“No use my coming. Best man on typhoid in West lives in your own town. See Dr. David West.”
“No use my coming. Best man on typhoid in West lives in your own town. See Dr. David West.”
Katherine laid down the yellow pieces and raised her eyes to Blake’s white, strained face. The two gazed at each other for a long moment.
“Well?” he said huskily.
“Well?” she quietly returned.
“Do you think I can get him?”
“How can you get a man who is serving a sentence in jail?”
“If I—if I——” He could not get the words out.
“Yes. If you confess—clear him—get him out of jail—of course he will treat the case.”
“I didn’t mean that! God!” he cried, “is confession of a thing I never did the fee you exact for saving a life?”
“What, you still hold out?”
“I’m not guilty! I tell you, I’m not guilty!”
“Then you’ll not confess?”
“Never! Never!”
“Not even to save your mother?”
“She’s sick—very sick. But she’s not going to die—I’ll not let her die! Your father does not have to be cleared to get out of jail. In this emergency I can arrange to get him out for a time on parole. What do you say?”
She gazed at the desperate, wildly expectant figure. A little shiver ran through her.
“What do you say?” he repeated.
“There can be but one answer,” she replied. “My father is too big a man to demand any price for his medical skill—even the restoration of his honest name by the man who stole it. Parole him, and he will go instantly to Mrs. Blake.”
He dropped into his chair and seized his telephone.
“Central, give me six-o-four—quick!” There was a moment of waiting. “This you,Judge Kellog?... This is Harrison Blake. I want you to arrange the proper papers for the immediate parole of Doctor West. I’ll be responsible for everything. Am coming right over and will explain.”
He fairly threw the receiver back upon its hook. “Your father will be free in an hour,” he cried. And without waiting for a reply, he seized his hat and hurried out.
Katherinecame down from Blake’s office with many thoughts surging through her brain: Of her father’s release—of Blake’s obduracy—of his mother’s illness; but at the forefront of them all, because demanding immediate action, was the need of finding Doctor Sherman.
As she stepped forth from the stairway, she saw Arnold Bruce striding along the Square in her direction. There was a sudden leaping of her heart, a choking at her throat. But they passed each other with the short cold nod which had been their manner of greeting during the last few days when they had chanced to meet.
The next instant a sudden impulse seized her, and she turned about.
“Mr. Bruce,” she called after him.
He came back to her. His face was rather pale, but was doggedly resolute. Her look was not very different from his.
“Yes, Miss West?” said he.
For a moment it was hard for her to speak. No word, only that frigid nod, had passed between them since their quarrel.
“I want to ask you something—and tell you something,” she said coldly.
“I am at your service,” said he.
“We cannot talk here. Suppose we cross into the Court House yard?”
In silence he fell into step beside her. They did not speak until they were in the yard where passers-by could not overhear them.
“You know of Mrs. Sherman’s illness?” she began in a distant, formal tone.
“Yes.”
“It promises to be serious. We must get her husband home if possible. But no one has his address. An idea for reaching him has been vaguely in my head. It may not be good, but it now seems the only way.”
“Do you mind telling me what it is?”
“Doctor Sherman is somewhere in the pine woods of the North. What I thought about doing was to order some Chicago advertising agency to insert notices in scores of small dailies and weeklies up North, announcing to Doctor Sherman his wife’s illness and urging him to come home. My hope is that one of the papers may penetrate whatever remote spot he may be in and the notice reach his eyes. What I want to ask you is the name of an agency.”
“Black & Graves are your people,” said he.
“Also I want to know how to go about it to get prompt action on their part.”
“Write out the notice and send it to them with your instructions. And since they won’t know you, better enclose a draft or money order on account. No, don’t bother about the money; you won’t know how much to send. I know Phil Black, and I’ll write him to-day guaranteeing the account.”
“Thank you,” she said.
“You’re perfectly welcome,” said he with his cold politeness. “Is there anything else I can do?”
“That’s all about that. But I have something to tell you—a suggestion to make for your campaign, if you will not consider it impertinent.”
“Quite otherwise. I shall be very glad to get it.”
“You have been saying in your speeches that the bad water has been due to intentional mismanagement of the present administration, which is ruled by Mr. Blake, for the purpose of rendering unpopular the municipal ownership principle.”
“I have, and it’s been very effective.”
“I suggest that you go farther.”
“How?”
“Make the fever an issue of the campaign.The people, in fact all of us, have been too excited, too frightened, to understand the relation between the bad management of the water-works, the bad water, and the fever. Tell them that relation. Only tell it carefully, by insinuation if necessary, so that you will avoid the libel law—for you have no proof as yet. Make them understand that the fever is due to bad water, which in turn is due to bad management of the water-works, which in turn is due to the influence of Mr. Blake.”
“Great! Great!” exclaimed Bruce.
“Oh, the idea is not really mine,” she said coldly. “It came to me from some things my father told me.”
Her tone recalled to him their chilly relationship.
“It’s a regular knock-out idea,” he said stiffly. “And I’m much obliged to you.”
They had turned back and were nearing the gate of the yard.
“I hope it will really help you—but be careful to avoid giving them an opening to bring a libel charge. Permit me to say that you have been making a splendid campaign.”
“Things do seem to be coming my direction. The way I threw Blind Charlie’s threat back into his teeth, that has made a great hit. I think I have him on the run.”
He hesitated, gave her a sharp look, then added rather defiantly:
“I might as well tell you that in a few days I expect to have Blake also on the run—in fact, in a regular gallop. That Indianapolis lawyer friend of mine, Wilson’s his name, is coming here to help me.”
“Oh!” she exclaimed.
“You’ll remember,” he continued in his defiant tone, “that I once told you that your father’s case was not your case. It’s the city’s. I’m going to put Wilson on it, and I expect him to clear it all up in short order.”
She could not hold back a sudden uprush of resentment.
“So then it’s to be a battle between us, is it?” she demanded, looking him straight in the face.
“A battle? How?”
“To see which one gets the evidence.”
“We’ve got to get it—that’s all,” he answered grimly.
In an instant she had resumed control of herself.
