Part 18

The next morning, after a vigil which seemed interminable, she was down before eight o’clock. That was the hour, as a rule, when the first post came. Eagerly she listened for the familiar knock. And when, just as the hour struck, the knock was plainly heard, she could hardly muster courage to go as far as the letter box in the hall. Go, however, she did.

There was a mail of eight letters. And among them one, a small neat envelope, bore the unmistakable handwriting which for two days past had been stamped upon the retina of Helen’s imagination.

She tore the letter open. There was a brief line:

“MY DEAR HELEN:

“Yes, certainly, with the greatest pleasure I will come and see your new home at four o’clock Friday afternoon. “Yours always, “S. H.”

LVII

The letter of the Colossus was characteristic. Such cordial simplicity was so like him. In a keen and swift recoil of feeling which cut like a knife, Helen recalled the man as he had always seemed to her. It was a case, if ever there was one, of multiple personality. To her Saul Hartz had appeared a man whose kindliness, charm, generosity it would have been hard to exaggerate. There might have been motive behind it all, but so far as Helen was concerned personally there was no reason to think so. He liked her because he liked her. The human beings for whom the Colossus had a regard were not many, but certainly she was among the chosen few admitted to the sunny side of a nature complex, enigmatic, subtle beyond analysis.

Helen now did not doubt that in sum the Colossus was a bad man; a creature of abnormal powers of mind who owed the workaday world of men and things a grudge for having been born into it. He was a natural enemy, who at the call of a perverted genius was ready to under-pin civilization, that crazy structure, the moment he got the chance. And that chance was surely coming, unless----

His friendly letter in hand, Helen had now to harden the will with a brief restatement of a dreadful plight. She was luring a man who on the surface was simple and kindly to her house in order to do him to death. As she sat down to breakfast opposite her husband and toyed with dry toast and a cup of tea, a ghoulish sense of nightmare seemed to cause the four walls of their little dining room to contract.

John was very pale. He, too, had not slept. At three o’clock he had got up and dressed and had spent the night’s remaining hours downstairs among his books. Helen saw that his hand was trembling as she gave him his cup. He, too, was living on his nerves.

This long-drawn Thursday was for both an intolerable day. They now stood together fighting with their wills against an implacable destiny. John, some instinct told her, was already trying to subdue the whole force of his nature to the thought of death. Precisely in what form it would overtake him or when it might be expected to do so, he did all that he could not to allow her to guess. But in the course of another night in which neither of them closed their eyes, words escaped his lips that gave her a clue to the mind process which in the end would destroy him.

“Macbeth has murdered sleep,” he whispered to her in the winter darkness. “This side the grave, my darling, I shall never sleep again.”

She hugged him close, as a mother hugs a child. Nature, she knew then, was nearing exhaustion. All too soon the will that grappled him to life must relax. And then in a moment of frenzy, of desperation, he would kill himself.

It behooved her, as long as was possible, to delay that moment. Friday was already here. And at four o’clock that afternoon Saul Hartz had promised to come to her. Pray Heaven that he did not fail!

As Helen lay in bed, however, listening hour by hour to the chime of the clocks of many neighboring steeples, she was haunted by a fear that the man by her side would not be able to carry on through the day. One stroke of a razor while he shaved, one step in front of an electric train, what could be simpler? His controls were yielding. Of that fact there were many indications. The question was, could he now outlast this all-important day?

Many times she had urged him to take a bromide, but he had not done so. Such things were likely to prove worse than futile. Death was the penalty he inevitably would have to pay; and his mind and will were at one in that, so far as his soul’s welfare was concerned, it was best that death came to him through his instincts working in a natural and unfettered way.

“If one bedevils oneself,” he argued, “with drugs and potions one may lose control of one’s reason altogether. And that will mean a state of aphasia compared with which death is more than kind. Hell is a mental condition. And there is none to equal that of the man who longs for death and yet has not the nerve to ensue it.”

Helen had felt bound to respect this attitude of mind. But dressing now in the wintry dawn of Friday, the question that harrowed her was, Could unaided nature hold him to his course for another four-and-twenty hours?

Immediately their pretense at breakfast was over, they went to a church close by. Here they stayed nearly three hours. And when they emerged from its precincts into the December gloom, they felt far down in their hearts that at the back of everything was still a Friend who was surely helping them to keep their sanity.

