Saul Hartz laughed harshly. “The sooner daylight is let into the whole thing, the better—that’s my view.”
The look of trouble deepened in the editor’s face. “May I ask you not to forget that the police are up against the stiffest proposition they have ever had to tackle?”
“Why have you turned devil’s advocate, Gage?” Saul Hartz’s tone was sharply impatient.
“On public grounds,” was the reluctant answer.
“Why, you are as bad as those old women in Whitehall.”
“But look what has happened within a year. Three clear cases. One in Tokyo, one in New York, and now one in London. In each case a warning, a disregard of the warning, followed in one instance by a mysterious disappearance, and in the other two by an even more mysterious death.”
“Well, no matter what Scotland Yard may say or what it may do, we, at any rate, shall not allow ourselves to be frightened by any kind of fee faw fum.”
Mr. Gage shook his head. “This terrible affair,” he said weightily, “amply confirms the opinion I have ventured already to express to you that the police are up against the most powerful and certainly the most sinister force in the world to-day.”
The Chief was frankly annoyed. “Nonsense! I refuse to believe anything of the kind. And in any event, no matter what its power, we are going to fight it. Tell Norton to come to me in half an hour.”
The keenly intelligent face of Bennet Gage clouded heavily. With the look of a man who staggers under a blow, he went to the door. But as he got there, he changed his mind. Turning suddenly, he came back several paces into the room. “It’s no use, sir.” The voice was full of pain. “I know it’s a subject on which you won’t listen to advice. But it’s one also in which I feel I must obey my deepest instinct. Frankly, I haven’t your courage. So that if you have fully made up your mind to disregard these warnings, I must ask you to announce in to-morrow’s Planet that I am no longer its editor.”