“I hope you succeed,” she said calmly. “Good afternoon.” And with a crisp nod she turned away.
Bruce’s action in calmly taking the case out of her hands, which was in effect an iteration of his statement that he had no confidence inher ability, stung her bitterly and for a space her wrath flamed high. But there were too many things to be done to give much time to mere resentment. She wrote the letter to the Chicago advertising agency, mailed it, then set out to find her father. At the jail she was told that he had been released and had left for Blake’s. There she found him. He came out into the hall, kissed her warmly, then hurried back into the bedroom. Katherine, glancing through the open door, saw him move swiftly about the old gray-haired woman, while Blake stood in strained silence looking on.
When her father had done all for Mrs. Blake he could do at that time, Katherine hurried him away to Elsie Sherman. He replaced the very willing Doctor Woods, who knew little about typhoid, and assumed charge of Elsie with all his unerring mastery of what to do. He gave her his very best skill, and he hovered about her with all the concern that the illness of his own child might have evoked, for she had been a warm favourite with him and the charges of her husband had in no degree lessened his regard. Whatever science and care and love could do for her, it all was certain to be done.
Within two hours after Blake had received Doctor Brenholtz’s telegram its contents had flashed about the town. Doctor West was besieged. The next day found him treating not onlyas many individual cases as his strength and the hours of the day allowed, but found him in command of the Board of Health’s fight against the plague, with all the rest of the city’s doctors accepting orders from him. All his long life of incessant study and experiment, all those long years when he had been laughed at for a fool and jeered at for a failure—all that time had been but an unconscious preparation for this great fight to save a stricken city. And the town, for all its hatred, for all the stain upon his name, as it watched this slight, white-haired man go so swiftly and gently and efficiently about his work, began to feel for him something akin to awe—began dimly to feel that this old figure whom it had been their habit to scorn for near a generation was perhaps their greatest man.
While Katherine watched this fight against the fever with her father as its central figure, while she awaited in suspense some results of her advertising campaign, and while she tried to press forward the other details of her search for evidence, she could but keep her eyes upon the mayoralty campaign—for it was mounting to an ever higher climax of excitement. Bruce was fighting like a fury. The sensation created by his announcement of Blind Charlie’s threatened treachery was a mere nothing compared to the uproar created when he informed thepeople, not directly, but by careful insinuation, that Blake was responsible for the epidemic.
Blake denied the charge with desperate energy and with all his power of eloquence; he declared that the epidemic was but another consequence of that supremest folly of mankind, public ownership. He was angrily supported by his party, his friends and his followers—but those followers were not so many as a few short weeks before. Passion was at its highest—so high that trustworthy forecasts of the election were impossible. But ten days before election it was freely talked about the streets, and even privately admitted by some of Blake’s best friends, that nothing but a miracle could save him from defeat.
In these days of promise Bruce seemed to pour forth an even greater energy; and in his efforts he was now aided by Mr. Wilson, the Indianapolis lawyer, who was spending his entire time in Westville. Katherine caught in Bruce’s face, when they passed upon the street, a gleam of triumph which he could not wholly suppress. She wondered, with a pang of jealousy, if he and Mr. Wilson were succeeding where she had failed—if all her efforts were to come to nothing—if her ambition to demonstrate to Bruce that she could do things was to prove a mere dream?
Toward noon one day, as she was walkingalong the Square homeward bound from Elsie Sherman’s, she passed Bruce and Mr. Wilson headed for the stairway of theExpressBuilding. Both bowed to her, then Katherine overheard Bruce say, “I’ll be with you in a minute, Wilson,” and the next instant he was at her side.
“Excuse me, Miss West,” he said. “But we have just unearthed something which I think you should be the first person to learn.”
“I shall be glad to hear it,” she said in the cold, polite tone they reserved for one another.
“Let’s go over into the Court House yard.”
They silently crossed the street and entered the comparative seclusion of the yard.
“I suppose it is something very significant?” she asked.
“So significant,” he burst out, “that the minute theExpressappears this afternoon Harrison Blake is a has-been!”
She looked at him quickly. The triumph she had of late seen gleaming in his face was now openly blazing there.
“You mean——”
“I mean that I’ve got the goods on him!”
“You—you have evidence?”
“The best sort of evidence!”
“That will clear my father?”
“Perhaps not directly. Indirectly, yes. But it will smash Blake to smithereens!”
She was happy on Bruce’s account, on herfather’s, on the city’s, but for the moment she was sick upon her own.
“Is the nature of the evidence a secret?”
“The whole town will know it this afternoon. I asked you over here to tell you first. I have just secured a full confession from two of Blake’s accomplices.”
“Then you’ve discovered Doctor Sherman?” she exclaimed.
“Doctor Sherman?” He stared at her. “I don’t know what you mean. The two men are the assistant superintendent of the water-works and the engineer at the pumping-plant.”
“How did you get at them?”
“Wilson and I started out to cross-examine everybody who might be in the remotest way connected with the case. My suspicion against the two men was first aroused by their strained behaviour. I went——”
“Then it was you who made this discovery, not that—that other lawyer?”
“Yes, I was the first to tackle the pair, though Wilson has helped me. He’s a great lawyer, Wilson. We’ve gone at them relentlessly—with accusation, cross-examination, appeal; with the result that this morning both of them broke down and confessed that Blake had secretly paid them to do all that lay within their power to make the water-works a failure.”
They followed the path in silence for severalmoments, Katherine’s eyes upon the ground. At length she looked up. In Bruce’s face she plainly read what she had guessed to be an extra motive with him all along, a glowering determination to crush her, humiliate her, a determination to cut the ground from beneath her ambition by overturning Blake and clearing her father without her aid.
“And so,” she breathed, “you have made good all your predictions. You have succeeded and I have failed.”
For an instant his square face glowed upon her, exultant with triumph. Then he partially subdued the look.
“We won’t discuss that matter,” he said. “It’s enough to repeat what I once said, that Wilson is a crackerjack lawyer.”
“All the same, I congratulate you—and wish you every success,” she said; and as quickly thereafter as she could she made her escape, her heart full of the bitterness of personal defeat.
