“It should be quite a pleasant trip for you, Falconer,” remarked the little, middle-aged, well-dressed man who was one of his superiors, as they sat together in a room in the Engineering Section at Marconi House on a bright October afternoon. “The plant went out from the works at Chelmsford three months ago, and we have been advised that it has all arrived in Hungary, or I suppose they call it Czecho-Slovakia now, and it is lying at the station at Arad.”

“I will do my best,” replied Geoffrey, greatly delighted at the instructions he had just been given, namely, to proceed to Hungary to erect two complete one-and-a-half kilowatt stations for continuous-wave telegraphy and telephony. “I have never been in Hungary, and it will, no doubt, be interesting.”

“It will. I’d dearly like to go with you,” laughed Mr. Millard, one of the best-known of wireless engineers. “The sets have been purchased by the Baron de Pelzel, on behalf of the new Government of Czecho-Slovakia, and one of the conditions of the contract provides that we should send out an engineer to erect the stations.”

“Will anyone go with me?” asked Geoffrey.

“No. There is, I think, no need. I myself looked through the instruments before they were packed. All is in order. You can employ local labour. There are surely some quite good electricians in Hungary. The first station is to be erected somewhere near Arad—wherever that may be—and the other in some other part of Hungary. We thought you would like an opportunity to go abroad.”

Geoffrey thanked the chief of his department, and then, after receiving a number of other instructions, he went down in the lift and out into the busy Strand.Half an hour later he was at Mrs. Beverley’s.

“Hulloa, Geoff!” cried Sylvia as he entered the room. “Where have you sprung from? I thought of you down at Chelmsford with your uncomfortable old telephones on your ears, turning little handles very slowly, and listening! Oh, Geoff, you look so funny sometimes when you listen! You look as if your whole life depended upon it,” added the girl chaffingly.

“And so it does, dear. At least my bread-and-cheese depends upon it.”

“Why, the other day Colonel Maybury, of the Air Ministry, told me that your improved amplifier will probably bring you a comfortable fortune in royalties!”

The keen, smooth-haired young fellow shrugged his shoulders, and replied:

“I only hope it will. We wireless men are never optimists, you know. We always look for failure first. Success surprises us, and bucks us up. When one is dealing with a science which is in its infancy one must first look for failure.”

“My dear Geoffrey, as I’ve said before, you are so horribly philosophic about things,” she declared with a laugh.

At that moment her mother entered, and invited Geoffrey to stay to dinner en famille. The ladies, however, put on dance frocks, for they were due at Lady Waterden’s at nine o’clock. So about that hour, after Falconer had told them of his impending journey to Hungary, he saw them into the car and then walked to the corner of Grosvenor Square, where he took a taxi to Liverpool Street and caught the train to Warley.

At the Works at Chelmsford next day he was handed a copy of a letter from the Baron de Pelzel, who had purchased the installations on behalf of the Government of Czecho-Slovakia. It was a private letter dated from the Schloss NyÉk, in Transylvania, recalling the fact that all the plant had already arrived at Arad, and asking the Marconi Company to send their engineer to Budapest as soon as possible, where he would meet him at the Ritz Hotel and consult with him.

A week later Falconer left London—after an affectionate farewell to Sylvia—and travelling by the Orient express by way of Paris, Wels, and Vienna, duly arrived at the Hungarian capital. The moment he entered the taxi to drive to the Ritz—that hÔtel de luxe overlooking the Danube—a great change was apparent in what was once the gayest city in Europe. The war had brought disaster upon the unfortunate Hungarians, who, owing to the terribly low rate of exchange, and the difficulty of food imports, were now half-starving.

As in the late afternoon Geoffrey went from the station along the wide handsome street half the shops were closed, and the passers-by were mostly thin-faced, ill-dressed and shabby.

At the hotel a brave show of luxury was made, and naturally the charges were high—in Austrian coinage. The price asked for a room with bathroom adjoining was enormous, but when he calculated it in English money at the current rate of exchange it was about two shillings and sixpence a night!

He inquired at the bureau if the Baron de Pelzel had arrived, and received an affirmative reply. The Baron and his niece had gone out motoring to Szajol, a place on the River Tisza, and would return about six. He had left that message for Geoffrey.

