Part 6

“Wiser, no doubt.” Wygram, politely nonchalant, pointed to the silver box. The visitor warily took a second cigarette. “Garland was the only one of his kind.” Wygram’s voice grew curiously soft. “And his case, looking at it ‘in the round,’ opened a door in my experience.”

“That I can readily believe.” Saul Hartz had no afterthought. “From the details the Office has been able to glean, the full story of Garland’s death might be the biggest ‘scoop’ of modern times.”

XVIII

For a little, while the two men smoked, there was silence. They did not quite set each other’s genius, it was clear. Between them was a subtle antagonism, which yet on both sides did not deny a claim to respect. Saul Hartz, at any rate, had now modified considerably his first estimate of “the pseudo-oriental.”

“There’s a second question I hope you’ll not mind my asking,” he said at last. “Do you know exactly what agent was used to compass Garland’s death?”

“Oh, yes.” Wygram’s tone removed every shred of doubt from the mind of his questioner.

“Your information would be of considerable value to--shall we say--the police?”

“The police are in possession of it,” said Wygram unconcernedly.

“May I ask how you know that?”

“I have been acting for them.”

Hartz was at once alive to the significance of the statement. “Are you at liberty to disclose the full extent of your knowledge?”

“At liberty, yes,” was the cool reply. “I never, in any circumstances, touch a case without retaining complete liberty of action. But in this affair, I am not inclined to communicate what I know to a private person.”

“Why not?”

“It would be against the public interest.”

“So say the police. By the way, when were you called in?”

“This morning--at two o’clock.”

“It hasn’t taken long to get at the facts.”

“A mass of data was available from those other cases.”

“Yamotoga and Kornichef?”

Wygram’s calm avowal of full knowledge of those dark affairs which so deeply stirred a section of the world had a palpable effect upon Hartz. But he went on with his catechism.

“Were you allowed to examine the body?”

“I was.”

“Were you able to tell the police the exact cause of death?”

“Oh, yes.”

It went against the grain for Saul Hartz to believe that Wygram spoke the truth, but tone and manner overrode all doubt. He was piqued by the discovery. For once, that proud creation of his own, the U. P. secret service, was at fault. It was far from pleasing to the Colossus that persons there were in the realm so much better informed than himself.

One fact clearly emerged. Report, for once, had not overpainted the attainments of this man Wygram. How to make use of them was the problem for his visitor. The man was determined to lock away his knowledge. It was plain that he set more store by the police than by the U. P. But the Colossus had made up his mind already that so valuable an ally must be lured on to his own side.

With that end in view, Mr. Hartz produced at this point the Society’s letter with its sinister black seal and mourning border.

He handed it to the man on the ground.

Wygram read the letter. Then he held it up to the light, also its envelope. His next act was to pass his fingers delicately over the surface of both.

“May I tear a little off?”

Permission was readily given for him to do so.

“Chinese,” was Wygram’s comment as he rubbed a small piece between his thumb and first finger. “It doesn’t mean very much.” Wygram negligently tossed two or three tiny fragments on to the carpet. “However, it serves to confirm a theory which is not going to mean very much either, but is certainly a sidelight on a most unpleasant affair.”

“I hope you’ll be as explicit as you can.” Saul Hartz was now betraying a little anxiety. “It may be that I have something at stake.”

“You have a good deal at stake.” Wygram was not one to temper the wind to the shorn lamb.

“Do you think you can help me?”

Wygram shook his head. “No,” he said. “This is a matter in which one person only can help you. That person is yourself.”

Such an answer was eminently unpleasant to Saul Hartz. His voice grew harsh and domineering. “I don’t intend to let myself be intimidated by any sort of mumbo jumbo--if that is what you mean.”

“William Garland used almost those identical words in this room less than a week ago.”

The Colossus, in spite of the fact that Wygram’s piercing black eyes were fixed upon his face, could not repress a shiver. “Won’t you tell me,” he said in a lower tone, “exactly what you are able to deduce from this letter and this envelope?”

Wygram pondered. “At this stage,” he said slowly, “it would be premature, it would serve no purpose, and perhaps it might be unkind.”

