“Ah! Then you didn’t hear that message to you—did you?”
“No. What message?” asked Geoffrey.
“Oh, somebody on the wireless ’phone about sixteen hundred mètres wave-length, called you by name, Geoffrey Falconer, Warley, Essex, England.”
“Yes. What did he say?”
“I don’t know whether it was a man’s voice or a woman’s. If a man’s it was unusually high-pitched. The modulation was not very good, though I heard the words quite distinctly, and wondered if you also heard them. It was a kind of warning to you.”
“Warning!” echoed the young Marconi engineer. “In what way?”
“Well, whoever was calling you evidently did not know your call-signal, so called your name. And then he went on to warn you not to go East. If you do, you go at your peril!”
“Not to go East! How strange!” Geoffrey remarked.
“Yes; it’s a bit uncanny—isn’t it? He repeated it several times, and then added the words: ‘Anyone hearing this urgent message, will they kindly give it to Geoffrey Falconer at Warley, Essex, England?’”
“Some silly ass having a joke,” laughed Falconer. “I heard the other day that some horrible spook message was given by a practical joker over the radiophone, and the fellow who heard it, being a spiritualist, nearly died of fright. Perhaps it’s the same fellow up to his tricks again!”