At a sign from Lien Weng, the cabled account from Washington was produced by George Hierons, the person to whom it was sent. It was laid on the table.
“Read,” said Lien Weng.
“It doesn’t interest me,” said the Colossus. “Besides, it proves nothing. Mistakes of this kind are bound to arise.”
“That may or may not be so,” said Lien Weng. “But they occur far too often. And as far as Britain and the United States are concerned they always err upon one side. That is not the side of amity. Less than a month ago you put in the mouth of an eminent English politician a phrase he never used, and sowed it broadcast. Tardy denial followed, but a calculated lie had a clear start of seventy-two hours. Infinite damage has thereby been done to a growing reputation and to the cause we have at heart.”
“What sort of a reputation is it, I ask you,” said Saul Hartz, insolently, “that can suffer infinite damage because a single letter is omitted accidentally from a single word its owner uses?”
“There lies your skill,” a hoarse voice broke in. It was that of John Endor. With lustrous eyes and a face inhuman in its pallor he was following each word of the argument with intensity. “All of us here can only regard it as devilish.”
“Yes—devilish,” said Lien Weng, in his soft and gentle voice. “But even sheer wickedness sometimes overreaches itself. That simple act of omission, in the peculiar circumstances of the case, was vile. Yet already it has had a recoil. The Society of the Friends of Peace owes to that foul blow the presence here this evening of John Endor.” The President bowed gravely to the politician. “He will prove a source of infinite strength to our counsels. We welcome such a man with open arms.”
A look of disgust flashed from the eyes of Saul Hartz. “A man is not to be envied,” he said, “who mixes himself up with a thing of this kind. If Mr. Endor is the man I take him to be,” Hartz looked Endor steadily in the face, “he is going to regret very bitterly his association with you and your fellow anarchists and murderers.”
“Time alone can prove,” said Lien Weng impassively, “whether John Endor will have anything to regret in his whole-hearted devotion to the cause of peace. Meanwhile his presence here cannot fail to give weight to the deliberations of the Council of Seven.”
“And if I may say so,” interposed George Hierons, “authority to its acts. Without the help of John Endor and all that he stands for, the Society might not have been able to deal with the most inimical power of the modern world.”