Part 10

“In other words,” said Saul Hartz, “it murders people of whom it doesn’t approve from the highest motives. A scheme delightfully convenient, yet not altogether new.”

“The Society makes no claim to novelty. It has existed in a rudimentary form in the Celestial Empire and throughout many Eastern lands for thousands of years. In the oldest of all existing civilizations it is the last resort of the weak against the strong. Those whose minds are developed on disparate lines from that implacable ‘efficiency’ which enables the brain of the modern western business man to dominate the physical world and make life a hell for those who arouse its predatory instincts, are now banded together in self-defense against the common enemy of the human race.”

“Who and what is the common enemy of the human race?”

“Those who contrive war. Those who preach war. Those who spread rumors of war. The Society has one aim, and one aim only. By every means in its power it ensues Peace.”

“Even at the price of murder.”

“Murder is a word, a phrase, determined by the man-made statutes of a ballot-box democracy, presided over by the occupant of the Woolsack whom a supine government failed to hang in the year 19----. Human nature does not vary in the matter of its law courts. The man who is hanged is never so finished a criminal as the man who hangs him. Murder, I repeat, is a word, a phrase. Peace is tangible, a possible ideal, a definite object. For many months now, to give one more instance of its activities, the Universal Press, of which you, sir, are the controlling spirit, owing allegiance to none, has been working in a hundred subterranean ways to embroil the United States with Great Britain. What it has to gain by these periodical rifts the stock exchanges of London and New York are best able to say. But the Universal Press, whose power is now manifest in every land of the habitable globe, may yet choose, if unable to surmount the Trust Law, that bulwark and defense of the plain American citizen, to involve the two nations in a fratricidal conflict, with unchallenged world-power a fitting crown for the victor. Antichrist would then be indeed enthroned.”

The Colossus again expressed a contempt of such reasoning. “Evidently,” he said in his husky whisper, “your precious Society has not condescended to read the article in yesterday’s _Planet_ which I myself dictated.”

“Let me assure you, sir,” said Lien Weng, “that it has done so and marked it carefully. But such admirable sentiments, of which your newspapers have an inexhaustible supply, is no more than dust for the eyes of fools. The Universal Press has taken for its motto the famous saying of our own Lao-tsze, the prophet of Taoism, ‘Learn to throw dust in order to cast it.’ Or in words which the western brain may find easier to understand, ‘Learn to defile the wells of truth behind a curtain of poison gas.’”

“One has heard all this so often,” said the Colossus, plaintively. “Can’t you tell us something new?” And he yawned cavernously in the face of the others.

Lien Weng paid no regard to the interruption. He went quietly on, “Much of the political news the Universal Press transmits so diligently from America to England is willfully distorted; much of the political news it transmits from England to America is equally false.”

“So you say,” laughed the Colossus.

“Let us take one example. The report of the speech in Congress of Senator Larcom which you print on page 8 of yesterday’s _Planet_ is quite inaccurate.”

“How do you know that?”

“Senator Larcom has already sent by cable his own version of his speech to a member of the Society. You may read it if you choose, and compare it with the garbled fragments which appear in the _Planet_ newspaper and which the Universal Press has already flashed round the world. At this moment it is being read, assimilated, acted upon in Hong Kong, Calcutta, Sydney, Montreal and a hundred-and-one other centers of public opinion.”

At a sign from Lien Weng, the cabled account from Washington was produced by George Hierons, the person to whom it was sent. It was laid on the table.

“Read,” said Lien Weng.

“It doesn’t interest me,” said the Colossus. “Besides, it proves nothing. Mistakes of this kind are bound to arise.”

“That may or may not be so,” said Lien Weng. “But they occur far too often. And as far as Britain and the United States are concerned they always err upon one side. That is not the side of amity. Less than a month ago you put in the mouth of an eminent English politician a phrase he never used, and sowed it broadcast. Tardy denial followed, but a calculated lie had a clear start of seventy-two hours. Infinite damage has thereby been done to a growing reputation and to the cause we have at heart.”

