“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.