Supper was over and Broderick and Miss Crumley sat in the back yard studio; Mrs. Crumley had company of her own, and as Alys decried the vulgarity of the legendary American daughter's attitude to the poor-spirited American mother, she invariably retired to the background whenever it would enhance Mrs. Crumley's self-respect to occupy not only the foreground but (if her daughter had an interesting visitor) the entire stage. Alys, since her humiliating failure with Dwight Rush, clung the more passionately to her rules of conduct. They were not red with the blood of life, but at least they served as an anchored buoy.
The atelier was hung with olive green burlap and covered with an artistic litter of sketches. Broderick, before settling himself into a comfortable chair by the stove, examined the more recent and encouraged her with a few words of discriminating praise.
"Keep it up, Alicia. TheNewsfor you next month if you are ready for a job. You've improved marvellously in figures, which was where you were weak. Miss Loys, our fashion artist, is marrying next month. You might as well begin with that. You'll be on the paper and can jump into something better when it offers."
Alys nodded emphatically. "Give me work, and as soon as possible. I don't care much what it is. ButI want work and plenty of it. It isn't only that I want to use my energies, but I've spent all I can afford on lessons and the rest of it."
"I'll see to it. Your sort doesn't go begging."
Broderick clipped his cigar and watched her thin profile for a moment without speaking.
He noticed for the first time that she had lost the little flesh that formerly had covered her small bones, and that the pink stained the pale ivory of her cheeks only when conversation excited her. But if anything she was prettier—no, more attractive—than ever, for there was more depth in her face, which in spite of its subtle suggestions, had seemed to his critical masculine taste to be too eager, too prone to pour out her personality without reserve when the brain lighted up. Now there was a slight droop of the eyelids which might mean fatigue, but gave length and mystery to the strange olive eyes. Her pink mouth, with its short upper lip, was too small for his taste, but the modelling of her features in general seemed to him more cleanly defined, and the sweep of jaw, almost as keen as a blade, must have delighted her own artist soul. She was rather diminutive (to her sorrow), but the long lines she cultivated in her house gowns made her figure very alluring, and the limp and awkward grace of fashion singularly became her. She wore to-night a "butterfly" gown of georgette (finding, as ever, admirable effects in cotton since she could not afford the costly fabrics), the colour of the American beauty rose, and a narrow band of olive velvet around her thin ivory-white neck. For the moment of her absorption, as she stared into the coals, her attitude would have been one of complete repose had it not been for herrestless hands. Broderick noticed, too, that there were darkened hollows under her eyes. "Poor kid," he thought. "She's been through it, all right, and put up a stiff fight. But what a pity."
As he struck a match she rose, and, opening a drawer in the table, took out a box of Russian cigarettes. "I keep these here," she announced, "because I don't want to shock mother; and I seldom indulge these days in expensive habits. But I shall celebrate and smoke all evening. It is jolly to have you like this again, Jimmy. I heard you were engaged. Is it true? You would seem to have deserted every one else."
Mr. Broderick coloured and looked as sheepish as a highly sophisticated star reporter may. "Well, not quite," he admitted. "It's been heavy running, and I don't have all the time there is on my hands. But—I hope—well, I think now it'll be pretty plain sailing—"
"Good, Jimmy, good!"
For a moment he, too, gazed into the coals, his eyes softening; then once more he banished the dainty image evoked; no nonsense for him in Elsinore, with the Balfame tangle to unravel to the glory of the New YorkNews.
"Alys," he said, stretching out his long legs and looking innocent and comfortable, "I want to have a confidential talk with you about Mrs. Balfame." He paused and then looked her straight in the eyes as he launched his bolt. "I have come to the conclusion that she shot him—"
"Jim Broderick!" Alys sprang to her feet, her eyes wide and full of angry light. "Oh, you newspaper men!—How utterly abominable!"
"Why? Sit down, my dear. Somebody did it—not? as our friends the Germans say. And undoubtedly that some one is the person most interested in getting him out of the way."
