"His name has been cut out of his shirt collar and underclothing, and the laundry marks removed--all deliberately done as if to efface his ident.i.ty. Possibly he intended to commit suicide, and that"s why he was on the river bank."
"But the doctor, when he saw him at the police station, gave his opinion that the man was drugged," the police sergeant said. "I don"t think he had any intention of suicide."
"Well, in any case, let us wait till this evening. I will telephone to you after the doctor has seen him," the matron promised. And with that the sergeant left.
At six o"clock Doctor Maynard, a quiet elderly man who had practised in Pangbourne and district for fifteen years, called again and saw Roddy lying in the narrow little bed.
His face was pale and drawn, and his eyes sunken and weary:
"Well, doctor," he exclaimed cheerily, "I feel a lot better than I did this morning. I"m able to think now--and to remember. But oh!--my head!"
"That"s good," declared the white-haired medical man. "Now what is your name, and how did you come here?" he asked, the stout matron standing, watchful, beside him.
"My name is Roderick Homfray, and I"m the son of the Reverend Norton Homfray, rector of Little Farncombe, in Surrey," the patient replied frankly. "What brought me here I don"t know. What day is it to-day?"
"The fourteenth of December."
"The fourteenth of December! Well, the last I remember is on the night of the third--a Sunday night. And I shan"t forget it either, I a.s.sure you! I was on my way home soon after half-past nine at night, and in Welling Wood, close by the Rectory paddock, I found a girl lying on the ground. She could just speak. She appealed to me to save her. Then she died. I rose and dashed across the wood to my father"s house to raise the alarm, but I had hardly gone a hundred yards when straight in front of me something exploded. I saw what seemed to be a ball of red fire, but after that I know nothing--nothing until I came to my senses this morning and found myself here! Where I"ve been in the meantime, doctor, I have no idea."
Doctor Maynard, still under the impression that the story of the murdered girl was a delusion, sympathised with the patient and suggested sleep.
"I"ll come to see you to-morrow," he added. "You"re quite all right, so don"t worry. I will see that a telegram is sent to-night to your father. He"ll be here to-morrow, no doubt."
At ten o"clock the following morning the rector stood at the bedside of his son and listened to the amazing story of the discovery in Welling Wood and the red ball of fire which Roddy subsequently saw before him.
"Perhaps I was struck by lightning!" Roddy added. "But if that were so I should surely have remained in the wood. No doubt I was struck down maliciously. But why? And why should I have been taken away unconscious and kept so for several days, and then conveyed to the river bank here at Whitchurch?"
"I don"t know, my son," replied his father quietly, though he stood staggered at the amazing story.
Then he added:
"The police searched Welling Wood and all the neighbouring copses three days after you had disappeared, but found no trace of you."
"But surely they found the poor girl, father?" cried Roddy, raising himself upon his arm.
"No, my boy, n.o.body was found," he replied. "That"s strange!" exclaimed the young man. "Then she must have been taken away with me! But by whom? What devil"s work was there in progress that night, father?"
"Ah! my boy. That I cannot tell!"
"But I mean to ascertain!" cried the young man fiercely. "That girl appealed to me to save her, and she died in my arms. Where is she? And why should I be attacked and drugged so that I nearly became insane?
Why? Perhaps it was because I had accidentally discovered the crime!"
CHAPTER FIVE.
THROUGH THE ETHER.
"Hush! You infernal idiot! What did I tell you? What the deuce are you doing?" cried the man, tearing the telephone from the woman"s hand and throwing over a switch upon the roll-top desk at which she was seated.
The low hum of an electric generator ceased and the current was cut off.
"You fool!" cried the short, middle-aged, clean-shaven man in a dinner-jacket, and with a cigar stuck in the corner of his mouth.
"Will you never learn common sense, Freda, after all I"ve told you!
It"s fortunate I came in at this moment! Do you want to be jugged? It seems so!"
Freda Crisp, in a gorgeous Paquin evening gown, turned deliberately in her chair and, coldly surveying the man who had just entered, said:
"Well, my dear Gordon, and what"s upset your digestion to-night? Things said over this wireless telephone--broadcasted over five hundred miles of s.p.a.ce from your cosy rooms here--can be said without anybody being the wiser as to who uttered them. I look upon this wireless box of tricks as a priceless joke. You turn over a switch, and into thousands of ears you speak all over the kingdom, and across into Holland and France and even Scandinavia. The great Marconi is, you"ll admit, dear old thing, a wonderful nut!"
