Amid a stunned court room, Bruce sprang to his feet.
"Lies! Lies!" he cried in a choking fury. "They've been bought off by Blake!"
"Silence!" shouted Judge Kellog, pounding his desk with his gavel.
"I tell you it's trickery! They've been bought off by Blake!"
"Silence!" thundered the judge, and followed with a dire threat of contempt of court.
But already Mr. Wilson and Sheriff Nichols were dragging the struggling Bruce back into his chair. More shouts and hammering of gavels by the judge and clerk had partially restored to order the chaos begotten by this scene, when a bit of paper was slipped from behind into Bruce's hand. He unfolded it with trembling fingers, and read in a disguised, back-hand scrawl:
"There's still enough left of me to know what's happened."
That was all. But Bruce understood. Here was the handiwork and vengeance of Blind Charlie Peck. He sprang up again and turned his ireful face to where, in the crowd, sat the old politician.
"You--you----" he began.
But before he got further he was again dragged down into his seat. And almost before the crowd had had time fairly to regain its breath, the jury had filed out, had filed back in again, had returned its verdict of guilty, and Judge Kellog had imposed a sentence of five hundred dollars fine and sixty days in the county jail.
In all the crowd that looked bewildered on, Katherine was perhaps the only one who believed in Bruce's cry of trickery. She saw that Blake, with Blind Charlie's cunning back of him, had risked his all on one bold move that for a brief period had made him an object of universal hatred. She saw that Bruce had fallen into a trap cleverly baited for him, saw that he was the victim of an astute scheme to discredit him utterly and remove him from the way.
As Blake left the Court House Katherine heard a great cheer go up for him; and within an hour the evidence of eye and ear proved to her that he was more popular than ever. She saw the town crowd about him to make amends for the injustice it considered it had done him. And as for Bruce, as he was led by Sheriff Nichols from the Court House toward the jail, she heard him pursued by jeers and hisses.
Katherine walked homeward from the trial, completely dazed by this sudden capsizing of all of Bruce's hopes--and of her own hopes as well, for during the last few days she had come to depend on Bruce for the clearing of her father. That evening, and most of the night, she spent in casting up accounts. As matters then stood, they looked desperate indeed. On the one hand, everything pointed to Blake's election and the certain success of his plans. On the other hand, she had gained no clue whatever to the whereabouts of Doctor Sherman; nothing had as yet developed in the scheme she had built about Mr.
Manning; as for Mr. Stone, she had expected nothing from him, and all he had turned in to her was that he suspected secret relations between Blake and Peck. Furthermore, the man she loved--for yes, she loved him still--was in jail, his candidacy collapsed, the cause for which he stood a ruin. And last of all, the city, to the music of its own applause, was about to be colossally swindled.
A dark prospect indeed. But as she sat alone in the night, the cheers for Blake floating in to her, she desperately determined to renew her fight. Five days still remained before election, and in five days one might do much; during those five days her ships might still come home from sea. She summoned her courage, and gripped it fiercely. "I'll do my best! I'll do my best!" she kept breathing throughout the night.
And her determination grew in its intensity as she realized the sum of all the things for which she fought, and fought alone.
She was fighting to save her father, she was fighting to save the city, she was fighting to save the man she loved.
CHAPTER XXII
THE LAST STAND
The next morning Katherine, incited by the desperate need of action, was so bold as to request Mr. Manning to meet her at Old Hosie's. She was fortunate enough to get into the office without being observed.
The old lawyer, in preparation for the conference, had drawn his wrinkled, once green shade as far down as he dared without giving cause for suspicion, and before the window had placed a high-backed chair and thrown upon it a greenish, blackish, brownish veteran of a fall overcoat--thus balking any glances that might rove lazily upward to his office.
Old Hosie raised his lean figure from his chair and shook her hand, at first silently. He, too, was dazed by the collapse of Bruce's fortunes.
"Things certainly do look bad," he said slowly. "I never suspected that his case would suddenly stand on its head like that."
"Nor did I--though from the beginning I had an instinctive feeling that it was too good, too easy, to be true."
