From this inception her deductions followed in logical feminine sequence. If she loved him with a completeness which was both preadamic and neoteric, it was of course because he was consumed with a similar passion; in other words he was her mate. He might be too comfortable and content to have realised it so far, but only one awakening was possible, and hers was the entrancing part to reveal him to himself.
She knew that while by no means a beauty, she was as far from commonplace in colouring at least as in style. Her eyes were an odd opaque olive, their tint so pronounced that it seemed to invade the pale ivory of her skin and the smooth masses of her hair. It was a far more subtle face than American women as a rule possess, and the eyes in spite of a curious inscrutability that might mean anything were capable of a play of lights directed from a battery more archaic than modern; and late one evening after she had read him an impassioned drama (ancient) and there was a dusky rose in either cheek, she turned them on.
Rush immediately took fright. She had not roused a responsive spark of passion in him. Moreover, he was now haunted continually by the image of a sweet, remote, and (to him) far more mysterious woman, whom he worshipped as the ideal of all womanhood.
There was none of the old time American suavity about Rush. He was abrupt, forthright, and impatient. But he was kind and innately chivalrous. He "let Miss Crumley down" as gently as he could; buthe let her down. No doubt of that. In less than a week she faced the bewildering fact that a man could strike loose a woman's emotional torrents while his own depths awaited the magical touch of another. It was incredible, preposterous.
For a time Alys, in the privacy of her atelier, raged like a fury. She cursed Rush, particularly when engaged in a violent struggle with the pride which alone held her from grovelling at his feet.
She was further incensed that he had revealed her to herself as a mere morbid unsatisfied girl, whose quarter of a century should be crowned by a little family of three; and at last she doubted if she had ever loved him at all. That she had been a mere female principle unable to escape its impersonal destiny disgusted her with life, but it served to restore her balance and philosophy.
Being a girl of brains and character she emerged from the encounter with pride still crested in the eyes of the man; and if his image was too deeply stamped into her imagination to prevent a recurrence of wild desire whenever she was so imprudent as to let her mind wander, she remembered that all great physical upheavals are followed by many minor shocks, and waited with what patience she could command for full delivery.
Of the sanguinary condition of the battle ground in his young friend's soul Rush had a mere glimpse before she took heed and dissembled. He assumed that she either had fallen in love with him after the fashion of girls when they saw too much of a man, or that she was eager to marry and improve her condition. He reproached himself for thoughtlessness, renounced the long evenings in the pretty room with a sigh, and inhis bachelor quarters read the books of her choice. He had a very kindly feeling for her, for he knew that he owed her a debt; if he had not met the other woman—who could tell? Moreover, as he conceived it to be his duty to shield her from spiteful comment, he danced with her in public and joined her on the street whenever they met.
But if he knew nothing of the intricate and interminable ramifications of sex psychology, the infinite variety of moods peculiar to a woman in love, he was well enough aware that love is easily turned to hate, particularly when vanity has been deeply wounded; and although he had conceived a high esteem for Alys Crumley's character during the weeks of their intimacy, he knew that men had been mistaken in their estimate of women before this, and that if she discovered that he loved another woman she might be capable of taking the basest revenge.
It was possible that she was the noblest of her sex, and he hoped she was, but as he considered her that night, he realised that it behooved him to walk warily nevertheless. By the time he could marry Enid Balfame, or even betray his desire to marry her, this crime would have passed into county history. Of the real danger he never thought.
The vision evoked of Alys Crumley was accompanied by that of her home, and he looked round his stark bachelor quarters with a sigh.
The untidy sitting-room was crowded with law books and legal reviews; the maid had given it up in despair long since, and only swept out the ashes daily and dusted once a week.
In the small bedroom was an iron bed like a soldier's;neckties hung from the chandelier; on the bureau and table beside the bed were more books, several by the young British authors of the moment for whom Miss Crumley had communicated some of her rather perfunctory enthusiasm.
He flung his clothes all over the room as he undressed. He hated bachelor quarters. Six months hence he would be the master of a home as exquisite as the woman he loved. Balfame! The man was dead, but as Rush thought of him his face turned almost black and his hands tingled and clenched. It would be long before he could hear that name mentioned without a hot uprush of hatred and loathing. But it subsided and he took a bath and "turned in."
As Rush walked to the Elks' Club for breakfast a few hours later he felt that suspicion was in the very air of Elsinore, the very leaves of the quiet Sunday streets rustled with it. Even on Atlantic Avenue there were knots of men discussing the murder, and in Main Street every man that passed received a hard stare.
Rush was thankful to observe that all looked as if they had gone to bed late and slept little, and when he met Sam Cummack on the steps of the clubhouse he realised the advantages of the habit of careful grooming to which the deceased's brother-in-law was quite indifferent.
"Oh, Dwight!" groaned Cummack, seizing his hand. "Where were you last night? I'd have liked to have you round."
"I was in Brooklyn and got back late. What's your opinion?"
"I've had a dozen but they don't seem to hold water. I guess it was a gunman, imported direct—though perhaps I'm just hoping it wasn't one of them trollops did it—for the sake of the family as well as poor Dave's name. I don't want a scandal like that. Murder's bad enough, the Lord knows."
"What sort of footsteps in the grounds?"
"Every kind we've got in Elsinore, I guess. Aboutforty people were runnin' round the yard before the police came. Funny that Gifning didn't think of that. But he says the breath was knocked out of him. Jimminy! I never knew anything to upset the town like this before—the county, you might say. The telephone's been buzzin' till the girls have threatened to strike. An operator fainted this morning—wonder if Dave knew her?"
"Well, I am rather surprised to learn that Balfame was so popular—"
"'Tain't that only—though Dave still had lots of friends in spite of that ugly temper he was growin'; but we've all got enemies—every last one of us—and to be shot down at his own gate like that—Gee, it has given every man in town the creeps. We must get the man quick and make an example of him. I hope I'm drawn."
"I hope he doesn't ask me to defend him. How is Mrs. Balfame bearing up?"
"Fine. She's as cool as they make 'em. I'd hate to be married to one of them cucumbers myself, but they're damned convenient in times of trouble. Maybe she cared a lot for Dave; who knows? At any rate we must make people think she did. I don't want suspicion pointing to her."
"What! It is incredible that you should think of such a thing." Rush, always pale, had turned as white as chalk. "You can't mean that people are saying—"
"Not yet. But we've got to be prepared for anything, especially with these New York newspapermen on the trail. Unless we catch the murderer damned quick, every last one of us that was close to Dave that can't prove an alibi will be suspected. Why, I walkedwith him for two blocks after he left my house—thought he might not be able to make it alone, and he wouldn't go in the car; then, I didn't go straight home, either. I went to my office to straighten out something—Oh, Lord! don't let's talk of it; I must have been there alone, not a soul to see me, when he was shot. It gives me the horrors to think of it—"
"Nonsense! It was well known that you were his best friend. No one would think of you."
