In this moment of exquisite torment, it was as if something broke inside John Endor’s heart.
Even before the second slip was drawn from the bag, and the name it bore was made known, Endor realized, as if by the magic of an occult power, that in an especial manner Fate had marked him down. Before the impassive American opened this paper and announced its contents, the latest member of the Council saw and heard his own name:
JOHN ENDOR
When seconds later that name was pronounced, he gave a little gasp. He felt the burning eyes of the others envelop him. Overcome by emotion, he was unable to meet those eyes and bent his own to the table. A nausea of dismay bereft him of the power to think or act. But all too soon there came to his ear the calm and precise speech of Lien Weng.
“John Endor,” said the President in a small soft voice, not unlike a cat’s purr, that turned to ice the blood of the man whom he addressed, “you are called, within the term of eight days, reckoning from this Sunday midnight, to kill the man Saul Hartz by the method ordained in such cases by the Council of Seven. What that method is, it is now our duty to reveal.”
XLIV
FROM the depths of his gorgeous robe, Lien Weng took a small gun-metal case. A spring released the top. Within was a tiny glass phial, in the form of a syringe, containing about an ounce of a colorless fluid. So delicate was the whole contrivance that it could be concealed in the palm of one hand.
After Lien Weng had placed it on the table in front of him, he went on to explain its nature and its use.
The fluid was the most subtle and the most deadly poison science had yet evolved. Distilled in minute quantities by a recent chemical process from a rare herb indigenous to the Manchurian wilds, the secret was known to the Society alone, and its use was strictly regulated by its laws. In operation, as Lien Weng explained, it was very simple. By discharging the contents of the phial on the back of a person’s coat, of no matter what thickness, at a point midway between the shoulder blades, it would percolate in the course of less than three hours to the spinal marrow. And, without warning of any kind, it would bring about a sudden and complete collapse of the nervous system. Death would at once ensue and not leave a trace of its cause. So subtle was the work of this poison that it defied all medical diagnosis. Its operation was impossible to detect. Autopsies were vain. The police of London, New York, Bombay, Shanghai could only surmise that such a thing existed without being able to prove the fact. Indeed they were faced by a problem with which they could not deal; a problem so elusive that it merged cause in effect.
Succinctly and gently, with the air of a British judge addressing a British jury, Lien Weng expounded all this to John Endor. He was required to use the lethal weapon formally entrusted to him now by the decree of the Council of Seven within the time appointed and in the manner specified.