Part 8

The U. P. freely circulated Mr. Endor’s contradiction. It ate in public as much humble pie as was consistent with a sense of dignity. The _Planet_, that high-toned newspaper associated itself with this belated apology to Mr. Endor, but at the same time covered its tracks in its own inimitable fashion, by drawing a moral and adorning a tale. A trivial episode in the career of a minor politician had already had more attention paid to it than its nature called for in these strenuous days!

In regard to Helen Sholto, new difficulties arose. She had declined on any terms to take charge of the new journal for women. It had not been easy to make up her mind, since none knew better than she what a prize she was giving up. Nor was it easy for Saul Hartz to yield to this decision. A man of imperious will, the habit of gratifying it had become second nature. For once, however, he had gone the wrong way to work. He had counted on being able, in the last resort, to force the hand of an ambitious and brilliant woman. When squarely put to a choice between a ruined John Endor and a triumphant U. P. with the advantages of the one, and the disabilities of the other in the scale, he felt pretty sure that common sense must gain the day.

That it had not done so was annoying. He had the highest opinion of this young woman. Emphatically she was beginning to count with her own sex. An agile pen, a clear perception, a quick tongue, a fine presence were winning an ever-growing authority on the lecture platform and in the press. Maker and unmaker of reputations, as the Colossus secretly flattered himself that he was, it went to his heart that one to whom he was ready to offer a crown should cross over to the camp of a weak and insignificant enemy--an enemy who, in point of fact, was already broken.

Moreover, she had resigned her position in the Office. That she was still there was because Saul Hartz was entitled to claim due notice of the termination of the contract. But there was no open breach in their relations. Even if his misprison was as grave as John Endor declared it to be, and now that Helen’s eyes were open, all things conspired to make the fact more credible, she could not forget the past, nor could she quite overcome the curious power of the man himself.

Much was about to happen to John and Helen, and to this subtle foe who was bent on the destruction of the one, and who, besides, was fully determined that the other should be made to serve his will. Ten days passed, however, without a hint of the cards that destiny was about to play. In the Office things went on as usual. Saul Hartz was inclined to believe--like the Iron Duke he was in a situation much exposed to fools he always said--that the mandate from the Council of Seven was a hoax and that there would be no developments, when the time came to keep his week-end engagement at Doe Hill.

XXIII

On Saturday afternoon Saul Hartz left London by the 3:20 from Paddington. It was a long and full train and the Colossus whose habit was to travel _en prince_ whenever possible, had, in spite of all that his equerry could do, to share a carriage with other passengers. Slight attention was paid to these. Acutely observant on occasion of the world around him he could also be the reverse. And now as he entered the compartment and took the seat that had been retained for him in the corner next the door, he gave to his fellow travelers, of whom there were three, a glance so perfunctory that it told nothing. He proceeded to immerse himself in a memoir of a publicist lately dead whom he had intimately known. It amused him to compare his own estimate of the man with that presented to the world in this official biography.

When the train stopped at Slough, two of the other occupants of the carriage got out, leaving the one who remained in the corner farthest from Saul Hartz. At first, the Colossus paid him no more attention than before, but as the train began to move out of the station, he chanced to look up from the book whose naïveté had palled already, and suddenly caught the eye of his fellow traveler.

It was the eye of John Endor.

The two men had a nodding acquaintance with each other. All the personalities of the time were known to Saul Hartz. He went everywhere, he rubbed shoulders continually with the celebrated, the notorious, in fact with all the members of that heterogeneous body who from whatever cause are large in the public eye. John Endor was not yet forty but he was a figure already in the life of the time.

The Colossus never forgot a face. And he never forgot any material fact that was involved in the process of recognition. His glance was held at once, less by John Endor than by an ugly bruise above the right eye. Seeing it, he gave a slight start. Involuntarily his gaze fell to the eyes beneath, and again he started, this time, at their look of open, implacable enmity.

Saul Hartz smiled. On all occasions his power of recovery was automatic. As became one who saw himself as a modern dictator, he allowed nothing to come between the wind and his nobility.

The eyes of John Endor would have quelled a lesser man. They merely goaded the Colossus into action.

“I wonder if we are going to the same place.” Hartz’s voice, which seldom rose above a husky wheeze and yet had the power of carrying a great distance, had a note of half insolent _bonhomie_. It had, too, the complacence of one who does not disguise that he has sized up all things in the visible universe. Not for him the irritating reserves, the conventional glosses of “the English gentleman.” Sublime faith in himself and a stupendous power of will enabled him to ride straight at every obstacle in his path. He knew that he could and would surmount it.

No answer having greeted his remark, the Colossus slowly repeated it.

“Mr. Hartz?” The tentativeness of John Endor was emphasized by a quick fall of the eyelids.

