Counsel for the Defense
“That was the only decision,” said Bruce. “Go on!”
“But at the same time, to protect Doctor West’s reputation, I decided to take no one into my plan; should his integrity reassert itself at the last moment and cause him to refuse the bribe, the whole matter would then remain locked up in my heart. I arranged with Mr. Marcy that he should carry out his agreement with Doctor West. Day before yesterday, as you know, the council, on Doctor West’s recommendation, formally approved the filtering plant, and yesterday a draft was sent to the company. Mr. Marcy was to call at Doctor West’s home this morning to conclude their secret bargain. Just before the appointed hour I dropped in on Doctor West, and was there when Mr. Marcy called. I said I would wait to finish my talk with Doctor West till they were through their business, took a book, and went into an adjoining room. I could see the two men through the partly opened door. After some talk, Mr. Marcy drew an envelope from his pocket and handed it to Doctor West, saying in a low voice, ‘Here is that money we spoke about.’”
“And he took it?” Bruce interrupted.
“Doctor West slipped the envelope unopened into his pocket, and replied, ‘Thank you very much; it will come in very handy just now.’”
“My God!” breathed the editor.
“Though I had suspected Doctor West, I sat there stunned,” the minister continued. “But after a minute or two I slipped out by another door. I returned with a policeman, and found Doctor West still with Mr. Marcy. The policeman arrested Doctor West, and found the envelope upon his person. In it was two thousand dollars.”
“Now, what do you think of that?” Kennedy demanded of the editor. “Won’t the town be thunderstruck!”
Bruce turned to the agent, who had sat through the recital, a mere corroborative presence.
“And this is all true?”
“That is exactly the way it happened,” replied Mr. Marcy.
Bruce looked back at the minister.
“But didn’t he have anything to say for himself?”
“I can answer that,” put in Kennedy. “I had him in here before I sent him over to the jail. He admits practically every point that Doctor Sherman has made. The only thing he says for himself is that he never thought the money Mr. Marcy gave him was intended for a bribe.”
Bruce stood up, his face hard and glowering, and his fist crashed explosively down upon the table.
“Of all the damned flimsy defenses that ever a man made, that’s the limit!”
“It certainly won’t go down with the people of Westville,” commented the prosecutor. “And I can see the smile of the jury when he produces that defense in court.”
“I should say they would smile!” cried Bruce. “But what was his motive?”
“That’s plain enough,” answered the prosecutor. “We both know, Mr. Bruce, that he has earned hardly anything from the practice of medicine since we were boys. His salary as superintendent of the water-works was much less than he has been spending. His property is mortgaged practically to its full value. Everything has gone on those experiments of his. It’s simply a case of a man being in a tight fix for money.”
Bruce was striding up and down the room, scowling and staring fiercely at the worn linoleum that carpeted the prosecutor’s office.
“I thought you’d take it rather hard,” said Kennedy, a little slyly. “It sort of puts a spoke in that general municipal ownership scheme of yours – eh?”
Bruce paused belligerently before the prosecutor.
“See here, Kennedy,” he snapped out. “Because a man you’ve banked on is a crook, does that prove a principle is wrong?”
“Oh, I guess not,” Kennedy had to admit.
“Well, suppose you cut out that kind of talk then. But what are you going to do about the doctor?”
“The grand jury is in session. I’m going straight before it with the evidence. An hour from now and Doctor West will be indicted.”
“And what about to-morrow’s show?”
“What do you think we ought to do?”
“What ought we to do!” Again the editor’s fist crashed upon the desk. “The celebration was half in Doctor West’s honour. Do we want to meet and hurrah for the man that sold us out? As for the water-works, it looks as if, for all we know, he might have bought us a lot of old junk. Do we want to hold a jubilee over a junk pile? You ask what we ought to do. God, man, there’s only one thing to do, and that’s to call the whole damned performance off!”
“That’s my opinion,” said the prosecutor. “What do you think, Doctor Sherman?”
The young minister wiped his pale face.
“It’s a most miserable affair. I’m sick because of the part I’ve been forced to play – I’m sorry for Doctor West – and I’m particularly sorry for his daughter – but I do not see that any other course would be possible.”
“I suppose we ought to consult Mr. Blake,” said Kennedy.