About half-past six a waiter came to Falconer’s room asking him to go along to the Baron’s sitting-room, which was on the same floor. This he did, and there met a tall, well-built, very elegant, brown-bearded man of about forty, with a round, merry, fresh-complexioned face and a pair of dark, humorous eyes.

He welcomed Falconer in very good English and at once introduced him to his niece, FranÇoise Biringer, a tall, rather slim, dark-eyed girl, very smartly attired, who spoke to him in French. Apparently she knew but very little English.Then when the girl had gone to dress for dinner, the two men sat down and discussed the business in hand.

The Baron seemed an extremely affable and cultured man, as so many Hungarians are. He lived mostly in Paris, he explained, but since the war he had assisted his Government in various matters.

“I hope you will have an enjoyable time, Mr. Falconer,” he went on. “When I was at Marconi House they told me they would send out an expert engineer to fit both stations and get them going. How far do you think I can speak over the set they have sent me?”

“Speech should carry from seven hundred to nine hundred miles—perhaps more under favourable conditions, but Morse signals will carry very much further.”

The Baron seemed highly satisfied.

“You see, my Government is greatly interested in certain mining enterprises, and it is my plan to set up two wireless stations on either side of Hungary, so that we can conduct rapid business from one zone of operation to the other, and also with Budapest when we so desire. But,” he added, “it is annoying that the plant should have been sent to Arad. There must have been some mistake. I went to Arad last week and saw the railway people there. It has already been passed on to its proper destination. But I do not expect it will arrive for a week or even ten days, so during that time I hope you will honour me by being my guest here, as well as during the time you are engaged in fitting the installation.”

“I shall require assistance,” Geoffrey said. “Do you happen to know of, say, two good electricians whom I could engage as assistants?”

“I will inquire,” replied the Baron. “No doubt we can find two good men who, during the war, were engaged in radio-telegraphy.”

Afterwards Geoffrey, well-impressed by the genial Baron, returned to dress for dinner, and later on took a perfectly cooked meal with his elegant and courteous host and his niece. The young man found the pretty FranÇoise extremely interesting. They discussed many things at table, new books, new plays, and, of course, the terrible havoc of the war.

The Baron was pro-British in all his remarks. He deplored the ridiculous weakness of the poor old doddering Emperor Franz-Josef, who, as every one knew, was beneath the thumb of a wily adventuress, and with vehemence declared: “We were always Britain’s friends. We should never have opposed her. Look at our poor Hungary now! Only ruin and starvation! Until we can recover ourselves we shall be at the mercy of any of the petty Powers who make themselves so conspicuous and obnoxious at the eternal pourparlers presided over by your Premier. We want peace, Mr. Falconer,” cried the Baron furiously. “Peace, and with it renewed prosperity. But there!” he added. “Pardon me! I apologise. FranÇoise knows that this constant casting of dust in the eyes of our poor starving people goads me to the point of fury.”

Even though Hungary was in such evil case, and half the population were starving, yet at that hotel people—many of them war-profiteers as in London—dined expensively, danced, and thoroughly enjoyed themselves. To them it mattered not how freely the bones of the poor rattled, or how many children died daily of sheer starvation. They had money—and with it they bought merriment and “life.”

After dinner the Baron’s car took them down the Nagy-Korut—the Great Boulevard—to the Folies Caprice, where they spent the evening at an excellent variety performance.

That night when Geoffrey retired to his room he was fully satisfied with the warm reception and generosity of the Baron, and charmed with the chic and verve of his pretty niece FranÇoise, who seemed to have spent most of her life in Paris, where her father had an apartment close to the Étoile.

Next day the Baron invited the young radio-engineer to have a run in the Mercedes, and the rather morose Frenchman, Lebon, who drove, took them out to Tepla, a very beautiful spot with warm springs that have been visited for centuries by the Hungarian nobility. They lunched at the Sina-haz, one of the many excellent hotels, and ran back through Trencsen, where they pulled up to find the “Lovers’ Well.”

After an inquiry from the Baron, who alone spoke the Hungarian tongue, they discovered it just outside the village, within the confines of the ruin of a Roman castle—a well dug in the rock.

The Baron and the peasant who conducted them to it had a short chat. Then FranÇoise’s uncle turned to them, and explained in French:

“A most curious story this good man tells. It seems that centuries ago a young Turk of high rank and family offered a large ransom for his bride, who was in captivity in this castle. But the lord of the castle, Stephen Zapolya, demanded as the price of her release that her lover should dig a well through the rock. After seven years’ hard work the well was completed, and the spring is to this day called the ‘Lovers’ Well.’”

