Geoffrey Falconer stood at the window of the big old Adams room at the Savage Club, chatting with a journalist friend, Charles—alias “Doggy”—Wentworth, of the Daily Mail.

Before them lay Adelphi Terrace and beyond the Embankment and the broad grey Thames with its wharves on the Surrey bank, London’s silent highway.

It was the luncheon hour on a day in early spring. The trees along the Embankment, and in the Gardens below, wore their fresh bright green, not yet dulled by the London smoke, while along the Embankment the trams were rolling heavily between the bridges of Blackfriars and Westminster.

The room in which they stood was familiar to Bohemian London—the world of painters, poets, actors, novelists, sculptors, journalists, and scientists, who lunch and smoke in the same great room with its portraits, caricatures, and trophies—perhaps the only spot on earth where a man’s worth is nowadays not judged by his pocket or the estimation of his own importance. Confined to the professions, it is a club where as long as a man is a good fellow and has no side he is popular. But woe betide the member who betrays the slightest leaning towards egotism.

The members, leaving the little back bar, had already begun to drift in to take their places at the little tables which occupied half the big common-room. The unconventional shouts of “Hulloa, Tommie!” “Hulloa, Jack!” “Hulloa, Max!” were heard on every side—Christian names and nicknames of men some of whose names were in the homes of England and America as household words, men of mark whose portraits greeted one every day in the picture papers.Just as “Doggy” was about to turn aside with his guest, a friend of his approached the pair. A tall, lank man with a furrowed face, “Dicky” Peters, foreign editor of the great London journal, the Daily Telephone, was known to both, as indeed he was known to every journalist in London.

“Well, Dicky, what’s the latest?” asked Wentworth, a man ten years his junior, but who was among the most brilliant men in Fleet Street.

“Oh, nothing much,” laughed the other good-humouredly. “Only that infernal Moscow wireless press. It gets on one’s nerves.”

“How?” asked Geoffrey, at once on the alert.

“Let’s go and feed, and I’ll tell you.”

The trio went past the row of old leather-covered couches from the “smoking-room” to the “dining-room,” between which there was no partition, and presently as they discussed a plain English luncheon which even peers as guests did not disdain—for every one is on equality in the Savage—Peters began to rail at the wireless reports from Moscow.

“Well, Falconer’s a Marconi man,” remarked Wentworth. “Perhaps he can explain.”

“I don’t understand it at all,” Geoffrey said. “Of course I’m on the engineering side. I don’t know much about the operating side—except in experimenting.”

“Well, I think the whole thing is most puzzling.”

“How?”

“Well, one day we get the wireless press from Russia and publish it. Next day we have an entirely different and contradictory version. And, oh! the Bolshevik propaganda—well, you see it in many papers. Sub-editors all over the country are using no discretion. We get all the jumble of facts, fictions, declarations, but I never publish any. This latest propaganda against Britain is most pernicious. In America they are publishing all sorts of inflammatory stuff against us regarding Ireland—all of it emanating from the Third International—or whatever they call themselves.”“The Bolshevik press news should be wiped out,” declared “Doggy” Wentworth. “No sane man who reads it ever believes in the glorious and prosperous state of Russia under Lenin!”

“I agree,” said Falconer, interested in the conversation between the two journalists. “I often listen to ‘M.S.K.’ at night and read him, but his stories are of such a character that I wonder any newspaper publishes them. We never refer to it in our Marconi Press which we send out each night to the cross-Atlantic ships.”

“Yes, but how about the revolutionary propaganda regarding Ireland? We get a pile of it in the office every night,” said Peters. “I never publish it, but over in America they get it too, and I’m certain it does Britain incalculable harm.”

It was at a moment when a wave of Bolshevism was sweeping across Europe, a hostility to culture and to intelligence which had, in Russia, brought about a terrorism which was assisted by a police system which left far behind it the ideas and the proceedings of the Tsar’s secret police. And those responsible for the chaos in Russia were, it was known, endeavouring to stir up revolution in Great Britain, and thus assist Germany in her defiant attitude towards the Allies.

That night the young Marconi engineer dined at Mrs. Beverley’s, and sat beside Sylvia. Only three other guests were present, a well-known peer and his wife, and a prominent member of the Government, Mr. Charles Warwick.

