AS none knew better than Helen, it was a foible of the Colossus always to be “on time.” Punctuality is the soul of business, she had heard him say was his favorite aphorism.
The minutes ticked on, however, and she listened in vain for a ring at the front door bell. She went up to the drawing-room window and looked down into the Square. The street lamp, just opposite the front door, was already lit. The December evening was fast closing in. She listened tensely for the sound of an approaching car. Her eyes tried to pierce the fog, which after hanging about all day had increased considerably during the last hour.
A quarter past four struck. Helen had now ceased to think of anything she did, but proceeded to draw the heavy curtains across the window. And then guided by the bright glow of the fire she went to the door and switched on the light.
All at once it dawned upon her that now she would have to meet a fact that as yet had not taken shape in her mind. The Colossus might not come. It was so unlike him to be late. And he was such a busy man, with so many calls upon his time, that something might have intervened at the last moment to prevent his coming. But in that case, she argued, man of method as he was and respecter in small matters of the rights of others, he would almost certainly have let her know.
While her mind was busy with these pros and cons the clock moved steadily on. It chimed the half hour. More and more positive she grew that Saul Hartz would not come now. Her mind began to reach out tentatively to meet the new and unforeseen situation. The one hope she had, a desperate and perhaps a fantastic hope, of saving her husband’s life seemed already to have passed away.
She rang for the tea. It was necessary to do something, even if it involved a trivial action, in order to keep a hold of the will. The tea was wormwood in her mouth, but she was able to drink one cup. And then, with the walls of the room closing in upon her more surely than ever, she lay down on the sofa.
The clock chimed five. Her mind grew numb. All power of action was ebbing away from her. She realized that she could do no more. But half dazed as she was by the strong and cruel reaction that had already set in, she yet heard the honk honk of a motor as it entered the Square, followed at once by a sound of wheels.
Intensely she listened for the ring of the front door bell. But she listened in vain. In her excitement she got up from the sofa on which she sat. Hardly had she done so when the door opened, and John came into the room.
He was still wearing his overcoat and hat. In his ashen face was a look of burning intensity. They stood a moment looking at each other in a silence that was rather grotesque.
“Darling ... tell me ... what has happened?”
Endor did not answer the question. Or rather, he answered it by taking from a pocket of his overcoat “the late extra” edition of the Evening Press. The front page was draped heavily in thick mourning lines. He folded back the paper, set his finger on the middle column, and then handed it to Helen.
Her head swam round as she read:
TRAGIC DEATH OF SAUL HARTZ
The salient facts of the occurrence were that
|
about three o’clock this afternoon, shortly |
The uncanny silence which gripped them was broken at last by Endor’s high-pitched laugh. “First with the news as usual,” he said.
“There is a God after all!” said Endor.
The still half-terrified eyes of Helen strayed from the ashen face of her husband, in which a new light was breaking, to the chimneypiece and its blue Wedgwood vase. “I wonder,” she gasped, “I wonder!”
THE END