The
COUNCIL OF SEVEN

By

J. C. SNAITH

The Council of Seven
The Adventurous Lady
The Undefeated
The Sailor
The Time Spirit
The Coming
Anne Feversham

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
Publishers New York

The
COUNCIL OF SEVEN

BY
J. C. SNAITH
AUTHOR OF “THE UNDEFEATED,” “THE
SAILOR,” “BROKE OF COVENDEN,” ETC.

McCLELLAND & STEWART
PUBLISHERS TORONTO
1921

COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

The
COUNCIL OF SEVEN

I

AT FIVE o’clock of a September evening, Helen Sholto left the office, as usual, and went to her club. Opposite the tube lift in Dover Street, London, out of which she came, was a bookstall. Clamoring across the front, a newsbill at once caught the eye of an informed modern woman:

She bought a copy of the Evening Press. Looking it quickly through, she found in the column for late news a blurred, hastily-inserted paragraph

Helen gasped. The words were like icy water thrown in the face. And the sensation of having had all the breath taken out of her body was increased by the knowledge that a second purchaser of the Evening Press, a rough-looking workman, standing by her elbow, had given a savage exclamation. Moreover, in the act of so doing, by that process of telepathy beyond whose threshold Science has yet to peer, he caught the distracted eyes of the particularly attractive-looking girl who was folding up her own copy of the paper.

“Does for him, I reckon!” And the man spat savagely.

Helen turned abruptly away, and walked slowly along Dover Street. A thousand imps were loose in her brain. Space, quiet, solitude were needed in which to quell them, to bring them under control. Almost it was as if the bottom had fallen out of the world in which she lived.

II

THE Helicon Club was at the end of the street. Women interested in literature, the arts, in social and public affairs could lunch, dine, entertain their friends in this oasis. Its pleasant rooms were large and cool, and, crowning boon in the very heart of modern Babylon, they offered even a measure of isolation. For the members’ roll did not respond too readily to the length of “the waiting list.”

A nook of the “silence” room enabled Helen to think her thoughts with the help of a well-earned cup of tea. And a second look at the evening paper cast one ray upon the darkness. “I believe in the Sword.” The phrase hurt like a blow, yet somehow it forced the conclusion upon her that the speech could not have been reported accurately. Knowing John Endor so well, she could not bring herself to believe that those were the words he had used. It hardly seemed credible that without some hint beforehand he should go back on all that he stood for in political life.

Bent on setting doubt at rest, she went presently to the telephone and rang up John’s chambers in Bury Street. She was informed that Mr. Endor had not yet returned from Blackhampton, but that he was expected home about half past seven. Thereupon she left a message, asking him, if not otherwise engaged, to come and dine with her, adding the little feminine proviso that “he was not to dress.”

It was then a quarter to six. Two hours slowly passed. Helen had letters to write, a book deeply interesting to look at. Much was said, all the same, for her mental habit that, with a grim specter in the outskirts of her mind, she could yet dragoon her will to the task of putting it away.

A few minutes before eight John arrived. She went to him at once. The glow of her greeting masked a tumult of feeling. None could have guessed from such entrain that she was facing a crisis upon whose issue her whole life must turn.

“What a piece of luck that you were able to come!”

The eyes and the laugh of a man deeply in love proclaimed this happy chance to be even more than that.

With no other preface, Helen led the way to the dining room. Before one question could be put to a hard-driven politician he must be fed. No matter what her own emotions might immediately dictate, she had a sense, almost masculine, of the rules of the game. Hers was a powerfully disciplined nature. A terrible phrase seared her like an acid, but for the time being sheer stoicism allowed her to bear the pain.

A table had been commandeered without difficulty in a favorite corner. Only a few of the Club habitués were dining, but John Endor brought a new interest into the room. It was no more than the emotion he was accustomed to excite. He leapt to the eye of every assembly. A force, a magnet, the lines of a rare personality made an effect of positive beauty. Nearly all women were attracted by him.

Well over six feet high, thin almost to emaciation, pale with the cast of thought, his high cheek-bones seemed to accentuate the hollows beneath them. The poise of the head and the features exquisitely bold might have been lures for the chisel of Pheidias; the deep eyes with their in-striking glances were those of a seer. Moving with freedom and grace, he had the look of a man who has seen a vision of the eternal. Nature at last seemed to have come near that which through the centuries she had been in search of. In the mind and mansion of John Endor her only concern was ultimate things.

As he crossed the wide room, intense curiosity tinged in some cases by an open admiration, was in the gaze of the other diners. Yet this did not apply to all. The curiosity was universal, but in one or two instances there was also a steady, level-lidded hostility. Helen was conscious of this as she piloted him to their table, perhaps because it was to be expected; but in this rising politician who had Gladstone’s power of arousing strong yet diverse emotion wherever he went there was an apartness which lifted him far beyond the plane whereon friend gives the countercheck to foe.

It was a good dinner. And the guest, for all his air of other-worldliness, had none of that rather dubious breeding which holds itself indifferent to what it eats and drinks. He complimented his hostess upon a modest sole Colbert and a poulet en casserole—the Club chef he assured her had nothing to learn from Saint James’s Street and Pall Mall; to the claret he rendered all the honors of a vintage wine; in a word, John Endor’s look of high ascetism did not taboo the minor arts of life.

It was this zest in everything which made him such a lovable companion. The seer, the visionary, was a man of the world. In spite of his dedication, in spite of the inward fire of the prophets of old, he had that subtle appreciation of the human comedy which is one of the final graces of a liberal education.

This evening, as always, he was charming. Helen could not help yielding to his attraction, no matter how strict her guard against it; she could not help being fascinated by his mental outlook and being lulled, even a little dangerously, by the personality of the man she loved. Listening to him now made it seem almost tragic that one should have to put the question she had summoned him to ask.

Delays are perilous. Twice before the enchanted meal was through she was at the point of sending for the evening paper, so that she might learn the truth. The fallibility of the newspaper press was still her hope. But while he talked as only he could, it seemed an act of barbarism to open the case so crudely. While his fancy and his humor played upon a hundred things how could one sidetrack him with such a doubt? There was some absurd mistake. High faith in this hero bade her take care.

Almost before she knew that she had let a precious moment go, she found herself bitterly rueing the fact. One of his odd, quick, unforeseen turns brought her up dead against an impasse she would have given much to avoid.

Plunging an impetuous hand in his coat, he suddenly produced a half sheet of notepaper, and tossed it over the table into her lap. “High time,” he laughed, “we let the dear old Morning Post into our secret de Polichinelle.”

She unfolded the slip of paper and read with a pang of dismay:

“Will it meet the case?” The question was whimsically direct, even without the enforcement of his amused eyes.

