“I hope, Mr. Falconer, you have not been disappointed with Budapest. Unfortunately I have had so many official affairs to attend to. We shall be at home at Zenta to-night. I fear it may be very dull for you, as it is far away up in the mountains. I only yesterday received word that all your apparatus has arrived there.”
“What height is it?” Geoffrey asked, as he was concerned with the height of his aerial wires.
“I hardly know,” the Baron laughed. “I’ve never tested it with an aneroid. No doubt you will. It is high, and that is why I thought it would suit you, because I’ve always understood that aerial wires for wireless are best on a hill.”
“Certainly they are,” said Falconer, gazing out upon the beautiful panorama of stream and mountain through which they were passing. They were entering the most remote, but most beautiful, district in all Hungary, that which lies between the High Tatra—a lovely mountain district known so little to English travellers, save those familiar with the Carpathians—and the Roumanian frontier.
At evening they arrived at a small, picturesque town called Nagy-Károly, the capital of the Szatmas country, nestling between the mountains, and at once a powerful car took them for about thirty miles up higher and higher into a wild remote district, the very name of which was unknown to Geoffrey. Presently, just as the night was drawing in, the pretty Françoise pointed to a high-up château perched on the edge of a steep rocky precipice, and said:
“Look! There is Zenta—at last!”
It looked, as indeed it was, one of those ancient strongholds of the Hungarian barons who had for ages resisted the repeated invasions of the Turks.
Later, when they arrived and the Baron showed him round before dressing for dinner, he found that it was a splendid old fortress, full of rare antiques and breathing an air of days long gone by, while at the same time it was also the comfortable home of a very wealthy man.
That night as they sat at dinner in the long panelled dining-room adorned with many heads of stags and bears, trophies of the chase, the Baron raised his glass of Imperial Tokay and welcomed his guest beneath his roof.
“Here,” he said, “you have a very historic old place which you are going to fit with the latest invention of wireless—the radio-telephone. A strange combination, is it not? All your boxes have arrived, and they are in the back courtyard. I am sorry that I was not able to arrange for expert assistance for you, Mr. Falconer, but I have two very good electricians arriving to-morrow. My agent in Vienna is sending them.”