“Then you also know Farrer?”
“Yes,” Geoffrey replied briefly, for the conversation had increased his wonder and suspicion. Along the table the conversation turned, as it always does, upon wireless research and the business of the Company, interspersed with personal chaff. At Chelmsford there is a daily reunion of heads of departments at luncheon, where the interchange of ideas is always intellectual, for gathered there are men of the greatest scientific knowledge, mostly young, all enthusiastic, and all experts in their own branches of radio-telegraphy.
Later that day young Falconer went into the testing department where Davies was busily engaged, and returned to the conversation they had had at luncheon.
“Is Farrer an intimate friend of yours?” asked Geoffrey.
“Not intimate. I know Beryl, his pretty little friend. I’ve dined once or twice with him in town.”
“Have you ever met a fellow named Jack Halliday?”
“No. Never heard the name. Why?”
“Well, because Halliday, who is an old schoolfellow of mine, is prospecting for gold on the Red Sea coast.”
“Ah! Then no doubt Farrer has bought his secret.”
“Perhaps he’s stolen it,” Geoffrey suggested.