Death on the Lizard (25 page)

“We will try,” Jenna said, although, Charles thought, not with any great enthusiasm. In fact, he thought she looked tired and pale, a paleness emphasized by the garnet-colored dress she was wearing. She put her hand on Sir Oliver's arm. “Sir Oliver, I have discovered several photographs of you and Father, taken here some years ago. Come and have a look at them.” She drew him toward an album laid open on a table.

“What's this about testing a theory?” Charles asked Kate in a low voice.

“Sir Oliver is here to do some psychic research,” Kate said. “After dinner, there will be a séance. He's going to attempt to get Jenna's daughter to contact her, through automatic writing.”

“Oh, come now, Kate,” Charles said. He viewed the current vogue for spiritualism with a great deal of skepticism. He had been vaguely aware that Sir Oliver had an interest in spiritualism, but had no idea that he was actually conducting psychic research. Charles's own interest in mediums was of the same order as his interest in Harry Houdini's escape artistry: There was a trick to the illusion, and he was mildly curious to know what it was—but not curious enough to spend any time investigating it.

“I knew you'd say that, you old fuddy-duddy,” Kate replied with a teasing smile. “You don't have to stay, you know, Charles. Everyone would understand if you excused yourself after dinner and—”

“Actually,” Charles said, in an apologetic tone, “I thought I might do that anyway, if Jenna and Sir Oliver would not be offended.”

“I shouldn't think so,” Kate said. “They are both intent on the séance. You might not even be missed.” She smiled. “Where are you going?”

“I intended to drive round to Helford, to see if Kirk-Smythe can be found. I received your note,” he added. “I tried to see him last night, but—”

“I saw him again today, Charles.” Kate leaned closer and lowered her voice. “He was in a little boat in Gillan Harbor. He seemed to have his eye on a sailing yacht that is often moored here in Frenchman's Creek.” As Charles listened with a growing surprise, she told him that Jenna had been visiting the yacht the night her daughter drowned. “It belongs to a man named Niels Andersson, who keeps a half-dozen messenger pigeons on the boat.”

“Messenger pigeons?” Charles repeated.

“Exactly,” Kate said. “Alice, the little girl who was with Harriet the night she drowned, took this message from one of the pigeons.” She pressed a paper into his hand. “I have no clear idea what its significance might be, but I thought you should see it.”

Charles glanced down at the paper. He frowned. “Why, it's in German.”

“In English, it says, ‘Item located, negotiations begun,' ” Kate translated.

“So it does,” Charles said, an idea beginning to stir. “When did the child find this?”

“Yesterday morning. The pigeon came to the church tower while she was feeding the other birds.” She looked up at him, puzzled. “What item, Charles? Negotiations for what? What is this about, do you think?”

“I wonder if Kirk-Smythe might have an idea,” Charles said, folding the paper carefully and putting it into his coat pocket. “I really must see him tonight, Kate, if at all possible. This message may hold the key to—”

Jenna Loveday clapped her hands, summoning them to the dining room.

“You will have to wait to see Andrew
after
dinner,” Kate said firmly, and took his arm. As she pulled him toward the group, she added playfully, in a louder voice, “I'm afraid that you shall have to behave, my dear. You and Sir Oliver must find some other subject of conversation.”

“I doubt that will be difficult,” Charles said. “Eh, Sir Oliver? We can talk about Nicola Tesla and his latest experiments in electricity. Or those two brothers in Ohio, who are said to be adding a propeller and a gasoline engine to that glider they managed to get airborne last year. Of course, they probably won't succeed. But if they do, theirs will be the first powered flight. Now
that
would be something to see, wouldn't it?”

