The Council of Seven

by J. C. Snaith

The party for the week-end was not large but it had been chosen with care. Comprising eight men and four women, at dinner they mustered thirteen. Although the hostess jested gayly, Saul Hartz in his present frame of mind was not proof altogether against the omen. Casting a dubious eye along the table he scrutinized his fellow guests. His gaze was caught at once by the ascetic visage of Lien Weng. The Celestial in the magnificent robes of a high order of mandarins was an awe-inspiring figure. Such a man seemed to bear the centuries on his brow and in the deep lines of an impassive face. He spoke little, but his English was choice, with hardly a trace of accent; his every word was ripe, his every gesture pregnant with meaning.

Seated next but one to Lien Weng was an old gray-bearded Hindu, the famous sage and philosopher Bandar Ali. The controller of the Universal Press, who plumed himself justly on the encyclopedic nature of his mind, knew this old man as one whose name was familiar throughout the East. Opposite was Roland Holles, a combination almost unique, of poet, sportsman, publicist, seer, Kentish squire, and member of an old family who scandalized his relations and alienated his friends by a rooted antagonism to the British Empire. On the right of the hostess was De Tournel, litterateur and homme du monde, unsparing critic of all religions and most advanced of thinkers; on her left was Hierons the American. The other men at the table were John Endor and El Santo, the Spanish mystic.

The women, even with the hostess left out, were hardly less interesting; the venerable Marchesa della Gardia who had spent a long life fighting for Italy; the awe-inspiring Madame Kornileff who had braved Siberia for her opinions; Pauline Verdet, widow of the great chemist who so recently had discovered a new element and had forfeited his life in the process; and Ethel Bergman, a woman of vast possessions, only child of a great inventor who had inherited much of her father’s genius. These people, seated dourly round that solemn mahogany, were a company whose significance even a house with the traditions of Doe Hill could seldom, if ever, have equaled.

To a man like Saul Hartz, the range of whose information allowed him to know exactly who these persons were and what they stood for, such a gathering was in itself a portent. So formidable was its collective effect that for once his habitual self-confidence threatened to desert him. As revealed by the tempered rays of the softly shaded candles, there was something sinister in those twelve faces.

The talk at the dinner table ministered to this impression. There was little of the light give and take, of the cheerful wit, of the loosing of the voice for the love of hearing it, peculiar to these occasions. Low tones embodied words weighty and considered; all seemed preoccupied with large issues, grave things.

Saul Hartz was soon alive to the fact that he was rather being given the cold shoulder. In such a picked company of intellectuals, even he might expect to feel a little out of it. Such indeed was his sense of isolation that several times that evening the Colossus was fain to ask himself why he had been invited to meet these people. And for his severely logical mind there could be only one answer.

He could have wished that he had not come. All the same, the love of adventure was rooted in him. And deep in his heart was the arrogance of one who knows that he has the master-key to human nature. No matter how imposing its airs, human nature can never be more than itself, an affair of pygmies. In relation to others, even if they comprised the world’s flower, he saw himself a giant. So far, he had carried everything to victory. All that he handled turned to gold. His was the Midas touch. Let those cranks and visionaries do their worst. He did not fear them; he did not fear mortal men. And they would do well to look to themselves. As controller of that amazing engine, the Universal Press, Saul Hartz firmly believed that he wielded the mightiest power of the modern world.

If the atmosphere of the dining room had been heavy to the verge of the baleful, that of the ancient library, whither the men retired with their coffee and cigars, was no less suffocating. Hartz’s educated palate had been regaled with a cordon bleu and vintage wines, the brandy was old and the cigars not unworthy of it, but, in spite of these things, he was unable to throw off the feeling that a sword was hanging over his head. Somehow, the other seven men held intercourse in a language to which he had not a key. Their words were few and fragmentary, but they held esoteric meanings. As the time passed, Hartz’s conviction grew that these men were assembled for a dark purpose. When at last he decided to look for consolation elsewhere, his withdrawal from the library seemed to provoke a keen sense of relief.

It was ten o’clock. He sought the ladies in various stately rooms, but already they appeared to have gone to bed. Thoroughly depressed by now, the Colossus felt that he could not do better than follow this example.

His bedroom was at the end of a long cavernous-looking corridor. The room was large, magnificently upholstered and full of Louis Seize furniture, an apartment, in fact, which le grand monarque himself might have condescended to sleep in. Yet, to the senses of its present occupant, now so acutely strung, it gave a feeling of the uncanny. Shadows lurked round the canopied bed; in spite of the thick carpet, the floor seemed a thing of echoes as he walked across it; the great shutters of the windows with their look of medieval solidity might have hid some magic casement; above all, the dark lights springing from the black oak paneling were weird and strange. None knew better than Saul Hartz how to ride imagination on the curb, yet as he slowly and rather unwillingly undressed, he felt that in such a room anything might happen.