Page:The council of seven.djvu/100

 *ence, he continued to smoke. Evidently it was his way of asking his visitor to explain himself. But the Colossus could not help secretly resenting this detachment. He was a very great man. It was idle to disguise that fact. The world at large was even more keenly aware of it than he was himself; therefore, the pose of this creature Wygram was a little galling.

Saul Hartz was too much a man of the world to betray his private feelings. But with an air more rapt than that of any fakir, soothsayer or mystic, Wygram calmly awaited the declaration of his errand. But why declare it? A sudden doubt now stiffened the will of the Colossus. Such a window-dressing fellow was a European or most likely an American, the astutest kind of westerner who knew how to wear his tongue in his cheek. Why, therefore, disclose such an exceedingly intimate matter to one whom instinctively he did not trust; one who, moreover, might know how, should occasion call, to turn such very perilous knowledge against him.

It was not to be wondered at that the ensuing silence was not immediately broken. To Saul Hartz it was peculiarly trying. He was a man who had a right to plume himself upon the faculty of knowing his own mind. His fortunes had been built upon it. But now, at this difficult moment, for almost the first time in his life it deserted him. Should he confide in this charlatan or should he not?

In the end it was the man on the ground who opened