J. C. Snaith

“ 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. ”

“ He knew little about life, he knew even less about women.
In their first quarter of an hour together over the drawing-room teacups Helen was amused, irritated, surprised, confounded by the calm assumptions of Lady Elizabeth Endor. All her standards of life and conduct were based on a rather remote past. John, who had humor enough to make due allowance for the old lady’s antique flavor, had done his best to prepare Helen for a shock; all the same, a lively sense of the comic was needed in Helen herself to make tolerable that first evening at Wyndham. ”

“ Neither John or Helen had the depth of mind of the real thinker. In action lay their strength. To improve one tiny niche of the world they knew but very little was all they sought. But they were open to impressions, intensely alive. And each had a secret ear to catch, no matter how fitfully, how faintly, the pulse of the time.
“When we humans,” said the sick man, “we hapless two-legs sit in our gazebo trying to peer behind the sunset, as you and I are doing now, we always seem to be up against one question. Is there anything really to be hoped from science? ”

“ Helen’s face showed a frank incredulity. “You would have one believe,” she said, with a thrill of horror in her voice, “that people are murdered secretly in the name of the Most High?”
“Murder is a harsh word. But as you say,” Hierons went on in a stern, solemn tone, “the Society’s every act is dictated by the aim it has in view. ‘God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform.’”
“To me,” said Helen with a little gasp of horror, “that sounds very like blasphemy.”
“No, no!” said Hierons. “Consider the problem the world has now to face. ”

“ As slowly and with a touch of pomp they descended the Club steps, for the awed eyes of ordinary workaday citizens were upon them, a shower of small white leaflets fell from the sky. It was a part and only a trivial part of the U. P. propaganda but the general effect was remarkably like a stage snowstorm. Indeed, Sir Munt emitted a quiet “very pretty” as he stooped augustly to retrieve one of these handbills which had fluttered and rotated to its long home at the bottom of the Club steps.
Sir Munt always liked to speak of himself as a practical man. ”

“ Helen sighed. “To me,” she said, “the inability to see far enough begins to seem the universal tragedy, common to each individual life and to the life of every nation.”
Hierons agreed. And he added with an air whimsically prophetic: “Man being as he is in the world that we know, it is a tragedy for which there can be no remedy. Even the wisest people have to improvise their actions from day to day, without knowing or being able to guess what their re-percussion will be.”
Slowly they walked along Knightsbridge, past Hyde Park Corner into Piccadilly. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The weaker or more delicate types—so far as our Society can read world tendencies—are fighting a losing battle with their backs against the wall. In other words, so far as this unhappy time is concerned, Evil is stronger than Good.”
“Hasn’t it always been so?” said Helen.
“More or less, I agree. But human ingenuity has now entered a phase which is a direct menace to evolution itself. Never has it been so imperative that those who do evil for the love of evil should be brought under control.” ”

“ 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 [21] with it, he began mentally to recite his secret formula. The gods approve the depth, and not the tumult of the soul. ”

“ At the look of horror in the eyes of the woman at his side, Wygram paused. “Mind you,” he said, “one does not for a moment accept all the implications that such a theory may open up. Let the possibility be advanced just for what it is worth. And I think”—his voice grew very gentle—“it would have been kinder, and perhaps wiser, not to have advanced such a possibility at all.”
“Your studies have made you pessimistic,” said Helen, hoping this was a straw to which she might cling.
“Yes, I quite think so,” Wygram agreed. “Every mind becomes subdued to that in which it works. ”

“ And then Hierons, with rather an air of taking the bit between his teeth, went suddenly on:
“Fate has ordained that your husband shall do a thing which we, his friends and co-workers, humbly believe to be the will of God.”
“That may be your view,” said Helen. “It may be the view of your Society. But it is not my husband’s. And he is quite ready to give his own life rather than take, as he believes unlawfully, the life of another man.” ”

“ Even the other side—for generations Blackhampton had been notoriously a “sporting” city—did not try to minimize the humor and the significance of the case. At the end of a week of nightly fiascos, while John Endor Is Jannock seemed to wax ever brighter in the heavens and its vis-à-vis more dismally waned, the sportsmen of Blackhampton—even the dogs were held to be sportsmen in Blackhampton—took a continual delight in the affair. Sir Munt had surpassed himself. He looked like winning the election off his own bat. ”

“ Saul Hartz smiled. On all occasions his power of recovery was automatic. As became one who saw himself as a modern dictator, he allowed nothing to come between the wind and his nobility.
The eyes of John Endor would have quelled a lesser man. They merely goaded the Colossus into action.
“I wonder if we are going to the same place.” Hartz’s voice, which seldom rose above a husky wheeze and yet had the power of carrying a great distance, had a note of half insolent bonhomie. It had, too, the complacence [143] of one who does not disguise that he has sized up all things in the visible universe. ”

“ LVIII THERE now remained for Helen the task of awaiting the arrival of Saul Hartz. Four o’clock was the hour that he was due.
The rather tiny drawing room in which she intended to receive him was quite a delight to the eye. It was choice, seductive, trim. Much care and taste had been lavished on the decorations, the hangings, the general scheme. A bright fire burned on a cosy hearth of blue and white Dutch tiles. Everything was a harmony of delicate blues and greens. No room could have been more civilized. ”

“ Above Market Square a monstrous air-ship still hovered, on whose Gargantuan belly the magic letters U. P. were clearly visible. And at that moment, dashing across the great Square itself, was a familiar mustard-colored contraption, with the legend “First with the News as Usual” flaring above it. The news was heralded by a large placard hung at the tail of the machine. “Aunt Mittie to address Charwoman’s Conference” was its cryptic nature.
To the initiate, however, the “news” was not without significance. And Sir Munt and the worthy Alderman [236] were themselves at the brink of enlightenment. ”

