Part 2

“There’s not a moment to lose with the U. P.,” she said decisively. “I tried to get through five minutes ago, but the line was engaged. The provincial _Mercury_ goes to press at eleven, and they may raise all sorts of difficulties. After Mr. Sub-Editor Wingrove, one foresees big trouble in Universe Lane. However, the _Mercury_ isn’t the _Planet_. All the same, the U. P. is the U. P., and every moment counts.”

Again she left the table, in spite of all that Endor could do to detain her, gave orders to a servant, and returned at once to the telephone box. Half stunned as Endor still was by the enemy’s first blow, he had never admired this woman’s virile sense so much. What a prize he had won! As the thought came to him now, it was balm for a deep wound. Quite apart from her attraction and her charm such courage and such competence were beyond price to a public man.

Close upon that reflection came one less happy. This rare woman belonged to the enemy’s camp. It was so like the Colossus to have this fine instrument under his hand. Therein lay one of the secrets of his power. And what could be clearer evidence of his Machiavellian quality? How artful the mask he had contrived for his purposes, when even the feminine intuitions of a Helen Sholto were so much at fault that she could bring herself blindly to serve him! To her Saul Hartz was not merely an honest man, he was a hero, a demigod.

By the time he had drunk some coffee, and sipped a little brandy, he began to feel more himself. Better able to look the situation in the face, if not to grapple with it, he began mentally to recite his secret formula. _The gods approve the depth, and not the tumult of the soul._ Never had this incantation been known to fail. More than once, even as a boy, it had enabled him to hitch his poor, at times half crazy, wagon to a star.

It did so now. When Helen returned to the room which the other diners had already forsaken, she found him calm. Her ten minutes’ absence had wrought in him a palpable change for the better.

“Some pow-wow with the U. P.” Her laugh was light, but it could not quite conceal a powerful undercurrent of annoyance. “Mr. Fuller himself! Up till now, one has always had a high respect for his intelligence, but really he can be crass!”

“To order--no doubt.”

“No,” she said quickly, “believe me, there is not the slightest reason to think that.” He was forced to admire a loyalty that would admit no breath of innuendo. “I am convinced it is no more than the red tape of the high official. The truth is, of course, they are all terribly afraid of the Chief.”

“That’s easily understandable.”

“Most unluckily in this case, they simply decline to act without his explicit orders.”

“What! They take it upon themselves to publish a speech that has never been made. And they know, of course, that I have to speak to-morrow at Hellington.”

“Yes, I told them all that. But the rule of the office forbids their canceling a special wire--unless they have Mr. Hartz’s own authority to do so.”

“Quite!” The voice of Endor grew grim. “And they don’t need to be told that it may be absolutely impossible to get that authority by eleven o’clock.”

“Of course. I made a strong point of that. Finally, I got Mr. Fuller’s promise to keep your speech off the machines until a quarter to twelve. That is the very latest moment he can allow. But at least it gives us a little more time in which to do something.”

“Pray, what can one do?”

“We must get through at once to the Chief himself.”

“To Hartz?”

“Yes, to the mountain! Miss Mahomet is now going to ring up Carlton House Terrace.”

Before Endor could interpose any real effort to hold her back, she was off again to the telephone.

The Club brandy continued to soothe his fretted nerves, but the calmer he grew, the higher his conviction mounted that the plot was deep laid, and that one woman, of no matter what will or what capacity, would not be allowed to undo it. All the same, it would be instructive to see how the game was played. The predestined victim could take at least a morbid zest in observing the workings of “the machine.” It had hardly started to move as yet, but all too soon his head would be in the basket.

Helen was back this time in three minutes. She looked decidedly crestfallen.

“Such bad luck! Of course, one guessed he’d be dining out. But they don’t know where. At one of his clubs, they think, and he may have gone on to the opera. Still, they can’t say. They only know that he may return at any time from now on until after midnight.”

Endor smiled rather sadly. “Never mind. Let us accept the omen. There can be no contending with Destiny.”