"They might! They might!"
"Well—about Mrs. Balfame?"
"Oh, she's got the best alibi ever. She'd packed his suitcase and carried it downstairs, and even written a note describing some bag or other she wanted and pinned it to his coat. I was there when the police examined it. They're not saying who they're suspectin', but they're doin' a heap of thinkin'. Fact remains that she was alone in the front of the house—that mutt of a hired girl she's got was way up in the back part groanin' with a toothache when I routed her out. If she wasn't such a fright that Dave wouldn't have looked at her—Well, the police know that Dave wasn't what you might call a model husband; but Enid, so far as we all know, never rowed him. That's the most tryin' sort, though, and generally conceals the most hate. But she had her clubs and all the rest of it. Maybe she didn't care. I'm only wonderin' what Phipps thinks. That's the reason I want her to see the newspapermen. She might throw them off the scent at least. Of course, they'd rather she'd done it than any one—"
"You won't even hint to her that she may be suspected?" interrupted Rush, sharply.
"Oh, Lord, no. I'd never dare. Just persuade her somehow. Guess Anna or Polly can manage it."
Rush turned and walked down the steps. "I'll go to the Elsinore to breakfast. The reporters are likely to show up there. I know Jim Broderick. We must be on the job all the time."
To Dr. Anna alone Mrs. Balfame told the story of the night, although, implicit as was her trust, with certain reservations. She omitted the detail of the poisoned lemonade, but otherwise unburdened herself with freedom and relief.
"Before I knew where I was," she concluded, "there was the kitchen door closed behind me. I can't understand why I lost my presence of mind. I could easily have run through the back door and out the front, and reached him about the time Gifning did."
Dr. Anna was drinking strong coffee. It was eight o'clock, and she had gone downstairs and made breakfast for her friend and herself, Frieda having retired to her room and bolted the door. The doctor had heard the whole story as soon as she arrived, but after an interval of sleep had asked for it again.
"I think it's better as it is," she said thoughtfully. "No one could have seen you. The moon rose late; the night at that time must have been pitch dark. The trees alone would have shielded you, even had any one been watching. Suspicion never would fall on you anyhow; you are too far above it, and Dave had been insulting people right and left the last year. But you want to avoid blackmail. The only thing that disturbs me is that that girl may have been on the back stairs when you came in. I'll come in for lunch andtalk to her then. You keep to your room. Rest, and sleep if you can. I don't fancy you'll have early visitors. Everybody'll sleep late. I wish I could!"
"Will you stop in and see Dr. Lequeur about yourself—"
"If I can find a minute. Don't worry about me. I'm tough, and the Lord knows I ought to be immune."
But she found no time to see a doctor in her own behalf and returned to the Balfame house between twelve and one. Reporters were sitting on the box hedge and on the doorstep. She evaded them good-naturedly, but it was some time before she was admitted by the rebellious Frieda, who had been summoned to the front door some sixteen times during the forenoon.
When Dr. Anna finally found herself in the dark hall she saw that Frieda's face was swollen and tied up in a towel. The spectacle gave the doctor an instant opportunity.
"The worst infliction on earth, bar none!" she announced, following the maid into the kitchen. "Let me take a look at it? How long have you had it?"
"Two days," replied Frieda sullenly, unamenable to sympathy which offered no immediate surcease of pain.
"Abscess?"
"Don't know."
Frieda's mental processes were slow. Before she could follow the doctor's the bandage was ripped off and a sharp eye was examining the inflamed interior of her cavernous mouth. A moment later Dr. Anna had opened her doctor's bag and was anointing the surroundings of the tortured tooth with a brown liquid.
"That won't cure it," she said, "but no dentist coulddo more until the swelling is reduced. And it will save you a preliminary bill. Keep this. As soon as you feel you can stand it, go to Dr. Meyers, Main Street. Tell him I sent you. But why didn't you tell Mrs. Balfame last night? Why endure pain? Kind mistresses always keep such alleviatives in the house, and Mrs. Balfame is not the sort to mind being roused in the middle of the night if some one were suffering."
The pain had subsided under treatment, and Frieda was restored to such civility as she knew. "It only got bad when I am dancing to the hall, and I ran home. I had some drops in my room."
"Oh, I see. Did they stop the pain?"
"Nix. Ache like before, but I lie down and perhaps can sleep if those men have not make me come downstairs to make the coffee. All night I am up." And she glowered with self-pity.
"But when you found that your drops were no good, why didn't you run at once to Mrs. Balfame? You were braver than I should have been. It was about eight o'clock, was it not, when Mr. Balfame was shot? Mrs. Balfame was probably awake when you came in, even if she had gone to bed. Or perhaps you didn't know that she came home early?"
"On Saturday nights she come home after I do. How I am to know she is here?"
"But you might have gone to her medicine closet—in her bathroom."
"When you have the pain like hot iron you think of all the good things for it the next day." Frieda relapsed into sullen silence; Dr. Anna hastily disposed of the lunch prepared for her and went upstairs.
Mrs. Balfame was lying on the sofa. She had notdressed, but looked as trim as usual in a blue and white bathrobe; never having been a woman to "let herself go," she did not possess a wrapper. Her long hair hung in two loose braids, and she looked very pale and lovely.
"Put Frieda out of your head," said Dr. Anna hurriedly; familiar voices ascended from the path below. "She heard nothing. You don't when you have a jumping toothache."
"Thank heaven!"
A soft knock announced several of her friends. They were dressed for motoring; this being Sunday, not even death must interfere with the cross-country refreshment of the Elsinore husband. They kissed Mrs. Balfame and congratulated her upon her appearance and her nerves.
"But one thing must be settled right here," announced Mrs. Gifning, "and that is the question of your mourning. I'll go over on the eight-ten in the morning and see to it. But you never wear ready-made things and it would be a pity to waste money that way. Are you going to wear a veil at the inquest?"
"Of course I am. Do you suppose I shall submit to being stared at by a curious mob and snapshotted by reporters?"
"That's just what I thought. I'll bring back a smart hat and a long crêpe veil with me, and order your widow's outfit from one of the big shops; they'll have it over in time for the funeral. And you can wear your tailor suit to the inquest; it will be half covered by the veil."
"What a good idea!" said Mrs. Balfame gratefully. "You are too kind."
"Kind? Nothing! I just love to shop for other people. How lucky that you hadn't bought your new winter suit. It might have been blue."
