Counsel for the Defense
Within two hours after Blake had received Doctor Brenholtz’s telegram its contents had flashed about the town. Doctor West was besieged. The next day found him treating not only as many individual cases as his strength and the hours of the day allowed, but found him in command of the Board of Health’s fight against the plague, with all the rest of the city’s doctors accepting orders from him. All his long life of incessant study and experiment, all those long years when he had been laughed at for a fool and jeered at for a failure – all that time had been but an unconscious preparation for this great fight to save a stricken city. And the town, for all its hatred, for all the stain upon his name, as it watched this slight, white-haired man go so swiftly and gently and efficiently about his work, began to feel for him something akin to awe – began dimly to feel that this old figure whom it had been their habit to scorn for near a generation was perhaps their greatest man.
While Katherine watched this fight against the fever with her father as its central figure, while she awaited in suspense some results of her advertising campaign, and while she tried to press forward the other details of her search for evidence, she could but keep her eyes upon the mayoralty campaign – for it was mounting to an ever higher climax of excitement. Bruce was fighting like a fury. The sensation created by his announcement of Blind Charlie’s threatened treachery was a mere nothing compared to the uproar created when he informed the people, not directly, but by careful insinuation, that Blake was responsible for the epidemic.
Blake denied the charge with desperate energy and with all his power of eloquence; he declared that the epidemic was but another consequence of that supremest folly of mankind, public ownership. He was angrily supported by his party, his friends and his followers – but those followers were not so many as a few short weeks before. Passion was at its highest – so high that trustworthy forecasts of the election were impossible. But ten days before election it was freely talked about the streets, and even privately admitted by some of Blake’s best friends, that nothing but a miracle could save him from defeat.
In these days of promise Bruce seemed to pour forth an even greater energy; and in his efforts he was now aided by Mr. Wilson, the Indianapolis lawyer, who was spending his entire time in Westville. Katherine caught in Bruce’s face, when they passed upon the street, a gleam of triumph which he could not wholly suppress. She wondered, with a pang of jealousy, if he and Mr. Wilson were succeeding where she had failed – if all her efforts were to come to nothing – if her ambition to demonstrate to Bruce that she could do things was to prove a mere dream?
Toward noon one day, as she was walking along the Square homeward bound from Elsie Sherman’s, she passed Bruce and Mr. Wilson headed for the stairway of the Express Building. Both bowed to her, then Katherine overheard Bruce say, “I’ll be with you in a minute, Wilson,” and the next instant he was at her side.
“Excuse me, Miss West,” he said. “But we have just unearthed something which I think you should be the first person to learn.”
“I shall be glad to hear it,” she said in the cold, polite tone they reserved for one another.
“Let’s go over into the Court House yard.”
They silently crossed the street and entered the comparative seclusion of the yard.
“I suppose it is something very significant?” she asked.
“So significant,” he burst out, “that the minute the Express appears this afternoon Harrison Blake is a has-been!”
She looked at him quickly. The triumph she had of late seen gleaming in his face was now openly blazing there.
“You mean – ”
“I mean that I’ve got the goods on him!”
“You – you have evidence?”
“The best sort of evidence!”
“That will clear my father?”
“Perhaps not directly. Indirectly, yes. But it will smash Blake to smithereens!”
She was happy on Bruce’s account, on her father’s, on the city’s, but for the moment she was sick upon her own.
“Is the nature of the evidence a secret?”
“The whole town will know it this afternoon. I asked you over here to tell you first. I have just secured a full confession from two of Blake’s accomplices.”
“Then you’ve discovered Doctor Sherman?” she exclaimed.
“Doctor Sherman?” He stared at her. “I don’t know what you mean. The two men are the assistant superintendent of the water-works and the engineer at the pumping-plant.”
“How did you get at them?”
“Wilson and I started out to cross-examine everybody who might be in the remotest way connected with the case. My suspicion against the two men was first aroused by their strained behaviour. I went – ”
“Then it was you who made this discovery, not that – that other lawyer?”
