The Voice from the Void: The Great Wireless Mystery Part 18

"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 s.h.i.+ps 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, c.o.x! 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 s.h.i.+pping 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 tete-a-tete 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 from _Il 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 a.s.sembling 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 k.n.o.b 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 k.n.o.b 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 k.n.o.b altered the wavelength of his reception, first tuning in s.h.i.+ps in the Channel signalling to their controlling station at Niton, in the Isle of Wight, or the North Foreland; then Leafield, in Oxfords.h.i.+re, 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 Ma.r.s.eilles, where he will meet Mohamed Ben Azuz at the Hotel Louvre et Paix. Will you go to Ma.r.s.eilles? 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 Ma.r.s.eilles. Is Freda coming? 3.V.N. over."

"Yes. Freda will come if you wish it," replied the loud, hard voice.