“Doctor Sherman?” He stared at her. “I don’t know what you mean. The two men are the assistant superintendent of the water-works and the engineer at the pumping-plant.”
“How did you get at them?”
“Wilson and I started out to cross-examine everybody who might be in the remotest way connected with the case. My suspicion against the two men was first aroused by their strained behaviour. I went——”
“Then it was you who made this discovery, not that—that other lawyer?”
“Yes, I was the first to tackle the pair, though Wilson has helped me. He’s a great lawyer, Wilson. We’ve gone at them relentlessly—with accusation, cross-examination, appeal; with the result that this morning both of them broke down and confessed that Blake had secretly paid them to do all that lay within their power to make the water-works a failure.”
They followed the path in silence for several moments, Katherine’s eyes upon the ground. At length she looked up. In Bruce’s face she plainly read what she had guessed to be an extra motive with him all along, a glowering determination to crush her, humiliate her, a determination to cut the ground from beneath her ambition by overturning Blake and clearing her father without her aid.
“And so,” she breathed, “you have made good all your predictions. You have succeeded and I have failed.”
For an instant his square face glowed upon her, exultant with triumph. Then he partially subdued the look.
“We won’t discuss that matter,” he said. “It’s enough to repeat what I once said, that Wilson is a crackerjack lawyer.”
“All the same, I congratulate you—and wish you every success,” she said; and as quickly thereafter as she could she made her escape, her heart full of the bitterness of personal defeat.