Over the dinner table, in consequence of some serious reports in that night’s newspaper concerning the advance of the Red Army in the south of Russia, the conversation turned upon the situation, Mr. Warwick expressing an opinion that half the news concerning the Red successes was incorrect.

“I agree,” declared Falconer. “Only this morning I was discussing the same subject with two journalists in the Savage Club. It seems that Lenin and his friends are sending out by wireless all sorts of untruths concerning our rule in Ireland—allegations calculated to incense other countries against us.”

“Well, if that’s so, Geoffrey, why don’t you wireless people try to suppress them?” remarked Sylvia.

“An excellent suggestion!” laughed the smooth-haired young fellow. “But I’m afraid it would be impossible to stop the wireless waves they send out from Moscow each evening. When you press a wireless key the waves radiate in every direction, and reach far and wide. There is no invention yet to suppress wireless signals, except to jam them by sending out stronger ones upon the same wave-length. That can, of course, be done, but it would interfere with all wireless traffic.”

“Somebody really ought to blow up the Moscow wireless station,” declared Lord Cravenholme, an elderly blunt man, whose wife was many years his junior.

“Yes,” agreed Warwick. “The sooner somebody puts an end to their lie-factory the better.”

“Britain’s enemies are always ready enough to believe any fiction alleged against her. And, of course, the crafty Germans are behind all these attempts to stir strife,” his lordship declared, poising his hock-glass in his hand.

“Well,” exclaimed Sylvia, “I really think there’s an excellent chance for you, Geoffrey.” And she laughed merrily.

“Yes,” added her mother, “If you could manage to stop it all, you would certainly be a public benefactor, Mr. Falconer. I read in the American papers I get over some very nasty things about you here—all of it emanating, no doubt, from enemy and revolutionary sources.”

“Ah! Mrs. Beverley,” exclaimed the young Marconi man, “I’m afraid that such a task is beyond me. In the first place, nobody can get into Russia just now. Again, if the station were wrecked, Lenin’s people would soon rig up another. So I fear that we are suggesting the impossible.”

Later that evening, when Geoffrey and Sylvia were alone together in the morning-room—the others being in the big upstairs drawing-room—the girl mentioned that the odious fortune-hunter, Lord Hendlewycke, was to take them by car on the following day to tea at the Burford Bridge Hotel, at Box Hill.

“Oh, how I detest him!” said the pretty girl with a sigh. “And yet mother is for ever asking him here. I’m sick of it all. Wherever we go he turns up.”

“Because your mother has set her mind upon your becoming Lady Hendlewycke,” he said in a low, intense voice. “Why is she in London—except to marry you to somebody with a title? I know it’s a very horrid way of putting it, dearest, but nevertheless it is the truth.”

“I know,” she sighed. “But I hate the fellow—I hate him! I’m for ever having headaches, and pretending a chill in order to avoid meeting him. But he is so horribly persistent.”

He took her in his strong arms and kissed her fondly, saying:

“Never mind. Be patient, dearest. He will grow weary very soon. Be patient—for my sake!”

But at that moment the footman entered, and springing apart, they rejoined the others upstairs.

Geoffrey could only remain for half an hour, as he had to catch his train from Liverpool Street. He was back at Warley just before eleven. His sombre old home was all quiet, for the servants had retired, and his father was busy writing in his study when Geoffrey entered.

Together they smoked for about a quarter of an hour, after which his father extinguished his oil reading-lamp and retired.

Geoffrey, as was his habit before turning in, entered his wireless room wherein he had fitted that most up-to-date set—a bewildering array of apparatus—chief among which was his improved amplifier and a double note magnifier of his own design.

He placed the telephones over his ears, and having switched on the seven little glow lamps or valves of the amplifier, and the two others of the magnifier, tuned-in one or two stations.

“G.F.A.A.G.”—a great airship to wireless men—was out upon a night cruise from Pulham, in Norfolk, over England. He soon picked her up, and heard her taking her bearings from the direction-finding station at Flamborough, on the Yorkshire coast. After which she spoke by wireless telephony to her base at Pulham, and then to Croydon, Lympe, near Folkestone, and to St. Inglevert in France.