“Yes, I was the first to tackle the pair, though Wilson has helped me. He’s a great lawyer, Wilson. We’ve gone at them relentlessly – with accusation, cross-examination, appeal; with the result that this morning both of them broke down and confessed that Blake had secretly paid them to do all that lay within their power to make the water-works a failure.”
They followed the path in silence for several moments, Katherine’s eyes upon the ground. At length she looked up. In Bruce’s face she plainly read what she had guessed to be an extra motive with him all along, a glowering determination to crush her, humiliate her, a determination to cut the ground from beneath her ambition by overturning Blake and clearing her father without her aid.
“And so,” she breathed, “you have made good all your predictions. You have succeeded and I have failed.”
For an instant his square face glowed upon her, exultant with triumph. Then he partially subdued the look.
“We won’t discuss that matter,” he said. “It’s enough to repeat what I once said, that Wilson is a crackerjack lawyer.”
“All the same, I congratulate you – and wish you every success,” she said; and as quickly thereafter as she could she made her escape, her heart full of the bitterness of personal defeat.
That afternoon the Express, in its largest type, in its editor’s highest-powered English, made its exposure of Harrison Blake. And that afternoon there was pandemonium in Westville. Violence might have been attempted upon Blake, but, fortunately for him, he had gone the night before to Indianapolis – on a matter of state politics, it was said.
Blake, however, was a man to fight to the last ditch. On the morning after the publication of the Express’s charges, the Clarion printed an indignant denial from him. That same morning Bruce was arrested on a charge of criminal libel, and that same day – the grand jury being in session – he was indicted. Blake’s attorney demanded that, since these charges had a very direct bearing upon the approaching election, the trial should take precedence over other cases and be heard immediately. To this Bruce eagerly agreed, for he desired nothing better than to demolish Blake in court, and the trial was fixed for five days before election.
Katherine, going about, heard the people jeer at Blake’s denial; heard them say that his demand for a trial was mere bravado to save his face for a time – that when the trial came he would never show up. She saw the former favourite of Westville become in an hour an object of universal abomination. And, on the other hand, she saw Bruce leap up to the very apex of popularity.
For Bruce’s sake, for every one’s sake but her own, she was rejoiced. But as for herself, she walked in the valley of humiliation, she ate of the ashes of bitterness. Swept aside by the onrush of events, feeling herself and her plans suddenly become futile, she decided to cease all efforts and countermand all orders. But she could not veto her plan concerning Doctor Sherman, for her money was spent and her advertisements were broadcast through the North. As for Mr. Manning, he stated that he had become so interested in the situation that he was going to stay on in Westville for a time to see how affairs came out.
On the day of the trial Katherine and the city had one surprise at the very start. Contrary to all predictions, Harrison Blake was in the court-room and at the prosecution’s table. Despite all the judge, the clerk, and the sheriff could do to maintain order, there were cries and mutterings against him. Not once did he flinch, but sat looking straight ahead of him, or whispering to his private attorney or to the public prosecutor, Kennedy. He was a brave man. Katherine had known that.
Bruce, all confidence, recited on the witness stand how he had come by his evidence. Then the assistant superintendent told with most convincing detail how he had succumbed to Blake’s temptation and done his bidding. Next, the engineer testified to the same effect.
The crowd lowered at Blake. Certainly matters looked blacker than ever for the one-time idol of the city.
But Blake sat unmoved. His calmness begat a sort of uneasiness in Katherine. When the engineer had completed his direct testimony, Kennedy arose, and following whispered suggestions from Blake, cross-questioned the witness searchingly, ever more searchingly, pursued him in and out, in and out, till at length, snap! – Katherine’s heart stood still, and the crowd leaned forward breathless – snap, and he had caught the engineer in a contradiction!
Kennedy went after the engineer with rapid-fire questions that involved the witness in contradiction on contradiction – that got him confused, then hopelessly tangled up – that then broke him down completely and drew from him a shamefaced confession. The fact was, he said, that Mr. Bruce, wanting campaign material, had privately come to him and paid him to make his statements. He had had no dealings with Mr. Blake whatever. He was a poor man – his wife was sick with the fever – he had needed the money – he hoped the court would be lenient with him – etc., etc. The other witness, recalled, confessed to the same story.
