Brucewas incensed at the cool manner in which Katherine had taken leave of him without so much as hinting at her purpose. In offering her aid and telling her his plans he had made certain advances. She had responded to these overtures by telling nothing. He felt he had been snubbed, and he resented such treatment all the more from a woman toward whom he had somewhat relaxed his dignity and his principles.
As he sat alone on his porch that night he breathed out along with his smoke an accompanying fire of profanity; but for all his wrath, he could not keep the questions from arising. Why had she gone? What was she going to do? Was she coming back? Had she given up her father’s case, and had she been silent to him that afternoon about her going for the simple reason that she had been ashamed to acknowledge her retreat?
He waited impatiently for the return of his uncle, who had been absent that evening fromsupper. He thought that Hosie might answer these questions since he knew the old man to be on friendly terms with Katherine. But when Old Hosie did shuffle up the gravel walk, he was almost as much at a loss as his nephew. True, a note from Katherine had been thrust under his door telling him she wished to talk with him that afternoon; but he had spent the day looking at farms and had not found the note till his return from the country half an hour before.
Bruce flung away his cigar in exasperation, and the dry night air was vibrant with half-whispered but perfervid curses. She was irritating, erratic, irrational, irresponsible—preposterous, simply preposterous—damn that kind of women anyhow! They pretended to be a lot, but there wasn’t a damned thing to them!
But he could not subdue his curiosity, though he fervently informed himself of the thousand and one kinds of an unblessed fool he was for bothering his head about her. Nor could he banish her image. Her figure kept rising before him out of the hot, dusty blackness: as she had appeared before the jury yesterday, slender, spirited, clever—yes, she had spoken cleverly, he would admit that; as she had appeared in her parlour that afternoon, a graceful, courteous, self-possessed home person; as hehad seen her in Mr. Huggins’s old surrey, with her exasperating, non-committal, cool little nod. But why, oh, why, in the name of the flaming rendezvous of lost and sizzling souls couldn’t a woman with her qualities also have just one grain—only one single little grain!—of the commonest common-sense?
The next morning Bruce sent young Harper to inquire from Doctor West in the jail, and after that from Katherine’s aunt, why Katherine had gone to New York, whether she had abandoned the case, and whether she had gone for good. But if these old people knew anything, they did not tell it to Billy Harper.
Westville buzzed over Katherine’s disappearance. The piazzas, the soda-water fountains, the dry goods counters, the Ladies’ Aid, were at no loss for an explanation of her departure. She had lost her case—she had discovered that she was a failure as a lawyer—she had learned what Westville thought of her—so what other course was open to her but to slip out of town as quietly as she could and return to the place from which she had come?
The Women’s Club in particular rejoiced at her withdrawal. Thank God, a pernicious example to the rising young womanhood of the town was at last removed! Perhaps woman’s righteous disapproval of Katherine had a deeper reason than was expressed—for what mostself-searching person truly knows the exact motives that prompt his actions? Perhaps, far down within these righteously indignant bosoms, was unconsciously but potently this question: if that type of woman succeeds and wins man’s approval, then what is going to become of us who have been built upon man’s former taste? At any rate, feminine Westville declared it a blessing that “that terrible thing” was gone.
Westville continued to buzz, but it soon had matters more worth its buzzing. Pressing the heels of one another there came two amazing surprises. The city had taken for granted the nomination of Kennedy for mayor, but the convention’s second ballot declared Blake the nominee. Blake had given heed to Mr. Brown’s advice and had decided to take no slightest risk; but to the people he let it be known that he had accepted the nomination to help the city out of its water-works predicament, and Westville, recognizing his personal sacrifice, rang with applause of his public spirit. The respectable element looked forward with self-congratulation to him as the next chief of the city—for he would have an easy victory over any low politician who would consent to be Blind Charlie’s candidate.
Then, without warning, came Bruce’s nomination, with a splendid list of lesser candidates,and upon a most progressive platform. Westville gasped again. Then recovering from its amazement, it was inclined to take this nomination as a joke. But Bruce soon checked their jocularity. That he was fighting for an apparently defunct cause seemed to make no difference to him. Perhaps Old Hosie had spoken more wisely than he had intended when he had once sarcastically remarked that Bruce was “a cross between a bulldog and Don Quixote.” Certainly the qualities of both strains were now in evidence. He sprang instantly into the campaign, and by the power and energy of his speeches and of his editorials in theExpress, he fairly raised his issue from the dead. Bruce did not have a show, declared the people—not the ghost of a show—but if he maintained the ferocious earnestness with which he was starting out, this certainly was going to be the hottest campaign which Westville had seen since Blake had overthrown Blind Charlie Peck.
People recalled Katherine now and then to wonder what she was doing and how mortified she must feel over her fiasco, and to laugh good-naturedly or sarcastically at the pricked soap-bubble of her pretensions. But the newer and present excitement of the campaign was forcing her into the comparative insignificance of all receding phenomena—when, one late SeptemberSunday morning, Westville, or that select portion of Westville which attended the Wabash Avenue Church, was astonished by the sight of Katherine West walking very composedly up the church’s left aisle, looking in exceedingly good health and particularly stunning in a tailor-made gown of rich brown corduroy.
She quietly entered a vacant pew and slipped to a position which allowed her an unobstructed view of Doctor Sherman, and which allowed Doctor Sherman an equally unobstructed view of her. Worshippers who stared her way noticed that she seemed never to take her gaze from the figure in the pulpit; and it was remarked, after the service was over, that though Doctor Sherman’s discourses had been falling off of late—poor man, his health was failing so!—to-day’s was quite the poorest sermon he had ever preached.
The service ended, Katherine went quietly out of the church, smiling and bowing to such as met her eyes, and leaving an active tongue in every mouth behind her. So she had come back! Well, of all the nerve! Did you ever! Was she going to stay? What did she think she was going to do? And so on all the way home, to where awaited the heavy Sunday dinner on which Westville gorged itself python-like—if it be not sacrilege to compare communicants with such heathen beasts—till theycould scarcely move; till, toward three o’clock, the church paper sank down upon the distended stomachs of middle age, and there arose from all the easy chairs of Westville an unrehearsed and somewhat inarticulate, but very hearty, hymnal in praise of the bounty of the Creator.