“Trying to give me cold feet, eh?” The voice of the Colossus again grew harsh.

“That is what I want to avoid. At the same time, if you value your life, don’t make Garland’s mistake.”

“What was Garland’s mistake?”

“He defied the Council of Seven.”

Saul Hartz lifted an imperious chin. “What exactly do you mean by that?”

“The Society prescribed for Garland a certain course within a certain time. His only chance of life was to follow it, but that was a fact he chose to ignore.”

“No course has yet been prescribed for me, at any rate.”

“It will be.”

The Colossus folded his arms with a gesture of defiance. “That remains to be seen,” he said.

“You are bound to hear more of this matter.” Wygram toyed with the paper that was still in his hand. “The Society of the Friends of Peace has made up its mind to break you.”

“If it can.”

Wygram’s eyes were fixed once again upon a face which was betraying signs of an ever-deepening conflict. “That hardly admits of doubt,” he said in a low, solemn voice.

“Nonsense ... nonsense!” The manner of the Colossus was that of one struggling to throw off an evil dream. “I refuse to be intimidated by this sort of deviltry. I and my papers, I and my world-wide organization, will fight this _Vehmgericht_. We will scotch and kill it with the resources we command.”

“I hope you may.” Wygram weighed his words coolly. “Of two evils it is well to choose the less. And that is saying much. For the U. P. is a foul blot enough on our civilization, heaven knows. And you yourself, sir, as I see you, are a sort of third-rate antichrist....”

“Thank you!”

“A Napoleon _in pétto_, but a dire menace, all the same, to the peace of the world. Still, your wings are about to be clipped and that is reason enough for honest men to rejoice.”

Saul Hartz resented these words deeply, but his arrogance was too great to allow the fact to appear in his manner. His laugh had even a ring of good humor. Wygram, fully bent on taking the measure of the man, did not let that laugh escape him. He rather liked the fellow for being able to indulge it at such a moment. After all, this brummagem Colossus might be of larger mold than on the surface he seemed.

One thing was clear. They were well met, these two. Each sought to assay the other, and if possible, transmute any residuum of exact knowledge into power.

“You are out of sympathy with my aims and ambitions.” The mildness of Saul Hartz had quite an apologetic sound. “But don’t for that reason blind yourself willfully to the fact that the remedy we are up against is far worse than the disease.”

“I wonder!”

“You needn’t!” said the Colossus, sternly. “This _Vehmgericht_ is trying to put back the clock five hundred years.”

“The U. P.,” said Wygram, “aims at even more than that. It would reduce the whole world to slavery.”

“A mere figure of speech, my friend!”

“We shall not agree. The U. P. is now an international ring of newspaper bosses which has corralled everything that relates to the printed word. Cables, labor, paper, ink, power of distribution--it has cornered them all. The time is at hand when the humblest sheet of provincial gossip will be subject to your veto here, and the veto of Breit in America.”

“Impossible!”

“Nothing is impossible to the big serpent who swallows all the little serpents. His capacity grows and grows. The late war has definitely put back the clock of mankind. Such phenomena as yourself, say the wise, are proof enough that the human race is now past its zenith.”

The Colossus smiled. He was careful, all the same, to veil any contempt he might feel for such reasoning. It was his intention to use this man Wygram, inimical as he was, so far as lay in his power.

“Just now,” said Saul Hartz, “in examining that absurd letter in your hand, you let fall the word ‘Chinese.’ May I ask if you attach any particular significance to the presence in London of Lien Weng, the philosopher and mystic?”

For a moment Wygram considered the question. Moreover, he weighed carefully the range of information of the man who asked it. Finally he decided to answer. “Yes, quite a good deal,” he said frankly.

“Do the police share that view?”

“I believe so.”

“Then why don’t they move in the matter?”

“For one of two reasons,” said the candid Wygram. “Either they can’t, or they daren’t.”

“Daren’t!”

“Very deep minds are in this affair. The human race, as you probably know, is faced with some ugly developments.”

“Of which I am said to be the only true begetter!”

“There are others, less commonplace, in the higher regions of thought.”