Afterwards she carried on a conversation with the air stations at Renfrew and Castle Bromwich. She was told by Flamborough that her position was thirty miles due north of Cardiff, going westward.

Such was one of the wonders of wireless.

His thoughts, however, were elsewhere. He was still pondering over those budgets of lies sent out from Moscow four of five times each twenty-four hours.

He placed his hand upon the knob of his “tuner,” and raised his wave-length to five thousand mÈtres. Other stations were transmitting, but he heard nothing of “M.S.K.”—the call-letters assigned to Moscow. Higher he raised the wave-length until, on seven thousand six hundred mÈtres, he found that high-pitched continuous-wave note, which he recognised as the lying voice from the ether.

He took up a pencil and began to write down rapidly in French a most scurrilous and untrue allegation against British rule in Ireland, intended for the anti-British press in America.

Halfway through he flung down the pencil with an exclamation of disgust, and removing the “Brown” head-’phones, switched off, and went upstairs to bed.

Next day, at the Marconi Works at Chelmsford, he discussed with several of his fellow-engineers the scandal of the Moscow Bolshevik propaganda, but each of them declared that nothing could be done to suppress it. Lenin and Trotsky ruled Red Russia, and certainly the tide of lies sent out broadcast into space could not be stemmed.Sylvia’s words constantly recurred to him. She had urged him to do something to stifle the pernicious propaganda against law and order in Great Britain. But how?

Many days went by. He was busy in the experimental laboratory up at Marconi House, and had but little time to devote to anything except the highly scientific problem which he was assisting three great wireless experts to try to solve.

About three weeks had passed when one afternoon he happened to be in the great airy apartment at Chelmsford where various instruments were being subjected to severe tests before being passed as “O.K.”—note-magnifiers, direction-finders, calling-devices, amplifiers, and all the rest—when, with the telephones on his ears, he heard Moscow sending out “C.Q.”—or a request for all to listen. Then again came that never-ending praise of Soviet Russia, which, under the absolute rule of a little group of men, mostly Russian or German Jews obeying the orders of Lenin—the new Ivan the Terrible—and his war minister, Trotsky, was, it was said, converting Russia into a terrestrial paradise. On the contrary, it was well known that Russia was a terrestrial hell, where torture was deliberately being used on a great scale, and with a cruelty that had never been surpassed, even by the Spanish Inquisition. The recapture of Kharkoff by Deniken had revealed a most terrible state of affairs, atrocities of which even the terrible Turks would have been ashamed. And yet the Moscow wireless was inviting the people of Britain and America to rise and establish a similar rÉgime!

As Geoffrey listened attentively, his ear trained to the variations of the sound of the signals of different stations, it suddenly occurred to him that the “note” was slightly different from that which he had heard and discarded on so many occasions.

He called across to one of the technical assistants, and he also agreed.“It’s probably due to some atmospheric interference,” the latter remarked.

Again the young radio-engineer listened. But it seemed to him to be a different note, though the wave-length was about the same. It was higher pitched, and just a little more difficult to tone.

When any problem arose, of whatever nature, Geoffrey Falconer never rested until he had solved it. That was how he had invented his improved amplifier. He had all the patience, the disregard of disappointment, the dogged perseverance, and the refusal to accept failure which characterises the great inventor. In the days long past most inventors died in poverty. Now in the days of stringent patent laws, fortunes are sometimes made out of a new safety-pin, or a sweet-smelling hair wash.

Though he carried on the important experiments both at Marconi House and at Chelmsford, and also at another station which had been established in secret not far from London, he nevertheless each night when at home listened in for “M.S.K.,” and diligently took down all the wilful perversions of the truth sent out by Soviet Russia.

On four different occasions, while listening upon his own set at Warley, he became convinced that some new station had been set up in Moscow for the deliberate purpose of circulating the most glaring untruths concerning events in Ireland. The text of all the messages was now much more bitter than before.

Time after time he sat back in his chair, utterly puzzled.

Here was a dastardly and insidious attack being made upon the country by disseminating false news by wireless, and yet nobody was able to suppress it.

