Here she felt herself greatly handicapped. Owing to her long residence away from Westville she was practically in ignorance of public affairs—and she faced the further difficulty of having no one to whom she could turn for information. Her father she knew could be of little service; expert though he was in his specialty, he was blind to evil in men. As for Blake, she did not care to ask aid from him so soon after his refusal of assistance. And as for others, she felt that all who could give her information were either hostile to her father or critical of herself.

For days the idea possessed her mind. She kept it to herself, and, her suspicious eyes sweeping in all directions, she studied as best she could to find some evidence or clue to evidence, that would corroborate her conjecture. In her excited hope, she strove, while she thought and worked, to be indifferent to what the town might think about her. But she was well aware that Old Hosie's prophecy was swift in coming true—that a storm was raging, a storm of her own sex. It should be explained, however, in justice to them, that they forgot the fact, or never really knew it, that she had been forced to take her father's case. To be sure, there was no open insult, no direct attack, no face-to-face denunciation; but piazzas buzzed indignantly with her name, and at the meeting of the Ladies' Aid the poor were forgotten, as at the Missionary Society were the unbibled heathen upon the foreign shore.

Fragments of her sisters' pronouncements were wafted to Katherine's ears. "No self-respecting, womanly woman would ever think of wanting to be a lawyer"—"A forward, brazen, unwomanly young person"—"A disgrace to the town, a disgrace to our sex"—"Think of the example she sets to impressionable young girls; they'll want to break away and do all sorts of unwomanly things"—"Everybody knows her reason for being a lawyer is only that it gives her a greater chance to be with the men."

Katherine heard, her mouth hardened, a certain defiance came into her manner. But she went straight ahead seeking evidence to support her suspicion.

Every day made her feel more keenly her need of intimate knowledge about the city's political affairs; then, unexpectedly, and from an unexpected quarter, an informant stepped out upon her stage. Several times Old Hosie Hollingsworth had spoken casually when they had chanced to pass in the building or on the street. One day his lean, stooped figure appeared in her office and helped itself to a chair.

"I see you haven't exactly made what Charlie Horn, in his dramatic criticisms, calls an uproarious and unprecedented success," he remarked, after a few preliminaries.

"I have not been sufficiently interested to notice," was her crisp response.

"That's right; keep your back up," said he. "I've been agin about everything that's popular, and for everything that's unpopular, that ever happened in this town. I've been an 'agin-er' for fifty years. They'd have tarred and feathered me long ago if there'd been any leading citizen unstingy enough to have donated the tar. Then, too, I've had a little money, and going through the needle's eye is easy business compared to losing the respect of Westville so long as you've got money—unless, of course," he added, "you're a female lawyer. I tell you, there's no more fun than stirring up the animals in this old town. Any one unpopular in Westville is worth being friends with, and so if you're willing——"

He held out his thin, bony hand. Katherine, with no very marked enthusiasm, took it. Then her eyes gleamed with a new light; and obeying an impulse she asked:

"Are you acquainted with political conditions in Westville?"

"Me acquainted with——" He cackled. "Why, I've been setting at my office window looking down on the political circus of this town ever since Noah run aground on Mount Ararat."

She leaned forward eagerly.

"Then you know how things stand?"

"To a T."

"Tell me, is there any rotten politics, any graft or corruption going on?" She flushed. "Of course, I mean except what's charged against my father."

"When Blind Charlie Peck was in power, there was more graft and dirty——"

"Not then, but now?" she interrupted.

"Now? Well, of course you know that since Blake run Blind Charlie out of business ten years ago, Blake has been the big gun in this town."

"Yes, I know."

"Then you must know that in the last ten years Westville has been text, sermon, and doxology for all the reformers in the state."

"But could not corruption be going on without Mr. Blake knowing it? Could not Mr. Peck be secretly carrying out some scheme?"

"Blind Charlie? Blind Charlie ain't dead yet, not by a long sight—and as long as there's a breath in his carcass, that good-natured old blackguard is likely to be a dangerous customer. But though Charlie's still the boss of his party, he controls no offices, and has got no real power. He's as helpless as Satan was after he'd been kicked out of heaven and before he'd landed that big job he holds on the floor below. Nowadays, Charlie just sits in his side office over at the Tippecanoe House playing seven-up from breakfast till bedtime."

"Then you think there's no corrupt politics in Westville?" she asked in a sinking voice.

"Not an ounce of 'em!" said Old Hosie with decision.

This agreed with the conviction that had been growing upon Katherine during the last few days. While she had entertained suspicion of there being corruption, she had several times considered the advisability of putting a detective on the case. But this idea she now abandoned.

After this talk with the old lawyer, Katherine was forced back again upon misunderstanding. She went carefully over the records of her father's department, on file in the Court House, seeking some item that would cast light upon the puzzle. She went over and over the indictment, seeking some loose end, some overlooked inconsistency, that would yield her at least a clue.

For days she kept doggedly at this work, steeling herself against the disapprobation of the town. But she found nothing. Then, in a flash, an overlooked point recurred to her. The trouble, so went her theory, was all due to a confusion of the bribe with the donation to the hospital. Where was that donation?

Here was a matter that might at last lead to a solution of the difficulty. Again on fire with hope, she interviewed her father. He was certain that a donation had been promised, he had thought the envelope handed him by Mr. Marcy contained the gift—but of the donation itself he knew no more. She interviewed Doctor Sherman; he had heard Mr. Marcy refer to a donation but knew nothing about the matter. She tried to get in communication with Mr. Marcy, only to learn that he was in England studying some new filtering plants recently installed in that country. Undiscouraged, she one day stepped off the train in St. Louis, the home of the Acme Filter, and appeared in the office of the company.

The general manager, a gentleman who ran to portliness in his figure, his jewellery and his courtesy, seemed perfectly acquainted with the case. In exculpation of himself and his company, he said that they were constantly being held up by every variety of official from a county commissioner to a mayor, and they were simply forced to give "presents" in order to do business.

"But my father's defense," put in Katherine, "was that he thought this 'present' was in reality a donation to the hospital. Was anything said to my father about a donation?"

"I believe there was."

"That corroborates my father!" Katherine exclaimed eagerly. "Would you make that statement at the trial—or at least give me an affidavit to that effect?"

"I'll be glad to give you an affidavit. But I should explain that the 'present' and the donation were two distinctly separate affairs."

"Then what became of the donation?" Katherine cried triumphantly.

