Part 17

“To the Council yesterday,” said Hierons, “your husband made a similar statement. And, my dear Mrs. Endor,”--deep feeling suddenly fused the voice of her countryman--“I have to say this: We, the six members of the Council who were present, were most profoundly moved by the appeal your husband made to us. The strength of his position in England at this moment we fully recognize. Upheld by a recent victory against enormous odds, he believes that he is called to a great work for the state. He believes that as far as Britain is concerned it is now possible to rally public opinion to a perception of the awful danger that lurks in the unbridled power of certain inimical forces.”

“Has he not given proof already,” said Helen, “of what he can do? What other man in this country could have won the Blackhampton election in the face of the U. P.?”

Hierons deferred to the force of that argument. “Oh, yes,” he said, “the Council of Seven grants all that. It is the last to close its eyes to the hard fact. But the Society of the Friends of Peace, governed of necessity by a set of iron laws, has not the power to absolve any member from his vows.”

“Is there then no way out for my husband?” asked Helen.

“Apart from the death of Saul Hartz, I am afraid there is none. Once a decree has been promulgated by the Council, the Society is bound to stand or fall by it. But let me say this: The Council is so deeply engaged with the great question your husband has raised----”

“--That the remedy is at least as bad as the disease,” Helen interjected quickly.

“--Even if we don’t go with you quite so far as that, your husband’s words yesterday to the Council have already sunk deep. And I may say that it has appointed me to wait upon Mr. Endor in the course of to-morrow, so that, in its name, a certain proposal may be laid before him.”

A vivid light came into Helen’s eyes, as she asked what the proposal was.

“Let it first be made to your husband,” said Hierons, in a tone kind and gentle, “before I disclose it to you. He may or may not feel at liberty to accede to it. One hopes sincerely that he will. And in any event it may help to lessen his doubts, by convincing him of the absolute _bona fides_ of those whom he now stigmatizes as visionaries and fanatics. In the meantime, my dear Mrs. Endor, keep up your heart.”

LII

Helen, alas! returned uncomforted to her home. She had little hope. Grateful indeed for the true and real consideration George Hierons had shown her, a single conversation with him had yet proved that he, too, like all the members of the group to which he belonged, was an extremist.

At breakfast next morning, John, who was haggard and overstrung from loss of sleep, told his wife casually that George Hierons was coming to see him on business at eleven o’clock. Helen, from a natural desire to avoid a subject that was almost a menace to reason itself, had not mentioned her own visit to Freeman’s Hotel. And so far as John knew, she was not even aware that the American was a member of the Council of Seven.

Avoid the subject as she might, Helen could not overcome a devouring curiosity in regard to Hierons’ morning call. Was there still hope of a way out of this impasse? At best it could only be tenuous. Knowing her husband for the man he was, she felt sure that he would not yield a point without the full assent of his conscience.

On the stroke of eleven Hierons arrived. He was shown at once into the small room in which John Endor did his work. At the moment his visitor came in Endor was writing a letter. Rising at once with a formal greeting, he knew by the grip of the American’s hand and his warmth of tone that he might count on his friendship and sympathy.

“I come from the Council,” said Hierons briefly and without preface.

“So I understand,” said Endor in a voice that betrayed no emotion. “Lien Weng wrote last night telling me to expect you.”

“Did he mention the proposition I bring to you?”

“No.”

Hierons was silent a short time. And then he said abruptly: “By the way, did your wife tell you of the talk we had yesterday afternoon at my hotel?”

Endor said that she had not spoken of it.

Hierons, diplomatist that he was, now began to proceed with caution. “After you had put the general position before your wife----”

“--Say rather that she dragged it out of me,” said Endor with a wan smile.

“--she came to me. And having due regard to these difficult and peculiar circumstances I took her to some extent into the Society’s confidence. Knowing so much, it seemed best, I think, that she knew more. Therefore, I would like her to hear what I have to say to you now. The whole position is so irregular that one feels her presence in this room will not do any harm. Moreover, at the point we are now approaching it is just possible that she may be able to help us.”