“On the contrary,” she said bravely, fighting his fatalism, “I have fully made up my mind to hunt down the Chief in the next two hours--wherever he is to be found. Only he can stop the _Planet_ and the U. P.”

“He may decline to do so--even if you run him to earth.”

“But why in the world should you think that?” Her voice was full of challenge. “An honest man is bound--is simply bound--to stop them.”

“I agree,” said Endor, abstractedly. “I humbly beg the pardon of the Colossus.”

“Please beg mine--for thinking--thinking--thinking!”

He kissed her hand. “I’m hardly myself to-night,” he said.

“You’ve had a really tiresome day,” she said, gently; “what with a journey to Blackhampton and back again--not to mention the luncheon, the presentation, and now this horrid affair! You look quite worn out.”

Recognizing that he must pull himself together, he proceeded rather heroically to do so. He was upheld, moreover, by Helen’s strength of purpose, the working of her active will, of her high and keen intelligence. And yet, at the back of everything, he felt that all they did would be futile. This was only a beginning, the first turn of the wheel. Now that a cog had caught him, the devil’s work would go on until his life had been crushed out. But she could not be expected to know that. And in this early phase he ought not to make any such admission, even to himself. It was weak. No matter what happened he must go down fighting.

“What’s on to-night at the opera?” said Helen. Under her chair lay the discarded _Evening Press_. She picked it up. “The Russian ballet. He is quite likely to be there. If he is, he may not be home before midnight.”

For a moment she considered the question in its various aspects. And then she said, “I’d better go there and see if I can find him.”

Endor shook his head. “Looking,” he said, “for a pin in a truss of hay to search for people at the opera.”

“He has a box. More than once he’s lent it to me. If he’s there, I’ll find him.”

A growing sense of the futility of all they could do was now overpowering Endor. But he was forced to admire the noble zeal which was determined not to leave one thing undone.

Knowing argument to be vain, he was content merely to insist upon the finishing of the meal before she did anything else. But it was only under protest that she could be brought to do even that. If Mr. Hartz was not at the opera, the sooner they learned that fact the better.

VI

Endor, against his private judgment and the will of Helen, accompanied her to Covent Garden. She was sure that after such a day he ought to go straight to bed. Curiously temperamental, she knew him to be, but never had she seen him so completely “bowled out.” Like all people who live on their nerves, he was poised on a very fine thread; yet this threat of collapse was hardly justified by the thing that had occurred. He saw in it more than the facts seemed on the surface to warrant. She, on the contrary, was sure that a word from the Chief would put the whole thing right.

It was ten o’clock when they reached Covent Garden. Helen, by dint of tact amounting to diplomacy which she brought to bear on divers officials, was able at last to send one of them with an urgent message to Mr. Hartz’s box. Soon, however, the answer came that Mr. Hartz was not there, and that to the best of the messenger’s information he had not been there that evening.

A rebuff, for which Helen was half prepared, left her undaunted. They turned down the street to Universe Lane, on the off-chance that the _Mercury_ might be able to throw light on the whereabouts of the great man. This the _Mercury_ could not do; nor was the Office itself in the adjacent Cosmos Alley able to provide a clue to the movements of the august controller of the U. P.

“We’ll now draw his clubs,” said Helen, undefeatedly. “He may be at the Game in Piccadilly playing bridge. Or he may be in Pall Mall smoking a quiet cigar at the Imperium.”

Both, alas! were drawn blank. The Colossus was not nor had been that evening at either. “Dead out of luck, aren’t we?” said Helen. “It’s very vexing.”

One other course only occurred to her now. That was to go on to Carlton House Terrace, and if Mr. Hartz had not returned home to await his arrival. They went there accordingly only to learn that he had not yet come in; moreover, so uncertain, as a rule, were his nocturnal movements that the butler did not care to commit himself as to the hour his master was likely to do so. “May be here any moment, miss, or he may even not be here at----” The butler’s discretion did not allow him to complete his sentence.

“Well, I’ll wait for him,” said Helen, with an air of quiet decision, “for an hour, at any rate.” She glanced at a watch on her wrist. “Nearly eleven already.”