The blood burned slowly vivid in her face. Happily the quality or absence of quality in the electric light prevented his seeing it.

“Don’t you think?”—in a gay whisper.

There was no escape. “One shrinks——” Her will cut the phrase in two. To have completed it would have been to say too little or too much.

“Everybody’s secret,” he laughed.

As she felt the knife edge of the irony lurking in the situation, she gave a little gasp. There was only one thing for her now. She must harden her heart.

“I hadn’t realized,” she said, in her soft voice, a delicious blend of the Old World and the New, “that your speech to-day was going to be so important.”

“Quite the last word for it,” he said, lightly. “A heart-to-heart talk, don’t you know, with a few friends and constituents. For some dark reason they insisted on giving me a lovely bit of old Sheffield plate—and a scroll. One mustn’t forget the scroll. Perhaps the birds have been talking. Anyhow, the Chairman thought the salver would look very nice on the dining-room sideboard of a newly married couple!”

He waited for her laugh, but only one tiny segment of her mind was listening.

“It fills the entire placard of the Evening Press.” She dare not look at him. There was a clutch at her heart.

“What! My jawbation! Shade of the sea serpent and the giant gooseberry!”

She felt the beat of her heart strike upwards. Her throat was filled by it. He sounded hardly more than a laughing, irresponsible boy. And yet the hour was surely near when even his lighter grace notes must prove organ tones in the strained ear of the time.

III

THE fates were at her elbow. As she sent for the Evening Press, she realized that fact to the full. Afraid to turn again to her occupation of the last three hours, the weighing of her love for John Endor, she was yet unable to escape the challenge of a dire event. Truly a woman, yet beyond all things she was an American citizen. No matter what his spells, she could never marry a man of these ideas. Her country must stand first.

The Evening Press arrived. Folding back the sheet, the rather unpretty sheet with its crude headlines and blurred ink, she placed a finger on the fatal paragraph.

While he read she watched him. But his face was hidden by the paper and it was not until a slow perusal was at an end that it came again into view. So great was the change that it struck her almost with fear. The allure was gone; such a depth of pallor had the look of death itself. But the eyes were blazing and the large, mobile orator’s mouth was clenched in a vain effort to control its emotion.

“Blackguards!” he gasped. She saw that in his eyes were tears. Her brain was numb, yet the glow racing through her veins was sheer joy. The question was answered; every doubt was laid. So much for the woman. And in that moment the woman was paramount. But in the balanced mind, delicately poised, acutely commonsensible, was now a concern beyond the personal. What was the meaning of it all?

“I knew of course ... I felt ... that you had been ... misreported.”... Her words were tentative, inadequate. Painfully watching the man opposite she knew only too well that the John Endor of three minutes back might never have been. The play, the interplay, of changing lights upon his face and in his eyes were beyond her ken. Almost for the first time she began to have a real perception of the infinities within him, of that central power which could sweep a great audience off its feet.

Of a sudden he sprang fiercely from his chair. “It’s devilish!” His voice was hoarse. “Absolutely devilish!”

Hardly had he used the words when the pain in her eyes reined him back. Abruptly as he had risen, he sat down again at the table. “I beg your pardon!” he said. “But, you see, it’s a stab in the back—from the world’s most accomplished assassin.”

She saw that his lips were white and that his face was drawn.

“Mayn’t it be just a mere accident?” Courage was needed to say anything. To say that called for much.

He laughed harshly. The gay irresponsible boy might never have been. “Accidents don’t happen to the Universal Press.”

“But why shouldn’t they—once in a while?” Her voice had a maternal caress in it.

“The U. P. is the most efficient machine ever invented. It lives for and by efficiency—damnable word! That’s the talisman with which it sways five continents. God help us all! No accident here.”

“Can you really be sure?”

“Internal evidence. The few casual, cut-and-dried phrases I used, hardly more than a formal returning of thanks, have been so twisted round that they are the exact opposite of what was meant.”

“Perhaps there’s been a confusion of names.”

“No! no! Much too circumstantial—John Endor—luncheon—this afternoon—Blackhampton Town Hall. There’s no excuse. And the trick is so simple, so easy, once you condescend to its use. Take that final phrase, ‘I believe in the Sword.’”

Helen waited eagerly.

“Knock out the first letter of the last word and you have the phrase I used.”

She was blinded for a moment by the flood of light let in by this concrete instance. It went far to prove that his suspicions, which by nature he was the last man in the world to harbor, were not without warrant. Such a rebuttal of the charge against himself was complete, final; at the same time Helen Sholto had a very strong reason of her own for declining to accept all the implications that now arose.

In a sense she herself was an employee of the Universal Press. For nearly two years she had been one of the private secretaries of Saul Hartz, the master spirit of the U. P.—its organizer of victory. Moreover to the Colossus, as he was playfully called, she had a deep sense of loyalty. To her he had always seemed a truly great man. Moving up and down the intensive London world, it was no new thing to hear harshly criticized the mighty organization of international newspapers of which he was the head. More than once she had heard its motives impugned, but she had shrewdly perceived that so great a force in the life of the time could be wielded only at a price. To Helen Sholto the Colossus stood forth the beau idéal of a considerate, almost princely, employer. His foes were many, but none denied his genius. And in the sight of Helen he was so considerable a man, the admiration he excited was so keen, her sense of gratitude was so lively and so deep, that it was almost lèse majesté to traverse his political acts.

It had always been the aim of the Colossus to keep as much as possible in the background of affairs. None the less, in his own despite, he was becoming known as the secret power which propelled many a great movement of the time. It was said that he created and directed public opinion on more than one continent—to such an extent that he made and unmade governments; enforced and canceled treaties; in a word, he and the International Newspaper Ring that he controlled had become a menace to the world. But Helen Sholto in all her dealings with this man had never had reason to suspect that he claimed for himself these plenary powers.

Sensitive as she was for John Endor and jealous for his growing reputation, it now became her clear duty to defend Saul Hartz. She believed him to be an honest man. Had one doubt infected her mind she could not have served him. But in the immediate presence of her fiancé’s terrible indictment she lost the power to marshal her ideas. Womanlike she grew a little wounded by such a condemnation of the Colossus and all his works.

Granted that the blow had shaken John to the foundations and making allowance for a vivid temperament, she could have wished in this tragic hour that the sufferer had shown a little more regard for her feelings. But she had only to exhibit those feelings, or as much of them as pride would allow, for this impulsive child-of-a-man to be on his knees.

Humbly he owned that his sense of outrage had carried him completely away. He should have remembered that Mr. Hartz was her patron and friend. A naïf, almost boyish apology, bound her wound, wiped away her tears. His outburst was freely forgiven. Perhaps it was forgiven the more freely inasmuch as Helen felt quite sure in her own mind that she would soon be able to clear one hero of the charges brought against him by the other.