"It was to have been blue." There was a note of regret in Mrs. Balfame's voice. "Don't forget to buy me two black chiffon blouses. One very simple for every day; the other, really good. And something white for the neck. Of course I wouldn't wear it on the street; but in the house—black is too trying!"
"Rather. Trust me. Have you black gloves—undressed kid, I mean? You don't want to look like an undertaker." Mrs. Balfame nodded. "That's all, I think. Send me a line if you think of something else. I must run and take Giffy for his ride. He's all broken up, poor darling. Wasn't he just splendid last night?" She blew a kiss along the widow's forehead and ran out with a light step that caused her more substantial friends to sigh with envy. She, too, was in the manœuvring forties, but she had gone into training at thirty.
"I guess we'd all better go." Mrs. Battle, with a sudden dexterous heave of her armoured bulk, was out of the chair and on her feet. "Now, try to sleep, dearie. You are just the bravest thing! But to-morrow will be trying. Sam Cummack says the coroner won't hold the inquest before afternoon, but if they do and your veil isn't here, I've got one of Ma's packed away in camphor that I'll get out for you. I'll get it out to-night and have it airing—we won't take any chances; and you sha'n't be annoyed by the vulgar curious."
"Oh, thank you! But that is not the only ordeal. It's even more trying to stay in the house all these days—in this room! If I could walk in the grounds. But I suppose those reporters are everywhere."
"They are swarming, simply swarming. And the avenue is so packed with automobiles you can't navigate. People have come from all over the country—some from New York and Brooklyn."
Mrs. Balfame curled her lip with disgust. Morbid curiosity, like other vulgarities, was incomprehensible to her. Death, no matter how desired or how accomplished, should inspire hush and respect, not provide excitement for a Sunday afternoon.
"Let us hope they will find the wretch to-day," she said impatiently. "That will end it, for, of course, it is the element of mystery that has made the case so notorious. Is there no clue?"
"Not the ghost of one." Mrs. Cummack, too, was adjusting her automobile veil. "Sam's on the job,—I'm only taking him out for an hour or two; and so, of course, are the police—hot. But he's covered his tracks so far."
"If it is a he," whispered Mrs. Battle to Mrs. Frew, as they stole softly down the stairs. "What about that red-head, or that telephone girl who fainted? They say she had to go home—"
"Can you imagine caring enough for Dave Balfame—Let's get out of this, for heaven's sake, or I'll faint right here."
The atmosphere was as depressing as the dark interior of the house, for it was heavy laden with the scent of flowers and death. The parlour doors, behind which lay David Balfame, embalmed and serene in his casket, were closed, but hushed whisperings came forth like the rustling of funeral wreaths disturbed by thevapours of decay. The devoted friends of the widow burst out into the sunshine almost with a cry of relief.
Here all was as animated as a county fair. The grounds were void, save by patrolling police, but the avenue and adjoining streets were packed with every type of car from limousine to farmer's runabout, and many more people were afoot, staring at the house, venturing as near the hedge as they dared, to inspect the grove. They asked questions, answered them, offered theories, all in a breath, and without the slightest respect for any opinion save their own. A few children, sucking peppermint sticks, sat on the hedge.
"Did you ever?" murmured Mrs. Frew to Mrs. Battle. "Didyou ever?" She shuddered with refined disgust, but felt thrilled to her marrow. "Just Enid's luck!" was her auxiliary but silent reflection.
At the inquest on the following day, Mrs. Balfame, circumvested in crêpe, sat between Mr. and Mrs. Cummack, gracefully erect, and without even a nervous flutter of the hands.
When called upon to testify, she told in a clear low voice the meagre story already known to her friends and by this time the common property of Elsinore and all that read the newspapers of the State.
The coroner released her as quickly as possible, and called her servant to the stand. Although the swelling in Frieda's face had subsided somewhat under Dr. Anna's repeated ministrations, the tooth still throbbed; and she also was released after announcing resentfully that she'd seen "notings," heard "notings," and "didn't know notings" about the murder except having to get up and make coffee when she was like to die with the ache in her tooth.
There was no one else to testify, except Cummack, who gave the hour, about a quarter or ten minutes to eight, when the deceased had left his house, and Mr. Gifning and his two guests, who testified to hearing the sound of Balfame's voice raised in song, followed a moment later by the report of a pistol. They also described minutely the position of the body when found. Indubitably the shot had been fired from the grove.
The staff artists were forced to be content with a black sketch of a very long widow, who held her headhigh and emanated an air of chill repose. One reporter, camera set, forced his way to her side as she was about to enter Mrs. Battle's limousine and begged her plaintively to raise her veil; but he might as well as have addressed a somnambulist; Mrs. Balfame did not even snub him.
"Why should they want a picture of me?" she asked Mrs. Battle, wonderingly. "It's poor Dave that is dead. Whoever heard of me outside of Elsinore?"
"I guess you haven't amused yourself reading the papers. You've been written up as a beauty and the intellectual and social leader of Elsinore. Some distinction, that! The public is mighty interested in you all over the State and will be for several days yet, no doubt. Then we'll find the man and they'll forget all about the whole affair until the trial comes up."
Mrs. Balfame, clad in full weeds, more dignified, stately and unapproachable than ever, ran the gauntlet of staring eyes at the church funeral, apparently unconscious of the immense crowd of women that had driven over from every township in Brabant County. That the women did not approve of her haughty head and tearless eyes, brilliant even behind the heavy crêpe, would have concerned her little if she had known it. Her mind was concentrated upon the future moment when this series of hideous ordeals would be over and she could re-enter the decent seclusion of private life.
Mrs. Balfame may have had her faults, but a vulgar complaisance to publicity was not among them.
She had also made up her mind sternly not to feel happy, not to rejoice in her freedom, not to make a plan for the future until her husband was in his grave. But all during that long service, while the new parsondiscoursed unctuously upon the virtues and eminence of the slain, she had the sensation of holding her breath.
It was four days from the night of the murder before she consented to see the reporters. Meanwhile every suspected person had proved an alibi, including the red-haired Miss Foxie Bell, and the indignant and highly respectable Miss Mamie Russ, who officiated at the telephone. She had known the deceased, yes, and once or twice she had driven out to one of the roadhouses with him, where a number of her friends were indulging in a quiet Sunday afternoon tango, but she had merely looked upon him as a kind fatherly sort of person; and at the hour of his death she was asleep, as her landlady could testify.
Old Dutch had indignantly repudiated the charge of employing gunmen, and had even attended the funeral and shed tears. Whatever the faults of the deceased, they were not of a nature to antagonise permanently the erring members of his own sex. Moreover, he had been an able politician, respected of his enemies, and was now glorified by his cowardly and untimely taking off.
