Part 15

Endor’s protest made, he sat down again at the table. He must now abide the issue. Clairvoyantly he awaited the slow unfolding of an odd ritual. The proceedings began with curious solemnity. As the latest member of the Council of Seven, the task devolved upon himself of drawing from the velvet bag the first slip of paper.

Should he or should he not bear his part? It was a momentous decision to have to take. But there shot through his mind a clear perception of the fact that there was really no alternative. He was under oath to obey the rules of the Society or pay the heaviest penalty of all.

One glance at the faces around the table told him quite plainly that the penalty would be exacted. These men were not to be trifled with. He would die like a rat in a trap. And such an exit would not save Saul Hartz, nor would it help the future of mankind.

On the spur of the moment Endor had to decide. By a withdrawal now from the Council of Seven he would gain nothing and yet he would lose his life. Was he ready to lose it? Was he ready to lose it without a struggle for the vindication of his ideals? Automatically, yet with a subtle sense of coercion from the powerful minds around him, he dipped his hand into the velvet bag and drew out one of the slips of paper.

Unfolding the strip with a feeling of irresponsibility a little bizarre he found that on it was written the name George Hierons.

The rules now required that upon the American should devolve the duty of taking from the velvet bag the name of him who was called to a dreadful task.

A hush fell upon the table. In a silence that was physical torture to more than one around that bright mahogany, the strings at the bag’s mouth were pulled tight, and then the bag itself was handed to George Hierons.

In this moment of exquisite torment, it was as if something broke inside John Endor’s heart.

Even before the second slip was drawn from the bag, and the name it bore was made known, Endor realized, as if by the magic of an occult power, that in an especial manner Fate had marked him down. Before the impassive American opened this paper and announced its contents, the latest member of the Council saw and heard his own name:

JOHN ENDOR

When seconds later that name was pronounced, he gave a little gasp. He felt the burning eyes of the others envelop him. Overcome by emotion, he was unable to meet those eyes and bent his own to the table. A nausea of dismay bereft him of the power to think or act. But all too soon there came to his ear the calm and precise speech of Lien Weng.

“John Endor,” said the President in a small soft voice, not unlike a cat’s purr, that turned to ice the blood of the man whom he addressed, “you are called, within the term of eight days, reckoning from this Sunday midnight, to kill the man Saul Hartz by the method ordained in such cases by the Council of Seven. What that method is, it is now our duty to reveal.”

XLIV

From the depths of his gorgeous robe, Lien Weng took a small gun-metal case. A spring released the top. Within was a tiny glass phial, in the form of a syringe, containing about an ounce of a colorless fluid. So delicate was the whole contrivance that it could be concealed in the palm of one hand.

After Lien Weng had placed it on the table in front of him, he went on to explain its nature and its use.

The fluid was the most subtle and the most deadly poison science had yet evolved. Distilled in minute quantities by a recent chemical process from a rare herb indigenous to the Manchurian wilds, the secret was known to the Society alone, and its use was strictly regulated by its laws. In operation, as Lien Weng explained, it was very simple. By discharging the contents of the phial on the back of a person’s coat, of no matter what thickness, at a point midway between the shoulder blades, it would percolate in the course of less than three hours to the spinal marrow. And, without warning of any kind, it would bring about a sudden and complete collapse of the nervous system. Death would at once ensue and not leave a trace of its cause. So subtle was the work of this poison that it defied all medical diagnosis. Its operation was impossible to detect. Autopsies were vain. The police of London, New York, Bombay, Shanghai could only surmise that such a thing existed without being able to prove the fact. Indeed they were faced by a problem with which they could not deal; a problem so elusive that it merged cause in effect.

Succinctly and gently, with the air of a British judge addressing a British jury, Lien Weng expounded all this to John Endor. He was required to use the lethal weapon formally entrusted to him now by the decree of the Council of Seven within the time appointed and in the manner specified.