IV

“I ’LL ring up the office at once.” Helen rose impulsively. “They must know what a dreadful blunder the U. P. reporter has made. I’ll get through if I can to Mr. Gage, the editor, and tell him that on no account must the Planet come out with the speech in that form. I’ll also get through to Mr. Jevons, the chief editor of the U. P., and ask him to lose no time in withdrawing their version, and circulating an absolute contradiction. And as soon as I see the Chief himself, which should be to-morrow morning at eleven o’clock, I’ll ask him personally to do what he can to put things right.”

John Endor pressed her hand. It was more than homage to the woman he loved, it was a tribute, almost involuntary, to her decision, her fine capacity, her clear good sense. Of the Colossus it had been said that his fairy godmother had given him a rare faculty of choosing the heaven-sent instrument. Even in the sight of John Endor this able woman had never shone quite so much as in this crisis.

Forsaking a favorite iced pudding and hot chocolate sauce, she went there and then to the telephone box. Endor, alone at the table, sat a picture of dismay. He had a full share of the egoism inseparable from a man who believes intensely in himself. It was his sense of election that lay at the root of his power. He was an elemental besides; his mind was a thing of wide curves, moving on broad lines of right and wrong. For one in essence so primitive, it would have been hard to exaggerate the force of the blow.

The enemy was out in the open at last. Sitting there in a thrall of sudden darkness, that was his thought. The Colossus to whom in the spirit of Sir Galahad he had offered battle was known as a deadly and a subtle foe. To such an extent had he centralized power, so absolute was his control of the wires, to such perfection had he brought his “stunts,” his “propaganda,” and all the rest of the paraphernalia, which so easily fouled public opinion at its source, that it was said that he could kill a reputation as easily as he could make one.

For some little time past, Endor had suspected that he was on the “Index.” More than once had he challenged the bona fides of the U. P.; more than once had he thrown down the gage to the all-powerful newspaper ring which was now proposing to link up every continent. Moreover, in the phrase of a recent speech, he had bitterly attacked “its Vehmgericht of assassins.” That speech, made to Helen’s dismay, and of which she was far from realizing the true significance, would not, he knew, be forgiven. Nothing wounds like the truth. To Helen, however, it was part of his “platform,” an amusingly, over-emphasized article of political faith. She did not know, she could not be expected to know, that it was a deliberate offering of battle to the most potent evil in the life of the time. It was David vs. Goliath. The primitive sling and pebbles had hardly a chance, but David was upheld by the divine courage of youth and by a pure cause.

Already he was in the arena. He could feel the horrid breath of the monster on his face. One flick he had had of a grisly paw, just one little flick below the belt—there were no Queensberry rules for the U. P.—and he was nearly out. He was nearly out even before the game had really started.

Gasping in an agony that seemed hardly less than mortal, he realized now the nature of the odds. The force of that first playful little tap had almost killed him. However, he must rise from the tan. If he didn’t look out, those cloven hoofs would be pressing out his life.

There was no time to rest, even for a little while. Let him get up, keep going somehow. He must fight on.

V

HELEN was at the telephone a long ten minutes. She returned to find her guest in a kind of stupor. His legs were stretched out; his eyes shut.

“Such a tiring day he must have had, poor darling!” was her thought, as her strong, cheerful, assured voice brought him back with a start to the moment’s pressure.

“I managed to get through to the Office,” she said, sitting down again to the table. “Mr. Gage, unfortunately, was not there. And, really”—a clear note of vexation began to strike through the optimism this woman of the world imposed habitually upon herself—“sometimes they can be very trying, even in Cosmos Alley. I explained what the situation was—told them just what had happened—gave them your word that the U. P. version was hopelessly inaccurate, and that on no account must it appear in to-morrow’s Planet.”

“Yes, yes,” he said, faintly.

“Well, Mr. Sub-Editor Wingrove, hidebound little pedant”—the note of vexation was growing more dominant—“said he could not take any responsibility in the matter, but as soon as Mr. Gage arrived he would lay the facts before him.”

“Were you able to find out whether it is their intention to reprint the speech as given in the Evening Press?”

“That, of course, is what I tried to do. I put the question, point blank. But I couldn’t get anything definite. The fact is I don’t think Mr. Wingrove knew, but a sub-editor is like a policeman, he’ll never own a limit to his knowledge. He hummed and hawed and grew very Planeto-pontifico, the little donkey. However, I clinched the matter finally by making him promise to ring me up as soon as Mr. Gage came in.”

“What time is he expected?”

“As a rule, he looks in at the Office between ten and eleven.”

“When does the paper go to press?”

“About midnight—the first edition.”

Endor looked at his watch. “Only five minutes to nine at present.”

“There’s any amount of time.” The note of reassurance was very stimulating. “And if we can’t get something definite out of them in the course of the next two hours, I’ll go down to the office and see Mr. Gage myself. Now, let me get you some coffee and a little of the Club brandy—if you’ll condescend to it—and then I’ll see what can be done with the U. P.”

“Please, please, finish your dinner before you do anything further.”

“There’s not a moment to lose with the U. P.,” she said decisively. “I tried to get through five minutes ago, but the line was engaged. The provincial Mercury goes to press at eleven, and they may raise all sorts of difficulties. After Mr. Sub-Editor Wingrove, one foresees big trouble in Universe Lane. However, the Mercury isn’t the Planet. All the same, the U. P. is the U. P., and every moment counts.”

Again she left the table, in spite of all that Endor could do to detain her, gave orders to a servant, and returned at once to the telephone box. Half stunned as Endor still was by the enemy’s first blow, he had never admired this woman’s virile sense so much. What a prize he had won! As the thought came to him now, it was balm for a deep wound. Quite apart from her attraction and her charm such courage and such competence were beyond price to a public man.

Close upon that reflection came one less happy. This rare woman belonged to the enemy’s camp. It was so like the Colossus to have this fine instrument under his hand. Therein lay one of the secrets of his power. And what could be clearer evidence of his Machiavellian quality? How artful the mask he had contrived for his purposes, when even the feminine intuitions of a Helen Sholto were so much at fault that she could bring herself blindly to serve him! To her Saul Hartz was not merely an honest man, he was a hero, a demigod.

By the time he had drunk some coffee, and sipped a little brandy, he began to feel more himself. Better able to look the situation in the face, if not to grapple with it, he began mentally to recite his secret formula. The gods approve the depth, and not the tumult of the soul. Never had this incantation been known to fail. More than once, even as a boy, it had enabled him to hitch his poor, at times half crazy, wagon to a star.

It did so now. When Helen returned to the room which the other diners had already forsaken, she found him calm. Her ten minutes’ absence had wrought in him a palpable change for the better.