"It was sent," said the manager.

"Sent?"

"I sent it myself," was the reply.

Katherine left St. Louis more puzzled than before. What had become of the check, if it had really been sent? Home again, she ransacked her father's desk with his aid, and in a bottom drawer they found a heap of long-neglected mail.

Doctor West at first scratched his head in perplexity. "I remember now," he said. "I never was much of a hand to keep up with my letters, and for the few days before that celebration I was so excited that I just threw everything——"

But Katherine had torn open an envelope and was holding in her hands a fifty dollar check from the Acme Filter Company.

"What was the date of your arrest?" she asked sharply. "The date Mr. Marcy gave you that money?"

"The fifteenth of May."

"This check is dated the twelfth of May. The envelope shows it was received in Westville on the thirteenth."

"Well, what of that?"

"Only this," said Katherine slowly, and with a chill at her heart, "that the prosecution can charge, and we cannot disprove the charge, that the real donation was already in your possession at the time you accepted what you say you believed was the donation."

Then, with a rush, a great temptation assailed Katherine—to destroy this piece of evidence unfavourable to her father which she held in her hands. For several moments the struggle continued fiercely. But she had made a vow with herself when she had entered law that she was going to keep free from the trickery and dishonourable practices so common in her profession. She was going to be an honest lawyer, or be no lawyer at all. And so, at length, she laid the check before her father.

"Just indorse it, and we'll send it in to the hospital," she said.

Afterward it occurred to her that to have destroyed the check would at the best have helped but little, for the prosecution, if it so desired, could introduce witnesses to prove that the donation had been sent. Suspicion of having destroyed or suppressed the check would then inevitably have rested upon her father.

This discovery of the check was a heavy blow, but Katherine went doggedly back to the first beginnings; and as the weeks crept slowly by she continued without remission her desperate search for a clue which, followed up, would make clear to every one that the whole affair was merely a mistake. But the only development of the summer which bore at all upon the case—and that bearing seemed to Katherine indirect—was that, since early June, the service of the water-works had steadily been deteriorating. There was frequently a shortage in the supply, and the filtering plant, the direct cause of Doctor West's disgrace, had proved so complete a failure that its use had been discontinued. The water was often murky and unpleasant to the taste. Moreover, all kinds of other faults began to develop in the plant. The city complained loudly of the quality of the water and the failure of the system. It was like one of these new-fangled toys, averred the street corners, that runs like a miracle while the paint is on it and then with a whiz and a whir goes all to thunder.

But to this mere by-product of the case Katherine gave little thought. She had to keep desperately upon the case itself. At times, feeling herself so alone, making no inch of headway, her spirits sank very low indeed. What made the case so wearing on the soul was that she was groping in the dark. She was fighting an invisible enemy, even though it was no more than a misunderstanding—an enemy whom, strive as she would, she could not clutch, with whom she could not grapple. Again and again she prayed for a foe in the open. Had there been a fight, no matter how bitter, her part would have been far, far easier—for in fight there is action and excitement and the lifting hope of victory.

It took courage to work as she did, weary week upon weary week, and discover nothing. It took courage not to slink away at the town's disapprobation. At times, in the bitterness of her heart, she wished she were out of it all, and could just rest, and be friends with every one. In such moods it would creep coldly in upon her that there could be but one solution to the case—that after all her father must be guilty. But when she would go home and look into his thoughtful, unworldy old face, that solution would instantly become impossible; and she would cast out doubt and despair and renew her determination.

The weeks dragged heavily on—hot and dusty after the first of July, and so dry that out in the country the caked earth was a fine network of zigzagging fissures, and the farmers, gazing despondently upon their shrivelling corn, watched with vain hope for a rescuing cloud to darken the clear, hard, brilliant heavens. At length the summer burned to its close; the opening day of the September term of court was close at hand. But still the case stood just as on the day Katherine had stepped so joyously from the Limited. The evidence of Sherman was unshaken. The charges of Bruce had no answer.

One afternoon—her father's case was set for two days later—as Katherine left her office, desperate, not knowing which way to turn, her nerves worn fine and thin by the long strain, she saw her father's name on the front page of the Express. She bought a copy. In the centre of the first page, in a "box" and set in heavy-faced type, was an editorial in Bruce's most rousing style, trying her father in advance, declaring him flagrantly guilty, and demanding for him the law's extremest penalty.

That editorial unloosed her long-collected wrath—wrath that had many a reason. In Bruce's person Katherine had from the first seen the summing up, the leader, of the bitterness against her father. All summer he had continued his sharp attacks, and the virulence of these had helped keep the town wrought up against Doctor West. Moreover, Katherine despised Bruce as a powerful, ruthless, demagogic hypocrite. And to her hostility against him in her father's behalf and to her contempt for his quack radicalism, was added the bitter implacability of the woman who feels herself scorned. The town's attitude toward her she resented. But Bruce she hated, and him she prayed with all her soul that she might humble.

She crushed the Express, flung it from her into the gutter, and walked home all a-tremble. Her aunt met her in the hall as she was laying off her hat. A spot burned faintly in either withered cheek of the old woman.

"Who does thee think is here?" she asked.

"Who?" Katherine repeated mechanically, her wrath too high for interest in anything else.

"Mr. Bruce. Upstairs with thy father."

"What!" cried Katherine.

Her hat missed the hook and fell to the floor, and she went springing up the stairway. The next instant she flung open her father's door, and walked straight up to Bruce, before whom she paused, bosom heaving, eyes on fire.

"What are you doing here?" she demanded.

His powerful figure rose, and his square-hewn face looked directly into her own.

"Interviewing your father," he returned with his aggressive calm.

"He was asking me to confess," explained Doctor West.

"Confess?" cried Katherine.

"Just so," replied Bruce. "His guilt is undoubted, so he might as well confess."

Scorn flamed at him.

"I see! You are trying to get a confession out of him, in advance of the trial, as a big feature for your terrible paper!"

She moved a pace nearer him. All the suppressed anger, all the hidden anguish, of the last three months burst up volcanically.

"Oh! oh!" she cried breathlessly. "I never dreamt till I met you that a man could be so low, so heartless, as to hound an old man as you have hounded my father—and all for the sake of a yellow newspaper sensation. But he's a safe man for you to attack. Yes, he's safe—old, unpopular, helpless!"

Bruce's heavy brows lowered. He did not give back a step before her ireful figure.