That afternoon theExpress, in its largest type, in its editor’s highest-powered English, made its exposure of Harrison Blake. And that afternoon there was pandemonium in Westville. Violence might have been attempted upon Blake, but, fortunately for him, he had gone the night before to Indianapolis—on a matter of state politics, it was said.
Blake, however, was a man to fight to thelast ditch. On the morning after the publication of theExpress’scharges, theClarionprinted an indignant denial from him. That same morning Bruce was arrested on a charge of criminal libel, and that same day—the grand jury being in session—he was indicted. Blake’s attorney demanded that, since these charges had a very direct bearing upon the approaching election, the trial should take precedence over other cases and be heard immediately. To this Bruce eagerly agreed, for he desired nothing better than to demolish Blake in court, and the trial was fixed for five days before election.
Katherine, going about, heard the people jeer at Blake’s denial; heard them say that his demand for a trial was mere bravado to save his face for a time—that when the trial came he would never show up. She saw the former favourite of Westville become in an hour an object of universal abomination. And, on the other hand, she saw Bruce leap up to the very apex of popularity.
For Bruce’s sake, for every one’s sake but her own, she was rejoiced. But as for herself, she walked in the valley of humiliation, she ate of the ashes of bitterness. Swept aside by the onrush of events, feeling herself and her plans suddenly become futile, she decided to cease all efforts and countermand all orders.But she could not veto her plan concerning Doctor Sherman, for her money was spent and her advertisements were broadcast through the North. As for Mr. Manning, he stated that he had become so interested in the situation that he was going to stay on in Westville for a time to see how affairs came out.
On the day of the trial Katherine and the city had one surprise at the very start. Contrary to all predictions, Harrison Blake was in the court-room and at the prosecution’s table. Despite all the judge, the clerk, and the sheriff could do to maintain order, there were cries and mutterings against him. Not once did he flinch, but sat looking straight ahead of him, or whispering to his private attorney or to the public prosecutor, Kennedy. He was a brave man. Katherine had known that.
Bruce, all confidence, recited on the witness stand how he had come by his evidence. Then the assistant superintendent told with most convincing detail how he had succumbed to Blake’s temptation and done his bidding. Next, the engineer testified to the same effect.
The crowd lowered at Blake. Certainly matters looked blacker than ever for the one-time idol of the city.
But Blake sat unmoved. His calmness begat a sort of uneasiness in Katherine. When the engineer had completed his direct testimony,Kennedy arose, and following whispered suggestions from Blake, cross-questioned the witness searchingly, ever more searchingly, pursued him in and out, in and out, till at length, snap!—Katherine’s heart stood still, and the crowd leaned forward breathless—snap, and he had caught the engineer in a contradiction!
Kennedy went after the engineer with rapid-fire questions that involved the witness in contradiction on contradiction—that got him confused, then hopelessly tangled up—that then broke him down completely and drew from him a shamefaced confession. The fact was, he said, that Mr. Bruce, wanting campaign material, had privately come to him and paid him to make his statements. He had had no dealings with Mr. Blake whatever. He was a poor man—his wife was sick with the fever—he had needed the money—he hoped the court would be lenient with him—etc., etc. The other witness, recalled, confessed to the same story.
Amid a stunned court room, Bruce sprang to his feet.
“Lies! Lies!” he cried in a choking fury. “They’ve been bought off by Blake!”
“Silence!” shouted Judge Kellog, pounding his desk with his gavel.
“I tell you it’s trickery! They’ve been bought off by Blake!”
“Silence!” thundered the judge, and followed with a dire threat of contempt of court.
But already Mr. Wilson and Sheriff Nichols were dragging the struggling Bruce back into his chair. More shouts and hammering of gavels by the judge and clerk had partially restored to order the chaos begotten by this scene, when a bit of paper was slipped from behind into Bruce’s hand. He unfolded it with trembling fingers, and read in a disguised, back-hand scrawl:
“There’s still enough left of me to know what’s happened.”
“There’s still enough left of me to know what’s happened.”
That was all. But Bruce understood. Here was the handiwork and vengeance of Blind Charlie Peck. He sprang up again and turned his ireful face to where, in the crowd, sat the old politician.
“You—you——” he began.
But before he got further he was again dragged down into his seat. And almost before the crowd had had time fairly to regain its breath, the jury had filed out, had filed back in again, had returned its verdict of guilty, and Judge Kellog had imposed a sentence of five hundred dollars fine and sixty days in the county jail.
In all the crowd that looked bewildered on, Katherine was perhaps the only one who believedin Bruce’s cry of trickery. She saw that Blake, with Blind Charlie’s cunning back of him, had risked his all on one bold move that for a brief period had made him an object of universal hatred. She saw that Bruce had fallen into a trap cleverly baited for him, saw that he was the victim of an astute scheme to discredit him utterly and remove him from the way.
As Blake left the Court House Katherine heard a great cheer go up for him; and within an hour the evidence of eye and ear proved to her that he was more popular than ever. She saw the town crowd about him to make amends for the injustice it considered it had done him. And as for Bruce, as he was led by Sheriff Nichols from the Court House toward the jail, she heard him pursued by jeers and hisses.
Katherine walked homeward from the trial, completely dazed by this sudden capsizing of all of Bruce’s hopes—and of her own hopes as well, for during the last few days she had come to depend on Bruce for the clearing of her father. That evening, and most of the night, she spent in casting up accounts. As matters then stood, they looked desperate indeed. On the one hand, everything pointed to Blake’s election and the certain success of his plans. On the other hand, she had gainedno clue whatever to the whereabouts of Doctor Sherman; nothing had as yet developed in the scheme she had built about Mr. Manning; as for Mr. Stone, she had expected nothing from him, and all he had turned in to her was that he suspected secret relations between Blake and Peck. Furthermore, the man she loved—for yes, she loved him still—was in jail, his candidacy collapsed, the cause for which he stood a ruin. And last of all, the city, to the music of its own applause, was about to be colossally swindled.