“Charles is at it again, I see,” Patsy teased. “Kate, how
do
you tolerate it? Come on, you two, or we shall have dinner without you!”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

day's drive around Mount's Bay to Porthcurno, where he had taken a look at the aerial mast Charles had told him about. This was also the place where the undersea telegraph cables made landfall on the British coast. People in England and North America had been able to communicate, via the cable, since the first two submarine cables were laid in 1866. By 1902, when a line was run from Vancouver, British Columbia, to Australia and New Zealand, the globe was at last girdled with undersea cables. A dozen of these cables, owned by Eastern Telegraph Company, came ashore at Porthcurno, where they were linked to land lines which carried the messages to Eastern's main telegraph station in Moorgate, London.

It was cable companies such as Eastern, of course, which were enormously threatened by the new wireless. In fact, Anglo-American had got an injunction against the first Marconi station in Newfoundland, based on their fifty-year monopoly on the landing of telegraph cables and the receiving of telegraph messages in Newfoundland. Anglo had decided that transatlantic wireless communication was a major competitive threat. Marconi would have to build his stations somewhere else.

With this in the back of his mind, Bradford would not have been surprised to find a well-organized spying operation at Porthcurno. But he did not. The line from the aerial ended in a small shack nearby, where he discovered one lone operator dozing in his chair, his printer chattering out the messages intercepted from the Poldhu station's very strong transmissions. When Bradford woke him and asked what he was doing, he only shrugged.

“Listenin' in to transmissions, sir,” he replied, “although why, I cert'nly can't say.”

“What do you do with the transmissions you're intercepting?” Bradford asked, in as neutral a tone as he could manage. The interceptions made him angry, of course, but that had nothing to do with the operator.

“Why, I file 'em, of course,” was the answer, “like I'm told to. But nobody's ever been down from the London office to read 'em, or asked to send 'em up. So it doesn't seem to me like anybody much cares.” He grinned. “Long as they pay my salary, I don't see how it's any concern of mine.”

And that had been that. The operator went back to sleep, and Bradford, feeling that he had learned nothing very conclusive, drove back around Mount's Bay. He arrived a little cross and late for tea, because the drive had been long and tedious, the road dusty, twisting, and narrow, bounded by hedges and high stone walls.

And then, at tea in the hotel's sitting room, Marconi had made matters worse by telling him that someone had broken into Daniel Gerard's room the night before. Since the break-in had happened after Bradford and Charles had searched the room for themselves, it meant that somebody was still searching for something. But who? And what? The tuner was already gone, and Gerard's notebook, as well— what other valuables could the thief be after?

There was more, and worse. The afternoon post from Helston had brought
The Times,
and Marconi put it on the table between them. It contained Maskelyne's sardonic letter describing, in embarrassing detail, exactly what had happened during the Royal Institution lecture, and describing, as well, the equipment his friend Horace Manders had used to generate those humiliating messages. It was an old, simple spark-gap transmitter, which Marconi's system was thought to have made obsolete. The implication was clear: Marconi's vaunted system was not proof against interference or interception. The attack was devastating, and Bradford winced as he imagined how it would be used by the company's rivals. They would launch a campaign to discredit the company, and there was little that could be done to combat it.

Reading the letter again, Marconi had flown into a tirade. “It's nothing but scientific hooliganism!” he cried, throwing the newspaper onto the floor and stamping on it. As he often did when he was angry, he launched into Italian. “The dirtiest of dirty tricks! The lowest of underhanded dealings! The filthiest of filthy dogs!” In English, he added, “I shall write to
The Times
immediately. I shall be revenged! Revenged, I tell you!”

“Steady on, old man,” Bradford had said, taking his arm and attempting to quiet him. “A public exchange is only going to whet the public's appetite. Far better to let Maskelyne have his innings and forfeit the game than to drag it out.”

“Forfeit the game!” Marconi shrieked. “Never!” he had stamped out of the sitting room and up the stairs, muttering through his teeth. Really, Bradford thought, if the matter had not been so serious, the fellow's pique would have been quite comic.

