Recognizing that he must pull himself together, he proceeded rather heroically to do so. He was upheld, moreover, by Helen’s strength of purpose, the working of her active will, of her high and keen intelligence. And yet, at the back of everything, he felt that all they did would be futile. This was only a beginning, the first turn of the wheel. Now that a cog had caught him, the devil’s work would go on until his life had been crushed out. But she could not be expected to know that. And in this early phase he ought not to make any such admission, even to himself. It was weak. No matter what happened he must go down fighting.
“What’s on to-night at the opera?” said Helen. Under her chair lay the discarded Evening Press. She picked it up. “The Russian ballet. He is quite likely to be there. If he is, he may not be home before midnight.”
For a moment she considered the question in its various aspects. And then she said, “I’d better go there and see if I can find him.”
Endor shook his head. “Looking,” he said, “for a pin in a truss of hay to search for people at the opera.”
“He has a box. More than once he’s lent it to me. If he’s there, I’ll find him.”
A growing sense of the futility of all they could do was now overpowering Endor. But he was forced to admire the noble zeal which was determined not to leave one thing undone.
Knowing argument to be vain, he was content merely to insist upon the finishing of the meal before she did anything else. But it was only under protest that she could be brought to do even that. If Mr. Hartz was not at the opera, the sooner they learned that fact the better.
VI
ENDOR, against his private judgment and the will of Helen, accompanied her to Covent Garden. She was sure that after such a day he ought to go straight to bed. Curiously temperamental, she knew him to be, but never had she seen him so completely “bowled out.” Like all people who live on their nerves, he was poised on a very fine thread; yet this threat of collapse was hardly justified by the thing that had occurred. He saw in it more than the facts seemed on the surface to warrant. She, on the contrary, was sure that a word from the Chief would put the whole thing right.
It was ten o’clock when they reached Covent Garden. Helen, by dint of tact amounting to diplomacy which she brought to bear on divers officials, was able at last to send one of them with an urgent message to Mr. Hartz’s box. Soon, however, the answer came that Mr. Hartz was not there, and that to the best of the messenger’s information he had not been there that evening.