The owner of the _Planet_ smiled affirmatively. “My first visit to Doe Hill,” he said. “A beautiful Tudor house, I’m told. I suppose you know it well.”

“I’ve been there several times.” Endor’s cold politeness let it be seen that he was not in a mood to talk. “Shakespeare and the musical glasses.”

The Colossus, however, declined to be put off. He had things to say to this man, and he was going to say them. Between the two was an antagonism that was absolutely deadly, but so well was each versed in the rules of the game that a third person not sharing their grim secret could never have guessed it.

“Who’ll be there?” said Hartz in a light tone.

Endor was unable to say.

“Our dear Helen Sholto for one, perhaps.” The genial voice was full of charm.

John Endor believed not. And to hear that name on the lips of the man opposite was a little more than he could bear. He let down the window with a jerk.

“By the way, congratulations--hearty congratulations.” The husky wheeze floating across the compartment seemed to grow more virile. “A lucky--a very lucky fellow. I hope you know--but of course, you _do_ know--what a prize--an altogether exceptional prize--you have drawn in the lottery.”

Endor returned icy thanks. With all the aristocrat’s power of defending himself at close quarters, he began to feel that the man opposite was too much for him.

“Of course,”--the Colossus was almost like a kitten with a skein of wool--“I shall always owe you a grudge for stealing her from me.”

Gentle, half amused as were the words, behind them was a glint of steel. Endor, in spite of a disciplined will, could not resist its challenge.

“Not quite a pretty way of putting it,” he said. And there was a nip in his voice.

“_Rien qui blesse comme la verité._” The laugh of the Colossus had now a singular lack of music. “Helen Sholto was my right hand, my other self almost. She understood my ways. I don’t know what I shall do without her.”

Endor had only a conventional regret to offer for having robbed his enemy of so rare a treasure. He may have felt that the note of lamentation was pitched dangerously high, or again, knowing this man for what he was, he may have been seeking a motive behind it.

The Colossus, however, with an odd concentration of voice and eye, went on developing the theme in his own peculiar manner.

“She was everything to me,” he said. “Just--everything.”

Somehow that husky wheeze put John in mind of a Californian rattler he had heard more than once in his travels. It now struck right home to his heart.

“Everything is a big word.” He tried to keep his voice level, but restrain himself as he might he was beginning to see red.

“A big word--yes--I agree.” The wheeze became a snarl of subtle contempt. “But in this case it’s the only one you see.”

Helen’s lover had an illusion of fangs striking his flesh.

“What do you mean?” he demanded with savage eyes.

Saul Hartz shrugged contemptuously and spread his hands like a stage Frenchman.

In the vain hope of freeing his veins of a poison, Endor repeated a futile question. With a skill, in itself a mockery, his enemy tossed it lightly into the air.

“Isn’t it better in some cases,” he said, picking each word with the fetid delicacy of a Baudelaire, “to leave, my dear friend, just a little to the imagination?”

The words in the ear of John Endor were those of a devil. He could but gasp. There was no mistaking their implication. Looking squarely across at the man seated in the far corner of the carriage, he saw the image of one capable of doing evil for the love of it. A monster of wickedness confronted him. But in this moment of suffering, his thought was less of the woman he loved than of the country he adored. By what cruel turn of Fate’s shuttle had she, the conqueror of half the world, been conquered by antichrist himself?

This secret power behind the great movements of the time, this framer of policies, foreign and domestic, this boss of all bosses, this big serpent who swallowed the little serpents, what a commentary he was on the world that he governed! Was it possible, that in the act of recoil from the highest moment in her history, Civilization should now be in bondage to a mere beast!

Still looking at the hooded eyes of the man opposite, a strange light came into those of John Endor. As in a glass darkly he saw the final degradation, the ultimate doom of the thing he loved beyond all other things. “One with Nineveh and Tyre.” How often had antichrist, and with what a gusto, blazoned these words in the pages of his own newspapers. He even printed them in Greek on appropriate occasions. Cynicism raised to this power was the perquisite of no common man.

Man he hardly seemed to be as there he sat, looking at the light in the face of John Endor and yet characteristically heedless of its cause. Truly, the mind becomes subdued to that in which it works! Having, with his insight into modern mechanical conditions, bemused the five continents of the world by diabolonian arts, he saw himself now with the world at his feet, and in his grasp all the strings of the U. P.--that latter-day symbol of the supreme power.

Endor might well despair of his country. A sort of blind fury swept him as the thought of its impotence flooded his mind. Sheer force of will was needed to choke back that tide of rage. The man opposite, reading his heart like a page of news tensed his muscles, held himself ready. Even if the true cause of Endor’s violence was not yet revealed to Saul Hartz, he knew that he had goaded to the breaking point one whose nerves were overstrung.

