On the following Thursday he left Charing Cross for Lucerne, where, at the Schweizerhof, that well-known hotel facing the lake, Lane, who had come by boat from Alpnach, came to meet him. Next day they ascended to the famous Hôtel Pilatuskulm, where they took up their quarters, only half an hour’s walk by a good path to the site of the new wireless station.
Already the two one-storeyed buildings, and the aerial upon masts of steel lattice, were erected. The material had all come out from England, and the contractors had finished their work on the masts. Indeed, Lane and his colleagues from Chelmsford had already commenced their work of fitting the apparatus.
The wireless station which the Swiss Government had ordered was situated high upon the wild rocky mountains, and was intended for the communication of post-office messages with Rome, Vienna, and Paris, the apparatus being the last word in Marconi invention.
The two great buildings which comprise the hotel were full to overflowing, as it usually is in the autumn season, a gay cosmopolitan crowd, who dined and danced and went on excursions either mountaineering or along the great blue lake to Kussnacht to see Tell’s Chapel, to Vitznau, Brunnen, or Fluelen. From the verandas there spread a wonderful panorama of lake and mountain with the various peaks, with the names of which the visitor so soon becomes familiar.
Geoffrey was standing alone on the veranda early one morning admiring the wonderful view in the morning light. There was passing along a very feeble, white-haired, white-bearded old man, accompanied by a handsome dark-haired, well-dressed young woman, who, from the attention she paid him, was palpably his daughter. The old fellow walked decrepitly as one of advanced age, and ever and anon he halted to take in the wondrous scene.
As they passed by they spoke in a tongue with which Geoffrey was unfamiliar. But the young woman, he saw, wore a wedding ring.
Their eyes met, and in hers he noted a strange, appealing look--an expression which, being quite unusual, caused him to ponder. He was rapidly becoming a cosmopolitan after his various missions abroad on behalf of the Marconi Company.
All that day he spent in the wireless hut high upon the bare, rocky mountain, carefully fitting the instruments which were to give such a wide range of telegraphy and speech--the very latest devices that had been invented in the research department at Chelmsford, for, after all, the real brains of wireless are centred in that old-fashioned Essex town.