With FranÇoise, Geoffrey peered down into the pitch darkness, and saw that it was really cut in the rock. As they did so, their hands came into contact. Indeed, she grasped his instinctively as they stood together at the edge of the deep well.

Then she withdrew her hand quickly with a word of apology, and ten minutes later they were in the car back upon the broad highway which led to Budapest.

The autumn days passed very pleasantly. Living so much in Paris, as he had done of late, the Baron, apparently, had but few friends in Budapest. He, however, had much business to attend to in the daytime on behalf of his Government, hence Falconer and the Baron’s pretty niece were thrown constantly into each other’s society.

She was a smart girl, full of a keen sense of humour, and possessing all the verve of the true Parisienne. She knew Budapest, of course, and acted as Geoffrey’s guide in the city, but her heart was always in Paris. She regarded the Hungarians as an uncouth race.

Her mother had been French, she told him one day. She had, alas! died two years ago. But she had induced her father to take the flat in Paris rather than remain in the wilds of Hungary.

More than once Falconer wrote to Sylvia telling her of the society junketings in Budapest, while the city starved. Each night they dined expensively and went either to the opera, or to the Vigszinhas to see comedy; to the Fortress, or the People’s Theatre. They also went to the Arena in the Town Park, the performances at which were quite as good as in pre-war days.

One evening as Geoffrey sat in the palm court of the Ritz with FranÇoise, she exclaimed suddenly in French: “I think we go to-morrow or the next day. My uncle was with Count Halmi this afternoon, and they were speaking of it. All the wireless apparatus has arrived at Zenta.”

“Zenta? Where is that?” asked Geoffrey, removing his cigarette, for the pair were alone together in a corner of the lounge. FranÇoise looked very pretty in a jade-coloured dance frock, for a dance to weird Tsigane music was to commence in the great ballroom in half an hour.

“Zenta! Why, don’t you know? Has not the Baron told you? It is his estate right away on the other side of Hungary—near the Russian frontier. I confess that it is out of the world, and I do hope you will not be bored to death there!”

“No doubt I shall not; I have my work to do,” laughed the well-set-up young Englishman, for he was really having a most enjoyable time.

Hence he was not surprised when two days later his host, the Baron, departed for the Schloss Zenta.

In the express between Budapest and Debrechen, on the line which leads out to the Polish frontier, the Baron, lolling lazily in the corner of the first-class compartment, remarked in English:“I hope, Mr. Falconer, you have not been disappointed with Budapest. Unfortunately I have had so many official affairs to attend to. We shall be at home at Zenta to-night. I fear it may be very dull for you, as it is far away up in the mountains. I only yesterday received word that all your apparatus has arrived there.”

“What height is it?” Geoffrey asked, as he was concerned with the height of his aerial wires.

“I hardly know,” the Baron laughed. “I’ve never tested it with an aneroid. No doubt you will. It is high, and that is why I thought it would suit you, because I’ve always understood that aerial wires for wireless are best on a hill.”

“Certainly they are,” said Falconer, gazing out upon the beautiful panorama of stream and mountain through which they were passing. They were entering the most remote, but most beautiful, district in all Hungary, that which lies between the High Tatra—a lovely mountain district known so little to English travellers, save those familiar with the Carpathians—and the Roumanian frontier.

At evening they arrived at a small, picturesque town called Nagy-KÁroly, the capital of the Szatmas country, nestling between the mountains, and at once a powerful car took them for about thirty miles up higher and higher into a wild remote district, the very name of which was unknown to Geoffrey. Presently, just as the night was drawing in, the pretty FranÇoise pointed to a high-up chÂteau perched on the edge of a steep rocky precipice, and said:

“Look! There is Zenta—at last!”

It looked, as indeed it was, one of those ancient strongholds of the Hungarian barons who had for ages resisted the repeated invasions of the Turks.

Later, when they arrived and the Baron showed him round before dressing for dinner, he found that it was a splendid old fortress, full of rare antiques and breathing an air of days long gone by, while at the same time it was also the comfortable home of a very wealthy man.That night as they sat at dinner in the long panelled dining-room adorned with many heads of stags and bears, trophies of the chase, the Baron raised his glass of Imperial Tokay and welcomed his guest beneath his roof.

