Saul Hartz had not long to wait. Almost immediately the Egyptian
reappeared. Without speaking a word he contrived to make clear that Mr.
Wygram would receive his visitor.
The Colossus was ushered at once into the presence of a remarkable
personage. A man about forty years old was seated cross-legged on the
ground, after the fashion of the East, in a room hardly less exotic.
Its cushions, rugs and curtains evoked the Orient as surely as the
tchibouk its occupant was contemplatively sucking and the fumes of the
pungent-scented Arabian tobacco which filled the whole place. The man
who sat on a cushion on the richly carpeted floor wore a burnoose,
slippers and a turban. In every detail of surroundings and pose he
recalled a very different scene, but the dark-eyed, close-shaven face,
in spite of a withdrawn look which lent it a subtle asceticism, was too
fair of skin to suggest an exclusively eastern type.
The keenly penetrating Hartz who had never seen this man before, was a
little taken aback by the sight he presented. Almost the first thought
that entered the visitor’s mind was that he had to do with an obvious
charlatan. The trappings of the East superimposed upon the contours of
the West did not inspire confidence. Yet the reputation of this man
Wygram was such as to make it impossible to dismiss him lightly. Humbug
he might be, yet no one could have earned such a name throughout the
world, or rather the underworld of high affairs, without being the
possessor of qualities which placed him entirely beyond the range of
ordinary people.
All the same a dyed-in-the-wool skeptic found it hard to dissemble a
secret pang which was more than disappointment if less than disgust,
as he confronted this pseudo-oriental with a smile and a conventional
phrase.
“It is good of you, Mr. Wygram, to see me.”
The man on the floor removed the pipe from his lips and bowed slightly.
Between his slender fingers, which were those of an æsthete and an
artist, he held the card of his august visitor.
“Pray, sit down,” he said, in a gentle voice of extraordinary sweetness
as the Egyptian closed the door and left them together.
As Saul Hartz brought his solid bulk very slowly and deliberately to
anchor on the edge of a most seductive divan, he felt pretty sure in
his own mind that already he had this merry-andrew sized up.
The man on the floor placidly resumed his tchibouk. With a grave
absorption, a more than oriental indifference, he continued to smoke.
Evidently it was his way of asking his visitor to explain himself. But
the Colossus could not help secretly resenting this detachment. He was
a very great man. It was idle to disguise that fact. The world at large
was even more keenly aware of it than he was himself; therefore, the
pose of this creature Wygram was a little galling.
Saul Hartz was too much a man of the world to betray his private
feelings. But with an air more rapt than that of any fakir, soothsayer
or mystic, Wygram calmly awaited the declaration of his errand. But why
declare it? A sudden doubt now stiffened the will of the Colossus. Such
a window-dressing fellow was a European or most likely an American,
the astutest kind of westerner who knew how to wear his tongue in his
cheek. Why, therefore, disclose such an exceedingly intimate matter to
one whom instinctively he did not trust; one who, moreover, might know
how, should occasion call, to turn such very perilous knowledge against
him.
It was not to be wondered at that the ensuing silence was not
immediately broken. To Saul Hartz it was peculiarly trying. He was
a man who had a right to plume himself upon the faculty of knowing
his own mind. His fortunes had been built upon it. But now, at this
difficult moment, for almost the first time in his life it deserted
him. Should he confide in this charlatan or should he not?
In the end it was the man on the ground who opened the ball. He
removed the tube from his lips and said with a curious absence of
gesture, almost in the manner of one who communes with the unseen, “I
appreciate your difficulty, Mr. Hartz. But in these little matters,
things are not always as they appear.”
This speech, delicately suave though it was, yet stung the visitor to
words of his own. “What little matters?” he asked, with a sense of
irritation that he knew to be illogical.
“When busy men seek me out,” was the answer, “they desire guidance,
as a rule, in things beyond their ken ... things which have suddenly,
unexpectedly, even terribly obtruded themselves upon their daily lives.”
Curtly, Saul Hartz agreed. This cunning quack was fishing for a clue to
the business which had brought him there.
“You are under no obligation to take me into your confidence.” The
voice was charming. “There was no compulsion for you to come here at
all. And now you are here, you deplore your boldness. The dilemma is
quite intelligible. One even sympathizes with it. But there is a short
way out, if you will but consent to take it.”
“Very glad, if you’ll find one for me,” said Hartz, in a voice that was
half a growl.
