“If what you say is true, then your father is guilty, for building such a filter.”
“You know better. You know that the guilty man is yourself.”
His face grew more yellowish-green.
“It’s not so! No one is more appalled by this disaster than I am!”
“I know you are appalled by the outcome. You did not plan to murder citizens. You only planned to defraud the city. But this epidemic is the direct consequence of your scheme. Every person who is now in a sick bed, you put that person there. Every person who may later go to his grave, you will have sent that person there.”
Her steady voice grew more accusing. “What does your conscience say to you? And what do you think the people will say to you, to the great public-spirited Mr. Blake, when they learn that you, prompted by the desire for money and power, have tried to rob the city and have stricken hundreds with sickness?”
His yellowish face contorted most horribly, but he did not answer.
“I see that your conscience has been asking you those same questions,” Katherine pursued. “It is something, at least, that your conscience is not dead. Those are not pleasant questions to have asked one, are they?”