“Do you remember, Geoffrey, what you told me--that mysterious message by wireless telephone warning you not to go East?” she said anxiously, as they sat in the corridor after dinner, while her mother had gone upstairs.
“Yes,” he replied. “But really the whole thing was so ridiculous. It was, I’m convinced, only some amateur playing a practical joke.”
“Perhaps. But you should take no risks, dear,” she replied. “I don’t like the situation. Remember all that has passed.”
“Well,” she answered, glancing around, “you are, no doubt, a marked man, Geoff. You have been able to upset the plans of various conspirators, and they, no doubt, seek their revenge. Hence, be careful--do be very careful.”
Geoffrey laughed. He ridiculed the idea that any vengeance should be attempted upon him.
“I have only done my duty, my dear Sylvia!” he laughed. “My duty to the company and my duty to the Nation. Everybody surely understands that.”
“No,” the girl replied; “everybody does not understand. You, as an honest man, are at enmity with a certain revolutionary section of society. They know it. And they may lay their plans accordingly,” she said warningly. “I, of course, have no knowledge of any such plot--but I do urge you, Geoffrey, to keep very wide awake. I have some strange intuition that something may happen to you. Why--I can’t tell you!”
“My dear Sylvia, I hope I am always wide awake,” he laughed, kissing her clandestinely in the shadows, while a few moments later Mrs. Beverley reappeared.
Next morning mother and daughter went up by the railway from Alpnach to the Pilatuskulm, where they lunched with the young engineer and his friend Lane, and afterwards ascended to the newly constructed wireless station. It was not yet in working order, but Sylvia was highly interested, for she had by that time quite a good superficial knowledge of the apparatus and the power-plant, which, by the way, was almost a replica of the set which Geoffrey had installed at Bouvignes Aerodrome, in Belgium.
In the evening they went down again to Lucerne, but not until the following evening did Geoffrey again see the girl with whom he was so deeply in love. As soon as he had finished his work in that high-up spot on the Tomlishorn, he returned to the hotel, and after changing his clothes, descended to Lucerne and dined with the South American widow and her daughter.