The Voice from the Void: The Great Wireless Mystery

Chapter One

Concerns a Stranger

“Yes! I’m certain it was Gordon Gray – the man whose face I can never forget, and whom I could identify among a million! Gordon Gray! Returned from, the dead!”

The white-haired rector, the Reverend Norton Homfray, a tall, sparely-built man of sixty-five, pursed his lips and drew a long breath. He was evidently greatly upset.

He had taken off his surplice in the vestry after evening service, and now stood motionless against the old rood-screen gazing into the cavernous darkness of the empty Norman church.

The congregation had dispersed into the winter darkness, wandering slowly and piously through the churchyard and out by the old lych-gate and down the hill, and old Morley, the verger, had already turned out the lights.

“Yes,” murmured the old clergyman, “he sat in the last pew yonder listening to me as I preached! Surely he cannot have risen from the grave, for I heard that he died at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York eighteen months ago! Forget him? Ah!” he sighed. “How can I ever forget? Why is he here in Little Farncombe, I wonder?”

For a few moments he remained motionless in the silent gloom of the historic old church, with its beautiful Norman arches so admired by archaeologists from all parts of the country. The stillness was broken only by the creaking of old Morley’s Sunday boots and the slow deep tick of the clock in the belfry.

Then, at last, he buttoned his overcoat and made his way out into the windy December night, passing round the churchyard and entering the grounds of his quiet old-world, ivy-clad rectory, a sixteenth-century house too large for his needs and too expensive for his slender pocket.

Norton Homfray was a fine type of country rector, a theological scholar and highly popular with all in his rural parish.

As a young man at Balliol he had taken high honours, and when a curate at Durham he had married. After twenty-seven years of married happiness Mrs Homfray had died four years ago leaving one son, Roderick, a heavy-jawed young fellow, now twenty-six. Mr Homfray had been utterly crushed by his wife’s death, and his house was now conducted by Mrs Bentley, a deaf old woman with a high-pitched voice.

When the latter, in order to make up the fire, came into the long old dining-room, a heavily-furnished apartment with several old portraits on the walls and French windows across which heavy dark-green curtains were drawn, she found Mr Homfray sitting beside the glowing logs staring straight at the embers.

Of late he had been unusually silent and morose. Therefore she put on a couple of logs and left the room without speaking.

When she had closed the door the old man, whose strong face was thrown into bold relief by the fitful light of the fire, stirred uneasily in a manner that showed him to be highly nervous and anxious.

“Roddy must never know! Roddy must never know – never!” he kept whispering to himself.

And the light of the blazing logs rose and fell, illuminating his fine old face, the countenance of an honest, upright man.

“No!” he murmured to himself, too agitated even to enjoy his pipe which he always smoked as relaxation after preaching his sermon. “No, I am not mistaken! Gordon Gray is still in the flesh! But why should he come here, as though risen from the grave? I saw him come in after the service had commenced. He sat there staring straight at me – staring as though in evil triumph. Why? What can it mean?”

And the thin, white-haired man lapsed into silence again, still staring into the blazing logs, the light from which danced about the long dining-room. On a little mahogany side-table near where the rector was seated stood a small tin tobacco-box attached by a cord to a pair of wireless telephones, and also to a thick, rubber-covered wire which ran to the window and passed out to the garden. Roddy Homfray, the rector’s son, was a young mining engineer, and also an enthusiastic wireless amateur. In an adjoining room he had a very fine wireless set, most of which he had constructed himself, but the little tobacco-box was a “freak” crystal-receiver set which he could carry in his pocket, together with the telephones, and by using a little coil of wire, also easily carried – which he could stretch anywhere as an aerial – he could listen to any of the high-power stations such as Paris, Leafield, Carnarvon, Nantes or Bordeaux. It was a remarkably sensitive little piece of apparatus, ships and “spark” stations being also received with peculiar clearness. That wonderful little contrivance had been described in several of the journals devoted to the science of radio, together with photographs, and had caused a sensation.

As the old clergyman’s eyes fell upon it he drew a long breath, and then whispered to himself:

“Poor Roddy! If he knew! Ah! If he knew! But he must never know the truth. It would break his heart, poor boy!”