“He’s not in town,” returned Bruce. “And we don’t need to consult him. We three are a majority of the committee. The matter has to be settled at once. And it’s settled all right!”
The editor jerked out his watch, glanced at it, then reached for his hat.
“I’ll have this on the street in an hour – and if this town doesn’t go wild, then I don’t know Westville!”
He was making for the door, when the newspaper man in him recalled a new detail of his story. He turned back.
“How about this daughter of Doctor West?” he asked.
The prosecutor looked at the minister.
“Was she coming home for the celebration, do you know?”
“Yes. She wrote Mrs. Sherman she was leaving New York this morning and would get in here to-morrow on the Limited.”
“What’s she like?” asked Bruce.
“Haven’t you seen her?” asked Kennedy.
“She hasn’t been home since I came back to Westville. When I left here she was a tomboy – mostly legs and freckles.”
The prosecutor’s lean face crinkled with a smile.
“I guess you’ll find she’s grown right smart since then. She went to one of those colleges back East; Vassar, I think it was. She got hold of some of those new-fangled ideas the women in the East are crazy over now – about going out in the world for themselves, and – ”
“Idiots – all of them!” snapped Bruce.
“After she graduated, she studied law. When she was back home two years ago she asked me what chance a woman would have to practise law in Westville. A woman lawyer in Westville – oh, Lord!”
The prosecutor leaned back and laughed at the excruciating humour of the idea.
“Oh, I know the kind!” Bruce’s lips curled with contempt. “Loud-voiced – aggressive – bony – perfect frights.”
“Let me suggest,” put in Doctor Sherman, “that Miss West does not belong in that classification.”
“Yes, I guess you’re a little wrong about Katherine West,” smiled Kennedy.
Bruce waved his hand peremptorily. “They’re all the same! But what’s she doing in New York? Practising law?”
“No. She’s working for an organization something like Doctor Sherman’s – The Municipal League, I think she called it.”
“Huh!” grunted Bruce. “Well, whatever she’s like, it’s a pretty mess she’s coming back into!”
With that the editor pulled his hat tightly down upon his forehead and strode out of the Court House and past the speakers’ stand, across whose front twin flags were being leisurely festooned. Back in his own office he picked up the story he had finished an hour before. With a sneer he tore it across and trampled it under foot. Then, jerking a chair forward to his typewriter, his brow dark, his jaw set, he began to thump fiercely upon the keys.
CHAPTER III
KATHERINE COMES HOME
Next morning when the Limited slowed down beside the old frame station – a new one of brick was rising across the tracks – a young woman descended from a Pullman at the front of the train. She was lithe and graceful, rather tall and slender, and was dressed with effective simplicity in a blue tailored suit and a tan straw hat with a single blue quill. Her face was flushed, and there glowed an expectant brightness in her brown eyes, as though happiness and affection were upon the point of bubbling over.
Standing beside her suit-case, she eagerly scanned the figures about the station. Three or four swagger young drummers had scrambled off the smoker, and these ambassadors of fashion as many hotel bus drivers were inviting with importunate hospitality to honour their respective board and bed. There was the shirt-sleeved figure of Jim Ludlow, ticket agent and tenor of the Presbyterian choir. And leaning cross-legged beneath the station eaves, giving the effect of supporting the low roof, were half a dozen slowly masticating, soberly contemplative gentlemen – loose-jointed caryatides, whose lank sculpture forms the sole and invariable ornamentation of the façades of all Western stations. But nowhere did the young woman’s expectant eyes alight upon the person whom they sought.
The joyous response to welcome, which had plainly trembled at the tips of her being, subsided, and in disappointment she picked up her bag and was starting for a street car, when up the long, broad platform there came hurrying a short-legged little man, with a bloodshot, watery eye. He paused hesitant at a couple of yards, smiled tentatively, and the remnant of an old glove fumbled the brim of a rumpled, semi-bald object that in its distant youth had probably been a silk hat.
The young woman smiled back and held out her hand.
“How do you do, Mr. Huggins.”
“How de do, Miss Katherine,” he stammered.
“Have you seen father anywhere?” she asked anxiously.
“No. Your aunt just sent me word I was to meet you and fetch you home. She couldn’t leave Doctor West.”
“Is father ill?” she cried.
The old cabman fumbled his ancient headgear.