At about the time Westville was starting up this chorus, Old Hosie Hollingsworth, in Katherine’s parlour, deposited his rusty silk hat upon the square mahogany piano that had been Doctor West’s wedding gift to his wife. The old lawyer lowered himself into a rocker, crossed his attenuated legs, and shook his head.
“Land sakes—I certainly was surprised to get your note!” he repeated. “When did you get back?”
“Late last night.”
He stared admiringly at her fresh young figure.
“I must say, you don’t look much like a lawyer who has lost her first case and has sneaked out of town to hide her mortification!”
“Is that what people have been saying?” she smiled. “Well, I don’t feel like one!”
“Then you haven’t given up?”
“Given up?” She lifted her eyebrows. “I’ve just begun. It’s still a hard case, perhaps a long case; but at last I have a start. And I have some great plans. It was to ask your advice about these plans that I sent for you.”
“My advice! Huh! I ain’t ever been married—not even so much as once,” he commented dryly, “but I’ve been told by unfortunates that have that it’s the female way to do a thing and then ask whether she should do it or not.”
“Now, don’t be cynical!” laughed Katherine. “You know I tried to consult you before I went away. But it still is not too late for your advice. I’ll put my plans before you, and if your masculine wisdom, whose superiority you have proved by keeping yourself unmarried, can show me wherein I’m wrong, I’ll change them or drop them altogether.”
“Fire away,” he said, half grumbling. “What are your plans?”
“They’re on a rather big scale. First, I shall put a detective on the case.”
“That’s all right, but don’t you underestimate Harrison Blake,” warned Old Hosie. “Since you’ve come back Blake will be sure you’re after him. He will be on his guard against you; he will expect you to use a detective; he will watch out for him, perhaps try to have his every move shadowed. I suppose you never thought of that?” he demanded triumphantly.
“Oh, yes I did,” Katherine returned. “That’s why I’m going to hire two detectives.”
The old man raised his eyebrows.
“Two detectives?”
“Yes. One for Mr. Blake to watch. One to do the real work.”
“Oh!” It was an ejaculation of dawning comprehension.
“The first detective will be a mere blind; a decoy to engage Mr. Blake’s attention. He must be a little obvious, rather blundering—so that Mr. Blake can’t miss him. He will know nothing about my real scheme at all. While Mr. Blake’s attention and suspicion are fixed on the first man, the second man, who is to be a real detective with real brains in his head, will get in the real work.”
“Splendid! Splendid!” cried Old Hosie, looking at her enthusiastically. “And yet that pup of a nephew of mine sniffs out, ‘Her a lawyer? Nothing! She’s only a woman!’”
Katherine flushed. “That’s what I want Mr. Blake to think.”
“To underestimate you—yes, I see. Have you got your first man?”
“No. I thought you might help me find him, for a local man, or a state man, will be best; it will be easiest for him to be found out to be a detective.”
“I’ve got just the article for you,” cried Old Hosie. “You know Elijah Stone?”
“No. But, of course, I’ve seen him.”
“He’s Westville’s best and only. He thinkshe’s something terrible as a detective—what you might call a hyper-super-ultra detective. Detective sticks out big all over him—like a sort of universal mumps. He never looks except when he looks cautiously out of the corner of his eye; he walks on his tiptoes; he talks in whispers; he simply oozes mystery. Fat head?—why, Lige Stone wears his hat on a can of lard!”
“Come, I’m not engaging a low comedian for a comic opera.”
“Oh, he’s not so bad as I said. He’s really got a reputation. He’s just the kind of a detective that an inexperienced girl might pick up. Blake will soon find out you’ve hired him, he’ll believe it a bona fide arrangement on your part, and will have a lot of quiet laughs at your simplicity. God made Lige especially for you.”
“All right. I’ll see him to-morrow.”
“Have you thought about the other detective?”
“Yes. One reason I went to New York was to try to get a particular person—Mr. Manning, with whom I’ve worked on some cases for the Municipal League. He has six children, and is very much in love with his wife. The last thing he looks like is a detective. He might pass for a superintendent of a store, or a broker. But he’s very, very competent and clever, and is always master of himself.”
“And you got him?”
“Yes. But he can’t come for a couple of weeks. He is finishing up a case for the Municipal League.”
“How are you going to use him?”
“I don’t just know yet. Perhaps I can fit him into a second scheme of mine. You’ve heard of Mr. Seymour, of Seymour & Burnett?”
“The big bankers and brokers?”
“Yes. I knew Elinor Seymour at Vassar, and I visited her several times; and as Mr. Seymour is president of the Municipal League, altogether I saw him quite a great deal. I don’t mean to be conceited, but I really believe Mr. Seymour has a lot of confidence in me.”
“That’s a fine compliment to his sense,” Old Hosie put in.
“He’s about the most decent of the big capitalists,” she went on. “He was my second reason for going to New York. When I got there he had just left to spend a week-end in Paris, or something of the sort. I had to wait till he came back; that’s why I was gone so long. I went to him with a plain business proposition. I gave him a hint of the situation out here, told him there was a chance the water-works might be sold, and asked authority to buy the system in for him.”
“And how did he take it?” Old Hosie asked eagerly.
“You behold in me an accredited agent of Seymour & Burnett. I don’t know yet how I shall use that authority, but if I can’t do anything better, and if the worst comes to the very worst, I’ll buy in the plant, defeat Mr. Blake, and see that the city gets something like a fair price for its property.”
Old Hosie stared at her in open admiration. “Well, if you don’t beat the band!” he exclaimed.
“In the meantime, I shall busy myself with trying to get my father’s case appealed. But that is really only a blind; behind that I shall every minute be watching Mr. Blake. Now, what do you think of my plans? You know I called you in for your advice.”
“Advice! You need advice about as much as an angel needs a hat pin!”
“But I’m willing to change my plans if you have any suggestions.”
“I was a conceited old idiot when I was a little sore awhile ago because you had called me in for my opinion after you had settled everything. Go right ahead. It’s fine. Fine, I tell you!” He chuckled. “And to think that Harrison Blake thinks he’s bucking up against only a woman. Just a simple, inexperienced, dear, bustling, blundering woman! What a jar he’s got coming to him!”
