After Mr. Gage had gone, Saul Hartz sat some time at his table in deep
thought. Then he began to pace the room slowly and heavily, in a state
of indecision quite alien to his character. Finally, by pressing the
bell once, he summoned Helen Sholto from the next room, issued a few
brief but clear directions in regard to the pile of letters on his
table, taking care, however, as he did so, to assure himself that the
most important one was in his coat pocket. And then putting on overcoat
and hat he affirmed his intention of lunching at the Imperium Club and
the probability of a return to the Office about four o’clock.
Mr. Hartz’s slow walk from Fleet Street along the Strand across
Trafalgar Square was without real incident until he reached Pall Mall.
At various points along the route it was illuminated by flaming news
bills, his own and his rivals’, proclaiming “Mysterious Death of Famous
Labor Leader.” At the very dangerous corner, however, where the Carlton
Hotel debauches from the Haymarket, and where more than one recognized
ornament of human society has paid toll to Moloch in his modern guise,
the Colossus came within an ace of being cut off.
A mechanical contrivance propelled by a simian shape in oilskins and a
peaked cap, one of Plato’s two-legged animals without feathers, crashed
round the fatal corner almost at the precise instant that Saul Hartz,
fathoms deep in thought, incautiously left the pavement. How he managed
to escape being run over was purely a matter for the ironical deities
who had his affairs in hand. Escape he did, however. And so rudely had
his powerful mind been summoned to the needs of the moment that he was
able to observe that the engine of destruction was armed fore and aft
with placards, bearing the single word