“Nothing simpler. Smoke one of my cigarettes and I guarantee that your
path shall grow magically clearer.”
Saul Hartz scowled a little. Even when the man on the floor made a
long arm and took a box of wonderful Indian inlay work from a tiny
table near his elbow and offered it with a smile of rare courtesy, the
dubiousness of the visitor was without disguise.
“No pressure,” Wygram held out the box with an air of delicious irony.
“Quite a free agent, my dear sir.”
Like a swimmer taking a plunge into the Serpentine on Christmas
morning, Saul Hartz suddenly dipped his fingers among the cigarettes.
Moreover, with the faint-smiling aid of his host he lit one defiantly,
and what was of even more consequence proceeded to smoke it with an air
of slight bravado.
It was a powerful, rare, full-flavored Arabian tobacco. Mumbo jumbo,
of course! However, he would humor this trickster, who found it so
easy to deceive the world into believing that he was a wielder of
occult powers. Nevertheless, a dozen whiffs or so cleared the brain
wonderfully. Doubts melted. The mind began to germinate. And the man on
the ground in spite of his queer trappings and his feline ways acquired
a power, an atmosphere, an authority that Saul Hartz had never before
conceded to any human being.
“You suffer from limitations, Mr. Hartz.” The fall of the soft
syllables had a music beyond anything the Colossus had ever heard.
“We all do, don’t we?” he answered, with a first gruff approach to
geniality.
“Yes, but some in a greater, some in a less, degree.”
“True.”
“Even to the verge of platitude! But the trouble with you clean-run
westerners, if you’ll excuse my saying so, is that your minds can only
react to one small fragment of the Truth; and again, if you’ll excuse
my saying so, it is not the fragment that really matters.”
At any other moment, the creator of the _Planet_ newspaper, whose
circulation over five continents was reckoned in millions of copies
a day, would have challenged this statement. A brain such as his
susceptible only to things that didn’t matter! Yes, the usual “gup”
of the inflated high-brow ass. But he was good to listen to, this
pseudo-oriental, for the simple reason that he was clever enough to
keep a special blend of tobacco to soothe, tickle, stimulate the brains
of his patrons.
“You ‘practical’ men, who harness Niagara and dream of making the
material universe your servant, who aspire to shoot yourselves out
of a gun to the planet Jupiter and back again, have got hold of the
wrong end of the stick, if you’ll excuse my saying so. However, that’s
neither here nor there. You are a busy man with only a limited portion
of what you are pleased to call ‘time’ at your disposal.”
“True enough,” Mr. Hartz was now able to muster his own private blend
of raillery. “And you would have one believe that what lesser mortals
call time and space are completely transcended by such a mind as your
own.”
“In a manner of speaking, yes. If one is able to glimpse the Whole
its counterfeits don’t matter much. But as I am sure you are not
particularly concerned with the Realities, perhaps you’ll tell me what
I can do for you.”
Mr. Hartz had now smoked the enchanted cigarette; his ideas were
clearer, his thoughts less turgid, but he was not yet convinced that
any good end would be served by admitting the mysterious Wygram to his
confidence. Still, he hoped for enlightenment, perhaps for a little
advice. Many whom the world accounted wise had bestowed upon this man
undeniable credentials.
The visitor’s perplexity seemed rather to amuse Wygram. “As a proof
of my _bona fides_,” he said, after a pause that held a threat of
embarrassment, “allow me to indicate your business. It has to do,
unless I am greatly mistaken, with the murder of Garland.”
Skeptical as he was, Hartz could not repress a start of surprise. “How
did you find out that?”
“A simple matter. I claim no supranatural power: at least as far as you
are concerned, and as up till now your affairs have been presented to
me. But there is a science of deduction, even if of late years it has
been sadly blown upon by writers of fiction. In other words, two and
two still make four--at all events in a three-dimensional universe.”
Saul Hartz was a little impressed. “You claim access to the fourth
dimension?” he asked, rather naïvely.
“It will be more immediately profitable, I think, if, for the moment,
we keep strictly within the scope of this inquiry. You are troubled by
the murder of Garland. I use the word ‘murder’ advisedly. You would
like to ask why? But let us pass on to its bearing upon your own
affairs. Why, Mr. Hartz, are you troubled by this man Garland’s end? I
hope you’ll agree that it was richly deserved.”
“An arch-blackguard, certainly.”
“And therefore his fate was merited?”
“Ye-es. Perhaps. But I don’t hold with murder.”