"And because he's old and unpopular I should not attack him, eh?" he demanded. "Because he's down, I should not hit him? That's your woman's reasoning, is it? Well, let me tell you," and his gray eyes flashed, and his voice had a crunching tone—"that I believe when you've got an enemy of society down, don't, because you pity him, let him up to go and do the same thing again. While you've got him down, keep on hitting him till you've got him finished!"

"Like the brute that you are!" she cried. "But, like the coward you are, you first very carefully choose your 'enemy of society.' You were careful to choose one who could not hit back!"

"I did not choose your father. He thrust himself upon the town's attention. And I consider neither his weakness nor his strength. I consider only the fact that your father has done the city a greater injury than any man who ever lived in Westville."

"It's a lie! I tell you it's a lie!"

"It's the truth!" he declared harshly, dominantly. "His swindling Westville by giving us a worthless filtering-plant in return for a bribe—why, that is the smallest evil he has done the town. Before that time, Westville was on the verge of making great municipal advances—on the verge of becoming a model and a leader for the small cities of the Middle West. And now all that grand development is ruined—and ruined by that man, your father!" He excitedly jerked a paper from his pocket and held it out to her. "If you want to see what he has brought us to, read that editorial in the Clarion!"

She fixed him with glittering eyes.

"I have read one cowardly editorial to-day in a Westville paper. That is enough."

"Read that, I say!" he commanded.

For answer she took the Clarion and tossed it into the waste-basket. She glared at him, quivering all over, in her hands a convulsive itch for physical vengeance.

"If I thought that in all your fine talk about the city there was one single word of sincerity, I might respect you," she said with slow and scathing contempt. "But your words are the words of a mere poseur—of a man who twists the truth to fit his desires—of a man who deals in the ideas that seem to him most profitable—of a man who cares not how poor, how innocent, is the body he uses as a stepping stone for his clambering greed and ambition. Oh, I know you—I have watched you—I have read you. You are a mere self-seeker! You are a demagogue! You are a liar! And, on top of that, you are a coward!"

Whatever Arnold Bruce was, he was a man with a temper. Fury was blazing behind his heavy spectacles.

"Go on! I care that for the words of a woman who has so little taste, so little sense, so little modesty, as to leave the sphere——"

"You boor!" gasped Katharine.

"Perhaps I am. At least I am not afraid to speak the truth straight out even to a woman. You are all wrong. You are unwomanly. You are unsexed. Your pretensions as a lawyer are utterly preposterous, as the trial on Thursday will show you. And the condemnation of the town is not half as severe a rebuke——"

"Stop!" gasped Katherine. A wild defiance surged up and overmastered her, her nerves broke, and her hot words tumbled out hysterically. "You think you are a God-anointed critic of humanity, but you are only a heartless, conceited cad! Just wait—I'll show you what your judgment of me is worth! I am going to clear my father! I am going to make this Westville that condemns me kneel at my feet! and as for you—you can think what you please! But don't you ever dare to speak to my father again—don't you ever dare speak to me again—don't you ever dare enter this house again! Now go! Go! I say. Go! Go! Go!"

His face had grown purple; he seemed to be choking. For a space he gazed at her. Then without answering he bowed slightly and was gone.

She glared a moment at the door. Then suddenly she collapsed upon the floor, her head and arms on the old haircloth sofa, and her whole body shook with silent sobs. Doctor West, first gazing at her a little helplessly, sat down upon the sofa, and softly stroked her hair. For a time there were no words—only her convulsive breathing, her choking sobs.

Presently he said gently:

"I'm sure you'll do everything you said."

"No—that's the trouble," she moaned. "What I said—was—was just a big bluff. I won't do any—of those things. Your trial is two days off—and, father, I haven't one bit of evidence—I don't know what we're going to do—and the jury will have to—oh, father, father, that man was right; I'm just—just a great big failure!"

Again she shook with sobs. The old man continued to sit beside her, softly stroking her thick brown hair.



CHAPTER VII

THE MASK FALLS

But presently the sobs subsided, as though shut off by main force, and Katherine rose to her feet. She wiped her eyes and looked at her father, a wan smile on her reddened, still tremulous face.

"What a hope-inspiring lawyer you have, father!"

"I would not want a truer," said he loyally.

"We won't have one of these cloud-bursts again, I promise you. But when you have been under a strain for months, and things are stretched tighter and tighter, and at last something makes things snap, why you just can't help—well," she ended, "a man would have done something else, I suppose, but it might have been just as bad."

"Worse!" avowed her father.

"Anyhow, it's all over. I'll just repair some of the worst ravages of the storm, and then we'll talk about our programme for the trial."

As she was arranging her hair before her father's mirror, she saw, in the glass, the old man stoop and take something from the waste-basket. Turning his back to her, he cautiously examined the object.

She left the mirror and came up behind him.

"What are you looking at, dear?"

He started, and glanced up.

"Oh—er—that editorial Mr. Bruce referred to." He rubbed his head dazedly. "If that should happen, with me even indirectly the cause of it—why, Katherine, it really would be pretty bad!" He held out the Clarion. "Perhaps, after all, you had better read it."

She took the paper. The Clarion had from the first opposed the city's owning the water-works, and the editorial declared that the present situation gave the paper, and all those who had held a similar opinion, their long-awaited triumph and vindication. "This failure is only what invariably happens whenever a city tries municipal ownership," declared the editorial. "The situation has grown so unbearably acute that the city's only hope of good water lies in the sale of the system to some private concern, which will give us that superior service which is always afforded by private capital. Westville is upon the eve of a city election, and we most emphatically urge upon both parties that they make the chief plank of their platforms the immediate sale of our utterly discredited water-works to some private company."

The editorial did not stir Katherine as it had appeared to stir Bruce, nor even in the milder degree it had stirred Doctor West. She was interested in the water-works only in so far as it concerned her father, and the Clarion's proposal had no apparent bearing on his guilt or innocence.

She laid the Clarion on the table, without comment, and proceeded to discuss the coming trial. The only course she had to suggest was that they plead for a postponement on the ground that they needed more time in which to prepare their defense. If that plea were denied, then before them seemed certain conviction. On that plea, then, they decided to place all their hope.

When this matter had been talked out Doctor West took the Clarion from the table and again read the editorial with troubled face, while Katherine walked to and fro across the floor, her mind all on the trial.

"If the town does sell, it will be too bad!" he sighed.

"I suppose so," said Katherine mechanically.

"It has reached me that people are saying that the system isn't worth anything like what we paid for it."

