Counsel for the Defense
But she decided against conferring with Old Hosie. Her adviser and leader must be a man more actively in the current of modern affairs. No, Blake was her great hope, and precious and few as were the hours before the trial, there was nothing for it but to wait for his return.
She went up to her room, and her excited mind, now half inspired, went feverishly over the situation and all who were in any wise concerned in it. She thought of the fifty dollar check from the Acme Filter Company. With her new viewpoint she now understood the whole bewildering business of that check. The company, or at least one of its officers, was somehow in on the deal, and there had been some careful scheming behind the sending of that fifty dollars. The company had been confronted with two obvious difficulties. First, it had to make certain that the check would not be received until after the two thousand dollars was in the hands of her father. Second, the date of the check and the date of the Westville postmark must be earlier than the day the two thousand dollars was delivered – else Doctor West could produce check and envelope to prove that the check had not arrived until after he had already accepted what he thought was the donation, and thus perhaps ruin the whole scheme. What had been done, Katherine now clearly perceived, was that some one, most probably an assistant of her father, had been bought over to look out for the arrival of the letter, to hold it back until the critical day had passed, and then slip it into her father’s neglected mail.
Her mind raced on to further matters, further persons, connected with the situation. When she came to Bruce her hands clenched the arms of her wicker rocking chair. In a flash the whole man was plain to her, and her second great discovery of the day was made.
Bruce was an agent of the hidden corporation!
The motive behind his fierce desire to destroy her father was at last apparent. To destroy Doctor West was his part in the conspiracy. As for his rabid advocacy of municipal ownership, and all his fine talk about the city’s betterment, that was mere sham – merely the virtuous front behind which he could work out his purpose unsuspected. No one could quote the scripture of civic improvement more loudly than the civic despoiler. She always had distrusted him. Now she knew him. Many a time through the night her mind flashed back to him from other matters and she thrilled with a vengeful joy at the thought of tearing aside his mask.
It was a long and feverish night to Katherine, and a long and feverish forenoon. At a quarter to two she was in Blake’s office, which was furnished with just that balance between simplicity and richness appropriate to a growing great man with a constituency half of the city and half of the country. She had sat some time at a window looking down upon the Square, its foliage now a dusty, shrivelled brown, when Blake came in. He had not been told that she was waiting, and at sight of her he came to a sudden pause. But the next instant he had crossed the room and was shaking her hand.
For that first instant Katherine’s eyes and mind, which during the last twenty-four hours had had an almost more than mortal clearness, had an impression that he was strangely agitated. But the moment over, the impression was gone.
He placed a chair for her at the corner of his desk and himself sat down, his dark, strong, handsome face fixed on hers.
“Now, how can I serve you, Katherine?”
There were rings about her eyes, but excitement gave her colour.
“You know that to-morrow is father’s trial?”
“Yes. You must have a hard, hard fight before you.”
“Perhaps not so hard as you may think.” She tried to keep her tugging excitement in leash.
“I hope not,” said he.
“I think it may prove easy – if you will help me.”
“Help you?”
“Yes. I have come to ask you that again.”
“Well – you see – as I told you – ”
“But the situation has changed since I first came to you,” she put in quickly, not quite able to restrain a little laugh. “I have found something out!”
He started. “You have found – you say – ”
“I have found something out!”
She smiled at him happily, triumphantly.
“And that?” said he.
She leaned forward.
“I do not need to tell you, for you know it, that the big corporations have discovered a new gold mine – or rather, thousands of little gold mines. That all over the country they have gained control, and are working to gain control, of the street-car lines, gas works and other public utilities in the smaller cities.”
“Well?”
She spoke excitedly, putting the case more definitely than it really was, to better the chance of winning his aid.
“Well, I have just discovered that there is a plan on foot, directed by a hidden some one, to seize the water-works of Westville. I have discovered that my father is not guilty. He is the victim of a trick to ruin the water-works and make the people willing to sell. The first thing to do is to find the man behind the scheme. I want you to help me find this man.”
A greenish pallor had overspread his features.
“And you want me – to find this man?” he repeated.
