“THE MASTER OF MYSTERY” WILLIAM LE QUEUX’S NOVELS “Mr. William Le Queux retains his position as ‘The Master of Mystery.’... He is far too skilful to allow pause for thought; he whirls his readers from incident to incident, holding their attention from the first page to the close of the book.”— Pall Mall Gazette. “Mr. Le Queux is the master of mystery. He never fails to produce the correct illusion. He always leaves us panting for more—a brilliant feat.”— Daily Graphic. “Mr. Le Queux is still ‘Th

Geoffrey Falconer removed the wireless telephone receivers from his ears, and sat back in his wooden chair, staring straight before him, utterly puzzled. “Eighteen-and-a-half minutes past seven!” he muttered to himself, glancing up at the big round clock above the long bench upon which a number of complicated-looking wireless instruments were set out. In front of him were half-a-dozen square mahogany boxes with tops of ebonite and circles of brass studs, with white circular dials and black knobs

One afternoon about a month after the curious Affair of the Secret Signal, while Geoffrey was busy conducting some experiment in the research laboratory at Chelmsford, a tall, well-dressed young foreigner entered, and advancing to where he was seated, placed his hand upon his shoulder. “Well!” gasped Geoffrey starting, his face lighting with pleasure. “Why, my dear Enrico! Wherever have you sprung from?” “They’ve sent me over from Coltano about some new apparatus, and I heard you were in here. I

Mrs. Beverley, who, on account of her reckless expenditure, had been nicknamed “The Wild Widow” by a certain set in Society, had gone up to Perthshire to join a gay house-party at a shooting lodge near Crieff, leaving Sylvia at home at Upper Brook Street. After the girl there was dangling a Peer of the Realm, twice her age, in the person of Viscount Hendlewycke, a penniless man, whose family tree ran back to the days of Richard Cœur de Lion, and who, in his youth, had been distinguished by his t

The calm summer morning broke gloriously over the entrance to the English Channel between Land’s End and the Lizard. The sea was blue, with only a faint ripple. Mrs. Beverley had been induced by Geoffrey to leave Upper Brook Street to spend a few weeks in Cornwall, taking Sylvia with her. Indeed, it was Sylvia who pressed her mother to go to Cornwall because Geoffrey was compelled to go down to the Marconi wireless station at Poldhu, near Mullion, where some alterations were being carried out. T

“Isn’t it a horrid nuisance, Geoffrey, Lord Hendlewycke has arrived!” exclaimed Sylvia Beverley as she stood with her lover on the terrace before the luxurious Hôtel Royal, at Dinard. “Hendlewycke here!” exclaimed the young Marconi engineer in surprise. “Then I suppose it means that I’d better get back to London,” he said rather grimly. “Isn’t it too bad of mother? She’s just told me that she wrote to the fellow asking him to join us on our motor trip to Touraine,” the pretty, dark-haired girl s

“It should be quite a pleasant trip for you, Falconer,” remarked the little, middle-aged, well-dressed man who was one of his superiors, as they sat together in a room in the Engineering Section at Marconi House on a bright October afternoon. “The plant went out from the works at Chelmsford three months ago, and we have been advised that it has all arrived in Hungary, or I suppose they call it Czecho-Slovakia now, and it is lying at the station at Arad.” “I will do my best,” replied Geoffrey, gr

Geoffrey Falconer stood at the window of the big old Adams room at the Savage Club, chatting with a journalist friend, Charles— alias “Doggy”—Wentworth, of the Daily Mail . Before them lay Adelphi Terrace and beyond the Embankment and the broad grey Thames with its wharves on the Surrey bank, London’s silent highway. It was the luncheon hour on a day in early spring. The trees along the Embankment, and in the Gardens below, wore their fresh bright green, not yet dulled by the London smoke, while

“Hulloa? Hulloa? Hulloa? Hulloa, Croydon? Brussels calling!” cried Geoffrey Falconer one afternoon over the wireless telephone at the aerodrome just outside Brussels. “It’s Falconer speaking. Changing over.” “Hulloa, Falconer? Yes,” came a clear voice through the ether. “Changing over.” “Oh, it’s you, Heddon. Would you please ask Dennis to speak to me if he’s there?” said Falconer. “Right-o! Stand by, and I’ll try and get him. Switching off.” Falconer, seated at the operating bench in the small

Geoffrey Falconer, Mrs. Beverley, and Sylvia were spending a week-end at Tansor, in Northamptonshire, with George Barclay, a friend of the South American widow, who rented a hunting-box and rode regularly with the Fitzwilliam Hounds. On the night of their arrival when they sat down to dinner with Barclay and his go-ahead wife and the latter’s cousin, a pretty girl named May Farncombe, all were full of expectation of some good runs. To Geoffrey, who had recently returned from a mission abroad, th

Over the picturesque Welsh mountains the wind blew fresh, even though the afternoon was a brilliant one in August. Outside the great Marconi wireless station high up at Ceunant, midway between Carnarvon and Llanberis, Geoffrey stood with Sylvia and her mother, explaining the huge aerial system with its ten masts, each four hundred feet high, placed around the cluster of white buildings comprising the power-house, transmission rooms, and other departments. The tall masts dwarfed the buildings ben

The military wireless station at Aldershot had just finished sending the usual extracts from the press to the headquarters of the Rhine Army at Cologne, when Geoffrey Falconer, with the telephones still over his ears, lowered the wave-length of his reception set, and began to listen to the strains of an orchestra being played at The Hague. It was a Sunday afternoon, and “the Dutch Concert,” to which all wireless men in England listen so eagerly, was in progress. Seated in his own experimental la

Mrs. Beverley was giving one of her usual dinner-parties at Upper Brook Street. Among the guests were two Cabinet Ministers and their wives, for money can always command guests, the names of whom will be duly recorded in the society column of the Morning Post next day. Money buys publicity, and without the latter nowadays one may as well live in suburbia, or in the peace of a country village. When the hostess and her guests went to the drawing-room, Geoffrey—who had just come back from making so