"Is that so?" she asked absently.

Doctor West drew himself up and his faded cheeks flushed indignantly.

"No, it is not so. I don't know what's wrong, but it's the very best system of its size in the Middle West!"

She paused.

"Forgive me—I wasn't paying any attention to what I was saying. I'm sure it is."

She resumed her pacing.

"But if they sell out to some company," Doctor West continued, "the company will probably get it for a third, or less, of what it is actually worth."

"So, if some corporation has been secretly wanting to buy it," commented Katherine, "things could not have worked out better for the corporation if they had been planned."

She came to a sudden pause, and stood gazing at her father, her lips slowly parting.

"It could not have worked out better for the corporation if it had been planned," she repeated.

"No," said Doctor West.

She picked up the Clarion, quickly read the editorial, and laid the paper aside.

"Father!" Her voice was a low, startled cry.

"Yes?"

She moved slowly toward him, in her face a breathless look, and caught his shoulders with tense hands.

"Perhaps it was planned!"

"What?"

Her voice rang out more loudly:

"Perhaps it was planned!"

"But Katherine—what do you mean?"

"Let me think. Let me think." She began feverishly to pace the room. "Oh, why did I not think of this before!" she cried to herself. "I thought of graft—political corruption—everything else. But it never occurred to me that there might be a plan, a subtle, deep-laid plan, to steal the water-works!"

Doctor West watched her rather dazedly as she went up and down the floor, her brows knit, her lips moving in self-communion. Her connection with the Municipal League in New York had given her an intimate knowledge of the devious means by which public service corporations sometimes gain their end. Her mind flashed over all the situation's possibilities.

Suddenly she paused before her father, face flushed, triumph in her eyes.

"Father, it was planned!"

"Eh?" said he.

"Father," she demanded excitedly, "do you know what the great public service corporations are doing now?" Her words rushed on, not waiting for an answer. "They have got hold of almost all the valuable public utilities in the great cities, and now they are turning to a fresh field—the small cities. Westville is a rich chance in a small way. It has only thirty thousand inhabitants now. But it is growing. Some day it will have fifty thousand—a hundred thousand."

"That's what people say."

"If a private company could get hold of the water-works, the system would not only be richly profitable at once, but it would be worth a fortune as the city grows. Now if a company, a clever company, wanted to buy in the water-works, what would be their first move?"

"To make an offer, I suppose."

"Never! Their first step would be to try to make the people want to sell. And how would they try to make the people want to sell?"

"Why—why——"

"By making the water-works fail!" Her excitement was mounting; she caught his shoulders. "Fail so badly that the people would be disgusted, just as they now are, and willing to sell at any price. And now, father—and now, father—" he could feel her quivering all over—"listen to me! We're coming to the point! How would they make the water-works fail?"

He could only blink at her.

"They'd make it fail by removing from office, and so disgracing him that everything he had done would be discredited, the one incorruptible man whose care and knowledge had made it a success! Don't you see, father? Don't you see?"

"Bless me," said the old man, "if I know what you're talking about!"

"With you out of the way, whom they knew they could not corrupt, they could buy under officials to attend to the details of making the water bad and the plant itself a failure—just exactly what has been done. You are not the real victim. You are just an obstruction—something that they had to get out of the way. The real victim is Westville! It's a plan to rob the city!"

His gray eyes were catching the light that blazed from hers.

"I begin to see," he said. "It hardly seems possible people would do such things. But perhaps you're right. What are you going to do?"

"Fight!"

"Fight?" He looked admiringly at her glowing figure. "But if there is a strong company behind all this, for you to fight it alone—it will be an awful big fight!"

"I don't care how big the fight is!" she cried exultantly. "What has almost broken my heart till now is that there has been no one to fight!"

A shadow fell on the old man's face.

"But after all, Katherine, it is all only a guess."

"Of course it is only a guess!" she cried. "But I have tested every other possible solution. This is the only one left, and it fits every known circumstance of the case. It is only a guess—but I'll stake my life on its being the right guess!" Her voice rose. "Oh, father, we're on the right track at last! We're going to clear you! Don't you ever doubt that. We're going to clear you!"

There was no resisting the ringing confidence in her voice, the fire of her enthusiasm.

"Katherine!" he cried, and opened his arms.

She rushed into them. "We're going to clear you, father! And, oh, won't it be fine! Won't it be fine!"

For a space they held each other close, then they parted.

"What are you going to do first?" he asked.

"Try to find the person, or corporation, behind the scheme."

"And how will you do that?"

"First, I shall talk it over with Mr. Blake. You know he told me to come to him if I ever wished his advice. He knows the situation here—he has the interests of Westville at heart—and I know he will help us. I'm not going to lose a second, so I'm off to see him now."

She rushed downstairs. But she did have to lose a second, and many of them, for when she called up Mr. Blake's office on the telephone, the answer came back that Mr. Blake was in the capital and would not return till the following day on the one forty-five. It occurred to Katherine to advise with old Hosie Hollingsworth, for during the long summer her blind, childish shrinking had changed to warm liking of the dry old lawyer; and she had discovered, too, that the heresies it had been his delight to utter a generation before—and on which he still prided himself—were now a part of the belief of many an orthodox divine.

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?"

She had not yet quite got her bearings concerning this new Bruce.

"Help? Why should you help? Oh, I see," she said coldly; "it would make a nice sensational story for your paper."

He flushed at her cutting words, and his square jaw set.

"I suppose I might follow your example of a minute ago and say that I don't care what you think. But I don't mind telling you a few things, and giving you a chance to understand me if you want to. I was on a Chicago paper, and had a big place that was growing bigger. I could have sold the Express when my uncle left it to me, and stayed there; but I saw a chance, with a paper of my own, to try out some of my own ideas, so I came to Westville. My idea of a newspaper is that its function is to serve the people—make them think—bring them new ideas—to be ever watching their interests. Of course, I want to make money—I've got to, or go to smash; but I'd rather run a candy store than run a sleepy, apologetic, afraid-of-a-mouse, mere money-making sheet like the Clarion, that would never breathe a word against the devil's fair name so long as he carried a half-inch ad. You called me a yellow journalist yesterday. Well, if to tell the truth in the hardest way I know how, to tell it so that it will hit people square between the eyes and make 'em sit up and look around 'em—if that is yellow then I'm certainly a yellow journalist, and I thank God Almighty for inventing the breed!"