She went down the steps to the taxi and John Endor. To him she made her intention known. “And you,” she said, “must go straight home to bed. You are fagged out. Now mind you don’t worry about this. A word from the Chief will clear up everything. Forget it all. Promise me you will. And for my part I promise that it shall be put right. Good-night.”

“But how will you get home?”

“My tube to South Kensington runs till one o’clock. And I’m quite used to being out late. Good-night.”

“Darling!” he whispered, hoarsely. “You darling!”

She stood a moment by the curb to watch him drive away.

VII

As Helen was shown into Saul Hartz’s library a clock on the chimneypiece struck eleven.

“May I get you anything, miss?” said the butler, to whom she was well known.

“Thank you, Jennings--no.” She shivered slightly; it was a chill September night.

Jennings gave the fire a poke and retired.

Helen took a book from a table, turned up a reading lamp and sat down. At first so strong was the current of her thought that she did not look at the book. Her whole mind was fixed upon the forty precious minutes that could be allowed for Mr. Hartz’s return. If he tarried beyond that time it might be too late for him to be of use--at any rate, so far as the U. P. was concerned. In regard to the _Planet_ he might, perhaps, be allowed another two hours.

Severe good sense forbade giving her thoughts much rein. Worry was not going to help. Besides, she had one of those disciplined minds, which, in spite of the moment’s pressure, are not allowed to riot. She looked at the book in her hand. Its title was _Essays in Contribution to a Permanent Peace_, its author, John Endor. Publication was not due for another fortnight, but an advance copy had been sent already to the _Planet_ by the book’s publishers in the hope of an early review.

Coincidence, brain wave, sixth, seventh, eighth, nth sense, had drawn her fingers subconsciously, in semidarkness to this volume. That it was now in her hand was not due to the fact that she had read the title on the cover. The book’s coming open at this particular place was less a fruit of chance than of the fact that a marker had been inserted.

A mere glance disclosed that much of page 204 was heavily underscored in red ink.

“The most acute problem of this vexed time is the ever-growing power of the newspaper press. Legislation of a drastic kind is needed to cope with certain newspaper ‘bosses’ in Great Britain and America and their combinations, national and international, of periodicals, agencies, special correspondents and their sinister antennae, which persistently foul at the source the wells of truth. So long as the infernal machinery which creates and molds public opinion and now aspires to govern the world can be set in motion by the Luciferian minds which control it, minds whose sole merit is a prodigious development of the modern business brain and its infinite capacity for combination and adjustment, hope of a stable peace on any of the five continents of this unlucky planet is out of the question. It cannot be said too often that such an engine as the Universal Press is a power for evil and a dire menace to civilization.”

To the eyes that read these words they were written in letters of fire. They seemed to burn themselves in Helen’s brain. Could this terrible indictment be true? Was it justified? At least it was the considered verdict of the man she had promised to marry. And it was directed against one who had her whole allegiance, one who crowned with a princely reward her loyal labors.

The Chief had many foes. So much was known to her. But like most other people she had been willing to regard that fact as a tribute to the peculiar nature of his talent. Saul Hartz’s enemies were the first to own that his genius had enabled him to get so many strings into his hand that he was able to interfere too intimately with the inner workings of the body politic. He had made such a “corner” in public opinion and the subterranean forces which mold it that he had been able to upset the true balance of government throughout the world. Acute minds saw the time coming when the U. P. would have all nations at its mercy.

Helen Sholto knew that sinister charges had been brought against a portentous machine. But to her they had always remained vague. Now, however, they were taking shape. Once she had heard Mr. Hartz stigmatize John Endor as a fanatic. The moment was at hand when the two men must be weighed in the scales. Which was in the right? Helen felt that her whole career was involved in the answer about to be given.

Under which king, Bezonian? The words seemed to come to her out of the upper air. It was as if they sounded in the delicate ear of her spirit. Before, however, she could trace them to their source she was terribly startled. Someone had entered the room unperceived. With a shiver she woke to a perception of the fact that the Colossus stood looking at her.

