Perhaps the first emotion to arise in the outraged being of the
Colossus was regret that he had not recovered quickly enough from his
shock to take the number of this friend of progress. It would have been
pleasant to deal with the creature in due season; but if such a feeling
was ever there, it was superseded immediately by a sense of pride. As
usual, the U. P. was living up to itself. The efficiency of the grim
monster that had been created by his severely practical genius was
ruthless, astonishing, without a flaw. Only a very little reflection
was needed for the mind of Saul Hartz to set the incident in true
perspective. The achievement of this obscure servant of the U. P. was
not a matter for censure. To dash round the Haymarket corner at midday
without warning, at the rate of twenty miles an hour, was praiseworthy
in the highest degree. Feats such as that, on an ever-ascending plane,
without a thought for the rights of others, had enabled the U. P.
to declare, as usual, a dividend for the last financial year of one
hundred per cent, free of tax.
Difficult as it was to know why at that moment the mangled form of the
Colossus was not on its way in a wheeled ambulance to Charing Cross
Hospital, he was not a man to yield to an isolated fact of experience.
By the time he had passed through Jermyn Street and had made the
perilous crossing to Swan & Edgar’s corner, this minor incident was as
if it had not been. The mind of Saul Hartz was now engulfed in a far
more potent thing.
Near the entrance of the Piccadilly Hotel he stopped and took from
an inner pocket a small address book bound in red leather. Memory
reinforced, he went on as far as the Albany and halted finally at a
door towards the Vigo Street end of that quaint caravansary.
The knock of the Colossus was answered at once by a creature slightly
more odd than his surroundings. A pure bred Egyptian in a neat gray
flannel suit, surmounted by a taboosh, opened the door and greeted
the visitor with a gravely impassive smile. The man, slight of form,
lustrous of feature, had an aloof dignity; he had, moreover the noetic
subtlety of a very old civilization.
“Mr. Wygram in? Give him my card, will you?”
In the presence of such forceful, deliberate authority the smile of the
janitor became a bow. Mr. Hartz produced a card. “Tell him, please, a
very urgent matter.”
The man bowed again. Saul Hartz took this further obeisance as an
invitation to enter. With cat-footed elegance the Egyptian silently
bore the card to his master.