As Katherine listened to his snappy, vibrant words, as she looked at his powerful, dominant figure, and into his determined face with its flashing eyes, she felt a reluctant warmth creep through her being.

"Perhaps—I may have been mistaken about you," she said.

"Perhaps you may!" he returned grimly. "Perhaps as much as I was about your father. And, speaking of your father, I don't mind adding something more. Ever since I took charge of the Express, I've been advocating municipal ownership of every public utility. The water-works, which were apparently so satisfactory, were a good start; I used them constantly as a text for working up municipal ownership sentiment. The franchises of the Westville Traction Company expire next year, and I had been making a campaign against renewing the franchises and in favour of the city taking over the system and running it. Opinion ran high in favour of the scheme. But Doctor West's seeming dishonesty completely killed the municipal ownership idea. That was my pet, and if I was bitter toward your father—well, I couldn't help it. And now," he added rather brusquely, "I've explained myself to you. To repeat your words, you can believe me or not, just as you like."

There was no resisting the impression of the man's sincerity.

"I suppose," said Katherine, "that I should apologize for—for the things I've called you. My only excuse is that your mistake about my father helped cause my mistake about you."

"And I," returned he, "am not only willing to take back, publicly, in my paper, what I have said against your father, but am willing to print your statement about——"

"You must not print a word till I get my evidence," she put in quickly. "Printing it prematurely might ruin my case."

"Very well. And as for what I have said about you, I take back everything—except——" He paused; she saw disapprobation in his eyes. "Except the plain truth I told you that being a lawyer is no work for a woman."

"You are very dogmatic!" said she hotly.

"I am very right," he returned. "Excuse my saying it, but you appear to have too many good qualities as a woman to spoil it all by going out of your sphere and trying——"

"Why—why——" She stood gasping. "Do you know what your uncle told me about you?"

"Old Hosie?" He shrugged his shoulders. "Hosie's an old fool!"

"He said that the trouble with you was that you had not been thrashed enough as a boy. And he was right, too!"

She turned quickly to the door, but he stepped before her.

"Don't get mad because of a little truth. Remember, I want to help you."

"I think," said she, "that we're better suited to fight each other than to help each other. I'm not so sure I want your help."

"I'm not so sure you can avoid taking it," he retorted. "This isn't your father's case alone. It's the city's case, too, and I've got a right to mix in. Now do you want me?"

She looked at him a moment.

"I'll think it over. For the present, good afternoon."

He hesitated, then held out his hand. She hesitated, then took it. After which, he opened the door for her and bowed her out.



CHAPTER IX

THE PRICE OF A MAN

When, half an hour before, Katherine walked with bowed head out of Harrison Blake's office, Blake gazed fixedly after her for a moment, and his face, now that he was private, deepened its sickly, ashen hue. Then he strode feverishly up and down the room, lips twitching nervously, hands clinching and unclinching. Then he unlocked a cabinet against the wall, poured out a drink from a squat, black bottle, gulped it down, and returned the bottle, forgetting to close the cabinet. After which he dropped into his chair, gripped his face in his two hands, and sat at his desk breathing deeply, but otherwise without motion.

Presently his door opened.

"Mr. Brown is here to see you," announced a voice.

He slowly raised his head, and stared an instant at his stenographer in dumfounded silence.

"Mr. Brown!" he repeated.

"Yes," said the young woman.

He continued to stare at her in sickly stupefaction.

"Shall I tell him you'll see him later?"

"Show him in," said Blake. "But, no—wait till I ring."

He passed his hand across his moist and pallid face, paced his room again several times, then touched a button and stood stiffly erect beside his desk. The next moment the door closed behind a short, rather chubby man with an egg-shell dome and a circlet of grayish hair. He had eyes that twinkled with good fellowship and a cheery, fatherly manner.

"Well, well, Mr. Blake; mighty glad to see you!" he exclaimed as he crossed the room.

Blake, still pale, but now with tense composure, took the hand of his visitor.

"This is a surprise, Mr. Brown," said he. "How do you happen to be in Westville?"

Mr. Brown disposed himself comfortably in the chair that Katherine had so lately occupied.

"To-morrow's the trial of that Doctor West, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"Well, I thought I'd better be on the ground to see how it came out."

Blake did not respond at once; but, lips very tight together, sat gazing at the ruddy face of his visitor.

"Everything's going all right, isn't it?" asked Mr. Brown in his cheery voice.

"About the trial, you mean?" Blake asked with an effort.

"Of course. The letter I had from you yesterday assured me conviction was certain. Things still stand the same way, I suppose?"

Blake's whole body was taut. His dark eyes were fixed upon Mr. Brown.

"They do not," he said quietly.

"Not stand the same way?" cried Mr. Brown, half rising from his chair. "Why not?"

"I am afraid," replied Blake with his strained quiet, "that the prosecution will not make out a case."

"Not make out a case?"

"To-morrow Doctor West is going to be cleared."

"Cleared? Cleared?" Mr. Brown stared. "Now what the devil—see here, Blake, how's that going to happen?"

Blake's tense figure had leaned forward.

"It's going to happen, Mr. Brown," he burst out, with a flashing of his dark eyes, "because I'm tired of doing your dirty work, and the dirty work of the National Electric & Water Company!"

"You mean you're going to see he's cleared?"

"I mean I'm going to see he's cleared!"

"What—you?" ejaculated Mr. Brown, still staring. "Why, only in your letter yesterday you were all for the plan! What's come over you?"

"If you'd gone through what I've just gone through——" Blake abruptly checked his passionate reference to his scene with Katherine. "I say enough when I say that I'm going to see that Doctor West is cleared. There you have it."

No further word was spoken for a moment. The two men, leaning toward each other, gazed straight into one another's eyes. Blake's powerful, handsome face was blazing and defiant. The fatherly kindness had disappeared from the other, and it was keen and hard.

"So," said Mr. Brown, cuttingly, and with an infinity of contempt, "it appears that Mr. Harrison Blake is the owner of a white liver."

"You know that's a lie!" Blake fiercely retorted. "You know I've got as much courage as you and your infernal company put together!"

"Oh, you have, have you? From the way you're turning tail——"

"To turn tail upon a dirty job is no cowardice!"

"But there have been plenty of dirty jobs you haven't run from. You've put through many a one in the last two or three years on the quiet."

"But never one like this."

"You knew exactly what the job was when you made the bargain with us."

"Yes. And my stomach rose against it even then."

