Counsel for the Defense
“Then I will answer for you. The reason, Doctor Sherman, is that you have a guilty conscience.”
“That is not – ”
“Do not lie,” she interrupted quickly. “You realize what you have done, you are afraid it may become public, you are afraid of the consequences to yourself – and that is why you slipped back in the dead of night and lie hidden like a fugitive in your own house.”
A spasm of agony crossed his face.
“For God’s sake, tell me what you want and leave me!”
“I want you to clear my father.”
“Clear your father?” he cried. “And how, if you please?”
“By confessing that he is innocent.”
“When he is guilty!”
“You know he is not.”
“He’s guilty – he’s guilty, I tell you! Besides,” he added, wildly, “don’t you see that if I proclaim him innocent I proclaim myself a perjured witness?”
She leaned a little farther across the desk.
“Is not that exactly what you are, Doctor Sherman?”
He shrank back as though struck. One hand went tremulously to his chin and he stared at her.
“No! No!” he burst out spasmodically. “It’s not so! I shall not admit it! Would you have me ruin myself for all time? Would you have me ruin Elsie’s future! Would you have me kill her love for me?”
“Then you will not confess?”
“I tell you there is nothing to confess!”
She gazed at him steadily a moment. Then she turned back to the door, softly unlocked and opened it. He started to rush through, but she raised a hand and stopped him.
“Just look,” she commanded in a whisper.
He stared through the open door. They could see Elsie’s white face upon the pillow, with the two dark braids beside it; and could see Doctor West hovering over her. He had not heard them, but Miss Sherman had, and she directed at Katherine a pale and hostile glance.
The young husband twisted his hands in agony.
“Oh, Elsie! Elsie!” he moaned.
Katherine closed the door, and turned again to Doctor Sherman.
“You have seen your work,” she said. “Do you still persist in your innocence?”
He drew a deep, shivering breath and shrank away behind his desk, but did not answer.
Katherine followed him.
“Do you know how sick your wife is?”
“I heard your father say.”
“She is swinging over eternity by a mere thread.” Katherine leaned across the desk and her eyes gazed with an even greater fixity into his. “If the thread snaps, do you know who will have broken it?”
“Don’t! Don’t!” he begged.
“Her own husband,” Katherine went on relentlessly.
A cry of agony escaped him.
“You saw that old man in there bending over her,” she pursued, “trying with all his skill, with all his love, to save her – to save her from the peril you have plunged her into – and with never a bitter feeling against you in his heart. If she lives, it will be because of him. And yet that old man is ruined and has a blackened reputation. I ask you, do you know who ruined him?”
“Don’t! Don’t!” he cried, and he sank a crumpled figure at his desk, and buried his face in his arms.
“Look up!” cried Katherine sternly.
“Wait!” he moaned. “Wait!”
She passed around the desk and firmly raised his shoulders.
“Look me in the eyes!”
He lifted a face that worked convulsively.
She stood accusingly before him. “Out with the truth!” she commanded in a rising voice. “In the presence of your wife, perhaps dying, and dying as the result of your act – in the presence of that old man, whom you have ruined with your word – do you still dare to maintain your innocence? Out with the truth, I say!”
He sprang to his feet.
“I can stand it no longer!” he gasped in an agony that went to Katherine’s heart. “It’s killing me! It’s been tearing me apart for months! What I have suffered – oh, what I have suffered! I’ll tell you all – all! Oh, let me get it off my soul!”
The desperation of his outburst, the sight of his fine face convulsed with uttermost agony and repentance, worked a sudden revulsion in Katherine’s heart. All her bitterness, her momentary sternness, rushed out of her, and there she was, quivering all over, hot tears in her eyes, gripping the hands of Elsie’s husband.
“I’m so glad – not only for father’s sake – but for your sake,” she cried chokingly.
“Let me tell you at once! Let me get it out of myself!”
“First sit down,” and she gently pressed him back into his chair and drew one up to face him. “And wait for a moment or two, till you feel a little calmer.”
He bowed his head into his hands, and for a space breathed deeply and tremulously. Katherine stood waiting. Through the night sounded the brassy strains of “My Country ’Tis of Thee.” Back at the Court House Blake’s party was opening its great mass-meeting.
“I’m a coward – a coward!” Doctor Sherman groaned at length into his hands. And in a voice of utmost contrition he went on and told how, to gain money for the proper care of Elsie, he had been drawn into gambling in stocks; how he had made use of church funds to save himself in a falling market, and how this church money had, like his own, been swallowed down by Wall Street; how Blake had discovered the embezzlement, for the time had saved him, but later by threat of exposure had driven him to play the part he had against Doctor West.
