“Herakleophorbia?”
“Yes, Sir. Mr. Caterham, Sir—”
“You are beaten! Of course that beats you. It’s Cossar! What can you hope to do now? What good is it to do anything now? You will breathe it in the dust of every street. What is there to fight for more? Rules of war, indeed! And now Caterham wants to humbug me to help him bargain. Good heavens, man! Why should I come to your exploded windbag? He has played his game ... murdered and muddled. Why should I?”
The young man stood with an air of vigilant respect.
“It is a fact, Sir,” he interrupted, “that the Giants insist that they shall see you. They will have no ambassador but you. Unless you come to them, I am afraid, Sir, there will be more bloodshed.”
“On your side, perhaps.”
“No, Sir—on both sides. The world is resolved the thing must end.”
Redwood looked about the study. His eyes rested for a moment on the photograph of his boy. He turned and met the expectation of the young man. “Yes,” he said at last, “I will come.”
IV.
His encounter with Caterham was entirely different from his anticipation. He had seen the man only twice in his life, once at dinner and once in the lobby of the House, and his imagination had been active not with the man but with the creation of the newspapers and caricaturists, the legendary Caterham, Jack the Giant-killer, Perseus, and all the rest of it. The element of a human personality came in to disorder all that.