Читать книгу Counsel for the Defense - Scott Leroy - Страница 9

But presently the sobs subsided, as though shut off by main force, and Katherine rose to her feet. She wiped her eyes and looked at her father, a wan smile on her reddened, still tremulous face.

“What a hope-inspiring lawyer you have, father!”

“I would not want a truer,” said he loyally.

“We won’t have one of these cloud-bursts again, I promise you. But when you have been under a strain for months, and things are stretched tighter and tighter, and at last something makes things snap, why you just can’t help – well,” she ended, “a man would have done something else, I suppose, but it might have been just as bad.”

“Worse!” avowed her father.

“Anyhow, it’s all over. I’ll just repair some of the worst ravages of the storm, and then we’ll talk about our programme for the trial.”

As she was arranging her hair before her father’s mirror, she saw, in the glass, the old man stoop and take something from the waste-basket. Turning his back to her, he cautiously examined the object.

She left the mirror and came up behind him.

“What are you looking at, dear?”

He started, and glanced up.

“Oh – er – that editorial Mr. Bruce referred to.” He rubbed his head dazedly. “If that should happen, with me even indirectly the cause of it – why, Katherine, it really would be pretty bad!” He held out the Clarion. “Perhaps, after all, you had better read it.”

She took the paper. The Clarion had from the first opposed the city’s owning the water-works, and the editorial declared that the present situation gave the paper, and all those who had held a similar opinion, their long-awaited triumph and vindication. “This failure is only what invariably happens whenever a city tries municipal ownership,” declared the editorial. “The situation has grown so unbearably acute that the city’s only hope of good water lies in the sale of the system to some private concern, which will give us that superior service which is always afforded by private capital. Westville is upon the eve of a city election, and we most emphatically urge upon both parties that they make the chief plank of their platforms the immediate sale of our utterly discredited water-works to some private company.”

The editorial did not stir Katherine as it had appeared to stir Bruce, nor even in the milder degree it had stirred Doctor West. She was interested in the water-works only in so far as it concerned her father, and the Clarion’s proposal had no apparent bearing on his guilt or innocence.

She laid the Clarion on the table, without comment, and proceeded to discuss the coming trial. The only course she had to suggest was that they plead for a postponement on the ground that they needed more time in which to prepare their defense. If that plea were denied, then before them seemed certain conviction. On that plea, then, they decided to place all their hope.

When this matter had been talked out Doctor West took the Clarion from the table and again read the editorial with troubled face, while Katherine walked to and fro across the floor, her mind all on the trial.

“If the town does sell, it will be too bad!” he sighed.

“I suppose so,” said Katherine mechanically.

“It has reached me that people are saying that the system isn’t worth anything like what we paid for it.”

“Is that so?” she asked absently.

Doctor West drew himself up and his faded cheeks flushed indignantly.

“No, it is not so. I don’t know what’s wrong, but it’s the very best system of its size in the Middle West!”

She paused.

“Forgive me – I wasn’t paying any attention to what I was saying. I’m sure it is.”

She resumed her pacing.

“But if they sell out to some company,” Doctor West continued, “the company will probably get it for a third, or less, of what it is actually worth.”

“So, if some corporation has been secretly wanting to buy it,” commented Katherine, “things could not have worked out better for the corporation if they had been planned.”

She came to a sudden pause, and stood gazing at her father, her lips slowly parting.

“It could not have worked out better for the corporation if it had been planned,” she repeated.

“No,” said Doctor West.

She picked up the Clarion, quickly read the editorial, and laid the paper aside.

“Father!” Her voice was a low, startled cry.

“Yes?”

She moved slowly toward him, in her face a breathless look, and caught his shoulders with tense hands.

“Perhaps it was planned!”

“What?”

Her voice rang out more loudly:

“Perhaps it was planned!”

“But Katherine – what do you mean?”

“Let me think. Let me think.” She began feverishly to pace the room. “Oh, why did I not think of this before!” she cried to herself. “I thought of graft – political corruption – everything else. But it never occurred to me that there might be a plan, a subtle, deep-laid plan, to steal the water-works!”

Doctor West watched her rather dazedly as she went up and down the floor, her brows knit, her lips moving in self-communion. Her connection with the Municipal League in New York had given her an intimate knowledge of the devious means by which public service corporations sometimes gain their end. Her mind flashed over all the situation’s possibilities.

Suddenly she paused before her father, face flushed, triumph in her eyes.

“Father, it was planned!”

“Eh?” said he.

“Father,” she demanded excitedly, “do you know what the great public service corporations are doing now?” Her words rushed on, not waiting for an answer. “They have got hold of almost all the valuable public utilities in the great cities, and now they are turning to a fresh field – the small cities. Westville is a rich chance in a small way. It has only thirty thousand inhabitants now. But it is growing. Some day it will have fifty thousand – a hundred thousand.”

“That’s what people say.”

“If a private company could get hold of the water-works, the system would not only be richly profitable at once, but it would be worth a fortune as the city grows. Now if a company, a clever company, wanted to buy in the water-works, what would be their first move?”

“To make an offer, I suppose.”

“Never! Their first step would be to try to make the people want to sell. And how would they try to make the people want to sell?”

“Why – why – ”

“By making the water-works fail!” Her excitement was mounting; she caught his shoulders. “Fail so badly that the people would be disgusted, just as they now are, and willing to sell at any price. And now, father – and now, father – ” he could feel her quivering all over – “listen to me! We’re coming to the point! How would they make the water-works fail?”

He could only blink at her.

“They’d make it fail by removing from office, and so disgracing him that everything he had done would be discredited, the one incorruptible man whose care and knowledge had made it a success! Don’t you see, father? Don’t you see?”

“Bless me,” said the old man, “if I know what you’re talking about!”

“With you out of the way, whom they knew they could not corrupt, they could buy under officials to attend to the details of making the water bad and the plant itself a failure – just exactly what has been done. You are not the real victim. You are just an obstruction – something that they had to get out of the way. The real victim is Westville! It’s a plan to rob the city!”

His gray eyes were catching the light that blazed from hers.

“I begin to see,” he said. “It hardly seems possible people would do such things. But perhaps you’re right. What are you going to do?”

“Fight!”

“Fight?” He looked admiringly at her glowing figure. “But if there is a strong company behind all this, for you to fight it alone – it will be an awful big fight!”

“I don’t care how big the fight is!” she cried exultantly. “What has almost broken my heart till now is that there has been no one to fight!”

A shadow fell on the old man’s face.

“But after all, Katherine, it is all only a guess.”

“Of course it is only a guess!” she cried. “But I have tested every other possible solution. This is the only one left, and it fits every known circumstance of the case. It is only a guess – but I’ll stake my life on its being the right guess!” Her voice rose. “Oh, father, we’re on the right track at last! We’re going to clear you! Don’t you ever doubt that. We’re going to clear you!”