BENNET GAGE had delivered an ultimatum. The Colossus was far from expecting it. He had come to look upon the staunch, the tried, the absolutely dependable Gage as a segment of his other self. Saul Hartz would have been the first to own, for he was fundamentally generous, that much of the Planet’s success was due to the ability of its editor-in-chief; and for himself there was no man on whose services he set a higher value. At the same time he must follow his star. No member of his staff was ever allowed to oppose his will. Advice was sometimes sought, it was sometimes taken, but even a man of Gage’s quality could not be permitted to offer it, much less to insist upon it, uninvited.
“You are talking like a fool, Gage, aren’t you?” The Colossus was too primitive to weigh his words overmuch at any time; in a crisis his bluntness of phrase seemed to add to his power. “Why go off at half cock, my friend?”
The editor of the Planet folded his arms, a little after the fashion of Napoleon, although he had too balanced a mind ever to feel in the least Napoleonic. “I don’t know why,” he said after a moment’s pause. “It may not be very logical and I daresay I shall live to regret it, but there is something there that tells me”—he pointed a finger ruefully whimsical at the pit of his own stomach—“that at all hazards we have to keep out of this.”
“Not ‘we,’ my friend.” The voice of Saul Hartz took him up sharply. “Confine yourself to the first person singular.”
“When I say ‘we’, I mean the Planet newspaper, a thing over and beyond myself.”
“Be it so. And for that reason you must stand to your guns. We can carry on, of course, without you. No man is indispensable. But you are by far the ablest person in this office with one exception ... put that in your pipe and smoke it! ... and you mustn’t think of leaving the ship at such a crisis.”
As the Colossus spoke he rose from his chair and with the gesture of an elder brother laid a hand on Gage’s shoulder. The elemental simplicity of the man was hard to resist. Bennet Gage had always been susceptible to it. Never had Saul Hartz been more compelling than at this moment. But the issue at stake transcended the personal equation.
A great effort was called for but Gage mustered the tenacity to stand his ground. He idolized the Planet and in spite of headstrong, domineering ways he idolized its owner; but he was face to face now with a very grave decision. “I beg you—I beg you”—his voice shook—“to keep us out of this.”
“Bah—you old woman!”
Scarcely had the words been uttered, when Saul Hartz was troubled to perceive the look of horror in the eyes of his lieutenant. “Forgive me, Gage!” It was almost the air of a schoolboy. “You’re not thinking of yourself, I know that of course, but you must, you simply must, trust the man at the wheel, as you always have trusted him, eh?”
For both, the silence that followed was full of pain. And of a sudden it was ended by half audible words. “I offer my resignation not because I want to, not because I ought to, but because a power not myself....” Unable to complete a sentence that grew more lame as it went on, the editor of the Planet lurched awkwardly out of the room.