“What sort of a reputation is it, I ask you,” said Saul Hartz, insolently, “that can suffer infinite damage because a single letter is omitted accidentally from a single word its owner uses?”

“There lies your skill,” a hoarse voice broke in. It was that of John Endor. With lustrous eyes and a face inhuman in its pallor he was following each word of the argument with intensity. “All of us here can only regard it as devilish.”

“Yes--devilish,” said Lien Weng, in his soft and gentle voice. “But even sheer wickedness sometimes overreaches itself. That simple act of omission, in the peculiar circumstances of the case, was vile. Yet already it has had a recoil. The Society of the Friends of Peace owes to that foul blow the presence here this evening of John Endor.” The President bowed gravely to the politician. “He will prove a source of infinite strength to our counsels. We welcome such a man with open arms.”

A look of disgust flashed from the eyes of Saul Hartz. “A man is not to be envied,” he said, “who mixes himself up with a thing of this kind. If Mr. Endor is the man I take him to be,” Hartz looked Endor steadily in the face, “he is going to regret very bitterly his association with you and your fellow anarchists and murderers.”

“Time alone can prove,” said Lien Weng impassively, “whether John Endor will have anything to regret in his whole-hearted devotion to the cause of peace. Meanwhile his presence here cannot fail to give weight to the deliberations of the Council of Seven.”

“And if I may say so,” interposed George Hierons, “authority to its acts. Without the help of John Endor and all that he stands for, the Society might not have been able to deal with the most inimical power of the modern world.”

“You pay poor me far too high a compliment,” said the Colossus with a down-looking smile. But all present knew, when they saw it, the pride which apes humility. “However, what does it matter?” With an air of resignation Saul Hartz folded his arms. “And you are getting tedious, aren’t you? Why not cut the cackle and get to the hosses? Before you proceed to nick my throat, or knock me on the head, or dope my mineral water is there any little thing in which I can oblige you?”

“We are coming, sir, to that.” The civilized politeness of Lien Weng was an odd contrast to Saul Hartz’s ill-breeding. “On behalf of the Society I am about to place before you a formal proposition. It is this: The Society is prepared to buy your entire holding, including the Founder’s shares, in the Universal Press.”

“I shall be glad to learn your price.”

“Within three months the Society is prepared to pay you the sum of two hundred millions sterling. But to this offer it attaches one condition. You will be required to give an undertaking never again to engage in any form whatever of journalistic enterprise. In other words, sir, you must give up the formidable, nay, terrible, machine you control, and you are expressly debarred from ever constructing another one like it.”

“And in the event of this offer being refused?” Saul Hartz asked.

For a moment there was silence. Lien Weng looked at the circle of tense faces. But it was the American who answered the question. As a preliminary he slowly removed a large cigar from the corner of his mouth.

“Pretty bad for the coo, sir,” he said in a voice like a child’s. “Take it from me.”

“I expect so,” was Saul Hartz’s only comment.

Silence came again. The eight men smoked steadily.

Lien Weng it was who spoke at last. “We don’t ask you to make up your mind here and now. You shall have eight weeks from to-morrow, Monday, in which to reach a decision.”

“Eight weeks. Thank you,” said the Colossus dryly. And he began to chew the end of his cigar.

“Think it over, my friend,” said Hierons, in a cheerful and business-like tone. “One thousand million dollars--paid down within three months. Think it over.”

“I will.” The Colossus knocked the ash from the end of his cigar. “I promise you that. And now perhaps you’ll let me out of this mousetrap.”

“For the time being, sir, the business is concluded.” And Lien Weng returned the keys of the room to the Frenchman and the American who promptly unlocked the doors of the library.

XXVIII

Within the space of the eight weeks granted by the Society of the Friends of Peace for Saul Hartz’s decision, much was to happen to John Endor and to the inner world of politics in which he moved. Endor’s own life was linked so closely with the energies of the time that the recoil of events affected it deeply. Many strange, many pregnant, things were about to happen.

