Geoffrey laughed. He ridiculed the idea that any vengeance should be attempted upon him.
“I have only done my duty, my dear Sylvia!” he laughed. “My duty to the company and my duty to the Nation. Everybody surely understands that.”
“No,” the girl replied; “everybody does not understand. You, as an honest man, are at enmity with a certain revolutionary section of society. They know it. And they may lay their plans accordingly,” she said warningly. “I, of course, have no knowledge of any such plot—but I do urge you, Geoffrey, to keep very wide awake. I have some strange intuition that something may happen to you. Why—I can’t tell you!”
“My dear Sylvia, I hope I am always wide awake,” he laughed, kissing her clandestinely in the shadows, while a few moments later Mrs. Beverley reappeared.
Next morning mother and daughter went up by the railway from Alpnach to the Pilatuskulm, where they lunched with the young engineer and his friend Lane, and afterwards ascended to the newly constructed wireless station. It was not yet in working order, but Sylvia was highly interested, for she had by that time quite a good superficial knowledge of the apparatus and the power-plant, which, by the way, was almost a replica of the set which Geoffrey had installed at Bouvignes Aerodrome, in Belgium.
In the evening they went down again to Lucerne, but not until the following evening did Geoffrey again see the girl with whom he was so deeply in love. As soon as he had finished his work in that high-up spot on the Tomlishorn, he returned to the hotel, and after changing his clothes, descended to Lucerne and dined with the South American widow and her daughter.
Afterwards he went out with Sylvia on to the veranda. The night was a glorious one, the full moon rendering the lake and mountains a scene fairy-like and beautiful such as is presented perhaps nowhere else in the world. The view from the Schweizerhof on a moonlit night is always superb.
Again Sylvia returned to the strange warning from the ether which Geoffrey had received. She again confessed that she somehow felt uncomfortable about it. But her lover only pooh-poohed the affair, telling her that it was not the first time that jokes had been played by wireless.
“Why, not long ago,” he said, “the operator at one of the aerodromes for civil flying was spoken to over the wireless telephone by the Air Minister himself, who explained that he was flying from Scotland in a certain machine, and that in half an hour he intended to descend at that aerodrome. There was a great bustle at the news, but though they waited till dark the Minister never arrived. And not until next day did they learn that it was a hoax played by one of the pilots.”
The girl laughed, but still she urged Geoffrey to take care.