“No – he ain’t – he ain’t exactly sick. He’s just porely. I guess it’s only – only a bad headache.”
He hastily picked up her suit-case and led her past the sidling admiration of the drummers, those sovereign critics of Western femininity, to the back of the station where stood a tottering surrey and a dingy gray nag, far gone in years, that leaned upon its shafts as though on crutches. Katherine clambered in, and the drooping animal doddered along a street thickly overhung with the exuberant May-green of maples.
She gazed with ardent eyes at the familiar frame cottages, in some of which had lived school and high-school friends, sitting comfortably back amid their little squares of close-cropped lawn. She liked New York with that adoptive liking one acquires for the place one chooses from among all others for the passing of one’s life; but her affection remained warm and steadfast with this old town of her girlhood.
“Oh, but it feels good to be back in Westville again!” she cried to the cabman.
“I reckon it must. I guess it’s all of two years sence you been home.”
“Two years, yes. It’s going to be a great celebration this afternoon, isn’t it?”
“Yes’m – very big” – and he hastily struck the ancient steed. “Get-ep there, Jenny!”
Mr. Huggins’s mare turned off Station Avenue, and Katharine excitedly stared ahead beneath the wide-boughed maples for the first glimpse of her home. At length it came into view – one of those big, square, old-fashioned wooden houses, built with no perceptible architectural idea beyond commodious shelter. She had thought her father might possibly stumble out to greet her, but no one stood waiting at the paling gate.
She sprang lightly from the carriage as it drew up beside the curb, and leaving Mr. Huggins to follow with her bag she hurried up the brick-paved path to the house. As she crossed the porch, a slight, gray, Quakerish little lady, with a white kerchief folded across her breast, pushed open the screen door. Her Katherine gathered into her arms and kissed repeatedly.
“I’m so glad to see you, auntie!” she cried. “How are you?”
“Very well,” the old woman answered in a thin, tremulous voice. “How is thee?”
“Me? Oh, you know nothing’s ever wrong with me!” She laughed in her buoyant young strength. “But you, auntie?” She grew serious. “You look very tired – and very, very worn and worried. But I suppose it’s the strain of father’s headache – poor father! How is he?”
“I – I think he’s feeling some better,” the old woman faltered. “He’s still lying down.”
They had entered the big, airy sitting-room. Katherine’s hat and coat went flying upon the couch.
“Now, before I so much as ask you a question, or tell you a thing, Aunt Rachel, I’m going up to see dear old father.”
She made for the stairway, but her aunt caught her arm in consternation.
“Wait, Katherine! Thee musn’t see him yet.”
“Why, what’s the matter?” Katherine asked in surprise.
“It – it would be better for him if thee didn’t disturb him.”
“But, auntie – you know no one can soothe him as I can when he has a headache!”
“But he’s asleep just now. He didn’t sleep a minute all night.”
“Then of course I’ll wait.” Katherine turned back. “Has he suffered much – ”
She broke off. Her aunt was gazing at her in wide-eyed, helpless misery.
“Why – why – what’s the matter, auntie?”
Her aunt did not answer her.
“Tell me! What is it? What’s wrong?”
Still the old woman did not speak.
“Something has happened to father!” cried Katherine. She clutched her aunt’s thin shoulders. “Has something happened to father?”
The old woman trembled all over, and tears started from her mild eyes.
“Yes,” she quavered.
“But what is it?” Katherine asked frantically. “Is he very sick?”
“It’s – it’s worse than that.”
“Please! What is it then?”
“I haven’t the heart to tell thee,” she said piteously, and she sank into a chair and covered her face.
Katherine caught her arm and fairly shook her in the intensity of her demand.
“Tell me! I can’t stand this another instant!”
“There – there isn’t going to be any celebration.”
“No celebration?”
“Yesterday – thy father – was arrested.”
“Arrested!”
“And indicted for accepting a bribe.”
Katherine shrank back.
“Oh!” she whispered. “Oh!” Then her slender body tensed, and her dark eyes flashed fire. “Father accept a bribe! It’s a lie! A lie!”
“It hardly seems true to me, either.”
“It’s a lie!” repeated Katherine. “But is he – is he locked up?”
“They let me go his bail.”
Again Katherine caught her aunt’s arm.
“Come – tell me all about it!”
“Please don’t make me. I – I can’t.”
“But I must know!”