“Some pow-wow with the U. P.” Her laugh was light, but it could not quite conceal a powerful undercurrent of annoyance. “Mr. Fuller himself! Up till now, one has always had a high respect for his intelligence, but really he can be crass!”

“To order—no doubt.”

“No,” she said quickly, “believe me, there is not the slightest reason to think that.” He was forced to admire a loyalty that would admit no breath of innuendo. “I am convinced it is no more than the red tape of the high official. The truth is, of course, they are all terribly afraid of the Chief.”

“That’s easily understandable.”

“Most unluckily in this case, they simply decline to act without his explicit orders.”

“What! They take it upon themselves to publish a speech that has never been made. And they know, of course, that I have to speak to-morrow at Hellington.”

“Yes, I told them all that. But the rule of the office forbids their canceling a special wire—unless they have Mr. Hartz’s own authority to do so.”

“Quite!” The voice of Endor grew grim. “And they don’t need to be told that it may be absolutely impossible to get that authority by eleven o’clock.”

“Of course. I made a strong point of that. Finally, I got Mr. Fuller’s promise to keep your speech off the machines until a quarter to twelve. That is the very latest moment he can allow. But at least it gives us a little more time in which to do something.”

“Pray, what can one do?”

“We must get through at once to the Chief himself.”

“To Hartz?”

“Yes, to the mountain! Miss Mahomet is now going to ring up Carlton House Terrace.”

Before Endor could interpose any real effort to hold her back, she was off again to the telephone.

The Club brandy continued to soothe his fretted nerves, but the calmer he grew, the higher his conviction mounted that the plot was deep laid, and that one woman, of no matter what will or what capacity, would not be allowed to undo it. All the same, it would be instructive to see how the game was played. The predestined victim could take at least a morbid zest in observing the workings of “the machine.” It had hardly started to move as yet, but all too soon his head would be in the basket.

Helen was back this time in three minutes. She looked decidedly crestfallen.

“Such bad luck! Of course, one guessed he’d be dining out. But they don’t know where. At one of his clubs, they think, and he may have gone on to the opera. Still, they can’t say. They only know that he may return at any time from now on until after midnight.”

Endor smiled rather sadly. “Never mind. Let us accept the omen. There can be no contending with Destiny.”

“On the contrary,” she said bravely, fighting his fatalism, “I have fully made up my mind to hunt down the Chief in the next two hours—wherever he is to be found. Only he can stop the Planet and the U. P.”

“He may decline to do so—even if you run him to earth.”

“But why in the world should you think that?” Her voice was full of challenge. “An honest man is bound—is simply bound—to stop them.”

“I agree,” said Endor, abstractedly. “I humbly beg the pardon of the Colossus.”

“Please beg mine—for thinking—thinking—thinking!”

He kissed her hand. “I’m hardly myself to-night,” he said.

“You’ve had a really tiresome day,” she said, gently; “what with a journey to Blackhampton and back again—not to mention the luncheon, the presentation, and now this horrid affair! You look quite worn out.”

Recognizing that he must pull himself together, he proceeded rather heroically to do so. He was upheld, moreover, by Helen’s strength of purpose, the working of her active will, of her high and keen intelligence. And yet, at the back of everything, he felt that all they did would be futile. This was only a beginning, the first turn of the wheel. Now that a cog had caught him, the devil’s work would go on until his life had been crushed out. But she could not be expected to know that. And in this early phase he ought not to make any such admission, even to himself. It was weak. No matter what happened he must go down fighting.

“What’s on to-night at the opera?” said Helen. Under her chair lay the discarded Evening Press. She picked it up. “The Russian ballet. He is quite likely to be there. If he is, he may not be home before midnight.”

For a moment she considered the question in its various aspects. And then she said, “I’d better go there and see if I can find him.”

Endor shook his head. “Looking,” he said, “for a pin in a truss of hay to search for people at the opera.”

“He has a box. More than once he’s lent it to me. If he’s there, I’ll find him.”

A growing sense of the futility of all they could do was now overpowering Endor. But he was forced to admire the noble zeal which was determined not to leave one thing undone.

Knowing argument to be vain, he was content merely to insist upon the finishing of the meal before she did anything else. But it was only under protest that she could be brought to do even that. If Mr. Hartz was not at the opera, the sooner they learned that fact the better.

VI

ENDOR, against his private judgment and the will of Helen, accompanied her to Covent Garden. She was sure that after such a day he ought to go straight to bed. Curiously temperamental, she knew him to be, but never had she seen him so completely “bowled out.” Like all people who live on their nerves, he was poised on a very fine thread; yet this threat of collapse was hardly justified by the thing that had occurred. He saw in it more than the facts seemed on the surface to warrant. She, on the contrary, was sure that a word from the Chief would put the whole thing right.

It was ten o’clock when they reached Covent Garden. Helen, by dint of tact amounting to diplomacy which she brought to bear on divers officials, was able at last to send one of them with an urgent message to Mr. Hartz’s box. Soon, however, the answer came that Mr. Hartz was not there, and that to the best of the messenger’s information he had not been there that evening.

A rebuff, for which Helen was half prepared, left her undaunted. They turned down the street to Universe Lane, on the off-chance that the Mercury might be able to throw light on the whereabouts of the great man. This the Mercury could not do; nor was the Office itself in the adjacent Cosmos Alley able to provide a clue to the movements of the august controller of the U. P.

“We’ll now draw his clubs,” said Helen, undefeatedly. “He may be at the Game in Piccadilly playing bridge. Or he may be in Pall Mall smoking a quiet cigar at the Imperium.”

Both, alas! were drawn blank. The Colossus was not nor had been that evening at either. “Dead out of luck, aren’t we?” said Helen. “It’s very vexing.”

One other course only occurred to her now. That was to go on to Carlton House Terrace, and if Mr. Hartz had not returned home to await his arrival. They went there accordingly only to learn that he had not yet come in; moreover, so uncertain, as a rule, were his nocturnal movements that the butler did not care to commit himself as to the hour his master was likely to do so. “May be here any moment, miss, or he may even not be here at——” The butler’s discretion did not allow him to complete his sentence.

“Well, I’ll wait for him,” said Helen, with an air of quiet decision, “for an hour, at any rate.” She glanced at a watch on her wrist. “Nearly eleven already.”

She went down the steps to the taxi and John Endor. To him she made her intention known. “And you,” she said, “must go straight home to bed. You are fagged out. Now mind you don’t worry about this. A word from the Chief will clear up everything. Forget it all. Promise me you will. And for my part I promise that it shall be put right. Good-night.”

“But how will you get home?”

“My tube to South Kensington runs till one o’clock. And I’m quite used to being out late. Good-night.”

