Counsel for the Defense
Whenever Katherine entered the sick chamber – they had moved Elsie’s bed into the sitting-room because of its greater convenience and better air – her heart would stand still as she saw how white and wasted was her friend. At such a time she would recall with a choking keenness all of Elsie’s virtues, each virtue increased and purified – her simplicity, her purity, her loyalty.
Several times Elsie came back from the brink of the Great Abyss, over which she so faintly hovered, and smiled at Katherine and spoke a few words – but only a few, for Doctor West allowed no more. Each time she asked, with fluttering trepidation, if any word had come from her husband; and each time at Katherine’s choking negative she would try to smile bravely and hide her disappointment.
On one of the last days of this period – it was the Sunday before election – Doctor West had said that either the end or a turn for the better must be close at hand. Katherine had been sitting long watching Elsie’s pale face and faintly rising bosom, when Elsie slowly opened her eyes. Elsie pressed her friend’s hand with a barely perceptible pressure and smiled with the faintest shadow of a smile.
“You here again, Katherine?” she breathed.
“Yes, dear.”
“Just the same dear Katherine!”
“Don’t speak, Elsie.”
She was silent a space. Then the wistful look Katherine had seen so often came into the patient’s soft gray eyes, and she knew what Elsie’s words were going to be before they passed her lips.
“Have you heard anything – from him?”
Katherine slowly shook her head.
Elsie turned her face away for a moment. A sigh fluttered out. Then she looked back.
“But you are still trying to find him?”
“We have done, and are doing, everything, dear.”
“I’m sure,” sighed Elsie, “that he would come if he only knew.”
“Yes – if he only knew.”
“And you will keep on – trying – to get him word?”
“Yes, dear.”
“Then perhaps – he may come yet.”
“Perhaps,” said Katherine, with hopeful lips. But in her heart there was no hope.
Elsie closed her eyes, and did not speak again. Presently Katherine went out into the level, red-gold sunlight of the waning November afternoon. The church bells, resting between their morning duty and that of the night, all were silent; over the city there lay a hush – it was as if the town were gathering strength for its final spasm of campaign activity on the morrow. There was nothing in that Sabbath calm to disturb the emotion of Elsie’s bedside, and Katherine walked slowly homeward beneath the barren maples, in that fearful, tremulous, yearning mood in which she had left the bedside of her friend.
In this same mood she reached home and entered the empty sitting-room. She was slowly drawing off her gloves when she perceived, upon the centre-table, a special delivery letter addressed to herself. She picked it up in moderate curiosity. The envelope was plain, the address was typewritten, there was nothing to suggest the identity of the sender. In the same moderate curiosity she unfolded the inclosure. Then her curiosity became excitement, for the letter bore the signature of Mr. Seymour.
“I have to-day received a letter from Mr. Harrison Blake of Westville,” Mr. Seymour wrote her, “of which the following is the text: ‘We have just learned that there is in our city a Mr. Hartsell who represents himself to be an agent of yours instructed to purchase the water-works of Westville. Before entering into any negotiations with him the city naturally desires to be assured by you that he is a representative of your firm. As haste is necessary in this matter, we request you to reply at once and by special delivery.”
“Ah, I understand the delay now!” Katherine exclaimed. “Before making a deal with Mr. Manning, Mr. Blake and Mr. Peck wanted to be sure their man was what he said he was!”
“And now, Miss West,” Mr. Seymour wrote on, “since you have kept me in the dark as to the details of your plan, and as I have never heard of said Hartsell, I have not known just how to reply to your Mr. Blake. So I have had recourse to the vague brevity of a busy man, and have sent the following by the same mail that brings this to you: ‘Replying to your inquiry of the 3rd inst. I beg to inform you that I have a representative in Westville fully authorized to act for me in the matter of the water-works.’ I hope this reply is all right. Also there is a second hope, which is strong even if I try to keep it subdued; and that is that you will have to buy the water-works in for me.”
From that instant Katherine’s mind was all upon her scheme. She was certain that Mr. Seymour’s reply was already in the hands of Blake and Peck, and that they were even then planning, or perhaps had already planned, what action they should take. At once she called Old Hosie up by telephone.
