Never did I feel as I feel now the utter uselessness of mere intellectuality, of material advancement, of scientific discovery, and the thousand other things which men strive after when divorced from faith, divorced from God. I feel that Science, Philosophy, have no answer to give me, and the wisdom of men is but as the voice of the wandering wind. If I believed in God, if I were sure of God, sure of the message which Jesus proclaimed, I could laugh at death; for I should know that out of discord would come harmony, and that out of incompleteness would come completeness. But that secret is not mine. I only dimly hope.
But I will follow my fancies no further. I have my work to do. I have to carry out the plans I have made.
Again I take up my pen to continue the narrative commenced long months ago. Since I last looked at these pages, wonderful things have happened, so wonderful that I do not expect to be believed; but I will set them down nevertheless, and I will record them exactly as they took place.
In order to do this I must go back to that May evening in the year 1915, when, as it seemed to me, I had come to the end of my life. As I have set down in these pages, I had, as I believed, made a discovery which seemed of importance to the nation, and pierced a mystery which had been baffling our Government. Events have proved that I was not wrong in my surmises, and that I had become of importance to the nation's welfare. As I said, I had placed my little wireless apparatus on what seemed to me a suitable place for receiving messages.
That I took every precaution in placing it may be imagined; I knew from the conversation I had heard between John Liddicoat and the woman who acted with him that I was a suspect, and that they had taken every precaution against me. I knew, too, if my suspicions were correct, and those suspicions almost amounted to a positive certainty, that I was constantly watched, and that I had, more by chance than by cleverness of my own, kept John Liddicoat in the dark.
It was a little after six o'clock in the evening, as near as I can remember, when I returned to my cottage after having visited my wireless apparatus, and made sure that no messages were being received. I had barely entered my room when Squire Treherne paid me a visit. I cannot say that I was glad to see him, much as I had grown to like him, for I felt that I was on the eve of great events and was impatient at interruption. Yet I knew he had not come without reason, and I could not tell him that his visit was untimely.