“You must make this statement public, instantly!” Katherine exclaimed when he had finished.
He shrank back before that supreme humiliation. “Let me do it later – please, please!” he besought her.
“A day’s delay will be – ” She caught his arm. “Listen!” she commanded.
Both held their breath. Through the night came the stirring music of “The Star Spangled Banner.”
“What is that?” he asked.
“The great rally of Mr. Blake’s party at the Court House.” Her next words drove in. “To-morrow Mr. Blake is going to capture the city, and be in position to rob it. And all because of your act, Doctor Sherman!”
“You are right, you are right!” he breathed.
She held out a pen to him.
“You must write your statement at once.”
“Yes, yes,” he cried, “only let it be short now. I’ll make it in full later.”
“You need write only a summary.”
He seized the pen and dipped it into the ink and for a moment held it shaking over a sheet of paper.
“I cannot shape it – the words won’t come.”
“Shall I dictate it then?”
“Do! Please do!”
“You are willing to confess everything?”
“Everything!”
Katherine stood thinking for a moment at his side.
“Ready, then. Write, ‘I embezzled funds from my church; Mr. Blake found me out, and replaced what I had taken, with no one being the wiser. Later, by the threat of exposing me if I refused, he compelled me to accuse Doctor West of accepting a bribe and still later he compelled me to testify in court against Doctor West. Mr. Blake’s purpose in so doing was to remove Doctor West from his position, ruin the water-works, and buy them in at a bargain. I hereby confess and declare, of my own free will, that I have been guilty of lying and of perjury.’ Do you want to say that?”
“Yes! Yes!”
“‘And I further confess and declare that Dr. David West is innocent in every detail of the charges made against him. Signed, Harold Sherman.’”
He dropped his pen and sprang up.
“And now may I go in to Elsie?”
“You may.”
He hurried noiselessly across the room and through the door. Katherine, picking up the precious paper she had worked so many months to gain, followed him. Miss Sherman saw them come in, but remained silent. Doctor West was bending over Elsie and did not hear their entrance.
Doctor Sherman tiptoed to the bedside, and stood gazing down, his breath held, hardly less pale than the soft-sleeping Elsie herself. Presently Doctor West straightened up and perceived the young minister. He started, then held out his hand.
“Why, Doctor Sherman!” he whispered eagerly. “I’m so glad you’ve come at last!”
The younger man drew back.
“You won’t be willing to shake hands with me – when you know.” Then he took a quick half step forward. “But tell me,” he breathed, “is there – is there any hope?”
“I dare not speak definitely yet – but I think she is going to live.”
“Thank God!” cried the young man.
Suddenly he collapsed upon the floor and embraced Doctor West about the knees, and knelt there sobbing out broken bits of sentences.
“Why – why,” stammered Doctor West in amazement, “what does this mean?”
Katherine moved forward. Her voice quavered, partly from joy, partly from pity for the anguished figure upon the floor.
“It means you are cleared, father! This will explain.” And she gave him Doctor Sherman’s confession.
The old man read it, then passed a bewildered hand across his face.
“I – I don’t understand this!”
“I’ll explain it later,” said Katherine.
“Is – is this true?” It was to the young minister that Doctor West spoke.
“Yes. And more. I can’t ask you to forgive me!” sobbed Doctor Sherman. “It’s beyond forgiveness! But I want to thank you for saving Elsie. At least you’ll let me thank you for that!”
“What I have done here has been only my duty as a physician,” said Doctor West gently. “As for the other matter” – he looked the paper through, still with bewilderment – “as for that, I’m afraid I am not the chief sufferer,” he said slowly, gently. “I have been under a cloud, it is true, and I won’t deny that it has hurt. But I am an old man, and it doesn’t matter much. You are young, just beginning life. Of us two you are the one most to be pitied.”
“Don’t pity me – please!” cried the minister. “I don’t deserve it!”
“I’m sorry – so sorry!” Doctor West shook his head. Apparently he had forgotten the significance of this confession to himself. “I have always loved Elsie, and I have always admired you and been proud of you. So if my forgiveness means anything to you, why I forgive you with all my heart!”
A choking sound came from the bowed figure, but no words. His embracing arms fell away from Doctor West. He knelt there limply, his head bowed upon his bosom. There was a moment of breathless silence. In the background Miss Sherman stood looking on, white, tense, dry-eyed.