“We mustn’t be too hopeful,” warned Katherine. “There’s a long, hard fight ahead.Perhaps my plan may not work out. And remember that, after all, I am only a woman.”
“But if you do win!” His old eyes glowed excitedly. “Your father cleared, the idol of the town upset, the water-works saved—think what a noise all that will make!”
A new thought slowly dawned into his face. “H’m—this old town hasn’t been, well, exactly hospitable to you; has laughed at you—sneered at you—given you the cold shoulder.”
“Has it? What do I care!”
“It would be sort of nice, now wouldn’t it,” he continued slowly, keenly, with his subdued excitement, “sort of heaping coals of fire on Westville’s roofs, if the town, after having cut you dead, should find that it had been saved by you. I suppose you’ve never thought of that aspect of the case—eh? I suppose it has never occurred to you that in saving your father you’ll also save the town?”
She flushed—and smiled a little.
“Oh, so we’ve already thought of that, have we. I see I can’t suggest anything new to you. Let the old town jeer all it wants to now, we’ll show ’em in the end!—is that it?”
She smiled again, but did not answer him.
“Now you’ll excuse me, won’t you, for I promised to call on father this afternoon?”
“Certainly.” He rose. “How is your father—or haven’t you seen him yet?”
“I called at the jail first thing this morning. He’s very cheerful.”
“That’s good. Well, good-by.”
Old Hosie was reaching for his hat, but just then a firm step sounded on the porch and there was a ring of the bell. Katherine crossed the parlour and swung open the screen. Standing without the door was Bruce, a challenging, defiant look upon his face.
“Why, Mr. Bruce,” she exclaimed, smiling pleasantly. “Won’t you please come in?”
“Thank you,” he said shortly.
He bowed and entered, but stopped short at sight of his uncle.
“Hello! You here?”
“Just to give an off-hand opinion, I should say I am.” Old Hosie smiled sweetly, put his hat back upon the piano and sank into his chair. “I just dropped in to tell Miss Katherine some of those very clever and cutting things you’ve said to me about the idea of a woman being a lawyer. I’ve been expostulating with her—trying to show her the error of her ways—trying to prove to her that she wasn’t really clever and didn’t have the first qualification for law.”
“You please let me speak for myself!” retorted Bruce. “How long are you going to stay here?”
Old Hosie recrossed his long legs and settled back with the air of the rock of ages.
“Why, I was expecting Miss Katherine was going to invite me to stay to supper.”
“Well, I guess you won’t. You please remember this is your month to look after Jim. Now you trot along home and see that he don’t fry the steak to a shingle the way you let him do it last night.”
“Last night I was reading your editorial on the prospects of the corn crop and I got so worked up as to how it was coming out that I forgot all about that wooden-headed nigger. I tell you, Arn, that editorial was one of the most exciting, stirring, nerve-racking, hair-breadth——”
“Come, get along with you!” Bruce interrupted impatiently. “I want to talk some business with Miss West!”
Old Hosie rose.
“You see how he treats me,” he said plaintively to Katherine. “I haven’t had one kind word from that young pup since, when he was in high-school, he got so stuck on himself because he imagined every girl in town was in love with him.”
Bruce took Old Hosie’s silk hat from the piano and held it out to him.
“You certainly won’t get a kind word from me to-night if that steak is burnt!”
Katherine followed Hosie out upon the porch.
“He’s a great boy,” whispered the old manproudly—“if only I can lick his infernal conceit out of him!” He gripped her hand. “Good-by, and luck with you!”
She watched the bent, spare figure down the walk, then went in to Bruce. The editor was standing stiffly in the middle of the parlour.
“I trust that my call is not inopportune?”
“I’m glad to see you, but it does so happen that I promised father to call at five o’clock. And it’s now twenty minutes to.”
“Perhaps you will allow me to walk there with you?”
“But wouldn’t that be, ah—a little dangerous?”
“Dangerous?”
“Yes. Perhaps you forget that Westville disapproves of me. It might not be a very politic thing for a candidate for mayor to be seen upon the street with so unpopular a person. It might cost votes, you know.”
He flushed.
“If the people in this town don’t like what I do, they can vote for Harrison Blake!” He swung open the door. “If you want to get there on time, we must start at once.”
Two minutes later they were out in the street together. People whom they passed paused and stared back at them; groups of young men and women, courting collectively on front lawns, ceased their flirtatious chaffing and theirbombardments with handfuls of loose grass, and nudged one another and sat with eyes fixed on the passing pair; and many a solid burgher, out on his piazza, waking from his devotional and digestive nap, blinked his eyes unbelievingly at the sight of a candidate for mayor walking along the street with that discredited lady lawyer who had fled the town in chagrin after losing her first case.
At the start Katherine kept the conversation upon Bruce’s candidacy. He told her that matters were going even better than he had hoped; and informed her, with an air of triumph he did not try to conceal, that Blind Charlie Peck had been giving him an absolutely free rein, and that he was more than ever convinced that he had correctly judged that politician’s motives. Katherine meekly accepted this implicit rebuke of her presumption, and congratulated him upon the vindication of his judgment.
“But I came to you to talk about your affairs, not mine,” he said as they turned into Main Street. “I half thought, when you left, that you had gone for good. But your coming back proves you haven’t given up. May I ask what your plans are, and how they are developing?”
Her eyes dropped to the sidewalk, and she seemed to be embarrassed for words. It was not wholly his fault that he interpreted heras crest-fallen, for Katherine was not lacking in the wiles of Eve.
“Your plans have not been prospering very well, then?” he asked, after a pause.
“Oh, don’t think that; I still have hopes,” she answered hurriedly. “I am going to keep right on at the case—keep at it hard.”
“Were you successful in what you went to New York for?”
“I can’t tell yet. It’s too early. But I hope something will come of it.”
He tried to get a glimpse of her face, but she kept it fixed upon the ground—to hide her discomfiture, he thought.
“Now listen to me,” he said kindly, with the kindness of the superior mind. “Here’s what I came to tell you, and I hope you won’t take it amiss. I admire you for the way you took your father’s case when no other lawyer would touch it. You have done your best. But now, I judge, you are at a standstill. At this particular moment it is highly imperative that the case go forward with highest speed. You understand me?”