"And to think that after all we know the boy is right!" groaned the old man.
"That's what makes the whole affair so tantalizing. We know he is right--we know my father is innocent--we know the danger the city is in--we know Mr. Blake's guilt--we know just what his plans are. We know everything! But we have not one jot of evidence that would be believed by the public. The irony of it! To think, for all our knowledge, we can only look helplessly on and watch Mr. Blake succeed in everything."
Old Hosie breathed an imprecation that must have made his ancestors, asleep behind the old Quaker meeting-house down in Buck Creek, gasp in their grassy, cedar-shaded graves.
"All the same," Katherine added desperately, "we've got to half kill ourselves trying between now and election day!"
They subsided into silence. In nervous impatience Katherine awaited the appearance of the pseudo-investor in run-down farms. He seemed a long time in coming, but the delay was all in her suspense, for as the Court House clock was tolling the appointed hour Mr. Manning, _alias_ Mr. Hartsell, walked into the office. He was, as Katherine had once described him to Old Hosie, a quiet, reserved man with that confidence-inspiring amplitude in the equatorial regions commonly observable in bank presidents and trusted officials of corporations.
As he closed the door his subdued but confident dignity dropped from him and he warmly shook hands with Katherine, for this was their first meeting since their conference in New York six weeks before.
"You must know how very, very terrible our situation is," Katherine rapidly began. "We've simply _got_ to do something!"
"I certainly haven't done much so far," said Manning, with a rueful smile. "I'm sorry--but you don't know how tedious my role's been to me. To act the part of bait, and just lie around before the noses of the fish you're after, and not get a bite in two whole weeks--that's not my idea of exciting fishing."
"I know. But the plan looked a good one."
"It looked first-class," conceded Manning. "And, perhaps----"
"With election only four days off, we've simply got to do something!"
Katherine repeated. "If nothing else, let's drop that plan, devise a new one, and stake our hopes on some wild chance."
"Wait a minute," said Manning. "I wouldn't drop that plan just yet.
I've gone two weeks without a bite, but--I'm not sure--remember I say I'm not sure--but I think that at last I may possibly have a nibble."
"A nibble you say?" cried Katherine, leaning eagerly forward.
"At least, the cork bobbed under."
"When?"
"Last night."
"Last night? Tell me about it!"
"Well, of late I've been making my study of the water-works more and more obvious, and I've half suspected that I've been watched, though I was too uncertain to risk raising any false hopes by sending you word about it. But yesterday afternoon Blind Charlie Peck--he's been growing friendly with me lately--yesterday Blind Charlie invited me to have supper with him. The supper was in his private dining-room; just us two. I suspected that the old man was up to some game, and when I saw the cocktails and whiskey and wine come on, I was pretty sure--for you know, Miss West, when a crafty old politician of the Peck variety wants to steal a little information from a man, his regulation scheme is to get his man so drunk he doesn't know what he's talking about."
"I know. Go on!"
"I tried to beg off from the drinking. I told Mr. Peck I did not drink. I liked it, I said, but I could not carry it. A glass or two would put me under the table, so the only safe plan for me was to leave it entirely alone. But he pressed me--and I took one. And he pressed me again, and I took another--and another--and another--till I'd had five or----"
"But you should never have done it!" cried Katherine in alarm.
Manning smiled at her reassuringly.
"I'm no drinking man, but I'm so put together that I can swallow a gallon and then sign the pledge with as steady a hand as the president of the W. C. T. U. But after the sixth drink I must have looked just about right to Blind Charlie. He began to put cunning questions at me.
Little by little all my secrets leaked out. The farm lands were only a blind. My real business in Westville was the water-works. There was a chance that the city might sell them, and if I could get them I was going to snap them up. In fact, I was going to make an offer to the city in a very few days. I had been examining the system closely; it wasn't really in bad shape at all; it was worth a lot more than the people said; and I was ready, if I had to, to pay its full value to get it--even more. I had plenty of money behind me, for I was representing Mr. Seymour, the big New York capitalist."
"Good! Good!" cried Katharine breathlessly. "How did he seem to take it?"