The editor of the Planet obeyed the summons at once. He seemed a bundle of nerves as he came into the room. But his relief was keen when he was curtly informed that for the time being the Garland affair was to stand in abeyance.
“Your resignation, I take it, will not appear to-morrow in large pica on page eight,” said the Colossus with a gleam of frost.
“Not unless you hold me to it.” The look in the large, dark, oriental eyes had an almost canine pathos. Bennet Gage would not have been at all surprised had the despot done so.
“No, carry on, my friend.” The words of the Colossus were light, but a grim mouth belied them. “I quite think we shall have to put all the cards on the table, but this may not be the moment. Before taking a definite line, it may be well to hear what the coroner’s jury has to say on the subject. In the meantime, we had better get to know whether Scotland Yard’s keeping anything up its sleeve.”
“Verity can be trusted there, I think.”
“I hope so.” Saul Hartz, as he spoke, took the black-sealed envelope from the table before him and slipped it into his coat pocket. A weaker man would have been impelled to take Gage into his confidence. But the self-faith of the Colossus stood foursquare against every shock. He was even ready to despise himself for allowing such a piece of “mumbo jumbo” to upset his plans. The fact remained that it had; but so far as he could he was determined to minimize the effect and to conceal the cause.
“You had better make this to-morrow’s first article.”
As the Chief spoke, he opened a drawer in his writing table and took out a printer’s galley proof, with a number of corrections in his own forcible hand. “Instead of ‘The Chinese Situation,’ I’ve headed it ‘Plain Words to the Celestial Empire,’ and you’ll see I’ve gingered it up generally. And Fuller might follow on in the Mercury with ‘A Straight Tip to John Chinaman.’”
The editor cast an acute eye over the Chief’s flamboyance. “A shade on the strong side, aren’t we?” But his tone had lightened considerably. To the mind of Bennet Gage the mysterious death of an American labor leader was a far more significant matter than a calculated affront to several hundred million people.
“The stronger the better,” was the curt answer of the Colossus. “I have very good reasons.”