All in all, the events of the day had been deeply disquieting, and as Bradford went up to his room to change for dinner, he was feeling considerably troubled. His unease had little to do with what he had seen at Porthcurno. It wasn't that business with Pauline Chase, either, although she had certainly been a disquieting, disagreeable presence in his thoughts for most of the day—an unseen passenger, as it were, in the Panhard's left seat. He hadn't come up with a way, yet, to deal with the minx—that is, to force her to break off with Marconi without risking her showing those damned indiscreet letters to Edith. Given the financial situation, things were difficult enough at home just now. The letters would be the last straw.

Bradford finished dressing and glanced into the mirror over the chest of drawers to straighten his tie. As bad as that might be, there was also the threat against Marconi's life to worry about, and that had been on his mind all day, too. “Marconi is dead” was quite a serious matter, and as he smoothed his hair and adjusted his cuffs, he was thinking somberly about it. The company's directors could not afford to take the threat at anything less than full face, especially with two employees dead within the fortnight. But what to do? Cancel Marconi's trip to Paris next week? Employ a bodyguard to shadow the man's movements? Bradford smiled grimly. Now,
that
would be a job, wouldn't it?

The smile became a frown. After dinner, he should have to write a letter to Sir Euan Wallace, the chairman of the board and put him in the picture. Sir Euan would have seen
The Times,
and would want to know the story behind it—and of course, he must be informed about the death threat. And then there was the woman. The frown deepened. How much should Sir Euan be told about Pauline Chase? The woman was clearly up to no good, and her past definitely cast a suspicious light on her connection to Marconi. But without a clearer sense of her motive . . .

Bradford sighed, gave the mirror another glance, and went to the door. He would be having dinner alone again tonight. Sheridan had gone off to Penhallow for dinner with Oliver Lodge—no joy there—and Marconi was dining with Miss Chase, worse luck. He opened the door and stepped out into the hall.

As he did, the door to the room adjacent to his was closing, someone apparently having just been admitted. And through the door, Bradford caught the sound of a light, familiar voice. Speak of the devil, he thought sourly. It was Miss Chase herself. She was his neighbor.

“Well,” she was saying. “It certainly took you long enough. I thought . . .” The rest of her words were inaudible but the tone was aggravated and almost shrewish.

A man laughed, not altogether pleasantly. “A pleasure to see you, too, old girl. You're looking quite delightful.”

Old girl? Bradford, who had been about to walk on down the hallway, stopped. The man was clearly not Marconi. Was Miss Chase already acquainted with another of the hotel guests? Who?

A suspicion came into his mind. He considered it briefly, then turned, unlocked the door of his room, and went back inside. There was a connecting door between his room and the one he now knew to be Miss Chase's, secured with a bolt on his side and (he presumed) a corresponding bolt on the other. He stepped quietly across the room and applied his ear to it.

“—not quite according to plan, I'm afraid,” the man was saying.

“Well, that's hardly my fault, is it, now?” Miss Chase countered crisply. “I should have thought you would make arrangements against all contingencies. Isn't that why White hired you?”

“White hired me to get that tuner,” the man said. “Nothing else.”

Bradford's eyes widened and he tensed. The
tuner?
Was this the very thief himself?

“That's what I don't understand,” Miss Chase said in a petulant tone. “I thought Mr. de Forest had invented his own wireless thingy, whatever-you-call-it. And I thought it was better than Marconi's—at least, that's what they're telling everybody in America. It's in all the newspapers, you know. Those Yanks are awf'ly proud to be ahead of the Brits for a change. So why does White want us to steal Marconi's thingy?”

Bradford, with his ear to the door, barely managed to suppress a gasp of pure astonishment. Abraham White was the promoter of the De Forest Wireless Telegraph Company of New Jersey, which had just recently sold three million dollars of stock. It was the Marconi Company's best capitalized competitor. What a dirty, underhanded bit of business! And just like the Americans, too. Always out for what they could get, with no thought of gentlemanly behavior. Bradford's blood boiled at the thought of it.