probably so,” laughed the old clergyman. “But hearing you were coming home to-day, she sent me a message to say that she is calling here at five.”

“Jolly good of her!” replied the young man, suddenly raising his head, which seemed to be bursting, “It’s now nearly four. I think I’ll go up and have a lie down till she comes,” and so saying he ascended the stairs to his own room.

Just before five o’clock Elma Sandys, a dainty figure in furs, was ushered into the study by Mrs Bentley, and was greeted by the rector, who, shaking her hand, said:

“It’s really awfully kind of you to come and see my poor son, Miss Sandys. Frankly, I hardly know what to make of him. His mind seems entirely upset in some way. He talks wildly, and tells me of some terrible tragedy which occurred in Welling Wood on the night of his disappearance.”

“Tragedy! What?” asked the girl quickly.

“He will tell you all about it. The story is a very strange one. I would rather he told you himself.”

The girl sank into the wide wicker arm-chair which the old man pulled up to the fire, and then he left to summon his son.

When Roddy entered the room Elma, jumping up, saw instantly that he seemed still half-dazed. She took his hand and instinctively realised that his gaze was fixed and strange. His friend Denton had seen him soon after his return, and declared him to foe suffering from some potent drug which had apparently affected him mentally.

“Hulloa, Miss Sandys?” exclaimed the young man cheerily. “Well! I’m in a pretty pickle – as you see – eh? What’s happened I can’t make out. People seem to think I’m not quite in my right senses,” and then, grinning, he added: “Perhaps I’m not – and perhaps I am.”

“But, Mr Homfray, I’ve been awfully worried about you,” the girl said, facing him and gazing again into his pale drawn face. “You disappeared, and we had an awful shock, all of us. You left me at the end of the avenue and nobody saw you again!”

“Well,” said the young fellow, with a sorry attempt at laughing, “somebody must have seen me, no doubt, or I shouldn’t have been found in this precious state. What happened to me I haven’t the slightest notion. You see, I came up the village and went on through Welling Wood, and – well, as I went along I heard a strange cry, and in the darkness found a girl lying, under a tree. I went to her, and as I did so, she cried out to me to save her. The whole affair was unusual, wasn’t it? I bent and took her up, and – the poor girl sank in my arms.”

“Sank? Did she die?” asked the great financier’s daughter.

“Yes, she did.”

The rector, who stood near his writing-table, exchanged glances with their pretty visitor. They were meaning glances. Old Mr Homfray was somewhat puzzled why the daughter of Purcell Sandys should be so deeply interested in his son. Yet, of course, young people will be ever young people, and deep pockets are of no account where Love is concerned. Love and Lucre have now happily been divorced in our post-war get ahead world.

“But tell me, Mr Homfray, what was she like? Who could she be to be in Welling Wood at that hour?”

“Ah! I don’t know,” was the young fellow’s half-dazed reply. “I only know what happened to me, how I dashed away to reach home and raise the alarm, and suddenly saw what appeared to be a ball of fire before me. Then I knew no more till I found myself in hospital at Pangbourne. A man, they say, found me lying near the towing-path by the Thames. I was in the long grass – left there to die, Doctor Maynard believes.”

“But you must have been in somebody’s hands for days,” his father remarked.

“Yes,” said the young man, “I know. Though I can recollect nothing at all – distinctly. Some incidents seem to be coming back to me. I have just a faint idea of two persons – a man and a woman. They were well-dressed and lived in a big old house. And – and they made me do something. Ah! I – I can’t recall it, only – only I know that the suggestion horrified me!” And he gave vent to a strange cry and his eyes glared with terror at the recollection. “Ah! the – the brutes – they forced me to – to do something – to – ”

“To do what?” asked the girl, taking his hand softly and looking into his pale, drawn face.

“It is all a strange misty kind of recollection,” he declared, staring stonily in front of him. “I can see them – yes! I can see both of them – the woman – she – yes! – she held my hand while – she guided my hand when I did it!”

“Did what?” asked Elma in a slow, calm voice, as though trying to soothe him.

“I – I – I can’t recollect! Only – only he died!”

“Died! Who died?” gasped the old rector, who at the mention of the man and the woman at once wondered again whether Gordon Gray and Freda Crisp were in any way implicated. “You surely did not commit – murder!”

The young man seated in his chair sat for a few seconds, silent and staring.

“Murder! I – yes, I saw him! I would recognise him. Murder, perhaps – oh, perhaps I – I killed him! That woman made me do it!”

The rector and the pretty daughter of Purcell Sandys exchanged glances. Roddy was no doubt still under the influence of some terrible, baneful drug. Was his mind wandering, or was there some grain of truth in those misty, horrifying recollections?

“I’m thirsty,” he said a moment later; “very thirsty.”

His father went out at once to obtain a glass of water, whereupon Elma, advancing closely to the young man, drew from her little bag a photograph.

“Hush! Mr Homfray! Don’t say a word. But look at this! Do you recognise it?” she whispered in breathless anxiety.

He glanced at it as she held it before his bewildered eyes.

“Why – yes!” he gasped, staring at her in blank amazement. “That’s – that’s the girl I found in Welling Wood!”