"But not Mrs. Balfame! Why—I've been brought up on Mrs. Balfame. I'd as soon suspect my own mother."
"No, my friend, you would not. Mrs. Crumley is adorable in her own way, but she is frankly and comfortably in her fifties. She is not a beautiful woman who looks fully ten years younger than she has any right to look. See?"
"Oh—but—"
"Think it over. You said the other day that you believed Mrs. Balfame to have unplumbed depths, or something equally popular with your sex. And you were horrified at her singular facial transformations no less than twice within a fortnight. Certainly the picture you drew of her stalking down the Country Club room was that of a woman in a mood for anything—"
"Of a lovely well-bred woman outraged by the conduct of a drunken brute of a husband. But do you imagine that any woman goes through life without being turned into a fury now and then by her husband?"
"No doubt. But, you see, the death of the brute occurred so soon after the transformation scene enacted behind the expressive face of the lady you have immortalised on paper—and no new-made devil is so complete as that which rises out of the debris of an angel. When your placid sternly-controlled women do explode, they may patch themselves together as swiftly as a cyclone passes, but one of the sinister faces of theirhidden collection has been flashed momentarily before the public eye—"
"Oh! Oh!"
"I have tracked down every suspect, several upon whom no suspicion has alighted—as yet. To my mind there are only two people to whom the crime could be brought home."
"Who is the other?"
"Dwight Rush."
This time Alys did not sit up with flaming eyes. To the astute gaze of the reporter she took herself visibly in hand. But she bit through the long tube between her lips. "What makes you think that?" she asked, as she tossed the bits into the fire and lighted another cigarette. "You roam too far afield for me."
"He is in love with her."
"With whom?"
"The lady who was so opportunely, if somewhat sensationally, made a widow last Saturday night."
"He is not! Why—how absurd you are to-night, Jim. She is a thousand years older than he."
"How old is she—"
"Forty-two. Mother sent her a birthday cake last month."
"Rush is thirty-four. Who cares for eight years on the wrong side these days? She looks younger than he does, to say nothing of her own inconsiderable age; and when a woman is as lovely as Mrs. Balfame, as interesting as she must be with that astute mind, that subtle suggestion of mystery—"
"You are mad, simply mad. In the first place, he has had no chance to find out whether she is interestingor not—if he had, all Elsinore would have rung with it. And—ah—"
"What?"
"Nothing."
"Come out with it. It's up to you to prove him innocent if you can."
"He was in Brooklyn that evening. I met him at the Cummacks' the next day, and heard him say so."
"Yes, that is what he is at pains to tell every one. Perhaps he can prove it, perhaps not. But that's not what was in your mind."
"I was afraid of being misunderstood. But it is all right, for of course he can prove that he was in Brooklyn. I happen to know that he went to the Balfame house on his way back from the club Saturday evening, and only stayed a few minutes. I left the club just after Mrs. Balfame did, as I had been out there all afternoon and had promised mother to help her during the evening. I came in on the trolley and got off at the corner of Balfame and Dawbarn Streets, to finish an argument I was having with Harriet Bell over the possibility of Mrs. Balfame losing her social power through the scene out at the club—few of the members would care to go through such a scene a second time. Moreover, some of these newer rich women resent her supremacy and would like to force her to take a back seat.
"I only talked for a few minutes after I got off the car and then walked quickly over to the avenue. Just as I turned the corner I saw Dwight Rush slam the Balfame gate and almost run up the walk. He seemed in a tearing hurry about something. I was standingon our porch only a few minutes later when he strode past—no doubt hoping to catch the seven-ten for Brooklyn. Now!"
"Nobody would be happier than I to prove a first-class alibi for Rush—"
"Who else suspects him?"
"No one; and so far as I am concerned no one shall. If you want the whole truth, what I'm as intent on just now as big news itself is complete exoneration for my friend. But if he didn't do it, she did. And if he butted in upon her at a time like that it was because he was beside himself—no doubt he asked her to elope with him—get a divorce—"
"What utter nonsense!"