One day, being up in London, he was re-entering Marconi House by the back way in Aldwych, and waiting for the lift, when suddenly an idea crossed his brain. It was only a vague suggestion, yet that night in the rural quiet of his home at Warley he listened in for Moscow, and succeeded in determining the wave-length accurately. It was neither the five thousand mÈtre “spark” transmission, nor the seven thousand six hundred mÈtre, but lower—four thousand seven hundred, to be exact.

Evidently Lenin had established an entirely new lie-factory for Britain only.

Night after night Falconer, after his return from the works, listened for Moscow—at seven o’clock and at nine-thirty on “spark,” and at ten-fifteen on continuous-wave. The latter was, however, absent. It had apparently been cut off, and the new anti-British station substituted.

Though Geoffrey saw Sylvia constantly, he said nothing to her regarding the problem. Often when up at Marconi House he met her at half-past five and they had tea at the Savoy or the Carlton, after which he caught his train back into Essex, there to spend the evening in calculating and devising all sorts of new “gadgets,” with the object of improving wireless telephony—the science which must, in the near future, revolutionise commercial communication.

The difference in the strength of signals from the new station of Soviet Russia, as heard in his telephones, puzzled him intensely. As an expert he felt that there was something unusual—hence, to an experimenter, of outstanding interest.

Therefore, he set to work to determine, if possible, the exact location of Lenin’s latest wireless station. With that object he one evening travelled to Lowestoft, and at the direction-finding wireless station there beside the sea, had a long chat with the engineer-in-charge. The station is normally used by aircraft to locate their position if in any difficulty with fog while passing between the terminal aerodrome at Croydon to Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, or other Continental cities. The two direction-finding stations worked in conjunction, one at Chelmsford and one at Pevensey, on the marshes between Eastbourne and Hastings—a triangle between which the sources of a wireless call can be plotted, and exactly determined.For an hour Geoffrey discussed the problem with Mr. Finlay, the engineer, who at once volunteered to assist. Then Falconer left, and two days later arrived at the Pevensey station, down upon the pebbly beach. Here, too, the engineer-in-charge was eager to render assistance.

Geoffrey and he were walking over the beach at the edge of the sea, smoking their pipes in the afternoon sunshine.

“I’ll call you up from Chelmsford on Thursday night—if the mysterious station is transmitting then,” Falconer said. “Listen, and you will no doubt hear him on about four thousand seven hundred mÈtres—a rather high-pitched note. If he is going I will call you up on Morse and signal ‘Forty-four.’ I’ll do the same to Lowestoft. Then you can plot with Chelmsford where he is located.”

“He may not be in Moscow at all,” remarked Finlay. “It may be some disguised station.”

“That’s exactly my own idea. But we can, no doubt, locate him, wherever he may be.”

So on the following Thursday night at about nine o’clock Falconer sat in the direction-finding station at the Works long after every one had left, listening intently upon the four thousand seven hundred mÈtre wave-length. He had waited in patience for about twenty-five minutes when at last there sounded a long shrill whistle, and the Bolshevik station began to poison the ether with its lies.

For five minutes he listened. Then placing his hand upon the transmitting switch, he drew it over and spoke over the wireless telephone to both Lowestoft and Pevensey, giving the code-word, “Forty-four.”

“O.K.” came the answer from both operators, and at once they began to make measurements upon the big maps in front of them.

All three direction-finding stations, at Chelmsford, at Pevensey, and at Lowestoft were now engaged, by working with each other in turn, in determining the exact position of the Bolshevik lie-factory.In each station shrewd, clever young men, with the telephones over their ears, worked the big ebonite handles of the direction-finder—a piece of wonderful apparatus in a square box with sloping top, and several dials upon which minute scales were drawn.

The operator at Pevensey and the one at Lowestoft exchanged conversations in a jumble of numerals. Then Lowestoft called Chelmsford, and within ten minutes the position of the mysterious station was measured out upon the map, and Geoffrey, bending eagerly, found that it had been located at a point somewhere in the centre of Copenhagen, and not in Moscow at all!

The anti-British station was still working on, as it did every evening; therefore, three times its bearings were taken, and each result came out the same.

“Thanks, Lowestoft! Thanks, Pevensey! Much obliged!” Geoffrey said over the wireless telephone. “Switching off!”

He looked for a long time at the map, and with the officer-in-charge of direction-finding he discussed the matter for a long time.

