by Robin Paige
“Progress,” Bradford repeated emphatically, ignoring his sister. “Someday, when the Marconi system is perfected, the people of the Lizard will be very proud to say that these first steps, however awkward and faltering, took place here.”
“Progress, indeed,” Jenna said, and seemed to dismiss the subject. She crossed her arms and tilted her head. “We are having another guest on Friday—Sir Oliver Lodge. I should be delighted if you and Lord Charles would join us for dinner.” She paused. “I believe that Sir Oliver has also done some experiments in wireless. If Mr. Marconi would like to come, he is certainly welcome.”
Another guest? Kate glanced at Patsy, who looked surprised and a little crestfallen, as if she had expected Jenna Loveday to be entirely alone, friendless, and uncomforted. Perhaps, Kate thought, their “mission of mercy,” as Patsy had called it, was unnecessary. Perhaps their hostess had put the death of her daughter behind her and was already in the process of getting on with things.
Bradford’s eyes had narrowed. “I regret that I must decline on Signor Marconi’s behalf, and my own, as well,” he said with a stiff formality. “Professor Lodge is a competitor, and a small unpleasantness has arisen between him and the Marconi Company in recent months. I don’t think we three should be entirely comfortable together.”
Jenna seemed unconcerned. “If you should change your mind, you’re more than welcome.” To Patsy, she added, “Sir Oliver and my father were life-long friends. When I asked him for the weekend, I did not know you were coming. It has been lonely here since Harriet . . .” Her eyes darkened and her mouth tightened. “Since my daughter died.”
Ah, Kate thought compassionately, watching her expression and hearing the bleakness in her tone. Jenna Loveday is not comforted, after all.
“I am a great admirer of Professor Lodge’s studies in electrolysis and X-rays—and wireless, too, of course,” Charles said, turning to Kate with a quick smile. “You remember Sir Oliver, Kate. We met at a reception last year.”
“Oh, yes,” Kate said. Now that Charles mentioned it, she recalled the tall, stooped, courtly gentleman. “I shall be glad to see him again.”
Charles smiled at Jenna. “Thank you for the invitation, Lady Loveday. I shall be delighted to join the party.” He reached into the motor car for his cap and goggles. “And now, I’m afraid, we really must be on our way.”
“Yes,” Bradford said. He glanced at his sister. “If you should need anything while you are here, Patsy . . .”
“If I should need anything, I will borrow a bicycle and ride over the moor to get it for myself,” Patsy said, raising her chin. Bradford reddened angrily.
Kate sighed, wishing that Patsy and Bradford could mend their frayed relationship, which had been strained since Bradford had married Edith. Patsy’s sister-in-law, once a free, frank young woman, had inherited a sum of money and was rapidly turning into a frowning matron.
“Goodbye, Kate,” Charles said, and bent to kiss her. Bradford went to crank the Panhard, and in a few minutes the motorcar was clattering down the lane.
“On the whole,” Jenna Loveday said, regarding the cloud of dust rising in its wake, “I rather prefer horses.” She turned to Kate. “I’m sorry if that sounded offensive. I only meant that—”
“I know,” Kate said, with a rueful smile. “Perhaps progress isn’t worth it, after all.” She looked around at the green fields, with the moor behind. “It would be a great pity if progress destroyed any of this beauty.”
Patsy slipped her arm around Jenna’s waist. “Thank you so much for inviting us, Jenna. I’m delighted to see you looking well.”
“Appearances are often deceiving,” Jenna said ambiguously. And then, with a smile and a toss of her head, she said, “Come with me, ladies. I will show you to your rooms, and then, since it’s so lovely out of doors, we’ll have our tea on the terrace.”
She began talking as they walked, in what sounded to Kate like a determinedly cheerful voice. “We’re not at all elegant here, I’m afraid. The name “Penhallow Manor” may sound as if it belongs to a grand country house, but we’re very old-fashioned, and I fear that you will think us terribly primitive. There’s no gas, no telephone, of course, and certainly no electricity. But I think you’ll be comfortable, especially since it’s July. In the winter—” She laughed gaily. “Well, that’s rather a different story. Cold feet and chilblains are the rule.”