“I think I do,” she said meekly. “You mean that a man could do much better with the case than a woman?”
“Frankly, yes—still meaning no offense to you. You see how much hangs upon your father’s case besides his own honour. There isthe election, the whole future of the city. You see we are really facing a crisis. We have got to have quick action. In this crisis, being in the dark as to what you were doing, and feeling a personal responsibility in the matter, I have presumed to hint at the outlines of the case to a lawyer friend of mine in Indianapolis; and I have engaged him, subject to your approval, to take charge of the matter.”
“Of course,” said Katherine, her eyes still upon the sidewalk, “this man lawyer would expect to be the chief counsel?”
“Being older, and more experienced——”
“And being a man,” Katherine softly supplied.
“He of course would expect to have full charge—naturally,” Bruce concluded.
“Naturally,” echoed Katherine.
“Of course you would agree to that?”
“I was just trying to think what a man would do,” she said meditatively, in the same soft tone. “But I suppose a man, after he had taken a case when no one else would take it, when it was hopeless—after he had spent months upon it, made himself unpopular by representing an unpopular cause, and finally worked out a line of defense that, when the evidence is gained, will not only clear his client but astound the city—after he had triumph and reputation almost within his grasp, I suppose a man would be quite willing to stepdown and out and hand over the glory to a newcomer.”
He looked at her sharply. But her face, or what he saw of it, showed no dissembling.
“But you are not stating the matter fairly,” he said. “You should consider the fact that you are at the end of your rope!”
“Yes, I suppose I should consider that,” she said slowly.
They were passing the Court House now. He tried to study her face, but it continued bent upon the sidewalk, as if in thought. They reached the jail, and she mounted the first step.
“Well, what do you say?” he asked.
She slowly raised her eyes and looked down on him guilelessly.
“You’ve been most thoughtful and kind—but if it’s just the same to you, I’d like to keep on with the case a little longer alone.”
“What!” he ejaculated. He stared at her. “I don’t know what to make of you!” he cried in exasperation.
“Oh, yes you do,” she assured him sweetly, “for you’ve been trying to make very little of me.”
“Eh! See here, I half believe you don’t want my aid!” he blurted out.
Standing there above him, smiling down upon him, she could hardly resist telling him the truth—that sooner would she allow her righthand to be burnt off than to accept aid from a man who had flaunted and jeered at her lawyership—that it was her changeless determination not to tell him one single word about her plans—that it was her purpose to go silently ahead and let her success, should she succeed, be her reply to his unbelief. But she checked the impulse to fling the truth in his face—and instead continued to smile inscrutably down upon him.
“I hope that you will do all for my father, for the city, for your own election, that you can,” she said. “All I ask is that for the present I be allowed to handle the case by myself.”
The Court House tower tolled five. She held out to him a gloved hand.
“Good-by. I’m sorry I can’t invite you in,” she said lightly, and turned away.
He watched the slender figure go up the steps and into the jail, then turned and walked down the street—exasperated, puzzled, in profound thought.
Thenext morning Elijah Stone appeared in Katherine’s office as per request. He was a thickly, if not solidly, built gentleman, in imminent danger of a double chin, and with that submerged blackness of the complexion which is the result of a fresh-shaven heavy beard. He kept his jaw clinched to give an appearance of power, and his black eyebrows lowered to diffuse a sense of deeply pondered mystery. His wife considered him a rarely handsome specimen of his sex, and he permitted art to supplement the acknowledged gifts of nature so far as to perfume his glossy black hair, to wear a couple of large diamond rings, and to carry upon the watch chain that clanked heavily across the broad and arching acreage of his waistcoat a begemmed lodge emblem in size a trifle smaller than a paper weight.
He was an affable, if somewhat superior, being, and he listened to Katherine with a still further lowering of his impressive brows. She informed him, in a perplexed, helpless, womanlyway, that she was inclined to believe that her father was “the victim of foul play”—the black brows sank yet another degree—and that she wished him privately to investigate the matter. He of course would know far, far better what to do than she, but she would suggest that he keep an eye upon Blake. At first Mr. Stone appeared somewhat sceptical and hesitant, but after peering darkly out for a long and ruminative period at the dusty foliage of the Court House elms, and after hearing the comfortable fee Katherine was willing to pay, he consented to accept the case. As he left he kindly assured her, with manly pity for her woman’s helplessness, that if there was anything in her suspicion she “needn’t waste no sleep now about gettin’ the goods.”
In the days that followed, Katherine saw her Monsieur Lecoque shadowing the movements of Blake with the lightness and general unobtrusiveness of a mahogany bedstead ambling about upon its castors. She soon guessed that Blake perceived that he was being watched, and she imagined how he must be smiling up his sleeve at her simplicity. Had the matters at stake not been so grave, had she been more certain of the issue, she might have put her own sleeve to a similar purpose.
In the meantime, as far as she could do so without exciting suspicion, she kept close watchupon Blake. It had occurred to her that there was a chance that he had an unknown accomplice whose discovery would make the gaining of the rest of the evidence a simple matter. There was a chance that he might let slip some revealing action. At any rate, till Mr. Manning came, her rôle was to watch with unsleeping eye for developments. Her office window commanded the entrance to Blake’s suite of rooms, and no one went up by day whom she did not see. Her bedroom commanded Blake’s house and grounds, and every night she sat at her darkened window till the small hours and watched for possible suspicious visitors, or possible suspicious movements on the part of Blake.
Also she did not forget Doctor Sherman. On the day of her departure for New York, she had called upon Doctor Sherman, and in the privacy of his study had charged him with playing a guilty part in Blake’s conspiracy. She had been urged to this course by the slender chance that, when directly accused as she had dared not accuse him in the court-room, he might break down and confess. But Doctor Sherman had denied her charge and had clung to the story he had told upon the witness stand. Since Katherine had counted but little on this chance, she had gone away but little disappointed.