The local police had an uneasy suspicion that the assassin was one of their "pals"—in that small and democratic community, where every man was an Elk from the banker to the undertaker. They were quite ready to drop the case, loudly ascribing the deed to an ordinary housebreaker, or to some unknown enemy from out the impenetrable rabbit warrens of New York City.
The newspaper men were chagrined and desperate. The Balfame Case had proved uncommonly magnetic to the New York public. They had done their best tocreate this interest, and now were on their mettle to "make good." But they were beginning to wish they had waited for at least a lantern's ray at the end of the dark perspective before exciting the public with descriptions of the winding picturesque old street of the ancient village of Elsinore; the stately old-time residence at its head which had housed (in more or less discomfort) three generations of Balfames, the sinister grove of trees that had sheltered the dastardly assassin, the prominence and political importance of David Balfame who had inherited this ancestral estate, and played among those trees in childhood; his unsuspecting and vocal return at an early hour to be shot down at his own gate.
All this appealed acutely to a public which makes the fortune of the sentimental play, the "crook" play, and the "play with a punch and a mystery." Here was the real thing, as rural as the childhood of many of the Greater New York public—weary of black-hand murders and anarchist bombs—with a mystery as deep as any ever invented by their favourite authors, and in no remote district but at their very gates.
If anything more were necessary to rivet their interest, there was the handsome and elegant (if provincial) Mrs. Balfame, as austere as a Roman matron, as chaste as Diana, as decently invisible in public during this harrowing ordeal as imported crêpe could make her. The men reporters had dismissed the widow with a paragraph of personal description, but the newspaper women had filled half a page in each of the evening journals.
The press had given the public at least two columns a day of the Balfame murder; there had been abiography of every suspect in turn, and there had been the thrilling episode of the bloodhounds turned loose upon that trampled enclosure. But no road led anywhere, and the public, baffled for the moment, but still hopeful, demanded an interview with the interesting widow.
Of course, her alibi was perfect, but all felt sure that she "knew something about it." Her unhappy married life was now common property, and if it only could be proved that she had had a lover—but the newspapers as has been said were discouraging upon this point. Mrs. Balfame (quoting the young men this time), while amiable and kind to all, was cold and indifferent. Men were afraid of her. The New York detectives had "fine-tooth-combed" Brabant County and reported disgustedly to their chief that she was "just one of those club women; no use for men at all."
The reporters, however, had made up their minds to fix the crime, if possible, upon her. They would have compromised upon the young servant, but Frieda, especially with her face framed in a towel stained brown, and her eyes swollen above the wrenching agonies of an ulcerated tooth, was hopeless material. Moreover, they were convinced, after thorough investigation, that the deceased's gallantries, while sufficiently catholic, had not run to serving maids, and that of late particularly he had loudly hated all things German.
Regarding Mrs. Balfame they held their judgment in reserve until they met and talked with her; but Broderick had extracted the miserable details of her life from his friend, Alys Crumley, as well as a lively description of the scene at the Country Club; they believed they could bring to light enough to base a sensational trial upon, whatever the verdict of the jury.
It must not be inferred for a moment that these brilliant and industrious young men were bloodthirsty. They knew that if Mrs. Balfame had committed the crime and could be induced to make a defiant confession, it was more than probable that she would go scot free; that in no case was there more than a bare possibility of a woman of her age, position and appearance being sent to the chair. But it is these alert, resourceful, ruthless young men who make the newspapers we read with such interest twice a day; it is they who write the columns of "news" that we skip if dull (with a mental reservation to change our newspaper), or devour without a thought of the tireless individual activities that re-supply us daily with our strongest impersonal interests. Sometimes a trifle more sparkle or vitality, or a deeper note, will wring from us that facile comment, "How well written!" without a pause to reflect that mere good writing never made a newspaper, or to hazard a guess that behind the column that thrilled us were hours, perhaps weeks, of incessant unravelling of clues, of following a scent in the dark, with death at every turn. It is the business of reporters to furnish news of vital interest to a pampered public, and as so large a part of it is furnished to them by the weaknesses and misdeeds of mankind, what wonder that the reporters grow cynical and make no bones about providing clues that will lead, at the least, to many columns charged with suspense and sensational human interest!
These young men knew the moment the Balfame case "broke" that it was big with possibilities; they scented a mystery that would be cleared by the arrestof no local politician; and they knew the interlocking social relationships of these loyal old communities. It was "up to them" to solve the mystery, and by a process of elimination, spurred by their own desire to give the public the best the market afforded, they arrived at Mrs. Balfame.
Within forty-eight hours they were hot on her trail. Among other things, they discovered that she was an expert shot at a target; but did she keep a pistol in the house? She had used one, kept for target purpose, out at the Country Club, and it was impossible to verify the rumor that in common with many another, she had one in the house as a protection against burglars and tramps.
At their instigation, Phipps, the local chief of police, had reluctantly consented to interrogate her on this point (a mere matter of form, he assured her), and she had replied blandly that she never had possessed a pistol. The chief apologised and withdrew. He was of a respectable Brabant family himself, and was horrified that a member of the good old order should even be brushed by the wing of suspicion. Being a quiet family man and a Republican to boot, he had never approved of Dave Balfame, and had only refrained from arresting him upon more than one occasion—notably a week or two since when he had publicly blacked the eye of Miss Billy Gump—out of deference to the good name of Elsinore; and after all, they were both Elks and had spun many a yarn in the comfortable clubrooms. Inheritance, circumstances, and a fine common contempt for the inferior brands of whiskey, had made them "stand in together, whatever happened." Thechief had no love for Mrs. Balfame, for she had frozen him too often, but she was the pride of Elsinore and he was alert to defend her.
It had never occurred to Mrs. Balfame that she would incur even a passing suspicion, and she had left the pistol in the pocket of her automobile coat. Immediately after the visit of the chief of police she took the pistol into the sewing-room, locked the door, covered the keyhole, and buried the weapon in the depths of an old sofa. As her large strong fingers had mended furniture many times, no one would suspect that this ancient piece (dating back to the first Balfame) had been tampered with. She performed the operation with haughty reluctance, but the instinct of self-preservation abides in the proudest souls, and Mrs. Balfame had the wit to realise that it was by far the better part of valour.
The shooting occurred on Saturday night. By Wednesday all the horrors of the criminal episode were over and she felt as young as she looked, and at liberty to begin life again, a free and happy woman. Her mourning was perfect.