“Yes. I know you will take this up, simply because of your interest in the city. But there is another reason – it would help you in your larger ambition. If you could disclose this scheme, save the city, become the hero of a great popular gratitude, think how it would help your senatorial chances!”
He did not at once reply, but sat staring at her.
“Don’t you see?” she cried.
“I – I see.”
“Why, it would turn your chance for the Senate into a certainty! It would – but, Mr. Blake, what’s the matter?”
“Matter,” he repeated, huskily. “Why – why nothing.”
She gazed at him with deep concern. “But you look almost sick.”
In his eyes there struggled a wild look. Her gaze became fixed upon his face, so strangely altered. In her present high-wrought state all her senses were excited to their intensest keenness.
There was a moment of silence – eyes into eyes. Then she stood slowly up, and one hand reached slowly out and clutched his arm.
“Mr. Blake!” she whispered, in an awed and terrified tone. She continued to stare into his eyes. “Mr. Blake!” she repeated.
She felt a tensing of his body, as of a man who seeks to master himself with a mighty effort. He tried to smile, though his greenish pallor did not leave him.
“It is my turn,” he said, “to ask what is the matter with you, Katherine.”
“Mr. Blake!” She loosed her hold upon his arm, and shrank away.
He rose.
“What is the matter?” he repeated. “You seem upset. I suppose it is the nervous strain of to-morrow’s trial.”
In her face was stupefied horror.
“It is what – what I have discovered.”
“What you call your discovery would be most valuable, if true. But it is just a dream, Katherine – a crazy, crazy dream.”
She still was looking straight into his eyes.
“Mr. Blake, it is true,” she said slowly, almost breathlessly. “For I have found the man behind the plan.”
“Indeed! And who?”
“I think you know him, Mr. Blake.”
“I?”
“Better than any one else.”
His smile had left him.
“Who?”
She continued to stare at him for a moment in silence. Then she slowly raised her arm and pointed at him.
The silence continued for several moments, each gazing at the other. He had put one hand upon his desk and was leaning heavily upon it. He looked like a man sick unto death. But soon a shiver ran through him; he swallowed, gripped himself in a strong control, and smiled again his strained, unnatural smile.
“Katherine, Katherine,” he tried to say it reprovingly and indulgently, but there was a quaver in his voice. “You have gone quite out of your head!”
“It is true!” she cried. “All unintentionally I have followed one of the oldest of police expedients. I have suddenly confronted the criminal with his crime, and I have surprised his guilt upon his face!”
“What you say is absurd. I can explain it only on the theory that you are quite out of your mind.”
“Never before was I so much in it!”
In this moment when she felt that the hidden enemy she had striven so long to find was at last revealed to her, she felt more of anguish than of triumph.
“Oh, how could you do such a thing, Mr. Blake?” she burst out. “How could you do it?”
He shook his head, and tried to smile at her perversity – but the smile was a wan failure.
“I see – I see!” she cried in her pain. “It is just the old story. A good man rises to power through being the champion of the people – and, once in power, the opportunities, the temptation, are too much for him. But I never – no, never! – thought that such a thing would happen with you!”
He strove for the injured air of the misjudged old friend.
“Again I must say that I can only explain your charges by supposing that you are out of your head.”
“Here in Westville you believe it is not woman’s business to think about politics,” Katherine went on, in her voice of pain. “But I could not help thinking about them, and watching them. I have lost my faith in the old parties, but I had kept my faith in some of their leaders. I believe some of them honest, devoted, indomitable. And of them all, the one I admired most, ranked highest, was you. And now – and now – oh, Mr. Blake! – to learn that you – ”
“Katherine! Katherine!” And he raised his hands with the manner of exasperated, yet indulgent, helplessness.
“Mr. Blake, you know you are now only playing a part! And you know that I know it!” She moved up to him eagerly. “Listen to me,” she pleaded rapidly. “You have only started on this, you have not gone too far to turn back. You have done no real wrong as yet, save to my father, and I know my father will forgive you. Drop your plan – let my father be honourably cleared – and everything will be just as before!”
For a space he seemed shaken by her words. She watched him, breathless, awaiting the outcome of the battle she felt was waging within him.
