Chapter 8

THE EDITOR OF THE _EXPRESS_

Katherine stumbled down into the dusty, quivering heat of the Square. She was still awed and dumfounded by her discovery; she could not as yet realize its full significance and whither it would lead; but her mind was a ferment of thoughts that were unfinished and questions that did not await reply.

How had a man once so splendid come to sell his soul for money or ambition? What would Westville think and do, Westville who worshipped him, if it but knew the truth? How was she to give battle to an antagonist, so able in himself, so powerfully supported by the public? What a strange caprice of fate it was that had given her as the man she must fight, defeat, or be defeated by, her former idol, her former lover!

Shaken with emotion, her mind shot through with these fragmentary thoughts, she turned into a side street. But she had walked beneath its withered maples no more than a block or two, when her largest immediate problem, her father's trial on the morrow, thrust itself into her consciousness, and the pressing need of further action drove all this spasmodic speculation from her mind. She began to think upon what she should next do. Almost instantly her mind darted to the man whom she had definitely connected with the plot against her father, Arnold Bruce, and she turned back toward the Square, afire with a new idea.

She had made great advance through suddenly, though unintentionally, confronting Blake with knowledge of his guilt. Might she not make some further advance, gain some new clue, by confronting Bruce in similar manner?

Ten minutes after she had left the office of Harrison Blake, Katherine entered the _Express_ Building. From the first floor sounded a deep and continuous thunder; that afternoon's issue was coming from the press. She lifted her skirts and gingerly mounted the stairway, over which the _Express's_ "devil" was occasionally seen to make incantations with the stub of an undisturbing broom.

At the head of the stairway a door stood open. This she entered, and found herself in the general editorial room, ankle-deep with dirt and paper. The air of the place told that the day's work was done. In one corner a telegraph sounder was chattering its tardy world-gossip to unheeding ears. In the centre at a long table, typewriters before them, three shirt-sleeved young men sprawled at ease reading the _Express_, which the "devil" had just brought them from the nether regions, moist with the black spittle of the beast that there roared and rumbled.

At sight of her tall, fresh figure, a red spot in her either cheek, defiance in her brown eyes, Billy Harper, quicker than the rest, sprang up and crossed the room.

"Miss West, I believe," he said. "Can I do anything for you?"

"I wish to speak with Mr. Bruce," was her cold reply.

"This way," and Billy led her across the wilderness of proofs, discarded copy and old newspapers, to a door beside the stairway that led down into the press-room. "Just go right in," he said.

She entered. Bruce, his shirt-sleeves rolled up and his bared fore-arms grimy, sat glancing through the _Express_, his feet crossed on his littered desk, a black pipe hanging from one corner of his mouth. He did not look round but turned another page.

"Well, what's the matter?" he grunted between his teeth.

"I should like a few words with you," said Katherine.

"Eh!" His head twisted about. "Miss West!"

His feet suddenly dropped to the floor, and he stood up and laid the pipe upon his desk. For the moment he was uncertain how to receive her, but the bright, hard look in her eyes fixed his attitude.

"Certainly," he said in a brusque, businesslike tone. He placed the atlas-bottomed chair near his own. "Be seated."

She sat down, and he took his own chair.

"I am at your service," he said.

Her cheeks slowly gathered a higher colour, her eyes gleamed with a pre-triumphant fire, and she looked straight into his square, rather massive face. Over Blake she had felt an infinity of regret and pain. For this man she felt only boundless hatred, and she thrilled with a vengeful, exultant joy that she was about to unmask him--that later she might crush him utterly.

"I am at your service," he repeated.

She slowly wet her lips and gathered herself to strike, alert to watch the effects of her blow.

"I have called, Mr. Bruce," she said with slow distinctness, "to let you know that I know that a conspiracy is under way to steal the water-works! And to let you know that I know that you are near its centre!"

He started.

"What?" he cried.

Her devouring gaze did not lose a change of feature, not so much as the shifting in the pupil of his eye.

"Oh, I know your plot!" she went on rapidly. "It's every detail! The first step was to ruin the water-works, so the city would sell and sell cheap. The first step toward ruining the system was to get my father out of the way. And so this charge against my father was trumped up to ruin him. The leader of the whole plot is Mr. Blake; his right hand man yourself. Oh, I know every detail of your infamous scheme!"

He stared at her. His lips had slowly parted.

