The Council of Seven

by J. C. Snaith

The answer of John Endor was icy, venomous, slow. “Of the Planet at any rate.”

“So!” said the Colossus. “One guessed your program was ambitious. Maybe you’ll find the affairs of the Planet a pretty tough problem, my friend.” And there was a challenge in his voice and in his eyes.

Endor’s face grew darker. “No doubt,” he said aloofly. And then, without another word, he turned abruptly and lurched a little unsteadily out of the room. As he did so he switched off the light.

The Colossus was able to get an hour or two of troubled sleep. But it was disturbed by bad dreams. Take it altogether it was perhaps the least agreeable night he had ever spent. The arrival of his servant at eight o’clock with tea and shaving water came as a real relief. Never had daylight been quite so welcome. But it was a prelude to a day of tedium broken now and then by moments of acute embarrassment. The other men continued to keep him at arm’s length, and he was at no pains to disguise that he fully reciprocated their feelings. Besides, much of their time seemed to be passed in anxious conclave, of which, although conducted in secret with all the privacy of closed doors, he was not slow to guess the nature.

As far as the women were concerned, he did not get on much better. His hostess, a creature of rare accomplishment and charm, was not at all at ease in her brief and fragmentary conversations with him. By the others he was frankly bored. They belonged to the pure milk of the intellectual. Disdaining the feminine arts altogether, they had that rather distressing mental acuteness of which men of equal or superior caliber are apt to fight very shy.

It occurred to Saul Hartz, as soon as luncheon was over, that his wisest course in the circumstances would be to return at once to town. Sorely was he tempted to this, but to begin with there was no Sunday train, and even if a motor could be obtained, the journey was considerably more than a hundred miles. It would be an affront, moreover, to the hostess, although perhaps the Colossus was the last man in the world with whom a consideration of that kind was likely to weigh.

But when all was said, what really enabled Saul Hartz to face another day of Doe Hill was the situation itself. The feeling obsessed him that something was about to happen. And whatever the something might be, he was not the man to shirk it.

The day wore on, however, and nothing occurred. Grim faces, hostile looks were on every hand, but they did not culminate in any overt act. And the hostess with her immense social experience was able to ease the tension a little. But the Colossus provided a rare test for her powers. He seldom opened his heart to a woman. And with bitter enemies on every side, he retired very much into his shell. Howbeit, even he could not resist the allure of Rose Carburton. She was so very much a woman of the world that in the course of the day, as the crown of many attempts, she made some impact upon a reserve that was indeed formidable.

After tea, while she was showing him a rare collection of miniatures, it suddenly occurred to Saul Hartz that through the medium of this woman there might be a hope of getting a line as to the Society’s attitude towards himself. Some hint, also, might be forthcoming of the course it was likely to follow.

Characteristically, he began by asking point blank if she were a member of it. She fenced adroitly, with infinite wit in the use of the foils, but he pressed her hard. He meant to have the truth; and the sense of its importance her dexterity confessed nerved him to tear it from her. Force of reasoning took it captive in the end, not that the penetration of a Solomon was called for in the process.