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 rÔle’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?”

“I could see that he was stirred up, and I guessed that he was thinking big thoughts.”

“But did he say anything?”

“Not a word. Except that it was interesting.”

“Ah!” It was an exclamation of disappointment. Then she instantly added: “But of course he could not say anything until after he had talked it over with Mr. Blake. He’ll do that this morning—if he did not do it last night. You may be approached by them to-day.”

She stood up excitedly, and her brown eyes glowed. “After all, something may come of the plan!”

“It’s at least an opening,” said Manning.

“Yes. And let’s use it for all it’s worth. Don’t you think it would be best for you to go right back to your hotel, and keep yourself in sight, so Mr. Peck won’t have to lose a second in case he wants to talk to you again?”

“That’s what I had in mind.”

“And all day I’ll be either in my office, or at home, or at Mrs. Sherman’s. And the minute anything develops, send word to Mr. Hollingsworth and he’ll send word to me.”

“I’ll not waste a minute,” he assured her.

All day she waited with suppressed excitement for good news from Manning. But the only news was that there was no news. And so on the second day. And so on the third. Her hopes, that had flared so high, sunk by slow degrees to mere embers among the ashes. It appeared that the nibble, which had seemed but the preliminary to swallowing the bait, was after all no more than a nibble; that the fish had merely nosed the worm and swum away. In the meantime, while eaten up by the suspense of this inaction, she was witness to activity of the most strenuous variety. Never had she seen a man spring up into favour as did Harrison Blake. His campaign meetings were resumed the very night of Bruce’s conviction; the city crowded to them; the Blake Marching Club tramped the streets till midnight, with flaming torches, rousing the enthusiasm of the people with their shouts and campaign songs; and wherever Blake appeared upon the platform he was greeted by an uproar, and even when he appeared by daylight, when men’s spirits are more sedate, his progress through the streets was a series of miniature ovations.

As for Bruce, Katherine saw his power and position crumble so swiftly that she could hardly see them disappear. The structure of a tremendous future had stood one moment imposingly before her eyes. Presto, and it was no more! The sentiment he had roused in favour of public ownership, and against the regime of Blake, was as a thing that had never been. With him in jail, his candidacy was but the ashes that are left by a conflagration—though, to be sure, since the ballots were already printed, it was too late to remove his name. He was a thing to be cursed at, jeered at. He had suddenly become a little lower than nobody, a little less than nothing.

And as for his paper, when Katherine looked at it it made her sick at heart. Within a day it lost a third in size. Advertisers no longer dared, perhaps no longer cared, to give it patronage. Its news and editorial character collapsed. This last she could hardly understand, for Billy Harper was in charge, and Bruce had often praised him to her as a marvel of a newspaper man. But one evening, when she was coming home late from Elsie Sherman’s and hurrying through the crowd of Main Street, Billy Harper lurched against her. The next day, with a little adroit inquiry, she learned that Harper, freed from Bruce’s restraining influence, and depressed by the general situation, was drinking constantly. It required no prophetic vision for Katherine to see that, if things continued as they now were going, on the day Bruce came out of jail he would find the Express, which he had lifted to power and a promise of prosperity, had sunk into a disrepute and a decay from which even so great an energy as his could not restore it.

Since there was so little she could do elsewhere, Katherine was at the Shermans’ several times a day, trying in unobtrusive ways to aid the nurse and Doctor Sherman’s sister. Miss Sherman was a spare, silent woman of close upon forty, with rather sharp, determined features. Despite her unloveliness, Katherine respected her deeply, for in other days Elsie had told her sister-in-law’s story. Miss Sherman and her brother were orphans. To her had been given certain plain virtues, to him all the graces of mind and body. She was a country school-teacher, and it had been her hard work, her determination, her penny-counting economy, that had saved her talented brother from her early hardships and sent him through college. She had made him what he was; and beneath her stern exterior she loved him with that intense devotion a lonely, ingrowing woman feels for the object on which she has spent her life’s thought and effort.

Whenever Katherine entered the sick chamber—they had moved Elsie’s bed into the sitting-room because of its greater convenience and better air—her heart would stand still as she saw how white and wasted was her friend. At such a time she would recall with a choking keenness all of Elsie’s virtues, each virtue increased and purified—her simplicity, her purity, her loyalty.

