“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?”