Doctor Sherman turned slowly, fearfully, toward the bed.
“But, Elsie,” he whispered in a dry, lost voice. “It’s all bad – but that’s the worst of all. When she knows, she never can forgive me!”
Katherine laid a hand upon his shoulder.
“If you think that, then you don’t know Elsie. She will be pained, but she loves you with all her soul; she would forgive you anything so long as you loved her, and she would follow you through every misery to the ends of the world.”
“Do you think so?” he breathed; and then he crept to the bed and buried his face upon it.
Katherine looked down upon him for a moment. Then her own concerns began flooding back upon her. She realized that she had not yet won the fight. She had only gained a weapon.
“I must go now,” she whispered to her father, taking the paper from his hand.
Throbbing with returned excitement, she hurried out to the dimly comprehended, desperate effort that lay before her.
CHAPTER XXIV
BILLY HARPER WRITES A STORY
As Katherine crossed the porch and went down the steps she saw, entering the yard, a tall, square-hatted apparition.
“Is that you, Miss Katherine?” it called softly to her.
“Yes, Mr. Hollingsworth.”
“I was looking for you.” He turned and they walked out of the yard together. “I went to your house, and your aunt told me you were here. I’ve got it!” he added excitedly.
“Got what?”
“The agreement!”
She stopped short and seized his arm.
“You mean between Blake, Peck, and Manning?”
“Yes. I’ve got it!”
“Signed?”
“All signed!” And he slapped the breast pocket of his old frock-coat.
“Let me see it! Please!”
He handed it to her, and by the light of a street lamp she glanced it through.
“Oh, it’s too good to believe!” she murmured exultantly. “Oh, oh!” She thrust it into her bosom, where it lay beside Doctor Sherman’s confession. “Come, we must hurry!” she cried. And with her arm through his they set off in the direction of the Square.
“When did Mr. Manning get this?” she asked, after a moment.
“I saw him about an hour ago. He had then just got it.”
“It’s splendid! Splendid!” she ejaculated. “But I have something, too!”
“Yes?” queried the old man.
“Something even better.” And as they hurried on she told him of Doctor Sherman’s confession.
Old Hosie burst into excited congratulations, but she quickly checked him.
“We’ve no time now to rejoice,” she said. “We must think how we are going to use these statements – how we are going to get this information before the people, get it before them at once, and get it before them so they must believe it.”
They walked on in silent thought. From the moment they had left the Shermans’ gate the two had heard a tremendous cheering from the direction of the Square, and had seen a steady, up-reaching glow, at intervals brilliantly bespangled by rockets and roman candles. Now, as they came into Main Street, they saw that the Court House yard was jammed with an uproarious multitude. Within the speakers’ stand was throned the Westville Brass Band; enclosing the stand in an imposing semicircle was massed the Blake Marching Club, in uniforms, their flaring torches adding to the illumination of the festoons of incandescent bulbs; and spreading fanwise from this uniformed nucleus it seemed that all of Westville was assembled – at least all of Westville that did not watch at fevered bedsides.
At the moment that Katherine and Old Hosie, walking along the southern side of Main Street, came opposite the stand, the first speaker concluded his peroration and resumed his seat. There was an outburst of “Blake! Blake! Blake!” from the enthusiastic thousands; but the Westville Brass Band broke in with the chorus of “Marching Through Georgia.” The stirring thunder of the band had hardly died away, when the thousands of voices again rose in cries of “Blake! Blake! Blake!”
The chairman with difficulty quieted the crowd, and urged them to have patience, as all the candidates were going to speak, and Blake was not to speak till toward the last. Kennedy was the next orator, and he told the multitude, with much flinging heavenward of loose-jointed arms, what an unparalleled administration the officers to be elected on the morrow would give the city, and how first and foremost it would be their purpose to settle the problem of the water-works in such a manner as to free the city forever from the dangers of another epidemic such as they were now experiencing. As supreme climax to his speech, he lauded the ability, character and public spirit of Blake till superlatives could mount no higher.
When he sat down the crowd went well-nigh mad. But amid the cheering for the city’s favourite, some one shouted the name of Doctor West and with it coupled a vile epithet. At once Doctor West’s name swept through the crowd, hissed, jeered, cursed. This outbreak made clear one ominous fact. The enthusiasm of the multitude was not just ordinary, election-time enthusiasm. Beneath it was smouldering a desire of revenge for the ills they had suffered and were suffering – a desire which at a moment might flame up into the uncontrollable fury of a mob.
