At that moment Mulliner entered with two cups of hot cocoa, a beverage at that hour and in those circumstances very welcome.
“You managed splendidly!” Roseye declared. “Isn’t it awfully exciting to be up in the dark! Nobody who hasn’t been up at night would ever dream how weird and yet how lovely is the feeling—would they?”
“It’s far worse with these new lighting orders,” I remarked. “One gets so few landmarks. That’s why I lost my way more than once.”
Scarcely had I uttered those words when Teddy, in his big brown motor-coat and muffler, burst into the room.
Dashing across to me he wrung my hands with wild enthusiasm.
“It works, Claude!” he cried. “The conductor sparked across at every test. Even the last, at three thousand yards, the spark was quite an intense one!”
“Then we haven’t failed!” I cried breathlessly.
“No. I should rather think not!” was my friend’s eager reply. “Why, at five hundred yards the laurel bush got badly burnt, and at a thousand it made a fearful crackle and was alight.”
“But it really acted at three thousand—you say?”
“It acted perfectly—and over a twelve-inch spark, too!”