A dark prospect indeed. But as she sat alone in the night, the cheers for Blake floating in to her, she desperately determined to renew her fight. Five days still remained before election, and in five days one might do much; during those five days her ships might still come home from sea. She summoned her courage, and gripped it fiercely. “I’ll do my best! I’ll do my best!” she kept breathing throughout the night. And her determination grew in its intensity as she realized the sum of all the things for which she fought, and fought alone.
She was fighting to save her father, she was fighting to save the city, she was fighting to save the man she loved.
Thenext morning Katherine, incited by the desperate need of action, was so bold as to request Mr. Manning to meet her at Old Hosie’s. She was fortunate enough to get into the office without being observed. The old lawyer, in preparation for the conference, had drawn his wrinkled, once green shade as far down as he dared without giving cause for suspicion, and before the window had placed a high-backed chair and thrown upon it a greenish, blackish, brownish veteran of a fall overcoat—thus balking any glances that might rove lazily upward to his office.
Old Hosie raised his lean figure from his chair and shook her hand, at first silently. He, too, was dazed by the collapse of Bruce’s fortunes.
“Things certainly do look bad,” he said slowly. “I never suspected that his case would suddenly stand on its head like that.”
“Nor did I—though from the beginningI had an instinctive feeling that it was too good, too easy, to be true.”
“And to think that after all we know the boy is right!” groaned the old man.
“That’s what makes the whole affair so tantalizing. We know he is right—we know my father is innocent—we know the danger the city is in—we know Mr. Blake’s guilt—we know just what his plans are. We know everything! But we have not one jot of evidence that would be believed by the public. The irony of it! To think, for all our knowledge, we can only look helplessly on and watch Mr. Blake succeed in everything.”
Old Hosie breathed an imprecation that must have made his ancestors, asleep behind the old Quaker meeting-house down in Buck Creek, gasp in their grassy, cedar-shaded graves.
“All the same,” Katherine added desperately, “we’ve got to half kill ourselves trying between now and election day!”
They subsided into silence. In nervous impatience Katherine awaited the appearance of the pseudo-investor in run-down farms. He seemed a long time in coming, but the delay was all in her suspense, for as the Court House clock was tolling the appointed hour Mr. Manning,aliasMr. Hartsell, walked into the office. He was, as Katherine had once describedhim to Old Hosie, a quiet, reserved man with that confidence-inspiring amplitude in the equatorial regions commonly observable in bank presidents and trusted officials of corporations.
As he closed the door his subdued but confident dignity dropped from him and he warmly shook hands with Katherine, for this was their first meeting since their conference in New York six weeks before.
“You must know how very, very terrible our situation is,” Katherine rapidly began. “We’ve simplygotto do something!”
“I certainly haven’t done much so far,” said Manning, with a rueful smile. “I’m sorry—but you don’t know how tedious my rôle’s been to me. To act the part of bait, and just lie around before the noses of the fish you’re after, and not get a bite in two whole weeks—that’s not my idea of exciting fishing.”
“I know. But the plan looked a good one.”
“It looked first-class,” conceded Manning. “And, perhaps——”
“With election only four days off, we’ve simply got to do something!” Katherine repeated. “If nothing else, let’s drop that plan, devise a new one, and stake our hopes on some wild chance.”
“Wait a minute,” said Manning. “I wouldn’t drop that plan just yet. I’ve gonetwo weeks without a bite, but—I’m not sure—remember I say I’m not sure—but I think that at last I may possibly have a nibble.”
“A nibble you say?” cried Katherine, leaning eagerly forward.
“At least, the cork bobbed under.”
“When?”
“Last night.”
“Last night? Tell me about it!”
“Well, of late I’ve been making my study of the water-works more and more obvious, and I’ve half suspected that I’ve been watched, though I was too uncertain to risk raising any false hopes by sending you word about it. But yesterday afternoon Blind Charlie Peck—he’s been growing friendly with me lately—yesterday Blind Charlie invited me to have supper with him. The supper was in his private dining-room; just us two. I suspected that the old man was up to some game, and when I saw the cocktails and whiskey and wine come on, I was pretty sure—for you know, Miss West, when a crafty old politician of the Peck variety wants to steal a little information from a man, his regulation scheme is to get his man so drunk he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
“I know. Go on!”
“I tried to beg off from the drinking. I told Mr. Peck I did not drink. I liked it, Isaid, but I could not carry it. A glass or two would put me under the table, so the only safe plan for me was to leave it entirely alone. But he pressed me—and I took one. And he pressed me again, and I took another—and another—and another—till I’d had five or——”
“But you should never have done it!” cried Katherine in alarm.
Manning smiled at her reassuringly.
“I’m no drinking man, but I’m so put together that I can swallow a gallon and then sign the pledge with as steady a hand as the president of the W. C. T. U. But after the sixth drink I must have looked just about right to Blind Charlie. He began to put cunning questions at me. Little by little all my secrets leaked out. The farm lands were only a blind. My real business in Westville was the water-works. There was a chance that the city might sell them, and if I could get them I was going to snap them up. In fact, I was going to make an offer to the city in a very few days. I had been examining the system closely; it wasn’t really in bad shape at all; it was worth a lot more than the people said; and I was ready, if I had to, to pay its full value to get it—even more. I had plenty of money behind me, for I was representing Mr. Seymour, the big New York capitalist.”
“Good! Good!” cried Katharine breathlessly. “How did he seem to take it?”
“I could see that he was stirred up, and I guessed that he was thinking big thoughts.”
“But did he say anything?”
“Not a word. Except that it was interesting.”
“Ah!” It was an exclamation of disappointment. Then she instantly added: “But of course he could not say anything until after he had talked it over with Mr. Blake. He’ll do that this morning—if he did not do it last night. You may be approached by them to-day.”
She stood up excitedly, and her brown eyes glowed. “After all, something may come of the plan!”
“It’s at least an opening,” said Manning.
“Yes. And let’s use it for all it’s worth. Don’t you think it would be best for you to go right back to your hotel, and keep yourself in sight, so Mr. Peck won’t have to lose a second in case he wants to talk to you again?”
“That’s what I had in mind.”
“And all day I’ll be either in my office, or at home, or at Mrs. Sherman’s. And the minute anything develops, send word to Mr. Hollingsworth and he’ll send word to me.”