“Drop the plan – do! – do! – I beg you!” she cried.
His dark face twitched; a quivering ran through his body. Then by a mighty effort he partially regained his mastery.
“There is no plan for me to drop,” he said huskily.
“You still cling to the part you are playing?”
“I am playing no part; you are all wrong about me,” he continued. “Your charges are so absurd that it would be foolish to deny them. They are merely the ravings of an hysterical woman.”
“And this is your answer?”
“That is my answer.”
She gazed at him for a long moment. Then she sighed.
“I’m so sorry!” she said; and she turned away and moved toward the door.
She gave him a parting look, as he stood pale, quivering, yet controlled, behind his desk. In this last moment she remembered the gallant fight this man had made against Blind Charlie Peck; she remembered that fragrant, far-distant night of June when he had asked her to marry him; and she felt as though she were gazing for the last time upon a dear dead face.
“I’m sorry – oh, so sorry!” she said tremulously. “Good-by.” And turning, she walked with bowed head out of his office.
CHAPTER VIII
THE EDITOR OF THE EXPRESS
Katherine stumbled down into the dusty, quivering heat of the Square. She was still awed and dumfounded by her discovery; she could not as yet realize its full significance and whither it would lead; but her mind was a ferment of thoughts that were unfinished and questions that did not await reply.
How had a man once so splendid come to sell his soul for money or ambition? What would Westville think and do, Westville who worshipped him, if it but knew the truth? How was she to give battle to an antagonist, so able in himself, so powerfully supported by the public? What a strange caprice of fate it was that had given her as the man she must fight, defeat, or be defeated by, her former idol, her former lover!
Shaken with emotion, her mind shot through with these fragmentary thoughts, she turned into a side street. But she had walked beneath its withered maples no more than a block or two, when her largest immediate problem, her father’s trial on the morrow, thrust itself into her consciousness, and the pressing need of further action drove all this spasmodic speculation from her mind. She began to think upon what she should next do. Almost instantly her mind darted to the man whom she had definitely connected with the plot against her father, Arnold Bruce, and she turned back toward the Square, afire with a new idea.
She had made great advance through suddenly, though unintentionally, confronting Blake with knowledge of his guilt. Might she not make some further advance, gain some new clue, by confronting Bruce in similar manner?
Ten minutes after she had left the office of Harrison Blake, Katherine entered the Express Building. From the first floor sounded a deep and continuous thunder; that afternoon’s issue was coming from the press. She lifted her skirts and gingerly mounted the stairway, over which the Express’s “devil” was occasionally seen to make incantations with the stub of an undisturbing broom.
At the head of the stairway a door stood open. This she entered, and found herself in the general editorial room, ankle-deep with dirt and paper. The air of the place told that the day’s work was done. In one corner a telegraph sounder was chattering its tardy world-gossip to unheeding ears. In the centre at a long table, typewriters before them, three shirt-sleeved young men sprawled at ease reading the Express, which the “devil” had just brought them from the nether regions, moist with the black spittle of the beast that there roared and rumbled.
At sight of her tall, fresh figure, a red spot in her either cheek, defiance in her brown eyes, Billy Harper, quicker than the rest, sprang up and crossed the room.
“Miss West, I believe,” he said. “Can I do anything for you?”
“I wish to speak with Mr. Bruce,” was her cold reply.
“This way,” and Billy led her across the wilderness of proofs, discarded copy and old newspapers, to a door beside the stairway that led down into the press-room. “Just go right in,” he said.
She entered. Bruce, his shirt-sleeves rolled up and his bared fore-arms grimy, sat glancing through the Express, his feet crossed on his littered desk, a black pipe hanging from one corner of his mouth. He did not look round but turned another page.
“Well, what’s the matter?” he grunted between his teeth.
“I should like a few words with you,” said Katherine.
“Eh!” His head twisted about. “Miss West!”
His feet suddenly dropped to the floor, and he stood up and laid the pipe upon his desk. For the moment he was uncertain how to receive her, but the bright, hard look in her eyes fixed his attitude.
“Certainly,” he said in a brusque, businesslike tone. He placed the atlas-bottomed chair near his own. “Be seated.”
