He was surprised that he had no answer to his three letters to Sylvia since he had been there, but he recollected that Mrs. Beverley had spoken of going to Paris for a fortnight or so, to do some shopping, hence it was quite possible that mother and daughter had left London.
It struck him, too, as somewhat strange that the Baron’s pretty niece should evince so much inquisitiveness concerning his affairs. When they were together she frequently turned the conversation very cleverly, and questioned him about his friends in England.
“I’m terribly bored here,” she declared in French one night after dinner, as she sat with a cigarette between her fingers and yawned. “At last I’ve persuaded my uncle to let me go back to Paris. I shall return very soon.”
“Will you?” asked Falconer. “I expect to be here quite another fortnight before we can get going. Then I have to erect the other station. Have you any idea where that is to be?”
“No,” she said. “Uncle has never told me. But, no doubt, it will be a long way from here.”
The secrecy concerning the position of the corresponding station also puzzled the young fellow. The Baron had, however, promised to let him know in due course, so he continued his work out in the forest, and gradually he assembled the engine, generator, and all the apparatus necessary for radio-telegraphy and telephony.
One afternoon he returned to the castle unusually early, and was surprised to discover the Baron—who had not seen him—emerge from his bedroom and slip down the stairs. On examining his suit-case a few moments later he saw that the lock had been tampered with, and all his papers had been overhauled!
What object, he wondered, could his genial host have in prying into his private affairs?
By day the two Austrians working under his direction were ever diligent—both being excellent fellows, and very careful and precise in their work, which is most necessary in setting up a wireless station. At night they remained at the castle in quarters which the Baron had provided.
So far from everywhere was the castle that the Baron seldom had visitors except on two occasions, when two gentlemen, one a short, stout, thick-set man, probably an Austrian, and the other a middle-aged Russian who seemed something of a cosmopolitan, arrived, and after spending the night, drove away again.