"Perhaps. But if she saw her chance, I'm thinking she wouldn't have hesitated a minute to put a bullet in Balfame. People don't turn as sick at the mere thought of committing murder, when there's a good chance of putting it over, as you may imagine. Most of us experience the impulse some time or other. Cowardice or circumstances safeguard us. She did it, take my word for it. She deliberately poisoned a glass of lemonade first, for Balfame to drink when he came home on his way to take the train for Albany. Then, something or other interfering—what, I can only guess at as yet—she found her chance to shoot, and shot."
"Why, if all that were true, she would be a fiend."
"Not necessarily. Merely a highly exasperated woman. One, moreover, who had locked herself up too long. Marital squabbles are safety valves, and I understand she let him do the rowing. But I don't care about her impulses. The act is enough for me.Psychology later, when I write a page of Sunday stuff. But you can see for yourself that if she isn't indicted, and pretty quick, Dwight Rush will be?"
"But no one else suspects him."
"Not yet. But the whole town thinks of nothing else. And as they've about given up all hope of the political crowd, as well as gunmen and tango girls, they'll veer presently toward the truth. But before they settle down on their idol's lofty head, they'll root about for some man who might easily be in love with her—although hopelessly, as a matter of course. Then they'll recall a thousand trifles that no doubt you too recall without effort."
"It's true she turned to him out there, ignoring men she had known for years—she saw him at the house that night, if only for a few moments—Oh, it's too horrible! Mrs. Balfame. An Elsinore lady! And she has been so good to us all these hard years, helped us over and over again. Oh, I don't mind telling you, Jim, that I was a little bit jealous of her—I rather liked Rush—he was interesting and a nice male creature, and I was so lonely—and he stopped coming so suddenly—and then seeing him so delighted to meet her that night—and both of them dragging up the avenue as if each moment were a jewel—I've always thought it hateful for married women to try to cut girls out—it's so unnatural—but I can't hear her accused of murder—to go—Oh, it's too awful to talk about!"
"She'd get off. Don't let that worry you. Innocent or guilty. There's no other way of saving Rush. Be more jealous, if that will help matters. He'll marry her the moment he decently can."
"I don't believe he cares a bit for her. And I don't believe she will marry him or any one."
"Oh, yes, she will. He's the sort to get what he wants—and, take it from me, he is mad about her. And she's at the age to be carried off her feet by an ardent determined lover. Make no mistake about that. Besides, her's is a name that she'll want to drop as soon as possible."
"Jim Broderick, you know that you are deliberately playing on my female nature, on all the baseness you feel sure is in it. I'd always thought you rather subtle, diplomatic. I don't thank you for the compliment of frankness."
"My dear girl, it is a compliment—my utter lack of diplomacy with you. I want to pull this big thing off for my paper, for your paper. And I want to save the friend of both of us. I have merely tried to prove to you that Mrs. Balfame is a mere human being, not a goddess, and deserves to pay some of the penalty of her crime, at least. Certainly, she isn't worth the sacrifice of Dwight Rush—"
"But if he can prove his alibi—"
"Suppose he couldn't. It was Saturday night. What more likely than that he failed to find the man he wanted? I have a dark suspicion that he never went near Brooklyn that night, was in no mood to think of business; although I don't for a moment believe he was near the Balfame place, or knows who did it—unless Mrs. Balfame has confessed to him. She is a very clever woman, not likely to linger on smugly in any fool's paradise. She must know that suspicion will work round to her, and knowing his infatuation, no doubt has consulted him."
Broderick really thought nothing of the sort, but calculated his words; and they produced their effect. The blood rose to the girl's hair, then ebbed, leaving her ghastly. "He would hate her then," she whispered.