As evidence of this strength that had been given them both were able to take a little food. And then for Helen came the facing of the grim problem--How did John propose to spend the afternoon?

She had hoped that he would go down to the House of Commons. But as soon as luncheon was at an end he retired to the room in which he worked. An hour passed and yet he made no sign of going out. Presently the clock struck three; and Helen, no longer able to bear the suspense, came in and found him sitting apathetically at his table, not attempting to write or to read.

Her instinct for the practical showed her now the paramount need of making up his mind for him. She determined to take a strong line.

“It’s such an unpleasant afternoon that I am going to get you a taxi.”

The eyes he lifted to hers seemed to have scarcely a spark of life in them. “Why--a taxi?” he asked dully.

“To take you to the House.”

He shook his head. “I’m not going there again.”

“Oh, but you are,” she said quickly. “Just once more--to please me.”

The eyes that looked at her were those of a man who was near the end of his tether. “But I said good-bye to it yesterday,” he muttered.

Plain sense now told her that all must depend on the imperious exercise of her own strong will. She left the room, to return almost at once with his coat and hat. “Ferris has gone for a taxi,” she said.

“No, no,” he said wearily, “I don’t feel up to it to-day.”

“Make the effort, my darling--if only because I ask you.”

Loving her as he did, it was hard to refuse. The spirit was willing, but alas he was no longer in command of himself.

“You needn’t stay long,” said Helen beguilingly. “But in the name of that in which we both believe and for the sake of the work we have still to do----”

As one compelled by sheer magnetism he got up slowly from his chair. With resolute deftness she fixed him up with his overcoat. “Promise me that you will take a taxi home again.”

He didn’t say anything.

“Promise,” she gently insisted. “Anyhow, I’ll promise for you. And you’ll come back to me, won’t you? Yes, you will.” She pressed her lips to his cold cheek. “You shall--you must!”

With the same gentle insistence she led him out of the room and through the tiny entrance hall. As if he had been a small child going to a New Year’s party she herded him into the taxi.

As she closed the door upon him, she put her head through the lowered window with a little laugh that was almost gay. “Something tells me that Providence is working for us. Promise me, darling, that you’ll take a taxi and come straight back home?”

As the taxi began to move she ran beside it.

“Promise?”

“I’ll do my best,” he muttered as the taxi began to outpace her.

LVIII

There now remained for Helen the task of awaiting the arrival of Saul Hartz. Four o’clock was the hour that he was due.

The rather tiny drawing room in which she intended to receive him was quite a delight to the eye. It was choice, seductive, trim. Much care and taste had been lavished on the decorations, the hangings, the general scheme. A bright fire burned on a cosy hearth of blue and white Dutch tiles. Everything was a harmony of delicate blues and greens. No room could have been more civilized. It was really fantastic that a creature like herself, one whose mind was humane, creative, essentially modern, essentially sane, should have invited a man to such a room in order to murder him.

That aspect of the case didn’t bear thinking about. And with a courage that showed no sign of failing now the crisis was at hand she put it away from her. She went to the safe in the other room to procure the phial. But as she was in the act of unlocking its heavy door, a paralyzing thought flashed along her nerves.

Suppose ... suppose ... the phial was not there!

It was more than likely that John had now reached a state of mind when he could carry this deadly thing about with him for use upon himself. It was such a simple, convenient mode of exit from the world. As the door of the safe yielded to the key, she had a thrill of pure fright. This new hypothesis had a touch of inevitability that appalled her. But the fear instantly passed. There, in the place in which she had last seen it, was the gun-metal case.

A careful examination told her that as far as she could learn the apparatus was in working order. She took it accordingly to the drawing room and set it on the chimneypiece in a place easily accessible, behind a charming Wedgwood vase. Next it was a pretty little French clock which soon chimed half past three.

She then took up a piece of needlework and began with skilful fingers to weave a mosaic of colored silks. All too soon, however, she discovered that she was not quite superhuman. After five minutes or so she was compelled to put it down. Every nerve in her body was in a state of mutiny.

Several books from the circulating library were on a small table near her hand. The first she took up was entitled _New Uses for the Will: a translation from the Chinese of Lien Weng_. Involuntarily her glance strayed towards the chimneypiece and the Wedgwood vase. The coincidence made her shiver.