But she did not now let up upon the youngminister. Regular attendance at church had of late years not been one of Katherine’s virtues, but after her return it was remarked that she did not miss a single service at which Doctor Sherman spoke. She always tried to sit in the very centre of his vision, seeking to keep ever before his mind, while he preached God’s word, the sin he had committed against God’s law and man’s. He visibly grew more pale, more thin, more distraught. The changes inspired his congregation with concern; they began to talk of overwork, of the danger of a breakdown; and seeing the dire possibility of losing so popular and pew-filling a pastor, they began to urge upon him the need of a long vacation.
Katherine could not but also give attention to the campaign, since it was daily growing more sensational, and was completely engrossing the town. Blake, in his speeches, stood for a continuance of the rule that had made Westville so prosperous, and dwelt especially upon an improvement in the service of the water-works, though as to the nature of the improvements he confined himself to language that was somewhat vague. Katherine heard him often. He was always eloquent, clever, forceful, with a manly grace of presence upon the platform—just what she, and just what the town, expected him to be.
But the surprise of the campaign, to Katherine and to Westville, was Arnold Bruce. Katherine had known Bruce to be a man of energy; now, in her mind, a forceful if not altogether elegant phrase of Carlyle attached itself to him—“A steam-engine in pants.” He was never clever, never polished, he never charmed with the physical grace of his opponent, but he spoke with a power, an earnestness, and an energy that were tremendous. By the main strength of his ideas and his personality he seemed to bear down the prejudice against the principle for which he stood. He seemed to stand out in the mid-current of hostile opinion and by main strength hurl it back into its former course. The man’s efforts were nothing less than herculean. He was a bigger man, a more powerful man, than Westville had ever dreamed; and his spirited battle against such apparently hopeless odds had a compelling fascination. Despite her defiantly critical attitude, Katherine was profoundly impressed; and she heard it whispered about that, notwithstanding Blake’s great popularity, his party’s certainty of success was becoming very much disturbed.
Both Katherine and Bruce were fond of horseback riding—Doctor West’s single luxury, his saddle horse, was ever at Katherine’s disposal—and at the end of one afternoon they met by chance out along the winding River Road,with its border of bowing willows and mottled sycamores, between whose browned foliage could be glimpsed long reaches of the broad and polished river, steel-gray in the shadows, a flaming copper where the low sun poured over it its parting fire. Little by little Bruce began to talk of his ideals. Presently he was speaking with a simplicity and openness that he had not yet used with Katherine. She perceived, more clearly than before, that whereas he was dogmatic in his ideas and brutally direct in their expression, he was a hot-souled idealist, overflowing with a passionate, even desperate, love of democracy, which he feared was in danger of dying out in the land—quietly and painlessly suffocated by a narrowing oligarchy which sought to blind the people to its rule by allowing them the exercise of democracy’s dead forms.
His square, rude face, which she watched with a rising fascination, was no longer repellent. It had that compelling beauty, superior to mere tint and moulding of the flesh, which is born of great and glowing ideas. She saw that there was sweetness in his nature, that beneath his rough exterior was a violent, all-inclusive tenderness.
Now and then she put in a word of discriminating approval, now and then a word of well-reasoned dissent.
“I believe you are even more radical than I am!” he exclaimed, looking at her keenly.
“A woman, if she is really radical, has got to be more radical than a man. She sees all the evils and dangers that he sees, and in addition she suffers from injustices and restrictions from which man is wholly free.”
He was too absorbed in the afterglow of what he had been saying to take in all the meanings implicated in her last phrase.
“Do you know,” he said, as they neared the town, “you are the first woman I have met in Westville to whom one could talk about real things and who could talk back with real sense.”
A very sly and pat remark upon his inconsistency was at her tongue’s tip. But she realized that he had spoken impulsively, unguardedly, and she felt that it would be little short of sacrilege to be even gently sarcastic after the exalted revelation he had made of himself.
“Thank you,” she said quietly, and turned her face and smiled at the now steel-blue reaches of the river.
He dropped in several evenings to see her. When he was in an idealistic mood she was warmly responsive. When he was arbitrary and opinionated, she met him with chaffing and raillery, and at such times she was as elusive, as baffling, as exasperating as a sprite. On occasions when he rather insistently asked herplans and her progress in her father’s case, she evaded him and held him at bay. She felt that he admired her, but with a grudging, unwilling admiration that left his fundamental disapproval of her quite unshaken.
The more she saw of this dogmatic dreamer, this erratic man of action, the more she liked him, the more she found really admirable in him. But mixed with her admiration was an alert and pugnacious fear, so big was he, so powerful, so violently hostile to all the principles involved in her belief that the whole wide world of action should in justice lie as much open to woman to choose from as to man.
Without cessation Katherine kept eyes and mind on Blake. She searched out and pondered over the thousand possible details and ramifications his conspiracy might have. No human plan was a perfect plan. By patiently watching and studying every point there was a chance that she might discover one detail, one slip, one oversight, that would give her the key to the case.
One of the thousand possibilities was that he had an active partner in his scheme. Since no such partner was visible in the open, it was likely that his associate was a man with whom Blake wished to have seemingly no relations. Were this conjecture true, then naturally he would meet this confederate in secret. Shebegan to think upon all possible means and places of holding secret conferences. Such a meeting might be held there in Westville in the dead of night. It might be held in any large city in which individuals might lose themselves—Indianapolis, Louisville, Cincinnati, Chicago. It might be held at any appointed spot within the radius of an automobile journey.
Katherine analyzed every possible place of this last possibility. She began to watch, as she watched other possibilities, the comings and goings of the Blake automobile. It occurred to her that, if anything were in this conjecture, the meeting would be held at night; and then, a little later, it occurred to her to make a certain regular observation. The Blake garage and the West stable stood side by side and opened into the same alley. Every evening while Blake’s car was being cleaned—if it had been in use during the day—Katherine went out to say good night to her saddle horse, and as she was on friendly terms with Blake’s man she contrived, while exchanging a word with him, to read the mileage record of the speedometer. This observation she carried on with no higher hope of anything resulting from it than from any of a score of other measures. It was merely one detail of her all-embracing vigilance.
Every night she sat on watch—the evening’s earlier half usually in the rustic summer-housein the backyard, the latter part at her bedroom window. One night after most of Westville was in bed, her long, patient vigil was rewarded by seeing the Blake automobile slip out with a single vague figure at the wheel and turn into the back streets of the town.