Amid a stunned court room, Bruce sprang to his feet.
“Lies! Lies!” he cried in a choking fury. “They’ve been bought off by Blake!”
“Silence!” shouted Judge Kellog, pounding his desk with his gavel.
“I tell you it’s trickery! They’ve been bought off by Blake!”
“Silence!” thundered the judge, and followed with a dire threat of contempt of court.
But already Mr. Wilson and Sheriff Nichols were dragging the struggling Bruce back into his chair. More shouts and hammering of gavels by the judge and clerk had partially restored to order the chaos begotten by this scene, when a bit of paper was slipped from behind into Bruce’s hand. He unfolded it with trembling fingers, and read in a disguised, back-hand scrawl:
“There’s still enough left of me to know what’s happened.”
That was all. But Bruce understood. Here was the handiwork and vengeance of Blind Charlie Peck. He sprang up again and turned his ireful face to where, in the crowd, sat the old politician.
“You – you – ” he began.
But before he got further he was again dragged down into his seat. And almost before the crowd had had time fairly to regain its breath, the jury had filed out, had filed back in again, had returned its verdict of guilty, and Judge Kellog had imposed a sentence of five hundred dollars fine and sixty days in the county jail.
In all the crowd that looked bewildered on, Katherine was perhaps the only one who believed in Bruce’s cry of trickery. She saw that Blake, with Blind Charlie’s cunning back of him, had risked his all on one bold move that for a brief period had made him an object of universal hatred. She saw that Bruce had fallen into a trap cleverly baited for him, saw that he was the victim of an astute scheme to discredit him utterly and remove him from the way.
As Blake left the Court House Katherine heard a great cheer go up for him; and within an hour the evidence of eye and ear proved to her that he was more popular than ever. She saw the town crowd about him to make amends for the injustice it considered it had done him. And as for Bruce, as he was led by Sheriff Nichols from the Court House toward the jail, she heard him pursued by jeers and hisses.
Katherine walked homeward from the trial, completely dazed by this sudden capsizing of all of Bruce’s hopes – and of her own hopes as well, for during the last few days she had come to depend on Bruce for the clearing of her father. That evening, and most of the night, she spent in casting up accounts. As matters then stood, they looked desperate indeed. On the one hand, everything pointed to Blake’s election and the certain success of his plans. On the other hand, she had gained no clue whatever to the whereabouts of Doctor Sherman; nothing had as yet developed in the scheme she had built about Mr. Manning; as for Mr. Stone, she had expected nothing from him, and all he had turned in to her was that he suspected secret relations between Blake and Peck. Furthermore, the man she loved – for yes, she loved him still – was in jail, his candidacy collapsed, the cause for which he stood a ruin. And last of all, the city, to the music of its own applause, was about to be colossally swindled.
A dark prospect indeed. But as she sat alone in the night, the cheers for Blake floating in to her, she desperately determined to renew her fight. Five days still remained before election, and in five days one might do much; during those five days her ships might still come home from sea. She summoned her courage, and gripped it fiercely. “I’ll do my best! I’ll do my best!” she kept breathing throughout the night. And her determination grew in its intensity as she realized the sum of all the things for which she fought, and fought alone.
She was fighting to save her father, she was fighting to save the city, she was fighting to save the man she loved.
CHAPTER XXII
THE LAST STAND
The next morning Katherine, incited by the desperate need of action, was so bold as to request Mr. Manning to meet her at Old Hosie’s. She was fortunate enough to get into the office without being observed. The old lawyer, in preparation for the conference, had drawn his wrinkled, once green shade as far down as he dared without giving cause for suspicion, and before the window had placed a high-backed chair and thrown upon it a greenish, blackish, brownish veteran of a fall overcoat – thus balking any glances that might rove lazily upward to his office.
Old Hosie raised his lean figure from his chair and shook her hand, at first silently. He, too, was dazed by the collapse of Bruce’s fortunes.
“Things certainly do look bad,” he said slowly. “I never suspected that his case would suddenly stand on its head like that.”