Sight of the stranger who had sat alone in the pew at the back of the church had brought to him a flood of bitter memories, haunting recollections of a closed page in his history – one that he never dared reopen.

Meanwhile Roddy Homfray, a tall, dark-haired, clean-limbed fellow who, though young, had made several mining expeditions in Brazil and Peru as assistant to a well-known engineer, had left the church after service and walked down the hill towards the village. Recently he had been in Peru for five months, and had only returned a week ago and again taken up his hobby of wireless.

Three days before, while walking down the road from Little Farncombe into Haslemere to take train to London, he had overtaken an extremely dainty chestnut-haired girl, petite and full of charm, warmly clad in rich furs. She was evidently a lady. With her was a black toy pom which ran yapping at Roddy, as was its nature.

“Tweedles! Come here,” she cried, and having called off her pet she in a sweet refined voice apologised. Roddy laughed, assuring her that he was not in the least alarmed, and then they walked the remainder of the way side by side, chatting about the picturesqueness of the Surrey hills, until at last he lifted his hat and left her. She did not look more than seventeen, though he afterwards found that she was twenty. He had become fascinated by her extreme beauty, by her manner, and her inexpressible grace and charm, and as he sat in the express rushing towards London her sweet oval face and deep violet eyes arose time after time before him.

On that Sunday morning he had called upon his old friend Hubert Denton, the village doctor, and while smoking before the fire in the low-pitched sitting-room, he had described his meeting with the fair stranger.

“Oh! That’s Elma Sandys,” replied the doctor, a thick-set man of about forty-five.

“What? The daughter of Mr Purcell Sandys who has just bought Farncombe Towers?” asked Roddy in surprise.

“Yes. As I dare say you know, Purcell Sandys is a well-known financier in the City and has a house in Park Lane,” said the doctor. “A few months ago he bought the Towers and the great estates, including three villages with their advowsons, from the Earl of Farncombe.”

“He must be immensely rich,” remarked Roddy reflectively.

“Yes, no doubt. He is a widower and Elma is his only daughter. She looks only a child. I was asked to dinner at the Towers a fortnight ago, and I found both father and daughter charming – the girl especially so. Since leaving school her father has taken her travelling quite a lot. Last winter they spent in Egypt.”

Roddy listened to his description of the dinner-party. Then he said:

“Poor Lord Farncombe! I’m sorry he had to sell the place. He is a real good type of the British nobility. It seems nothing short of vandalism that the historic houses of our peers should pass into the hands of the magnates of commerce.”

“I quite agree. Lord Farncombe has gone to America, I believe. They say he was broken-hearted at being compelled to sell the house which his ancestors had held for five centuries.”

“Mr Sandys’ daughter is a very charming girl,” Roddy said.

“Very. She acts as hostess for her father. Mrs Sandys died some years ago, I understand,” replied the doctor. “Sandys is spending an enormous sum in improving the Towers, putting in a new electrical plant and building a new range of glass-houses. Halton, the builder, was telling me of it.”

But Roddy’s thoughts were afar. He was thinking of the chic, dainty little girl at whose side he had walked down to Haslemere, little dreaming that she was the daughter of the man who had purchased the whole Farncombe estates, including the living which his father held.

That night, after church, he decided to stroll down through the village and out to the house of an old retired colonel, who was a friend of his father.

The new moon was shining, but the sky was growing dull and overcast. He had lingered until all the congregation had passed out of the old churchyard, and following them down the hill, he turned to the left at the Market Cross, where he overtook a small, fur-clad female figure, whom he at once recognised by the light of the moon, which had reappeared from a bank of cloud, as that of Elma Sandys.

She, too, recognised him as he raised his hat and joined her.

“We are hardly strangers, Mr Homfray,” she exclaimed in her sweet musical voice. “Since we met the other day I learned who you are.”

“May I walk with you?” he asked, laughing. “You are going home, I suppose, and it’s lonely beyond the bridge.”

“You’re really awfully kind,” she said. “I’ve just been taking some chicken broth the cook made for a poor old lady named Bamford. Do you know her?”

