VII
AS Helen was shown into Saul Hartz’s library a clock on the chimneypiece struck eleven.
“May I get you anything, miss?” said the butler, to whom she was well known.
“Thank you, Jennings—no.” She shivered slightly; it was a chill September night.
Jennings gave the fire a poke and retired.
Helen took a book from a table, turned up a reading lamp and sat down. At first so strong was the current of her thought that she did not look at the book. Her whole mind was fixed upon the forty precious minutes that could be allowed for Mr. Hartz’s return. If he tarried beyond that time it might be too late for him to be of use—at any rate, so far as the U. P. was concerned. In regard to the Planet he might, perhaps, be allowed another two hours.
Severe good sense forbade giving her thoughts much rein. Worry was not going to help. Besides, she had one of those disciplined minds, which, in spite of the moment’s pressure, are not allowed to riot. She looked at the book in her hand. Its title was Essays in Contribution to a Permanent Peace, its author, John Endor. Publication was not due for another fortnight, but an advance copy had been sent already to the Planet by the book’s publishers in the hope of an early review.
Coincidence, brain wave, sixth, seventh, eighth, nth sense, had drawn her fingers subconsciously, in semidarkness to this volume. That it was now in her hand was not due to the fact that she had read the title on the cover. The book’s coming open at this particular place was less a fruit of chance than of the fact that a marker had been inserted.
A mere glance disclosed that much of page 204 was heavily underscored in red ink.
“The most acute problem of this vexed time is the ever-growing power of the newspaper press. Legislation of a drastic kind is needed to cope with certain newspaper ‘bosses’ in Great Britain and America and their combinations, national and international, of periodicals, agencies, special correspondents and their sinister antennae, which persistently foul at the source the wells of truth. So long as the infernal machinery which creates and molds public opinion and now aspires to govern the world can be set in motion by the Luciferian minds which control it, minds whose sole merit is a prodigious development of the modern business brain and its infinite capacity for combination and adjustment, hope of a stable peace on any of the five continents of this unlucky planet is out of the question. It cannot be said too often that such an engine as the Universal Press is a power for evil and a dire menace to civilization.”