Smiling at his thoughts, he got up from the sofa on which they sat. As he stood before her in the arrogance of his mental and physical power, she could not kill a sense, try to stifle it as she would, that here perhaps was the noblest thing on which her eyes had looked.
He still kept close track of her mind. “Bless you, dear child!” She felt his eyes pass through her like a sword, and she bit her lip in an agony that had a touch of ecstasy. And then came terror again. She fought against a sob she could not control. Hearing it, he sighed tenderly. “One mustn’t hurt you too much,” he said, half to himself. “You’ve always been a particularly nice girl. I have always liked you.” His voice had grown gentle, charming, whimsical. “Good luck. Bon voyage. You are a good woman. Your husband is a good man. And I am a very, very bad one. But please remember that it is against all experience to suppose that the bad people don’t come out on top. Believe me, they always do—and they always must.”
XLVII
THAT night Helen slept little. Her talk with Saul Hartz had proved cruelly disturbing to the mind and to the emotions. She was haunted by it. For hours she lay awake thinking of this man who had played so strange a part in her life. Seeing him now as the thing he truly was, her fear of him was unnerving. It troubled her that they should be under one roof. She had an insurgent desire to seek at once the safety of her home. There could be no rest for her until she had returned to that haven and to the man she loved.
Much of the next day, Sunday, was spent in active dread of the Colossus and a desire to avoid him. Helen mixed freely with the other guests. She went to church in the morning, she played bridge in the afternoon and by every means that was open to her she took precaution against being caught unawares. The last thing she desired was another tête-à-tête with Saul Hartz.
In her present emotional state she was met with one harsh fact. For some reason she was now the prey of a secret fear. An unknown force had invaded her life. Suddenly the future had become an abyss. To such an extent was she possessed by a sense of the impending, that it was as if a sword was about to fall.
What this menace could be she was without means of knowing. But it was surely there, a phantom perhaps of an overdriven brain. At least Helen hoped that it might prove no worse than that. Certainly as far as she was aware, it had no ground in reason or logic, and was, therefore, without the stay of fact.
Color, however, was lent to this new fear in a rather odd way. Among her fellow week-end guests was a man named Wygram. The personality of this man excited Helen’s curiosity. She had never met any one like him. A rather exotic, oriental appearance seemed to lend value and emphasis to his views on occultism, mental telepathy, thought transference and kindred subjects which were now so much in the air, and upon which, in an unobtrusive way, he seemed to be a veritable mine of information.
After Helen had spent an entrancing hour in talk with Mr. Wygram, she gleaned from her hostess by dint of judicious inquiry that he was now recognized the world over as an authority upon the Unseen. She learned further that this remarkable man had found a solution to more than one mystery that seemed impenetrable and that the police often had recourse to his services.
This view of Wygram’s unique powers was supported by the attention paid him by Saul Hartz. It was never a habit of the Colossus to flatter the vanity of his fellow men by sitting in public at the feet of Gamaliel. But it was clear to Helen that the orientalist had some potent attraction for him. More than once in the course of that day she saw the two men together in quiet corners. And to judge by the look of concentration on Mr. Hartz’s face the subject of their talk was to him of vital concern.