“It will. I’d dearly like to go with you,” laughed Mr. Millard, one of the best-known of wireless engineers. “The sets have been purchased by the Baron de Pelzel, on behalf of the new Government of Czecho-Slovakia, and one of the conditions of the contract provides that we should send out an engineer to erect the stations.”
“Will anyone go with me?” asked Geoffrey.
“No. There is, I think, no need. I myself looked through the instruments before they were packed. All is in order. You can employ local labour. There are surely some quite good electricians in Hungary. The first station is to be erected somewhere near Arad--wherever that may be--and the other in some other part of Hungary. We thought you would like an opportunity to go abroad.”
Geoffrey thanked the chief of his department, and then, after receiving a number of other instructions, he went down in the lift and out into the busy Strand.
Half an hour later he was at Mrs. Beverley’s.
“Hulloa, Geoff!” cried Sylvia as he entered the room. “Where have you sprung from? I thought of you down at Chelmsford with your uncomfortable old telephones on your ears, turning little handles very slowly, and listening! Oh, Geoff, you look so funny sometimes when you listen! You look as if your whole life depended upon it,” added the girl chaffingly.
“And so it does, dear. At least my bread-and-cheese depends upon it.”
“Why, the other day Colonel Maybury, of the Air Ministry, told me that your improved amplifier will probably bring you a comfortable fortune in royalties!”
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.