“Oh, yes, poor old Betty Bamford! She’s been bedridden for years, poor old woman,” replied Roddy. “My mother used to go and see her. It certainly is good of you to look after her. Lady Farncombe also used to be very kind to her, I’ve heard my father say.”

And as they sauntered slowly along over the ancient moss-grown bridge and down the road where the bare trees met overhead, they chatted on merrily as young people will chat.

Roddy Homfray found her a delightful companion. He had on their first meeting believed her to be a visitor in the locality, for many people came from London to Little Farncombe on account of its picturesque surroundings, and its fine views across to the Hog’s Back and over in the direction of Petersfield. But he had been disappointed to find that she was the only daughter of Purcell Sandys, the millionaire purchaser of the Farncombe estates.

From the moment her father had entered possession of the Towers, the magnificent Tudor mansion which had been the home of the Farncombes, Elma had interested herself in the welfare of the village and had, with the assistance of two lady residents, sought out the poor. Her father, unlike most financiers, was a straightforward, upright, honest man who believed in giving charity in secret where it was needed. In this Elma assisted him, hence the new owner had already become popular in the neighbourhood, though, naturally, great sympathy was felt on all sides for the old earl who had been compelled to part with his estates.

As Roddy walked at Elma’s side down the dark, lonely road, the girl suddenly said:

“It’s really awfully good of you to come with me all this way, Mr Homfray. I expected to be home earlier, but the poor old lady was alone and begged me to stay a little longer. I was surprised when I saw how dark it had grown.”

“I assure you that it is a pleasure,” he declared briefly. There was regret in his heart that she was what she was. From the very first moment they had met, when little Tweedles had bristled his black hair and barked at him, he had fallen in love with her. Thoughts of her obsessed him, and her face rose ever before him. But as they walked together he knew that the difference in their stations would ever be a barrier between them. He was poor and could never aspire to her hand.

“I hear you have just returned from abroad,” she remarked.

“Yes. I sailed from Buenos Ayres six weeks ago,” he replied. “I’m a mining engineer, and we’ve been prospecting in the Andes.”

“And were you successful?”

“Fortunately, yes. But I expect to go away again very soon – that is, if I can obtain what I want, namely, a concession from the Moorish Government to prospect for emeralds beyond the Atlas Mountains. According to records left by the ancients there is a rich deposit of emeralds in the Wad Sus district, and I am hoping to be able to discover it.”

“How exciting! Fancy discovering emeralds?” Roddy laughed, and replied:

“The probability is that I shall fail. But if I get the concession I shall do my best.”

“I certainly wish you every good luck,” the girl said. “It must be awfully exciting to go prospecting. I suppose you meet with all sorts of adventures?”

“Oh! We have curious experiences sometimes,” he said lightly, and then he went on to describe a very narrow escape from drowning he had had once while at work on the bank of the Amazon.

On her part, she told him she was delighted with Farncombe.

“I’m tired of the rush of life in London,” she said. “My father is compelled to entertain a great deal at Park Lane, and I have to be hostess. But it is so very pleasant to live here in the country and have one’s friends down from town. We had a big house-party last week and had a ripping time. We shall have a shooting-party next week, and another the week after.”

Roddy was silent for a few moments, for they were already in the avenue and in sight of the lights of the great mansion.

“I had better leave you here, Miss Sandys,” he said, with undisguised regret. “And if you are to be so busy I fear I shall not have the pleasure of meeting you again before I go.” Then as he raised his hat, she replied cheerily: “Perhaps we may meet again very soon. Who knows? Thanks ever so much, Mr Homfray. It was very good of you to come all this way. Good-night?”

And she turned and left him.

Chapter Two

The Rector’s Secret Visitor

While Roddy Homfray had been strolling at Elma’s side, his father had still sat, gloomy and thoughtful, in the firelight at the Rectory.

The light evening meal which the rector always took on Sunday evening had been placed upon the table by old Mrs Bentley, who, after lighting the gas, had retired to her part of the rambling house. But the food had remained untouched.