John’s first act on his return on the Monday to London from his rather nightmarish visit to Doe Hill was to communicate at once with Helen Sholto. He arranged that they should lunch together at a quiet restaurant in Soho.

Here, in privacy, with none to overhear and none to oversee, he unburdened his heart. He did not think well to let Helen know of the Society, much less of his own transactions with it: how in spite of some deep protesting instinct, he had been induced to take the oath of allegiance; how in the main he had yielded to the powerful arguments of their friend in common, George Hierons; and how, having taken the plunge with a full perception of all that it involved, he was ready to defend his action. For he now saw with a clearness greater than ever before, that the malign growth which was so rapidly eating its way to the core of the state must, no matter what the cost to the body politic, be at once cut out.

One thing, however, Endor decided to do. That was to tell Helen of the charge this man, Saul Hartz, had laid upon her good name. Such, indeed, was his real purpose in going to her at once. The impulse of his nature would not allow him a moment’s rest until the woman he loved was rescued from the clutches of the monster of infamy whom she was loyally serving.

Without preface Endor told her what Saul Hartz had said.

“He says you are his mistress.” As word by word her ear felt their whispered fall, the surge of emotion in his voice filled her with pain. Before the blow itself, however, not a nerve quivered. But her heart turned to ice.

“I felt like killing him. But these are not heroic days. Besides, such _canaille_ are not worth it--if one has a work to do.”

“Not worth it--no,” she said at last, gently, and then, a woman: “Tell me, what led him, do you suppose, to say that?”

“Pure devilment. He knows you’re leaving him, he understands your value, and to give you up to me, of all people, is for one of his nature a bath of vitriol.”

“But it isn’t like him,” said Helen, “to indulge a mere spite. He is too big a man. There must have been a deeper, a subtler motive.”

“What do you think it can be?”

“He must have reckoned on an outside chance of your believing what he said.”

John’s look of sheer incredulity gave her a sudden insight into those hidden depths of character she had yet to penetrate. This new knowledge brought a glow of light to her eyes.

“I think,” he said, “as soon as you have lunched, you had better go to the telephone and tell them you are not returning to the Office. Here and now you must close this man down. You can never go back to Universe Building.”

She did not answer at once. Seconds only were recorded by heart and brain, but when she spoke a weight of years had been added to her voice. “I think you are right,” she said.

He could guess the wrench to such a practical mind as hers to part with her career, to give up with almost quixotic decision the greatest prize in her profession. But faced now with the necessity she did not hesitate. “I have saved very little,” she said quite simply. “And I don’t quite see how I am going to get work--certainly not immediately, if at all. The U. P. may be able to close every door. He says they can. However ... no matter ... there it is. I’ll go and telephone to them now.”

His own will had steeled hers for the task. So be it! Let the die be cast! But as he sat at the restaurant table, looking all the facts in the face, the oppression upon his heart was almost more than he could bear.

Storm clouds lowered on every hand, heavy with menace. The future was dark to the verge of the terrible.

As Helen returned, that virile figure, so strong, so sane, so alive with courage and capacity braced him for his own great throw.

“You’ve cut the painter?”

“Yes,” she said in a low voice.

“Well now, my darling,” he said with the odd tenderness which always made him so hard to resist, “we stand together or we fall. Let us get married at once with the least possible fuss.”

She did not yield at once. Elementally she was very feminine. Besides, there were strong arguments to bring against unseemly haste. It would be a bitter blow to John’s mother who had quite other views for her ewe lamb. And what, pray, had they to set up housekeeping upon, now that Helen had just cast away her princely thousand dollars a month?

John, however, had given thought to all that. The old lady, with Helen’s consent, should stay on at Wyndham where things might remain exactly as they were for the rest of her days; and Helen and he could take a small house in London. At the start, it was true, the house in London would have to be a very modest affair. He had a few hundred a year of his own, plus a few hundred more as a member of parliament; but now that the U. P. had raised the fiery cross, that source of revenue would probably disappear at the next general election, which by all the portents could not be long delayed. When his mother died he would have Wyndham and her entire income, which, however, at the present time was barely sufficient to keep up an old and much depreciated property.