“Darling!” he whispered, hoarsely. “You darling!”

She stood a moment by the curb to watch him drive away.

VII

AS Helen was shown into Saul Hartz’s library a clock on the chimneypiece struck eleven.

“May I get you anything, miss?” said the butler, to whom she was well known.

“Thank you, Jennings—no.” She shivered slightly; it was a chill September night.

Jennings gave the fire a poke and retired.

Helen took a book from a table, turned up a reading lamp and sat down. At first so strong was the current of her thought that she did not look at the book. Her whole mind was fixed upon the forty precious minutes that could be allowed for Mr. Hartz’s return. If he tarried beyond that time it might be too late for him to be of use—at any rate, so far as the U. P. was concerned. In regard to the Planet he might, perhaps, be allowed another two hours.

Severe good sense forbade giving her thoughts much rein. Worry was not going to help. Besides, she had one of those disciplined minds, which, in spite of the moment’s pressure, are not allowed to riot. She looked at the book in her hand. Its title was Essays in Contribution to a Permanent Peace, its author, John Endor. Publication was not due for another fortnight, but an advance copy had been sent already to the Planet by the book’s publishers in the hope of an early review.

Coincidence, brain wave, sixth, seventh, eighth, nth sense, had drawn her fingers subconsciously, in semidarkness to this volume. That it was now in her hand was not due to the fact that she had read the title on the cover. The book’s coming open at this particular place was less a fruit of chance than of the fact that a marker had been inserted.

A mere glance disclosed that much of page 204 was heavily underscored in red ink.

“The most acute problem of this vexed time is the ever-growing power of the newspaper press. Legislation of a drastic kind is needed to cope with certain newspaper ‘bosses’ in Great Britain and America and their combinations, national and international, of periodicals, agencies, special correspondents and their sinister antennae, which persistently foul at the source the wells of truth. So long as the infernal machinery which creates and molds public opinion and now aspires to govern the world can be set in motion by the Luciferian minds which control it, minds whose sole merit is a prodigious development of the modern business brain and its infinite capacity for combination and adjustment, hope of a stable peace on any of the five continents of this unlucky planet is out of the question. It cannot be said too often that such an engine as the Universal Press is a power for evil and a dire menace to civilization.”

To the eyes that read these words they were written in letters of fire. They seemed to burn themselves in Helen’s brain. Could this terrible indictment be true? Was it justified? At least it was the considered verdict of the man she had promised to marry. And it was directed against one who had her whole allegiance, one who crowned with a princely reward her loyal labors.

The Chief had many foes. So much was known to her. But like most other people she had been willing to regard that fact as a tribute to the peculiar nature of his talent. Saul Hartz’s enemies were the first to own that his genius had enabled him to get so many strings into his hand that he was able to interfere too intimately with the inner workings of the body politic. He had made such a “corner” in public opinion and the subterranean forces which mold it that he had been able to upset the true balance of government throughout the world. Acute minds saw the time coming when the U. P. would have all nations at its mercy.

Helen Sholto knew that sinister charges had been brought against a portentous machine. But to her they had always remained vague. Now, however, they were taking shape. Once she had heard Mr. Hartz stigmatize John Endor as a fanatic. The moment was at hand when the two men must be weighed in the scales. Which was in the right? Helen felt that her whole career was involved in the answer about to be given.

Under which king, Bezonian? The words seemed to come to her out of the upper air. It was as if they sounded in the delicate ear of her spirit. Before, however, she could trace them to their source she was terribly startled. Someone had entered the room unperceived. With a shiver she woke to a perception of the fact that the Colossus stood looking at her.

VIII

THERE was something almost feline in the movements of Saul Hartz. So cat-footed was his progress about the Office that he was continually taking his staff by surprise. It made for efficiency, no doubt, this liability to be overlooked and incidentally “to be fired” at short notice; but in the opinion of the more Olympian spirits who lived under his ægis such tactics were hardly worthy of one so august. They were content to suffer them all the same. Saul Hartz in everything insisted on being a law unto himself.

He was very much a law unto himself to-night.

“What do you make of it?” So like the man to get through at once, without preface or apology, to a leading question. The book, at that moment, was the one thing that mattered to the Colossus. “Bright fellow that?” He did not disdain to answer his own question; it was his method, as a rule, of asking another. “But!” He tapped a finger of rue, half humorous, half melodramatic upon the center of an immense forehead, “just a weeny!” As he drummed again an odd puckering of the eyelids somehow became truly comic. “I’m sorry to have to say so.”

Helen rose rather nervously from her chair. She was never quite at her ease in this man’s presence. Few were. Before she could muster wits enough to say anything, Saul Hartz had gone on developing his theme in the hushed, far-away voice which only one person at a time was ever able to hear and yet in the ear of that person every syllable was like a bell. “Madness in the mother’s family. Got his dossier—dear fellow! Brilliant at Oxford. At Eton, too. Geared a little too high, just a little too high—that’s all. Great pity! A second Gladstone might have been so useful just now. But”—the shrug of the Colossus almost seemed in the tranced eyes of Helen to set the cosmos whirling—“over the verge already. Dear fellow!”

The finality of that gentle, rather eerie voice turned her soul faint. She could not repress a shudder. The sense of fate as adumbrated in the personality of this man was overpowering.

“Dear fellow!” He developed his theme with a cadence ever-recurring, yet of a slightly fantastic irrelevance, like a leit-motif of the later Wagner. “You’ve seen his speech, I daresay, to his constituents. Proud people—they must be—dear fellow! Mother, you know, was one of the mad Dinneford lot.”

So intense was his absorption in his subject that it might be said to evoke an atmosphere. The room itself became submerged in a miasma that was almost deadly. Helen had a sensation of being stifled by a lurking, unknown force. It was very difficult to interpose a word. By the time she was able to do so, mischief had been wrought.

“Don’t you wonder why I’m here,” she said, “at this hour?”

“To own the Planet,” he laughed, “is to wonder at nothing.”

“I want your help in a matter of great importance.”

“Aha!” There came at once an entire change of tone and manner that was charming. “Sit down again in that chair, and tell me just precisely what I can do.” Of a sudden he had put on the cloak of an indulgent father. When he spoke like that to any one, there was no resisting him.

Helen automatically obeyed. “It’s about Mr. Endor’s speech.” She plunged in medias res. With those eyes, their light ever changing, fixed upon her, she lost the power to order her words artistically. “I have his assurance that he has been misreported.”

“Ah!” The slight exclamation was curiously, almost affectionately, gentle.

“He’s so upset!” A feminine urgency of tone was the oddest contrast. “Almost every word he used has in some strange way been given another meaning. For instance, the final phrase as given in the Evening Press is ‘I believe in the Sword.’”