"Not Rush. Another man, perhaps; but not only do things go too deep with a man like that for anything but time to cure, but he's chock full of romantic chivalry. And he's madly in love, remember; by that I mean in the first flush. He'd look upon her as a martyr, and immediately set to work to ward suspicion from her; if an alibi could not be proved for him he'd take the crime on his own shoulders, if the worst came to worst."
"Oh! Are men really so Quixotic in these days?"
"Haven't changed fundamentally since they evolved from protoplasm."
"But why should all that chivalry—that magnificent passion—the first love of a man like that—be called out by a woman of Mrs. Balfame's age? Why, it's some girl's right! I don't say mine. Don't think I'm a dog in the manger. I'm trying not to be. But the world is full of girls—not foolish young things only good enough for boys, but girls in their twenties, bright, companionable, helpful, real mates for men—Why, it is unnatural, damnable!"
"Yes, it is," said Broderick sympathetically. "But if human nature weren't a tangled wire fence electrified full of contradictions, life wouldn't be interesting at all. Perhaps it's a mere case of affinity, destiny—don't ever betray me. But there it is. As well try to explain the abrupt taking off of useful men in their prime, of lovely children, of needed mothers, of aged women who have lived exemplary lives, mainly for others, spending their last years with the horrors of cancer. Don't try toexplain human passion. And sheisbeautiful, and fresher to look at than girls of eighteen that tango day and night. But he must be saved from her as well as from arrest. Will you help me?"
"What do you want me to do?"
"Get further evidence about Mrs. Balfame."
"I cannot, and would not if I could. Do you think I would be the means of fastening the crime of murder on any woman?"
"You would if you were a hardened—and good—newspaper woman."
"Well, I'm not. And I won't. Do your own sleuthing."
"More than I are on the job, but I want your help. I don't say you can pick up fragments of her dress in the grove, or that you can—or would—worm yourself into her confidence and extract a confession. But you can set your wits to work and think up ways to put me on the track of more evidence than I've got now. Can you think of anything off-hand?"
"No."
"Ah? What does that intonation mean?"
"Your ears are off the key."
"Not mine. Tell me at once—No,"—He rose and took up his hat—"never mind now. Think it over. You will tell me in a day or two. Just remember while watching all my little seeds sprout that you can help me save a fine fellow and put my heel on a snake—a murderess! Paugh! There's nothing so obscene. Good night."
She did not rise as he let himself out, but sat beside her cold stove thinking and crying until her mother called her to come in and go to bed.
Mrs. Balfame, after she dismissed the newspaper men, went up to her bedroom and sat very still for a long while. She was apprehensive rather than frightened, but she felt very sober.
She had accepted the assurance of the chief of the local police that his inquiry regarding the pistol was a mere matter of routine, and had merely obeyed a normal instinct in concealing it. But she knew the intense interest of her community in the untimely and mysterious exit of one of its most notorious members, an interest raised to the superlative degree by the attentions of the metropolitan press; and she knew also that when a community is excited suspicions are rapidly translated into proofs, and every clue feeds the appetite for a victim.
The European war was a dazzling example on the grand scale of the complete breakdown of intellect before the primitive passions of hatred, greed, envy, and the recurrent desire of man to kill, combined with that monstrous dilation of the ego which consoles him with a childish belief in his own impeccability.
The newspapers of course pandered to the taste of their patrons for morbid vicarious excitement; she had glanced contemptuously at the headlines of her own "Case," and had accepted her temporary notoriety as a matter of course, schooled herself to patience; the ordeal was scarifying but of necessity brief.
But these young men. They had insinuated—what had they not insinuated? Either they had extraordinary powers of divination, or they were a highly specialised branch of the detective force. They had asked questions and forced answers from her that made her start and shiver in the retrospect.
Was it possible they believed she had murdered David Balfame, or were they merely seeking material for a few more columns before the case died a natural death? She had never been interviewed before, save once superficially as President of the Friday Club, but she knew one or two of the county editors, and Alys Crumley had sometimes amused her with stories of her experiences as a New York reporter.
