, 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 Westvil