“Yes, I noticed that.” The tone had all the kindliness of an old-fashioned pedagogue patting on the head a favorite pupil. “A little bold perhaps just now, but striking ... really quite striking!”

“But it was never used. What he did say was, ‘I believe in the Word.’”

“Ah—the ‘Word’—‘I believe in the Word.’ Quite so. Hardly so effective. Everybody has believed in the ‘Word’ since the time of Moses. But the ‘sword,’ it takes a big man just now—just at the moment—to believe in the sword.”

“He doesn’t believe in it, that’s the whole point.” Helen’s voice grew a little strained. “It’s a mistake, just a ghastly mistake. On no account, he says, must the speech be circulated. It will do so much harm, not only in this country, but in America, where he has so many friends.”

“So many friends in America. How interesting!” Again the head of the good boy received a gentle, fatherly pat.

“Don’t you see—that a speech like that—may undo a reputation—a reputation that it has taken years—years—to build up?”

“You think so?” The soul of a courtier was in the throbbing warmth of that faint whisper. “Well, you are always right.” What in the mouth of any one else would have been a gross compliment became in that of the Colossus a sober presentment of fact.

“It is of vital importance that the speech, at any rate the U. P. version, shall not appear in to-morrow’s Planet or Mercury.”

“Quite.” Mr. Hartz nodded indulgently. “One appreciates that ... at least ... one appreciates his feeling about it ... dear fellow!”

“He has an important meeting at Hellington to-morrow.”

“Quite.” Again the indulgent nod.

“And the U. P. must circulate an unconditional withdrawal to overtake as quickly as possible the harm it has already done.”

There was not an instant’s hesitation. “If he wants that, he’s entitled to have it certainly.”

“But there’s so little time,” said Helen urgently. “It is only with the utmost difficulty that Mr. Fuller has been persuaded to keep the provincial Mercury off the machines until a quarter to twelve, in the hope of being able to get your permission to omit the speech altogether. There’s only five minutes now, I’m afraid.”

“Much may happen in five minutes at the headquarters of the planetary bodies.” The playfulness of the Colossus was delightful. It was also reassuring. For it had been said of him that inside five minutes he was fully competent to knock Saturn out of the firmament and put it back again.

“Have I your authority to stop the Mercury?” Her eagerness was a little pathetic.

“Why, of course,—of course.” The tone was thistledown.

“If I may use your telephone——” She was on her feet, the woman of action.

“Sit down, please, and go on reading his clever book while I myself speak a little word to the Office. These rubs will arise, don’t you know, in the best regulated families, as Lucifer, Son of the Morning, is said to have remarked on a much-celebrated occasion to President Wilson.” With the air of a very kindly, rather boyish, old gentleman having a game of romps with a favorite grandchild, he forced her back to her chair and her book. And then with a kind of elephantine humor he made for the door.

At its threshold, with a hearty laugh, he turned again. “The revised version of this priceless old-world story is that it was Mr. President who really made the remark to the Eldest of the Sons of Time in old John Milton’s—or was it old John Morley’s?—hearing. However, the point is not material at the moment. A little word with the Office.”

With the pleasant chuckle of one basking agreeably in the light of his own humor, he went out of the room.

IX

WHEN the door closed, Helen began to feel that she could breathe again. The room was large, high-ceiled, well-ventilated; but the Colossus had seemed to absorb every molecule of air there was in it. In this mood of expansion he was truly formidable. No matter what his detractors had to say of him, and they said much and said it bitterly, it was never denied that Saul Hartz was a power.

As soon as the door had closed, however, Helen for the first time in a two years’ intercourse, brought herself to shape a question. Was it really wise to trust this man so blindly? Where there was so much smoke must there not be also a certain amount of fire?

Encompassed by that dynamic force the higher nerve-centers were a little apt to fail. And to submit the all-embracing mind of Saul Hartz to the common scale of right and wrong was hardly feasible. Right and wrong in that paradoxical cosmos of a brain, which yet formed a key to the whole objective modern world, seemed interchangeable terms. She recalled hearing him say more than once, that Right in the midday special was Wrong in the evening edition. Certainly he made a jest of everything. He seemed to believe in nothing, to respect nobody; yet in her dealings with the man himself she had always found him scrupulously kind, wonderfully considerate, nobly generous.

To-night, in this chance visit, she had never felt so much out of her depth, she had never been swept so completely off her feet. John Endor was no common man, but this Chief to whom she owed allegiance had somehow a quality which seemed to raise him almost beyond good and evil.

In a time which to Helen was unexpectedly brief, Mr. Hartz was back in the room. “So much for that,” he said with the light, casual air that was always charming.

Helen rose at once. “Ever so many thanks,” she said, wholeheartedly. “I was quite sure it had only to be mentioned.” A look of gratitude drove the words right home. “And now I must fly. Good-night—and again, thank you.”

The passage to the door, however, was barred, playfully, if resolutely, by the genial spread of the Colossus: “Now please don’t run away. Sit down and tell me a little about yourself.”

“There’s the last train from Piccadilly Circus to think of.”

“’Tisn’t twelve yet. The South Kensington tube is open till one o’clock.”

It was flattering to think that so great a man should carry in his mind her address, but it was like him not to forget the simplest of facts. “Besides, I take all responsibility for getting you home.”

“And accept it, I hope”—yielding with a laugh—“if I am late to-morrow at the Office.”

“Let me get you a cup of tea or something.” He pressed a bell. “I’m going to have a whisky and soda myself.”

Helen declined refreshment.

To the servant who entered Mr. Hartz said: “Please tell Jennings the brougham will be wanted in half an hour.”

Duly armed with a “nightcap” which contained a great deal more soda than whisky the Colossus sat cosily down by the fire immediately opposite Helen. A man of fifty-two, his manner towards this singularly attractive woman of six-and-twenty was so whimsically, yet frankly, paternal, that something beyond disparity of years seemed necessary to sustain it.

An odd sensation, unlike anything she had ever felt before, came subtly upon Helen. This man’s personality was geared very high, but unlike that of John Endor it seemed to be a fixed quantity, not liable to fluctuate. In his case the nerves didn’t show. To talk to, when he chose, he was delightful. Just now, perhaps half deliberately, he chose.

If the question was not impertinent, why was she concerned so particularly for John Endor’s reputation?

Her shrewdness had allowed her to foresee that such a question might arise. She was half prepared to answer it. As the necessity came, however, she yielded to a slight embarrassment which did not make her attraction less.

“We are going to be married.”

Saul Hartz gave a sharp upthrow of the head.

“Lucky fellow!” The words of the Colossus were almost as quick as thought itself. “Devilish lucky fellow! I do congratulate him—upon my word!” The purr of the gentle voice had a warmth of overtone that in the ear of Helen was delicious. She felt the blood pass over her cheeks in a wave. Such a voice as that must have opened the heart of any woman. He had the power, when he chose, of simulating an intense humanity.