“Nor did I – though from the beginning I had an instinctive feeling that it was too good, too easy, to be true.”
“And to think that after all we know the boy is right!” groaned the old man.
“That’s what makes the whole affair so tantalizing. We know he is right – we know my father is innocent – we know the danger the city is in – we know Mr. Blake’s guilt – we know just what his plans are. We know everything! But we have not one jot of evidence that would be believed by the public. The irony of it! To think, for all our knowledge, we can only look helplessly on and watch Mr. Blake succeed in everything.”
Old Hosie breathed an imprecation that must have made his ancestors, asleep behind the old Quaker meeting-house down in Buck Creek, gasp in their grassy, cedar-shaded graves.
“All the same,” Katherine added desperately, “we’ve got to half kill ourselves trying between now and election day!”
They subsided into silence. In nervous impatience Katherine awaited the appearance of the pseudo-investor in run-down farms. He seemed a long time in coming, but the delay was all in her suspense, for as the Court House clock was tolling the appointed hour Mr. Manning, alias Mr. Hartsell, walked into the office. He was, as Katherine had once described him to Old Hosie, a quiet, reserved man with that confidence-inspiring amplitude in the equatorial regions commonly observable in bank presidents and trusted officials of corporations.
As he closed the door his subdued but confident dignity dropped from him and he warmly shook hands with Katherine, for this was their first meeting since their conference in New York six weeks before.
“You must know how very, very terrible our situation is,” Katherine rapidly began. “We’ve simply got to do something!”
“I certainly haven’t done much so far,” said Manning, with a rueful smile. “I’m sorry – but you don’t know how tedious my rôle’s been to me. To act the part of bait, and just lie around before the noses of the fish you’re after, and not get a bite in two whole weeks – that’s not my idea of exciting fishing.”
“I know. But the plan looked a good one.”
“It looked first-class,” conceded Manning. “And, perhaps – ”
“With election only four days off, we’ve simply got to do something!” Katherine repeated. “If nothing else, let’s drop that plan, devise a new one, and stake our hopes on some wild chance.”
“Wait a minute,” said Manning. “I wouldn’t drop that plan just yet. I’ve gone two weeks without a bite, but – I’m not sure – remember I say I’m not sure – but I think that at last I may possibly have a nibble.”
“A nibble you say?” cried Katherine, leaning eagerly forward.
“At least, the cork bobbed under.”
“When?”
“Last night.”
“Last night? Tell me about it!”
“Well, of late I’ve been making my study of the water-works more and more obvious, and I’ve half suspected that I’ve been watched, though I was too uncertain to risk raising any false hopes by sending you word about it. But yesterday afternoon Blind Charlie Peck – he’s been growing friendly with me lately – yesterday Blind Charlie invited me to have supper with him. The supper was in his private dining-room; just us two. I suspected that the old man was up to some game, and when I saw the cocktails and whiskey and wine come on, I was pretty sure – for you know, Miss West, when a crafty old politician of the Peck variety wants to steal a little information from a man, his regulation scheme is to get his man so drunk he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
“I know. Go on!”
“I tried to beg off from the drinking. I told Mr. Peck I did not drink. I liked it, I said, but I could not carry it. A glass or two would put me under the table, so the only safe plan for me was to leave it entirely alone. But he pressed me – and I took one. And he pressed me again, and I took another – and another – and another – till I’d had five or – ”
“But you should never have done it!” cried Katherine in alarm.
Manning smiled at her reassuringly.
“I’m no drinking man, but I’m so put together that I can swallow a gallon and then sign the pledge with as steady a hand as the president of the W. C. T. U. But after the sixth drink I must have looked just about right to Blind Charlie. He began to put cunning questions at me. Little by little all my secrets leaked out. The farm lands were only a blind. My real business in Westville was the water-works. There was a chance that the city might sell them, and if I could get them I was going to snap them up. In fact, I was going to make an offer to the city in a very few days. I had been examining the system closely; it wasn’t really in bad shape at all; it was worth a lot more than the people said; and I was ready, if I had to, to pay its full value to get it – even more. I had plenty of money behind me, for I was representing Mr. Seymour, the big New York capitalist.”
