For five nights in succession he waited patiently, hour after hour, but though he listened to thousands of messages, yet “M.S.K.” remained silent on its new wave-length.
Geoffrey Falconer was, however, quite unaware that the adjoining room was occupied by a grey-haired, undersized little man, who had been on the _quai_ at Antwerp when he landed, and having followed him to Copenhagen by way of Kiel, had taken up his abode in the next room.
In the hotel the two men passed each other frequently, but Geoffrey was entirely unsuspicious that his movements were being so closely watched.
He, however, as is the practice of most case-hardened cosmopolitans, always kept the key of his room in his pocket, contrary to the hotel rule of leaving it in the key-office. When one is at a hotel and keeps one’s key in one’s pocket, only the chambermaid’s or the manager’s master-key opens the door. Hence intruders are debarred.
On the eighth night of Falconer’s stay his suspicions became aroused because he suddenly found the little old man keeping him under observation. At first he was in a quandary, but presently, after due consideration, he resolved to act with greater discretion.
The Raadhus-Plads, as those who know Copenhagen are well aware, is in the centre of the city, and the focus of the network of tramways, just as is the Piazza del Duomo in Milan. Time after time Geoffrey had passed backwards and forwards across the spacious square, but he could detect no aerial wires such as would be necessary to transmit the anti-British propaganda into the ether.
Each night he wandered into the square and gazed up at the many illuminated sky-signs upon the shops around, until he began to conclude that the bearings taken at Chelmsford must have been inaccurate.
He had been in Copenhagen ten days when one night, while seated in his bedroom at about ten o’clock with the telephones over his ears, he heard the mysterious station start up, calling “C.Q.,” namely, asking everybody to listen.
And then on a pure musical note there was tapped out a message, alleging that Britain was doing serious injustice in Ireland--a message calculated to inflame public opinion.
That it was close by Geoffrey detected at once. The signals were too loud on the “second intensity” of his double note magnifier, so he cut it out, and read it loudly from one “Q”--or detector valve.