Hours passed, and still she sat wide-eyed at her window. It was not till raucous old muzzains of roosters raised from the watch-towers of their various coops their concatenated prophecy of the dawn, that she saw the machine return with its single passenger. The next morning, as soon as she saw Blake’s man stirring about his work, she slipped out to her stable. Watching her chance, she got a glimpse of Blake’s speedometer. Then she quickly slipped back to her room and sat there in excited thought.
The evening before the mileage had read 1437; this morning the reading was 1459. Blake, in his furtive midnight journey, had travelled twenty-two miles. If he had slipped forth to meet a secret ally, then evidently their place of meeting was half of twenty-two miles distant. Where was this rendezvous?
Almost instantly she thought of The Sycamores. That fitted the requirements exactly. It was eleven miles distant—Blake had a cabin there—the place was deserted at this season of the year. Nothing could be safer than for two men, coming in different vehicles, from differentpoints perhaps, to meet at that retired spot at such an eyeless hour.
Perhaps there was no confederate. Perhaps Blake’s night trip was not to a secret conference. Perhaps The Sycamores was not the rendezvous. But there was a chance that all three of these conjectures were correct. And if so, there was a chance,—aye, more, a probability—that there would be further midnight trysts.
Bruce had fallen into the habit of dropping in occasionally for a few minutes at the end of an evening’s speaking to tell Katherine how matters seemed to be progressing. When he called that night toward ten he was surprised to be directed around to the summer-house. His surprise was all the more because the three months’ drought had that afternoon been broken, and the rain was now driving down in gusts and there was a far rumbling of thunder that threatened a nearer and a fiercer cannonading.
Crouching beneath his umbrella, he made his way through the blackness to the summer-house, in which he saw sitting a dim, solitary figure.
“In mercy’s name, what are you doing out here?” he demanded as he entered.
“Watching the rain. I love to be out in a storm.” Every clap of thunder sent a shiver through her.
“You must go right into the house!” hecommanded. “You’ll get wet. I’ll bet you’re soaked already!”
“Oh, no. I have a raincoat on,” she answered calmly. “I’m going to stay and watch the storm a little longer.”
He expostulated, spoke movingly of colds and pneumonia. But she kept her seat and sweetly suggested that he avoid his vividly pictured dangers of a premature death by following his own advice. He jerked a rustic chair up beside her, growled a bit in faint imitation of the thunder, then ran off into the wonted subject of the campaign.
As the situation now stood he had a chance of winning, so successful had been his fight to turn back public opinion; and if only he had and could use the evidence Katherine was seeking, an overwhelming victory would be his beyond a doubt. He plainly was chafing at her delays, and as plainly made it evident that he was sceptical of her gaining proof. But she did not let herself be ruffled. She evaded all his questions, and when she spoke she spoke calmly and with good-nature.
Presently, sounding dimly through a lull in the rising tumult of the night, they heard the Court House clock strike eleven. Soon after, Katherine’s ear, alert for a certain sound, caught a muffled throbbing that was not distinguishable to Bruce from the other noises of the storm.
She sprang up.
“You must go now—good night!” she said breathlessly, and darted out of the summer-house.
“Wait! Where are you going?” he cried, and tried to seize her, but she was gone.
He stumbled amazedly after her vague figure, which was running through the grape-arbour swiftly toward the stable. The blackness, his unfamiliarity with the way, made him half a minute behind Katherine in entering the barn.
“Miss West!” he called. “Miss West!”
There was no answer and no sound within the stable. Just then a flash of lightning showed him that the rear door was open. As he felt his way through this he heard Katherine say, “Whoa, Nelly! Whoa, Nelly!” and saw her swing into the saddle.
He sprang forward and caught the bridle rein.
“What are you going to do?” he cried.
“Going out for a little gallop,” she answered with an excited laugh.
“What?” A light broke in upon him. “You’ve been sitting there all evening in your riding habit! Your horse has been standing saddled and bridled in the stall! Tell me—where are you going?”
“For a little ride, I said. Now let loose my rein.”
“Why—why—” he gasped in amazement.Then he cried out fiercely: “You shall not go! It’s madness to go out in a storm like this!”
“Mr. Bruce, let go that rein this instant!” she said peremptorily.
“I shall do nothing of the sort! I shall not let you make an insane fool of yourself!”
She bent downward. Though in the darkness he could not see her face, the tensity of her tone told him her eyes were flashing.
“Mr. Bruce,” she said with slow emphasis, “if you do not loosen that rein, this second, I give you my word I shall never see you, never speak to you again.”
“All right, but I shall not let you make a fool of yourself,” he cried with fierce dominance. “You’ve got to yield to sense, even though I use force on you.”
She did not answer. Swiftly she reversed her riding crop and with all her strength brought its heavy end down upon his wrist.
“Nelly!” she ordered sharply, and in the same instant struck the horse. The animal lunged free from Bruce’s benumbed grasp, and sprang forward into a gallop.
“Good night!” she called back to him.
He shouted a reply; his voice came to her faintly, wrathful and defiant, but his words were whirled away upon the storm.
Shequieted Nelly into a canter, made her way through the soundly sleeping back streets, and at length emerged from the city and descended into the River Road, which was slightly shorter than Grayson’s Pike which led over the high back country to The Sycamores. She knew what Nelly could do, and she settled the mare down into the fastest pace she could hold for the eleven miles before her.
Katherine was aquiver with suspense, one moment with hopeful expectation, the next with fear that her deductions were all awry. Perhaps Blake had not gone out to meet a confederate. And if he had, perhaps The Sycamores was not the rendezvous. But if her deductions were correct, who was this secret ally? Would she be able to approach them near enough to discover his identity? And would she be able to learn the exact outlines of the plot that was afoot? If so, what would it all prove to be?
Such questions and doubts galloped madlythrough her mind. The storm grew momently in fierceness. The water and fury of three months of withheld storms were spending themselves upon the earth in one violent outburst. The wind cracked her skirt like a whip-lash, and whined and snarled and roared among the trees. The rain drove at her in maddened sheets, found every opening in her raincoat, and soon she was as wet as though dropped in the river yonder. The night was as black as the interior of a camera, save when—as by the opening of a snapshot shutter—an instantaneous view of the valley was fixed on Katherine’s startled brain by the lightning ripping in fiery fissures down the sky. Then she saw the willows bending and whipping in the wind, saw the gnarled old sycamores wrestling with knotted muscles, saw the broad river writhing and tossing its swollen and yellow waters. Then, blackness again—and, like the closing click of this world-wide camera, there followed a world-shaking crash of thunder.