“I think it looks as though the ‘nibble’ were going to develop into a bite, and quick,” she said rapidly. “Get into communication with Mr. Manning and tell him to make no final arrangement with those parties till he sees me. I want to know what they offer.”
It was an hour later, and the early night had already fallen, when there was a ring at the West door, and Old Hosie entered, alone. Katharine quickly led the old lawyer into the parlour.
“Well?” she whispered.
“Manning has just accepted an invitation for an automobile ride this evening from Charlie Peck.”
Katherine suddenly gripped his hand.
“That may be a bite!”
The old man nodded with suppressed excitement.
“They were to set out at six. It’s five minutes to six now.”
Without a word Katherine crossed swiftly and opened the door an inch, and stood tensely waiting beside it. Presently, through the calm of the Sabbath evening, there started up very near the sudden buzzing of a cranked-up car. Then swiftly the buzzing faded away into the distance.
Katherine turned.
“It’s Mr. Blake’s car. They’ll all be at The Sycamores in half an hour. It’s a bite, certain! Get hold of Mr. Manning as soon as he comes back, and bring him here. The house will be darkened, but the front door will be unlocked. Come right in. Come as late as you please. You’ll find me waiting here in the parlour.”
The hours that followed were trying ones for Katherine. She sat about with her aunt till toward ten o’clock. Then her father returned from his last call, and soon thereafter they all went to their rooms. Katherine remained upstairs till she thought her father and aunt were settled, then slipped down to the parlour, set the front door ajar, and sat waiting in the darkness. She heard the Court House clock with judicial slowness count off eleven o’clock – then after a long, long space, count off twelve. A few minutes later she heard Blake’s car return, and after a time she heard the city clock strike one.
It was close upon two when soft steps sounded upon the porch and the front door opened. She silently shook hands with her two vague visitors.
“We didn’t think it safe to come any sooner,” explained Old Hosie in a whisper.
“You’ve been with them out at The Sycamores?” Katherine eagerly inquired of Manning.
“Yes. For a four hours’ session.”
“Well?”
“Well, so far it looks O. K.”
In a low voice he detailed to Katherine how they had at first fenced with one another; how at length he had told them that he had a formal proposal to the city to buy the water-works all drawn up and that on the morrow he was going to present it – and that, furthermore, he would, if necessary, increase the sum he offered in that proposal to the full value of the plant. Blake and Peck, after a slow approach to the subject, in which they admitted that they also planned to buy the system, had suggested that, inasmuch as he was only an agent and there would be no profit in the purchase to him personally, he abandon his purpose. If he would do this they would make it richly worth his while. He had replied that this was such a different plan from that which he had been considering that he must have time to think it over and would give them his answer to-morrow. On which understanding the three had parted.
“I suppose it would hardly be practicable,” said Katherine when he had finished, “to have a number of witnesses concealed at your place of meeting and overhear your conversation?”
“No, it would be mighty difficult to pull that off.”
“And what’s more,” she commented, “Mr. Blake would deny whatever they said, and with his present popularity his words would carry more weight than that of any half dozen witnesses we might get. At the best, our charges would drag on for months, perhaps years, in the courts, with in the end the majority of the people believing in him. With the election so near, we must have instantaneous results. We must use a means of exposing him that will instantly convince all the people.”
“That’s the way I see it,” agreed Manning.
“When did they offer to pay you, in case you agreed to sell out to them?”
“On the day they got control of the water-works. Naturally they didn’t want to pay me before, for fear I might break faith with them and buy in the system for Mr. Seymour.”
“Can’t you make them put their proposition in the form of an agreement, to be signed by all three of you?” asked Katherine.
“But mebbe they won’t consent to that,” put in Old Hosie.
“Mr. Manning will know how to bring them around. He can say, for example, that, unless he has such a written agreement, they will be in a position to drop him when once they’ve got what they want. He can say that unless they consent to sign some such agreement he will go on with his original plan. I think they’ll sign.”
“And if they do?” queried Old Hosie.
“If they do,” said Katherine, “we’ll have documentary evidence to show Westville that those two great political enemies, Mr. Blake and Mr. Peck, are secretly business associates – their business being a conspiracy to wreck the water-works and defraud the city. I think such a document would interest Westville.”