“Here,” he said, “you have a very historic old place which you are going to fit with the latest invention of wireless—the radio-telephone. A strange combination, is it not? All your boxes have arrived, and they are in the back courtyard. I am sorry that I was not able to arrange for expert assistance for you, Mr. Falconer, but I have two very good electricians arriving to-morrow. My agent in Vienna is sending them.”

And at the same moment Karl, the Magyar servant, in his brown velvet dress and big buttons of silver filigree, helped him to a succulent dish of paprika lamb, which followed the halaszle, that famous fish soup which is served nightly in all the wealthier houses in Hungary.

“Have the engines and all the other plant arrived?” Geoffrey inquired.

“Everything. Twenty-eight packages in all,” answered the brown-bearded man, while FranÇoise, with her bare elbows on the table, glanced across at the young Marconi engineer, and remarked in French:

“I suppose you will be horribly busy now—eh, M’sieur Falconer?”

“Yes, mademoiselle,” he replied. “I have lost more than a fortnight already. But it has, I confess, been most enjoyable.” Then turning to the Baron, he asked:

“Have you engaged any operators to work the set?”

The question, put so suddenly to De Pelzel, nonplussed him. He was compelled to hesitate for a few seconds—a fact which did not escape the alert Geoffrey.

“Oh! how very foolish of me!” the Baron exclaimed in his suave, easy manner. “I have been so terribly busy of late, and also rectifying the blunder of sending the boxes to Arad, that I quite forgot the necessity of a staff to work the installation when it is complete. I will at once see about getting some ex-radio military men from Vienna.”

For half an hour after dinner a gipsy orchestra, four swarthy-faced men in brown velvet, with dark, piercing eyes, and lank black hair, gave some wonderful music with their violins. Then, when near midnight, the man-servant Karl showed Geoffrey to his room—a big, gloomy, dispiriting place, lit only by two candles in ancient silver holders.

When Karl had shut the door, Geoffrey instantly experienced a curious feeling of impending evil. Why, he knew not. He was there upon business for his company in that remote, out-of-the-world place, and his host, the Baron, was most kind and affable, while his niece was quite charming. Yet somehow as he lay awake the greater part of the night he became consumed by a strange apprehension.

At the Ritz, in Budapest, and also in the train, he had noticed on several occasions a curious exchange of glances between uncle and niece—or was it only his fancy?

Was anything amiss? He lay listening to the owls hooting in the great forest which surrounded the castle on three sides, and reflected deeply. FranÇoise, he remembered, had during the past few days questioned him very cleverly, yet very closely, concerning himself and his family. Could there be any motive in that? In the silent hours of that night he became haunted by dark suspicions, but next morning when he awoke refreshed and went out in the autumn sunshine along the terrace, which gave a magnificent view of the great Hungarian plain for many miles, all his apprehensions were quickly dispelled.

Inwardly he laughed heartily at his own misgivings.

At eleven o’clock he drove with the Baron about three miles into the forest to a large high-up clearing—the spot which De Pelzel suggested should be the site of the new station. Indeed, two new log huts were already built for the transmitting and receiving gear, with a remote control to the generator plant.Geoffrey, looking round upon the dense firs which screened them on every side save to the east, was surprised that such a site should have been chosen. But next second he recollected that the Baron knew nothing of wireless requirements.

“To tell you the truth,” Geoffrey said frankly, “I do not favour this spot at all. Results would be far better if we fitted the station somewhere else, for instance, near the terrace at the Schloss.”

“I quite imagine it, Mr. Falconer,” replied the eminently polite Baron. “But, unfortunately, my Government is desirous of possessing a confidential means of conversation between the two mining zones, and I have granted them permission to establish it here on my estate.”

“And the corresponding station?” asked Geoffrey.

“I will explain the situation of that later—when we have decided upon this.”

Falconer was disappointed. He saw that the aerial would be far too directional for the best results.

“This evening,” the Baron went on, “I hope your two assistants will be here. This car will then be at your disposal to take you backwards and forwards from the castle.”

To protest against such a site was, apparently, useless. All that Geoffrey could do was to warn the Baron that the results were not likely to be too good.

“Well,” he laughed, “I’ve bought the plant, and if I choose to erect it anywhere, I suppose I am at liberty to do so. You, Mr. Falconer, with your expert knowledge, will, no doubt, be able to make it work all right!” he said good-humouredly.

