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.
Impatient with himself he switched off the light and got into bed. But
never had he felt so little like sleep. Something was afoot in this
old house. Just what it was he could not say, and yet he was sure it
concerned him intimately. His mind was a nest of fancies. The second
glass of port might have been a mistake, or the oysters might have
upset him, for by some means, the room in which he lay was now alive
with the evil spirit of the Middle Ages. Who knew what black arts, what
latent devilries lurked behind its tapestry? Would this ancient bed in
which he felt so uncomfortable be let down into a secret vault wherein
a _Vehmgericht_ was assembled? Would these mysterious walls recede to
disclose a Secret Council in session? Lying impotently there, his mind
grew morbid. He was almost tempted to ring for his servant that he
might have company.
What was in the wind? Downstairs in the library something was afoot.
The frigid politeness of his fellow guests returned to him with new
meaning. All these people, men and women alike, nobly and variously
gifted as they were, had a taint of fanaticism. It was idle to deny
that he was lying in the midst of danger.
A man of less force might have been tempted to blame his own folly in
lying there at all. But Saul Hartz neither repined nor looked back. All
experience was good. This was a real adventure. Besides having at last
fallen foul of this precious Society, soon or late he would have to
face it. So far as he was concerned, it might as well be now. He knew
the grim record of the Council of Seven, but he would not swerve an
inch from the course already prescribed for himself. It should not be
easy to terrorize Saul Hartz. And even if life itself was the stake,
was life, after all, such a very great matter?
Lying there, with sleep far from his pillow, he sought to arrange his
mind and put his affairs in order. He felt it likely that he would
never leave that room alive, but the premonition did not lessen his
scorn of others. For that remorseless mind there could be no hereafter.
The position he took up was that of a philosopher known to the recent
past: “He knew there had been one ice age, and he believed there was
going to be another.” A bundle of primal instincts, he merely followed
his appetites.
Saul Hartz had an appetite for power. Up till the very moment of
entering that room he had considered himself beyond good and evil.
But as he lay, waves of thought leaped upon him from those walls.
Conspiracy was in the air. Certain forces meant to break him. And how
easy to achieve. A drop of poison in a cup of coffee, a knife, or a
pistol shot, a knock on the head in the dark, a push, neatly timed,
onto a live rail of the Underground, and all would be over. So far as
the Colossus was concerned, that would be the end. Let it be so. After
all, he had read the Riddle of the Sphinx. Knowing all, there was
nothing to know.
He pressed a button of his devil’s machine, and wheat rose five
shillings a bushel in Europe; he pressed another button, and half a
continent was removed from the comity of nations. But what did it
matter? In the sight of Saul Hartz the planet Earth was but a grain
of sand on the tideway of eternity. Organic life was a negation of a
negation, yet from the first, he had been ready to pay a full price for
supreme power. But now it had come to him, it wrought no appeasement of
the cosmic sense. Man he was and man he must remain.
It was probable that he was entering upon his last hours, but he made
no oblation to a God in which he did not believe. Pursuing the laws of
reason with remorseless logic, he had made of himself a god. At the
dawn of consciousness he had seen the self in pictures, till now, at
the threshold of the night of time, he saw himself as antichrist. His
brain, as he had always known, was adapted just a little better to the
modern one-hell-of-a-muss than that of any other adventurous insect.
It enabled him to get, with a minimum of effort, all the things he
sought in the material world. They did not bring happiness, but he did
not look for it. Such an abortion as man had no claims to beatitude.
For man in his very nature was a hybrid, a contradiction, a grotesque
in whom the elements must be ever at war. Let him never seek peace on
earth, and as far as heaven was concerned, granting that it existed,
what a place of exquisite boredom it must be!
Long hours the Colossus lay searching his heart and then, finally, he
drew the bedclothes over his head and decided to go down fighting. To
go down fighting--that would be the ultimate bliss for one who made no
terms with life. After all, the lust for power was greater than the
will to live.
Lying there, hour after hour, in the uncanny silence of that room,
the conviction had grown until now it enfolded him like the arms of a
woman, that the sleep upon which he was about to enter would be his
last. This brief but intense review of experience had pierced him so
deeply that it began to seem certain that the end was now near.
At last, he fell into a doze. But hardly had consciousness left him,
when, with a violent start, he awoke. Somebody had entered the room.
The electric light next the door had been switched on. He sat up in
bed to confront a face drawn and haggard, and a pair of eyes somber,
ruthless, terrible.
They were the eyes of John Endor.