Three men arose from about the flat-topped desk in the centre of the room, the prosecutor, the Reverend Doctor Sherman, and a rather smartly dressed man whom Bruce remembered to have seen once or twice but whom he did not know. With the first two the editor shook hands, and the third was introduced to him as Mr. Marcy, the agent of the Acme Filter Company, which had installed the filtering plant of the new water-works. Bruce turned in his brusque manner to the prosecuting attorney. "What's the matter?" he asked. "Suppose we all sit down first," suggested the prosecutor. They did so, and Kennedy regarded Bruce with a solemn, weighty stare. He was a lank, lantern-jawed, frock-coated gentleman of thirty-five, with an upward rolling forelock and an Adam's-apple that throbbed in his throat like a petrified pulse. He was climbing the political ladder, and he was carefully schooling himself into that dignity and poise and appearance of importance which should distinguish the deportment of the public man. "Well, what is it?" demanded Bruce shortly. "About the water-works?" "Yes," responded Kennedy. "The water-works, Mr. Bruce, is, I hardly need say, a source of pride to us all. To you especially it has had a large significance. You have made it a theme for a continuous agitation in your paper. You have argued and urged that, since the city's new water-works promised to be such a great success, Westville should not halt with this one municipal enterprise, but should refuse the new franchise the street railway company is going to apply for, take over the railway, run it as a municipal----" "Yes, yes," interrupted Bruce impatiently. "But who's dead? Who wants the line of march changed to go by his grocery store?" "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----"