These young men, so well-groomed, so urbane, so charming even, all of them no doubt generously equipped to love and marry and protect with their lives the girl of their choice, were they too but the soldiers of an everlasting battlefield, often at bay and desperate in the trenches? No matter how good their work, how great their "killing," the struggle must be renewed daily to maintain their own footing, to advance, or at least to uphold, the power of their little autocracy. To them journalism was the most important thing in the world, and mere persons like herself, suddenly lifted from obscurity to the brassy peaks of notoriety were so much material for first page columns of the newspapers they served with all the loyalty of those deluded soldiers on the European battlefields. She understood them with an abrupt and complete clarity, but she hated them. They might like and even admire her, but they would show her no mercy if theydiscovered that she had been in the yard that night. She felt as if a pack of wolves were at her heels.
But finally her brow relaxed. She shrugged her shoulders and began to unbutton the dense black gown that had expressed the mood the world demands of a four-days' widow. Let them suspect, divine what they chose. Not a soul on earth but Anna Steuer knew that she had been out that night after her return home. Even had those lynx-eyed young men sat on the box hedge they could not have seen her, for the avenue was well lighted, and the grove, the entire yard in fact, had been as black as a mine. Even the person skulking among those trees could not have guessed who she was.
For a moment she had been tempted to tell them a little; that she had looked out and seen a moving shadow in the grove. But she had remembered in time that they would ask why she had reserved this testimony at the coroner's inquest. Her rôle was to know nothing. Indubitably the shot had been fired from the trees; nobody questioned that; why involve herself? They would discharge still another set of questions at her, among others why she had not telephoned for the police.
As she hung up her gown she recognised the heavy footfalls of her maid of all work, and when Frieda knocked, bade her enter, employing those cool impersonal tones so resented by the European servant after a brief sojourn on the dedicated American soil.
As the girl closed the door behind her without speaking, Mrs. Balfame turned sharply. She felt at a disadvantage. As her figure was reasonably slim, she wore a cheap corset which she washed once a monthin the bath tub with her nailbrush; and her linen, although fresh, as ever, was of stout longcloth, and unrelieved by the coquetry of ribbons. She wore a serviceable tight petticoat of black jersey, beyond which her well-shod feet seemed to loom larger than her head. She was vaguely grateful that she had not been caught by Alys Crumley, so fond of sketching her, and was about to order Frieda to untie her tongue and be gone, when she noticed that the girl's face was no longer bound, and asked kindly:
"Has the toothache gone? I hope you do not suffer any longer."
Frieda lifted her small and crafty eyes and shot a suspicious glance at the mistress who had been so indifferent to what she believed to be the worst of all pains.
"It's out."
"Too bad you didn't have it out at once." Mrs. Balfame hastily encased herself in her bath robe and sat down. "I'll take my dinner upstairs—why—what is it?"
"I want to go home."
"Home?"
"To Germany."
"But, of course you can't. There are a lot of German reservists in the country who would like to go home and fight, but they can't get past the British."
"Some have. I could."
"How? That is quite interesting."
"I not tell. But I want to go."
"Then go, by all means. But please wait a day or two until I get another girl."
"Plenty girls out of job. I want to go to-morrow."
"Oh, very well. But you can't expect a full month's wages, as it is you that is serving notice, not I."
"I do not want a full month wage. I want five hundert dollar."
Mrs. Balfame turned her amazed eyes upon the girl. Her first thought was that the creature had been driven insane by her letters from home, and wondered if she could overcome her if attacked. Then as she met those small, sharp, crafty eyes, set high in the big stolid face like little deadly guns in a fort, her heart missed a beat. But her own gaze, large and cold, did not waver, and she said satirically:
"Well, I am sure I hope you will get it."
"I get it—from you."
Mrs. Balfame lifted her shoulders. "What next? I have contributed what little I can afford to the war funds. I am sorry, but I cannot accommodate you."