“In Copenhagen it should be easy to spot the whereabouts of the secret station. Indeed, upon a large-scale map of Denmark almost the very spot could be determined,” the direction-finding officer said.

Geoffrey lost no time next day when in London in obtaining a large-scale map of Denmark, as well as one of the city of Copenhagen, from a shop in Fleet Street, and a fortnight later, with the aid of an eminent geographer—a friend of his father—he was able, by making careful measurements, to locate the secret Soviet station as being in the Raadhus-Plads.

A week later, having been granted leave of absence from the Marconi Works at Chelmsford upon another pretext, he travelled to the Danish capital, where he put up at the HÔtel d’Angleterre, in the Kongens-Nytorv. In his luggage he carried his own supersensitive receiving set, all of which he had constructed himself.To the hotel personnel he made it known frankly that he was a wireless engineer, and on a table in the corner of his bedroom overlooking the square he set up his instruments, after hiring from a local garage an accumulator for his valve-filaments—namely, to light up the seven little cylindrical vacuum-tubes of his supersensitive amplifier.

On the night of his arrival in Copenhagen, after dining alone in the big white-and-gold salle-À-manger, he ascended to his room and sat there all the evening with the telephones over his ears. He could hear the British Admiralty working to Malta; Paris working to Warsaw; Carnarvon working to Belmar, and Bordeaux transmitting across the Atlantic. On that starlit night the ether was alive with messages by “spark” and continuous-wave being sent across the seven seas.

For over five hours he listened attentively, but all he heard was the usual commercial messages, most of them in code of various kinds. Then he took off the telephones and went out for a stroll along the Bredgade as far as the Esplenade, in order to refresh himself after his long and unsuccessful vigil.

Next day he wandered about the clean busy streets of the Danish capital, idling before the shops in the Ostergade, the Kjobmager Gade, and the Amargertov, or reading newspapers in the cafÉs, the Continental, the Bristol, or Otto’s. In spring Copenhagen is always bright and lively, and he found the city quite charming.

At night, however, he returned to his vigilant watch, for the secret Bolshevik station was not now working every night.

For five nights in succession he waited patiently, hour after hour, but though he listened to thousands of messages, yet “M.S.K.” remained silent on its new wave-length.

Geoffrey Falconer was, however, quite unaware that the adjoining room was occupied by a grey-haired, undersized little man, who had been on the quai at Antwerp when he landed, and having followed him to Copenhagen by way of Kiel, had taken up his abode in the next room.

In the hotel the two men passed each other frequently, but Geoffrey was entirely unsuspicious that his movements were being so closely watched.

He, however, as is the practice of most case-hardened cosmopolitans, always kept the key of his room in his pocket, contrary to the hotel rule of leaving it in the key-office. When one is at a hotel and keeps one’s key in one’s pocket, only the chambermaid’s or the manager’s master-key opens the door. Hence intruders are debarred.

On the eighth night of Falconer’s stay his suspicions became aroused because he suddenly found the little old man keeping him under observation. At first he was in a quandary, but presently, after due consideration, he resolved to act with greater discretion.

The Raadhus-Plads, as those who know Copenhagen are well aware, is in the centre of the city, and the focus of the network of tramways, just as is the Piazza del Duomo in Milan. Time after time Geoffrey had passed backwards and forwards across the spacious square, but he could detect no aerial wires such as would be necessary to transmit the anti-British propaganda into the ether.

Each night he wandered into the square and gazed up at the many illuminated sky-signs upon the shops around, until he began to conclude that the bearings taken at Chelmsford must have been inaccurate.

He had been in Copenhagen ten days when one night, while seated in his bedroom at about ten o’clock with the telephones over his ears, he heard the mysterious station start up, calling “C.Q.,” namely, asking everybody to listen.

And then on a pure musical note there was tapped out a message, alleging that Britain was doing serious injustice in Ireland—a message calculated to inflame public opinion.

That it was close by Geoffrey detected at once. The signals were too loud on the “second intensity” of his double note magnifier, so he cut it out, and read it loudly from one “Q”—or detector valve.