She made up her mind to see the newspaper men and have done with it. They had haunted the grounds—no patrols could keep them out—sat on the doorstep, forced their way into the kitchen, and rung the front door-bell so frequently that hourly she expected the scowling Frieda to give notice. Mr. Cummack told her repeatedly that she might as well give in first as last and she finally agreed with him.
It was five o'clock in the afternoon when they were admitted to the spacious old-fashioned parlour with its incongruous modern notes.
Like many women, Mrs. Balfame had an admirable taste in dress, so long as she marched with the conventions, but neither the imagination nor the training to create the notable room. Long since she had banished the old "body brussels" carpet and substituted rugs subdued in colour if commonplace in design. The plush "set" had not gone to the auction room, however, but had been reupholstered with a serviceable "tapestry covering." A what-not still stood in one corner, and both centre-table and mantel were covered with marble, although the wax works that once embellished them were now in the garret. The wall paper, which had been put on the year before, was a neutral pale brown. Nevertheless, it was a homelike room, for there were two rocking-chairs and three easy chairs; and on a small side-table was Mrs. Balfame's workbasket. On the marble centre-table was a most artistic lamp. The curtains matched the furniture.
There were ten reporters from New York, two from Brooklyn, three from Brabant County, and four correspondents. Word had been passed during the morning that Mrs. Balfame would see the newspaper men, and they were there in force; those that were not "on the job all the time" having loyally been notified by those that were. But they had stolen a march on the women. Not a "sob-sister" was in that intent file, led by James Broderick ofThe New York Morning News, that entered the Balfame house and parlour on Wednesday at five o'clock.
Frieda had announced that her mistress would be "down soon," and Mr. Broderick immediately drew the curtains back from the four long windows, and placed a comfortable chair for Mrs. Balfame in aposition where she would face both the light and her visitors. It was not the first stage that the astute Mr. Broderick had set; and whenever he was on a case he fell naturally into the position of leader; not only had he the most alert and driving, the most resourceful and penetrative mind, but his good looks and suave manner inspired confidence in the victim, and led him insensibly into damaging admissions. He was a tall slim young man, a graduate of Princeton, not yet thirty, with a regular face and warm colouring, and an expression so pleasant that the keenness of his eyes passed unnoted. In general equipment and dress he was typical of his kind, unless they took to drink and grew slovenly; but his more emphatic endowment enabled him to take the lead among a class of men whom he respected too thoroughly to antagonise with arrogance.
"Late—to make an impression!" he growled, but young Ryder Bruce of the evening edition of his paper nudged him. Mrs. Balfame was on the staircase opposite the parlour doors.
The young men stood up and watched her as she slowly descended, her black dress clinging to her tall rather rigid figure, her head high, her profile as calm as marble, her eye as devoid of expression as if awaiting the click of the camera.
The reporters were prejudiced on the spot, so impatient are newspaper men of any sort of pose or attempt to impress them. As she entered the room she greeted them pleasantly, looking straight at them with her large cold eyes, and allowed herself to be conducted to a chair by the polite Mr. Broderick.
She knew that in her high unrelieved black she looked older than common, but this was a deliberatelycalculated effect. She was not as adroit as she would have been after recurrent experiences with the press, but instinct warned her to look the dignified middle-aged widow, quite above the coquetry of the bare throat of fashion, or of tempering her weeds with soft white lawn.
As Mr. Broderick made a little speech of gratitude for her gracious reception of the press, she appraised her guests. The greater number were well-groomed, well-dressed, well-bred in effect, very sure of themselves; altogether a striking contrast to the local reporters that had come in on their heels.
She answered Mr. Broderick diffidently: "I have never been interviewed. I am afraid you will hardly find—what do you call it?—a story?—in me."
"We don't wish to be too personal," he said gently, "but the public is tremendously interested in this case, and more particularly in you. It isn't always that it takes an interest in the wife of a murdered man—but—well, you see, you are such a personality in this community. We really must have an interesting interview." He smiled at her with a charming expression of masculine indulgence that made her own eyes soften. "You see—don't you—we hate to intrude—but—we understand that you had a serious quarrel with your husband on the last day of his life. Would you mind telling us what you did after leaving the Country Club?"
She gave him a frozen stare, but recalled Mr. Cummack's warning not to take offence—"for remember that these men have their living to get, and if they fall down on their job they don't get it. Blame their paper, not them."
"That is a surprising question," she said sweetly. "Do you expect me to answer it?"
"Why not? Of course you read the newspapers. You know we have told the public of the scene at the clubhouse already—and with no detriment to you! It was a very dramatic scene, and every moment that you passed from that time until Mr. Balfame fell at his gate will be of the most absorbing interest to the public. In fact, they will eat it up."
Mrs. Balfame shrugged her shoulders. "As a matter of fact I have not read a newspaper since the—" She set her lips and her eyes grew hard—"the crime. I know you have written a great deal about it, but it hasn't interested me. Well—Dr. Anna Steuer drove me home, and shortly after I went up to my room—"
"Pardon me; let us take things in their turn. You took a box of sardines and some bread from the pantry, did you not?"
"I did." Mrs. Balfame's tones were both puzzled and bored.
"And then you were interrupted." As she raised her eyebrows, he continued. "The appearance of the sardine can indicated that."
She gave him a brilliant smile, her substitute for the average woman's merry laugh. "You are teaching me how they write those intricate detective tales my husband was so fond of. It is true that I was interrupted, but it is equally true that I should probably have left the can as you found it in any case, for I soon realised that I was not hungry. I had had sandwiches at the club, and although I always think it best to eat something before retiring, I was hardly hungry enough for sardines—"
"You ate sandwiches at the club? I have been out there once or twice and never saw—I was under the impression that during the afternoon the young people danced and the matrons played bridge before an early dinner."
"Did you?" Mrs. Balfame's eyes and tones abashed even Mr. Broderick, and he tacked hastily: "Oh, well, that is immaterial, as the lawyers say. And of course you ladies may have sandwiches served in the bridge rooms. May I ask what interrupted you?"
"My husband telephoned from Mr. Cummack's house that he was obliged to go to Albany at once and asked me to pack his suitcase."
"Yes, we have seen the suitcase. You suggested, did you not—over the telephone—making him a glass of lemonade with aromatic and bromide in it?"
Mrs. Balfame experienced an obscure thrill of alarm, but her haughty stare betrayed nothing. One of the reporters whose "job" it was to watch her hands, noted that they curved rigidly. "And may I ask how you foundthatout? Really, I think I feel even more curiosity than you do."
"He told it to Cummack and the other men present as a good joke, adding that you knew your business."