The rector had sat nearly half an hour in the silence of the long, old room with its low-pitched ceiling and black oak beams. Deep in his arm-chair he did not stir, his bearded chin resting upon his thin hands, his brows knit in reflection. He was thinking – thinking, as ghosts of the past arose before him, visions of scenes which in vain he had always tried to put from him, and to blot out from his memory.

The silence of the room was broken only by the crackling of the big logs and the slow tick of the grandfather clock in the corner by the door, till suddenly the church clock chimed the hour of nine across the hills.

Then, scarcely had it ceased when there was the noise of a door handle being slowly turned, and next moment the heavy green curtains before the French window were drawn aside and a dark-haired, rather handsome woman of forty, wearing a close-fitting hat and a coney seal coat with skunk collar, stepped into the room.

Old Mr Homfray, startled at the sound, turned in his chair, and then springing to his feet faced her.

“You!” he gasped. “Why do you dare to come here? What do you want?” he asked angrily.

“To speak privately with you,” was her hard reply. “I didn’t want others to know of my visit, and thinking the window might possibly be unlatched, I tried it, and came in this way.”

“Then go out the same way!” commanded the old clergyman angrily. “How dare you come here?”

“Because I want to say something to you.”

“I don’t wish to – and won’t hear it!”

“You shall, Mr Homfray!” replied the woman, whose face was full of evil, her eyes glittering like those of a serpent. “I come to-night as messenger from a man you know – from Gordon Gray.”

“From Gordon Gray —you?” gasped the rector in surprise. “Why should he send you to me?”

“Because he thought it best not to come himself.”

“If he wishes to speak to me let him face me here,” Mr Homfray said boldly.

“Ah?” laughed the woman as though in triumph. “I seem to be an unwelcome visitor.”

“How could you be otherwise, after what has passed?” queried the old fellow.

“Well, don’t let us have any more bickering. Let’s come to business. Mr Gray wants to know whether you intend paying?”

“Not a penny – until the money is due next August.”

“But it was due last August,” the woman declared.

“That is quite untrue,” replied the rector very quietly.

“Well, the date is on the deed.”

“If it is, then the date has been altered.”

“But you have a copy.”

“No. I can’t find it. I must have mislaid it. Is there no stamp, with date?”

“It was never stamped. Mr Gray’s solicitors have already written to you three times about it, and you have not replied.”

“I have been away, taking duty in Switzerland. Besides, I understood that Gordon Gray died in New York last year, and – ”

“And you thought that by that fact you would escape your indebtedness – eh?” laughed the woman as she stood beside the table, an erect smart figure which was well known in certain disreputable night-clubs in the West End. “But Gordon Gray attended service in your church to-night, and you must have seen him in the flesh.”

“I did,” replied the old man hoarsely. “Sight of him recalled many events of the past.”

“Things that you wish to forget – eh, Mr Homfray?” she said in a hard voice. “But Gordon wants his money. If you allege fraud on the part of his solicitors you had better write to them.”

“Why does Gray send you here? You, of all women! What does he intend to do?” asked the grave old man.

“To sell the property if you can’t pay him. He has already given you several months’ grace. And besides, you’ve never answered any letters, nor have you paid any interest on the loan.”

“Because the money is not yet due,” declared the Rector of Little Farncombe. “If you knew the facts you would never make this illegal demand.”

“I know all the facts. Gordon means to sell the property if you cannot pay at once.”

Norton Homfray bit his lip. Only during the past two years had he suspected his whilom friend Gordon Gray, and that suspicion had that night been confirmed by the presence there of that vampire woman, Freda Crisp, whose dark, handsome face he had hoped never to look upon again. Gray, the son of a rich City merchant, had long been the black sheep of his family, and had, when at Oxford, been sent down from Balliol for forging a cheque to a tailor in the Broad. A few years later Homfray, who had recently taken Holy Orders, met him and, ignorant of his past, had become his bosom friend. After six years Gordon went to America, and not until fifteen years afterwards did the pair see each other, when one day they found themselves staying at the Bath Hotel in Bournemouth and resumed their close friendship.

Now old Mr Homfray was at that moment in serious difficulties, partly owing to his business instinct and his innocent generosity and trustfulness. He was a real upright and pious man who, unlike many parsons, practised what he preached. He had, in fact, stood security for an old college chum who had died suddenly from pneumonia and “let him in.”