“I’ll not waste a minute,” he assured her.
All day she waited with suppressed excitementfor good news from Manning. But the only news was that there was no news. And so on the second day. And so on the third. Her hopes, that had flared so high, sunk by slow degrees to mere embers among the ashes. It appeared that the nibble, which had seemed but the preliminary to swallowing the bait, was after all no more than a nibble; that the fish had merely nosed the worm and swum away. In the meantime, while eaten up by the suspense of this inaction, she was witness to activity of the most strenuous variety. Never had she seen a man spring up into favour as did Harrison Blake. His campaign meetings were resumed the very night of Bruce’s conviction; the city crowded to them; the Blake Marching Club tramped the streets till midnight, with flaming torches, rousing the enthusiasm of the people with their shouts and campaign songs; and wherever Blake appeared upon the platform he was greeted by an uproar, and even when he appeared by daylight, when men’s spirits are more sedate, his progress through the streets was a series of miniature ovations.
As for Bruce, Katherine saw his power and position crumble so swiftly that she could hardly see them disappear. The structure of a tremendous future had stood one moment imposingly before her eyes. Presto, and it was no more! The sentiment he had rousedin favour of public ownership, and against the regime of Blake, was as a thing that had never been. With him in jail, his candidacy was but the ashes that are left by a conflagration—though, to be sure, since the ballots were already printed, it was too late to remove his name. He was a thing to be cursed at, jeered at. He had suddenly become a little lower than nobody, a little less than nothing.
And as for his paper, when Katherine looked at it it made her sick at heart. Within a day it lost a third in size. Advertisers no longer dared, perhaps no longer cared, to give it patronage. Its news and editorial character collapsed. This last she could hardly understand, for Billy Harper was in charge, and Bruce had often praised him to her as a marvel of a newspaper man. But one evening, when she was coming home late from Elsie Sherman’s and hurrying through the crowd of Main Street, Billy Harper lurched against her. The next day, with a little adroit inquiry, she learned that Harper, freed from Bruce’s restraining influence, and depressed by the general situation, was drinking constantly. It required no prophetic vision for Katherine to see that, if things continued as they now were going, on the day Bruce came out of jail he would find theExpress, which he had lifted to power and a promise of prosperity, had sunk into a disreputeand a decay from which even so great an energy as his could not restore it.
Since there was so little she could do elsewhere, Katherine was at the Shermans’ several times a day, trying in unobtrusive ways to aid the nurse and Doctor Sherman’s sister. Miss Sherman was a spare, silent woman of close upon forty, with rather sharp, determined features. Despite her unloveliness, Katherine respected her deeply, for in other days Elsie had told her sister-in-law’s story. Miss Sherman and her brother were orphans. To her had been given certain plain virtues, to him all the graces of mind and body. She was a country school-teacher, and it had been her hard work, her determination, her penny-counting economy, that had saved her talented brother from her early hardships and sent him through college. She had made him what he was; and beneath her stern exterior she loved him with that intense devotion a lonely, ingrowing woman feels for the object on which she has spent her life’s thought and effort.
Whenever Katherine entered the sick chamber—they had moved Elsie’s bed into the sitting-room because of its greater convenience and better air—her heart would stand still as she saw how white and wasted was her friend. At such a time she would recall with a choking keenness all of Elsie’s virtues, each virtueincreased and purified—her simplicity, her purity, her loyalty.
Several times Elsie came back from the brink of the Great Abyss, over which she so faintly hovered, and smiled at Katherine and spoke a few words—but only a few, for Doctor West allowed no more. Each time she asked, with fluttering trepidation, if any word had come from her husband; and each time at Katherine’s choking negative she would try to smile bravely and hide her disappointment.
On one of the last days of this period—it was the Sunday before election—Doctor West had said that either the end or a turn for the better must be close at hand. Katherine had been sitting long watching Elsie’s pale face and faintly rising bosom, when Elsie slowly opened her eyes. Elsie pressed her friend’s hand with a barely perceptible pressure and smiled with the faintest shadow of a smile.
“You here again, Katherine?” she breathed.
“Yes, dear.”
“Just the same dear Katherine!”
“Don’t speak, Elsie.”
She was silent a space. Then the wistful look Katherine had seen so often came into the patient’s soft gray eyes, and she knew what Elsie’s words were going to be before they passed her lips.
“Have you heard anything—from him?”
Katherine slowly shook her head.
Elsie turned her face away for a moment. A sigh fluttered out. Then she looked back.
“But you are still trying to find him?”
“We have done, and are doing, everything, dear.”
“I’m sure,” sighed Elsie, “that he would come if he only knew.”
“Yes—if he only knew.”
“And you will keep on—trying—to get him word?”
“Yes, dear.”
“Then perhaps—he may come yet.”
“Perhaps,” said Katherine, with hopeful lips. But in her heart there was no hope.
Elsie closed her eyes, and did not speak again. Presently Katherine went out into the level, red-gold sunlight of the waning November afternoon. The church bells, resting between their morning duty and that of the night, all were silent; over the city there lay a hush—it was as if the town were gathering strength for its final spasm of campaign activity on the morrow. There was nothing in that Sabbath calm to disturb the emotion of Elsie’s bedside, and Katherine walked slowly homeward beneath the barren maples, in that fearful, tremulous, yearning mood in which she had left the bedside of her friend.
In this same mood she reached home and entered the empty sitting-room. She was slowly drawing off her gloves when she perceived, upon the centre-table, a special delivery letter addressed to herself. She picked it up in moderate curiosity. The envelope was plain, the address was typewritten, there was nothing to suggest the identity of the sender. In the same moderate curiosity she unfolded the inclosure. Then her curiosity became excitement, for the letter bore the signature of Mr. Seymour.
“I have to-day received a letter from Mr. Harrison Blake of Westville,” Mr. Seymour wrote her, “of which the following is the text: ‘We have just learned that there is in our city a Mr. Hartsell who represents himself to be an agent of yours instructed to purchase the water-works of Westville. Before entering into any negotiations with him the city naturally desires to be assured by you that he is a representative of your firm. As haste is necessary in this matter, we request you to reply at once and by special delivery.”