“It’s in the newspapers – they’re on the centre-table.”
Katherine turned to the table and seized a paper. At sight of the sheet she had picked up, the old woman hurried across to her in dismay.
“Don’t read that Express!” she cried, and she sought to draw the paper from Katherine’s hands. “Read the Clarion. It’s ever so much kinder.”
But Katherine had already seen the headline that ran across the top of the Express. It staggered her. She gasped at the blow, but she held on to the paper.
“I’ll read the worst they have to say,” she said.
Her aunt dropped into a chair and covered her eyes to avoid sight of the girl’s suffering. The story, in its elements, was a commonplace to Katherine; in her work with the Municipal League she had every few days met with just such a tale as this. But that which is a commonplace when strangers are involved, becomes a tragedy when loved ones are its actors. So, as she read the old, old story, Katherine trembled as with mortal pain.
But sickening as was the story in itself, it was made even more agonizing to her by the manner of the Express’s telling. Bruce’s typewriter had never been more impassioned. The story was in heavy-faced type, the lines two columns wide; and in a “box” in the very centre of the first page was an editorial denouncing Doctor West and demanding for him such severe punishment as would make future traitors forever fear to sell their city. Article and editorial were rousing and vivid, brilliant and bitter – as mercilessly stinging as a salted whip-lash cutting into bare flesh.
Katherine writhed with the pain of it. “Oh!” she cried. “It’s brutal! Brutal! Who could have had the heart to write like that about father?”
“The editor, Arnold Bruce,” answered her aunt.
“Oh, he’s a brute! If I could tell him to his face – ” Her whole slender being flamed with anger and hatred, and she crushed the paper in a fierce hand and flung it to the floor.
Then, slowly, her face faded to an ashen gray. She steadied herself on the back of a chair and stared in desperate, fearful supplication at the bowed figure of the older woman.
“Auntie?” she breathed.
“Yes?”
“Auntie” – eyes and voice were pleading – “auntie, the – the things – this paper says – they never happened, did they?”
The old head nodded.
“Oh! oh!” she gasped. She wavered, sank stricken into a chair, and buried her face in her arms. “Poor father!” she moaned brokenly. “Poor father!”
There was silence for a moment, then the old woman rose and gently put a hand upon the quivering young shoulder.
“Don’t, dear! Even if it did happen, I can’t believe it. Thy father – ”
At that moment, overhead, there was a soft noise, as of feet placed upon the floor. Katherine sprang up.
“Father!” she breathed. There began a restless, slippered pacing. “Father!” she repeated, and sprang for the stairway and rapidly ran up.
At her father’s door she paused, hand over her heart. She feared to enter to her father – feared lest she should find his head bowed in acknowledged shame. But she summoned her strength and noiselessly opened the door. It was a large room, a hybrid of bedroom and study, whose drawn shades had dimmed the brilliant morning into twilight. An open side door gave a glimpse of glass jars, bellying retorts and other paraphernalia of the laboratory.
Walking down the room was a tall, stooping, white-haired figure in a quilted dressing-gown. He reached the end of the room, turned about, then sighted her in the doorway.
“Katherine!” he cried with quavering joy, and started toward her; but he came abruptly to a pause, hesitating, accused man that he was, to make advances.
Her sickening fear was for the instant swept away by a rising flood of love. She sprang forward and threw her arms about his neck.
“Father!” she sobbed. “Oh, father!”
She felt his tears upon her forehead, felt his body quiver, and felt his hand gently stroke her back.
“You’ve heard – then?” he asked, at length.
“Yes – from the papers.”
He held her close, but for a moment did not speak.
“It isn’t a – a very happy celebration – I’ve prepared for you.”
She could only cry convulsively, “Poor father!”
“You never dreamt,” he quavered, “your old father – could do a thing like this – did you?”
She did not answer. She trembled a moment longer on his shoulder; then, slowly and with fear, she lifted her head and gazed into his face. The face was worn – she thrilled with pain to see how sadly worn it was! – but though tear-wet and working with emotion, it met her look with steadiness. It was the same simple, kindly, open face that she had known since childhood.
There was a sudden wild leaping within her. She clutched his shoulders, and her voice rang out in joyous conviction:
“Father – you are not guilty!”
“You believe in me, then?”
“You are not guilty!” she cried with mounting joy.
