“What I was saying was merely to recall how very important the water-works has been to us,” the prosecutor returned, with increased solemnity. He paused, and having gained that heightened stage effect of a well-managed silence, he continued: “Mr. Bruce, something very serious has occurred.”
For all its ostentation the prosecutor’s manner was genuinely impressive. Bruce looked quickly at the other two men. The agent was ill at ease, the minister pale and agitated.
“Come,” cried Bruce, “out with what you’ve got to tell me!”
“It is a matter of the very first importance,” returned the prosecutor, who was posing for a prominent place in the Express’s account of this affair—for however much the public men of Westville affected to look down upon the Express, they secretly preferred its superior presentment of their doings. “Doctor Sherman, in his capacity of president of the Voters’ Union, has just brought before me some most distressing, most astounding evidence. It is evidence upon which I must act both as a public official and as a member of the Arrangements Committee, and evidence which concerns you both as a committeeman and as an editor. It is painful to me to break——”
“Let’s have it from first hands,” interrupted Bruce, irritated by the verbal excelsior which the prosecutor so deliberately unwrapped from about his fact.
He turned to the minister, a slender man of hardly more than thirty, with a high brow, the wide, sensitive mouth of the born orator, fervently bright eyes, and the pallor of the devoted student—a face that instantly explained why, though so young, he was Westville’s most popular divine.
“What’s it about, Doctor Sherman?” the editor asked. “Who’s the man?”
There was no posing here for Bruce’s typewriter. The minister’s concern was deep and sincere.
“About the water-works, as Mr. Kennedy has said,” he answered in a voice that trembled with agitation. “There has been some—some crooked work.”
“Crooked work?” ejaculated the editor, staring at the minister. “Crooked work?”