“And if, sir, one does not choose to carry out this horrible task?” said Endor, quietly.

“Sir,” was the President’s soft reply, “since you have taken the oath of our Society is it really necessary for me to answer your question?”

Endor looked earnestly at the faces of the six men around him, as if he would peer into their minds. Again he was undecided as to what his immediate course of action should be. His first thought was to defy these fanatics by flinging the phial into the fire. But as his fingers closed upon the slender tube of glass, the mysterious _prana_ deep down in every healthy nature intervened to save him. An overt act of that kind, as the faces around told him very surely, would mean certain death.

At the call of an obscure law of being Endor slowly returned the cylinder to its gun-metal sheath. And then fully sensible of six pairs of eyes fixed upon him, he took from his breast pocket a cigarette case and calmly placed within it this most deadly of weapons.

“Sir, you have until to-morrow Monday week at midnight,” were Lien Weng’s final words.

Once more Endor looked at the circle of faces around him. Of the thoughts they concealed he could glean nothing beyond a covert hostility in the eyes of Bandar Ali and a look of deep anxiety in those of George Hierons. The American was seated next to him. At this terrible moment, in which Endor knew that his own death sentence had been pronounced, and even in this most dangerous company, he was not without a friend.

As Endor got up from the table he felt upon his arm a slight pressure, soothing yet magnetic. It was as if that gentle touch spoke its own silent message, “For heaven’s sake, my friend,” it seemed to say, “do nothing hastily. Let your slightest action now be the fruit of wisdom.”

In spite of this tacit prayer, Endor yielded to the all-powerful desire now in his mind. He would fly at once from this house of ill omen. Before he left the room, however, he was moved to speak again.

“One last word!” As Endor reached the door he turned swiftly to face the men who were still seated at the table. “I believe,” he said, in a voice strained and thin, “that Providence itself has given me a means, a lawful means, of breaking this malign power which you would have me unlawfully destroy. You, who at all costs are pledged to conserve the peace of the world, cannot hope to gain your end by secret murder. I beg you to give me a chance to prove that the Divine Will is working for us and for all mankind.”

The passion of this last appeal drew no response from the six men at the table. Mutely impassive they watched that rather wild figure withdraw from the room.

Endor at once ordered his car. He was bent on going back to London immediately. Not another hour could he endure the fetid air of Busshe Court.

XLV

Helen, meanwhile, was spending the week-end at Cloudesley. And here, too, in the famous Midland home of a great political magnate, certain strange things happened.

To begin with, Mrs. John Endor had to make the best excuses she could for the non-arrival of her distinguished husband. He had “chucked” at the last moment, and it was not easy to forget that fact. The party was large and made up of heterogeneous elements. But more than one of its members had looked forward to spending a certain amount of time in the interesting company of the new Home Secretary. Keen disappointment was expressed by host, hostess and guests alike. Helen’s excuses for the absentee sounded in her own ears rather hollow, but she had tact enough to make them sound convincing in the ear of others.

All the same, her brief Saturday afternoon to Monday morning sojourn in a huge barracks of a house was to prove a particularly trying ordeal. Not that there was any lack of creature comforts. But the ordeal might be said to begin shortly after seven o’clock, just as she was about to ascend the famous white marble staircase to dress for the evening meal. For it came to Helen like a veritable blow to behold Saul Hartz, newly arrived, stride with an air of calm proprietorship into the entrance hall.

At the sight of him, her heart gave a leap. This indeed, was a bird of ill omen. She had not in the least expected him to be there. Not that there was any reason why he shouldn’t be. He had the _entrée_ to nearly every house in England; and in most the art of the _charmeur_, great when he chose to use it, and his range of information made him a more than welcome guest. To Helen, however, it simply had not occurred that she was likely to meet him. As disconsolately she made a slow ascent of those imposing stairs, she could have wished that the new Home Secretary had followed the practice of Royalty by demanding a list of the people who had been invited to meet him!