“What are they?”

“I am not at liberty to disclose them. But I may say this: your case, Mr. Hartz, has interested me much, and its inevitable developments are going to interest me even more. Therefore, at a later stage, if you care to come and see me again, pray do so.”

The Colossus rose from his cushioned divan with rather a disgruntled look.

“I’m afraid I’ve not been particularly illuminating,” said Wygram with a faint smile. “But I may be able to reconcile it with a sense of duty to shed a little light on your darkness presently.”

“What has a sense of duty to do with the matter?” The Colossus was hardly able to repress a snarl of impatience.

“Of two evils I choose the less. Still, as I say, it may be possible later to modify my views a little. I hope you’ll come and see me again.”

With a courtesy more than oriental yet not wholly free of a natural irony due to the circumstances, Wygram rose slowly from the ground and took leave of his perplexed visitor.

XIX

John Endor had arranged that after his meeting at Hellington he should go on to Wyndham, his mother’s house, some twenty miles away in the neighboring county of Middleshire, and there spend the week-end. Helen had promised to join him on the Saturday. She had yet to make the acquaintance of Lady Elizabeth, but now that the Rubicon was as good as crossed, she was called upon to face the rather dreaded music of the maternal criticism.

As things turned out, this week-end plan chimed very well with the course of events. Thursday was the day of the Hellington meeting; it was also the day of Helen’s powerfully disturbing talk with Saul Hartz. And at the breakfast table on Friday morning, when she opened her _Planet_ prior to setting out for the Office, she received a further shock. Two heavy captions on the paper’s front page at once caught her eye:

RIOT AT HELLINGTON M. P.’S MEETING BROKEN UP

It was no more than she expected. John had been refused a hearing. Missiles had been thrown, and, finally, a hostile mob had stormed the platform. Moreover, in the course of the fierce _mêlée_ which had followed, the would-be speaker had sustained an injury to his head.

On the way to the Office, Helen’s first act was to telegraph to Wyndham for fuller particulars. The three hours which had to elapse before a reply came were spent in great bitterness of spirit. John might or might not be sorely hurt, but this harsh sequel to the wrong he had already suffered was going to make it very difficult to forgive the authors of the mischief.

Precisely who those authors were, Helen, as yet, was in a position only to surmise. The whole thing was a cruel blunder on the part of the U. P. And yet, as far as Helen was concerned, the real tragedy lay in Saul Hartz’s defense of it.

As soon as she reached the Office, she at once pointed out to the Chief what had happened. He professed a sincere regret and promised that Mr. Endor’s denial of his misreported Blackhampton speech, which had provoked the trouble, should be immediately circulated.

“But one understood,” said Helen, “that the contradiction was to appear this morning.”

“You are quite right,” said the Chief, with a fine appearance of candor. “Presently I will go into the whole matter with Mr. Gage and Mr. Fuller and Mr. Bryant. They are entitled to stand their ground. One feels for them--in fact, one quite sympathizes with their attitude--but they must not ignore instructions. Mr. Endor’s contradiction, as I have already promised you, shall be given full publicity.”

“Too late, I’m afraid, to be of the slightest use now,” said Helen, bitterly.

“We’ll hope not,” said the Chief, with an oleaginous purr. “It’s never too late to repair an indiscretion.”

But Helen’s temper showed a rising insurgency. “To my mind,” she said, “the whole thing is indefensible. It’s a blunder or worse, on the part of somebody.”

Mr. Hartz did his best with soft words, but Helen was deeply angry. Clearly he was afraid of losing her and, rather than do so, he was ready to grovel. Several times, indeed, in the course of this painful interview, she was on the point of taking a definite, irrevocable step, but the consummate tact of the man with whom she was dealing was just able to stave off a final decision. And yet, in Helen’s own mind, it was not this diplomacy which really turned the scale; it was, when all was said, a sense of deep loyalty to one from whom she had received much kindness that became the determining factor.

“I understand you’ve telegraphed for further news. As soon as you hear, please let me know how he is, unfortunate fellow!”