Endor, however, was loath to consent. Already he regretted the fact that his wife knew so much. Surely, it had been wiser and kinder to have kept his own counsel. Such a matter was bound to distress her terribly. And the pain it must cause would serve no end. This was an affair in which he was sure that her good will could not possibly avail.

Hierons, all the same, persisted in his request. For a reason of his own he greatly desired that Helen should be present. And in the end John, much against his own judgment, allowed Hierons to prevail.

Endor went himself to fetch his wife.

Helen, for her own part, was only too eager to hear what the emissary of the Council of Seven had to say to her husband. Having learned so much already, she had now a burning desire to know all. Nevertheless, her hope was small that a way of escape from a terrible dilemma could be found.

LIII

As far as the grim matter now in hand was concerned, Hierons was the soul of business. Perhaps he may have realized that if his task were not instantly performed he might not be able to accomplish it.

When Helen entered the room, the American at once opened the ball.

“I am desired by the Council of Seven to say this: As soon as the death of Saul Hartz has been accomplished, the Society will consider its immediate aim to have been achieved. It will no longer seek the world’s peace on its present lines. In fact, it proposes at once to annul its constitution; as a corporate body it will cease to be.”

“The Society is about to disband?” said John Endor, quickly.

“Yes,--as soon as Saul Hartz, the world’s arch enemy, is dead. The transactions of the last few days have convinced some of the Society’s deepest thinkers that the cause of humanity as a whole will be best served by the Friends of Peace going to work in other ways.”

“There I am with it,” said Endor. “Yet, may I ask, what does it propose to do with the strange and terrible secrets it possesses?--secrets which, it seems to me, must always imperil the very thing it has been called into being to safeguard.”

“Before the Society passes out of existence,” said Hierons, “it will appoint certain trustees; and to these, under strict legal forms, will be intrusted the great discoveries, so dangerous to mankind, which it has been the first function of our Society to control.”

Endor, keenly following every word, expressed his approval.

“In the first place, as you may know,” Hierons went on, “it was because of the discoveries made by certain chemists and scientists, among whom I have the honor to count myself, that the Society of the Friends of Peace was first called into being. From the outset we realized that having had the good luck or the ill luck--one hesitates to say which--to evoke such powers, it became our duty to control them rigidly. For that purpose, we formed ourselves into a kind of International Conscience, on lines not dissimilar to the ill-starred League of Nations, which failed, as one is bound to believe, mainly because of the short-sighted policy of my own country. That, however, is still a sore subject upon which we won’t enter here. To return to our Society, it was born when some of us realized that the science of destruction had become such a dire menace to mankind that something must be done to keep its latest achievements out of the hands of any one particular government.”

“For the reason, I presume,” said Endor, “that no individual government, in such a world as the present, could be trusted to wield such powers rightly?”

“Quite so.”

“One is interested to know that.”

“We owe it to you, my dear Endor,” the American continued, “that our Society now sees that it has been working on wrong lines. The wisdom of using its own terrible secrets to enforce its aims has, some of us think, very properly been called in question. Before, however, the Council of Seven abolishes the present constitution it insists that its decree in regard to Saul Hartz be carried out.”

Endor dissented strongly.

“Surely,” said Hierons, “that position is not illogical. The death of this man is on all grounds desirable. He stands condemned in strict accordance with laws to which you have yourself most solemnly subscribed.”

“I know, I know,” said Endor.

“Moreover, the task falls upon you. And the means are in your hands. Nothing could be simpler or easier than what you have now to do. Will you not help us all by fulfilling your oath?”

“That’s quite impossible,” said Endor. “No one could welcome the limiting of the Society’s functions more earnestly than myself, but rather than take the life of another, in such circumstances, I am fully prepared to take my own.”