"I did. The matter had passed entirely out of my mind. More momentous things have happened since! Well—I made the glass of lemonade and left it on the dining-room table; then I went upstairs and packed his suitcase—"
"One moment. What became of that glass of lemonade? No one remembers having seen it, although I have made very particular inquiries."
Mrs. Balfame by this time was quite cold, but her brain was working almost as quickly as Mr. Broderick's. She uncurved her fingers and smiled. But her keen brain-sword had one edge only; the other was dull with inexperience. She knew nothing of the vast practice of newspaper men in detecting the lie.
"Oh—I drank it myself." She had drawn her brows for a moment as if in an effort of memory. "When I heard the noise outside—when I heard them say 'coroner'—and realised that something dreadful had happened, I ran downstairs. Then I suddenly felt faint and remembered the lemonade with the aromatic spirits of ammonia and bromide in it. I ran into the dining-room and drank it—fortunately!"
"And what became of the glass?"
"Oh!" Mrs. Balfame was now righteously indignant. "How do I know? Or any one else? Frieda, soon after, began to make coffee by the quart—and I don't doubt whisky was brought round from the Elks. Who could have noticed a glass more or less?"
"Frieda swears she never saw it."
"She has the worst memory of any servant I ever had, and that is saying a good deal."
Mr. Broderick regarded her with admiration. He distrusted her more every moment, but he had realised at once that he had no ordinary woman to deal with, and he rejoiced in the clash of wits.
The other young men were sitting forward, almost breathless, and Mrs. Balfame was now fully alive to the danger of her position. But all sensation of fear had left her. All the iron in her nature fused in the crucible of those terrible moments and came forth finely tempered steel.
"Anything more?"
"Oh—ah—yes. Would you mind telling us what you did after you had packed the suitcase and brought it downstairs?"
"I went up to my room and began to undress for bed."
"But that must have been quite fifteen minutes before Mr. Balfame's return. He walked from Cummack's house, which is about a mile from here. It was noticed that you merely had taken your dress off. Would you not have had time to get into bed?"
"If I were a man. But I had my hair to brush—with fifty strokes; and—a little nightly massage, if you will have it. Besides, I had intended to go down and lock the front door after my husband had left."
"Ah!" The admiration of the young men mounted higher. They disliked her coldly, if only for that lack of sex-magnetism, which men, particularly young men, naïve in their extensive surface psychology, take as a personal affront. They did not believe a word she said, and they did not give her and her possible fate a throb of sympathy, but they generously pronounced her "a wonder."
Mr. Broderick took a chance shot. "And did you not during that time look out of the window—toward the grove?"
Mrs. Balfame hesitated the fraction of a minute, then wisely returned to her know-nothing policy. "Why should I? Certainly not. I heard no sound out there. I am not in the habit of examining the grounds from my window at night. It is enough to go through the lower rooms before I lock up."
"But your window was dark when the men ran over from Gifning's after hearing the shot. They remember that. Do you brush your hair—and—and massage in the dark?"
Mrs. Balfame sat back in her chair with the resigned air of the victim who expects an interview with inquisitive newspaper men to last all night. "No. But I sometimes sit in the dark. I told you that I intended to sit up—partly dressed—until my husband had gone. I did not feel like reading, and my eyes were tired. As you know so much, you may have guessed that I cried a little after that trying afternoon. I do not often cry, and my eyes stung."
"But you had forgiven your husband?"
"I had forgiven him many times before. I infer that you know that also."
"Mrs. Balfame, is it not true that about two years ago you contemplated obtaining a divorce?"
This time her eyes flashed with anger. "I see that my kind friends have been gossiping. You would seem to have interviewed everybody in town."
"Pretty nearly. But you don't seem to realise that Elsinore—Brabant County, for that matter—has talked of nothing else but this case for the last four days."
"I did think of a divorce for a short time, but I never mentioned it to him, and as soon as I thought it all out I dismissed the idea. In the first place, divorce is against the principles of the school in which I was brought up, and in the second Mr. Balfame was a good husband in his way. Every woman has some sort of a heavy cross to bear, and I guess mine was lighter than most. The trouble is, we American women expect toomuch. I dismissed the subject so completely from my mind that I had practically forgotten it."
"Ah—yes—we thought you might have seen some one lurking in the grove and gone down to investigate." This was another chance shot. He was hoping for a "lead."
Mrs. Balfame thought him inspired.
For the moment the cold brilliant eyes of the woman and the keen contracted eyes of the reporter met and clashed. Then Mrs. Balfame displayed her teeth in her sweet and charming smile. "What a truly masculine inference. You don't know me. If I had seen anything I should have flown to the telephone and called the police."
"You look indomitable," murmured Mr. Broderick. "But will you tell us how it happened that you did not hear the shot? The men down at Gifning's did."
"They were standing on the porch, and I think now that I did hear the shot. But my windows were closed. I hear tires burst constantly. And that was Saturday night. The machines turn off just below our gate into Dawbarn Street, especially if they are bound for Beryl Myrtle's road house."
"True." Broderick leaned forward, staring at the carpet. He permitted the silence to last quite a minute. Even Mrs. Balfame, who had congratulated herself that the inquisition must be nearly over, stirred uneasily, so sinister was that silence.
The other men knew the Broderick method too well to spoil one of his designs; they sat in expectant stillness and turned upon Mrs. Balfame a battery of eyes.
Suddenly Broderick raised his head and his sharp boring gaze darted into hers. "I had not fullyintended to tell you of a discovery made by one of us yesterday. We have told no one as yet—waiting for just the right moment to publish it. But I think I'll tell you. There is evidence that two revolvers were fired that night. One killed David Balfame, and a bullet from the other penetrated the tree before the house and slightly to the right of where he must have stood for a moment. Bruce here dug it out. Now, not only did the men at Gifning's not hear two shots—indicating that they were fired simultaneously—but one bullet came from a .38 and the other from a .41."
Mrs. Balfame stood up. "Really, gentlemen, I did not consent to see you in order to help you solve riddles. But possibly you know better than I that gunmen generally travel in pairs. I am convinced that my husband—" (they applauded her for not saying "my poor husband") "was killed by one of those creatures, hired by his political enemies. Unless I can tell you something more of interest—if, indeed, you have found anything to interest the great New York public in this interview—I will ask you to excuse me."
The young men were politely on their feet. "And you have no pistol—nor ever had?"
She laughed outright. "Are you trying to fasten the crime on me?"
"Oh, no, indeed. Only, in a case like this, one leaves no stone unturned—I hope you do not think we are rude."
"I only just realise that quite the most polite young men I have ever met have been hoping to make me incriminate myself. If I had not been so dense I should have dismissed you long since. Good night."
And, once more looking human in her justindignation, she lifted her proud head and swept out of the room.
