“Perhaps the Martians,” said Prokop, forcing himself to jest; but he was certainly not in the mood for doing so.
Mr. Carson looked at him with hostility and then neighed exactly like a horse. “Let us say the Martians. Magnificent! But let us rather say somebody on the earth. Let us say that some earthly power is sending out its secret instructions. Let us say that it has extremely serious reasons for escaping human control. Let us say that there exists some sort of . . . international service or organization, or the devil knows what, and that it has at its disposal certain mysterious forces, secret stations and the rest. In any case . . . in any case we have the right to be interested in those secret messages, eh? Whether they are from hell or from Mars. It’s simply in the interests of human society. You can imagine. . . . Well, my dear sir, they certainly won’t be wireless messages about Little Red Riding Hood. So.”
Mr. Carson moved rapidly up and down the shed. “One thing is certain to begin with,” he said loudly, “that the transmitting station in question is somewhere in Central Europe, approximately in the middle of the areas where these disturbances occur, eh? Relatively, it’s not very strong, as it only talks at night. All the worse; there’s no difficulty in finding the Eiffel Tower or Nauen, eh? My friend,” he shouted suddenly and stood still: “Imagine that in the very heart of Europe something extraordinary is being prepared. The organization has branches and offices, and the branches are in touch with one another; it has technical devices unknown to us,