"What--you say that Mr. Blake----"

"Oh, you are trying to play your part of innocence well, but you cannot deceive me!" she cried with fierce contempt. "Yes, Mr. Blake is the head of it. I just came from his office. There's not a doubt in the world of his guilt. He has admitted it. Oh----"

"Admitted it?"

"Yes, admitted it! Oh, it was a fine and easy way to make a fortune--to dupe the city into selling at a fraction of its value a business that run privately will pay an immense and ever-growing profit."

He had stood up and was scratching his bristling hair.

"My God! My God!" he whispered.

She rose.

"And you!" she cried, glaring at him, her voice mounting to a climax of scorn, "You! Don't walk the room"--he had begun to do so--"but look me in the face. To think how you have attacked my father, maligned him, covered him with dishonour! And for what? To help you carry through a dirty trick to rob the city! Oh, I wish I had the words to tell you----"

But he had begun again to pace the little room, scratching his head, his eyes gleaming behind the heavy glasses.

"Listen to me!" she commanded.

"Oh, give me all the hell you want to!" he cried out. "Only don't ask me to listen to you!"

He paused abruptly before her, and, eyes half-closed, stared piercingly into her face. As she returned his stare, it began to dawn upon her that he did not seem much taken aback. At least his guilt bore no near likeness to that of Mr. Blake.

Suddenly he made a lunge for the door, jerked it open, and his voice descended the stairway, out-thundering the press.

"Jake! Oh, Jake!"

A lesser roar ascended:

"Yes!"

"Stop the press! Rip open the forms! Get the men at the linotypes! And be alive down there, every damned soul of you! And you, Billy Harper, I'll want you here in two minutes!"

He slammed the door, and turned on Katherine. She had looked upon excitement before, but never such excitement as was flaming in his face.

"Now give me all the details!" he cried.

She it was that was taken aback.

"I--I don't understand," she said.

"No time to explain now. Looks like I've been all wrong about your father--perhaps a little wrong about you--and perhaps you've been a little wrong about me. Let it go at that. Now for the details. Quick!"

"But--but what are you going to do?"

"Going to get out an extra! It's the hottest story that ever came down the pike! It'll make the _Express_, and"--he seized her hand in his grimy ones, his eyes blazed, and an exultant laugh leaped from his deep chest--"and we'll simply rip this old town wide open!"

Katherine stared at him in bewilderment.

"Oh, won't this wake the old town up!" he murmured to himself.

He dropped into his chair, jerked some loose copy paper toward him, and seized a pencil.

"Now quick! The details!"

"You mean--you are going to print this?" she stammered.

"Didn't I say so!" he answered sharply.

"Then you really had nothing to do with Mr. Blake's----"

"Oh, hell! I beg pardon. But this is no time for explanations. Come, come"--he rapped his desk with his knuckles--"don't you know what getting out an extra is? Every second is worth half your lifetime. Out with the story!"

Katherine sank rather weakly into her chair, beginning to see new things in this face she had so lately loathed.

"The fact of the matter is," she confessed, "I guess I stated my information a little more definitely than it really is."

"You mean you haven't the facts?"

"I'm afraid not. Not yet."

"Nothing definite I could hinge a story on?"

She shook her head. "I didn't come prepared for--for things to take this turn. It would spoil everything to have this made public before I had my case worked up."

"Then there's no extra!"

He flung down his pencil and sprang up. "Nothing doing, Billy," he called to Harper, who that instant opened the door; "go on back with you." He began to walk up and down the little office, scowling, hands clenched in his trousers' pockets. After a moment he stopped short, and looked at Katherine half savagely.

"I suppose you don't know what it means to a newspaper man to have a big story laid in his hands and then suddenly jerked out?"

"I suppose it is something of a disappointment."

"Disappointment!" The word came out half groan, half sneer. "Rot! If you were waiting in church and the bridegroom didn't show up, if you were----oh, I can't make you understand the feeling!"

He dropped back into his chair and scratched viciously at the copy paper with his heavy black pencil. She watched him in a sort of fascination, till he abruptly looked up. Suspicion glinted behind the heavy glasses.

"Are you sure, Miss West," he asked slowly "that this whole affair isn't just a little game?"

"What do you mean?"

"That your whole story is nothing but a hoax? Nothing but a trick to get out of a tight hole by calling another man a thief?"

Her eyes flashed.

"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.