Page:The council of seven.djvu/22

 "But why shouldn't they—once in a while?" Her voice had a maternal caress in it.

"The U. P. is the most efficient machine ever invented. It lives for and by efficiency—damnable word! That's the talisman with which it sways five continents. God help us all! No accident here."

"Can you really be sure?"

"Internal evidence. The few casual, cut-and-dried phrases I used, hardly more than a formal returning of thanks, have been so twisted round that they are the exact opposite of what was meant."

"Perhaps there's been a confusion of names."

"No! no! Much too circumstantial—John Endor—luncheon—this afternoon—Blackhampton Town Hall. There's no excuse. And the trick is so simple, so easy, once you condescend to its use. Take that final phrase, 'I believe in the Sword.'"

Helen waited eagerly.

"Knock out the first letter of the last word and you have the phrase I used."

She was blinded for a moment by the flood of light let in by this concrete instance. It went far to prove that his suspicions, which by nature he was the last man in the world to harbor, were not without warrant. Such a rebuttal of the charge against himself was complete, final; at the same time Helen Sholto had a very strong reason of her own for declining to accept all the implications that now arose.

In a sense she herself was an employee of the Uni