“What, you here in the lion’s den, Vine?” he remarked, smiling.  “Be careful or they will eat you up.”

Vine smiled.

“I am not afraid,” he said, “especially now that you are here to support me.”

“Mr. Vine,” Weiss said, “shows himself possessed of our natural quality, audacity.  He is here, I frankly believe, to pick up damaging information against us, for use the next time he issues his thunders.  We have been led into an interesting discussion, and we have a point to refer to you.”

John Drayton sat down and accepted the cigar which Weiss passed him.

“Sure,” he said, “I’ll be very pleased to join in; but you are a rash man, Weiss, to refer to me, for you know very well my sympathies are with Mr. Vine here.  I hate you millionaires and your Trusts, on principle of course, although I must admit that some of you are very good fellows, and smoke thundering good cigars,” he added, taking his from his mouth for a moment and looking at it.

“I don’t care,” Weiss answered.  “The point I want you to decide scarcely calls upon your sympathies so much as your judgment.  We were imagining a case in which say half a dozen men, who held the position of myself and Phineas Duge and Littleson here, I think I might say the half-dozen most powerful men in America, were suddenly, without a moment’s warning, to lose in the eyes of the whole of the public every scrap of character and stability, were to be threatened with absolute ruin, and a term of imprisonment for misdemeanour.  What would be the effect upon this country for the next forty-eight hours or so?”

John Drayton removed his cigar from his mouth.

“The one reason,” he said impressively, “why I hate your Trusts, why I loathe to see all the power of this country gathered together in the hands of a few men such as you have mentioned, is that, in the event of such a happening as you have put forth, the country would have to face a crisis that would mean ruin to hundreds of thousands of her innocent people.”  Then for the first time during this interview Weiss’ full round lips receded in a smile.  His spectacles could not hide the flash of triumph that leapt out.  He turned to Vine.

“You hear?” he said simply.

“Yes, I hear!” Norris Vine answered.

“Of course,” John Drayton continued, “I do not know how you drifted into a conversation such as this, but in my last article in the North American Review, which Mr. Vine here will probably remember, I took the case of even a single man controlling one of the huge mercantile Trusts in this country, and tried to show what would happen to the small investors in a perfectly sound undertaking should a collapse happen to a holder of shares to this excessive extent.  It is a painful thing to have to confess, but there is no doubt that it exists.  We Americans are a great commercial people, and the dollar fever runs a little too hotly in our blood.  We stretch out our hands too far.  Vine, I know, agrees with me.”