The Voice from the Void: The Great Wireless Mystery
He saw that the girl was uneasy, and was not surprised when she said:
“I trust, Mr Homfray, that you will treat what I have told you in entire confidence. My father does not approve of my making chance acquaintances. I got into an awful row a little time ago about it. I know he would not object to my knowing your son if we had been properly introduced. But, you see, we were not!” she laughed.
“I quite understand,” said the old rector, smiling. “One day I hope you will be properly introduced to my son when we find him.”
“We must, Mr Homfray. And we will!” cried the pretty young girl determinedly.
“Ah!” exclaimed the old man, his thin fingers clasped before him. “If we only could. Where can my boy be?”
Elma Sandys rose a few moments later, and taking the old man’s hand urged patience and courage, and then walked down the hill and back to the Towers full of grave reflections.
She was the last person to see and speak with the alert, athletic young man who had so suddenly and strangely come into her life. At Park Lane she met many young men-about-town, most of them wealthy and all of them idlers, but no second thought had she given to a single one of them. As she walked she examined her own mind, and was compelled to admit that thoughts of Roddy Homfray now absorbed her.
The mystery of his disappearance after bidding her farewell had gripped her, heart and soul.
During the two days that followed the description of Roderick Homfray, the young mining engineer, was circulated to every police station in the country, and all constables in London and the great cities had had that description read out to them before going on duty. There was scarcely a police constable in the United Kingdom who did not know it by heart, with the final words of the official notice: “The missing man is greatly interested in wireless telephony, of which he has a deep and scientific knowledge.”
That sentence had been added by the Surrey County Constabulary in case the young man might be hiding from his friends, and might betray himself by his expert knowledge of radio science.
Of the woman Freda Crisp, or of Gordon Gray, old Mr Homfray had heard nothing. The whole village sympathised with him in his distress, and, of course, all sorts of rumours – some of them cruel indeed – were afloat. Fortunately Elma’s name was not coupled with Roddy’s, for with the exception of the rector nobody knew of their acquaintance. Yet some ill-natured gossip, a low-bred woman at the end of the village, started a story connecting Roddy with a young married woman who had left her husband a fortnight before, gone to London, and disappeared.
This cruel story was not long in reaching Elma’s ears, and though she disbelieved it, nevertheless it naturally caused her both wonder and anger.
On the afternoon of the third day after the circulation of the description of the missing young man, a stout, pleasant-faced lady named Boydon chanced to read it in the paper, and then sat staring before her in wonderment.
Then, after a few moments, she rose, crossed the room, and rang the telephone.
A few seconds later she was speaking with a Mr Edwards, and asked him to come along to see her upon an important matter, to which he at once consented.
Now Miss Boydon was the matron of the Cottage Hospital at Pangbourne, a pretty Thames-side village well known to river folk as being one of the prettiest reaches in Berkshire, and Mr Edwards was the local police sergeant of the Berks. Constabulary, and lived at the other end of the long wide village street which led out upon the Reading road.
Ten minutes later Edwards, a portly, rather red-faced man, arrived on his bicycle, and on entering the matron’s room, his helmet in his hand, was shown the description.
“By jove, miss?” he exclaimed. “I believe it’s him! We’ve had the notice at the station, but I never connected him with it!”
“Neither did I – until now,” declared the stout Miss Boydon. “He only became conscious this morning – and now he tells us a rambling and altogether incoherent story. Personally I think he’s slightly demented. That’s what the doctor thought when he saw him at noon. He’s waiting to see his condition to-night.”
“Well, the description is exactly like him,” declared the sergeant, re-reading it. “When he was brought into the station the other night I took him to be intoxicated. Then when Doctor Maynard saw him, he ordered him here.”
“The doctor thinks he is suffering from drugs,” said the matron. “He has been unconscious ever since he was brought here, nearly a week ago, and now he certainly has not regained his senses. He talks wildly about a girl who was murdered in a wood and died in his arms. Apparently he is suffering from delusions.”