It would be foolish to shirk the fact that for the time being they would have to pare cheese. They would find themselves with their backs to the wall, with calumny and misrepresentation on every hand; but let them stand shoulder to shoulder, their colors nailed to the mast. No matter what happened they would go down fighting.

The light in his eyes decided Helen. She, too, belonged to a free people.

“Yes,” she said, “we’ll stand or fall together.”

He grasped, in his boy’s way, the hand of a good comrade. “We’ll break the International Newspaper Ring, or it shall break us.”

She was quite ready to buckle on his armor. “Government by newspaper must end--if civilization is to go on. One has always smiled at the notion that Saul Hartz can put in any government he chooses and turn it out if it doesn’t please him, but in the last three weeks one’s eyes have been opened to many things. And if the Breit Combine joins with the U. P. as you declare it will, my own country will be in the same plight.”

“Yes,” said John Endor, “now you really see the malignant growth that lies at the very root of the Anglo-Saxon world. There can be no hope of a stable peace while this king of all grafters is free to go on. Well, thank God, the eyes of some of us are open at last. I’ll go down to the House this afternoon and air my voice if I get a chance.”

“Do,” she said. “All power to it. Meanwhile, I’ll go and look for a little house. There are five hundred pounds in my stocking--did I tell you?--his money, alas!--but I hope honestly earned.”

John took from his pocket a sheaf of notes written in pencil. Much new material had come to him in the course of the week-end at Doe Hill for the speech he was meditating in the House of Commons. “But don’t let us deceive ourselves,” he said. “They are not in the least likely to listen to a private member. Strong as this indictment is it will impress neither the Cabinet nor the rank and file. They are men of straw. The U. P. put them where they are and it can remove them to-morrow. At least, they believe it can. Shade of Gladstone and Bright! Shade of Burke and Pitt! that a newspaper trust should have them all in its pocket.”

As he got up from the table, his face, which still bore the marks of recent ill-usage, looked strained and curiously old. But any hint of weakness was effaced by the eyes which burnt with lustre and intensity.

XXIX

John Endor went down to the House of Commons and made the speech of his life. Soon after five, when he rose to benches more than half empty, to demand a remedy against that ever-growing evil, the menace of the Newspaper Trust, many honorable members smiled. In a few brief years, the disintegration of the Mother of Parliaments was all but complete. This crowd of time-servers and adventurers, composed in the main of bagmen and trade-union officials were under no illusion as to the terms of their tenure. These hungry ravens knew better than to peck the gentle hand that fed them.

How often, besides, had they heard all this “gup.” There was nothing new in it. And this man Endor was either an egotistical donkey or a purblind idiot not to be aware that he was merely butting his head against a stone wall. At the next general election, which might come at any time now, it would simply be a case of “Endor must go.” And Endor would go. The Endors always did.

Didn’t this triple-play ass know that every word he uttered was digging his own grave? Such passion, such irony, such precision, such cumulative force simply asked for the scrap heap. Dating from the middle of the late war, that thrice blessed upheaval! the scrap heap was where all the Endors had gone. Education, breeding, dedication, were back numbers at Westminster. The country’s, the Empire’s, government, thank God! was now in the hands of business men. “We believe in the U. P. and we are registered subscribers!” That was the open sesame, just that simple and modest oath of allegiance. It was as easy as swallowing butter.

Some of the honorable members dozed a little in the course of this crack-brained fellow’s oratory, others retired to the refreshment room to get a cup of tea. And the few who listened to the strange words, so much out of place within those walls, two or perhaps three of the old hands, hardened æsthetes, not yet quite dead of fatty degeneration of the soul, could not restrain their minds from reverting to the days before the deluge. Bright! Gladstone! Asquith! Grey! Be it so. In the end, every country had the government it really wanted.