To add to Helen’s embarrassment, it fell out that the Colossus took her in to dinner. She would have given much merely to avoid talk with him or even the lightest contact with his arm. Yet surely this was Fate. And from Fate there can be no appeal. At the moment he crossed the room to claim her with a bow and a smile, she felt in her bones that this meeting had to be.

Since John had told her of the diabolical aspersions this man had cast upon her good name, they had not met. In spite of all that she owed Saul Hartz, and she still felt it was much, her resentment was deep, just, implacable. Pride forbade the showing that her wound was still raw, but she could not help letting him see, even had she had the wish to prevent it, that she was now in the thrall of an icy antagonism. And yet with what mastery, what subtle art was this man able to toy with her fine feelings!

At the dinner table he was irresistible. She sought escape at first by turning quickly to a pompous and monosyllabic politician seated at the other side of her. But that didn’t answer. Even more than usual Saul Hartz was dominant. When he liked to exert his great powers, he was the most compelling man she had ever known. The fact that he saw beyond his kind gave barbs to his wit, a depth to his insight, spice to his knowledge, a form to his philosophy.

When this man unbent, there was none like him. Helen once again had to render him that justice. With that strange, remote whisper he could dominate half the large room if he chose; or if, as he now preferred, he chose to confine himself to the young and singularly attractive woman at his side, she, too, must yield to its mystic spells.

The Colossus was never more the Colossus than this evening. All about him were mainly strangers--he was a man of many acquaintances and no friends--and no doubt there were secret enemies in their midst, but he paid them scant regard. He was willing, more than willing, that “his dear Helen” should claim it all.

She fought against him, but it was no use. He spread before her the jewels of his mind and her soul was dazzled. Ever and again, the thought recurred to her that there was none like him. None could there ever be. If demigods there were, to-night Saul Hartz was of their kin.

From the very hour of their first meeting some two years ago at his office in New York she had felt the sense of his power. And now hating him implacably as she did and as she must, he seemed to be raised to a power yet higher. His will, his courage, his imagination made her think of him now as a latter-day Haroun-al-Raschid. But he was something more. He saw beyond the Beyond. To Helen, as he revealed himself in the course of this unforgettable evening, he was like one who had rifled a sealed envelope and read its forbidden contents.

His talk in its abandon was that of one who cares for none of the world’s standards. It was the talk of one who defied God and man; of one who looks beyond experience; of one who saw so much that he accepted nothing. Deep in the heart of Helen was a desire to pity him. He was indeed a figure for pity. A noble mind was straining its moorings. Chartless, rudderless it might soon be out in an open sea.

In the two months that had passed since she had last talked with Saul Hartz, a subtle change had taken place in him. Something had happened to the man himself. Those hooded eyes still veiled their fires, but in the face to which they lent a luster and a value was the look of death. With a flash of vision it came upon Helen that the Colossus was now living in its shadow.

That fact, if fact it was, explained the man to-night. He seemed to know that the end was near. And it was as if he was trying not to care. After all he had had a pretty good inning. He was only fifty-four, still in the prime of his years as other men reckoned them, but a single year as the Colossus lived it was more than a lustrum for those of normal chemistry. Measured in terms of achievement, brain tissue, dynamic power, the fifty-four years of Saul Hartz could be multiplied by ten.

Slowly, with a stealth that at first she did not perceive, the spell of an old fascination came again upon Helen. She did not forget his depth of wickedness. With a shudder that had a tinge of joy she recognized that the mind and will so delicately enfolding hers did evil for the love of evil; but yet she felt, too, as she had always done, that there was nothing ignoble in his choice of the baser part. At the worst, it belonged to a false philosophy of life. It was part of his giantism, his lust of power for power’s sake.