The Colossus, however, was not afraid. He was ready for Endor’s expected onset. Of powerful physique, in the prime of manhood, he neither smoked nor drank too much; he rode two hours daily and in youth he had studied the arts of self-defense under the best masters.

Let this mad fool come on! He would find waiting for him a pretty old-fashioned customer.

XXIV

Happily for the credit of two distinguished men, the train began at once to slow up and Dowling Junction came in view. This chanced to be the station for Doe Hill. Saul Hartz opened the carriage door promptly and got out. Endor got out too.

Outside, in the station yard, three private motors awaited the train’s arrival. Others of the week-end party were clearly expected. One man, in point of fact, was already in conversation with the chauffeur of the first vehicle by the time Hartz and Endor arrived on the scene. This man, tall and arresting, with the open, alert look of the best type of American, would have been a striking figure anywhere. George Hierons by name, his reputation had spread already through two hemispheres as that of an audaciously progressive thinker; one of a chosen band of pioneers in the world of mind whom many conceived likely to revolutionize modern conditions, social, economic and industrial.

As soon as Endor saw the dominant figure of George Hierons he went straight up to him and with an impulsiveness delightfully frank, grasped his hand.

“My dear fellow,” he said, “how good--how very good to see you! When did you reach this country?”

“Ten days ago,” said Hierons, shaking hands cordially.

Saul Hartz, who had met Hierons more than once in New York, came up also with a salutation. The proffered hand, however, was declined by the American, who significantly turned aside to greet a remarkable personage who at that moment, with slow dignity, was approaching the little group round the first motor. A grave and reverend Celestial, gorgeous in a jacket of yellow brocade, and the regalia of a high and exclusive order of his race, exchanged a low bow with George Hierons. The American at once presented John Endor to this dignitary, but the controller of the U. P., although he pressed forward for the obvious purpose of being included in this ceremony, was left out in the cold. There could be no mistaking the icy antagonism with which both men regarded him; there could be no mistaking that such an emotion was fully shared by John Endor. The manner in which all three moved towards the door of the second motor, leaving Saul Hartz stranded high and dry in sole possession of the first, seemed to drive the fact home.

The Colossus, aware that a public affront had been given him, turned upon his heel not without a hint of disdain. His bearing as he entered the first car, alone, was calm indifference. He cared for none, he feared none; moreover, he prided himself upon his power of wiping off old scores and paying grudges with interest. The car waited a minute or two to give other arrivals an opportunity of joining him. None did so; and the first of the three cars started for Doe Hill with Saul Hartz its sole occupant.

As it began to move, there flashed across the mind of the Colossus the warning of the man Wygram in regard to Lien Weng, the Chinese occultist. And it came upon him now with the force of a definite action. Instantly he knew, without a shade of doubt, that he was in the toils of the Society of the Friends of Peace. Even for one of Saul Hartz’s iron nerve, such an intuition was not agreeable. Too much was known of the activities of the Council of Seven, its far-reaching yet dark power had been too recently demonstrated for such a fact to be lightly held.

Saul Hartz lit a cigar and then gave careful thought to a decidedly unpleasant situation. What should he do?

Uppermost, for a moment, was an instinct to tell the chauffeur to drive him back to the station, so that he might return to London by the next train. Only a madman or a fool would walk open-eyed into a den of declared enemies, particularly when they bore the indelible brand of fanatics and murderers.

There was nothing of the weakling, however, about Saul Hartz. He could never have reached his present significance in the scheme of things had there been any taint of will. Less than half a good cigar was needed to convince him that flight would serve no purpose. Besides, what direct evidence was there? And even if the case was as he feared, soon or late the music would have to be faced. Such an organization, in the light of evidence his own private agents had laboriously collected during the past two years, was too powerful for one of its chosen victims to thwart it by running away and hiding his head in sand.

At the back of everything, moreover, and in the last resort was the _élan vital_ of the born fighter. Saul Hartz loved danger for its own sake. War, in the inmost fiber of his nature, was the sweetest of all mistresses. He was the last man in the world to yield to a mere threat.

Let this _Vehmgericht_ do its worst!

XXV

The reception of the Colossus by the châtelain of Doe Hill was instinct with charm. Rose Carburton, as accomplished a hostess as the Old World could show, had the art of shining like a rare jewel in an exquisite setting. And hers the imperious magnetism to which all men yield. Highly sexed, a siren, an enchantress, she never forgot in mid-career the painfully difficult lessons learned in early youth.

Ridden by no sect, truckling to no class, Rose Carburton cast her net wide. The widow of a man of fabulous wealth, one of her ambitions had been to make Doe Hill the most interesting house in Britain. This she was in a fair way to achieve. At any rate, the representative few of many diverse worlds were glad to visit this famous trysting place to meet their kind.