“Well—I’ll try,” Geoffrey replied, and on his return to Zenta he sat down and wrote a long letter to Sylvia, telling her his whereabouts, and how the material had been addressed to Arad wrongly, of his life with the Baron, and of the rather unsatisfactory site that had been chosen.

He wrote four closely-filled pages, and having finished took it to one of the small rooms where FranÇoise was sitting reading a French novel.

“The post goes out every night at seven o’clock,” she said. “If you will put it in the rack by the front entrance Karl will see that it is put with the others this evening. Ludwig goes in the light car, and takes the letters into Deva. They go by road to Nagy-KÁroly to-morrow morning, and on by rail.”

Next day two shrewd-looking Austrian engineers presented themselves as Geoffrey’s assistants. Both spoke French, and when Falconer questioned them he discovered that the elder of the pair knew a good deal about radio-telephony.

They therefore set to work to open the huge boxes of apparatus which had been over three months on their way from Chelmsford. Each was marked, and they, of course, only unpacked one complete set, together with the aerial masts and wires. This work took three days, after which the whole of the plant was carried up by horses through the forest to the clearing which had been made near the top of the mountain.

Day by day Geoffrey was out there with his two assistants, first erecting the aerial—one of the newest type—and then making an “earth” by sinking three-foot copper plates edgewise in the form of a ring, and connecting all of them to a central point. Each evening he was back at the castle, where he spent many pleasant hours with the Baron and his charming niece. The latter, indeed, took him on several occasions to see the most delightful pieces of mountain scenery while the Baron, hearty and full of bonhomie, was keenly interested to watch Geoffrey at work fitting the complicated-looking apparatus.

Yet, curiously enough, Geoffrey’s strange feeling of apprehension had not passed. He could not rid himself of that creepy feeling which had stolen over him on the night of his arrival at the castle of Zenta. Why, he could not tell.

He was surprised that he had no answer to his three letters to Sylvia since he had been there, but he recollected that Mrs. Beverley had spoken of going to Paris for a fortnight or so, to do some shopping, hence it was quite possible that mother and daughter had left London.

It struck him, too, as somewhat strange that the Baron’s pretty niece should evince so much inquisitiveness concerning his affairs. When they were together she frequently turned the conversation very cleverly, and questioned him about his friends in England.

“I’m terribly bored here,” she declared in French one night after dinner, as she sat with a cigarette between her fingers and yawned. “At last I’ve persuaded my uncle to let me go back to Paris. I shall return very soon.”

“Will you?” asked Falconer. “I expect to be here quite another fortnight before we can get going. Then I have to erect the other station. Have you any idea where that is to be?”

“No,” she said. “Uncle has never told me. But, no doubt, it will be a long way from here.”

The secrecy concerning the position of the corresponding station also puzzled the young fellow. The Baron had, however, promised to let him know in due course, so he continued his work out in the forest, and gradually he assembled the engine, generator, and all the apparatus necessary for radio-telegraphy and telephony.

One afternoon he returned to the castle unusually early, and was surprised to discover the Baron—who had not seen him—emerge from his bedroom and slip down the stairs. On examining his suit-case a few moments later he saw that the lock had been tampered with, and all his papers had been overhauled!

What object, he wondered, could his genial host have in prying into his private affairs?

By day the two Austrians working under his direction were ever diligent—both being excellent fellows, and very careful and precise in their work, which is most necessary in setting up a wireless station. At night they remained at the castle in quarters which the Baron had provided.

So far from everywhere was the castle that the Baron seldom had visitors except on two occasions, when two gentlemen, one a short, stout, thick-set man, probably an Austrian, and the other a middle-aged Russian who seemed something of a cosmopolitan, arrived, and after spending the night, drove away again.

From FranÇoise he understood that the Austrian, whose name was Koblitz, was a Government undersecretary, and the Russian’s name was Isaakoff, and that their visits were upon official matters concerning Czecho-Slovakia.

At last, one day when Doctor Koblitz had unexpectedly arrived alone, the new wireless station in the forest was completed, and Geoffrey thoroughly tested the reception side, which he found gave highly satisfactory results, considering the screening from the trees. Both the Baron and Doctor Koblitz, together with FranÇoise, took the telephones and listened to the signals from Elvise, Rome, Warsaw, Carnarvon, Arlington, Lafayette, Lyons, and other of the “long-wave” stations. Indeed, during the whole afternoon Geoffrey entertained them by tuning-in messages and copying them from dots and dashes of the Morse code.