She sat down, and he took his own chair.
“I am at your service,” he said.
Her cheeks slowly gathered a higher colour, her eyes gleamed with a pre-triumphant fire, and she looked straight into his square, rather massive face. Over Blake she had felt an infinity of regret and pain. For this man she felt only boundless hatred, and she thrilled with a vengeful, exultant joy that she was about to unmask him – that later she might crush him utterly.
“I am at your service,” he repeated.
She slowly wet her lips and gathered herself to strike, alert to watch the effects of her blow.
“I have called, Mr. Bruce,” she said with slow distinctness, “to let you know that I know that a conspiracy is under way to steal the water-works! And to let you know that I know that you are near its centre!”
He started.
“What?” he cried.
Her devouring gaze did not lose a change of feature, not so much as the shifting in the pupil of his eye.
“Oh, I know your plot!” she went on rapidly. “It’s every detail! The first step was to ruin the water-works, so the city would sell and sell cheap. The first step toward ruining the system was to get my father out of the way. And so this charge against my father was trumped up to ruin him. The leader of the whole plot is Mr. Blake; his right hand man yourself. Oh, I know every detail of your infamous scheme!”
He stared at her. His lips had slowly parted.
“What – you say that Mr. Blake – ”
“Oh, you are trying to play your part of innocence well, but you cannot deceive me!” she cried with fierce contempt. “Yes, Mr. Blake is the head of it. I just came from his office. There’s not a doubt in the world of his guilt. He has admitted it. Oh – ”
“Admitted it?”
“Yes, admitted it! Oh, it was a fine and easy way to make a fortune – to dupe the city into selling at a fraction of its value a business that run privately will pay an immense and ever-growing profit.”
He had stood up and was scratching his bristling hair.
“My God! My God!” he whispered.
She rose.
“And you!” she cried, glaring at him, her voice mounting to a climax of scorn, “You! Don’t walk the room” – he had begun to do so – “but look me in the face. To think how you have attacked my father, maligned him, covered him with dishonour! And for what? To help you carry through a dirty trick to rob the city! Oh, I wish I had the words to tell you – ”
But he had begun again to pace the little room, scratching his head, his eyes gleaming behind the heavy glasses.
“Listen to me!” she commanded.
“Oh, give me all the hell you want to!” he cried out. “Only don’t ask me to listen to you!”
He paused abruptly before her, and, eyes half-closed, stared piercingly into her face. As she returned his stare, it began to dawn upon her that he did not seem much taken aback. At least his guilt bore no near likeness to that of Mr. Blake.
Suddenly he made a lunge for the door, jerked it open, and his voice descended the stairway, out-thundering the press.
“Jake! Oh, Jake!”
A lesser roar ascended:
“Yes!”
“Stop the press! Rip open the forms! Get the men at the linotypes! And be alive down there, every damned soul of you! And you, Billy Harper, I’ll want you here in two minutes!”
He slammed the door, and turned on Katherine. She had looked upon excitement before, but never such excitement as was flaming in his face.
“Now give me all the details!” he cried.
She it was that was taken aback.
“I – I don’t understand,” she said.
“No time to explain now. Looks like I’ve been all wrong about your father – perhaps a little wrong about you – and perhaps you’ve been a little wrong about me. Let it go at that. Now for the details. Quick!”
“But – but what are you going to do?”
“Going to get out an extra! It’s the hottest story that ever came down the pike! It’ll make the Express, and” – he seized her hand in his grimy ones, his eyes blazed, and an exultant laugh leaped from his deep chest – “and we’ll simply rip this old town wide open!”
Katherine stared at him in bewilderment.
“Oh, won’t this wake the old town up!” he murmured to himself.
He dropped into his chair, jerked some loose copy paper toward him, and seized a pencil.
“Now quick! The details!”
“You mean – you are going to print this?” she stammered.
“Didn’t I say so!” he answered sharply.
“Then you really had nothing to do with Mr. Blake’s – ”
“Oh, hell! I beg pardon. But this is no time for explanations. Come, come” – he rapped his desk with his knuckles – “don’t you know what getting out an extra is? Every second is worth half your lifetime. Out with the story!”