“All of us,” said Hierons, “are particularly anxious that your life shall not be sacrificed. We recognize that in the immediate future it is likely to be of signal use to the world. But, unhappily, there can be no going back on the Society’s laws. The Council of Seven is bound to insist that its decree be carried out within the time appointed.”

“Not by me,” said Endor, flatly. “That cannot be. And, as I say,” he added, “I am quite ready to accept the alternative. It is no more than a just penalty for tampering with forbidden things.”

“Don’t forget that the world can ill spare you.”

“If that is a true estimate of one’s worth, it is for the Council of Seven not to forget it.”

Hierons glanced furtively at Helen, who stood pale and rigid, a figure of tragedy. The silence which ensued was painful to all three. And then Hierons said suddenly, “Tell me, where do you keep the phial that was given you by Lien Weng?”

“There, my friend.” With a cool laugh that had a note of defiance, Endor pointed to a safe at the other end of the room. “That is the only place for such a diabolical contrivance. No wonder,” he added, “that the Society of the Friends of Peace has been able to give the police cold feet.”

Hierons agreed. “But please,” he said, “do it the justice of remembering that in the first instance it was formed to meet the situation to which this and kindred discoveries have given rise. And please remember, also, that we of the white races, although this particular discovery is not really ours, are determined to the utmost of our power to keep it under strict control.”

Endor smiled sadly, and shook his head.

“Awful possibilities have been opened up, I grant you, but, please God, the world at large may trust those whom the Society shall choose not to fail in their task. I hope you agree that such a task is safer in private hands than in those of any government.”

“I wonder!” said John Endor.

A further long pause followed. And then George Hierons said, in a tone which in such circumstances seemed rather careless, “If you are not going to make use of the phial you had better give it to me.”

Endor looked keenly at the American. “In order,” he said, choosing each word with care, “that you may use it in the breaking of the Sixth Commandment?”

Hierons did not deny that such was his intention.

“No, no, my friend,” said Endor, decisively. “I cannot aid and abet you in doing that which I will not do myself.”

“But that is surely extreme,” said Hierons, with a touch of impatience. “Please give me the phial that I may do with it as I choose. Even if there was time to procure a second phial before the term expires, the laws of the Society make it impossible for one to do so. The code which governs the use of this weapon is very rigidly enforced.”

“I am glad to know that such is the case,” said Endor, grimly. “And I fully appreciate your own courage and self-sacrifice. But, as I say, I cannot help you or any one else to do that which my conscience will not sanction my doing myself.”

“Don’t be quixotic,” said Hierons, with growing impatience. “As far as one can see, this is the only possible way out.”

Endor, however, was a rock. “I cannot, I will not, lend myself to cold-blooded murder. It is true that at a time of severe overstrain, I made certain vows. And it is true that I have chosen to break them. But having done so deliberately, I am now ready to pay a full price for the privilege.”

Such a finality of tone moved Helen to tears. Hierons, also, was deeply affected.

“You ought to think of others,” said Helen, piteously. “The world must not lose you. Does your life, your work, mean nothing?”

Endor raised his hands to his face with the gesture of a man driven beyond his strength. But he did not speak.

As Helen and George Hierons stood watching him, a sense of utter despair came upon them. They now shared in common a desolating thought. Even in a world in which Good was submerged, it seemed possible to pay too high a price for the hope of dethroning Evil.

LIV

Helen and the American had a sudden craving for fresh air. For both the restriction of four walls had grown intolerable. Endor’s wife begged her friend as he was leaving the house to let her walk with him some of the way towards his hotel.

Hierons readily assented.

Devoured by pity for a brave woman, he was also devoured by pity for a brave man. Loyal as he was to the Society which he had sincerely believed to be necessary to the world’s governance and which he had done as much as any man to call into being, he saw now that its methods had been pushed too far. But with bitterness of soul he realized that he could do nothing. Like Endor himself he was caught in a tragic coil of Fate’s weaving.