Both the Baron and Koblitz expressed their delight; therefore that evening Geoffrey ventured to ask where the second station was to be erected, for quite ten days before all the remaining cases had been despatched to a destination of which he had been kept in ignorance.

“My Government have not yet decided,” was his reply. “The boxes have been sent to Versec, close to the Serbian frontier. No doubt to-morrow or next day we shall hear what is decided. You said this afternoon that you have finished, and that all is in order to transmit—as well as to receive?”

“Yes,” Geoffrey replied, “all is ready. I have only now to put up the corresponding station.”“Could you, for instance, send off a message for me to-morrow—say at noon?”

“Certainly,” said Falconer. “We are ready to run and give a test whenever you like.”

“Excellent. Then we will go over in the car to-morrow and send out the test message—eh, Monsieur Koblitz?” was the genial, brown-bearded man’s reply.

That night Geoffrey failed to sleep. Five weeks had passed since he left London, and though he had written to Sylvia several times, he had received no word of reply. If she had been in Paris, she was surely at Upper Brook Street again!

He was ignorant of the significant fact that each letter he had left for Ludwig to post had been taken by FranÇoise and handed to her uncle, who had opened it and read it in conjunction with Karl, the faithful man-servant. Afterwards each letter had been burned. This had been repeated each time Geoffrey had written a letter, either to Marconi House, to his father at Warley, or to any other person.

On Sylvia’s part she was still writing to the Ritz, at Budapest, whence she had had a letter from her lover, and they were retaining the letters expecting the young English engineer to return, as the Baron, unknown to Geoffrey, had promised.

Next morning broke chill and misty over the Carpathians, and at half-past eleven the Baron, accompanied by Falconer, FranÇoise, and Koblitz, drove to the newly completed wireless station.

Inside the transmission hut as they stood together, the Baron took out a slip of thin paper which he carefully unfolded and handed to his companion, saying:

“The call-signal will not be found in the official book.” Then added: “As you see, the message is seven-figure code.”

Geoffrey looked and saw that the call-letters written upon the slip of paper were C.H.X.R., followed by a jumble of figures interspersed with letters of the alphabet.

The initial letter of the call showed that the station wanted was either in Spain, Portugal, Morocco, or Roumania. No doubt it was in the latter country.

“The call-signal allotted to this station is the letters O.S.R.U.,” the Baron said, after referring to his pocket-book.

So the young radio-engineer at once sat down to the key and tapped out the usual preliminary call, followed by his own call and the call of the unknown station he wanted.

“Get them first by telegraphy, and then I will telephone to them,” urged the Baron excitedly.

Within ten minutes Geoffrey obtained a response, and after sending the code message by telegraph, he switched on the telephone transmitter, and handed the microphone to the Baron.

“Hullo! Hullo! Hullo! Petresco? Petresco?” he called, holding the transmitter close to his lips. Then in English he went on: “Can you hear me? Is speech all right? This is a test to you. Please tell me whether you have heard me distinctly. Hullo! Petresco? Hullo! Petresco? This is O.S.R.U. calling—calling C.H.X.R.”

And he handed the microphone to Geoffrey, who at once repeated the query, and concluded it with the words always used in wireless telephony: “O.S.R.U., changing over.”

In a few moments there came a clear voice evidently at a considerable distance, saying:

“Hullo! O.S.R.U.? Hullo! Your signals are quite O.K. Your modulation quite good. Congratulations!”

He handed the head-’phones to the Baron, who, with great satisfaction, heard the speech repeated. They were certainly in touch with the mysterious station in Roumania.

While the test was in progress FranÇoise stood in the narrow little room watching intently.

“Really marvellous!” Mademoiselle declared when she herself put on the telephones and heard the reply again repeated in a clear, rather musical voice.

Then, after another ten minutes, the Baron asked Falconer to switch off the generator and close down, as they would be late for luncheon.

“It does you very great credit,” declared the owner of the great estate of Zenta. “I never dreamed that we should be in such complete touch so quickly.” And the man Koblitz also tendered his congratulations upon the achievement.

Later in the afternoon Mademoiselle FranÇoise left for Paris, and Geoffrey shook her hand as she entered the car. After dinner Falconer smoked with the Baron and his friend until about eleven o’clock, when he put down his cigar and wished them both good-night. It had become apparent that the pair wished to be rid of him for some reason. Therefore he retired.

