“And you meet with a good many adventures when you are on prospecting expeditions, I suppose?” remarked the widow.
“Well—a few,” he answered modestly. “It is a pretty rough life sometimes, but one gets used to it,” and his bronzed face relaxed into a merry smile.
The party spent an enjoyable evening together, and while Geoffrey gossiped with the rich widow, his friend Jack had a long chat with Sylvia.
They all retired to bed early, and were up betimes to the usual country hotel bacon-and-egg breakfast, the habit from which the Englishman, however cosmopolitan, can never break himself. In northern Europe they eat cheese for breakfast, in the south the horse-shaped roll with coffee, but the Briton must ever have his eggs-and-bacon in no matter what climate.
On arrival at Euston that evening they parted, and Geoffrey went back to his work in the research department at Chelmsford. He was experimenting with the four-electrode valve, the latest and most scientific invention applied to wireless reception.
Hour after hour, and day after day, with his telephones clamped over his ears, he experimented with new circuits, new inductances, and new condensers, the main object being the application of wireless telephony to commercial and household requirements in opposition to the heavy cost of construction and maintenance of land lines.
Many of the experiments in that great, well-lit room had given marvellous results, which when made public, would cause amazement throughout the world.
One afternoon, ten days later, Geoffrey met Jack Halliday in London. The latter was busy preparing his outfit for the expedition to recover the mine of the ancient Egyptians. Falconer was walking along the Strand not far from Marconi House when they accidentally came face to face. With Halliday was a man of about forty, smartly-groomed and well-set-up, apparently an ex-officer, with a well-dressed and rather pretty young woman. The man’s name was Gilbert Farrer, and the girl’s Miss Beryl Hessleton.
“We’re just going along to the Carlton to tea,” Jack said. “Come with us.”
Geoffrey accepted the invitation, and they all took tea in the palm-court.