For a space of ten seconds or so, the two men stared at one another.
And then Saul Hartz, once more the human animal, took himself strongly
in hand.
Automatically his fists clenched. A revolver ... a knife ... a
corrosive acid ... unless he sprang at once he would not be given a
chance to get one in before the _Vehmgericht_ put up his number!
“I beg your pardon!” The intruder’s polite voice came not an instant
too soon. “If I have disturbed you I am sorry. I thought this was my
room. It must be next door.”
“An easy mistake to make in the dark.” Almost at once Saul Hartz was in
full command of the situation.
Endor prepared to withdraw.
“Off to bed late, aren’t you? What’s the time?” The Colossus looked at
his watch. “Nearly a quarter to four.”
Surprise flashed across Endor’s dark face. “So late!” he said.
“Given up to high-brow talk down below, eh?” Hartz’s cold laugh did
not try to conceal the sneer behind it. “Setting the affairs of the
universe in order, I daresay.”
The answer of John Endor was icy, venomous, slow. “Of the _Planet_ at
any rate.”
“So!” said the Colossus. “One guessed your program was ambitious. Maybe
you’ll find the affairs of the _Planet_ a pretty tough problem, my
friend.” And there was a challenge in his voice and in his eyes.
Endor’s face grew darker. “No doubt,” he said aloofly. And then,
without another word, he turned abruptly and lurched a little
unsteadily out of the room. As he did so he switched off the light.
The Colossus was able to get an hour or two of troubled sleep. But it
was disturbed by bad dreams. Take it altogether it was perhaps the
least agreeable night he had ever spent. The arrival of his servant at
eight o’clock with tea and shaving water came as a real relief. Never
had daylight been quite so welcome. But it was a prelude to a day of
tedium broken now and then by moments of acute embarrassment. The other
men continued to keep him at arm’s length, and he was at no pains to
disguise that he fully reciprocated their feelings. Besides, much of
their time seemed to be passed in anxious conclave, of which, although
conducted in secret with all the privacy of closed doors, he was not
slow to guess the nature.
As far as the women were concerned, he did not get on much better. His
hostess, a creature of rare accomplishment and charm, was not at all
at ease in her brief and fragmentary conversations with him. By the
others he was frankly bored. They belonged to the pure milk of the
intellectual. Disdaining the feminine arts altogether, they had that
rather distressing mental acuteness of which men of equal or superior
caliber are apt to fight very shy.
It occurred to Saul Hartz, as soon as luncheon was over, that his
wisest course in the circumstances would be to return at once to
town. Sorely was he tempted to this, but to begin with there was no
Sunday train, and even if a motor could be obtained, the journey
was considerably more than a hundred miles. It would be an affront,
moreover, to the hostess, although perhaps the Colossus was the last
man in the world with whom a consideration of that kind was likely to
weigh.
But when all was said, what really enabled Saul Hartz to face another
day of Doe Hill was the situation itself. The feeling obsessed him that
something was about to happen. And whatever the something might be, he
was not the man to shirk it.
The day wore on, however, and nothing occurred. Grim faces, hostile
looks were on every hand, but they did not culminate in any overt act.
And the hostess with her immense social experience was able to ease the
tension a little. But the Colossus provided a rare test for her powers.
He seldom opened his heart to a woman. And with bitter enemies on every
side, he retired very much into his shell. Howbeit, even he could not
resist the allure of Rose Carburton. She was so very much a woman of
the world that in the course of the day, as the crown of many attempts,
she made some impact upon a reserve that was indeed formidable.
After tea, while she was showing him a rare collection of miniatures,
it suddenly occurred to Saul Hartz that through the medium of this
woman there might be a hope of getting a line as to the Society’s
attitude towards himself. Some hint, also, might be forthcoming of the
course it was likely to follow.
Characteristically, he began by asking point blank if she were a member
of it. She fenced adroitly, with infinite wit in the use of the foils,
but he pressed her hard. He meant to have the truth; and the sense of
its importance her dexterity confessed nerved him to tear it from her.
Force of reasoning took it captive in the end, not that the penetration
of a Solomon was called for in the process.
“And what, pray, do you think you are going to achieve with your mumbo
jumbo?” he asked, suddenly spinning the button off his foil. “It
is wrong in ethics, it stands outside the law, it is an affront to
religion, it is opposed to the deepest instincts of the human race.”
Mrs. Carburton said cautiously that the rules of the Society did not
permit its case to be argued. But its members sincerely believed that
by fearless coöperative action they could do permanent good to the
world.
Saul Hartz took leave to doubt it. And to kill a man because one did
not happen to agree with his opinions, gloss it over as one might, was
simple murder.
“But does it kill people?” said Mrs. Carburton, with a slow and steady
widening of fine gray eyes.
Was this real innocence? Or did she merely think him a fool? His stern
eyes questioned her candid ones, but they told him nothing.
“In effect,” said Saul Hartz brutally, “this Society is a murder club.
Barely a fortnight ago the unfortunate Garland was done to death by it.”
“A coroner’s jury,” said Rose Carburton, “declared William Garland’s
death to be from an unknown cause.”
“The cause is not unknown to the Council of Seven.”
“I do not belong to the Council,” said Rose Carburton simply. “No woman
does. But speaking as an ordinary member of society--we’ll dispense
with the ‘the’--from the bottom of my heart I rejoice that a man so
infamous as William Garland is no longer able to do harm to his fellow
creatures.”
“Infamous is a strong word.”
“No man ever won a better right to it than William Garland.”
“You can only know that by hearsay--even granting, as one may--that
Garland was a thoroughly ‘bad hat.’”
Rose Carburton smiled faintly and shook a mournful head. “On the
contrary, William Garland had a trial long, full and fair, if ever man
had. Evidence was collected and most carefully weighed, and it was
proven beyond a doubt that Garland’s aim was to set class against
class. By making the world no place for honest and peaceful folk to
live in, he hoped to become a sort of glorified Trotzky or Lenin.”
“And on these vague grounds a fortuitous body of persons takes upon
itself to murder him.”
“That is a matter in which one is only too glad to remain in
ignorance,” said Rose Carburton. “But at least one realizes,” she
fervently added, “that the world is a sweeter and cleaner place now
that Garland is no longer in it.”
“It may be so,” said Saul Hartz sternly. “On that point I offer no
opinion. But who and what, pray, is this Society, that it should
arrogate to itself the right to take these extreme measures?”
“It is composed,” said Rose Carburton, “of the ablest, the most
disinterested, the most humane minds of all countries, and, as I
understand, it has one object in view and one object alone--to conserve
by every means in its power the peace of the world.”
Saul Hartz laughed contemptuously. “As though by carrying on a private
vendetta, it can do anything of the kind.”
“It does not aim at reprisal. Personal animus has no place in the
scheme. In sum it is the last resort, the Final Court of Appeal of the
Weak against the Strong.”
“Sheer anarchy,” said Saul Hartz. “It is subversive of every law of God
and Man.”
Rose Carburton held her ground bravely. “It is a heroic attempt to
adjust the balance of power. Certain minds in the world of public
affairs--and it is only one world among many--are now in full control
of the wires which hold society together. These minds stand for
negation. At the beck of private ambition of an ignoble kind, they are
prepared to override all that is human, all that is divine. So long as
they can fill the world with war and the rumor of war they thrive. In
the end, of course, Fate itself will deal with them, but only at an
awful cost to the helpless and the innocent. Had society had the power
in 1912 to remove Wilhelm II and the small group of men around him, it
is almost certain that the cataclysm which has so nearly destroyed the
civilization of the West would have been averted.”
Saul Hartz took leave to doubt it.