VIII

There was something almost feline in the movements of Saul Hartz. So cat-footed was his progress about the Office that he was continually taking his staff by surprise. It made for efficiency, no doubt, this liability to be overlooked and incidentally “to be fired” at short notice; but in the opinion of the more Olympian spirits who lived under his ægis such tactics were hardly worthy of one so august. They were content to suffer them all the same. Saul Hartz in everything insisted on being a law unto himself.

He was very much a law unto himself to-night.

“What do you make of it?” So like the man to get through at once, without preface or apology, to a leading question. The book, at that moment, was the one thing that mattered to the Colossus. “Bright fellow that?” He did not disdain to answer his own question; it was his method, as a rule, of asking another. “But!” He tapped a finger of rue, half humorous, half melodramatic upon the center of an immense forehead, “just a weeny!” As he drummed again an odd puckering of the eyelids somehow became truly comic. “I’m sorry to have to say so.”

Helen rose rather nervously from her chair. She was never quite at her ease in this man’s presence. Few were. Before she could muster wits enough to say anything, Saul Hartz had gone on developing his theme in the hushed, far-away voice which only one person at a time was ever able to hear and yet in the ear of that person every syllable was like a bell. “Madness in the mother’s family. Got his _dossier_--dear fellow! Brilliant at Oxford. At Eton, too. Geared a little too high, just a little too high--that’s all. Great pity! A second Gladstone might have been so useful just now. But”--the shrug of the Colossus almost seemed in the tranced eyes of Helen to set the cosmos whirling--“over the verge already. Dear fellow!”

The finality of that gentle, rather eerie voice turned her soul faint. She could not repress a shudder. The sense of fate as adumbrated in the personality of this man was overpowering.

“Dear fellow!” He developed his theme with a cadence ever-recurring, yet of a slightly fantastic irrelevance, like a _leit-motif_ of the later Wagner. “You’ve seen his speech, I daresay, to his constituents. Proud people--they must be--dear fellow! Mother, you know, was one of the mad Dinneford lot.”

So intense was his absorption in his subject that it might be said to evoke an atmosphere. The room itself became submerged in a miasma that was almost deadly. Helen had a sensation of being stifled by a lurking, unknown force. It was very difficult to interpose a word. By the time she was able to do so, mischief had been wrought.

“Don’t you wonder why I’m here,” she said, “at this hour?”

“To own the _Planet_,” he laughed, “is to wonder at nothing.”

“I want your help in a matter of great importance.”

“Aha!” There came at once an entire change of tone and manner that was charming. “Sit down again in that chair, and tell me just precisely what I can do.” Of a sudden he had put on the cloak of an indulgent father. When he spoke like that to any one, there was no resisting him.

Helen automatically obeyed. “It’s about Mr. Endor’s speech.” She plunged in _medias res_. With those eyes, their light ever changing, fixed upon her, she lost the power to order her words artistically. “I have his assurance that he has been misreported.”

“Ah!” The slight exclamation was curiously, almost affectionately, gentle.

“He’s so upset!” A feminine urgency of tone was the oddest contrast. “Almost every word he used has in some strange way been given another meaning. For instance, the final phrase as given in the _Evening Press_ is ‘I believe in the Sword.’”

“Yes, I noticed that.” The tone had all the kindliness of an old-fashioned pedagogue patting on the head a favorite pupil. “A little bold perhaps just now, but striking ... really quite striking!”

“But it was never used. What he did say was, ‘I believe in the Word.’”

“Ah--the ‘Word’--‘I believe in the Word.’ Quite so. Hardly so effective. Everybody has believed in the ‘Word’ since the time of Moses. But the ‘sword,’ it takes a big man just now--just at the moment--to believe in the sword.”

“He doesn’t believe in it, that’s the whole point.” Helen’s voice grew a little strained. “It’s a mistake, just a ghastly mistake. On no account, he says, must the speech be circulated. It will do so much harm, not only in this country, but in America, where he has so many friends.”

“So many friends in America. How interesting!” Again the head of the good boy received a gentle, fatherly pat.

“Don’t you see--that a speech like that--may undo a reputation--a reputation that it has taken years--years--to build up?”