"Then why the devil did you tie up with us?"

"Because your big promises dazzled me! Because you took me up on a high mountain and showed me the kingdoms of the earth!"

"Well, you then thought the kingdoms were pretty good looking property."

"Good enough to make me forget the sort of thing I was doing. Good enough to blind me as to how things might come out. But I see now! And I'm through with it all!"

The chubby little man's eyes were on fire. But he was too experienced in his trade to allow much liberty to anger.

"And that's final—that's where you stand?" he asked with comparative calm.

"That's where I stand!" cried Blake. "I may have got started crooked, but I'm through with this kind of business now! I'm going back to clean ways! And you, Mr. Brown, you might as well say good-by!"

But Mr. Brown was an old campaigner. He never abandoned a battle merely because it apparently seemed lost. He now leaned back in his chair, slowly crossed his short legs, and thoughtfully regarded Blake's excited features. His own countenance had changed its aspect; it had shed its recent hardness, and had not resumed its original cheeriness. It was eminently a reasonable face.

"Come, let's talk this whole matter over in a calm manner," he began in a rather soothing tone. "Neither of us wants to be too hasty. There are a few points I'd like to call your attention to, if you'll let me."

"Go ahead with your points," said Blake. "But they won't change my decision."

"First, let's talk about the company," Mr. Brown went on in his mild, persuasive manner. "Frankly, you've put the company in a hole. Believing that you would keep your end of the bargain, the company has invested a lot of money and started a lot of projects. We bought up practically all the stock of the Westville street car lines, when that municipal ownership talk drove the price so low, because we expected to get a new franchise through your smashing this municipal ownership fallacy. We have counted on big things from the water-works when you got hold of it for us. And we have plans on foot in several other cities of the state, and we've been counting on the failure of municipal ownership in Westville to have a big influence on those cities and to help us in getting what we want. In one way and another this deal here means an awful lot to the company. Your failing us at the last moment means to the company——"

"I understand all that," interrupted Blake.

"Here's a point for you to consider then: Since the company has banked so much upon your promise, since it will lose so heavily if you repudiate your word, are you not bound in honour to stand by your agreement?"

Blake opened his lips, but Mr. Brown raised a hand.

"Don't answer now. I just leave that for you to think upon. So much for the company. Now for yourself. We promised you if you carried this deal through—and you know how able we are to keep our promise!—we promised you Grayson's seat in the Senate. And after that, with your ability and our support, who knows where you'd stop?" Mr. Brown's voice became yet more soft and persuasive. "Isn't that a lot to throw overboard because of a scruple?"

"I can win all that, or part of it, by being loyal to the people," Blake replied doggedly, but in a rather unsteady tone.

"Come, come, Mr. Blake," said Brown reprovingly, "you know you're not talking sense. You know that the only quick and sure way of getting the big offices is by the help of the corporations. So you realize what you're losing."

Blake's face had become drawn and pale. He closed his eyes, as though to shut out the visions of the kingdoms Mr. Brown had conjured up.

"I'm ready to lose it!" he cried.

"All right, then," Mr. Brown went mildly on. "So much for what we lose, and what you lose. Now for the next point, the action you intend to take regarding Doctor West. Do you mind telling me just how you propose to undo what you have done so far?"

"I haven't thought it out yet. But I can do it."

"Of course," pursued Mr. Brown blandly, "you propose to do it so that you will appear in no way to be involved?"

Blake was thinking of Katherine's accusation. "Of course."

"Just suppose you think about that point for a minute or two."

There was a brief silence. When Mr. Brown next spoke he spoke very slowly and accompanied each word with a gentle tap of his forefinger on the desk.

"Can you think of a single way to clear Doctor West without incriminating yourself?"

Blake gave a start.

"What's that?"

"Can you get Doctor West out of his trouble without showing who got him into his trouble? Just think that over."

During the moment of silence Blake grew yet more pale.

"I'll kill the case somehow!" he breathed.

"But the case looks very strong against Doctor West. Everybody believes him guilty. Do you think you can suddenly, within twenty-four hours, reverse the whole situation, and not run some risk of having suspicion shift around to you?"

Blake's eyes fell to his desk, and he sat staring whitely at it.

"And there's still another matter," pursued the gentle voice of Mr. Brown, now grown apologetic. "I wouldn't think of mentioning it, but I want you to have every consideration before you. I believe I never told you that the National Electric & Water Company own the majority stock of the Acme Filter Company."

"No, I didn't know that."

"It was because of that mutual relationship that I was able to help out your little plan by getting Marcy to do what he did. Now if some of our directors should feel sore at the way you've thrown us down, they might take it into their minds to make things unpleasant for you."

"Unpleasant? How?"

Mr. Brown's fatherly smile had now come back. It was full of concern for Blake.

"Well, I'd hate, for instance, to see them use their pressure to drive Mr. Marcy to make a statement."

"Mr. Marcy? A statement?"

"Because," continued Mr. Brown in his tone of fatherly concern, "after Mr. Marcy had stated what he knows about this case, I'm afraid there wouldn't be much chance for you to win any high places by being loyal to the people."

For a moment after this velvet threat Blake held upon Mr. Brown an open-lipped, ashen face. Then, without a word, he leaned his elbows upon his desk and buried his face in his hands. For a long space there was silence in the room. Mr. Brown's eyes, kind no longer, but keenest of the keen, watched the form before him, timing the right second to strike again.

At length he recrossed his legs.

"Of course it's up to you to decide, and what you say goes," he went on in his amiable voice. "But speaking impartially, and as a friend, it strikes me that you've gone too far in this matter to draw back. It strikes me that the best and only thing is to go straight ahead."

Blake's head remained bowed in his hands, and he did not speak.

"And, of course," pursued Mr. Brown, "if you should decide in favour of the original agreement, our promise still stands good—Senate and all."

Mr. Brown said no more, but sat watching his man. Again there was a long silence. Then Blake raised his face—and a changed face it was indeed from that which had fallen into his hands. It bore the marks of a mighty struggle, but it was hard and resolute—the face of a man who has cast all hesitancy behind.

"The agreement still stands," he said.

"Then you're ready to go ahead?"

"To the very end," said Blake.

Mr. Brown nodded. "I was sure you'd decide that way," said he.

"I want to thank you for what you've said to bring me around," Blake continued in his new incisive tone. "But it is only fair to tell you that this was only a spell—not the first one, in fact—and that I would have come to my senses anyhow."