Several times Elsie came back from the brink of the Great Abyss, over which she so faintly hovered, and smiled at Katherine and spoke a few words—but only a few, for Doctor West allowed no more. Each time she asked, with fluttering trepidation, if any word had come from her husband; and each time at Katherine’s choking negative she would try to smile bravely and hide her disappointment.

On one of the last days of this period—it was the Sunday before election—Doctor West had said that either the end or a turn for the better must be close at hand. Katherine had been sitting long watching Elsie’s pale face and faintly rising bosom, when Elsie slowly opened her eyes. Elsie pressed her friend’s hand with a barely perceptible pressure and smiled with the faintest shadow of a smile.

“You here again, Katherine?” she breathed.

“Yes, dear.”

“Just the same dear Katherine!”

“Don’t speak, Elsie.”

She was silent a space. Then the wistful look Katherine had seen so often came into the patient’s soft gray eyes, and she knew what Elsie’s words were going to be before they passed her lips.

“Have you heard anything—from him?”

Katherine slowly shook her head.

Elsie turned her face away for a moment. A sigh fluttered out. Then she looked back.

“But you are still trying to find him?”

“We have done, and are doing, everything, dear.”

“I’m sure,” sighed Elsie, “that he would come if he only knew.”

“Yes—if he only knew.”

“And you will keep on—trying—to get him word?”

“Yes, dear.”

“Then perhaps—he may come yet.”

“Perhaps,” said Katherine, with hopeful lips. But in her heart there was no hope.

Elsie closed her eyes, and did not speak again. Presently Katherine went out into the level, red-gold sunlight of the waning November afternoon. The church bells, resting between their morning duty and that of the night, all were silent; over the city there lay a hush—it was as if the town were gathering strength for its final spasm of campaign activity on the morrow. There was nothing in that Sabbath calm to disturb the emotion of Elsie’s bedside, and Katherine walked slowly homeward beneath the barren maples, in that fearful, tremulous, yearning mood in which she had left the bedside of her friend.

In this same mood she reached home and entered the empty sitting-room. She was slowly drawing off her gloves when she perceived, upon the centre-table, a special delivery letter addressed to herself. She picked it up in moderate curiosity. The envelope was plain, the address was typewritten, there was nothing to suggest the identity of the sender. In the same moderate curiosity she unfolded the inclosure. Then her curiosity became excitement, for the letter bore the signature of Mr. Seymour.

“I have to-day received a letter from Mr. Harrison Blake of Westville,” Mr. Seymour wrote her, “of which the following is the text: ‘We have just learned that there is in our city a Mr. Hartsell who represents himself to be an agent of yours instructed to purchase the water-works of Westville. Before entering into any negotiations with him the city naturally desires to be assured by you that he is a representative of your firm. As haste is necessary in this matter, we request you to reply at once and by special delivery.”

“Ah, I understand the delay now!” Katherine exclaimed. “Before making a deal with Mr. Manning, Mr. Blake and Mr. Peck wanted to be sure their man was what he said he was!”

“And now, Miss West,” Mr. Seymour wrote on, “since you have kept me in the dark as to the details of your plan, and as I have never heard of said Hartsell, I have not known just how to reply to your Mr. Blake. So I have had recourse to the vague brevity of a busy man, and have sent the following by the same mail that brings this to you: ‘Replying to your inquiry of the 3rd inst. I beg to inform you that I have a representative in Westville fully authorized to act for me in the matter of the water-works.’ I hope this reply is all right. Also there is a second hope, which is strong even if I try to keep it subdued; and that is that you will have to buy the water-works in for me.”

From that instant Katherine’s mind was all upon her scheme. She was certain that Mr. Seymour’s reply was already in the hands of Blake and Peck, and that they were even then planning, or perhaps had already planned, what action they should take. At once she called Old Hosie up by telephone.

“I think it looks as though the ‘nibble’ were going to develop into a bite, and quick,” she said rapidly. “Get into communication with Mr. Manning and tell him to make no final arrangement with those parties till he sees me. I want to know what they offer.”

It was an hour later, and the early night had already fallen, when there was a ring at the West door, and Old Hosie entered, alone. Katharine quickly led the old lawyer into the parlour.

“Well?” she whispered.

“Manning has just accepted an invitation for an automobile ride this evening from Charlie Peck.”

Katherine suddenly gripped his hand.

“That may be a bite!”

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.