She set the book down as if it had been a live coal. Then she got up and began feverishly to pace the room. For one horrid moment she had the illusion again that its four walls were closing in upon her. But it was dispelled for the time being by the entrance of the parlor maid with a silver tray containing tea things.

The clock on the chimneypiece began melodiously to chime four.

“Is that clock right, Ferris?” The high thin voice, as heard by herself, sounded to Helen quite unlike her own.

“Yes, m’m, I believe so.”

“You needn’t draw the curtains. I’ll attend to those myself.”

“Thank you, m’m.”

The parlor maid went out of the room.

LIX

As none knew better than Helen, it was a foible of the Colossus always to be “on time.” Punctuality is the soul of business, she had heard him say was his favorite aphorism.

The minutes ticked on, however, and she listened in vain for a ring at the front door bell. She went up to the drawing-room window and looked down into the Square. The street lamp, just opposite the front door, was already lit. The December evening was fast closing in. She listened tensely for the sound of an approaching car. Her eyes tried to pierce the fog, which after hanging about all day had increased considerably during the last hour.

A quarter past four struck. Helen had now ceased to think of anything she did, but proceeded to draw the heavy curtains across the window. And then guided by the bright glow of the fire she went to the door and switched on the light.

All at once it dawned upon her that now she would have to meet a fact that as yet had not taken shape in her mind. The Colossus might not come. It was so unlike him to be late. And he was such a busy man, with so many calls upon his time, that something might have intervened at the last moment to prevent his coming. But in that case, she argued, man of method as he was and respecter in small matters of the rights of others, he would almost certainly have let her know.

While her mind was busy with these pros and cons the clock moved steadily on. It chimed the half hour. More and more positive she grew that Saul Hartz would not come now. Her mind began to reach out tentatively to meet the new and unforeseen situation. The one hope she had, a desperate and perhaps a fantastic hope, of saving her husband’s life seemed already to have passed away.

She rang for the tea. It was necessary to do something, even if it involved a trivial action, in order to keep a hold of the will. The tea was wormwood in her mouth, but she was able to drink one cup. And then, with the walls of the room closing in upon her more surely than ever, she lay down on the sofa.

The clock chimed five. Her mind grew numb. All power of action was ebbing away from her. She realized that she could do no more. But half dazed as she was by the strong and cruel reaction that had already set in, she yet heard the honk honk of a motor as it entered the Square, followed at once by a sound of wheels.

Intensely she listened for the ring of the front door bell. But she listened in vain. In her excitement she got up from the sofa on which she sat. Hardly had she done so when the door opened, and John came into the room.

He was still wearing his overcoat and hat. In his ashen face was a look of burning intensity. They stood a moment looking at each other in a silence that was rather grotesque.

“Darling ... tell me ... what has happened?”

Endor did not answer the question. Or rather, he answered it by taking from a pocket of his overcoat “the late extra” edition of the _Evening Press_. The front page was draped heavily in thick mourning lines. He folded back the paper, set his finger on the middle column, and then handed it to Helen.

Her head swam round as she read:

TRAGIC DEATH OF SAUL HARTZ

The salient facts of the occurrence were that

| about three o’clock this afternoon, shortly | | after leaving the Imperium Club in Pall Mall, | | Mr. Hartz was run over and instantly killed. | | According to eye-witnesses of the accident, | | which took place at the bottom of the Haymarket, | | Mr. Hartz was in the act of crossing | | from the Carlton Hotel, when he dropped his | | umbrella in the roadway. As he stooped to | | retrieve it he was knocked down by a newspaper | | van belonging to the Universal Press | | which came round the corner at that moment. |

The uncanny silence which gripped them was broken at last by Endor’s high-pitched laugh. “First with the news as usual,” he said.

Helen could not speak.

“There is a God after all!” said Endor.

The still half-terrified eyes of Helen strayed from the ashen face of her husband, in which a new light was breaking, to the chimneypiece and its blue Wedgwood vase. “I wonder,” she gasped, “I wonder!”

THE END

FOOTNOTE:

[A] See _The Undefeated_.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

Archaic or alternate spelling has been retained from the original.