"I see--I see!" she cried in her pain. "It is just the old story. A good man rises to power through being the champion of the people--and, once in power, the opportunities, the temptation, are too much for him. But I never--no, never!--thought that such a thing would happen with you!"
He strove for the injured air of the misjudged old friend.
"Again I must say that I can only explain your charges by supposing that you are out of your head."
"Here in Westville you believe it is not woman"s business to think about politics," Katherine went on, in her voice of pain. "But I could not help thinking about them, and watching them. I have lost my faith in the old parties, but I had kept my faith in some of their leaders.
I believe some of them honest, devoted, indomitable. And of them all, the one I admired most, ranked highest, was you. And now--and now--oh, Mr. Blake!--to learn that you----"
"Katherine! Katherine!" And he raised his hands with the manner of exasperated, yet indulgent, helplessness.
"Mr. Blake, you know you are now only playing a part! And you know that I know it!" She moved up to him eagerly. "Listen to me," she pleaded rapidly. "You have only started on this, you have not gone too far to turn back. You have done no real wrong as yet, save to my father, and I know my father will forgive you. Drop your plan--let my father be honourably cleared--and everything will be just as before!"
For a s.p.a.ce he seemed shaken by her words. She watched him, breathless, awaiting the outcome of the battle she felt was waging within him.
"Drop the plan--do!--do!--I beg you!" she cried.
His dark face twitched; a quivering ran through his body. Then by a mighty effort he partially regained his mastery.
"There is no plan for me to drop," he said huskily.
"You still cling to the part you are playing?"
"I am playing no part; you are all wrong about me," he continued.
"Your charges are so absurd that it would be foolish to deny them.
They are merely the ravings of an hysterical woman."
"And this is your answer?"
"That is my answer."
She gazed at him for a long moment. Then she sighed.
"I"m so sorry!" she said; and she turned away and moved toward the door.
She gave him a parting look, as he stood pale, quivering, yet controlled, behind his desk. In this last moment she remembered the gallant fight this man had made against Blind Charlie Peck; she remembered that fragrant, far-distant night of June when he had asked her to marry him; and she felt as though she were gazing for the last time upon a dear dead face.
"I"m sorry--oh, so sorry!" she said tremulously. "Good-by." And turning, she walked with bowed head out of his office.
CHAPTER VIII
THE EDITOR OF THE _EXPRESS_
Katherine stumbled down into the dusty, quivering heat of the Square.
She was still awed and dumfounded by her discovery; she could not as yet realize its full significance and whither it would lead; but her mind was a ferment of thoughts that were unfinished and questions that did not await reply.
How had a man once so splendid come to sell his soul for money or ambition? What would Westville think and do, Westville who worshipped him, if it but knew the truth? How was she to give battle to an antagonist, so able in himself, so powerfully supported by the public?
What a strange caprice of fate it was that had given her as the man she must fight, defeat, or be defeated by, her former idol, her former lover!
Shaken with emotion, her mind shot through with these fragmentary thoughts, she turned into a side street. But she had walked beneath its withered maples no more than a block or two, when her largest immediate problem, her father"s trial on the morrow, thrust itself into her consciousness, and the pressing need of further action drove all this spasmodic speculation from her mind. She began to think upon what she should next do. Almost instantly her mind darted to the man whom she had definitely connected with the plot against her father, Arnold Bruce, and she turned back toward the Square, afire with a new idea.
She had made great advance through suddenly, though unintentionally, confronting Blake with knowledge of his guilt. Might she not make some further advance, gain some new clue, by confronting Bruce in similar manner?
Ten minutes after she had left the office of Harrison Blake, Katherine entered the _Express_ Building. From the first floor sounded a deep and continuous thunder; that afternoon"s issue was coming from the press. She lifted her skirts and gingerly mounted the stairway, over which the _Express"s_ "devil" was occasionally seen to make incantations with the stub of an undisturbing broom.
At the head of the stairway a door stood open. This she entered, and found herself in the general editorial room, ankle-deep with dirt and paper. The air of the place told that the day"s work was done. In one corner a telegraph sounder was chattering its tardy world-gossip to unheeding ears. In the centre at a long table, typewriters before them, three shirt-sleeved young men sprawled at ease reading the _Express_, which the "devil" had just brought them from the nether regions, moist with the black spittle of the beast that there roared and rumbled.
At sight of her tall, fresh figure, a red spot in her either cheek, defiance in her brown eyes, Billy Harper, quicker than the rest, sprang up and crossed the room.
"Miss West, I believe," he said. "Can I do anything for you?"
"I wish to speak with Mr. Bruce," was her cold reply.
"This way," and Billy led her across the wilderness of proofs, discarded copy and old newspapers, to a door beside the stairway that led down into the press-room. "Just go right in," he said.
She entered. Bruce, his shirt-sleeves rolled up and his bared fore-arms grimy, sat glancing through the _Express_, his feet crossed on his littered desk, a black pipe hanging from one corner of his mouth. He did not look round but turned another page.
"Well, what"s the matter?" he grunted between his teeth.
"I should like a few words with you," said Katherine.
"Eh!" His head twisted about. "Miss West!"
His feet suddenly dropped to the floor, and he stood up and laid the pipe upon his desk. For the moment he was uncertain how to receive her, but the bright, hard look in her eyes fixed his att.i.tude.
"Certainly," he said in a brusque, businesslike tone. He placed the atlas-bottomed chair near his own. "Be seated."
She sat down, and he took his own chair.
"I am at your service," he said.
Her cheeks slowly gathered a higher colour, her eyes gleamed with a pre-triumphant fire, and she looked straight into his square, rather ma.s.sive face. Over Blake she had felt an infinity of regret and pain.
For this man she felt only boundless hatred, and she thrilled with a vengeful, exultant joy that she was about to unmask him--that later she might crush him utterly.
"I am at your service," he repeated.
She slowly wet her lips and gathered herself to strike, alert to watch the effects of her blow.
"I have called, Mr. Bruce," she said with slow distinctness, "to let you know that I know that a conspiracy is under way to steal the water-works! And to let you know that I know that you are near its centre!"
He started.
"What?" he cried.
Her devouring gaze did not lose a change of feature, not so much as the shifting in the pupil of his eye.