“All the silly gnats”--a big wine was in his glass--“all the silly gnats who swarm in bus and tube, who line up in queues for theaters and movies, who devour bookstalls and live on our headlines, well, well! One-hell-of-a-muss, isn’t it, my dear? No place for people as sane as you and me.”

She was left a little stunned by the logical ferocity of a mind so modern, and yet so subversive of all things that seemed to make life livable.

XLVI

After dinner, in the privacy of an inner drawing room, Saul Hartz sought Helen again. It was agony almost for her to be with him, to hear his strange voice clothe yet stranger words; and yet it was a form of experience that no constructive mind would ever willingly forego. She was a woman of strong will, a woman sound in heart and brain, but of a sudden there returned upon her the memory of that night of subtle fear, some two months back, when she had paid a surprise visit to Carlton House Terrace--that unforgettable night of his dealing the man she loved a felon’s blow. Not then had she known him for the thing he was. For her, at least, his purpose was still masked. But now everything was clear. The hood had lifted, the veil was rent. He stood forth, open and declared, an enemy of mankind.

The knowledge filled Helen with curious emotion. She now felt the challenge of his nature in a way that frightened her. Beside her sat the very genius of negation. Was not she, too, just a poor silly gnat? The sense of his sheer animal power made her almost long at this moment to feel his arms about her; with his sorcery upon her she half wished that his lips would crush out her life. And she knew that she was powerless. As he sat very close to her in that cushioned nook, she might have been under the spell of a fabulous monster. Shivering with fear, she began to realize that her defenses were failing. Raised to this pitch, such a creature was all that had been, all that could ever be. Somehow she felt that the old prophecies were true. The living, sentient being whose hand now held hers was the incarnation of Evil.

Was he, to whom in the past she owed so much, about to amuse himself in the rôle of Don Juan? Pray heaven he would be content to-night with that of Lucifer! Oh, why had she come to this house? Oh, why had she come there alone?

She felt the touch of a cool palm on her lightly clad knees. It brought riot to her brain a hint of madness. She tried to free herself, but laughingly he pinned her down. If she could but get away! Held by his will she could hardly move or breathe. Was it possible, despite all she could do, that he was about to make good his vile boast of two months back? Where was the God in whom she believed? One part of her mind besought that Friend who for her had always been at the back of everything, while the other part glimpsed the joys of surrender to one who had declared war upon authority.

With an insight which she felt to be terrifying, the Colossus was able to read her thought. To him the human mind was an open page. Looking deep into those honest eyes he smiled at the naked terror that he saw there. With a softness more than feline he began to stroke the delicate fabric of crêpe de chine that so inefficiently covered her. “If I ask you to put your arms about my neck and kiss me, what will you do?” Not by the lips was that speech uttered, but by eyes that glowed and burned like those which glow and burn in jungle grass.

She tried again to get away. But with the flick of a paw he cast her back to her cushions and held her. “One can never understand,” he purred with an odd gentleness whose effect upon her was as wine and music, “why a creature of your intelligence, and particularly a woman, should ever truly believe that Right must triumph and Wrong must fail.”

“One does believe it, all the same.”

His laugh drove the blood from her heart. “And that is so amazing! Look at this horrible world we live in for our sins, and tell me quite honestly if there is any evidence at all of a power more benign than an impersonal, blind, animal force? The wind blows, the clouds rain, the stars shine. Some of us who are geared high smoke big cigars and own newspapers; some of us, geared not so high, are women broken in body and soul, whose daughters are on the streets and whose sons have been condemned by the State to the battue. So much, my dear girl, for this God of yours! On this little planet, you can’t tell me, He is making any headway at all.”

She felt as if he had hit her in the face. “I do believe,” she gasped. “And--and--no matter what happens”--his grip was on her shrinking knees--“to me--or to mine--I shall go on believing.”