"Of course, of course." It was not the policy of Mr. Brown, once the victory was won, to discuss to whom the victory belonged.

Blake's eyes were keen and penetrating.

"And you say that the things I said a little while back will not affect your attitude toward me in the future?"

"Those things? Why, they've already passed out of my other ear! Oh, it's no new experience," he went on with his comforting air of good-fellowship, "for me to run into one of our political friends when he's sick with a bad case of conscience. They all have it now and then, and they all pull out of it. No, don't you worry about the future. You're O. K. with us."

"Thank you."

"And now, since everything is so pleasantly cleared up," continued Mr. Brown, "let's go back to my first question. I suppose everything looks all right for the trial to-morrow?"

Blake hesitated a moment, then told of Katherine's discovery. "But it's no more than a surmise," he ended.

"Has she guessed any other of the parties implicated?" Mr. Brown asked anxiously.

"I'm certain she has not."

"Is she likely to raise a row to-morrow?"

"I hardly see how she can."

"All the same, we'd better do something to quiet her," returned Mr. Brown meaningly.

Blake flashed a quick look at the other.

"See here—I'll not have her touched!"

Mr. Brown's scanty eyebrows lifted.

"Hello! You seem very tender about her!"

Blake looked at him sternly a moment. Then he said stiffly: "I once asked Miss West to marry me."

"Eh—you don't say!" exclaimed the other, amazed. "That is certainly a queer situation for you!" He rubbed his naked dome. "And you still feel——"

"What I feel is my own affair!" Blake cut in sharply.

"Of course, of course!" agreed Mr. Brown quickly. "I beg your pardon!"

Blake ignored the apology.

"It might be well for you not to see me openly again like this. With Miss West watching me——"

"She might see us together, and suspect things. I understand. Needn't worry about that. You may not see me again for a year. I'm here—there—everywhere. But before I go, how do things look for the election?"

"We'll carry the city easily."

"Who'll you put up for mayor?"

"Probably Kennedy, the prosecuting attorney."

"Is he safe?"

"He'll do what he's told."

"That's good. Is he strong with the people?"

"Fairly so. But the party will carry him through."

"H'm." Mr. Brown was thoughtful for a space. "This is your end of the game, of course, and I make it a point not to interfere with another man's work. The only time I've butted in here was when I helped you about getting Marcy. But still, I hope you don't mind my making a suggestion."

"Not at all."

"We've got to have the next mayor and council, you know. Simply got to have them. We don't want to run any risk, however small. If you think there's one chance in a thousand of Kennedy losing out, suppose you have yourself nominated."

"Me?" exclaimed Blake.

"It strikes you as a come-down, of course. But you can do it gracefully—in the interest of the city, and all that, you know. You can turn it into a popular hit. Then you can resign as soon as our business is put through."

"There may be something in it," commented Blake.

"It's only a suggestion. Just think it over, and use your own judgment." He stood up. "Well, I guess that's all we need to say to one another. The whole situation here is entirely in your hands. Do as you please, and we ask no questions about how you do it. We're not interested in methods, only in results."

He clapped Blake heartily upon the shoulder. "And it looks as though we all were going to get results! Especially you! Why, you, with this trial successfully over—with the election won—with the goods delivered——"

He suddenly broke off, for the tail of his eye had sighted Blake's open cabinet.

"Will you allow me a liberty?"

"Certainly," replied Blake, in the dark as to his visitor's purpose.

Mr. Brown crossed to the cabinet, and returned with the squat, black bottle and two small glasses. He tilted an inch into each tumbler, gave one to Blake, and raised the other on high. His face was illumined with his fatherly smile.

"To our new Senator!" he said.



CHAPTER X

SUNSET AT THE SYCAMORES

When the door had closed behind the pleasant figure of Mr. Brown, Blake pressed the button upon his desk. His stenographer appeared.

"I have some important matters to consider," he said. "Do not allow me to be disturbed until Doctor and Mrs. Sherman come with the car."

His privacy thus secured, Blake sat at his desk, staring fixedly before him. His brow was compressed into wrinkles, his dark face, still showing a yellowish pallor, was hard and set. He reviewed the entire situation, and as his consuming ambition contemplated the glories of success, and the success after that, and the succession of successes that led up and ever up, his every nerve was afire with an excruciating, impatient pleasure.

For a space while Katherine had confronted him, and for a space after she had gone, he had shrunk from this business he was carrying through. But he had spoken truthfully to Mr. Brown when he had said that his revulsion was but a temporary feeling, and that of his own accord he would have come back to his original decision. He had had such revulsions before, and each time he had swung as surely back to his purpose as does the disturbed needle to the magnetic pole.

Westville considered Harrison Blake a happy blend of the best of his father and mother; whereas, in point of fact, his father and his mother lived in him with their personalities almost intact. There was his mother, with her idealism and her high sense of honour; and his father, with his boundless ambition and his lack of principles. In the earlier years of Blake's manhood his mother's qualities had dominated. He had sincerely tried to do great work for Westville, and had done it; and the reputation he had then made, and the gratitude he had then won, were the seed from which had grown the great esteem with which Westville now regarded him.

But a few years back he had found that rise, through virtue, was slow and beset with barriers. His ambition had become impatient. Now that he was a figure of local power and importance, temptation began to assail him with offers of rapid elevation if only he would be complaisant. In this situation, the father in him rose into the ascendency; he had compromised and yielded, though always managing to keep his dubious transactions secret. And now at length ambition ruled him—though as yet not undisturbed, for conscience sometimes rose in unexpected revolt and gave him many a bitter battle.

When his stenographer told Blake that Doctor and Mrs. Sherman were waiting at the curb, he descended with something more like his usual cast of countenance. Elsie and her husband were in the tonneau, and as Blake crossed the sidewalk to the car she stretched out a nervous hand and gave him a worn, excited smile.

"It is so good of you to take us out to The Sycamores for over night!" she exclaimed. "It's such a pleasure—and such a relief!"

She did not need to explain that it was a relief because the motion, the company, the change of scene, would help crowd from her mind the dread of to-morrow when her husband would have to take the stand against Doctor West; she did not need to explain this, because Blake's eyes read it all in her pale, feverish face.