As Saul Hartz spoke, a pair of vivid eyes completely absorbed him.
“_You_ don’t hold with murder?” The sensitive lips had a slight curl of
scorn.
“No, sir, I do not.” The emphasis of the Colossus amounted almost to
indignation. “But why take it for granted that Garland was murdered?”
“Beyond a doubt he was murdered.”
Proofs were asked for.
“He was warned by the Council of Seven,” said Wygram.
Hartz gazed intently at the man on the ground. “So you know about the
Council of Seven?” In spite of himself he could not keep an odd tremor
out of his voice.
“Oh, yes,” said Wygram. “Perhaps I know as much about the Society of
the Friends of Peace as any man alive.”
An imperious curiosity suddenly devoured Saul Hartz. “A member of
it, eh?” A feeling of intense repugnance governed the framing of the
question.
Wygram said calmly that he was not a member of the Society.
“But if you were”--Mr. Hartz disdained finesse where his feelings were
deeply engaged--“you would have to deny it, I presume?”
“Expedient, no doubt,” said Wygram dryly. “But I assure you the need
doesn’t arise.”
The heavy face of the visitor lost a little of its gloom. There was
even a light of eagerness in the somber eyes as he said: “May I ask one
question? When Garland arrived here from New York a week ago, did he
consult you professionally in the matter of his warning?”
“He did.” The answer seemed a little reluctant.
“Sought your help and advice?”
“Ye-es.”
“Sought the help you couldn’t give?” The words were almost a sneer.
“But no doubt you were able to offer advice that he was not in a
position to follow.”
Wygram laughed softly. “That is so, Mr. Hartz. But if you hold these _a
priori_ ideas in regard to my abilities why do you come to me yourself?”
“It doesn’t follow that I’ve come to consult you. Howbeit, there is no
harm in saying that I have. But one hardly goes so far as to look for
material assistance from you.”
“In your dealings with the Society?”
The uncompromising question rather took Saul Hartz aback. “I didn’t say
so,” he fenced. “We were discussing Garland. You say that Garland came
to you for advice. May I ask what advice you gave him?”
The answer did not come at once. Wygram drew solemnly at his tchibouk.
After a silence of several moments he said with a cool picking of
words, “Since Garland didn’t choose to follow the advice I gave, it may
not be very profitable to disclose it--particularly as I was out of
sympathy with the man himself.”
“You offered advice all the same.”
“I did. Out of no regard for Garland, with no desire to save his life,
but merely in the interests of the community as a whole.”
“Allow me to put this question.” Hartz’s senses were now strung to the
point of intensity. “Had Garland followed the course you suggested to
him, do you suppose he would have been alive to-day?”
“I think it highly probable.”
“Yet in your view he was a bad man?”
“Had he taken the advice I gave him, he would have been impotent to do
further mischief. But who does take advice?”
“Then why give it?”
“He came to me and sought it. I was enormously interested in his case.
He was one of the most remarkable men I ever met. A creature of rare
courage, energy, force of will, he aspired to the kind of dictatorship
over his fellow men which seems to have such a fascination for half
educated minds.”
“You would rate such a man as Garland among the half educated?”
“Among the rather less than half educated. At best his power lay among
the turbulent, seething proletariats of the western world which enjoy
political power without having to pay for it, among the shiftless herds
which are out to grab the goods and chattels of their more fortunate or
more deserving neighbors.”
“In other words, his aim was to set class against class, so that he
might ride to power on the storm he had raised.”
“_Vide_ the _Planet_ newspaper.” A soft laugh floated up from the
ground.
“Just so!” The owner of the _Planet_ newspaper folded his arms with a
fine gesture. “We take credit to ourselves for revealing Garlandism in
its true colors.”
“And for drawing a dividend from your soap-and-water-using public,
while your string of tag, rag and bobtail prints coax dividends from
the millions who have no use for soap and water but can always afford a
penny, a couple of cents, a few lira or half a mark as the case may be
to have their cupidity pleasantly tickled.”
The Colossus had heard the taunt so often that he had learned to smile
at it. “You do the Universal Press less than justice,” he said, with a
touch of proprietorial complacency.
“No doubt!” The answering smile was a little dour. “But that is between
you--and, shall we say?--the Council of Seven.”
In spite of an iron will, Saul Hartz started at the rather sinister
deliberation of the words. “For the present, if you don’t mind, let us
keep to Garland.” The attempt at rebuke was not altogether successful.
“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.”