"The first step," Vine continued, "has already been taken. There is a bill coming before the Senate very shortly, which, if it is passed into law, will strike at the very foundation of all these great corporations. Five of the men most likely to be affected met together one night, and four of them signed a document, guaranteeing a fund of one million dollars for the purpose of bribing certain members of the Senate, who had already been approached, and whose names are also upon the document. You must not ask me how or in what manner, but that document has come into my possession."
Vine's companion looked at him in astonishment.
"Are you sure of your facts, Vine?" he asked. "Are you sure that the thing is not a forgery?"
"Absolutely certain!" Vine answered.
"Then you know, of course," his host continued, "that you hold all these men in the hollow of your hand."
"Yes, I know it," Vine answered, "and so do they! They have offered me a million dollars already for the document, but I have declined to sell. While I considered what to do, I thought it better, for more reasons than one, that I did not remain in New York."
"I should say so," the other remarked softly. "This is a big thing,
Vine. I could have scarcely realized it."
He rose to his feet, and took a few quick steps backwards and forwards. The two men were sitting in wicker chairs on a small flat space on the roof of the American Embassy in Ormonde Square. Vine's host, tall, with shrewd, kindly face, the stoop of a student, and the short uneven footsteps of a near-sighted man, was the ambassador himself. He had been more famous, perhaps, in his younger days, as Philip Deane, the man of letters, than as a diplomatist. His appointment to London had so far been a complete success. He had shown himself possessed of shrewd and far-reaching common sense, for which few save those who had known him well, like Norris Vine, had given him credit. He stood now with his back to Vine, looking down across the Square below, glittering with lights aflame with the busy night life of the great city. The jingle of hansom bells, and the distant roar of traffic down one of the great thoroughfares, was never out of their ears; but in this place, cut off from the house by the trap-door through which they had climbed, it was cooler by far than the smoking-room, which they had deserted half an hour before.
For some reason Deane seemed to wish to let the subject rest for a moment. He stood close to the little parapet, looking towards the horizon, watching the dull glare of lights, whose concentrated reflection was thrown upon a bank of heavy clouds.
"You have not told me, Norris," he remarked, "what you think of my attempted roof-garden."