"
"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.
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