He had been compelled to confess to Gray that he was ruined, whereupon his old friend had at once told him not to worry, and offered to lend him the sum upon his little piece of house property in the steep main street of Totnes, in Devon, from which he derived his slender income, the stipend at Little Farncombe being hardly sufficient to pay the housekeeper and the gardener at the Rectory.

But by the sudden appearance of the woman and her demands he realised that there was some sinister design afoot. That woman who stood before him he had strong cause to hate, yet hatred never entered his soul – even at that moment.

He now realised with blank amazement that her friend Gordon Gray, the man returned from the grave, was trying to swindle him, and that the date of the deed – the copy of which he had mislaid – had been altered and pre-dated a year.

“If your friend Gray dares to sell my little property – all I have – then I shall institute criminal proceedings against him,” he told the woman frankly, whereupon his unwelcome visitor opened her little brown leather handbag and from it produced a crumpled envelope, out of which she took three tattered newspaper cuttings, saying coldly:

“Perhaps you had better read these before you utter threats,” and she handed them to him.

He held his breath, and the light died from his thin countenance. He pushed them aside with trembling hands.

“You know to what they refer, Mr Homfray – to your appearance under another name!” sneered Freda Crisp. “You are the highly respected rector of this picturesque, though obscure, little parish, but if your parishioners knew the truth I fancy that they and your bishop would have something to say about it. Is it just to the public that a man such as yourself should dare to wear a surplice and have the audacity to preach sermons?”

The Rector of Little Farncombe remained silent. His face was deathly white, his hands trembled, and his eyes were staring. He had suspected that the one great secret of his life was known. But it appeared that not only was it known to the unscrupulous man who had once been his friend, but also to the woman before him, who was his bitterest enemy!

“So the pair of you have learnt my secret!” he said in a low, hard voice. “And I suppose you intend to blackmail me – eh?”

The dark-haired woman laughed.

“Gordon only wants his money back, that’s all.”

“And you have forced him to take up this hostile attitude,” he said. “You are my enemy. I know it. Well, what do you intend to do?”

“It isn’t my affair,” she declared. “Gray now knows that the money you borrowed from him was in order to help your fellow-criminal – a man who once did him an evil turn – after he had served his sentence. He wants his money back, and he is going to take it. The property will be up for auction in a week or so.”

“But I won’t be swindled in this way!” cried old Mr Homfray.

“Act just as you wish – but remember, if you make any move it will be the worse for you. Gordon is not a man to stick at trifles,” the woman said.

“I know that,” said the rector.

“And it is a very ugly skeleton you have in your cupboard,” remarked the woman with a sinister smile.

“The property at Totnes is worth over four thousand pounds,” he said.

“You have only to repay the money with interest and the matter is ended.”

Mr Homfray paused.

Then, looking straight into the woman’s evil face, he said:

“It is you, woman, who once swore to ruin me because I would not assist you in that vile plot of yours! You thought to trap me, a minister of the Church, into assisting you to entice that fly into the web you had so cunningly spun for him. But you were mistaken! I saw through your evil game, and because I did so you vowed vengeance upon me. And this is the hour of your triumph!” he added bitterly in a deep, hoarse voice, and one quite unusual to him.

The woman’s thin lips were pressed together, but she made no immediate reply.

At last she said:

“I am only here on Mr Gray’s behalf.”

“But it is you who have goaded him to do this – to take this action, well knowing that at the moment I cannot pay.”

“That surely is not my affair,” snapped the woman, while old Mr Homfray stood aghast at the sudden blow which had fallen to crush him.

What would his son Roddy think if he learnt the truth concerning that closed chapter of his father’s past? What would the parish of Little Farncombe say if they knew that their respected rector had fallen among thieves?

“Won’t Gray come here himself and talk over the matter?” he asked presently.

“No. He motored back to London as soon as the service was over. He had a fancy to see you and hear you preach to your dear parishioners, who, in all their innocence, believe in you, Mr Homfray,” and again the woman laughed sardonically. “So he sent me to see you in private, and to tell you his intentions.”