Blake shook hands with Doctor Sherman, dismissed his chauffeur, and took the wheel. They spun out of the city and down into the River Road—the favourite drive with Westville folk—which followed the stream in broad sweeping curves and ran through arcades of thick-bodied, bowing willows and sycamores lofty and severe, their foliage now a drought-crisped brown. After half an hour the car turned through a stone gateway into a grove of beech and elm and sycamore. At a comfortable distance apart were perhaps a dozen houses whose outer walls were slabs of trees with the bark still on. This was The Sycamores, a little summer resort established by a small group of the select families of Westville.

Blake stopped the car before one of these houses—"cabins" their owners called them, though their primitiveness was all in that outer shell of bark. A rather tall, straight, white-haired old lady, with a sweet nobility and strength of face, was on the little porch to greet them. She welcomed Elsie and her husband warmly and graciously. Then with no relaxation of her natural dignity into emotional effusion, she embraced her son and kissed him—for to her, as to Westville, he was the same man as five years before, and to him she had given not only the love a mother gives her only son, but the love she had formerly borne her husband who, during his last years, had been to her a bitter grief. Blake returned the kiss with no less feeling. His love of his mother was the talk of Westville; it was the one noble sentiment which he still allowed to sway him with all its original sincerity and might.

They had tea out upon the porch, with its view of the river twinkling down the easy hill between the trees. Mrs. Blake, seeing how agitated Elsie was, and under what a strain was Doctor Sherman, and guessing the cause, deftly guided the conversation away from to-morrow's trial. She led the talk around to the lecture room which was being added to Doctor Sherman's church—a topic of high interest to them all, for she was a member of the church, Blake was chairman of the building committee, and Doctor Sherman was treasurer of the committee and active director of the work. This manoeuvre had but moderate success. Blake carried his part of the conversation well enough, and Elsie talked with a feverish interest which was too great a drain upon her meagre strength. But the stress of Doctor Sherman, which he strove to conceal, seemed to grow greater rather than decrease.

Presently Blake excused himself and Doctor Sherman, and the two men strolled down a winding, root-obstructed path toward the river. As they left the cabin behind them, Blake's manner became cold and hard, as in his office, and Doctor Sherman's agitation, which he had with such an effort kept in hand, began to escape his control. Once he stumbled over the twisted root which a beech thrust across their path and would have fallen had not Blake put out a swift hand and caught him. Yet at this neither uttered a word, and in silence they continued walking on till they reached a retired spot upon the river's bank.

Here Doctor Sherman sank to a seat upon a mossy, rotting log. Blake, erect, but leaning lightly against the scaling, mottled body of a giant sycamore, at first gave no heed to his companion. He gazed straight ahead down the river, emaciated by the drought till the bowlders of its bottom protruded through the surface like so many bones—with the ranks of austere sycamores keeping their stately watch on either bank—with the sun, blood red in the September haze, suspended above the river's west-most reach.

Thus the pair remained for several moments. Then Blake looked slowly about at the minister.

"I brought you down here because there is something I want to tell you," he said calmly.

"I supposed so; go ahead," responded Doctor Sherman in a choked voice, his eyes upon the ground.

"You seem somewhat disturbed," remarked Blake in the same cold, even tone.

"Disturbed!" cried Doctor Sherman. "Disturbed!"

His voice told how preposterously inadequate was the word. He did not lift his eyes, but sat silent a moment, his white hands crushing one another, his face bent upon the rotted wood beneath his feet.

"It's that business to-morrow!" he groaned; and at that he suddenly sprang up and confronted Blake. His fine face was wildly haggard and was working in convulsive agony. "My God," he burst out, "when I look back at myself as I was four years ago, and then look at myself as I am to-day—oh, I'm sick, sick!" A hand gripped the cloth over his breast. "Why, when I came to Westville I was on fire to serve God with all my heart and never a compromise! On fire to preach the new gospel that the way to make people better is to make this an easier world for people to be better in!"

That passion-shaken figure was not a pleasant thing to look upon. Blake turned his eyes back to the glistening river and the sun, and steeled himself.

"Yes, I remember you preached some great sermons in those days," he commented in his cold voice. "And what happened to you?"

"You know what happened to me!" cried the young minister with his wild passion. "You know well enough, even if you were not in that group of prominent members who gave me to understand that I'd either have to change my sermons or they'd have to change their minister!"

"At least they gave you a choice," returned Blake.

"And I made the wrong choice! I was at the beginning of my career—the church here seemed a great chance for so young a man—and I did not want to fail at the very beginning. And so—and so—I compromised!"

"Do you suppose you are the first man that has ever made a compromise?"

"That compromise was the direct cause of to-morrow!" the young clergyman went on in his passionate remorse. "That compromise was the beginning of my fall. After the prominent members took me up, favoured me, it became easy to blink my eyes at their business methods. And then it became easy for me to convince myself that it would be all right for me to gamble in stocks."

"That was your great mistake," said the dry voice of the motionless figure against the tree. "A minister has no business to fool with the stock market."

"But what was I to do?" Doctor Sherman cried desperately. "No money behind me—the salary of a dry goods clerk—my wife up there, whom I love better than my own life, needing delicacies, attention, a long stay in Colorado—what other chance, I ask you, did I have of getting the money?"

"Well, at any rate, you should have kept your fingers off that church building fund."

"God, don't I realize that! But with the market falling, and all the little I had about to be swept away, what else was a half frantic man to do but to try to save himself with any money he could put his hands upon?"

Blake shrugged his shoulders.

"Well, if luck was against you when that church money was also swept away, luck was certainly with you when it happened that I was the one to discover what you had done."

"So I thought, when you offered to replace the money and cover the whole thing up. But, God, I never dreamed you'd exact such a price in return!"

He gripped Blake's arm and shook it. His voice was a half-muffled shriek.

"If you wanted the water-works, if you wanted to do this to Doctor West, why did you pick on me to bring the accusation? There are men who would never have minded it—men without conscience and without character!"

Blake steadfastly kept his steely gaze upon the river.

"I believe I have answered that a number of times," he replied in his hard, even tone. "I picked you because I needed a man of character to give the charges weight. A minister, the president of our reform body—no one else would serve so well. And I picked you because—pardon me, if in my directness I seem brutal—I picked you because you were all ready to my hand; you were in a situation where you dared not refuse me. Also I picked you, instead of a man with no character to lose, because I knew that you, having a character to lose and not wanting to lose it, would be less likely than any one else ever to break down and confess. I hope my answer is sufficiently explicit."

Doctor Sherman stared at the erect, immobile figure.

"And you still intend," he asked in a dry, husky voice, "you still intend to force me to go upon the stand to-morrow and commit——"