“Won’t you congratulate me?” she ventured.

“Why, of course—of course.” The purr had not changed and yet, in a way that almost impinged on the mysteries of counterpoint, she was made to guess rather than to feel that a vital something was no longer there.

Madness in the mother’s family. Those five words descended upon her from the upper air. Almost in the same instant the open book on her knee slid to the carpet.

She had not time to recover the book before Mr. Hartz was on his feet politely restoring it to her.

“Clever, you know.” He seemed to think aloud. “A mind at work there.” The book was placed loverly in her hand. “Only one hopes——”

Sighing delicately he returned to his chair. His air had now become that of one who has to reconcile a very good heart with the sterner impulses of duty.

“You hope?” She caught up the broken phrase with an eagerness that was a little pitiful.

“Nothing, nothing.”

She shivered slightly. Madness in the mother’s family.

“Wonderful faculty he has”—the Colossus seemed again to be thinking aloud—“of swaying audiences. Rather picked audiences, too. And as men are reckoned nowadays, hardly more than a boy.”

“He’s thirty-eight.”

“Almost an infant prodigy!” The deep laugh was very good to hear. “I never heard Gladstone. Before my day. But one or two of the fathers who go back to prehistoric times say that your young man is such another, but that the People’s John—proud title the People’s John—and only thirty-eight—has one shot in his game that the G. O. M. never had. It’s the master-shot, too, believe me. Humor. Cool-drawn humor. With that in your bag, you’ve always a chance of holing out under bogey. Don’t you agree?”

“Yes, I hope he has it,” said the cautious Helen. “But whether on the platform it quite ‘gets over,’ as they say in the theater, one is never quite sure. Whenever one hears him one is always dominated by his tremendous moral enthusiasm.”

“There’s your Gladstone. Always the card, of course. That’s why good judges think he may go a very long way.”

Helen’s heart took fire. These were big words in the mouth of the Colossus. “You think that?” She looked eagerly across at him. “Really and truly you think that?”

The immediate answer of the great man was slowly to produce a cigar case. “No use offering you a cigarette. I know you don’t smoke. Wise—very wise woman.” As he spoke he chose a cigar, cut off the end, lit it.

“Do you really think he’ll go far?” she persisted.

“The pundits seem pretty unanimous.”

“But you—yourself—personally?”

The Colossus drew tentatively at his cigar. “Pray, who am I—a mere newspaper man—to hold an opinion—on such a matter? I can only tell you that Mr. Ransom thinks so and he, as you know, held office before the Deluge.”

“But you—yourself?” She was determined to nail him down. “Do you think John Endor may one day be Prime Minister?”

“Well, since you ask me”—each word was like a drip of ice-cold water—“in my humble opinion, I don’t.”

Something in the deliberate voice clutched her by the throat. As his eye caught hers and held it, she drew her breath quickly in.

“Since you ask me.” The tone was sweet apology, “Only my poor opinion. Really, I don’t pretend to know. Why should one?”

“You think,” said Helen, “that ... he ... might...?”

“My dear, I think nothing.” It was the father speaking again. “One can’t help feeling he’s a rather high explosive, that’s all. And of course, the mother——”

“The mother!” Her breath came and went in a little gasp.

Watching her closely he saw her turn very white. “I beg your pardon!” He was very quick, very adroit. “But you pin me down. And you mean so much to one, you know. In the Office we have come quite to depend on you. I can’t help thinking of you almost as a girl of my own.”

The simple words sank deep. They were music. This man had always had her loyal admiration. And now, as she sat facing him, she began to feel awed by a sense of all that he had done for her.

Suddenly a picture was flashed before her mind. Far away in America, in a backwater of a southern state, she saw her old parents hard pressed by modern conditions, but whose lot for nearly two years now she had been able to lighten with a liberal slice from her salary. It was going to be a terrible wrench to give up her life at the Office. And then John himself, would he, could he...?

The man who sat opposite seemed to read every thought she had.

“Hardly a matter upon which one is entitled to speak.”

The father again. “But, as I say, you mean so much to us in the Office—so please—please look before and after.”

A sense of being overcome by a great spirit afflicted her now. Here was an infinite power. She felt her defenses giving. The walls of the large room were beginning to press upon her. She was alone with the man in his own house, it was after midnight, she was at his mercy. Such fear was unworthy, but she was seized by a fierce desire to escape. There was the unknown to reckon with. At its beck, and under its fires, even her most sacred instincts were in danger of being subverted.

X

NEXT morning, as the clock struck eleven, the Chief entered his private room at the Office.

Punctuality, said his many biographers, was a cardinal fact in an amazing life. But Saul Hartz knew better.

As the Colossus sat down at his table, the mere look of him would have been enough to repute any theory so prosaic. The key of personality lay deeper. It was to be found in the eyes, curiously hooded like those of a bird of prey. In those undisclosed depths lurked the faculty of seeing into the future.

It was this rather terrible power that had made Saul Hartz the thing he was. He could afford to smile at the array of mental and moral virtues his Lives insisted upon. Well he knew how completely they were transcended by the fact that his birth had been attended by a Fairy.

A tray set on his blotting pad contained a mail of thirty unopened but judiciously sorted letters. He turned over each one in turn. In several cases the back of the envelope told all he needed to know about them. Others aroused a languid interest, a mild curiosity; life had few thrills to offer Saul Hartz. Two letters, however, among the pile were able to fix his attention. One had ultra thick paper embossed with the monogram of Royalty; the other was a black-sealed, black-edged envelope, registered and marked “private.”

Somehow, the mere look of the second letter intrigued the Colossus. His manner of laying it down proved that. But as a minor exercise in the art of self-mastery—it amused him to play these little pranks upon himself—he placed it carefully at the bottom of the pile. Then he opened the royal envelope.

A considerable personage, in his own hand, fair and clerkly, warmly thanked “My dear Hartz” for his efforts on behalf of the London hospitals. Previous campaigns in the newspapers had raised great sums, but the guiding spirit of the Universal Press was urgently asked to open a special fund to meet the needs of the coming winter.

This letter in hand, Mr. Hartz pondered rather less than a minute, and then he pressed a bell-button fixed in the side of his desk sharply three times.

The summons was answered at once by a youngish, bald, dome-headed man who wore the serious, rather pinched look that accompanies an intense preoccupation with money.

“Good-morning, Mumby.” The Chief greeted cheerfully the financial member of his Cabinet. Then he tossed him the letter. Before Mr. Mumby, in order to do justice to this document, could fix gold-rimmed eyeglasses to a nose with a narrow ridge, the Colossus gave a soft chuckle.