He smiled faintly.
“Why, of course not, my child.”
“Oh, father!” And again she caught him in a close embrace.
After a moment she leaned back in his arms.
“I’m so happy – so happy! Forgive me, daddy dear, that I could doubt you even for a minute.”
“How could you help it? They say the evidence against me is very strong.”
“I should have believed you innocent against all the evidence in the world! And I do, and shall – no matter what they may say!”
“Bless you, Katherine!”
“But come – tell me how it all came about. But, first, let’s brighten up the room a little.”
So great was her relief that her spirits had risen as though some positive blessing had befallen her. She crossed lightly to the big bay window, raised the shades and threw up the sashes. The sunlight slanted down into the room and lay in a dazzling yellow square upon the floor. The soft breeze sighed through the two tall pines without and bore into them the perfumed freshness of the spring.
“There now, isn’t that better?” she said, smiling brightly.
“That’s just what your home-coming has done for me,” he said gratefully – “let in the sunlight.”
“Come, come – don’t try to turn the head of your offspring with flattery! Now, sir, sit down,” and she pointed to a chair at his desk, which stood within the bay window.
“First,” – with his gentle smile – “if I may, I’d like to take a look at my daughter.”
“I suppose a father’s wish is a daughter’s command,” she complained. “So go ahead.”
He moved to the window, so that the light fell full upon her, and for a long moment gazed into her face. The brow was low and broad. Over the white temples the heavy dark hair waved softly down, to be fastened in a simple knot low upon the neck, showing in its full beauty the rare modelling of her head. The eyes were a rich, warm, luminous brown, fringed with long lashes, and in them lurked all manner of fathomless mysteries. The mouth was soft, yet full and firm – a real mouth, such as Nature bestows upon her real women. It was a face of freshness and youth and humour, and now was tremulous with a smiling, tear-wet tenderness.
“I think,” said her father, slowly and softly, “that my daughter is very beautiful.”
“There – enough of your blarney!” She flushed with pleasure, and pressed her fresh cheek against his withered one. “You dear old father, you!”
She drew him to his desk, which was strewn with a half-finished manuscript on the typhoid bacillus, and upon which stood a faded photograph of a young woman, near Katherine’s years and made in her image, dressed in the tight-fitting “basque” of the early eighties. Westville knew that Doctor West had loved his wife dearly, but the town had never surmised a tenth of the grief that had closed darkly in upon him when typhoid fever had carried her away while her young womanhood was in its freshest bloom.
Katherine pressed him down into his chair at the desk, sat down in one beside it, and took his hand.
“Now, father, tell me just how things stand.”
“You know everything already,” said he.
“Not everything. I know the charges of the other side, and I know your innocence. But I do not know your explanation of the affair.”
He ran his free hand through his silver hair, and his face grew troubled.
“My explanation agrees with what you have read, except that I did not know I was being bribed.”
“H’m!” Her brow wrinkled thoughtfully and she was silent for a moment. “Suppose we go back to the very beginning, father, and run over the whole affair. Try to remember. In the early stages of negotiations, did the agent say anything to you about money?”
He did not speak for a minute or more.
“Now that I think it over, he did say something about its being worth my while if his filter was accepted.”
“That was an overture to bribe you. And what did you say to him?”
“I don’t remember. You see, at the time, his offer, if it was one, did not make any impression on me. I believe I didn’t say anything to him at all.”
“But you approved his filter?”
“Yes.”
“Mr. Marcy says in the Express, and you admit it, that he offered you a bribe. You approved his filter. On the face of it, speaking legally, that looks bad, father.”
“But how could I honestly keep from approving his filter, when it was the very best on the market for our water?” demanded Doctor West.
“Then how did you come to accept that money?”
The old man’s face cleared.
“I can explain that easily. Some time ago the agent said something about the Acme Filter Company wishing to make a little donation to our hospital. I’m one of the directors, you know. So, when he handed me that envelope, I supposed it was the contribution to the hospital – perhaps twenty-five or fifty dollars.”
“And that is all?”
“That’s the whole truth. But when I explained the matter to the prosecuting attorney, he just smiled.”
“I know it’s the truth, because you say it.” She affectionately patted the hand that she held. “But, again speaking legally, it wouldn’t sound very plausible to an outsider. But how do you explain the situation?”
