Kring spoke again. "Was not Acton the name of your son, and did he not fight against you and the things you stood for?"
Rastol's eyes went from one to another in the room. He made no other movement. Even his breathing was not apparent. At length he said:
"Yes, Acton was my son."
Kring's breath came hard, as if he had been holding it.
Then Rastol added: "But what of that? Really, gentlemen, this is a most ridiculous performance. To bring me to this house, to threaten me with weapons and with words and to produce mysterious papers with the flourish of a wandering mystic—this is childish. I must ask you to excuse me. I have an important letter to write President Murain."
"What will the letter say?"
"It will say that I accept humbly, yet with pride that I have been chosen, the position of minister of commerce in the government to which I owe allegiance and wish to serve to the best of my poor ability."
"Allegiance!" Kring spat the word. "You speak of allegiance, who have never known it to anything decent and honorable. You blaspheme the memory of your son's great deeds when you use the word."
"Neither my son nor any creature that crawls on the ground has any bearing on my decision. Your threats and blackmail are unworthy of you, Mr. Kring. And if you persist in this farce, or seek to use your information publicly, I shall be forced to make a noisy and patriotic speech which will look incongruous in my biography but which will have the stupid public applauding from the galleries. I shall say that as an older man I believed in gradual change and that no man was happier than I when Mars became a republic under the aegis of World Government. I shall say, if I am forced to, that of course I had publicly deplored the activities of the man called the Green Arrow, but that I was in good company, for did not Mr. Murain—then not yet President Murain of the Republic-to-be—also plead for peaceful methods of achieving freedom, and urge his followers to shun violence? And if someone is so unfeeling as to mention that Acton was my son, could not my impatience with his activities have been in reality a father's fears for the life of the boy he had loved from the cradle? Oh, I shall make them weep, Mr. Kring, and your petty plan will come to nothing. Furthermore, I shall demand your resignation as a sub-commissioner of commerce, and I have little doubt that I shall receive it."