He put down his ’phones, switched off, and leaving the hotel, walked again to the Raadhus-Plads. Around the square the well-lit electric trams were circulating slowly, while all around were the illuminated advertisements of motor-tyres, mineral waters, cocoa, and soap, a picturesque night scene beneath the clear starlit sky.

Watching him unseen was his little grey-haired neighbour from the adjoining room in the Angleterre. The old fellow was, no doubt, a very clever watcher. As a matter of fact, he was Ivan Stromoff, one of the most astute officers of the secret police under the rÉgime of the last Tsar Nicholas, now, of course, pressed into Lenin’s service.

The secret police of Russia were ever corrupt, and they had now been suborned by the Bolsheviks to act in the interests of the Soviets as they had previously done in the interests of the Monarch.

While passing across the Kongens-Nytorv—the King’s new market—the fashionable centre of Copenhagen, Geoffrey again realised that the little old man was following him. So during the following day he walked the streets of the Danish capital with the sole purpose of drawing on the old fellow who was keeping such strict surveillance upon his movements. Everywhere he went the little old fellow shadowed him.

Therefore, at about ten o’clock on that evening he managed to elude the watchful old man, and taking a taxi, drove to the central bureau of police. He was taken at once to Marius Lund, the director of the police, and when alone with him, explained the object of his visit to Denmark, and asked that he might be given assistance in order to unearth the secret wireless station of the revolutionaries.

Lund, a broad-shouldered, fair-haired Dane, at once became sympathetic, promising all the assistance he could render.“We in Denmark are always anxious to support the Allies against the machinations of Germany and Russia. So I will give you whatever help you may require. Already we have been advised of your presence here, Mr. Falconer, and I confess it has aroused some suspicion, because you had in your baggage some wireless apparatus.” And he laughed.

Falconer explained all the circumstances, how the bearings taken in England had shown that the Bolshevik transmission set was not in Russia at all, but somewhere in the neighbourhood of the Raadhus-Plads in that city.

“But had we not better obtain the aid of one of the engineers at the radio-telegraph station here? Mr. Petersen, the chief engineer, I know quite well,” the head of the Copenhagen police suggested.

In consequence an introduction was next day effected between the two wireless engineers, who sat together in the big wireless station at Lyngby, outside Copenhagen, the note of which with its call-signal, “O.X.A.,” is well-known to every wireless man. There they thoroughly discussed the whole matter.

“We experience no interference,” said the Danish engineer. “But we use the six-hundred mÈtre wave in transmission, while you say ‘M.S.K.’ is under five thousand mÈtres. Anyhow it is highly interesting, and we will certainly investigate it.”

Together they strolled around the big busy square at noon, but their expert eyes could detect no sign of aerial wires. If a wireless station existed in that vicinity it was certainly extremely well disguised.

Yet upon them both the little old man, who occupied the bedroom next to Geoffrey’s, kept active vigilance, though that morning he was followed by a detective. It was apparent that by some means or other the Bolsheviks knew of Falconer’s journey and its object. That he was being watched was proof in itself that the station, though well concealed, certainly existed somewhere or other in the city.

At the suggestion of Marius Lund, both radio-engineers remained inactive during the following three days, for the first point towards success would be, he said, to get rid of the silent watcher, without allowing him to suspect that he in turn was being watched.

So the police called one morning at the hotel, and finding a fault with the old man’s passport, ordered him to return to Hamburg, whence he had come. This he did with ill-suppressed chagrin.

Hence the investigators were free to watch. One evening while Geoffrey could plainly read upon his own set in his bedroom at the Angleterre the messages sent out by “M.S.K.,” yet at the radio station, a couple of miles away, they could not be heard by the operator on duty, merely because of the difference of the wave-lengths employed.

That night Geoffrey Falconer and his Danish friend sat outside the Bristol CafÉ in the great square, for the night was quite warm and bright. As they gazed around at the brilliantly lit Place, the busy centre of Denmark’s capital, they were more than ever mystified.

Only on the previous day Geoffrey had received from the engineer-in-charge of the direction-finding station at Lowestoft a report of a further test, and the bearings had not altered in the slightest. That secret wireless station, which was endeavouring to do so much harm to British interests and Britain’s prestige abroad, was somewhere near them—but where?

His companion confessed himself utterly perplexed as just before midnight they strolled homeward.