"You give me five hundert dollar," reiterated the thick even voice, "or I tell the police you come in the back door two minutes after Mr. Balfame he was kilt at the front gate."
Obvious danger once more turned Mrs. Balfame into pure steel. "Oh, no; you will tell them nothing of the sort, for it is not true. I thought I heard some one on the back stairs when I went down to the kitchen. As you know I always drink a glass of filtered water before going to bed. I had forgotten the episode utterly, but I remember now, I heard a noise outside, even imagined that some one turned the knob of the door, and called up to ask you if you also had heard. I did not know that anything had happened out in front until I returned to my room."
"I see you come in the kitchen door." But thevoice was not quite so even, the shifty glance wavered. Frieda felt suddenly the European peasant in the presence of the superior by divine right. Mrs. Balfame followed up her advantage.
"You are lying—for purposes of blackmail. You did not see me come in the door, because I had not been outside of it. I do not even remember opening it to listen, although I may have done so. You saw nothing and cannot blackmail me. Nor would any one believe your word against mine."
"I hear you come in just after me—"
"Heard? Just now you said you saw."
"Ach—"
Mrs. Balfame had an inspiration. "My God!" she exclaimed, springing to her feet, "the murderer took refuge in the house, was hidden in the cellar or attic all night, all the next day! He may be here yet! You may be feeding him!"
She advanced upon the staring girl whose mouth stood open. "Of course. Of course. You are a friend of Old Dutch. It was one of his gunmen who did it, and you are his accomplice. Or perhaps you killed him yourself. Perhaps he treated you as he treated so many girls, and you killed him and are trying to blackmail me for money to get out of the country."
"It is a lie!" Frieda's voice was strangled with outraged virtue. "My man, he fight for the fatherland. Old Dutch, he will not hurt a fly. I would not have touch your pig of a husband. You know that, for you hate him yourself. I have see in the eye, in the hand. I know notings of who kill him, but—no, I have not see you come in the kitchen door, but I hear some onecome in, the door shut, you call out in so strange voice—I believe before that you have kill him—now—now I do not know—"
"It would be wise to know nothing,"—Mrs. Balfame's voice was charged with meaning—"unless you wish to be arrested as the criminal, or as an accomplice—after confessing that you entered the house within a moment or two of the shooting. Who is to say exactly when you did come in? Well, better keep your mouth shut. It is wise for innocent people to know as little about a crime as possible. Why did you testify before the coroner's jury that your tooth ached so you heard nothing? Why didn't you tell your story then?"
"I was frightened, and my tooth—I can tink of notings else."
"And now you think it quite safe to blackmail me?"
"I want to go back to Germany—to my man—and I hate this country what hates Germany."
"This country is neutral," said Mrs. Balfame severely. "It regards all the belligerents as barbarians tarred with the same brush. You Germans are so excitable that you imagine we hate when we merely don't care." This was intended to be soothing, but Frieda's brow darkened and she thrust out her pugnacious lips.
"Germany, she is the greatest country in the whole world," she announced. "All the world—it muss know that."
"How familiar that sounds! Just a slight variation on the old American brag that is quite a relief." Mrs. Balfame spoke as lightly as if she merely had let down the bars of her dignity out of sympathy with a lacerated Teuton. "Well, go back to your Germany, Frieda, ifyou can get there, but don't try to blackmail me again. I have no five hundred dollars to give you if I would. If you choose, you may stay your month out, and spend your evenings taking up a collection among your German friends. You are excused."
She had achieved her purpose. The girl's practical mind was puzzled by the simple explanation of her mistress' presence in the kitchen, deeply impressed by the contemptuous refusal to be blackmailed. Her shoulders drooped and she slunk out of the room.
For a moment Mrs. Balfame clung, reeling, to the back of a chair. Then she went downstairs and telephoned to Dwight Rush.
