Page:The council of seven.djvu/107

 one hardly goes so far as to look for material assistance from you."

"In your dealings with the Society?"

The uncompromising question rather took Saul Hartz aback. "I didn't say so," he fenced. "We were discussing Garland. You say that Garland came to you for advice. May I ask what advice you gave him?"

The answer did not come at once. Wygram drew solemnly at his tchibouk. After a silence of several moments he said with a cool picking of words, "Since Garland didn't choose to follow the advice I gave, it may not be very profitable to disclose it—particularly as I was out of sympathy with the man himself."

"You offered advice all the same."

"I did. Out of no regard for Garland, with no desire to save his life, but merely in the interests of the community as a whole."

"Allow me to put this question." Hartz's senses were now strung to the point of intensity. "Had Garland followed the course you suggested to him, do you suppose he would have been alive to-day?"

"I think it highly probable."

"Yet in your view he was a bad man?"

"Had he taken the advice I gave him, he would have been impotent to do further mischief. But who does take advice?"

"Then why give it?"

"He came to me and sought it. I was enormously interested in his case. He was one of the most re