"I snatched them up," she murmured, "and ran. I am sure they will come after me. And Vine—I think that that man will kill Vine. His fingers were upon his throat when I left."
"You brought them," Phineas Duge asked calmly, "from Norris Vine's rooms?"
She had no time to answer. The door was opened. Norris Vine stood there on the threshold. He looked in upon the little group and shrugged his shoulders.
"I am too late, then," he said slowly.
Phineas Duge thrust his hand into the flames and held the papers there. Norris Vine seemed for a moment as though he would have sprung forward, but Littleson intervened, and Deane himself.
"They shall burn!" Duge cried. "If you are really the altruist you claim to be, Mr. Vine, you need not fear their destruction. We are changing our tactics. If the bill becomes law we will face its effect, whatever it may be. There shall be no bribery. There shall be no underground history. If the people of America attack us, we will fight our own battles."
Norris Vine sighed.
"In another half an hour," he said, "my cable would have been sent.
To-morrow New York would have been indeed the city of unrest."
Phineas Duge turned upon him coldly.
"You," he said, "are one of those unpractical persons, who bring to the affairs of a purely utilitarian epoch the 'fainéant' scruples of the dilettante and romanticist. You cannot regulate the flow of wealth any more than you can dam a river with shifting sand. Don't you know that destiny, whether it be guided by other powers or not, was never meant to be shaped by the lookers-on?"