The Council of Seven

by J. C. Snaith

The keenly penetrating Hartz who had never seen this man before, was a little taken aback by the sight he presented. Almost the first thought that entered the visitor’s mind was that he had to do with an obvious charlatan. The trappings of the East superimposed upon the contours of the West did not inspire confidence. Yet the reputation of this man Wygram was such as to make it impossible to dismiss him lightly. Humbug he might be, yet no one could have earned such a name throughout the world, or rather the underworld of high affairs, without being the possessor of qualities which placed him entirely beyond the range of ordinary people.

All the same a dyed-in-the-wool skeptic found it hard to dissemble a secret pang which was more than disappointment if less than disgust, as he confronted this pseudo-oriental with a smile and a conventional phrase.

“It is good of you, Mr. Wygram, to see me.”

The man on the floor removed the pipe from his lips and bowed slightly. Between his slender fingers, which were those of an æsthete and an artist, he held the card of his august visitor.

“Pray, sit down,” he said, in a gentle voice of extraordinary sweetness as the Egyptian closed the door and left them together.

As Saul Hartz brought his solid bulk very slowly and deliberately to anchor on the edge of a most seductive divan, he felt pretty sure in his own mind that already he had this merry-andrew sized up.

The man on the floor placidly resumed his tchibouk. With a grave absorption, a more than oriental indifference, he continued to smoke. Evidently it was his way of asking his visitor to explain himself. But the Colossus could not help secretly resenting this detachment. He was a very great man. It was idle to disguise that fact. The world at large was even more keenly aware of it than he was himself; therefore, the pose of this creature Wygram was a little galling.

Saul Hartz was too much a man of the world to betray his private feelings. But with an air more rapt than that of any fakir, soothsayer or mystic, Wygram calmly awaited the declaration of his errand. But why declare it? A sudden doubt now stiffened the will of the Colossus. Such a window-dressing fellow was a European or most likely an American, the astutest kind of westerner who knew how to wear his tongue in his cheek. Why, therefore, disclose such an exceedingly intimate matter to one whom instinctively he did not trust; one who, moreover, might know how, should occasion call, to turn such very perilous knowledge against him.

It was not to be wondered at that the ensuing silence was not immediately broken. To Saul Hartz it was peculiarly trying. He was a man who had a right to plume himself upon the faculty of knowing his own mind. His fortunes had been built upon it. But now, at this difficult moment, for almost the first time in his life it deserted him. Should he confide in this charlatan or should he not?

In the end it was the man on the ground who opened the ball. He removed the tube from his lips and said with a curious absence of gesture, almost in the manner of one who communes with the unseen, “I appreciate your difficulty, Mr. Hartz. But in these little matters, things are not always as they appear.”