The young men left the house and adjourned to a private room in the rear of their favourite saloon. For twenty minutes they rehearsed the interview carefully, those that had taken notes correcting any lapses of memory on the part of those that had elected to watch as well as listen.
Broderick and many of the men were firmly of the opinion that Mrs. Balfame had committed the crime; others believed that she was shielding some one else; the less experienced were equally positive that no guilty woman taken off her guard repeatedly, as she had been, could "put it over" like that. She had "talked and acted like an innocent woman."
"She acted, all right," said Broderick. "I for one am convinced that she did it. But whether she did or didn't, she's got to be indicted and tried. This case, boys, is too big to throw away—too damned big; and she's already a personality to the public. She's the only one we have the ghost of a chance with; the only one whose arrest and trial would keep the interest going—"
"But say!" It was the youngest reporter that interrupted. "I call it lowdown to fasten a crime on a possibly innocent woman—a lady—keep her in jail for months; try her for murder! Why, even if she were acquitted, she would carry the stigma through life."
"Don't get sentimental, sonny," said Broderick patiently. "Sentiment is to the vanquished in this game. When you've been it as long as the rest of us you'll know that in nine cases out of ten the real solutionof any mystery is the simplest. Balfame drank. He had a violent temper when drunk. He was a dog at best. She must have hated him. Look at her. We have reason to believe that she did hate him and that her friends knew it. She thought of divorce two years ago. Gave it up because she was afraid of losing her leadership in this provincial hole. Look at her. She is as proud as Lucifer. And as hard as nails. There had been an ugly scene at the club that afternoon. He mortified her publicly. She was so overcome she had to leave. I've a hunch she poisoned that lemonade and got it out of the way in time. She's the sort that would think of nearly everything. Not quite, of course. Otherwise she would never have invented on the spur of the moment that story about drinking it herself; she'd have had the assumption on tap that one of the neighbours had drunk it. That complication, however, is yet to prove. It merely points a finger at her—straight; what we've got to prove and prove quick is that she was out of doors when that shot was fired—"
"Would you like to see her in the chair?" gasped young Loring.
"Good Lord, no. Not the least danger. Women of that sort don't go to the chair. If she even got a term, I'd head a petition to let her out, for she's a dead game sport, and I'm only after good front page stuff." He turned to Ryder Bruce of the evening edition of his newspaper. "You make love to that German hired girl. She hates us all, for we represent the real American press—that hasn't a hyphen in it. I sensed that. And I don't believe she's all the fool she looks. I believe she can tell something—few servants that can't—and that she only pretended at the inquest that sheknew nothing because she was nearly dead with pain and wanted it over. Well, she had the tooth out this morning, and at least she isn't quite as hideous as she was; so go to it, old boy. Get 'round her and do it quick. Use money if necessary. There's not a day to lose. Find out what she wants most—probably it's to send her sweetheart at the front something more substantial than mitts and bands. Got me?"
"I get you," said young Bruce gloomily. "You've picked me out because I'm blond and round faced and can pass myself off as a German. I wish I'd been born an Italian. Nice job, making love tothat. But I'll do it."
"Good boy. Well, s'long. I'm off on a trail of my own. I'll report later. May be nothing in it."
Broderick walked slowly toward Elsinore Avenue, sounding his memory for certain fugitive impressions, his active mind at the same time casting about for the current which would connect them.
He looked at his watch. He was to dine with the Crumleys at seven and it lacked but ten minutes of the hour; nevertheless he walked more slowly still, his eyes staring at the ground, his brow channeled.
On Sunday afternoon he had spent two hours with Alys Crumley. At first she had been reluctant to talk of any but the salient phases of the murder, but being appealed to as a "good old pal" and reminded that real newspaper people stood together, she finally had described the scene at the Country Club on the afternoon preceding Balfame's death, and shown him the drawing she had had the superior presence of mind to make. Broderick had examined every detail of that rapid but demonstrative sketch: the burly form at the head of the room, his condition indicated by an angle of the shoulders and a deft exaggeration of feature which recalled the facile art of the cartoonist; the strained forms of the men surrounding him; Mrs. Balfame heading down the room, her face set and terrible; the groups of women and girls in attitudes expressive of alarm or disgust.
But when he made as if to put the sketch in his pocket she had snatched it from him, and he merely hadshrugged his shoulders, confident that he could induce her to give it up should he really need it.
He had questioned her regarding the scene until its outlines were as firm in his mind as in her own. But there had been something else—some impression, not obviously linked with the case: It was for that impression that he sounded his admirable memory; and in a moment he found it and stopped with a smothered exclamation.
He had complimented her on the excellent likeness of Dwight Rush, whom he knew and liked, and remarked quite naturally that he might have sat for her a number of times. The dusky pink had mounted to her hair, but she had replied carelessly that Rush was "a common enough type."
Possibly Broderick would have forgotten the blush had it not have been for the swift change of expression in her eyes: a certain fear followed by a concentrated renitence; and at the same moment he had remembered that he had met Rush once or twice at the Crumleys' during the summer and thought him quite the favoured guest.
Driven only by a mild personal curiosity, he had asked her how she liked Rush and if she saw much of him; he recalled that she had answered with an elaboration of indifference that she hadn't seen him for ages and took no interest in him whatever.
Then Broderick had drawn her on to talk of Mrs. Balfame. Yes, in common with all Elsinore that counted, she admired Mrs. Balfame, although she believed that no one really knew her, that she unconsciously lived among the surfaces of her nature. Her face as she marched down the clubroom that day, andits curious sudden transformation on that other day at the Friday Club when her thoughts so plainly had drifted far from the platitudinous speakers, indicated to Miss Crumley's temperamental mind "depths and possibly tragic possibilities."
It was patent to Mr. Broderick's own mind that her suspicions had not lighted for a moment on the dead man's widow, but it also transpired in the course of the conversation that the young artist who had so "loved to sketch" the Star of Elsinore had suffered a long drop in personal enthusiasm. Pressed astutely, she had remarked that she guessed she was as broad-minded as anybody, especially since her year on the New York press, but she did not approve of married women claiming a right to share in the Great Game designed by Nature for the young of both sexes.
Then the story came out: Miss Crumley, afflicted with a headache something over a fortnight since, and enjoying the cool night air just behind her front gate, had seen Mrs. Balfame come out of Dr. Steuer's garden next door and meet Dwight Rush face to face. He had begged to be allowed to see her home.
Mrs. Balfame had lovely manners, she couldn't help being sweet unless she disliked a person, and no woman will elect to walk up a long dark avenue alone if a man offer to escort her.
