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.