“In any case, miss, I think I ought to telegraph to Guildford that a young man answering the description is here, don’t you think so?”
“I should not be in too great a hurry if I were you, Edwards,” was the reply. “Wait until Doctor Maynard has seen him again. We shall probably know more to-night. I’ve ordered nurse to keep him quite quiet and listen to his stories as though she believes every word.”
“The young man is missing from a place called Little Farncombe, in Surrey,” said the sergeant. “I wonder how he came to be lying on the tow-path at the foot of Whitchurch Bridge? He must have been there all night, for one of the men working on the Thames Conservancy dredger found him when on his way to work at six o’clock on Tuesday morning.”
“All clues to his identity have been removed,” remarked the matron. “His name has been cut out of his shirt collar and underclothing, and the laundry marks removed – all deliberately done as if to efface his identity. Possibly he intended to commit suicide, and that’s why he was on the river bank.”
“But the doctor, when he saw him at the police station, gave his opinion that the man was drugged,” the police sergeant said. “I don’t think he had any intention of suicide.”
“Well, in any case, let us wait till this evening. I will telephone to you after the doctor has seen him,” the matron promised. And with that the sergeant left.
At six o’clock Doctor Maynard, a quiet elderly man who had practised in Pangbourne and district for fifteen years, called again and saw Roddy lying in the narrow little bed.
His face was pale and drawn, and his eyes sunken and weary:
“Well, doctor,” he exclaimed cheerily, “I feel a lot better than I did this morning. I’m able to think now – and to remember. But oh! – my head!”
“That’s good,” declared the white-haired medical man. “Now what is your name, and how did you come here?” he asked, the stout matron standing, watchful, beside him.
“My name is Roderick Homfray, and I’m the son of the Reverend Norton Homfray, rector of Little Farncombe, in Surrey,” the patient replied frankly. “What brought me here I don’t know. What day is it to-day?”
“The fourteenth of December.”
“The fourteenth of December! Well, the last I remember is on the night of the third – a Sunday night. And I shan’t forget it either, I assure you! I was on my way home soon after half-past nine at night, and in Welling Wood, close by the Rectory paddock, I found a girl lying on the ground. She could just speak. She appealed to me to save her. Then she died. I rose and dashed across the wood to my father’s house to raise the alarm, but I had hardly gone a hundred yards when straight in front of me something exploded. I saw what seemed to be a ball of red fire, but after that I know nothing – nothing until I came to my senses this morning and found myself here! Where I’ve been in the meantime, doctor, I have no idea.”
Doctor Maynard, still under the impression that the story of the murdered girl was a delusion, sympathised with the patient and suggested sleep.
“I’ll come to see you to-morrow,” he added. “You’re quite all right, so don’t worry. I will see that a telegram is sent to-night to your father. He’ll be here to-morrow, no doubt.”
At ten o’clock the following morning the rector stood at the bedside of his son and listened to the amazing story of the discovery in Welling Wood and the red ball of fire which Roddy subsequently saw before him.
“Perhaps I was struck by lightning!” Roddy added. “But if that were so I should surely have remained in the wood. No doubt I was struck down maliciously. But why? And why should I have been taken away unconscious and kept so for several days, and then conveyed to the river bank here at Whitchurch?”
“I don’t know, my son,” replied his father quietly, though he stood staggered at the amazing story.
Then he added:
“The police searched Welling Wood and all the neighbouring copses three days after you had disappeared, but found no trace of you.”
“But surely they found the poor girl, father?” cried Roddy, raising himself upon his arm.
“No, my boy, nobody was found,” he replied. “That’s strange!” exclaimed the young man. “Then she must have been taken away with me! But by whom? What devil’s work was there in progress that night, father?”
“Ah! my boy. That I cannot tell!”
“But I mean to ascertain!” cried the young man fiercely. “That girl appealed to me to save her, and she died in my arms. Where is she? And why should I be attacked and drugged so that I nearly became insane? Why? Perhaps it was because I had accidentally discovered the crime!”
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.”