Alys would have thought nothing of it—merely assumed that Rush, being a comparative newcomer, had caught at the chance to make a favourable impression on the leader of Elsinore society—(no, he was no snob, but that idea just came to her), if they had not crawled, yes,crawledall the way up the avenue.
Both were vigorous people with long legs; they couldhave covered the distance to the Balfame place in three minutes. They had been more than ten, and as they passed under the successive lamp posts she had noted the man's bent head, the woman's tilted back—as she gazed up into his eyes, no doubt.
"In this town," Miss Crumley had announced, "a woman is fast or she isn't. You know just where you are. There's a class that's sly about it, but somehow you get 'on' in time. Mrs. Balfame has stood for the highest and best. Mind you, I'm not saying that she ever saw Rush alone again, or cared a snap of her finger for him—or he for her. No doubt she felt, when the rare chance offered of taking a little flyer, that it was too good to miss. But she shouldn't have done it; that's the point. I don't like my idols to have feet of clay."
Broderick had felt both sympathetic and amused. He knew that Alys Crumley was not only sweet of temper and frank, if not candid, but that in spite of all her desperate modernism she cherished high ideals of conduct; and here she was turning loose the cat that skulks somewhere in every commonplace female's nature.
But the whole conversation had left his mind promptly. He had attached no significance whatever to a ten minutes' walk between a polite man and a woman returning alone from a friend's house on a dark night.
Now every word of the conversation came back to him. Rush, he gathered, had gone to the Crumley house several times a week for a while, and then, for reasons known only to himself and Alys, had ceased his visits abruptly. Had she fallen in love with him? Or was it only her vanity that was wounded? And ifRush had dropped a girl as pretty and bright and winning as Alys Crumley—who improved upon acquaintance, moreover—what was the reason? Why had he not fallen in love with her? Had he loved some one else?
Broderick swung his mind to the morning following the murder, when he had met Rush in the hall of the Elsinore Hotel. The lawyer professed himself as delighted to "run up against him" and invited him to breakfast. All this had been natural enough, and it was equally natural that the conversation should have but one theme.
Once more Broderick sought a fugitive impression and found it. Rush, who was a master of words when verbal exactness was imperative, had created an impression in his companion's mind of the impeccability of the murdered man's widow.
Broderick had wondered once or twice since whence came that mental picture of Mrs. Balfame that rose clear-cut in his memory, in spite of his deliberate conviction of her guilt. Other people had raved about her and made no impression upon the young reporter's selective and somewhat cynical mind; but Rush had almost accomplished his purpose!
Why had he sought to accomplish it?
Broderick had known Rush in and out of court for nearly two years. Whenever he had been on an assignment in that part of Brabant County he had made a point of seeking him out, and even of spending an evening with him if he could afford the time. He liked the unique blend of East and West in the man; to Broderick's keen appraising mind Rush reflected the very best of the two great rival bisections of the nation. Heliked the mixture of frankness and subtlety, of simple unquestioning patriotism—of assumption that no country but the United States of America mattered in the very least—and the intense concentrated individualism. Of hard-headed American determination to "get there" at any honourable cost, of jealously hidden romanticism.
Broderick was almost at the Crumley gate. He halted for a moment under the dark maples and glanced up the long shadowy avenue, his own narrower and still more jealously guarded "romantic streak" appreciating the possibilities on a dusky evening with a girl whose face floated for a moment before him. But he banished her promptly, searching his memory for some salient trait in Rush that he instinctively knew would establish the current he desired.
He found it after a moment of intense concentration. Rush was the sort of man that loves not woman but a woman. His very friendship for Alys Crumley was evidence that he cared nothing for girls as girls. Only the exceptional drew him, and mere youth left him unmoved.
Knowing Rush as he did, he felt his way rapidly toward the facts. Alys, woman-like, had succumbed to propinquity, and betrayed herself; Rush, finding his mere masculine loneliness misinterpreted, and being honourable to boot, had promptly withdrawn.
But why? Alys would have made him a delightful and useful wife. She was one of those too clever girls whom celibacy made neurotic and uncertain, but out of whom matrimony and maternity knocked all the nonsense at once and finally. She would make a splendid woman.
He should have thought her just the girl to allure Rush, whom he also knew to be fastidious and to set a high value on the good old Brabant blood. Moreover, it was time that Rush would be wanting the permanent companionship of a woman, a bright, progressive, but feminine woman. He had observed certain signs.
Alys, apparently, had not measured up to Rush's secret ideal of the wholly desirable woman, nor appealed to that throbbing vein of romanticism which he had striven to bury beneath the dusty tomes of the law. What sort of woman, then, could satisfy all he desired? And had he found her?
Broderick recalled a certain knightly exaltation in Rush's blue eyes which had come and gone as they discussed Mrs. Balfame, although not a word of the adroit concept he had built remained in the reporter's memory. But those eyes came back to Broderick there in the dark—the eyes of a man young and ardent like himself—he almost fancied he had seen the woman's image in them.
He revived his impression of Mrs. Balfame, seen for the first time to-day, and contemplated it impersonally: A beautiful, a fascinating woman—to a man of Rush's limited experience and idealism; fastidious, proud, gracious, supremely poised.
Nor did she look a day over thirty, although she must be a good bit more—he recalled the obituaries of the dead man: they had alluded to his marital accomplishment as covering a term of some twenty years. Perhaps she was his second wife—but no—nor did it matter. Rush was just the sort of chap to fall in love with a woman older than himself, if she were still young in appearance and as chastely lovely, as unapproachable,as Mrs. Balfame. He would idealise her very years, contrast them with that vague suggestion of virginity that Broderick recalled, of deep untroubled tides.
All romantic men believe in women's unfathomed depths when in love, reflected the star reporter cynically, and Mrs. Balfame was just the sort to go until forty before having the smashing love affair of her life; and to inspire a similar passion in a hard-working idealist like Dwight Rush.
Mrs. Balfame and Dwight Rush! Broderick, who now stood quite still, a few paces from the Crumley gate, whistled.
Could Rush have fired that shot? Broderick recalled that the lawyer had mentioned having spent Saturday evening in Brooklyn—on business.
Broderick shook his head vigorously. So far as he was concerned, Rush never should be asked to produce his alibi. He did not believe that Rush had done it, did not propose to harbour the suggestion for a moment. Rush was not the man to commit a cowardly murder, not even for a woman. If he had wanted to kill the man he would have involved himself in an election row, forced the bully to draw his gun, and then got in his own fire double quick. Standards were standards.
Broderick was more convinced than ever that Mrs. Balfame had committed the deed, and he had established the current. His work was "cut out" for the evening; and without further delay he presented himself at the Widow Crumley's door.