Back in his great, gloomy bedroom he stood for some time at the window, gazing out upon the gorgeous scene of moonlit mountain and silent Carpathian forest. The attitude of the two men during that evening had become suspicious—the more so because the Baron had so constantly evaded his question as to the site of the second wireless station, and also the identity of the mystery station, “C.H.X.R.” Who, too, was Petresco? It was apparently a Roumanian name. Once again a strange intuition crept over him—a premonition of impending evil.

A quarter of an hour later he removed his evening shoes and crept back again down the great oak staircase to the door of the room wherein the two men were in consultation.

Bending he could hear their voices speaking low and confidentially. But they were speaking in Hungarian, hence he could not understand a single word. Probably it was only politics they were discussing; therefore, after waiting ten minutes, all the time in fear of the approach of Karl, he was about to return to his room when, of a sudden, he heard a few words in French.

Koblitz was speaking.

“Yes, I quite agree,” he said. “Your plan is excellent. The wireless station must remain a complete secret. This young fellow’s lips must be closed. The two men we have here are both good wireless men, and are affiliated to our cause. Hence they can be trusted completely. Falconer we cannot trust—even if we attempted to bribe him, for he is an Englishman and would accept nothing.”

“I am glad you agree, mon cher,” the Baron replied. “At the wireless station to-morrow he will accept a drink from my flask—and then—well, the forest will an hour later hold its secret,” he remarked meaningly.

Geoffrey held his breath. Could it be possible that their plan was to poison him, and bury him in the forest, now that he had completed his work?

It was quite apparent that the station he had erected was a secret one, established for some illicit purpose.

He listened again, but Koblitz was only congratulating his friend upon the success of what he termed “the great scheme.”

Silently Geoffrey crept back up to his room. His mind was made up. By his natural intuition of impending peril he had been forewarned. Hence putting on a pair of strong walking boots, he assumed his overcoat and let himself out of the great rambling place by a door he knew. In the moonlight he ascended the steep winding path which led to the wireless huts, and on arrival there, unlocked the house in which the transmission panel was erected. Then, switching on the light, he took up a hammer and deliberately smashed every one of the big glass valves.

Not content with that, he also smashed every spare valve, and then destroyed the insulation upon two transformers of the receiving set, thus putting the whole station out of action.

Afterwards he relocked the door and made his way back past the castle and out upon the high road which led down to Nagy-KÁroly. Through the greater part of the night he walked, until at a small mountain village he was able to induce a peasant to harness a horse and drive him into the town.

Before nine o’clock that morning he called upon the chief of police, and through a man who spoke French, gave him a description of the secret wireless set, and of the dastardly plot to kill him and dispose of his body by burying it in the forest.

At once the police official was on the alert, for the Schloss Zenta, he said, belonged to a certain young Count BÖckh, who was a minor, and at the university of Budapest. He had never heard of the Baron, who had, no doubt, established himself there unknown to its rightful owner, but pretending to the servants that he had rented it furnished. This was later on ascertained to be a fact.

Within an hour urgent telegrams were exchanged between the Ministry of Police in Budapest and the chief at Nagy-KÁroly, so that at noon, when the Baron and Koblitz put in an appearance at the railway station—intending to fly after finding that Falconer had gone and that the secret wireless station had been put out of action—they were at once arrested and sent by the next train under escort to Budapest.

Later, after much inquiry, the police discovered that the pseudo-Baron—whose real name was Franz Haynald, a well-known revolutionist—had, with Koblitz and a number of others, formed a great and widespread political plot, financed by Germany, to effect a union with Hungary and Bavaria. Austria was to be overthrown, Vienna occupied jointly by Bavarian and Hungarian troops, and Czecho-Slovakia was to be blindfolded by creating a revolution in Jugo-Slavia. The idea was, with the aid of Tzarist Russia, to establish a great “New Germany,” which was to be more powerful than ever, and become mistress of the world.

This certainly would have been attempted—for the erecting of that powerful wireless station was one of the first steps—had not Geoffrey Falconer acted with such boldness and decision.

Haynald, with FranÇoise—who was the daughter of the man Koblitz—Koblitz himself, the servant Karl, and twenty others are all now undergoing long sentences of imprisonment.