She glared a moment at the door. Then suddenly she collapsed upon the floor, her head and arms on the old haircloth sofa, and her whole body shook with silent sobs. Doctor West, first gazing at her a little helplessly, sat down upon the sofa, and softly stroked her hair. For a time there were no words--only her convulsive breathing, her choking sobs.
Presently he said gently:
"I'm sure you'll do everything you said."
"No--that's the trouble," she moaned. "What I said--was--was just a big bluff. I won't do any--of those things. Your trial is two days off--and, father, I haven't one bit of evidence--I don't know what we're going to do--and the jury will have to--oh, father, father, that man was right; I'm just--just a great big failure!"
Again she shook with sobs. The old man continued to sit beside her, softly stroking her thick brown hair.
CHAPTER VII
THE MASK FALLS
But presently the sobs subsided, as though shut off by main force, and Katherine rose to her feet. She wiped her eyes and looked at her father, a wan smile on her reddened, still tremulous face.
"What a hope-inspiring lawyer you have, father!"
"I would not want a truer," said he loyally.
"We won't have one of these cloud-bursts again, I promise you. But when you have been under a strain for months, and things are stretched tighter and tighter, and at last something makes things snap, why you just can't help--well," she ended, "a man would have done something else, I suppose, but it might have been just as bad."
"Worse!" avowed her father.
"Anyhow, it's all over. I'll just repair some of the worst ravages of the storm, and then we'll talk about our programme for the trial."
As she was arranging her hair before her father's mirror, she saw, in the glass, the old man stoop and take something from the waste-basket.
Turning his back to her, he cautiously examined the object.
She left the mirror and came up behind him.
"What are you looking at, dear?"
He started, and glanced up.
"Oh--er--that editorial Mr. Bruce referred to." He rubbed his head dazedly. "If that should happen, with me even indirectly the cause of it--why, Katherine, it really would be pretty bad!" He held out the _Clarion_. "Perhaps, after all, you had better read it."
She took the paper. The _Clarion_ had from the first opposed the city's owning the water-works, and the editorial declared that the present situation gave the paper, and all those who had held a similar opinion, their long-awaited triumph and vindication. "This failure is only what invariably happens whenever a city tries municipal ownership," declared the editorial. "The situation has grown so unbearably acute that the city's only hope of good water lies in the sale of the system to some private concern, which will give us that superior service which is always afforded by private capital.
Westville is upon the eve of a city election, and we most emphatically urge upon both parties that they make the chief plank of their platforms the immediate sale of our utterly discredited water-works to some private company."
The editorial did not stir Katherine as it had appeared to stir Bruce, nor even in the milder degree it had stirred Doctor West. She was interested in the water-works only in so far as it concerned her father, and the _Clarion's_ proposal had no apparent bearing on his guilt or innocence.
She laid the _Clarion_ on the table, without comment, and proceeded to discuss the coming trial. The only course she had to suggest was that they plead for a postponement on the ground that they needed more time in which to prepare their defense. If that plea were denied, then before them seemed certain conviction. On that plea, then, they decided to place all their hope.
When this matter had been talked out Doctor West took the _Clarion_ from the table and again read the editorial with troubled face, while Katherine walked to and fro across the floor, her mind all on the trial.
"If the town does sell, it will be too bad!" he sighed.
"I suppose so," said Katherine mechanically.
"It has reached me that people are saying that the system isn't worth anything like what we paid for it."
"Is that so?" she asked absently.
Doctor West drew himself up and his faded cheeks flushed indignantly.
"No, it is not so. I don't know what's wrong, but it's the very best system of its size in the Middle West!"
She paused.
"Forgive me--I wasn't paying any attention to what I was saying. I'm sure it is."
She resumed her pacing.
"But if they sell out to some company," Doctor West continued, "the company will probably get it for a third, or less, of what it is actually worth."
"So, if some corporation has been secretly wanting to buy it,"
commented Katherine, "things could not have worked out better for the corporation if they had been planned."
She came to a sudden pause, and stood gazing at her father, her lips slowly parting.
"It could not have worked out better for the corporation if it had been planned," she repeated.
"No," said Doctor West.
She picked up the _Clarion_, quickly read the editorial, and laid the paper aside.
"Father!" Her voice was a low, startled cry.
"Yes?"
She moved slowly toward him, in her face a breathless look, and caught his shoulders with tense hands.
"_Perhaps it was planned!_"
"What?"
Her voice rang out more loudly:
"_Perhaps it was planned!_"
"But Katherine--what do you mean?"
"Let me think. Let me think." She began feverishly to pace the room.
"Oh, why did I not think of this before!" she cried to herself. "I thought of graft--political corruption--everything else. But it never occurred to me that there might be a plan, a subtle, deep-laid plan, to steal the water-works!"