Katherine would have been terrified but for the stimulant within. She crouched low upon her horse, held a close rein, petted Nelly, talked to her and kept her going at her best—onward—onward—onward—through the covered wooden bridge that spanned Buck Creek—through the little old village of Sleepy Eye—up Red Man’s Ridge—and at last, battered,buffeted, half-drowned, she and Nelly drew up at the familiar stone gateway of The Sycamores.
She dismounted, led Nelly in and tied her among the beeches away from the drive. Then cautiously, palpitantly, she groped her way in the direction of the Blake cabin, avoiding the open lest the lightning should betray her presence. At length she came to the edge of a cleared space in which she knew the cabin stood. But she could see nothing. The cabin was just a cube of blackness imbedded in this great blackness which was the night. She peered intently for a lighted window; she listened for the lesser thunder of a waiting automobile. But she could see nothing but the dark, hear nothing but the dash of the rain, the rumble of the thunder, the lashing and shrieking of the wind.
Her heart sank. No one was here. Her guesses all were wrong.
But she crept toward the house, following the drive. Suddenly, she almost collided with a big, low object. She reached forth a hand. It fell upon the tire of an automobile. She peered forward and seemed to see another low shape. She went toward it and felt. It was a second car.
She dashed back among the trees, and thus sheltered from the revealing glare of the lightning, almost choking with excitement, she began to circle the house for signs which would locatein what room were the men within. She paused before each side and peered closely at it, but each side in turn presented only blackness, till she came to the lee of the house.
This, too, was dark for the first moment. Then in a lower window, which she knew to be the window of Blake’s den, two dull red points of light appeared—glowed—subsided—glowed again—then vanished. A minute later one reappeared, then the other; and after the slow rise and fall and rise of the glow, once more went out. She stood rigid, wondering at the phenomenon. Then suddenly she realized that within were two lighted cigars.
Bending low, she scurried across the open space and crouched beside the window. Luckily it had been opened to let some fresh air into the long-closed room. And luckily this was the lee of the house and the beat of the storm sounded less loudly here, so that their voices floated dimly out to her. This lee was also a minor blessing, for Katherine’s poor, wet, shivering body now had its first protection from the storm.
Tense, hardly breathing, with all five senses converged into hearing, she stood flattened against the wall and strained to catch their every word. One voice was plainly Blake’s. The other had a faintly familiar quality, though she could not place it. This second man hadevidently come late, for their conversation was of a preliminary, beating-around-the-bush character—about the fierceness of the storm, and the additional security it lent their meeting.
Katherine searched her memory for the owner of this second voice. She had thought at first of Doctor Sherman, but this voice had not a tone in common with the young clergyman’s clear, well-modulated baritone. This was a peculiar, bland, good-natured drawl. She had not heard it often, but she had unmistakably heard it. As she ransacked her memory it grew increasingly familiar, yet still eluded her. Then, all of a sudden, she knew it, and she stood amazed.
The second voice was the voice of Blind Charlie Peck.
Katherine was well acquainted with the secret bi-partisan arrangement common in so many American cities, by which the righteous voter is deluded into believing that there are two parties contending for the privilege of giving him their best service, whereas in reality the two are one, secretly allied because as a political trust they can most economically and profitably despoil the people. Her first thought was that these ancient enemies, who for ten years had belaboured one another with such a realistic show of bitterness upon the political stage of Westville, had all along been friends and partnersbehind the scenes. But of this idea she was presently disillusioned.
“Well, Mr. Blake, let’s get down to business,” Blind Charlie’s voice floated out to her. “You’ve had a day to think over my proposition. Now what have you got to say to it?”
There was a brief silence. When Blake did speak, Katherine could discern in his repressed tone a keen aversion for his companion.
“My position is the same as last night. What you say is all guesswork. There is nothing in it.”
Blind Charlie’s voice was soft—purringly soft.
“Then why didn’t you ask me to go to hell, and stay at home instead of coming out here?”
There was again a short silence.
“Come now,” the soft voice persuaded, “let’s don’t go over what we did last night. I know I’m right.”
“I tell you you’re only guessing,” Blake doggedly returned. “You haven’t a scrap of proof.”
“I don’t need proof, when I’m certain about a thing,” gently returned the voice of Blind Charlie. “I’ve been in politics for forty-eight years—ever since I was nineteen, when I cast my first vote. I’ve got sharpened up considerable in that time, and while I haven’tbeen in on much in the last ten years, I can still smell a fat deal clean across the state. For the last three months I’ve been smelling, and smelling it keener every day, that you’ve got a rich game going.”
“And so”—rather sarcastically—“you set Bruce on, to try to run the game down!”
“Well, I would use a little different figure of speech,” returned Blind Charlie smoothly. “When I’ve got a coon up a hollow tree I build a fire in the hollow to bring him down. Bruce is my fire.”
“And you think your coon is coming down?”
“I rather think he is. Don’t you?”
“Well, I tell you he’s not! For there’s no coon up the tree!”
“I see I’ve got to state the thing to you again,” said Blind Charlie patiently, and so softly that Katherine had to strain her utmost to get his words. “When I grew sure you had a big deal on about the water-works, I saw that the only way to force you to let me in was to put you in a fix where you would either have to split up or be in danger of losing the whole thing. So I nominated Bruce. He’s one of the easiest I ever took in; but, I tell you, he is certainly one hell of a fighter! That’s what I nominated him for. You know as well as I do the way he’s swinging the voters round. It beats anything I’ve ever seen. If he keepsthis up till election, and if I pull off a couple of good tricks I’ve got all ready, he’ll be a winner, sure! And now”—Blind Charlie’s purring voice thrust out its claws—“either I put Bruce in and smash your deal till it’s not worth a damn, or else you come across!”
“There’s nothing in it, I tell you!” declared Blake.