Katherine sank rather weakly into her chair, beginning to see new things in this face she had so lately loathed.
“The fact of the matter is,” she confessed, “I guess I stated my information a little more definitely than it really is.”
“You mean you haven’t the facts?”
“I’m afraid not. Not yet.”
“Nothing definite I could hinge a story on?”
She shook her head. “I didn’t come prepared for – for things to take this turn. It would spoil everything to have this made public before I had my case worked up.”
“Then there’s no extra!”
He flung down his pencil and sprang up. “Nothing doing, Billy,” he called to Harper, who that instant opened the door; “go on back with you.” He began to walk up and down the little office, scowling, hands clenched in his trousers’ pockets. After a moment he stopped short, and looked at Katherine half savagely.
“I suppose you don’t know what it means to a newspaper man to have a big story laid in his hands and then suddenly jerked out?”
“I suppose it is something of a disappointment.”
“Disappointment!” The word came out half groan, half sneer. “Rot! If you were waiting in church and the bridegroom didn’t show up, if you were – oh, I can’t make you understand the feeling!”
He dropped back into his chair and scratched viciously at the copy paper with his heavy black pencil. She watched him in a sort of fascination, till he abruptly looked up. Suspicion glinted behind the heavy glasses.
“Are you sure, Miss West,” he asked slowly “that this whole affair isn’t just a little game?”
“What do you mean?”
“That your whole story is nothing but a hoax? Nothing but a trick to get out of a tight hole by calling another man a thief?”
Her eyes flashed.
“You mean that I am telling a lie?”
“Oh, you lawyers doubtless have a better-tasting word for it. You would call it, say, a ‘professional expedient.’”
She was still not sufficiently recovered from her astonishment to be angry. Besides, she felt herself by an unexpected turn put in the wrong regarding Bruce.
“What I have said to you is the absolute truth,” she declared. “Here is the situation – believe me or not, just as you please. I ask you, for the moment, to accept the proposition that my father is the victim of a plot to steal the water-works, and then see how everything fits in with that theory. And bear in mind, as an item worth considering, my father’s long and honourable career – never a dishonouring word against him till this charge came.” And she went on and outlined, more fully than on yesterday before her father, the reasoning that had led her to her conclusion. “Now, does not that sound possible?” she demanded.
He had watched her with keen, half-closed eyes.
“H’m. You reason well,” he conceded.
“That’s a lawyer’s business,” she retorted. “So much for theory. Now for facts.” And she continued and gave him her experience of half an hour before with Blake, the editor’s boring gaze fixed on her all the while. “Now I ask you this question: Is it likely that even a poor water system could fail so quickly and so completely as ours has done, unless some powerful person was secretly working to make it fail? Do you not see it never could? We all would have seen it, but we’ve all been too busy, too blind, and thought too well of our town, to suspect such a thing.”
His eyes were still boring into her.
“But how about Doctor Sherman?” he asked.
“I believe that Doctor Sherman is an innocent tool of the conspiracy, just as my father is its innocent victim,” she answered promptly.
Bruce sat with the same fixed look, and made no reply.
“I have stated my theory, and I have stated my facts,” said Katherine. “I have no court evidence, but I am going to have it. As I remarked before, you can believe what I have said, or not believe it. It’s all the same to me.” She stood up. “I wish you good afternoon.”
He quickly rose.
“Hold on!” he said.
She paused at the door. He strode to and fro across the little office, scowling with thought. Then he paused at the window and looked out.
“Well?” she demanded.
He wheeled about.
“It sounds plausible.”
“Thank you,” she said crisply. “I could hardly expect a man who has been the champion of error, to admit that he has been wrong and accept the truth. Good afternoon.”
Again she reached for the door-knob.
“Wait!” he cried. There was a ring of resentment in his voice, but his square face that had been grudgingly non-committal was now aglow with excitement. “Of course you’re right!” he exclaimed. “There’s a damned infernal conspiracy! Now what can I do to help?”
“Help?” she asked blankly.
“Help work up the evidence? Help reveal the conspiracy?”