Just one there was, among those who deigned to hear John Endor who went even a step farther than these disloyal camp-followers of the U. P. On each side of this magnate on the Treasury Bench was an overdressed but underbred colleague--an ordinance sometimes resorted to by Divine Providence to restore the _aurea mediocritas_--for the magnate himself happened to be the prime minister.

There is no need, at any rate, in these pages, to decorate him with the pomp of capital letters. The prime minister of Britain was a supine and ignoble figure in the view of many. Wilberforce Williams by name, he was generally known as “Slippery Sam,” because, as his fervent admirers claimed, “you never knew when you ’ad him.”

Nobody knew exactly how, when or why Slippery Sam had made his way to his present eminence. Nobody cared. But there he was on the front bench with his boots cocked up on the table in front of him, master of all he surveyed, with a whole set of blank coupons, two books full, in his pocket. There he was and if possible there he meant to stay.

On principle the prime minister listened to John Endor. It may seem a little odd that such a man as Mr. Williams should have had a principle to indulge; certainly it was not at the call of mere duty or at the beck of truth that he now listened to this young man who took himself and his country so seriously. But Mr. Williams was a little intrigued by him, in the way he was a little intrigued by so many things. For, like other prime ministers before him, he was by way of being an amateur of the human comedy. Therefore, he knew the authentic note when he heard it.

Nobody, not even the Colossus himself, had penetrated to the fact that, in point of sheer cleverness, Slippery Sam was at that moment without a peer in the realm. Cleverness may not be a specially high attribute, and Mr. Williams, who was perfectly frank with himself, would have been the first to say so, but occasions do arise when it has its uses.

One of these now occurred. Midway through the speech of this rather simple but very gifted young man, there came the word China.

The prime minister, it seemed, had lately been paying a good deal of attention to China. His thoughts were in this wise. “In my pocketbook is the ukase that infernal fellow H. had the effrontery to hurl at me the other day in his own handwriting.”

“Saint James’s Square, “Friday afternoon “MY DEAR W. W.:

“Send the Fleet to Peking before Japan gets in, or forfeit all claim to thinking Imperially. “Yours, in haste, “S. H.”

Mr. Williams’ mind as it now reverted to China was a complex of many things. Listening to that name of ill omen on the lips of the member for Blackhampton, listening to the burning scorn of his words, the prime minister suddenly remembered the giants of his youth. Above all, he remembered Gladstone’s power of carrying not only the House, but the country with him on a live issue.

This young man Endor, out of date as he was, a rather tragic anachronism in that _cénacle_ sprawling, dozing and sneering around him, was a voice from the past. He had not the ear of the House it was true. The simple fact was, the House no longer possessed an ear; it had no longer the power to react to style or tradition. Demosthenes himself could not have pierced these professional hardbakes, who ran the country on the lines of their trade-unions. The British House of Commons was now the most soulless and vulgar of all assemblies; the U. P. had castrated it; but the prime minister, at any rate, was still able to recognize the divine fire.

Moreover, the flame burning in the heart of this young man, John Endor, set him thinking.

XXX

The thoughts of Slippery Sam were after this fashion.

“H. means war with China. And he has already said in my private ear, ‘If you don’t do my bidding I shall have you out and put in somebody who will.’ Now I, Wilberforce Williams, who am quite frank with myself, though with nobody else, do not want war with China. It will be an unjust war. It will be an ill-timed war, because money is still pretty ‘tight,’ and war itself is still out of fashion. Moreover, it may lead ultimately--[Mr. Williams was a far-sighted man]--to trouble with Japan and possibly, I don’t say probably, to war with the United States. Nor do I think this Chinese business can ever be popular. Hartz says his newspapers and his cinemas shall make it popular. Well, it is only too true, that in that line he can do anything ... all the same ... this may be ... I don’t say it is ... the psychological moment for the much trodden worm to begin to turn.