The party for the week-end was not large but it had been chosen with care. Comprising eight men and four women, at dinner they mustered thirteen. Although the hostess jested gayly, Saul Hartz in his present frame of mind was not proof altogether against the omen. Casting a dubious eye along the table he scrutinized his fellow guests. His gaze was caught at once by the ascetic visage of Lien Weng. The Celestial in the magnificent robes of a high order of mandarins was an awe-inspiring figure. Such a man seemed to bear the centuries on his brow and in the deep lines of an impassive face. He spoke little, but his English was choice, with hardly a trace of accent; his every word was ripe, his every gesture pregnant with meaning.

Seated next but one to Lien Weng was an old gray-bearded Hindu, the famous sage and philosopher Bandar Ali. The controller of the Universal Press, who plumed himself justly on the encyclopedic nature of his mind, knew this old man as one whose name was familiar throughout the East. Opposite was Roland Holles, a combination almost unique, of poet, sportsman, publicist, seer, Kentish squire, and member of an old family who scandalized his relations and alienated his friends by a rooted antagonism to the British Empire. On the right of the hostess was De Tournel, _litterateur_ and _homme du monde_, unsparing critic of all religions and most advanced of thinkers; on her left was Hierons the American. The other men at the table were John Endor and El Santo, the Spanish mystic.

The women, even with the hostess left out, were hardly less interesting; the venerable Marchesa della Gardia who had spent a long life fighting for Italy; the awe-inspiring Madame Kornileff who had braved Siberia for her opinions; Pauline Verdet, widow of the great chemist who so recently had discovered a new element and had forfeited his life in the process; and Ethel Bergman, a woman of vast possessions, only child of a great inventor who had inherited much of her father’s genius. These people, seated dourly round that solemn mahogany, were a company whose significance even a house with the traditions of Doe Hill could seldom, if ever, have equaled.

To a man like Saul Hartz, the range of whose information allowed him to know exactly who these persons were and what they stood for, such a gathering was in itself a portent. So formidable was its collective effect that for once his habitual self-confidence threatened to desert him. As revealed by the tempered rays of the softly shaded candles, there was something sinister in those twelve faces.

The talk at the dinner table ministered to this impression. There was little of the light give and take, of the cheerful wit, of the loosing of the voice for the love of hearing it, peculiar to these occasions. Low tones embodied words weighty and considered; all seemed preoccupied with large issues, grave things.

Saul Hartz was soon alive to the fact that he was rather being given the cold shoulder. In such a picked company of intellectuals, even he might expect to feel a little out of it. Such indeed was his sense of isolation that several times that evening the Colossus was fain to ask himself why he had been invited to meet these people. And for his severely logical mind there could be only one answer.

He could have wished that he had not come. All the same, the love of adventure was rooted in him. And deep in his heart was the arrogance of one who knows that he has the master-key to human nature. No matter how imposing its airs, human nature can never be more than itself, an affair of pygmies. In relation to others, even if they comprised the world’s flower, he saw himself a giant. So far, he had carried everything to victory. All that he handled turned to gold. His was the Midas touch. Let those cranks and visionaries do their worst. He did not fear them; he did not fear mortal men. And they would do well to look to themselves. As controller of that amazing engine, the Universal Press, Saul Hartz firmly believed that he wielded the mightiest power of the modern world.

If the atmosphere of the dining room had been heavy to the verge of the baleful, that of the ancient library, whither the men retired with their coffee and cigars, was no less suffocating. Hartz’s educated palate had been regaled with a _cordon bleu_ and vintage wines, the brandy was old and the cigars not unworthy of it, but, in spite of these things, he was unable to throw off the feeling that a sword was hanging over his head. Somehow, the other seven men held intercourse in a language to which he had not a key. Their words were few and fragmentary, but they held esoteric meanings. As the time passed, Hartz’s conviction grew that these men were assembled for a dark purpose. When at last he decided to look for consolation elsewhere, his withdrawal from the library seemed to provoke a keen sense of relief.

It was ten o’clock. He sought the ladies in various stately rooms, but already they appeared to have gone to bed. Thoroughly depressed by now, the Colossus felt that he could not do better than follow this example.

His bedroom was at the end of a long cavernous-looking corridor. The room was large, magnificently upholstered and full of Louis Seize furniture, an apartment, in fact, which _le grand monarque_ himself might have condescended to sleep in. Yet, to the senses of its present occupant, now so acutely strung, it gave a feeling of the uncanny. Shadows lurked round the canopied bed; in spite of the thick carpet, the floor seemed a thing of echoes as he walked across it; the great shutters of the windows with their look of medieval solidity might have hid some magic casement; above all, the dark lights springing from the black oak paneling were weird and strange. None knew better than Saul Hartz how to ride imagination on the curb, yet as he slowly and rather unwillingly undressed, he felt that in such a room anything might happen.