“What?” Patsy pretended great shock. “Primitive, with the most advanced wireless station in the world not seven miles away?” She laughed. “Just wait until I’ve told you, Jenna, what it’s like to live in a tent in the Arabian desert. Talk about the primitive life!”
A little later, Kate was alone in the upstairs bedroom to which she had been shown, and had completed her unpacking. The room was small but indeed comfortable, the stone floor brightened with woven rag rugs, the walls covered with cream-painted plaster. The windows, a pair of deep-set casements, opened outward into a profusion of blooming roses which flooded the room with their delicate scent. The manor house was set on a high point of land, with the Helford River to the east and Frenchman’s Creek to the south. The landscape was green and lush and mysterious, and the warm light of the afternoon sun brushed the rustling trees with gold. At the foot of the lawn, a donkey was pulling a mowing machine across the lush green grass, while in the herb garden, a woman with a basket over her arm was cutting lavender. On the terrace below, bordered with a profusion of blooming flowers, their hostess was seeing to the arrangements for an outdoor tea. The murmur of voices floated on the somnolent summer air.
Ah, said Beryl, with a long sigh, it’s very beautiful, isn’t it? And Kate could see why Jenna Loveday resisted the idea of living in London. It had to do with the light falling like a benediction across the green grass and trees, the woodland sloping down to the creek and the river beyond. And the promise of pixies and elves dancing across the open moors in the moonlight.
And then, just as Kate turned away from the window, she caught a glimpse of something out of the corner of her eye, a pale shape flitting, mothlike, through the shadowy woods. Beryl was immediately intrigued.
Oh, look! she exclaimed. Is it a fairy? A pixie? Kate, we simply must write a fairy tale—and Cornwall is the perfect setting for it!
“I should think we had better finish the project we’re working on before we start thinking about the next,” Kate muttered testily. But she reached for the binoculars she had just unpacked, brought in the expectation of watching birds on Goonhilly Down. She put the glasses to her eyes and adjusted them.
The pale shape blurred, and then resolved itself into a small, red-haired girl wearing a blue dress and a plain white pinafore, half-hidden behind an oak tree. Kate could not see her expression, but she seemed to be watching Lady Loveday.
A girl? Beryl asked curiously. Whatever is she doing behind that tree? Is it some sort of game, do you suppose?
But there was no answer to Beryl’s question, and when Kate looked again, the girl had vanished.
Well, if you ask me, that was no girl, Beryl said firmly. She was a fairy. They’re everywhere here, Kate. On the moors, in the fields, in the woods. Everywhere.
“Oh, don’t be silly,” Kate scoffed. But when she put the binoculars down, she was frowning.
CHAPTER FIVE
On the land side our surroundings were as sombre as on the sea. It was a country of rolling moors, lonely and dun-coloured, with an occasional church tower to mark the site of some old-world village. In every direction upon these moors there were traces of some vanished race which had passed utterly away, and left as its sole record strange monuments of stone, irregular mounds which contained the burned ashes of the dead, and curious earthworks which hinted at prehistoric strife.
The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Jenna Loveday had been right about the road, which zigzagged across the peninsula from Penhallow on the east to the village of Mullion on the west. It
was not a long drive, but it was certainly dusty, and as Charles drove, the Panhard trailed a long gray cloud, like a ragged scarf blowing in the wind. But there was no doubting the beauty of the vast brown moorland, empty of everything but a few dwarfed trees and the ancient stone tumuli built by some vanished civilization.
The road along which they traveled was also empty, until, not far from Mullion, they encountered a farmer’s cart, pulled by a horse which had apparently never before seen a motor car. The stone walls were built so closely on either side of the narrow road that there was no room to pull off, and Charles had to reverse the Panhard for quite a distance to find a spot where it could be stopped and the engine turned off. The horse (now blindfolded) was at last led reluctantly past, the farmer muttering imprecations into his beard and Charles wondering aloud whether bringing the motor car had been a good idea, after all.