The young lawyer was to call at eight o'clock. Mrs. Balfame put on her best black blouse in his honour; it was cut low about the throat and softened with a rolling collar of hemstitched white lawn. This was as far in the art of sex allurement as she was prepared to go; the bare idea of a negligée of white lace and silk, warmed by rose-colored shades, would have filled her with cold disgust. She was not a religious woman, but she had her standards.
At a quarter of eight she made a careful inspection of the lower rooms; sleuths, professional and amateur, would not hesitate to sneak into her house and listen at keyholes. She inferred that the house was under surveillance, for she had looked from her window several times and seen the same man sauntering up and down that end of the avenue. No doubt some one watched the back doors also.
Convinced that her home was still sacrosanct, she placed two chairs at a point in the parlour farthest from the doors leading into the hall, and into a room beyond which Mr. Balfame had used as an office. The doors, of course, would be open throughout the interview. No one should be able to say that she had shut herself up with a young man; on the other hand, it was the duty of the deceased husband's lawyer to call on the widow. Even if those young devils discovered that she had telephoned for him, what more regular thanthat she should wish to consult her lawyer after such insinuations?
Rush arrived as the town clock struck eight. Frieda, who answered the door in her own good time, surveyed him suspiciously through a narrow aperture to which she applied one eye.
"What you want?" she growled. "Mrs. Balfame she have seen all the reporters already yet."
"Let the gentleman in," called Mrs. Balfame from the parlour. "This is a friend of my late husband."
Rush was permitted to enter. He was a full minute disposing of his hat and overcoat in the hall, while Frieda dragged her heelless slippers back to the kitchen and slammed the door. His own step was not brisk as he left the hall for the parlour, and his face, always colourless, looked thin and haggard. Mrs. Balfame, as she rose and gave him her hand, asked solicitously:
"Are you under the weather? How seedy you look. I wondered why you had not called—"
"A touch of the grippe. Felt all in for a day or two, but am all right now. And although I have been very anxious to see you, I had made up my mind not to call unless you sent for me."
"Well, I sent for you professionally," she retorted coolly. "You don't suppose I took your love making seriously."
He flushed dully, after the manner of men with thick fair skins, and his hard blue eyes lost their fire as he stared at her. It was incomprehensible that she could misunderstand him.
"It was serious enough to me. I merely stayed away, because, having spoken as I did, I—well, I cannot very well explain. You will remember that I madeyou promise to send for me if you were in trouble—"
"I remembered!" She felt his rebuke obscurely. "It never occurred to me to send for any one else."
"Thank you for that."
"Did you mean anything but politeness when you said that you had been anxious to see me?"
He hesitated, but he had already made up his mind that the time had come to put her on her guard. Besides, he inferred that she had begun herself to appreciate her danger.
"You have read the newspapers. You saw the reporters this afternoon. Of course you must have guessed that they hope for a sensational trial with you as the heroine."
"How can men—men—be such heartless brutes?"
"Ask the public. Even that element that believes itself to be select and would not touch a yellow paper devours a really interesting crime in high life. Never mind that now. Let us get down to brass tacks. They want to fix the crime on you. How are they going to manage it? That is the question for us. Tell me exactly what they said, what they made you say."
Mrs. Balfame gave him so circumstantial an account of the interview that he looked at her in admiration, although his rigid American face, that looked so strong, turned paler still.
"What a splendid witness you would make!" He stared at the carpet for a moment, then flashed his eyes upward much as Broderick had done. "Tell me," he said softly, "is there anything you withheld from them? You know how safe you are with me. But I must be in a position to advise you what to say and to leave unsaid—if the worst comes."
"You mean if I am arrested?" She had a moment of complete naturalness, and stared at him wildly. He leaned forward and patted her hand.
"Anything is possible in a case like this. But you have nothing to fear. Now, will you tell me—"
"Do you think I did it?"
"I know that you did not. But I think you know something about it."
"It would cast no light on the mystery. He was shot from that grove on a pitch dark night, and that is all there is to it."
"Let me be the judge of that."
