“And if, sir, one does not choose to carry out this horrible task?” said Endor, quietly.
“Sir,” was the President’s soft reply, “since you have taken the oath of our Society is it really necessary for me to answer your question?”
Endor looked earnestly at the faces of the six men around him, as if he would peer into their minds. Again he was undecided as to what his immediate course of action should be. His first thought was to defy these fanatics by flinging the phial into the fire. But as his fingers closed upon the slender tube of glass, the mysterious prana deep down in every healthy nature intervened to save him. An overt act of that kind, as the faces around told him very surely, would mean certain death.
At the call of an obscure law of being Endor slowly returned the cylinder to its gun-metal sheath. And then fully sensible of six pairs of eyes fixed upon him, he took from his breast pocket a cigarette case and calmly placed within it this most deadly of weapons.
“Sir, you have until to-morrow Monday week at midnight,” were Lien Weng’s final words.
Once more Endor looked at the circle of faces around him. Of the thoughts they concealed he could glean nothing beyond a covert hostility in the eyes of Bandar Ali and a look of deep anxiety in those of George Hierons. The American was seated next to him. At this terrible moment, in which Endor knew that his own death sentence had been pronounced, and even in this most dangerous company, he was not without a friend.
As Endor got up from the table he felt upon his arm a slight pressure, soothing yet magnetic. It was as if that gentle touch spoke its own silent message, “For heaven’s sake, my friend,” it seemed to say, “do nothing hastily. Let your slightest action now be the fruit of wisdom.”
In spite of this tacit prayer, Endor yielded to the all-powerful desire now in his mind. He would fly at once from this house of ill omen. Before he left the room, however, he was moved to speak again.
“One last word!” As Endor reached the door he turned swiftly to face the men who were still seated at the table. “I believe,” he said, in a voice strained and thin, “that Providence itself has given me a means, a lawful means, of breaking this malign power which you would have me unlawfully destroy. You, who at all costs are pledged to conserve the peace of the world, cannot hope to gain your end by secret murder. I beg you to give me a chance to prove that the Divine Will is working for us and for all mankind.”
The passion of this last appeal drew no response from the six men at the table. Mutely impassive they watched that rather wild figure withdraw from the room.