“And I shall go on disbelieving.” He chuckled softly. “All the same, I like your pluck!” The father was speaking again to a favorite daughter. Helen shivered at the intolerable memories wrought by that tone. “How well you fight with your back to the wall.” He raised her hand in his and pressed his lips upon it lightly. “I respect your courage.” Voice and smile grew even more paternal. “And between ourselves, that is the only thing in the life one knows that one does respect. Courage. That alone is sacred. Courage. No matter when, no matter where one meets that, one pays homage.”

Smiling at his thoughts, he got up from the sofa on which they sat. As he stood before her in the arrogance of his mental and physical power, she could not kill a sense, try to stifle it as she would, that here perhaps was the noblest thing on which her eyes had looked.

He still kept close track of her mind. “Bless you, dear child!” She felt his eyes pass through her like a sword, and she bit her lip in an agony that had a touch of ecstasy. And then came terror again. She fought against a sob she could not control. Hearing it, he sighed tenderly. “One mustn’t hurt you too much,” he said, half to himself. “You’ve always been a particularly nice girl. I have always liked you.” His voice had grown gentle, charming, whimsical. “Good luck. _Bon voyage._ You are a good woman. Your husband is a good man. And I am a very, very bad one. But please remember that it is against all experience to suppose that the bad people don’t come out on top. Believe me, they always do--and they always must.”

XLVII

That night Helen slept little. Her talk with Saul Hartz had proved cruelly disturbing to the mind and to the emotions. She was haunted by it. For hours she lay awake thinking of this man who had played so strange a part in her life. Seeing him now as the thing he truly was, her fear of him was unnerving. It troubled her that they should be under one roof. She had an insurgent desire to seek at once the safety of her home. There could be no rest for her until she had returned to that haven and to the man she loved.

Much of the next day, Sunday, was spent in active dread of the Colossus and a desire to avoid him. Helen mixed freely with the other guests. She went to church in the morning, she played bridge in the afternoon and by every means that was open to her she took precaution against being caught unawares. The last thing she desired was another _tête-à-tête_ with Saul Hartz.

In her present emotional state she was met with one harsh fact. For some reason she was now the prey of a secret fear. An unknown force had invaded her life. Suddenly the future had become an abyss. To such an extent was she possessed by a sense of the impending, that it was as if a sword was about to fall.

What this menace could be she was without means of knowing. But it was surely there, a phantom perhaps of an overdriven brain. At least Helen hoped that it might prove no worse than that. Certainly as far as she was aware, it had no ground in reason or logic, and was, therefore, without the stay of fact.

Color, however, was lent to this new fear in a rather odd way. Among her fellow week-end guests was a man named Wygram. The personality of this man excited Helen’s curiosity. She had never met any one like him. A rather exotic, oriental appearance seemed to lend value and emphasis to his views on occultism, mental telepathy, thought transference and kindred subjects which were now so much in the air, and upon which, in an unobtrusive way, he seemed to be a veritable mine of information.

After Helen had spent an entrancing hour in talk with Mr. Wygram, she gleaned from her hostess by dint of judicious inquiry that he was now recognized the world over as an authority upon the Unseen. She learned further that this remarkable man had found a solution to more than one mystery that seemed impenetrable and that the police often had recourse to his services.

This view of Wygram’s unique powers was supported by the attention paid him by Saul Hartz. It was never a habit of the Colossus to flatter the vanity of his fellow men by sitting in public at the feet of Gamaliel. But it was clear to Helen that the orientalist had some potent attraction for him. More than once in the course of that day she saw the two men together in quiet corners. And to judge by the look of concentration on Mr. Hartz’s face the subject of their talk was to him of vital concern.

At dinner, no doubt as a concession to the keen curiosity Helen had shown in regard to Mr. Wygram, she was taken in by him. Further acquaintance did but add to the interest he excited in her. Little passed between them that average people could have laid hold of as definitely enlarging the boundaries of human knowledge, but Helen felt all the same that her approach to certain subjects whose importance and value she could but vaguely surmise would from now on be more practical, more scientific, more expert.