The morning was fine, the pavements were dry, and the sky was reasonably clear for December in London. For some time they walked in silence. They had become great friends, these two. There was more between them than the tie of nationality. On vital issues their minds marched together. Their outlook on life was the same.

“This horrible coil,” said George Hierons at last, “began first to be woven when America declined to enter the League of Nations. Her arguments, at the time, were no doubt strong, but she was not able to see far enough.”

Helen sighed. “To me,” she said, “the inability to see far enough begins to seem the universal tragedy, common to each individual life and to the life of every nation.”

Hierons agreed. And he added with an air whimsically prophetic: “Man being as he is in the world that we know, it is a tragedy for which there can be no remedy. Even the wisest people have to improvise their actions from day to day, without knowing or being able to guess what their re-percussion will be.”

Slowly they walked along Knightsbridge, past Hyde Park Corner into Piccadilly. As they approached the Ritz, which was on the other side of the road, the eyes of both were most oddly caught by a sight that held them fascinated.

They had grown alive to the fact that Saul Hartz was stepping off the pavement immediately in front of them. In spite, almost in defiance, of a flux of traffic, the Colossus made a bee line for the opposite side of the street. With a glossy silk hat tilted at a rather rakish angle, the fur coat of the plutocrat and an umbrella with an ivory crook depending from his right arm, his progress almost into the very jaws of the swift-moving buses and motors was so arrogant, so inhumanly cool, as to be sublime.

Oddly enough the thing which really fixed the eyes of the two spectators was the umbrella with the ivory crook. It hung so negligently from the arm of the great man that just as he was about to put off to the farther shore it threatened to drop from its perch. With a quick motion Saul Hartz re-grappled it to his arm.

Helen and George Hierons, their eyes and thoughts in the spell of a single image, halted for nearly a minute, yet without speaking a word, to watch the Colossus cross the wide road and enter the hotel. Still without speaking, but with an unforgettable picture in their minds, they resumed their walk as far as the corner of Dover Street.

“Thank you for bearing with me so far,” said Helen offering her hand.

“Won’t you come and have lunch somewhere?” said Hierons.

Helen declined the invitation. She frankly owned that food was very far from her thoughts just now.

Both were suffering. The American kept Helen’s hand a moment in his own. “I shall be at my hotel,” he said, “for at least another week. You have only to communicate with me at any time and I will come to you at once--if there is any chance of my being of the slightest use.”

She thanked him.

“In the meantime,”--his quiet voice deepened to intensity--“we who share great and unhappy secrets must keep close together in the thoughts of one another. We can but watch out in the hope that somehow--somewhen--a sign may be given.”

Helen was not able to speak. A single tear forced its way slowly along an eyelid and down a thin cheek.

Just as she was about to turn away in the direction of her club, an afterthought, swift and half-formed, caused Hierons still to detain her.

“There’s just one thing,” he said, “that--that occurs to me.” In odd contrast to his habitual air of decision his voice was halting, his words fragmentary. “There may ... may be a possibility ... and yet no ... after all ... it hardly bears thinking about.” In a fashion abrupt and strange he checked his words. “It wouldn’t be wise to....”

Helen looked at him disconcertedly. The man who was speaking was not the George Hierons she knew.

“No, we won’t clutch at straws,” he said enigmatically. “Let us continue to meet the facts of the case. But whenever you want me, ring up my hotel and I will come to you at once.”

She thanked him again. Then she turned and walked slowly down the street.

For a minute or more he stood to watch that tragic figure pass from view. An unspeakable oppression weighed heavily upon him. And then in the midst of it, with a feeling that was half nausea, half elation, a quick thought recalled to his mind that Lien Weng was in London. He remembered, moreover, that the President of the Council was staying at the Ritz.

As if drawn by a new chain of ideas Hierons turned suddenly and crossed the road. One more brief moment of reflection followed. Then slowly and sombrely he made his way to the doors of the hotel.

