Counsel for the Defense Part 49

"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 in her ability, stung her bitterly and for a s.p.a.ce 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 a.s.sumed 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 only as 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 the people, 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 owners.h.i.+p. 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. Pa.s.sion 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 pa.s.sed 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 walking along the Square homeward bound from Elsie Sherman's, she pa.s.sed Bruce and Mr. Wilson headed for the stairway of the _Express_ Building. 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 the _Express_ appears 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 her father'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 a.s.sistant 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 several moments, 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 the _Express_, 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 the last ditch. On the morning after the publication of the _Express's_ charges, the _Clarion_ printed 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 advertis.e.m.e.nts 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 a.s.sistant superintendent told with most convincing detail how he had succ.u.mbed 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.