“Ah, I understand the delay now!” Katherine exclaimed. “Before making a deal with Mr. Manning, Mr. Blake and Mr. Peck wanted to be sure their man was what he said he was!”
“And now, Miss West,” Mr. Seymour wrote on, “since you have kept me in the dark as tothe details of your plan, and as I have never heard of said Hartsell, I have not known just how to reply to your Mr. Blake. So I have had recourse to the vague brevity of a busy man, and have sent the following by the same mail that brings this to you: ‘Replying to your inquiry of the 3rd inst. I beg to inform you that I have a representative in Westville fully authorized to act for me in the matter of the water-works.’ I hope this reply is all right. Also there is a second hope, which is strong even if I try to keep it subdued; and that is that you will have to buy the water-works in for me.”
From that instant Katherine’s mind was all upon her scheme. She was certain that Mr. Seymour’s reply was already in the hands of Blake and Peck, and that they were even then planning, or perhaps had already planned, what action they should take. At once she called Old Hosie up by telephone.
“I think it looks as though the ‘nibble’ were going to develop into a bite, and quick,” she said rapidly. “Get into communication with Mr. Manning and tell him to make no final arrangement with those parties till he sees me. I want to know what they offer.”
It was an hour later, and the early night had already fallen, when there was a ring at the West door, and Old Hosie entered, alone.Katharine quickly led the old lawyer into the parlour.
“Well?” she whispered.
“Manning has just accepted an invitation for an automobile ride this evening from Charlie Peck.”
Katherine suddenly gripped his hand.
“That may be a bite!”
The old man nodded with suppressed excitement.
“They were to set out at six. It’s five minutes to six now.”
Without a word Katherine crossed swiftly and opened the door an inch, and stood tensely waiting beside it. Presently, through the calm of the Sabbath evening, there started up very near the sudden buzzing of a cranked-up car. Then swiftly the buzzing faded away into the distance.
Katherine turned.
“It’s Mr. Blake’s car. They’ll all be at The Sycamores in half an hour. It’s a bite, certain! Get hold of Mr. Manning as soon as he comes back, and bring him here. The house will be darkened, but the front door will be unlocked. Come right in. Come as late as you please. You’ll find me waiting here in the parlour.”
The hours that followed were trying ones for Katherine. She sat about with her aunttill toward ten o’clock. Then her father returned from his last call, and soon thereafter they all went to their rooms. Katherine remained upstairs till she thought her father and aunt were settled, then slipped down to the parlour, set the front door ajar, and sat waiting in the darkness. She heard the Court House clock with judicial slowness count off eleven o’clock—then after a long, long space, count off twelve. A few minutes later she heard Blake’s car return, and after a time she heard the city clock strike one.
It was close upon two when soft steps sounded upon the porch and the front door opened. She silently shook hands with her two vague visitors.
“We didn’t think it safe to come any sooner,” explained Old Hosie in a whisper.
“You’ve been with them out at The Sycamores?” Katherine eagerly inquired of Manning.
“Yes. For a four hours’ session.”
“Well?”
“Well, so far it looks O. K.”
In a low voice he detailed to Katherine how they had at first fenced with one another; how at length he had told them that he had a formal proposal to the city to buy the water-works all drawn up and that on the morrow he was going to present it—and that, furthermore,he would, if necessary, increase the sum he offered in that proposal to the full value of the plant. Blake and Peck, after a slow approach to the subject, in which they admitted that they also planned to buy the system, had suggested that, inasmuch as he was only an agent and there would be no profit in the purchase to him personally, he abandon his purpose. If he would do this they would make it richly worth his while. He had replied that this was such a different plan from that which he had been considering that he must have time to think it over and would give them his answer to-morrow. On which understanding the three had parted.
“I suppose it would hardly be practicable,” said Katherine when he had finished, “to have a number of witnesses concealed at your place of meeting and overhear your conversation?”
“No, it would be mighty difficult to pull that off.”
“And what’s more,” she commented, “Mr. Blake would deny whatever they said, and with his present popularity his words would carry more weight than that of any half dozen witnesses we might get. At the best, our charges would drag on for months, perhaps years, in the courts, with in the end the majority of the people believing in him. With the election so near, we must have instantaneousresults. We must use a means of exposing him that will instantly convince all the people.”
“That’s the way I see it,” agreed Manning.
“When did they offer to pay you, in case you agreed to sell out to them?”
“On the day they got control of the water-works. Naturally they didn’t want to pay me before, for fear I might break faith with them and buy in the system for Mr. Seymour.”
“Can’t you make them put their proposition in the form of an agreement, to be signed by all three of you?” asked Katherine.
“But mebbe they won’t consent to that,” put in Old Hosie.
“Mr. Manning will know how to bring them around. He can say, for example, that, unless he has such a written agreement, they will be in a position to drop him when once they’ve got what they want. He can say that unless they consent to sign some such agreement he will go on with his original plan. I think they’ll sign.”
“And if they do?” queried Old Hosie.
“If they do,” said Katherine, “we’ll have documentary evidence to show Westville that those two great political enemies, Mr. Blake and Mr. Peck, are secretly business associates—their business being a conspiracy to wreck the water-works and defraud the city. I think such a document would interest Westville.”
“I should say it would!” exclaimed Old Hosie.
They whispered on, excitedly, hopefully; and when the two men had departed and Katherine had gone up to her room to try to snatch a few hours’ sleep, she continued to dwell eagerly upon the plan that seemed so near of consummation. She tossed about her bed, and heard the Court House clock sound three, and then four. Then the heat of her excitement began to pass away, and cold doubts began to creep into her mind. Perhaps Blake and Peck would refuse to sign. And even if they did sign, she began to see this prospective success as a thing of lesser magnitude. The agreement would prove the alliance between Blake and Peck, and would make clear that a conspiracy existed. It was good, but it was not enough. It fell short by more than half. It would not clear her father, though his innocence might be inferred, and it would not prove Blake’s responsibility for the epidemic.
As she lay there staring wide-eyed into the gloom of the night, listening to the town clock count off the hours of her last day, she realized that what she needed most of all, far more than Manning’s document even should he get it, was the testimony which she believed was sealed behind the lips of Doctor Sherman, whose present whereabouts God only knew.
Theday before election, a day of hope deferred, had dragged slowly by and night had at length settled upon the city. Doctor West had the minute before come in from a long, dinnerless day of hastening from case to case, and now he, Katherine, and her aunt were sitting about the supper table. To Katherine’s eye her father looked very weary and white and frail. The day-and-night struggle at scores of bedsides was sorely wearing him down.
As for Katherine, she was hardly less worn. She scarcely touched the food before her. The fears that always assail one at a crisis, now swarmed in upon her. With the election but a few hours distant, with no word as yet from Mr. Manning, she saw all her high plans coming to naught and saw herself overwhelmed with utter defeat. From without there dimly sounded the beginning of the ferment of the campaign’s final evening; it brought to her more keenly that to-morrow the city was going to giveitself over unanimously to be despoiled. Across the table, her father, pale and worried, was a reminder that, when his fight of the plague was completed, he must return to jail. Her mind flashed now and then to Bruce; she saw him in prison; she saw not only his certain defeat on the morrow, but she saw him crushed and ruined for life as far as a career in Westville was concerned; and though she bravely tried to master her feeling, the throbbing anguish with which she looked upon his fate was affirmation of how poignant and deep-rooted was her love.
And yet, despite these flooding fears, she clung with a dizzy desperation to hope, and to the determination to fight on to the last second of the last minute.
While swinging thus between despair and desperate hope, she was maintaining, at first somewhat mechanically to be sure, a conversation with her father, whom she had not seen since their early breakfast together.
“How does the fever situation seem to-night?” she asked.
“Much better,” said Doctor West. “There were fewer new cases reported to-day than any day for a week.”
“Then you are getting the epidemic under control?”
“I think we can at last say we have it thoroughlyin hand. The number of new cases is daily decreasing, and the old cases are doing well. I don’t know of an epidemic of this size on record where the mortality has been so small.”
She came out of her preoccupation and breathlessly demanded:
“Tell me, how is Elsie Sherman? I could not get around to see her to-day.”
He dropped his eyes to his plate and did not answer.
“You mean she is no better?”
“She is very low.”
“But she still has a chance?”
“Yes, she has a chance. But that’s about all. The fever is at its climax. I think to-night will decide which it’s to be.”
“You are going to her again to-night?”
“Right after supper.”
“Then I’ll go with you,” said Katherine. “Poor Elsie! Poor Elsie!” she murmured to herself. Then she asked, “Have they had any word from Doctor Sherman?”
“I asked his sister this afternoon. She said they had not.”
They fell silent for a moment or two. Doctor West nibbled at his ham with a troubled air.
“There is one feature of the case I cannot approve of,” he at length remarked “Ofcourse the Shermans are poor, but I do not think Miss Sherman should have impaired Elsie’s chances, such as they are, from motives of economy.”
“Impaired Elsie’s chances?” queried Katherine.
“And certainly she should not have done so without consulting me,” continued Doctor West.
“Done what?”
“Oh, I forgot I had not had a chance to tell you. When I made my first call this morning I learned that Miss Sherman had discharged the nurse.”
“Discharged the nurse?”
“Yes. During the night.”
“But what for?”
“Miss Sherman said they could not afford to keep her.”
“But with Elsie so dangerously sick, this is no time to economize!”
“Exactly what I told her. And I said there were plenty of friends who would have been happy to supply the necessary money.”
“And what did she say?”
“Very little. She’s a silent, determined woman, you know. She said that even at such a time they could not accept charity.”
“But did you not insist upon her getting another nurse?”
“Yes. But she refused to have one.”
“Then who is looking after Elsie?”
“Miss Sherman.”
“Alone?”
“Yes, alone. She has even discharged old Mrs. Murphy, who came in for a few hours a day to clean up.”
“It seems almost incomprehensible!” ejaculated Katherine. “Think of running such a risk for the sake of a few dollars!”
“After all, Miss Sherman isn’t such a bad nurse,” Doctor West’s sense of justice prompted him to admit. “In fact, she is really doing very well.”
“All the same, it seems incomprehensible!” persisted Katherine. “For economy’s sake——”
She broke off and was silent a moment. Then suddenly she leaned across the table.
“You are sure she gave no other reason?”
“None.”
“And you believe her?”
“Why, you don’t think she would lie to me, do you?” exclaimed Doctor West.
“I don’t say that,” Katherine returned rapidly. “But she’s shrewd and close-mouthed. She might not have told you the whole truth.”
“But what could have been her real reason then?”
“Something besides the reason she gave. That’s plain.”
“But what is it? Why, Katherine,” her father burst out, half rising from his chair, “what’s the matter with you?”
Her eyes were glowing with excitement. “Wait! Wait!” she said quickly, lifting a hand.
She gazed down upon the table, her brow puckered with intense thought. Her father and her aunt stared at her in gathering amazement, and waited breathlessly till she should speak.
After a minute she glanced up at her father. The strange look in her face had grown more strange.
“You saw no one else there besides Miss Sherman?” she asked quickly.
“No.”
“Nor signs of any one?”
“No,” repeated the bewildered old man. “What are you thinking of, Katherine?”
“I don’t dare say it—I hardly dare think it!”
She pushed back her chair and arose. She was quivering all over, but she strove to command her agitation.
“As soon as you’re through supper, father, I’ll be ready to go to Elsie.”
“I’m through now.”
“Come on, then. Let’s not lose a minute!”
They hurried out and entered the carriagewhich, at the city’s charge, stood always waiting Doctor West’s requirements. “To Mrs. Sherman’s—quick!” Katherine ordered the driver, and the horse clattered away through the crisp November night.
Already people were streaming toward the centre of the town to share in the excitement of the campaign’s closing night. As the carriage passed the Square, Katherine saw, built against the Court House and brilliantly festooned with vari-coloured electric bulbs, the speakers’ stand from which Blake and others of his party were later to address the final mass-meeting of the campaign.
The carriage turned past the jail into Wabash Avenue, and a minute afterward drew up beside the Sherman cottage. Pulsing with the double suspense of her conjecture and of her concern for Elsie’s life, Katherine followed her father into the sick chamber. As they entered the hushed room the spare figure of Miss Sherman rose from a rocker beside the bed, greeted them with a silent nod, and drew back to give place to Doctor West.
Katherine moved slowly to the foot of the bed and gazed down. For a space, one cause of her suspense was swept out of her being, and all her concern was for the flickering life before her. Elsie lay with eyes closed, and breathing so faintly that she seemed scarcelyto breathe at all. So pale, so wasted, so almost wraithlike was she as to suggest that when her spirit fled, if flee it must, nothing could be left remaining between the sheets.
As she gazed down upon her friend, hovering uncertainly upon life’s threshold, a tingling chill pervaded Katherine’s body. Since her mother’s loss in unremembering childhood, Death had been kind to her; no one so dear had been thus carried up to the very brink of the grave. All that had been sweet and strong in her friendship with Elsie now flooded in upon her in a mighty wave of undefined emotion. She was immediately conscious only of the wasted figure before her, and its peril, but back of consciousness were unformed memories of their girlhood together, of the inseparable intimacy of their young womanhood, and of that shy and tender time when she had been the confidante of Elsie’s courtship.
There was a choking at her throat, tears slipped down her cheeks, and there surged up a wild, wild wish, a rebellious demand, that Elsie might come safely through her danger.
But, presently, her mind reverted to the special purpose that had brought her hither. She studied the face of Miss Sherman, seeking confirmation of the conjecture that had so aroused her—studying also for some method of approaching Miss Sherman, of breakingdown her guard, and gaining the information she desired. But she learned nothing from the expression of those spare, self-contained features; and she realized that the lips of the Sphinx would be easier to unlock than those of this loyal sister of a fugitive brother.
That her conjecture was correct, she became every instant more convinced. She sensed it in the stilled atmosphere of the house; she sensed it in the glances of cold and watchful hostility Miss Sherman now and then stole at her. She was wondering what should be her next step, when Doctor West, who had felt Elsie’s pulse and examined the temperature chart, drew Miss Sherman back to near where Katherine stood.
“Still nothing from Doctor Sherman?” he whispered in grave anxiety.
“Nothing,” said Miss Sherman, looking straight into her questioner’s eyes.
“Too bad, too bad!” sighed Doctor West. “He ought to be home!”
Miss Sherman let the first trace of feeling escape from her compressed being.
“But still there is a chance?” she asked quickly.
“A fighting chance. I think we shall know which it’s to be within an hour.”
At these words Katherine heard from behind her ever so faint a sound, a sound that sent athrill through all her nerves. A sound like a stifled groan. For a minute or more she did not move. But when Doctor West and Miss Sherman had gone back to their places and Doctor West had begun the final fight for Elsie’s life, she slowly turned about. Before her was a door. Her heart gave a leap. When she had entered she had searched the room with a quick glance, and that door had then been closed. It now stood slightly ajar.
Some one within must have noiselessly opened it to hear Doctor West’s decree upon the patient.
Swiftly and silently Katherine slipped through the door and locked it behind her. For a moment she stood in the darkness, striving to master her throbbing excitement.
At length she spoke.
“Will you please turn on the light, Doctor Sherman,” she said.
There was no answer; only a black and breathless silence.
“Please turn on the light, Doctor Sherman,” Katherine repeated. “I cannot, for I do not know where the electric button is.”
Again there was silence. Then Katherine heard something like a gasp. There was a click, and then the room, Doctor Sherman’s study, burst suddenly into light.
Behind the desk, one hand still upon theelectric key, stood Doctor Sherman. He was very thin and very white, and was worn, wild-eyed and dishevelled. He was breathing heavily and he stared at Katherine with the defiance of a desperate creature brought at last to bay.
“What do you want?” he demanded huskily.
“A little talk with you,” replied Katherine, trying to speak calmly.
“You must excuse me. With Elsie so sick, I cannot talk.”
She stood very straight before him. Her eyes never left his face.
“We must talk just the same,” she returned. “When did you come home?”
“Last night.”
“Why did you not let your friends know of your return? All day, in fact for several days, they have been sending telegrams to every place where they could conceive your being.”
He did not answer.
“It looks very much as if you were trying to hide.”
Again he did not reply.
“It looks very much,” she steadily pursued, “as if your sister discharged the nurse and the servant in order that you might hide here in your own home without risk of discovery.”
Still he did not answer.
“You need not reply to that question, forthe reply is obvious. I guessed the meaning of the nurse’s discharge as soon as I heard of it. I guessed that you were secretly hovering over Elsie, while all Westville thought you were hundreds of miles away. But tell me, how did you learn that Elsie was sick?”
He hesitated, then swallowed.
“I saw a notice of it in a little country paper.”
“Ah, I thought so.”
She moved forward and leaned across the desk. Their eyes were no more than a yard apart.
“Tell me,” she said quietly, “why did you slip into town by night? Why are you hiding in your own home?”
A tremor ran through his slender frame. With an effort he tried to take the upperhand.
“You must excuse me,” he said, with an attempt at sharp dignity. “I refuse to be cross-examined.”
“Then I will answer for you. The reason, Doctor Sherman, is that you have a guilty conscience.”
“That is not——”
“Do not lie,” she interrupted quickly. “You realize what you have done, you are afraid it may become public, you are afraid of the consequences to yourself—and that is why you slipped back in the dead of night and lie hidden like a fugitive in your own house.”
A spasm of agony crossed his face.
“For God’s sake, tell me what you want and leave me!”
“I want you to clear my father.”
“Clear your father?” he cried. “And how, if you please?”
“By confessing that he is innocent.”
“When he is guilty!”
“You know he is not.”
“He’s guilty—he’s guilty, I tell you! Besides,” he added, wildly, “don’t you see that if I proclaim him innocent I proclaim myself a perjured witness?”
She leaned a little farther across the desk.
“Is not that exactly what you are, Doctor Sherman?”