They are men who
deserve whatever may happen to them. They are not of your world, my
friend. They are the men who have sucked the life-blood out of many and
many a prosperous town-village in our country. Don't think that I
hesitate for one moment for their sakes. I tell you frankly that my
first idea was to give the whole thing away in the _Post_."
"It would have been," Deane remarked, with a faint smile, "the biggest
journalistic scoop of the century."
Vine nodded.
"Well," he said, "I should have done it but for one man's advice. It
was John Drayton who showed me what the other side of the thing might
be. He pointed out that the innocent would suffer for the guilty, in
fact hundreds, perhaps thousands, of the innocent, would be ruined that
these few men might be punished. It was his belief that the publication
of this document, and the arrest of the men concerned in it, would cause
the worst panic that had ever been known in America. That is why I
stayed my hand and came over here to consult you."
The ambassador sighed, as he resumed his seat and lit another cigar.
"Drayton was right," he remarked softly. "He is a man of common sense,
and yet we must remember that great reforms are never instituted without
sacrifices.
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