With that almost angelic valediction in her ears, Helen retired. But anger, impatience, bitterness were running riot. Her spirit was more than ever at war. Why had she not the resolution to break with this man? As soon as she had forsaken the presence of this spell-binder for the privacy of her own room, the stern question had to be met. A breach was almost inevitable now.

In a state of miserable indecision she returned to her work. But all the morning her thoughts were elsewhere. She could think of little save the answer to her telegram. Just before one o’clock, however, came the welcome news that John’s injury was not serious and that he was looking forward to seeing her on the morrow at Wyndham.

XX

Helen’s brief visit to the country proved to be a rather severe ordeal. It began with a lonely five-mile drive from the station in an antiquated brougham. And, on arrival at Wyndham about six o’clock on Saturday evening, a general state of tension was not made less when she found that John in obedience to doctor’s orders was keeping his bed, and that his mother had mounted guard over him.

Lady Elizabeth was a dragon “of the old school”; at least, that was the effect she contrived to make upon Helen in the course of their first evening together. A masterful dame of seventy, wonderfully active in spite of growing infirmity, it was clear to the guest, by the time she had spent ten minutes with her fiancé’s mother, that she would have a head full of feudal ideas to contend with. For the mistress of Wyndham, beyond a doubt, was a survival of another age. And to the modern mind of an American it was an age of considerably less enlightenment.

John, for one thing, was her ewe lamb. And she had no thought of surrendering him lightly. Far from approving his politics or his revolutionary coquettings with “new ideas,” of all things the most deadly in his mother’s opinion, she seemed to regard him still as only fit for the nursery. He knew little about life, he knew even less about women.

In their first quarter of an hour together over the drawing-room teacups Helen was amused, irritated, surprised, confounded by the calm assumptions of Lady Elizabeth Endor. All her standards of life and conduct were based on a rather remote past. John, who had humor enough to make due allowance for the old lady’s antique flavor, had done his best to prepare Helen for a shock; all the same, a lively sense of the comic was needed in Helen herself to make tolerable that first evening at Wyndham.

Not the least trying circumstance was Lady Elizabeth’s complete and resolute charge of the patient. If he were able to get a good night’s rest and his cut and bruised head became no worse, he might be allowed “up” for a short time on the morrow. Meanwhile, no one, not even his affianced, must venture to disturb the peace of his chamber.

Helen liked not the ukase but she had to submit. She had also to submit to dressing for dinner in a fireless but moldily magnificent bedroom. Moldy magnificence seemed, in fact, to be the note of that cheerless house. It even extended to the dinner itself. Long before that function was through, Helen felt that it was the most depressing and unsatisfying meal she had ever eaten.

Behind the old lady’s chair was a solemn pontiff in the form of a butler: a lord in waiting to a lady in waiting to Good Queen Victoria. A lovely bit of mahogany was before them; wonderful old silver, fine napery and divers articles of “bigotry and virtue” that excited Helen’s cupidity, lay all around; and yet the whole scheme had such an air of historical solidity that it might have come from Madame Tussaud’s, the Wallace Collection, or the Ark.

The fare was so scant that Helen would have had qualms about taking a full share had not her hostess appeared to subsist on hot water and dry toast. Moreover, it was ill cooked, sauceless, uninspired; and although claret was offered with an air that conferred the monarchy of all vintages upon it, the guest regretted that she had not been content with a humble but safe alternative in the form of barley water.

So much for the meal. As for the spirit which informed it, Helen soon found that it was hopeless for a mere “American newspaper person” of no particular social credentials, to penetrate the _chevaux de frise_ of Lady Elizabeth’s class consciousness. To begin with, judging by a stray remark the old woman let fall, it seemed a source of mild surprise to find that “an American” was not necessarily “a nigger” and that “a newspaper person” was not necessarily “a printer.” All the same, when the best had been said and every allowance made for the march of progress for any woman to be actively engaged in earning her own living was to place her in the governess category if not actually to consign her to the lower depths with Mossop the butler, and his highly trained subordinates, Charles and John.

