As Geoffrey listened attentively, his ear trained to the variations of the sound of the signals of different stations, it suddenly occurred to him that the “note” was slightly different from that which he had heard and discarded on so many occasions.
He called across to one of the technical assistants, and he also agreed.
“It’s probably due to some atmospheric interference,” the latter remarked.
Again the young radio-engineer listened. But it seemed to him to be a different note, though the wave-length was about the same. It was higher pitched, and just a little more difficult to tone.
When any problem arose, of whatever nature, Geoffrey Falconer never rested until he had solved it. That was how he had invented his improved amplifier. He had all the patience, the disregard of disappointment, the dogged perseverance, and the refusal to accept failure which characterises the great inventor. In the days long past most inventors died in poverty. Now in the days of stringent patent laws, fortunes are sometimes made out of a new safety-pin, or a sweet-smelling hair wash.
Though he carried on the important experiments both at Marconi House and at Chelmsford, and also at another station which had been established in secret not far from London, he nevertheless each night when at home listened in for “M.S.K.,” and diligently took down all the wilful perversions of the truth sent out by Soviet Russia.
On four different occasions, while listening upon his own set at Warley, he became convinced that some new station had been set up in Moscow for the deliberate purpose of circulating the most glaring untruths concerning events in Ireland. The text of all the messages was now much more bitter than before.
Time after time he sat back in his chair, utterly puzzled.
Here was a dastardly and insidious attack being made upon the country by disseminating false news by wireless, and yet nobody was able to suppress it.
One day, being up in London, he was re-entering Marconi House by the back way in Aldwych, and waiting for the lift, when suddenly an idea crossed his brain. It was only a vague suggestion, yet that night in the rural quiet of his home at Warley he listened in for Moscow, and succeeded in determining the wave-length accurately. It was neither the five thousand mètre “spark” transmission, nor the seven thousand six hundred mètre, but lower--four thousand seven hundred, to be exact.