At the end of a story which, halting and fragmentary as it was, took
some time to tell, Helen felt shattered. Deprived of the power to act
or to think consecutively, all the force of a strong will was needed to
sustain her. The awful Nemesis which had overtaken a phase of passing
weakness in a good and brave man struck at her heart; but in the end
it was perhaps as much as anything the sense of Fate’s injustice that
roused her fighting spirit.
With all the facts of the case before her, and once the control of her
nerves had been regained, Helen soon made up her mind. Be the cost
what it might, her husband’s life should not be thrown away. By nature
and temperament a woman of action, she was accustomed to reach quick
and bold decisions. And in the moment her resolve was taken it was
fortified by a sudden recollection of Wygram’s final words. “If, in the
course of the next few days, you feel you must have a friend whom you
can really trust, please remember your compatriot, George Hierons, who,
I believe, is still in London.”
Such words seemed truly prophetic. And as they came back to Helen’s
mind, she was upheld by a deep faith that John and she were not to
be abandoned in this hour of strife against the powers of darkness.
Providence was surely at their side. It was working for them. Counsel
and sympathy had come to her mysteriously, but she recognized the
source whence it sprang. Behind the phenomena of appearances there was
somewhere a Friend. And that Friend, whoever, whatever it might be, she
felt was going to help them now.
Luncheon was a miserable and belated meal. For both it was but a
hollow pretense. They were in such a febrile state of anxiety that the
mere presence of food was almost unbearable. But seated at the table,
crumbling bread and sipping water, Helen was able to do a certain
amount of thinking. At the end of this Barmecide feast, when she rose
and left the dining room, a kind of plan was already taking shape in
her mind.
All the facts of the case, which with infinite difficulty she had
been able to drag out of John, were now more or less clear. They were
marshaled in definite order, they fell into a logical scheme. It now
remained for her to act without an instant’s delay upon the data she
had so painfully gathered. And yet to move at all in such a matter
called for rare courage, high devotion.
At his wife’s entreaty, Endor went down to the House of Commons as
soon as luncheon was over. Her clear good sense, upon which he now
leaned heavily, saw that for him in so terrible a crisis the paramount
need was to keep at work. She divined that the only chance he had of
holding on to the will was to occupy himself as much as possible. In
such a crisis any form of brooding or inaction would be fatal.
For her, anything of that kind would be fatal, too. She must not look
before or after. It was like crossing an abyss on a narrow plank. Her
resolve taken, her plan formed, one pang of indecision might paralyze
a nerve upon which all chance of safety depended. And she must act
without an instant’s delay.
She listened for the click of the front door. And then from the
discreet ambush of the charming new curtains of that singularly
pleasant room, in which so lately as two days ago, each individual
object had been a thing of delight, she watched her husband’s tall
and picturesque figure disappear round the corner of the Square into
the Brompton Road. Then she went to the telephone at once and rang up
Freeman’s Hotel.
It seemed an age before her demand to speak with Mr. Hierons could be
met. A voice was not sure whether Mr. Hierons was now staying at the
hotel, but it would find out. He had been away some days and the voice
rather fancied that he had not yet returned. Minutes passed. And then
in the midst of a baffled impotence that was almost a fever now, to
Helen’s unspeakable relief, a tone she faintly recognized said, “Are
you there?”
George Hierons was speaking. If Mrs. Endor cared to come round at once
to the hotel he would be glad to wait in for her.
L
On the way to Freeman’s Hotel in a taxi, Helen did her best to remember
that she still lived and moved and had her being in twentieth century
London. She tried hard to keep all the simple and familiar realities
before her mind. Everything looked so oddly different now from what it
had done less than three hours ago when she had driven west from St.
Pancras station, that such a ritual seemed necessary. She was plunged
in a state of affairs whose fantastic horror it was hardly possible
for a mind so sane as hers to exaggerate. It was like living in a
nightmare, except that it was much more vivid. But when everything
around, the rattle of the taxi, the London mud, the raw air, had
convinced her that she was truly awake, she might have bartered her
immortal soul to believe otherwise.
George Hierons, who was living _en suite_, received Helen in his own
private sitting room. He greeted her with a cordial tenderness which
could only have sprung from the regard of an honest and a good man. Yet
hardly a glance was needed to tell her that not a little of her own
acute distress was shared by a true friend.
The face of George Hierons was that of a highly sensitive man who was
suffering acutely. His visitor was struck by a tragic change in his
appearance. Eyes and cheeks had deep hollows, their lines a look of age
that mere years did not warrant; and underlying a strong and beautiful
face was a torment of pain, stifled and repressed, that Helen could not
bear to see.
She had the courage to begin with a conventional remark. But Hierons at
once made clear that there was no need to withhold anything. He took
her hands gently in his own.
“You have done a wise thing in coming to see me,” he said without a
word of preface. “Tell me just how much you know.”
Helen hesitated. John had revealed much as to the workings of the
Society, but he had been careful not to disclose the names of its
members. She had strong reason to suspect that Hierons belonged to it,
but until she was quite sure it would be the height of folly to lay her
cards on the table.
“You may tell me all,” he said, reading her thoughts without
difficulty. “I was with the Council so recently as half past eleven
this morning--if it is any satisfaction to you to know that.”
“That is to say you belong?”