“I should say it would!” exclaimed Old Hosie.
They whispered on, excitedly, hopefully; and when the two men had departed and Katherine had gone up to her room to try to snatch a few hours’ sleep, she continued to dwell eagerly upon the plan that seemed so near of consummation. She tossed about her bed, and heard the Court House clock sound three, and then four. Then the heat of her excitement began to pass away, and cold doubts began to creep into her mind. Perhaps Blake and Peck would refuse to sign. And even if they did sign, she began to see this prospective success as a thing of lesser magnitude. The agreement would prove the alliance between Blake and Peck, and would make clear that a conspiracy existed. It was good, but it was not enough. It fell short by more than half. It would not clear her father, though his innocence might be inferred, and it would not prove Blake’s responsibility for the epidemic.
As she lay there staring wide-eyed into the gloom of the night, listening to the town clock count off the hours of her last day, she realized that what she needed most of all, far more than Manning’s document even should he get it, was the testimony which she believed was sealed behind the lips of Doctor Sherman, whose present whereabouts God only knew.
CHAPTER XXIII
AT ELSIE’S BEDSIDE
The day before election, a day of hope deferred, had dragged slowly by and night had at length settled upon the city. Doctor West had the minute before come in from a long, dinnerless day of hastening from case to case, and now he, Katherine, and her aunt were sitting about the supper table. To Katherine’s eye her father looked very weary and white and frail. The day-and-night struggle at scores of bedsides was sorely wearing him down.
As for Katherine, she was hardly less worn. She scarcely touched the food before her. The fears that always assail one at a crisis, now swarmed in upon her. With the election but a few hours distant, with no word as yet from Mr. Manning, she saw all her high plans coming to naught and saw herself overwhelmed with utter defeat. From without there dimly sounded the beginning of the ferment of the campaign’s final evening; it brought to her more keenly that to-morrow the city was going to give itself over unanimously to be despoiled. Across the table, her father, pale and worried, was a reminder that, when his fight of the plague was completed, he must return to jail. Her mind flashed now and then to Bruce; she saw him in prison; she saw not only his certain defeat on the morrow, but she saw him crushed and ruined for life as far as a career in Westville was concerned; and though she bravely tried to master her feeling, the throbbing anguish with which she looked upon his fate was affirmation of how poignant and deep-rooted was her love.
And yet, despite these flooding fears, she clung with a dizzy desperation to hope, and to the determination to fight on to the last second of the last minute.
While swinging thus between despair and desperate hope, she was maintaining, at first somewhat mechanically to be sure, a conversation with her father, whom she had not seen since their early breakfast together.
“How does the fever situation seem to-night?” she asked.
“Much better,” said Doctor West. “There were fewer new cases reported to-day than any day for a week.”
“Then you are getting the epidemic under control?”
“I think we can at last say we have it thoroughly in hand. The number of new cases is daily decreasing, and the old cases are doing well. I don’t know of an epidemic of this size on record where the mortality has been so small.”
She came out of her preoccupation and breathlessly demanded:
“Tell me, how is Elsie Sherman? I could not get around to see her to-day.”
He dropped his eyes to his plate and did not answer.
“You mean she is no better?”
“She is very low.”
“But she still has a chance?”
“Yes, she has a chance. But that’s about all. The fever is at its climax. I think to-night will decide which it’s to be.”
“You are going to her again to-night?”
“Right after supper.”
“Then I’ll go with you,” said Katherine. “Poor Elsie! Poor Elsie!” she murmured to herself. Then she asked, “Have they had any word from Doctor Sherman?”
“I asked his sister this afternoon. She said they had not.”
They fell silent for a moment or two. Doctor West nibbled at his ham with a troubled air.
“There is one feature of the case I cannot approve of,” he at length remarked “Of course the Shermans are poor, but I do not think Miss Sherman should have impaired Elsie’s chances, such as they are, from motives of economy.”
“Impaired Elsie’s chances?” queried Katherine.
“And certainly she should not have done so without consulting me,” continued Doctor West.
“Done what?”