“You think so?” The soul of a courtier was in the throbbing warmth of that faint whisper. “Well, you are always right.” What in the mouth of any one else would have been a gross compliment became in that of the Colossus a sober presentment of fact.

“It is of vital importance that the speech, at any rate the U. P. version, shall not appear in to-morrow’s _Planet_ or _Mercury_.”

“Quite.” Mr. Hartz nodded indulgently. “One appreciates that ... at least ... one appreciates his feeling about it ... dear fellow!”

“He has an important meeting at Hellington to-morrow.”

“Quite.” Again the indulgent nod.

“And the U. P. must circulate an unconditional withdrawal to overtake as quickly as possible the harm it has already done.”

There was not an instant’s hesitation. “If he wants that, he’s entitled to have it certainly.”

“But there’s so little time,” said Helen urgently. “It is only with the utmost difficulty that Mr. Fuller has been persuaded to keep the provincial _Mercury_ off the machines until a quarter to twelve, in the hope of being able to get your permission to omit the speech altogether. There’s only five minutes now, I’m afraid.”

“Much may happen in five minutes at the headquarters of the planetary bodies.” The playfulness of the Colossus was delightful. It was also reassuring. For it had been said of him that inside five minutes he was fully competent to knock Saturn out of the firmament and put it back again.

“Have I your authority to stop the _Mercury_?” Her eagerness was a little pathetic.

“Why, of course,--of course.” The tone was thistledown.

“If I may use your telephone----” She was on her feet, the woman of action.

“Sit down, please, and go on reading his clever book while I myself speak a little word to the Office. These rubs will arise, don’t you know, in the best regulated families, as Lucifer, Son of the Morning, is said to have remarked on a much-celebrated occasion to President Wilson.” With the air of a very kindly, rather boyish, old gentleman having a game of romps with a favorite grandchild, he forced her back to her chair and her book. And then with a kind of elephantine humor he made for the door.

At its threshold, with a hearty laugh, he turned again. “The revised version of this priceless old-world story is that it was Mr. President who really made the remark to the Eldest of the Sons of Time in old John Milton’s--or was it old John Morley’s?--hearing. However, the point is not material at the moment. A little word with the Office.”

With the pleasant chuckle of one basking agreeably in the light of his own humor, he went out of the room.

IX

When the door closed, Helen began to feel that she could breathe again. The room was large, high-ceiled, well-ventilated; but the Colossus had seemed to absorb every molecule of air there was in it. In this mood of expansion he was truly formidable. No matter what his detractors had to say of him, and they said much and said it bitterly, it was never denied that Saul Hartz was a power.

As soon as the door had closed, however, Helen for the first time in a two years’ intercourse, brought herself to shape a question. Was it really wise to trust this man so blindly? Where there was so much smoke must there not be also a certain amount of fire?

Encompassed by that dynamic force the higher nerve-centers were a little apt to fail. And to submit the all-embracing mind of Saul Hartz to the common scale of right and wrong was hardly feasible. Right and wrong in that paradoxical cosmos of a brain, which yet formed a key to the whole objective modern world, seemed interchangeable terms. She recalled hearing him say more than once, that Right in the midday special was Wrong in the evening edition. Certainly he made a jest of everything. He seemed to believe in nothing, to respect nobody; yet in her dealings with the man himself she had always found him scrupulously kind, wonderfully considerate, nobly generous.

To-night, in this chance visit, she had never felt so much out of her depth, she had never been swept so completely off her feet. John Endor was no common man, but this Chief to whom she owed allegiance had somehow a quality which seemed to raise him almost beyond good and evil.

In a time which to Helen was unexpectedly brief, Mr. Hartz was back in the room. “So much for that,” he said with the light, casual air that was always charming.

Helen rose at once. “Ever so many thanks,” she said, wholeheartedly. “I was quite sure it had only to be mentioned.” A look of gratitude drove the words right home. “And now I must fly. Good-night--and again, thank you.”

The passage to the door, however, was barred, playfully, if resolutely, by the genial spread of the Colossus: “Now please don’t run away. Sit down and tell me a little about yourself.”