Falconer glanced across to a big, broad-shouldered, round-faced man, who was clean-shaven, with a lock of fair hair falling across his forehead, a man with protruding chin, thick lips, a pair of shrewd blue eyes, who wore an emerald in his shirt-front.
In an instant a crowd of memories flashed across her companion’s mind. For a second he hesitated. Then he advanced, and greeted his fellow-traveller across the Atlantic.
“It was awfully kind of your mother to ask me, Miss Beverley,” said the big, burly fellow to Sylvia as they shook hands. “I took a house near Maidenhead, but I’ve been in Paris ever since we got over. I only got to the Ritz three days ago, and received her card through Morgan’s.”
“Well, we’re awfully pleased to see you,” Sylvia declared. “We’ve at last settled in London, and it’s real good to be here.”
“Yes,” drawled Mr. George Glover. “I usually come over to Europe twice a year on business, and I always look forward to it. Americans who haven’t travelled never realise the delights of dear old London, do they?”
Presently the trio went in to supper together. Quite casually Sylvia mentioned Geoffrey’s connection with wireless, whereupon Glover began to discuss some of the newest theories in a manner unusually intelligent for the uninitiated. This caused Geoffrey’s thoughts to wander far from that gay crowd by which he was surrounded.
The man seated opposite him was something of a mystery. On the trip over to Europe, at one o’clock one morning, he had despatched from the ship a curious wireless message. Geoffrey had happened to be in the cabin with the chief wireless operator when the message had been brought in. He was assisting the operator to adjust his spark, which was slightly out of order. Ships’ wireless sets, like watches, are sometimes liable to vagaries. Why, nobody can tell.
The message sent in was marked “very urgent,” but the “spark” was poor, and the range at the moment rather inefficient. As it lay beside the transmitting key, Geoffrey read it.
He remembered it quite distinctly because, by some strange intuition, he felt that it was not what it pretended to be. One sometimes experiences strange suspicions. And in this case Geoffrey wondered. He knew the sender, and perhaps because of his friendship with Sylvia and her mother, he had felt a little irritation, for he instinctively mistrusted the man.
The message was of a commercial character, and read: