"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 pa.s.s 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 c.o.o.n out. When the c.o.o.n 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. She heard 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.
CHAPTER XVI
THROUGH THE STORM
Bowed low to shield herself against the ever fiercer buffets of the storm, Katherine gave Nelly free rein to pick her own way at her own pace through the blackness. The rain volleyed into her pitilessly, the wind sought furiously to wrest her from the saddle, the lightning cracked open the heavens into ever more fiery chasms, and the thunder rattled and rolled and reverberated as though a thousand battles were waging in the valley. It was as if the earth"s dissolution were at hand--as if the long-gathered wrath of the Judgment Day were rending the earth asunder and hurling the fragments afar into the black abysm of eternity.
But Katherine, though gasping and shivering, gave minor heed to this elemental rage. Whatever terror she might have felt another time at such a storm, her brain had now small room for it. She was exultantly filled with the magnitude of her discovery. The water-works deal! The National Electric & Water Company! Bruce not a bona fide candidate at all, but only a pistol at Blake"s head to make him stand and deliver!
Blake and Blind Charlie--those two whole-hearted haters, who belaboured each other so valiantly before the public--in a secret pact to rob that same dear public!
At the highest moments of her exultation it seemed that victory was already hers; that all that remained was to proclaim to Westville on the morrow what she knew. But beneath all her exultation was a dim realization that the victory itself was yet to be won. What she had gained was only a fuller knowledge of who her enemies were, and what were their purposes.
Her mind raced about her discovery, seeking how to use it as the basis of her own campaign. But the moment of an extensive and astounding discovery is not the moment for the evolving of well-calculated plans; so the energies of her mind were spent on extravagant dreams or the leaping play of her jubilation.
One decision, however, she did reach. That was concerning Bruce. Her first impulse was to go to him and tell him all, in triumphant refutation of his ideas concerning woman in general, and her futility in particular. But as she realized that she was not at the end of her fight, but only at a better-informed beginning, she saw that the day of her triumph over him, if ever it was to come, had at least not yet arrived. As for admitting him into her full confidence, her woman"s pride was still too strong for that. It held her to her determination to tell him nothing. She was going to see this thing through without him.
Moreover, she had another reason for silence. She feared, if she told him all, his impetuous nature might prompt him to make a premature disclosure of the information, and that would be disastrous to her future plans. But since he was vitally concerned in Blake"s and Peck"s agreement, it was at least his due that he be warned; and so she decided to tell him, without giving her source of information, that Blind Charlie proposed to sell him out.
Nelly"s pace had slowed into a walk, and even then the gale at times almost swept the poor horse staggering from the road. The rain drove down in ever denser sheets. The occasional flashes of lightning served only to emphasize the blackness. So dense was it, it seemed a solid.
The world could not seem blacker to a toad in the heart of a stone.
The instants of crackling fire showed Katherine the river, below her in the valley, leaping, surging, almost out of its banks--the trees, writhing and wrestling, here and there one jaggedly discrowned. And once, as she was crossing a little wooden bridge that spanned a creek, she saw that it was almost afloat--and for an instant of terror she wished she had followed the higher back-country road taken by the two automobiles.
She had reached the foot of Red Man"s Ridge, and was winding along the river"s verge, when she thought she heard her name sound faintly through the storm. She stopped Nelly and sat in sudden stiffness, straining her ears. Again the voice sounded, this time nearer, and there was no mistaking her name.
"Miss West! Katherine!"
She sat rigid, almost choking. The next minute a shapeless figure almost collided with Nelly. It eagerly caught the bridle-rein and called out huskily:
"Is that you, Miss West?"
She let out a startled cry.
"Who are you? What do you want?"
"It"s you! Thank G.o.d, I"ve found you!" cried the voice.
"Arnold Bruce!" she e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed.
He loosened the rein and moved to her side and put his hand upon the back of her saddle.