“Of course it’s a good idea,” Bradford growled, climbing back into the car after cranking the engine. “The trouble is that these country folk are so bloody backward.” He snorted derisively. “Did you hear what Jenna Loveday said? People complaining about noise from the wireless station!”
“The trouble is,” Charles said, putting the car into gear, “that the new ways of doing things disrupt people’s lives. You can’t blame them for being angry.”
Cornwall was the most remote corner of England—one of the reasons Marconi had chosen it, Charles knew, so that he could carry out his experiments out of the public eye. But he also knew that many of the people here still clung to their own Cornish language and spoke reminiscently of the days not long past, when Spanish and Portuguese galleons driven onto the rocks yielded a bounty of gold and goods to those who plundered the wrecks, when smugglers hauled their kegs of brandy up the rocky cliffs to be hidden away in barns and cottages. Except for fishing and mining, there had never been much industry here, and with the decline of the pilchard fishery and the closing of the tin mines, there was precious little employment to be had, except for catering to trippers and tourists.
Charles glanced at Bradford and raised his voice above the clatter of the car, adding, “Perhaps that’s what’s behind the trouble at the station—some of it, anyway. People resent the disturbances.”
“Well, if that’s what it is,” Bradford said roughly, “we’ll soon put it right. These ignorant country people need to learn that they can’t stand in the way of progress.”
In another few minutes, they were entering Mullion Village, where they found themselves surrounded by a gaggle of shouting children and barking dogs. As they clattered along the narrow street, the doors of the houses flew open and astonished adults ran out to watch the noisy parade. Bradford shouted and brandished his stick threateningly, and Charles—stopping to keep from driving over a pair of women with baskets of laundry—thought to himself that he had been right. Bringing the car to this out-of-the-way place had been a serious mistake, for it attracted attention when he would rather have come unannounced. Better to park it somewhere and find a pony cart or a bicycle.
At last they were past the square gray stone tower of the Church of St. Mellanus and through Mullion Village. Ahead, as they looked across the windswept plateau toward the sea, they could see four tall wooden towers, odd-looking man-made intrusions. They were huge and ugly, Charles thought. He could see why the local people might not like them.
Bradford shouted over the clatter of the motor car, his voice full of pride. “Two hundred feet high, those wooden towers. We put them up after the first masts were blown over. Those trusses are built to stand up against any storm, even a hurricane. They won’t come down, by damn.” He pointed. “And you see that aerial wire? That’s what transmits and receives the signal, eighteen hundred miles across the Atlantic. Eighteen hundred miles, Sheridan! Marconi’s miracle, they called that first transmission, eighteen months ago. But that was just the beginning. Why, we’ll be flinging signals around the globe in the next decade.”
“You’re sure the original masts were sabotaged?” Charles asked.
He pulled the Panhard to a stop and cut off the motor at a spot some distance from the wireless station. His ears ringing in the sudden silence, he pushed up his goggles and looked toward the transmitter building, a substantial structure of plastered brick with a roof of gray-blue slates. It had been erected in the center of a fenced compound of about an acre in size, with a wooden tower at each of the four corners. The four wooden towers, one at each corner of the compound, supported the aerial, which was connected to the transmitter building by a radiating web of wires. Not far away stood the Poldhu Hotel, an imposing gabled edifice which looked out toward the sea to the west and a golf course to the north—a challenging golf course, Charles had been told. He didn’t play golf, but had heard Conan Doyle talk about its notorious twelfth hole, where the golfer had to drive his ball across a sixty-foot chasm, the white surf churning on the rocks below. A golf ball graveyard, Doyle called it.
“Of course it was sabotage,” Bradford replied grimly. “Just damn lucky nobody was killed. When the masts came down, one of them barely missed George Kemp, who was working here at the time. Another inch and he would’ve been a dead man.” He took out a cigar and lit it. “The company, of course, put it about that the damage was entirely due to the storm. They didn’t want it known that we’d been the target of sabotage.”
“And so it’s been on the other occasions? The company covering up?”
