Saul Hartz, after a little weighing, that was half contemptuous, of the pros and cons of the matter, decided to accept Mrs. Carburton’s invitation to Doe Hill. He did not know who was to be of the party, nor did he much care. That there would be a house full of entertaining people could be taken for granted. Rose Carburton was a power in the social world. Her week-ends were famous. For a variety of reasons, not easy to define, the Colossus was seldom honored in this way. It was a little odd perhaps that a man whose flair for “news” took him everywhere on principle should not have found himself oftener in a house where it was generally to be had in liberal quantities. Doe Hill was by no means exclusive. Its doors were open pretty wide to the talents. Saul Hartz was just the kind of man the world would look to find there. He knew Mrs. Carburton in the way he knew so many people; at more than one dinner table he had come under the spell of her attraction, but this was the first time, in recent years at any rate, that she had shown a desire to carry farther a casual acquaintance. The truth was, no doubt, that they didn’t quite set one another’s genius. Rose Carburton was something of _une maitresse femme_ and the dark shadow of the Colossus had fallen not without menace, as was its way, across her path. Over and beyond the fact that she was one of the most accomplished stalkers of the lion in Europe, she had her private ideas, her philosophy of life, her point of view. She was far more than a mere hunter of notoriety. Not only were her political instincts highly developed, but she had a faculty not always given to her sex, of seeing things “in the round.” Mindful of the commonweal she had learned to look ahead. It may have been that, to a gaze so far-seeing, Saul Hartz was the writing on the wall. The Colossus had much to occupy his thoughts in the ten days that lay between the arrival of the Society’s ukase and the visit to Doe Hill. When, how or by what means he would be called to its presence, no word was given him. This thing had come as a sharp and distinctly unpleasant shock, yet considering the matter with the poise of mind on which he prided himself, he did not pretend for a moment that it was in any sense a surprise. At the core of being was a nest of dark designs. Their nature had only to be suspected for powerful and implacable foes to take the field against him who dared to harbor them. He was most careful to keep his own counsel in the Office. No member of the staff, not even the _Planet’s_ editor, was given an inkling of the grisly secret he had locked away. All the same, his interview with Wygram, when at leisure he came to think it over, had a sobering effect. Wygram had brought home to him that his life was in grave danger.