“Yes,” he said, again taking her hands.
She could not hide the look of frank horror that came into her eyes.
Her impulse was to draw away from him as if he had been a thing
unclean. Man of fine perceptions as he was, he yielded instantly to
her emotion, not trying to combat it, but stepping back a pace with a
slight bow.
“You see,” he said in a low voice, “the stake we play for is the
highest there is. All that we do, all that we have done, all that
we hope to do, is dictated by the faith that the peace of the world
depends upon us.”
“Do you still believe that?” asked Helen, looking at him steadily.
He did not answer at once.
With an insurgency of feeling, an odd tightening of her throat and
breast, she repeated her question.
“Yes,” he said. “That is still our position.”
“You honestly think,” said Helen, “that evil can be met with evil? You
think that murder can prevent murder?”
“In certain extreme cases,” said Hierons, “we hold that view. The
Church has failed, Christianity is a back number, one after another the
higher moral sanctions are going by the board. Human society is very
sick indeed. Only a desperate remedy can save it.”
Helen looked bleakly at Hierons. But she didn’t speak.
“The root of the trouble,” Hierons went on, “is that it is still in
the power of certain people, of one man if you like, to unchain forces
more terrible than the earth has yet known. This unlucky planet of ours
is entering upon a new phase. Unless steps, drastic and immediate,
are taken to bring under control those who now govern it, the human
race may soon be faced with a catastrophe beside which all its other
catastrophes--and Heaven knows what they have been in the immemorial
past!--may appear of small account.”
The grim intensity of her countryman’s earnestness kept Helen silent.
He paused a few seconds that she might say something, but she chose not
to speak.
“I intend to take you fully into my confidence,” said Hierons with the
childlike simplicity of a great mind. “Our Society which we believe to
include the flower of the world’s creative wisdom takes no narrow or
partial view. It sees the human race now at the mercy of a particular
type of brain and that type is peculiarly ignoble. It sees other and
finer types, developed on lines less grossly material, with but little
chance against this archetype whose gospel is the cynical application
of brute force. The weaker or more delicate types--so far as our
Society can read world tendencies--are fighting a losing battle with
their backs against the wall. In other words, so far as this unhappy
time is concerned, Evil is stronger than Good.”
“Hasn’t it always been so?” said Helen.
“More or less, I agree. But human ingenuity has now entered a phase
which is a direct menace to evolution itself. Never has it been so
imperative that those who do evil for the love of evil should be
brought under control.”
“Surely,” said Helen, “that control can only be acquired by invoking
the spirit of Right.”
“True. And our Society, odd as the fact may seem to the uninitiate,
exists for that very purpose.”
Helen’s face showed a frank incredulity. “You would have one believe,”
she said, with a thrill of horror in her voice, “that people are
murdered secretly in the name of the Most High?”
“Murder is a harsh word. But as you say,” Hierons went on in a stern,
solemn tone, “the Society’s every act is dictated by the aim it has in
view. ‘God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform.’”
“To me,” said Helen with a little gasp of horror, “that sounds very
like blasphemy.”
“No, no!” said Hierons. “Consider the problem the world has now to
face. It is all very well to say that faith will move mountains, but
when Good is being done inevitably to death by the massed forces of
Evil, it is for those of us who dare to believe that the world may yet
be saved for mankind to use to the best of our skill what weapons the
stronger power may have left us.”
“Or to put it in another way,” said Helen, who was following a singular
argument closely, “believing as your Society does that this earth
of ours is now ruled by the spirit of Evil, in order to restore the
balance of power it is necessary in the most literal fashion to break
the Sixth Commandment.”
“Yes,” said Hierons. “But only in the last resort. And such are the
basic conditions which now govern the world that no other alternative
is left to the Friends of Peace. Let us take a concrete instance. Saul
Hartz has the power with the terrible machine he controls to bring
about war between Britain and America. And the best informed people
firmly believe that he will do so.”
“But why should he? The power of the Universal Press is almost as great
in one country as in the other.”
“True. And there’s the rub. The American Senate has recently decided to
take strong action against the International Newspaper Ring. Certain
trust laws, more or less obsolete, are going to be revived and rigidly
enforced. The Colossus is now in a position to fight them and is
preparing to do so. And say the wise, so that his will may prevail, he
must presently force a fratricidal conflict which may plunge the entire
world in darkness.”
“You really feel,” gasped Helen, “that he has that power?”
“Undoubtedly. All the strings are in his hand. He has brought to
perfection the art of fouling public opinion at its source. And rather
than this ‘unthinkable’ war--his favorite newspaper phrase!--shall come
to pass, with hell loose in the very air we breathe, with famine and
pestilence on every continent, and damage irreparable to all forms of
organic life, it were better, say the wise, for the human race to close
down altogether.”
“But surely all this is surmise?”
“Would that one might think so. For those who have eyes to see, the
designs of the Colossus in 19-- are just as clear as were those of
Wilhelm II in the years prior to 1914. That is why the Society of the
Friends of Peace is determined at all costs to remove Saul Hartz before
a second and greater disaster overtakes this unlucky world.”
Helen was silent. Extremists, tinged with fanaticism, these people
might be, but as Hierons presented the facts of the case, and once
granting its premises, there was no gainsaying the hard logic of the
whole matter.