“There’s no use keeping up that pretence,” continued Blind Charlie. “You’ve had a day to think over my proposition. You know perfectly well what your choice is between: a sure thing if you divide with me, the risk of nothing if you refuse. So let’s waste no more time. Come, which is it?”
There was a long silence.
“I understand,” commented Blind Charlie, with a soft sympathy that Katherine knew was meant to bite like acid. “It’s hard for a respectable man like you to mix up with Charlie Peck. But political business makes strange bed-fellows, and unless you’re willing to sleep with almost anybody you’d better keep out of this kind of business altogether. But after all,” he added, “I guess it’s better to share a good bed than to have no bed at all.”
“What do you want?” Blake asked huskily.
“Only my share of the bed,” blandly returned Blind Charlie.
“What’s that, in plain words?”
“Not much. Only half of what you’re going to make.”
Blake exploded.
“Damn you, Peck, you’re nothing but a damned blackmailer!”
“All right, I agree to that,” said Blind Charlie. Then he added in his soft voice: “But if I’m a blackmailer in this affair, then please, Mr. Blake, what do you call yourself?”
“You—you——” To the crouching figure outside the window Blake seemed to be half-choking. But suddenly he exploded again. “I’ll not do it, Peck! I’ll not do it—never while God’s earth stands!”
“I guess you will, Blake!” Blind Charlie’s voice was no longer soft; it had a slow, grating, crunching sound. “Damn your soul, you’ve been acting toward me with your holier-than-thou reformer’s attitude for ten years. D’you think I’m a man to swallow that quietly? D’you think I haven’t had it in for you all those ten years? Why, there hasn’t been a minute that I haven’t been looking for my chance. And at last I’ve got it! I’ve not only got a line on this water-works business, but I’ve found out all about your pretty little deal with Adamson during the last months you were Lieutenant-Governor!”
“Adamson!” ejaculated Blake.
“Yes, Adamson!” went on the harsh voice ofBlind Charlie. “That hits you where you live, eh! You didn’t know I had it, did you? Well, I didn’t till to-day—but I’ve got it now all right! There, my cards are all on the table. Look ’em over. I don’t want Bruce elected any more than you do; but either you do what I say, or by God I turn over to Bruce all I know about the Adamson affair and all I know about this water-works deal! Now I give you just one minute to decide!”
Katherine breathlessly awaited the answer. A space passed. She heard Blind Charlie stand up.
“Time’s up! Good night—and to hell with you!”
“Wait! Wait!” Blake cried.
“Then you accept?”
Blake’s voice shook. “Before I answer, what do you want?”
“I’ve already told you. Half of what you get.”
“But I’m to get very little.”
“Very little!” Blind Charlie’s voice was ironical; it had dropped its tone of crushing menace. “Very little! Now I figure that you’ll get the water-works for a third, or less, of their value. That’ll give you something like half a million at the start-off, not to speak of the regular profits later on. Now as for me,” he concluded drily, “I wouldn’t call that sucha very little sum that I’d kick it out of my way if I saw it lying in the road.”
“But no such sum is lying there.”
“No? Then what do you get?”
Blake did not answer.
“Come, speak out!”
Blake’s voice came with an effort.
“I’m not doing this for myself.”
“Then who for?”
Blake hesitated, then again spoke with an effort.
“The National Electric & Water Company.”
Blind Charlie swore in his surprise.
“But I reckon you’re not doing it for them for charity?”
“No.”
“Well, what for?”
Blake again remained silent.
“Come, what for?” impatiently demanded Charlie.
“For a seat in the Senate.”
“That’s no good to me. What else?”
“Fifty thousand dollars.”
“The devil! Is that all?” ejaculated Blind Charlie.
“Everything.”
Blind Charlie swore to himself for a moment. Then he fell into a deep silence.
“Well, what’s the matter?” Blake presently inquired.
“I was just wondering,” replied Blind Charlie, slowly, “if it wouldn’t be better to call this business off between you and me.”
“Call it off?”
“Yes. I never imagined you were playing for such a little pile as fifty thousand. Since there’s only fifty thousand in it”—his voice suddenly rang out with vindictive triumph—“I was wondering if it wouldn’t pay me better to use what I know to help elect Bruce.”
“Elect Bruce?” cried Blake in consternation.
“Exactly. Show you up, and elect Bruce,” said Blind Charlie coolly. “To elect my mayor—there’s more than fifty thousand for me in that.”
There was a dismayed silence on Blake’s part. But after a moment he recovered himself, and this time it was his voice that had the note of ascendency.
“You are forgetting one point, Mr. Peck,” said he.
“Yes?”
“Bruce’s election will not mean a cent to you. You will get no offices. Moreover, the control of your party machinery will be sure to pass from you to him.”
“You’re right,” said the old man promptly. “See how quick I am to acknowledge the corn. However, after all,” he added philosophically, “what you’re getting is really enough for two.You take the senatorship, and I’ll take the fifty thousand. What do you say to that?”
“What about Bruce—if I accept?”
“Bruce? Bruce is just a fire to smoke the coon out. When the coon comes down, I put out the fire.”
“You mean?”
“I mean that I’ll see that Bruce don’t get elected.”
“You’ll make sure about that?”
“Oh, you just leave Bruce to me!” said Blind Charlie with grim confidence. “And now, do you accept?”
Blake was silent. He still shrunk from this undesirable alliance. Outside, Katherine again breathlessly hung upon his answer.
“What do you say?” demanded the old man sharply. “Do you accept? Or do I smash you?”
“I accept—of course.”
“And we’ll see this thing through together?”
“Yes.”
“Then here you are. Let’s shake on it.”
They talked on, dwelling on details of their partnership, Katherine missing never a word.
At length, their agreement completed, they left the room, and Katherine slipped from the window across into the trees and made such haste as she could through the night and the storm to where she had left her horse. Sheheard one car go slowly out the entrance of the grove, its lamps dark that its visit might not be betrayed, and she heard it turn cautiously into the back-country road. After a little while she saw a glare shoot out before the car—its lamps had been lighted—and she saw it skim rapidly away. Soon the second car crept out, took the high back-country pike, and repeated the same tactics.
Then Katherine untied Nelly, mounted, and started slowly homeward along the River Road.