“Oh, I forgot I had not had a chance to tell you. When I made my first call this morning I learned that Miss Sherman had discharged the nurse.”
“Discharged the nurse?”
“Yes. During the night.”
“But what for?”
“Miss Sherman said they could not afford to keep her.”
“But with Elsie so dangerously sick, this is no time to economize!”
“Exactly what I told her. And I said there were plenty of friends who would have been happy to supply the necessary money.”
“And what did she say?”
“Very little. She’s a silent, determined woman, you know. She said that even at such a time they could not accept charity.”
“But did you not insist upon her getting another nurse?”
“Yes. But she refused to have one.”
“Then who is looking after Elsie?”
“Miss Sherman.”
“Alone?”
“Yes, alone. She has even discharged old Mrs. Murphy, who came in for a few hours a day to clean up.”
“It seems almost incomprehensible!” ejaculated Katherine. “Think of running such a risk for the sake of a few dollars!”
“After all, Miss Sherman isn’t such a bad nurse,” Doctor West’s sense of justice prompted him to admit. “In fact, she is really doing very well.”
“All the same, it seems incomprehensible!” persisted Katherine. “For economy’s sake – ”
She broke off and was silent a moment. Then suddenly she leaned across the table.
“You are sure she gave no other reason?”
“None.”
“And you believe her?”
“Why, you don’t think she would lie to me, do you?” exclaimed Doctor West.
“I don’t say that,” Katherine returned rapidly. “But she’s shrewd and close-mouthed. She might not have told you the whole truth.”
“But what could have been her real reason then?”
“Something besides the reason she gave. That’s plain.”
“But what is it? Why, Katherine,” her father burst out, half rising from his chair, “what’s the matter with you?”
Her eyes were glowing with excitement. “Wait! Wait!” she said quickly, lifting a hand.
She gazed down upon the table, her brow puckered with intense thought. Her father and her aunt stared at her in gathering amazement, and waited breathlessly till she should speak.
After a minute she glanced up at her father. The strange look in her face had grown more strange.
“You saw no one else there besides Miss Sherman?” she asked quickly.
“No.”
“Nor signs of any one?”
“No,” repeated the bewildered old man. “What are you thinking of, Katherine?”
“I don’t dare say it – I hardly dare think it!”
She pushed back her chair and arose. She was quivering all over, but she strove to command her agitation.
“As soon as you’re through supper, father, I’ll be ready to go to Elsie.”
“I’m through now.”
“Come on, then. Let’s not lose a minute!”
They hurried out and entered the carriage which, at the city’s charge, stood always waiting Doctor West’s requirements. “To Mrs. Sherman’s – quick!” Katherine ordered the driver, and the horse clattered away through the crisp November night.
Already people were streaming toward the centre of the town to share in the excitement of the campaign’s closing night. As the carriage passed the Square, Katherine saw, built against the Court House and brilliantly festooned with vari-coloured electric bulbs, the speakers’ stand from which Blake and others of his party were later to address the final mass-meeting of the campaign.
The carriage turned past the jail into Wabash Avenue, and a minute afterward drew up beside the Sherman cottage. Pulsing with the double suspense of her conjecture and of her concern for Elsie’s life, Katherine followed her father into the sick chamber. As they entered the hushed room the spare figure of Miss Sherman rose from a rocker beside the bed, greeted them with a silent nod, and drew back to give place to Doctor West.
Katherine moved slowly to the foot of the bed and gazed down. For a space, one cause of her suspense was swept out of her being, and all her concern was for the flickering life before her. Elsie lay with eyes closed, and breathing so faintly that she seemed scarcely to breathe at all. So pale, so wasted, so almost wraithlike was she as to suggest that when her spirit fled, if flee it must, nothing could be left remaining between the sheets.
As she gazed down upon her friend, hovering uncertainly upon life’s threshold, a tingling chill pervaded Katherine’s body. Since her mother’s loss in unremembering childhood, Death had been kind to her; no one so dear had been thus carried up to the very brink of the grave. All that had been sweet and strong in her friendship with Elsie now flooded in upon her in a mighty wave of undefined emotion. She was immediately conscious only of the wasted figure before her, and its peril, but back of consciousness were unformed memories of their girlhood together, of the inseparable intimacy of their young womanhood, and of that shy and tender time when she had been the confidante of Elsie’s courtship.
