The old man nodded with suppressed excitement.
"They were to set out at six. It's five minutes to six now."
Without a word Katherine crossed swiftly and opened the door an inch, and stood tensely waiting beside it. Presently, through the calm of the Sabbath evening, there started up very near the sudden buzzing of a cranked-up car. Then swiftly the buzzing faded away into the distance.
Katherine turned.
"It's Mr. Blake's car. They'll all be at The Sycamores in half an hour. It's a bite, certain! Get hold of Mr. Manning as soon as he comes back, and bring him here. The house will be darkened, but the front door will be unlocked. Come right in. Come as late as you please. You'll find me waiting here in the parlour."
The hours that followed were trying ones for Katherine. She sat about with her aunt till toward ten o'clock. Then her father returned from his last call, and soon thereafter they all went to their rooms.
Katherine remained upstairs till she thought her father and aunt were settled, then slipped down to the parlour, set the front door ajar, and sat waiting in the darkness. She heard the Court House clock with judicial slowness count off eleven o'clock--then after a long, long space, count off twelve. A few minutes later she heard Blake's car return, and after a time she heard the city clock strike one.
It was close upon two when soft steps sounded upon the porch and the front door opened. She silently shook hands with her two vague visitors.
"We didn't think it safe to come any sooner," explained Old Hosie in a whisper.
"You've been with them out at The Sycamores?" Katherine eagerly inquired of Manning.
"Yes. For a four hours' session."
"Well?"
"Well, so far it looks O. K."
In a low voice he detailed to Katherine how they had at first fenced with one another; how at length he had told them that he had a formal proposal to the city to buy the water-works all drawn up and that on the morrow he was going to present it--and that, furthermore, he would, if necessary, increase the sum he offered in that proposal to the full value of the plant. Blake and Peck, after a slow approach to the subject, in which they admitted that they also planned to buy the system, had suggested that, inasmuch as he was only an agent and there would be no profit in the purchase to him personally, he abandon his purpose. If he would do this they would make it richly worth his while. He had replied that this was such a different plan from that which he had been considering that he must have time to think it over and would give them his answer to-morrow. On which understanding the three had parted.
"I suppose it would hardly be practicable," said Katherine when he had finished, "to have a number of witnesses concealed at your place of meeting and overhear your conversation?"
"No, it would be mighty difficult to pull that off."
"And what's more," she commented, "Mr. Blake would deny whatever they said, and with his present popularity his words would carry more weight than that of any half dozen witnesses we might get. At the best, our charges would drag on for months, perhaps years, in the courts, with in the end the majority of the people believing in him.
With the election so near, we must have instantaneous results. We must use a means of exposing him that will instantly convince all the people."
"That's the way I see it," agreed Manning.
"When did they offer to pay you, in case you agreed to sell out to them?"
"On the day they got control of the water-works. Naturally they didn't want to pay me before, for fear I might break faith with them and buy in the system for Mr. Seymour."
"Can't you make them put their proposition in the form of an agreement, to be signed by all three of you?" asked Katherine.
"But mebbe they won't consent to that," put in Old Hosie.
"Mr. Manning will know how to bring them around. He can say, for example, that, unless he has such a written agreement, they will be in a position to drop him when once they've got what they want. He can say that unless they consent to sign some such agreement he will go on with his original plan. I think they'll sign."
"And if they do?" queried Old Hosie.
"If they do," said Katherine, "we'll have documentary evidence to show Westville that those two great political enemies, Mr. Blake and Mr.
Peck, are secretly business associates--their business being a conspiracy to wreck the water-works and defraud the city. I think such a document would interest Westville."
"I should say it would!" exclaimed Old Hosie.
They whispered on, excitedly, hopefully; and when the two men had departed and Katherine had gone up to her room to try to snatch a few hours' sleep, she continued to dwell eagerly upon the plan that seemed so near of consummation. She tossed about her bed, and heard the Court House clock sound three, and then four. Then the heat of her excitement began to pass away, and cold doubts began to creep into her mind. Perhaps Blake and Peck would refuse to sign. And even if they did sign, she began to see this prospective success as a thing of lesser magnitude. The agreement would prove the alliance between Blake and Peck, and would make clear that a conspiracy existed. It was good, but it was not enough. It fell short by more than half. It would not clear her father, though his innocence might be inferred, and it would not prove Blake's responsibility for the epidemic.
As she lay there staring wide-eyed into the gloom of the night, listening to the town clock count off the hours of her last day, she realized that what she needed most of all, far more than Manning's document even should he get it, was the testimony which she believed was sealed behind the lips of Doctor Sherman, whose present whereabouts God only knew.
CHAPTER XXIII
AT ELSIE'S BEDSIDE
The day before election, a day of hope deferred, had dragged slowly by and night had at length settled upon the city. Doctor West had the minute before come in from a long, dinnerless day of hastening from case to case, and now he, Katherine, and her aunt were sitting about the supper table. To Katherine's eye her father looked very weary and white and frail. The day-and-night struggle at scores of bedsides was sorely wearing him down.
As for Katherine, she was hardly less worn. She scarcely touched the food before her. The fears that always assail one at a crisis, now swarmed in upon her. With the election but a few hours distant, with no word as yet from Mr. Manning, she saw all her high plans coming to naught and saw herself overwhelmed with utter defeat. From without there dimly sounded the beginning of the ferment of the campaign's final evening; it brought to her more keenly that to-morrow the city was going to give itself over unanimously to be despoiled. Across the table, her father, pale and worried, was a reminder that, when his fight of the plague was completed, he must return to jail. Her mind flashed now and then to Bruce; she saw him in prison; she saw not only his certain defeat on the morrow, but she saw him crushed and ruined for life as far as a career in Westville was concerned; and though she bravely tried to master her feeling, the throbbing anguish with which she looked upon his fate was affirmation of how poignant and deep-rooted was her love.
And yet, despite these flooding fears, she clung with a dizzy desperation to hope, and to the determination to fight on to the last second of the last minute.
While swinging thus between despair and desperate hope, she was maintaining, at first somewhat mechanically to be sure, a conversation with her father, whom she had not seen since their early breakfast together.
"How does the fever situation seem to-night?" she asked.
"Much better," said Doctor West. "There were fewer new cases reported to-day than any day for a week."
"Then you are getting the epidemic under control?"
"I think we can at last say we have it thoroughly in hand. The number of new cases is daily decreasing, and the old cases are doing well. I don't know of an epidemic of this size on record where the mortality has been so small."
She came out of her preoccupation and breathlessly demanded:
"Tell me, how is Elsie Sherman? I could not get around to see her to-day."
He dropped his eyes to his plate and did not answer.
"You mean she is no better?"
"She is very low."
"But she still has a chance?"
"Yes, she has a chance. But that's about all. The fever is at its climax. I think to-night will decide which it's to be."
"You are going to her again to-night?"
"Right after supper."
"Then I'll go with you," said Katherine. "Poor Elsie! Poor Elsie!" she murmured to herself. Then she asked, "Have they had any word from Doctor Sherman?"