“Good! Good!” cried Katharine breathlessly. “How did he seem to take it?”
“I could see that he was stirred up, and I guessed that he was thinking big thoughts.”
“But did he say anything?”
“Not a word. Except that it was interesting.”
“Ah!” It was an exclamation of disappointment. Then she instantly added: “But of course he could not say anything until after he had talked it over with Mr. Blake. He’ll do that this morning – if he did not do it last night. You may be approached by them to-day.”
She stood up excitedly, and her brown eyes glowed. “After all, something may come of the plan!”
“It’s at least an opening,” said Manning.
“Yes. And let’s use it for all it’s worth. Don’t you think it would be best for you to go right back to your hotel, and keep yourself in sight, so Mr. Peck won’t have to lose a second in case he wants to talk to you again?”
“That’s what I had in mind.”
“And all day I’ll be either in my office, or at home, or at Mrs. Sherman’s. And the minute anything develops, send word to Mr. Hollingsworth and he’ll send word to me.”
“I’ll not waste a minute,” he assured her.
All day she waited with suppressed excitement for good news from Manning. But the only news was that there was no news. And so on the second day. And so on the third. Her hopes, that had flared so high, sunk by slow degrees to mere embers among the ashes. It appeared that the nibble, which had seemed but the preliminary to swallowing the bait, was after all no more than a nibble; that the fish had merely nosed the worm and swum away. In the meantime, while eaten up by the suspense of this inaction, she was witness to activity of the most strenuous variety. Never had she seen a man spring up into favour as did Harrison Blake. His campaign meetings were resumed the very night of Bruce’s conviction; the city crowded to them; the Blake Marching Club tramped the streets till midnight, with flaming torches, rousing the enthusiasm of the people with their shouts and campaign songs; and wherever Blake appeared upon the platform he was greeted by an uproar, and even when he appeared by daylight, when men’s spirits are more sedate, his progress through the streets was a series of miniature ovations.
As for Bruce, Katherine saw his power and position crumble so swiftly that she could hardly see them disappear. The structure of a tremendous future had stood one moment imposingly before her eyes. Presto, and it was no more! The sentiment he had roused in favour of public ownership, and against the regime of Blake, was as a thing that had never been. With him in jail, his candidacy was but the ashes that are left by a conflagration – though, to be sure, since the ballots were already printed, it was too late to remove his name. He was a thing to be cursed at, jeered at. He had suddenly become a little lower than nobody, a little less than nothing.
And as for his paper, when Katherine looked at it it made her sick at heart. Within a day it lost a third in size. Advertisers no longer dared, perhaps no longer cared, to give it patronage. Its news and editorial character collapsed. This last she could hardly understand, for Billy Harper was in charge, and Bruce had often praised him to her as a marvel of a newspaper man. But one evening, when she was coming home late from Elsie Sherman’s and hurrying through the crowd of Main Street, Billy Harper lurched against her. The next day, with a little adroit inquiry, she learned that Harper, freed from Bruce’s restraining influence, and depressed by the general situation, was drinking constantly. It required no prophetic vision for Katherine to see that, if things continued as they now were going, on the day Bruce came out of jail he would find the Express, which he had lifted to power and a promise of prosperity, had sunk into a disrepute and a decay from which even so great an energy as his could not restore it.
Since there was so little she could do elsewhere, Katherine was at the Shermans’ several times a day, trying in unobtrusive ways to aid the nurse and Doctor Sherman’s sister. Miss Sherman was a spare, silent woman of close upon forty, with rather sharp, determined features. Despite her unloveliness, Katherine respected her deeply, for in other days Elsie had told her sister-in-law’s story. Miss Sherman and her brother were orphans. To her had been given certain plain virtues, to him all the graces of mind and body. She was a country school-teacher, and it had been her hard work, her determination, her penny-counting economy, that had saved her talented brother from her early hardships and sent him through college. She had made him what he was; and beneath her stern exterior she loved him with that intense devotion a lonely, ingrowing woman feels for the object on which she has spent her life’s thought and effort.
