The keen, smooth-haired young fellow shrugged his shoulders, and replied:
“I only hope it will. We wireless men are never optimists, you know. We always look for failure first. Success surprises us, and bucks us up. When one is dealing with a science which is in its infancy one must first look for failure.”
“My dear Geoffrey, as I’ve said before, you are so horribly philosophic about things,” she declared with a laugh.
At that moment her mother entered, and invited Geoffrey to stay to dinner en famille. The ladies, however, put on dance frocks, for they were due at Lady Waterden’s at nine o’clock. So about that hour, after Falconer had told them of his impending journey to Hungary, he saw them into the car and then walked to the corner of Grosvenor Square, where he took a taxi to Liverpool Street and caught the train to Warley.
At the Works at Chelmsford next day he was handed a copy of a letter from the Baron de Pelzel, who had purchased the installations on behalf of the Government of Czecho-Slovakia. It was a private letter dated from the Schloss Nyék, in Transylvania, recalling the fact that all the plant had already arrived at Arad, and asking the Marconi Company to send their engineer to Budapest as soon as possible, where he would meet him at the Ritz Hotel and consult with him.
A week later Falconer left London—after an affectionate farewell to Sylvia—and travelling by the Orient express by way of Paris, Wels, and Vienna, duly arrived at the Hungarian capital. The moment he entered the taxi to drive to the Ritz—that hôtel de luxe overlooking the Danube—a great change was apparent in what was once the gayest city in Europe. The war had brought disaster upon the unfortunate Hungarians, who, owing to the terribly low rate of exchange, and the difficulty of food imports, were now half-starving.
As in the late afternoon Geoffrey went from the station along the wide handsome street half the shops were closed, and the passers-by were mostly thin-faced, ill-dressed and shabby.
At the hotel a brave show of luxury was made, and naturally the charges were high—in Austrian coinage. The price asked for a room with bathroom adjoining was enormous, but when he calculated it in English money at the current rate of exchange it was about two shillings and sixpence a night!
He inquired at the bureau if the Baron de Pelzel had arrived, and received an affirmative reply. The Baron and his niece had gone out motoring to Szajol, a place on the River Tisza, and would return about six. He had left that message for Geoffrey.
About half-past six a waiter came to Falconer’s room asking him to go along to the Baron’s sitting-room, which was on the same floor. This he did, and there met a tall, well-built, very elegant, brown-bearded man of about forty, with a round, merry, fresh-complexioned face and a pair of dark, humorous eyes.