Counsel for the Defense Part 14

"What was the date of your arrest?" she asked sharply. "The date Mr.

Marcy gave you that money?"

"The fifteenth of May."

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

"Well, what of that?"

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

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

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

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

This discovery of the check was a heavy blow, but Katherine went doggedly back to the first beginnings; and as the weeks crept slowly by she continued without remission her desperate search for a clue which, followed up, would make clear to every one that the whole affair was merely a mistake. But the only development of the summer which bore at all upon the case--and that bearing seemed to Katherine indirect--was that, since early June, the service of the water-works had steadily been deteriorating. There was frequently a shortage in the supply, and the filtering plant, the direct cause of Doctor West's disgrace, had proved so complete a failure that its use had been discontinued. The water was often murky and unpleasant to the taste.

Moreover, all kinds of other faults began to develop in the plant. The city complained loudly of the quality of the water and the failure of the system. It was like one of these new-fangled toys, averred the street corners, that runs like a miracle while the paint is on it and then with a whiz and a whir goes all to thunder.

But to this mere by-product of the case Katherine gave little thought.

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

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

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

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

That editorial unloosed her long-collected wrath--wrath that had many a reason. In Bruce's person Katherine had from the first seen the summing up, the leader, of the bitterness against her father. All summer he had continued his sharp attacks, and the virulence of these had helped keep the town wrought up against Doctor West. Moreover, Katherine despised Bruce as a powerful, ruthless, demagogic hypocrite.

And to her hostility against him in her father's behalf and to her contempt for his quack radicalism, was added the bitter implacability of the woman who feels herself scorned. The town's att.i.tude toward her she resented. But Bruce she hated, and him she prayed with all her soul that she might humble.

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

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

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

"Mr. Bruce. Upstairs with thy father."

"What!" cried Katherine.

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

"What are you doing here?" she demanded.

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

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

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

"Confess?" cried Katherine.

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

Scorn flamed at him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She fixed him with glittering eyes.

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

"Read that, I say!" he commanded.

For answer she took the _Clarion_ and tossed it into the waste-basket.

She glared at him, quivering all over, in her hands a convulsive itch for physical vengeance.

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

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

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

"You boor!" gasped Katharine.

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

"Stop!" gasped Katherine. A wild defiance surged up and overmastered her, her nerves broke, and her hot words tumbled out hysterically.

"You think you are a G.o.d-anointed critic of humanity, but you are only a heartless, conceited cad! Just wait--I'll show you what your judgment of me is worth! I am going to clear my father! I am going to make this Westville that condemns me kneel at my feet! and as for you--you can think what you please! But don't you ever dare to speak to my father again--don't you ever dare speak to me again--don't you ever dare enter this house again! Now go! Go! I say. Go! Go! Go!"

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