"You mean that I am telling a lie?"
"Oh, you lawyers doubtless have a better-tasting word for it. You would call it, say, a 'professional expedient.'"
She was still not sufficiently recovered from her astonishment to be angry. Besides, she felt herself by an unexpected turn put in the wrong regarding Bruce.
"What I have said to you is the absolute truth," she declared. "Here is the situation--believe me or not, just as you please. I ask you, for the moment, to accept the proposition that my father is the victim of a plot to steal the water-works, and then see how everything fits in with that theory. And bear in mind, as an item worth considering, my father's long and honourable career--never a dishonouring word against him till this charge came." And she went on and outlined, more fully than on yesterday before her father, the reasoning that had led her to her conclusion. "Now, does not that sound possible?" she demanded.
He had watched her with keen, half-closed eyes.
"H'm. You reason well," he conceded.
"That's a lawyer's business," she retorted. "So much for theory. Now for facts." And she continued and gave him her experience of half an hour before with Blake, the editor's boring gaze fixed on her all the while. "Now I ask you this question: Is it likely that even a poor water system could fail so quickly and so completely as ours has done, unless some powerful person was secretly working to make it fail? Do you not see it never could? We all would have seen it, but we've all been too busy, too blind, and thought too well of our town, to suspect such a thing."
His eyes were still boring into her.
"But how about Doctor Sherman?" he asked.
"I believe that Doctor Sherman is an innocent tool of the conspiracy, just as my father is its innocent victim," she answered promptly.
Bruce sat with the same fixed look, and made no reply.
"I have stated my theory, and I have stated my facts," said Katherine.
"I have no court evidence, but I am going to have it. As I remarked before, you can believe what I have said, or not believe it. It's all the same to me." She stood up. "I wish you good afternoon."
He quickly rose.
"Hold on!" he said.
She paused at the door. He strode to and fro across the little office, scowling with thought. Then he paused at the window and looked out.
"Well?" she demanded.
He wheeled about.
"It sounds plausible."
"Thank you," she said crisply. "I could hardly expect a man who has been the champion of error, to admit that he has been wrong and accept the truth. Good afternoon."
Again she reached for the door-knob.
"Wait!" he cried. There was a ring of resentment in his voice, but his square face that had been grudgingly non-committal was now aglow with excitement. "Of course you're right!" he exclaimed. "There's a damned infernal conspiracy! Now what can I do to help?"
"Help?" she asked blankly.
"Help work up the evidence? Help reveal the conspiracy?"
She had not yet quite got her bearings concerning this new Bruce.
"Help? Why should you help? Oh, I see," she said coldly; "it would make a nice sensational story for your paper."
He flushed at her cutting words, and his square jaw set.
"I suppose I might follow your example of a minute ago and say that I don't care what you think. But I don't mind telling you a few things, and giving you a chance to understand me if you want to. I was on a Chicago paper, and had a big place that was growing bigger. I could have sold the _Express_ when my uncle left it to me, and stayed there; but I saw a chance, with a paper of my own, to try out some of my own ideas, so I came to Westville. My idea of a newspaper is that its function is to serve the people--make them think--bring them new ideas--to be ever watching their interests. Of course, I want to make money--I've got to, or go to smash; but I'd rather run a candy store than run a sleepy, apologetic, afraid-of-a-mouse, mere money-making sheet like the _Clarion_, that would never breathe a word against the devil's fair name so long as he carried a half-inch ad. You called me a yellow journalist yesterday. Well, if to tell the truth in the hardest way I know how, to tell it so that it will hit people square between the eyes and make 'em sit up and look around 'em--if that is yellow then I'm certainly a yellow journalist, and I thank God Almighty for inventing the breed!"
As Katherine listened to his snappy, vibrant words, as she looked at his powerful, dominant figure, and into his determined face with its flashing eyes, she felt a reluctant warmth creep through her being.
"Perhaps--I may have been mistaken about you," she said.
"Perhaps you may!" he returned grimly. "Perhaps as much as I was about your father. And, speaking of your father, I don't mind adding something more. Ever since I took charge of the _Express_, I've been advocating municipal ownership of every public utility. The water-works, which were apparently so satisfactory, were a good start; I used them constantly as a text for working up municipal ownership sentiment. The franchises of the Westville Traction Company expire next year, and I had been making a campaign against renewing the franchises and in favour of the city taking over the system and running it. Opinion ran high in favour of the scheme. But Doctor West's seeming dishonesty completely killed the municipal ownership idea. That was my pet, and if I was bitter toward your father--well, I couldn't help it. And now," he added rather brusquely, "I've explained myself to you. To repeat your words, you can believe me or not, just as you like."
There was no resisting the impression of the man's sincerity.
"I suppose," said Katherine, "that I should apologize for--for the things I've called you. My only excuse is that your mistake about my father helped cause my mistake about you."
"And I," returned he, "am not only willing to take back, publicly, in my paper, what I have said against your father, but am willing to print your statement about----"
"You must not print a word till I get my evidence," she put in quickly. "Printing it prematurely might ruin my case."
"Very well. And as for what I have said about you, I take back everything--except----" He paused; she saw disapprobation in his eyes.
"Except the plain truth I told you that being a lawyer is no work for a woman."
"You are very dogmatic!" said she hotly.
"I am very right," he returned. "Excuse my saying it, but you appear to have too many good qualities as a woman to spoil it all by going out of your sphere and trying----"
"Why--why----" She stood gasping. "Do you know what your uncle told me about you?"
"Old Hosie?" He shrugged his shoulders. "Hosie's an old fool!"
"He said that the trouble with you was that you had not been thrashed enough as a boy. And he was right, too!"
She turned quickly to the door, but he stepped before her.
"Don't get mad because of a little truth. Remember, I want to help you."
"I think," said she, "that we're better suited to fight each other than to help each other. I'm not so sure I want your help."
"I'm not so sure you can avoid taking it," he retorted. "This isn't your father's case alone. It's the city's case, too, and I've got a right to mix in. Now do you want me?"
She looked at him a moment.
"I'll think it over. For the present, good afternoon."
He hesitated, then held out his hand. She hesitated, then took it.
After which, he opened the door for her and bowed her out.