“ 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. ”

“ With a shudder that had a tinge of joy she recognized that the mind and will so delicately enfolding hers did evil for the love of evil; but yet she felt, too, as she had always done, that there was nothing ignoble in his choice of the baser part. At the worst, it belonged to a false philosophy of life. It was part of his giantism, his lust of power for power’s sake.
“All the silly gnats”—a big wine was in his glass—“all the silly gnats who swarm in bus and tube, who line up in queues for theaters and movies, who devour bookstalls and live on our headlines, well, well! ”

“ The grim intensity of her countryman’s earnestness kept Helen silent. He paused a few seconds that she might say something, but she chose not to speak.
“I intend to take you fully into my confidence,” said Hierons with the childlike simplicity of a great mind. “Our Society which we believe to include the flower of the world’s creative wisdom takes no narrow or partial view. It sees the human race now at the mercy of a particular type of brain and that type is peculiarly ignoble. ”

“ In the moments that immediately followed, a mind cruelly torn became a house divided against itself. One part of his brain, wherein lurked the eternal verities, assured him that this illicit assembly, this Council of Seven, was no place for John Endor. And yet in another part of his ethos, an influence, alien, but of extreme potency, was also at work. The cold logic of the matter was that on the issue that had been raised Lien Weng and his associates were perfectly right. In a matter of this kind, no man could be permitted to forswear allegiance. ”

“ Helen was thrilled. Only a woman of ambition could have gone so far already upon the road. This was an opportunity she had foreseen and had been steadily working for. To be in charge of such an undertaking would not only gratify a keen desire; it would be fulfillment almost beyond what she had dared to hope.
She knew that the eyes of Saul Hartz were reading her soul. ”

“ Slippery Sam was not exactly beloved, but since the Blackhampton Election his stock as a political entity had risen. To have spiked the U. P. batteries so neatly at such a fateful moment clearly meant that W. W. had known how to read the skies. Every professional legislator now began to feel in his bones that one of the much dread periodical reactions was at hand.
Could it be that the power of the U. P. was on the wane? It had promised the Millennium and was doing its best to deliver the goods, but it was so like human nature to be in rather a hurry in these little matters. ”

“ There was a note, however, in this enthusiasm which suddenly cast Endor into an odd change of mood.
“Let us hope,” he said, with a melancholy so intense that to Helen it was like a blow over the heart, “that he won’t try too much. To me that seemed his danger. Wasn’t it Goethe who said that man must learn first to know where his problem begins? Minds of the Hierons’ type don’t always recognize how small are the resources of humanity. The best, the wisest, the strongest, all are in chains. Man is a slave.” ”

“ If Endor himself and the secret society to which he was pledged usurped terrible functions which his conscience could never approve, they, too, must sink to the level of the thing they sought to destroy.
John Endor knew now that he was on the horns of an inescapable dilemma. The body of fanatics and visionaries whose will he had sworn to do would not be in the least likely to release him from his vows. It was not the way of such a camarilla. Once a member, always a member. Before God he would have to assume full responsibility for its acts. ”

“ For months, through the agency of your terrible engine the Universal Press, you have been inciting your Government to shatter Peking. For months, to this end you have been organizing public opinion by means of false news and distorted facts. Once the die is cast the yellow and black races are powerless to cope with the airships, the poison gases, the high explosives, the dread magics the civilization of the West is able to hurl upon them. ”

“ Human nature does not vary in the matter of its law courts. The man who is hanged is never so finished a criminal as the man who hangs him. Murder, I repeat, is a word, a phrase. Peace is tangible, a possible ideal, a definite object. For many months now, to give one more instance of its activities, the Universal Press, of which you, sir, are the controlling spirit, owing allegiance to none, has been working in a hundred subterranean ways to embroil the United States with Great Britain. ”

“ Such passion, such irony, such precision, such cumulative force simply asked for the scrap heap. Dating from the middle of the late war, that thrice blessed upheaval! the scrap heap was where all the Endors had gone. Education, breeding, dedication, were back numbers at Westminster. The country’s, the Empire’s, government, thank God! was now in the hands of business men. “We believe in the U. P. and we are registered subscribers!” That was the open sesame, just that simple and modest oath of allegiance. ”

“ I can hear my Uncle Edmund saying to my father, ‘Robert, the world is a good enough place as it is, if only fools like you will let it be.’ A shrewd man Uncle Edmund. ‘You’ll put the workingman on top, and then you’ll be happy,’ he used to say. If Uncle Edmund could have had his way he would have hanged poor papa at Hyde Park Corner. And that is how I feel about that wretched boy upstairs.”
Helen was hard set to keep her gravity. But she was just equal to the task. Moreover, with those sinister words of Saul Hartz still in her ears, there was yet a private end to gain. ”

“ A man of truly remarkable gifts, a man of creative imagination in the world of common affairs, you have so adapted your brain to the new order evolved by modern civilization that you have gained control of the sinister machine which evokes, creates, molds and directs public opinion. That is a feat of which our Society makes no complaint. ”

“ If you wore in your buttonhole a small purple disc emblazoned with the Prince of Wales’ feathers which was given you in exchange for a year’s subscription, paid in advance, to the Planet, the Mercury or any of the thousand-and-one daily or weekly publications of the U. P. throughout the habitable globe, you were free of a great society which had the power of conferring subtle and unexpected benefits upon you. With that talisman in your buttonhole any retail grocer between China and Peru was bound to take twopence off a half-pound packet of U. P. tea. ”