LV

Helen, in the meantime, had reached the end of Dover Street and had entered her club. It was now one o’clock, but she could not bear the thought of food. Her mind was in a state of such imminent disruption that it seemed to call for every resource of a powerful will to hold it together.

She found an armchair in a quiet corner and gave herself up to the task of calming her brain. A horrible feeling of suffocation came to her, tinged with physical agony. She felt as a mouse must feel when caught in a trap.

All the same, the entire mechanism of a clear and powerful intelligence was working furiously. A very vigorous human animal was at bay. Every resource that her body and soul possessed, and they possessed many, had now come automatically into play. No matter what the cost to others or to herself, she must save the life of the man she loved.

Crudely stated that was the point her overdriven mind had reached after she had spent a long hour trying to dragoon it. At the end of that time she sat down at a table and took up a pen.

She had decided to send a letter to Saul Hartz saying that she wished particularly to see him on an urgent private matter. To this end she would invite him to come and drink tea in her new house at four o’clock on the following Friday or Saturday afternoon. Such a letter was not at all easy to write. More than one attempt had to be put in the waste paper basket before she came near saying in the right way the particular thing she wished to express.

With the letter composed at last more or less to her mind, she dropped it in the post box in the hall and went out of the Club. Turning into Bond Street, she walked as far as a locksmith’s at the Oxford Street end. Here she sought advice as to the means of opening a patent Warlock fireproof safe, of which the key had been mislaid.

A duplicate key was the suggested remedy. Helen thereupon arranged that on the following afternoon at four o’clock--at which hour John was sure to be at the House or at one of his clubs--an expert should come to Brompton Square and see what could be done in the matter.

LVI

The days that remained of a terrible week imposed a strain upon Helen almost beyond what she could bear. On the next afternoon the locksmith came at the time appointed and was able to provide a key to the safe out of the stock of keys in his possession.

As soon as the man had gone, Helen opened the safe and satisfied herself that the phial in its gun-metal case was still there. She had been given to understand that a child might use it, so remarkably simple was its operation. The colorless fluid, rather less in quantity than one tenth of a liter, had merely to be sprinkled on the coat of the victim at a point contiguous to the spinal column. Death would then ensue in three hours or less, without leaving a trace of its cause.

With a sense of grim repulsion, Helen pressed the tiny spring which held together the gun-metal case--a thing of exquisite contrivance--and satisfied herself that the phial and syringe were very much as she expected to find them. Her horror of this devilish thing was very real. But to the best of her ability she had thought out what had to be done. She saw herself as the hapless instrument of destiny. And she had not endured nine-and-twenty years of life without a clear perception of the stern fact that its decrees, no matter how ruthless, how savage, must be accepted.

She now awaited, with every spark of patience she could muster, a reply to her letter to Saul Hartz. He might not even deign to answer it. Or if answer he did, being the man he was, with so many calls upon his inadequate day of twenty-four hours, he was hardly likely to find the time or to take the trouble to pay a visit to Brompton Square. And in that event, which seemed to grow more and more inevitable, what then must be her course of action?

In the grip of a problem that would not bear thinking about, Helen waited, every sense astretch, for the arrival of each post. Three and four times a day she flew to the letter box, in the vain hope of seeing the crabbed, familiar handwriting of Saul Hartz lying in it.

Would no answer come? In the course of a distracted Wednesday that question became in her mind a specter. In Fate’s hourglass the sands were running out. Life was now so sharp a torment that it was hardly bearable. Strong her will yet was and, in spite of all, her faith still firm. And at the beck of some power, not herself, she was called to play a part which she believed to have the highest sanction.

In the last resort, she was sure that the movements of the Colossus, whose shadow might soon be lying athwart the whole world, must be determined by Fate itself. Was God’s hand strong enough to direct this man to her house at the time she had proposed? It was the sense and the knowledge of ultimate things which kept Helen sane in the course of the intolerable hours of that Wednesday night.