“A slight—a very slight irritation of the lobe of the left ear”—while he plucked at that organ his eye was fixed on Mr. Mumby’s face—“tells me that an irruption of Popocatapetl is about to occur. I hope you appreciate its significance.”

Even Mr. Mumby, schooled as he was in the more recondite ways of the Chief, was at a loss. The Colossus, however, was kind enough at once to enlighten him. “Tell me,” he said, “what is the price of National Mexican Thirds?”

“They closed last night,” said Mr. Mumby, who carried all little matters of that kind in his head, “at forty-six and an eighth, rather sellers.”

The Chief tapped an excellent set of teeth with a black lead pencil, a favorite trick when engaged in thinking constructively. “Suppose you go a bear—a modest bear?” Again he plucked at his left ear, but this time a smile famous upon five continents accompanied the action.

“When shall I cover, sir?” said Mr. Mumby, impassively.

“Twelve o’clock on Thursday,” said the Colossus. “And you can start the fund of His Nibs with the proceeds.”

“A thousand pounds, sir?” Mr. Mumby was more impassive than ever.

“Yes. A thousand pounds from the proprietor of the Planet newspaper. That, I think, should meet the case—to begin with, at any rate.”

For the third time the Colossus plucked a little whimsically at his left ear. Mr. Mumby bowed discreetly and retired.

XI

THE Chief turned again to his letters. That which he opened next was not the one that was really going to interest him. The place for it was still the bottom of the pile. He felt this bonne bouche was going to interest him so much that he would keep it until the very end.

All the same a mild surprise was contained in the second letter. It was an invitation for a week-end in the country, “to meet some rather interesting people.” Mr. Hartz permitted himself a faint smile. The socially gifted Mrs. Carburton was a power in the land, but emphatically she belonged to “the other camp.” Strictly speaking, the Colossus was far too big to belong to a camp. Mrs. Carburton did not belong to one either; but of late years they had not set each other’s genius. The famous châtelaine of Doe Hill made no secret of her belief that the U. P. had deliberately wrought the ruin of one of her rather numerous protégées. She was known to have a deep dislike for Saul Hartz. But she was important enough as the world went for an invitation to Doe Hill to be not without piquancy even for him.

Should he accept it? Why not? His attitude of slightly contemptuous indifference towards women in general was his attitude towards this woman, but she was a mine of information, and she made a hobby of gracing her table with the most interesting people in Europe. And for those alive to the lure of sex, her power of attraction was undoubted. Few men would have denied that Rose Carburton was, in her way, a siren.

Mr. Hartz was still in the valley of decision, this letter in hand, when Helen Sholto came into the room. Some two years before, on one of his brief but frequent trips across the Atlantic, he had found this remarkably able girl doing odd jobs in the New York office. Taken at once by her personality, he had brought her to London as one of several confidential secretaries, to whom, however, he never opened his mind; and in a post that was no sinecure she had discovered a feminine quick-thinking competence that had proved of high value. Moreover, Helen herself, with her charm, her high spirits, her good looks, seemed to relieve even the gloom and the grime of Cosmos Alley.

The great man had this morning, as usual, a cordial greeting, a benign smile, to offer her. But it hardly called for his abnormal powers of observation to see at once that something was wrong. His greeting was returned with a slight bow. Her face was grave and set. And in prompt response to the question in his eyes, she said without a word of preface in a low voice, “I wish to give formal notice to terminate my engagement here.”

Saul Hartz’s answer was to drum gently with a pencil on his blotting pad.

“I think it’s cruel!” Her eyes filled suddenly with tears. “The speech is in all the papers this morning. And the Planet has a leading article ... after your promise!”

The Colossus gazed at her impassively, and then he said, in that peculiar soft tone that now made her shiver. “Sit down, my dear child, and compose yourself. There’s something I have to say to you.”

Against her own reluctant will, Helen took a chair at the side of his desk, towards which he pointed.

“To begin with,” he said, “let me apologize for a mistake—a regrettable mistake. The instructions I gave hurriedly last night over the telephone were misunderstood. But I want you to believe”—the soft voice was now fused with feeling—“that that mistake, deplorable as it is, after all, is only of minor importance.”

Helen could only gasp. Of only minor importance! How dare he say that!

“You see, on inquiry, we learn that the speech was made as reported.”

“But Mr. Endor declares that he never used the words attributed to him,” was Helen’s answer, quick and stern.

“So I understand. But is Mr. Endor’s memory to be trusted? that is the point. He spoke without notes; he has no evidence of what he said impromptu, almost, as it were, on the spur of the moment, at a champagne luncheon. Many a man has wished to take back words, uttered under such circumstances. You see, the difficulty that arises in this case is”—the hooded eyes were opening and fastening upon her—“that three members of our staff who, by the way, were the only reporters there, are in unanimous agreement as to the words Mr. Endor used. They may not be the words Mr. Endor intended to use, but that is hardly a matter for the U. P.”

With those eyes fixed on her, Helen felt a chill spread through her veins.

“You see, my dear child,”—the father once more—“the evidence so far as we are concerned is conclusive. Three trusted members of the U. P. staff against one ... shall I say ... ra ... ther ... no, no, I beg your pardon ... I’d forgotten he’s your fiancé!”

“Last night,” Helen managed to say, in spite of the tentacles that pinned her now, “you promised to contradict the U. P. version, and withdraw it from circulation.”

“So I did,” was the gentle answer. “But I may not have realized ... quite adequately realized that our version was the only one at that moment in existence. Moreover, it places us in an awkward ... an immensely awkward position to have to go back on our own people ... whom we trust implicitly. However,”—the intense pain in her eyes did not escape him—“a promise is a promise, even if unwisely given. The U. P. is going to publish Mr. Endor’s disclaimer, and if I may say so ... if I may claim so much for it ... it is going to have the signal generosity not to divulge the facts upon which, in my humble judgment, it is fully entitled to rely. Indeed, having regard to the special ... the very special circumstances,”—a note of magnanimity was now in the voice of the Colossus—“I give you my word that the U. P. will not put in this very strong evidence on its own behalf unless Mr. Endor should happen to think that an action can lie against it. In that event, of course, I’m afraid it will have to be a case of cet animal est très mechant!”

“What good,” said Helen, “can this contradiction do Mr. Endor now? The lie has gone round the world and the truth can never overtake it.”

“Lie is a hard word,” said the Colossus, softly.

“I must believe the man who made the speech,” Helen’s voice trembled. “I do believe him.”

“We are in a very difficult position, but you can depend on our doing what we can to set the matter right.”

“It may be too late,” said Helen. “Personally, I feel that it is. Millions who read the original report in England and America will never see the contradiction. A speech of that kind may take a man years to live down.”