Bradford nodded. “Accidents, they say, mishaps, mistakes, that sort of thing. Never sabotage, for fear of the Press getting hold of the story, and the news getting to the investors. Marconi’s oblivious to it all, of course. He’s . . . well, he’s like other inventors, I suppose. Always scheming for the next innovation, trying to make the product better. And while he spends his time on research, the directors have to keep the company afloat.” His voice darkened. “It hasn’t been easy, I’ll tell you. This is the first year Marconi Wireless has shown a profit—although it has yet to declare a dividend.”
Charles was startled. “But I thought—”
“That the investors were already getting something back?” Bradford laughed shortly. “Not bloody likely. And if you want to know the truth, even that so-called profit was produced by juggling the financial report. We’ve a long way to go before there’s any real money to be made, with stations still to be built and equipped, and never enough cash to pay the bills. And the worst of it is that we’ve got to stay ahead of the pack.” His face twisted and he clenched his fist. “Always ahead of the pack, which are nipping at our heels like so many mad dogs.”
“There’s that much rivalry, then?” Charles asked.
“And more,” Bradford said grimly. “The cable telegraph companies—particularly Eastern—have fortunes at stake. Imagine the cost to lay and maintain the undersea cables around the world, all of which will be obsolete once we’re in full operation.”
Charles pulled his brows together. “You’re right about the cost, certainly. But do you really believe that wireless will make cable obsolete?”
“Of course I do,” Bradford said. “And then there are the wireless competitors. Fessenden and Tesla in America. Popov in Russia, Ducretet in France, Slaby and d’Arco in Germany. And the Lodge-Muirhead Syndicate, of course, here in England. You no doubt saw the article in the Pall Mall Gazette a few months ago.”
“I did,” Charles said. “Something to the effect that the Lodge-Muirhead system is more reliable and less likely to suffer signal interference.”
“Beastly lot of rubbish,” Bradford muttered.
“As I remember it,” Charles went on, “one of the cable companies had signed an agreement to use the Lodge-Muirhead equipment. There was something about a contract with the Indian government, too, wasn’t there?”
“Yes, unfortunately,” Bradford said bitterly. “We were after that Indian contract too, you know. I can’t think it’s a coincidence that Oliver Lodge is coming to the Lizard. The man has something up his sleeve. He’s
here to spy, I’ll wager.”
“I doubt that, somehow,” Charles said. “Lodge is a gentleman.” Still, he could understand Bradford’s feelings. All this rivalry—and especially the very real threat posed by the Lodge-Muirhead Syndicate—must be giving the Marconi Company nightmares. And with the Royal visit looming, no potential source of trouble could be dismissed, no matter how far-fetched it might seem.
Bradford got out and cranked the Panhard again, and they drove down the long slope to the Poldhu Hotel, where they parked and went toward the compound. A guard opened the gate when Bradford identified himself and watched them as they walked to the transmitter building. A rusty bicycle was propped against the wall.
Bradford rapped twice on the door, then twice again, saying over his shoulder to Charles, “I’m afraid we’ve had to adopt Draconian measures—the guard, coded knocks, passwords—to keep the curious out. They’re a bloody nuisance, and it’s impossible to separate the sightseers from the spies of other companies and foreign governments.”
Charles was about to ask which governments Bradford suspected, but they were interrupted by a wary voice from within. “Station’s closed. Who’s there?”
“Marsden. Double-ought-nine. Open up, Corey.”
Double-ought-nine? Charles hid his amusement. The whole thing was beginning to feel like one of those penny-dreadfuls Kate used to write. But a man was dead, and that was nothing to smile about.
There was the sound of a bolt being slid back, and the door opened. “Glad you’re here, Mr. Marsden,” the man said with relief in his voice. “It’s been . . . well, it’s been bad, I’ll tell you that. To think that Gerard is dead! Why, I just can’t seem to get the fact of it into my mind. I can’t—”
“Hold on, Corey,” Bradford said, raising his hand to stem the flow of words. “This is Lord Charles Sheridan. He and I have come to have a look around.” To Charles, he added, “Corey—Dick, is it?—is the assistant manager of the station.”