Yet as soon as Geoffrey entered his room and switched on his receiving loop-aerial—a wooden frame three feet square, upon which was wound a number of turns of wire, and which took the place of wires out of doors—he heard the Bolshevik’s message being sent out strongly across the North Sea to England!

On the following night the young Marconi engineer determined to watch alone. He dozed upon his bed until midnight, then rising and putting on his overcoat, he went forth to the Raadhus-Plads, which was at that hour almost deserted.

He took a seat outside the Bristol, and idled over coffee and a cigarette until one o’clock, when the establishment closed. Then he got up and wandered around the square, not meeting more than half a dozen persons, for the trams had ceased running, and only now and then there passed a taxi on its way home.

Rain began to fall in a slight unpleasant drizzle; therefore, turning up his coat collar, he drew into a doorway in order to keep as dry as possible.

Suddenly, just after two o’clock in the morning, two men and a woman emerged from a small cafÉ close by, that had been closed for a couple of hours. One man was carrying a suit-case which seemed very heavy for its size, and as the trio passed, Geoffrey overheard them talking together. They spoke in Russian!

Having realised this, Geoffrey followed them at a respectable distance through the deserted streets, past the Tivoli Gardens to the Central Railway Station, where the suit-case was deposited in the consigne. Geoffrey noted the case well. It was of dark-brown leather, and bore the initials, “G.E.K.”

Then the young woman left her companions and went in the direction of the Lange Bridge, while the men retraced their steps back to the obscure little cafÉ.

Early next morning Geoffrey sought Marius Lund and related what he had seen, whereupon they both went to the railway station, and having interviewed the stationmaster, the bag was obtained, and on opening it with a skeleton key, it was found to contain several portions of apparatus for wireless transmission.

“Well,” remarked Geoffrey, when he examined the contents of the suit-case, “I can’t see how they can transmit from that cafÉ. They have no aerial.”

“We will investigate before long,” said the police director, closing the bag and relocking it.

Within an hour Geoffrey accompanied him to the cafÉ, a dingy little place to which no one apparently went. They had previously discovered that it was kept by a man named Vedel, whose nationality was inscribed upon the municipal register as German.

As they entered, leaving four police agents in plain clothes outside, the man Vedel came forth, and behind him the second man whom Geoffrey had seen during the night.

The police director demanded to know where their secret wireless station was situated, but they at once denied possessing one.

“We shall search this place,” said Marius Lund. “You may as well tell us the truth at once.”

“Search—and welcome,” was Vedel’s defiant reply.

Hence, while the pair were prevented from leaving the premises, they searched the whole house and went out upon the roof, but found not the slightest trace of a wireless installation.

They had drawn blank!

In chagrin Geoffrey began to wonder what the police thought of the mare’s nest he had discovered, when Vedel, believing that he was about to be arrested, gave himself away by drawing a revolver and firing a shot point blank at Geoffrey, narrowly missing him.

In a flash the police agents secured and disarmed him, while Lund also ordered the immediate arrest of his companion—who gave the name of KÖbke—and both were hurried off to the police bureau.

The wireless engineer, Petersen, was at once telephoned for, and together they made a second examination of the premises, when after nearly an hour they found in the cellar a concealed door which led into a second cellar beneath a courtyard behind the house, wherein stood a small printing office.

In this subterranean chamber beneath the printing office they found a fine continuous-wave transmission set of one-and-a-half kilowatt power, together with its generator. Apparently the printing office had been established as a blind, so that the neighbours should believe the noise to be that of printing machinery.

Then they searched for the aerial wires, but it was a long time ere they discovered them. At last, to their great surprise, they found them very cunningly concealed behind and about an enormous sky-sign which, illuminated at night, advertised the merits of a certain brand of cocoa, a sign which Geoffrey had noticed nightly, never dreaming, of course, that the secret lay hidden up there.

The two prisoners who were proved to be dangerous emissaries of the Moscow Bolsheviks, were convicted, and sentenced to long terms of imprisonment for establishing secret wireless against the laws of Denmark, the result being that the world has ever since been spared the dissemination of the poisonous Bolshevik propaganda.

And the credit of its suppression was certainly entirely due to Geoffrey Falconer.