At the head of the stairway a door stood open. This she entered, and found herself in the general editorial room, ankle-deep with dirt and paper. The air of the place told that the day's work was done. In one corner a telegraph sounder was chattering its tardy world-gossip to unheeding ears. In the centre at a long table, typewriters before them, three shirt-sleeved young men sprawled at ease reading the _Express_, which the "devil" had just brought them from the nether regions, moist with the black spittle of the beast that there roared and rumbled. At sight of her tall, fresh figure, a red spot in her either cheek, defiance in her brown eyes, Billy Harper, quicker than the rest, sprang up and crossed the room. "Miss West, I believe," he said. "Can I do anything for you?" "I wish to speak with Mr. Bruce," was her cold reply. "This way," and Billy led her across the wilderness of proofs, discarded copy and old newspapers, to a door beside the stairway that led down into the press-room. "Just go right in," he said. She entered. Bruce, his shirt-sleeves rolled up and his bared fore-arms grimy, sat glancing through the _Express_, his feet crossed on his littered desk, a black pipe hanging from one corner of his mouth. He did not look round but turned another page. "Well, what's the matter?" he grunted between his teeth. "I should like a few words with you," said Katherine. "Eh!" His head twisted about. "Miss West!" His feet suddenly dropped to the floor, and he stood up and laid the pipe upon his desk. For the moment he was uncertain how to receive her, but the bright, hard look in her eyes fixed his attitude. "Certainly," he said in a brusque, businesslike tone. He placed the atlas-bottomed chair near his own. "Be seated." She sat down, and he took his own chair. "I am at your service," he said. Her cheeks slowly gathered a higher colour, her eyes gleamed with a pre-triumphant fire, and she looked straight into his square, rather massive face. Over Blake she had felt an infinity of regret and pain. For this man she felt only boundless hatred, and she thrilled with a vengeful, exultant joy that she was about to unmask him--that later she might crush him utterly. "I am at your service," he repeated. She slowly wet her lips and gathered herself to strike, alert to watch the effects of her blow. "I have called, Mr. Bruce," she said with slow distinctness, "to let you know that I know that a conspiracy is under way to steal the water-works! And to let you know that I know that you are near its centre!" He started. "What?" he cried. Her devouring gaze did not lose a change of feature, not so much as the shifting in the pupil of his eye.