Katherine clutched Old Hosie’s arm.
“Did you hear those cries against my father?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I know now what I shall do!”
He saw that her eyes were afire with decision.
“What?”
“I am going across there, watch my chance, slip out upon the speakers’ stand, and expose and denounce Mr. Blake before Mr. Blake’s own audience!”
The audacity of the plan for a moment caught Old Hosie’s breath. Then its dramatic quality fired his imagination.
“Gorgeous!” he exclaimed.
“Come on!” she cried.
She started across the street, with Old Hosie at her heels. But before she reached the opposite curb she paused, and turned slowly back.
“What’s the matter?” asked Old Hosie.
“It won’t do. The people on the stand would pull me down before I got started speaking. And even if I spoke, the people would not believe me. I have got to put this evidence” – she pressed the documents within her bosom – “before their very eyes. No, we have got to think of some other way.”
By this time they were back in the seclusion of the doorway of the Express Building, where they had previously been standing. For several moments the hoarse, vehement oratory of a tired throat rasped upon their heedless ears. Once or twice Old Hosie stole a glance at Katherine’s tensely thoughtful face, then returned to his own meditation.
Presently she touched him on the arm. He looked up.
“I have it this time!” she said, with the quiet of suppressed excitement.
“Yes?”
“We’re going to get out an extra!”
“An extra?” he exclaimed blankly.
“Yes. Of the Express!”
“An extra of the Express?”
“Yes. Get it out before this crowd scatters, and in it reproductions of these documents!”
He stared at her. “Son of Methuselah!” Then he whistled. Then his look became a bit strange, and there was a strange quality to his voice when he said:
“So you are going to give Arnold Bruce’s paper the credit of the exposure?”
His tone told her the meaning that lay behind his words. He had known of the engagement, and he knew that it was now broken. She flushed.
“It’s the best way,” she said shortly.
“But you can’t do it alone!”
“Of course not.” Her voice began to gather energy. “We’ve got to get the Express people here at once – and especially Mr. Harper. Everything depends on Mr. Harper. He’ll have to get the paper out.”
“Yes! Yes!” said Old Hosie, catching her excitement.
“You look for him here in this crowd – and, also, if you can see to it, send some one to get the foreman and his people. I’ll look for Mr. Harper at his hotel. We’ll meet here at the office.”
With that they hurried away on their respective errands. Arrived at the National House, where Billy Harper lived, Katherine walked into the great bare office and straight up to the clerk, whom the mass-meeting had left as the room’s sole occupant.
“Is Mr. Harper in?” she asked quickly.
The clerk, one of the most prodigious of local beaux, was startled by this sudden apparition.
“I – I believe he is.”
“Please tell him at once that I wish to see him.”
He fumbled the white wall of his lofty collar with an embarrassed hand.
“Excuse me, Miss West, but the fact is, I’m afraid he can’t see you.”
“Give him my name and tell him I simply must see him.”
The clerk’s embarrassment waxed greater.
“I – I guess I should have said it the other way around,” he stammered. “I’m afraid you won’t want to see him.”
“Why not?”
“The fact is – he’s pretty much cut up, you know – and he’s been so worried that – that – well, the plain fact is,” he blurted out, “Mr. Harper has been drinking.”
“To-night?”
“Yes.”
“Much?”
“Well – I’m afraid quite a little.”
“But he’s here?”
“He’s in the bar-room.”
Katherine’s heart had been steadily sinking.
“I must see him anyhow!” she said desperately. “Please call him out!”
The clerk hesitated, in even deeper embarrassment. This affair was quite without precedent in his career.
“You must call him out – this second! Didn’t you hear me?”
“Certainly, certainly.”
He came hastily from behind his desk and disappeared through a pair of swinging wicker doors. After a moment he reappeared, alone, and his manner showed a degree of embarrassment even more acute.
Katherine crossed eagerly to meet him.
“You found Mr. Harper?”
“Yes.”
“Well?”
“I couldn’t make him understand. And even if I could, he’s – he’s – well,” he added with a painful effort, “he’s in no condition for you to talk to, Miss West.”
Katherine gazed whitely at the clerk for a moment. Then without a word she stepped by him and passed through the wicker door. With a glance she took in the garishly lighted room – its rows of bottles, its glittering mirrors, its white-aproned bartender, its pair of topers whose loyalty to the bar was stronger than the lure of oratory and music at the Square. And there at a table, his head upon his arms, sat the loosely hunched body of him who was the foundation of all her present hopes.