"Bah! You"re not serious, Freda! You laugh at perils. And a peril now faces us."
"Ah! My dear Gordon, this is the first time I"ve ever heard such an admission from you--you, of all men! Peril? It"s in the dictionary, but not in your vocabulary--or mine, my dear boy. I"ve faced danger, and so have you--nasty troublous moments with detectives hanging around--but we"ve generally been able to wriggle out by the back door, or the window, or--"
"Or else bluff it out, Freda!" interrupted Gray. "Yes, you"re right!
But to deliberately ask after the health of Roderick Homfray over the wireless telephone--well, it"s simply courting trouble."
"Why?"
"Well, don"t you know that there"s an apparatus invented by two clever Italians, Bellini and Tosi, which is called a direction-finder?" asked her rather good-looking companion, as he removed his cigar from his lips. "That apparatus is in use all over the country. That"s how they find aircraft lost in fogs--and that"s how they could find to a yard exactly the position of this secret set of ours from which you spoke those silly jeering words. Gad! you"re a fool, Freda! Shut up--and don"t meddle with this wireless transmitter in future! Remember, I"ve got no official licence. This room,"--and he swept his hand around the small apartment filled with a marvellous collection of wireless apparatus--"is our secret. If the authorities discovered it--well, it would, no doubt, be the end for both of us--the Old Bailey and--well, just jug for both of us. I know something about wireless, and as you know it bears us in good stead. We"ve profited thousands on the stunt-- you and I, Freda--and--"
"And Roderick Homfray also knows something about wireless, my dear old thing," laughed the handsome woman, lazily taking a cigarette from her gold case, tapping it and lighting it.
"That"s just it! You"re a priceless fool to have taken such a risk as to speak broadcast as you did. What did you say?"
"I only asked how 3.X.Q. Roddy Homfray of Little Farncombe was getting on, and gave my name as Freda!"
"Fool!" yelled Gordon Gray in fury. "It may be reported to the old sky-pilot! Young Homfray is in oblivion. We know that he"s been picked up off the Thames towing-path, damp and unconscious, but in all probability he"ll never recover from the dope we gave him. We sincerely hope not, eh? I expected he"d die in the night." The handsome woman hesitated.
"No, Gordon, we hope he will recover. If he doesn"t, then it"s murder once again; and, after all, that"s an infernally ugly word. It would mean more than jug!"
The short, rather stout, beady-eyed man, the huge cigar still in his mouth, made a gesture of impatience, and crossing to the big roll-top writing-table, upon which was a high-power transmission set of wireless telephone capable of projecting the human voice clearly to any point in the British Isles, he turned over another switch and placed the telephones over his ears.
As he did so he turned an ebonite k.n.o.b with a bra.s.s pointer upon a semicircular scale of ivory--one of many before him--just a sixteenth of an inch. He touched it with infinite care.
"Just listen, Freda," he said, in a hard voice. "Now just listen here, how by your accursed foolishness you"ve brought danger upon us. Listen, you madwoman?"
The woman took up the second pair of head-"phones, twisted the steel band and, instead of placing the "phones over her head, put the ear pieces to her ears with the arched band towards her face--a favourite att.i.tude with women who listen to wireless telephony.
As the delicate receivers came to her ears she drew a long breath, the colour dying from her face.
The little room wherein the fine expensive experimental set was installed was on the ground floor of a good-sized, old-fashioned house called "Willowden," which stood behind a broad lawn just off the Great North Road between Hatfield and Welwyn, twenty-five miles from London, a distance which was as nothing to Gordon Gray with his up-to-date Rolls.
From the Automobile Club in Pall Mall he could easily reach home in half an hour, even though the traffic through North London was usually bad.
That night he had taken Freda to the theatre, and they had had supper at Ciro"s afterwards, and it was now only one o"clock in the morning.
"Listen, old thing?" she urged, as she again adjusted the telephones on her ears. "What"s that?"
Gordon Gray listened attentively.