Had Helen been less troubled in spirit, a keen sense of humor would have been frankly charmed by this almost perfect specimen from the backwoods. John himself always alluded to his mother as “a genuine Die-hard.” It was her austere, yet not altogether unenlightened feudalism, he declared, that had made England the country it was. Cherishing her as he did, and the wonderful old island of which she was the flesh and the bone, he certainly claimed for her many fine qualities. She was honest, she was wise in her own generation, she was fearless, she had a downright way of expressing herself, and according to her lights, she was just. All the same, her limitations were many and they were abrupt.

Charm, beauty, information, wit, Helen had her share of these and she used them modestly, but so far as John’s mother was concerned, they made no impact. From his early days at Eton she had mapped out a matrimonial career for her only surviving son. Money he would need and money he should have, even if he must go outside his own class to look for it. No doubt some well-born heiress would come along--Lady Elizabeth might despair of the country but she was an invincible optimist in all matters relating to herself and family--she had heard, in fact, of a nice young heiress in the next county, and John, although his “radicalism” annoyed her deeply, being his mother’s son had merely to cast the handkerchief.

Poor Helen was to learn in the course of the evening that it would not be with the consent of her hostess if she ever became Mrs. John Endor. The wind was not tempered to the shorn lamb. John simply couldn’t afford to marry under ten thousand a year; he had a little, only a very little, of his own, and Wyndham was one of those ramshackle old places, although good of its kind, that was really so expensive to keep up.

John’s destiny, so to speak, was cut and dried--let there be no doubt on that score--although his politics, his general outlook, his “isms” were crosses for his mother’s old age. Indeed, the attitude of Lady Elizabeth to her distinguished son was that of an entirely responsible barndoor hen who, by a whim of the gods, has hatched a peacock. The ideas in which he trafficked were so much colored moonshine, for which she had simply no use at all. She was greatly surprised that Eton and Oxford had failed to knock such pernicious nonsense out of him. _Ne sutor ultra crepidam_ was the motto she believed in. Old as she was, and rather too infirm to wield a stick with the vigor of her prime--the irony of the matter was, that a Spartan parent had always bestowed great pains upon his youth!--she did not despair, even now, of seeing this renegade back in the fold.

At any rate, the renegade’s mother was fain to inform the edified Helen that the knock on the head he had received the previous day from the Hellington miners would do him all the good in the world. “A gentleman has no right to go among the rabble. They have no more use for him, than he should have for them. I hope they’ve hit him hard enough, that’s all.”

Even Helen, a woman of the world, hardly knew whether to be shocked or amused by this downrightness. She compromised by being both. And greatly daring, she ventured presently to take up cudgels for her stricken hero.

Was it possible Lady Elizabeth didn’t realize that one day John might become Prime Minister?

The Die-hard would be surprised at nothing, but in times like these it was little enough to any one’s credit to become Prime Minister.

Helen, a little staggered, yet secretly charmed, did her best to develop the subject, but the old lady would have none of it. Abhorring John’s ideas, she refused to take their owner seriously. The truth was she had never quite got over the shock of his flaunting a red necktie at Christ Church and being called in consequence “Comrade” Endor.

At the back of Lady Elizabeth’s mind, no doubt, lay the hard fact that this Miss Sholto was not the least fantastic of “Comrade” Endor’s “isms.” She had no right to be there, and Helen was quick to penetrate to that cold truth. On occasion, however, she could be mischievous, and by the end of a trying meal she had decided that the only fun that evening was likely to provide would consist in drawing the old lady out.

She fell back, therefore, on tracing relationships. In Helen’s opinion, it was a poor game at best, but it served at least to keep the ball of conversation rolling in the drawing room. Lady Elizabeth’s tree was immensely distinguished; she was the second daughter of no less a personage than the fourth Duke of Bridport.

“My father,” said Lady Elizabeth, “had the name of a very clever man. But his own class never forgave him for introducing what was called The People’s Charter in the House of Lords. He certainly thought too much of the workingman, gave him free education, cheap beer, and so on. My father’s weakness for the masses made him innumerable enemies. People called him Brother Bridport or the Mad Duke. When he left the Tories and went over to Gladstone, even his lifelong friends turned against him, the dear Queen among them.”