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.