There was a choking at her throat, tears slipped down her cheeks, and there surged up a wild, wild wish, a rebellious demand, that Elsie might come safely through her danger.
But, presently, her mind reverted to the special purpose that had brought her hither. She studied the face of Miss Sherman, seeking confirmation of the conjecture that had so aroused her – studying also for some method of approaching Miss Sherman, of breaking down her guard, and gaining the information she desired. But she learned nothing from the expression of those spare, self-contained features; and she realized that the lips of the Sphinx would be easier to unlock than those of this loyal sister of a fugitive brother.
That her conjecture was correct, she became every instant more convinced. She sensed it in the stilled atmosphere of the house; she sensed it in the glances of cold and watchful hostility Miss Sherman now and then stole at her. She was wondering what should be her next step, when Doctor West, who had felt Elsie’s pulse and examined the temperature chart, drew Miss Sherman back to near where Katherine stood.
“Still nothing from Doctor Sherman?” he whispered in grave anxiety.
“Nothing,” said Miss Sherman, looking straight into her questioner’s eyes.
“Too bad, too bad!” sighed Doctor West. “He ought to be home!”
Miss Sherman let the first trace of feeling escape from her compressed being.
“But still there is a chance?” she asked quickly.
“A fighting chance. I think we shall know which it’s to be within an hour.”
At these words Katherine heard from behind her ever so faint a sound, a sound that sent a thrill through all her nerves. A sound like a stifled groan. For a minute or more she did not move. But when Doctor West and Miss Sherman had gone back to their places and Doctor West had begun the final fight for Elsie’s life, she slowly turned about. Before her was a door. Her heart gave a leap. When she had entered she had searched the room with a quick glance, and that door had then been closed. It now stood slightly ajar.
Some one within must have noiselessly opened it to hear Doctor West’s decree upon the patient.
Swiftly and silently Katherine slipped through the door and locked it behind her. For a moment she stood in the darkness, striving to master her throbbing excitement.
At length she spoke.
“Will you please turn on the light, Doctor Sherman,” she said.
There was no answer; only a black and breathless silence.
“Please turn on the light, Doctor Sherman,” Katherine repeated. “I cannot, for I do not know where the electric button is.”
Again there was silence. Then Katherine heard something like a gasp. There was a click, and then the room, Doctor Sherman’s study, burst suddenly into light.
Behind the desk, one hand still upon the electric key, stood Doctor Sherman. He was very thin and very white, and was worn, wild-eyed and dishevelled. He was breathing heavily and he stared at Katherine with the defiance of a desperate creature brought at last to bay.
“What do you want?” he demanded huskily.
“A little talk with you,” replied Katherine, trying to speak calmly.
“You must excuse me. With Elsie so sick, I cannot talk.”
She stood very straight before him. Her eyes never left his face.
“We must talk just the same,” she returned. “When did you come home?”
“Last night.”
“Why did you not let your friends know of your return? All day, in fact for several days, they have been sending telegrams to every place where they could conceive your being.”
He did not answer.
“It looks very much as if you were trying to hide.”
Again he did not reply.
“It looks very much,” she steadily pursued, “as if your sister discharged the nurse and the servant in order that you might hide here in your own home without risk of discovery.”
Still he did not answer.
“You need not reply to that question, for the reply is obvious. I guessed the meaning of the nurse’s discharge as soon as I heard of it. I guessed that you were secretly hovering over Elsie, while all Westville thought you were hundreds of miles away. But tell me, how did you learn that Elsie was sick?”
He hesitated, then swallowed.
“I saw a notice of it in a little country paper.”
“Ah, I thought so.”
She moved forward and leaned across the desk. Their eyes were no more than a yard apart.
“Tell me,” she said quietly, “why did you slip into town by night? Why are you hiding in your own home?”
A tremor ran through his slender frame. With an effort he tried to take the upperhand.
“You must excuse me,” he said, with an attempt at sharp dignity. “I refuse to be cross-examined.”
