AFTER Mr. Gage had gone, Saul Hartz sat some time at his table in deep thought. Then he began to pace the room slowly and heavily, in a state of indecision quite alien to his character. Finally, by pressing the bell once, he summoned Helen Sholto from the next room, issued a few brief but clear directions in regard to the pile of letters on his table, taking care, however, as he did so, to assure himself that the most important one was in his coat pocket. And then putting on overcoat and hat he affirmed his intention of lunching at the Imperium Club and the probability of a return to the Office about four o’clock.
Mr. Hartz’s slow walk from Fleet Street along the Strand across Trafalgar Square was without real incident until he reached Pall Mall. At various points along the route it was illuminated by flaming news bills, his own and his rivals’, proclaiming “Mysterious Death of Famous Labor Leader.” At the very dangerous corner, however, where the Carlton Hotel debauches from the Haymarket, and where more than one recognized ornament of human society has paid toll to Moloch in his modern guise, the Colossus came within an ace of being cut off.
A mechanical contrivance propelled by a simian shape in oilskins and a peaked cap, one of Plato’s two-legged animals without feathers, crashed round the fatal corner almost at the precise instant that Saul Hartz, fathoms deep in thought, incautiously left the pavement. How he managed to escape being run over was purely a matter for the ironical deities who had his affairs in hand. Escape he did, however. And so rudely had his powerful mind been summoned to the needs of the moment that he was able to observe that the engine of destruction was armed fore and aft with placards, bearing the single word
GARLAND
The contraption itself was painted a flaming yellow, the sign manual of the Universal Press, and surmounting it like a halo was its world-famous motto:
FIRST WITH THE NEWS AS USUAL
Perhaps the first emotion to arise in the outraged being of the Colossus was regret that he had not recovered quickly enough from his shock to take the number of this friend of progress. It would have been pleasant to deal with the creature in due season; but if such a feeling was ever there, it was superseded immediately by a sense of pride. As usual, the U. P. was living up to itself. The efficiency of the grim monster that had been created by his severely practical genius was ruthless, astonishing, without a flaw. Only a very little reflection was needed for the mind of Saul Hartz to set the incident in true perspective. The achievement of this obscure servant of the U. P. was not a matter for censure. To dash round the Haymarket corner at midday without warning, at the rate of twenty miles an hour, was praiseworthy in the highest degree. Feats such as that, on an ever-ascending plane, without a thought for the rights of others, had enabled the U. P. to declare, as usual, a dividend for the last financial year of one hundred per cent, free of tax.
Difficult as it was to know why at that moment the mangled form of the Colossus was not on its way in a wheeled ambulance to Charing Cross Hospital, he was not a man to yield to an isolated fact of experience. By the time he had passed through Jermyn Street and had made the perilous crossing to Swan & Edgar’s corner, this minor incident was as if it had not been. The mind of Saul Hartz was now engulfed in a far more potent thing.
Near the entrance of the Piccadilly Hotel he stopped and took from an inner pocket a small address book bound in red leather. Memory reinforced, he went on as far as the Albany and halted finally at a door towards the Vigo Street end of that quaint caravansary.
The knock of the Colossus was answered at once by a creature slightly more odd than his surroundings. A pure bred Egyptian in a neat gray flannel suit, surmounted by a taboosh, opened the door and greeted the visitor with a gravely impassive smile. The man, slight of form, lustrous of feature, had an aloof dignity; he had, moreover the noetic subtlety of a very old civilization.
“Mr. Wygram in? Give him my card, will you?”
In the presence of such forceful, deliberate authority the smile of the janitor became a bow. Mr. Hartz produced a card. “Tell him, please, a very urgent matter.”
The man bowed again. Saul Hartz took this further obeisance as an invitation to enter. With cat-footed elegance the Egyptian silently bore the card to his master.