She moved swiftly across the sawdusted floor and shook the acting editor by the shoulder.
“Mr. Harper!” she called into his ear.
She shook him again, and again she called his name.
“Le’ me ’lone,” he grunted thickly. “Wanter sleep.”
She was conscious that the two topers had paused in mid-drink and were looking her way with a grinning, alcoholic curiosity. She shook the editor with all her strength.
“Mr. Harper!” she called fiercely.
“G’way!” he mumbled. “’M busy. Wanter sleep.”
Katherine gazed down at the insensate mass in utter hopelessness. Without him she could do nothing, and the precious minutes were flying. Through the night came a rumble of applause and fast upon it the music of another patriotic air.
In desperation she turned to the bartender.
“Can’t you help me rouse him?” she cried. “I’ve simply got to speak to him!”
That gentleman had often been appealed to by frantic women as against customers who had bought too liberally. But Katherine was a new variety in his experience. There was a great deal too much of him about the waist and also beneath the chin, but there was good-nature in his eyes, and he came from behind his counter and bore himself toward Katherine with a clumsy and ornate courtesy.
“Don’t see how you can, Miss. He’s been hittin’ an awful pace lately. You see for yourself how far gone he is.”
“But I must speak to him – I must! Surely there is some extreme measure that would bring him to his senses!”
“But, excuse me; you see, Miss, Mr. Harper is a reg’lar guest of the hotel, and I wouldn’t dare go to extremes. If I was to make him mad – ”
“I’ll take all the blame!” she cried. “And afterward he’ll thank you for it!”
The bartender scratched his thin hair.
“Of course, I want to help you, Miss, and since you put it that way, all right. You say I can go the limit?”
“Yes! Yes!”
The bartender retired behind his bar and returned with a pail of water. He removed the young editor’s hat.
“Stand back, Miss; it’s ice cold,” he said; and with a swing of his pudgy arms he sent the water about Harper’s head, neck, and upper body.
The young fellow staggered up with a gasping cry. His blinking eyes saw the bartender, with the empty pail. He reached for the tumbler before him.
“Damn you, Murphy!” he growled. “I’ll pay you – ”
But Katherine stepped quickly forward and touched his dripping sleeve.
“Mr. Harper!” she said.
He slowly turned his head. Then the hand with the upraised tumbler sank to the table, and he stared at her.
“Mr. Harper,” she said sharply, slowly, trying to drive her words into his dulled brain, “I’ve got to speak to you! At once!”
He continued to blink at her stupidly. At length his lips opened.
“Miss West,” he said thickly.
She shook him fiercely.
“Pull yourself together! I’ve got to speak to you!”
At this moment Mr. Murphy, who had gone once more behind his bar, reappeared bearing a glass. This he held out to Harper.
“Here, Billy, put this down. It’ll help straighten you up.”
Harper took the glass in a trembling hand and swallowed its contents.
“And now, Miss,” said the bartender, putting Harper’s dry hat on him, “the thing to do is to get him out in the cold air, and walk him round a bit. I’d do it for you myself,” he added gallantly, “but everybody’s down at the Square and there ain’t no one here to relieve me.”
“Thank you very much, Mr. Murphy.”
“It’s nothing at all, Miss,” said he with a grandiloquent gesture of a hairy, bediamonded hand. “Glad to do it.”
She slipped her arm through the young editor’s.
“And now, Mr. Harper, we must go.”
Billy Harper vaguely understood the situation and there was a trace of awakening shame in his husky voice.
“Are you sure – you want to be seen with me – like this?”
“I must, whether I want to or not,” she said briefly; and she led him through the side door out into the frosty night.
The period that succeeded will ever remain in Katherine’s mind as matchless in her life for agonized suspense. She was ever crying out frantically to herself, why did this man she led have to be in such a condition at this the time when he was needed most? While she rapidly walked her drenched and shivering charge through the deserted back streets, the enthusiasm of Court House Square reverberated maddeningly in her ears. She realized how rapidly time was flying – and yet, aflame with desire for action as she was, all she could do was to lead this brilliant, stupefied creature to and fro, to and fro. She wondered if she would be able to bring him to his senses in time to be of service. To her impatience, which made an hour of every moment, it seemed she never would. But her hope was all on him, and so doggedly she kept him going.