"Very well. I had put out my light—upstairs—and, as I was nervous, I looked out of the window to see if Dave was coming. I so longed to have him come—and go! Then I happened to glance in the direction of the grove, and I saw some one sneaking about there—"
"Yes!" He half rose, his eyes expanding, his nostrils dilating. "Go on. Go on."
"I told you I was nervous—wrought up from that dreadful scene at the club. I just felt like an adventure! I slipped down stairs and out of the house by the kitchen door—Frieda takes the key of the back hall door on Saturday nights—thinking I would watch the burglar; of course that was what I thought he must be; and I knew that Dave would be along in a minute—"
"How long was this after he telephoned? It would take him some time to walk from Cummack's; and he didn't leave at once—"
"Oh, quite a while after. I was sure then that he would be along in a minute or two. Well—it mayseem incredible to you, but I really felt as if excitement of that dangerous sort would be a relief."
"I understand perfectly." Rush spoke with the fatuousness of man who believes that love and complete comprehension of the object beloved are natural corollaries. "But—but that is not the sort of story that goes down with a jury of small farmers and trades-people. They don't know much about your sort of nerves. But go on."
"Well, I managed to get into the grove without being either seen or heard by that man. I am sure of that. He moved round a good deal, and I thought he was feeling about for some point from which he could make a dart for the house. Then I heard Dave in Dawbarn Street, singing. Then I saw him under the lamp-post. After that it all happened so quickly I can hardly recall it clearly enough to describe. The man near me crouched. I can't tell you what I thought then—if I knew he was going to shoot—or why I didn't cry out. Almost before I had time to think at all, he fired, and Dave went down."
"But what about that other bullet? Are you sure there was no one else in the grove?"
"There may have been a dozen. I heard some one running afterwards; there may have been more than one."
"Did you have a pistol?" He spoke very softly. "Don't be afraid to tell me. It might easily have gone off accidentally—or something deeper than your consciousness may have telegraphed an imperious message to your hand."
But Mrs. Balfame, like all artificial people, was intensely secretive, and only delivered herself of theunvarnished truth when it served her purpose best. She gave a little feminine shudder. "I never kept a pistol in the house. If I had, it would have been empty—just something to flourish at a burglar."
"Ah—yes. I was going to say that I was glad of that, but I don't know that it matters. If you had taken a revolver out that night, loaded or otherwise, and confessed to it, you hardly could have escaped arrest by this time, even if it were a .38. And if you confessed to going out into the dark to stalk a man without one—that would make your adventure look foolhardy and purposeless—"
It was evident that he was thinking aloud. She interrupted him sharply:
"But you believe me?"
"I believe every word you say. The more differently you act from other women, the more natural you seem to me. But I think you were dead right in suppressing the episode. It leads nowhere and would incriminate you."
"It may come out yet. That is why I sent for you, not because I was afraid of those reporters. Frieda was on the backstairs that night when I came in. I thought I heard a sound and called out. I told Anna that night and she questioned Frieda indirectly and was satisfied that she had heard nothing, for although she had come home early with a toothache, she was suffering so intensely that she wouldn't have heard if the shot had been fired under her window. So I dismissed such misgivings as I had from my mind. But just after those reporters left she came up to my room and told me that she saw me come in, and tried to blackmail me for five hundred dollars. I soon made heradmit that she had not seen me; but she heard me, no doubt of that. I explained logically why I was there—after a drink of water, and that I called out to her because I thought I heard some one try the door—but if those reporters get hold of her—"
His face looked very grim. "That is bad, bad. By the way, why didn't you run to Balfame? That would seem the natural thing—"
"I was suddenly horribly afraid. I think I knew he was dead and I didn't want to go nearthat. I ran like a dog back to its kennel."
"It was a feminine enough thing to do." For the first time he smiled, and his voice, which had insensibly grown inquisitorial, softened once more. "It was a dreadful position to find oneself in and no mistake. Your instinct was right. If you had been found bending over him—still, as you had no weapon—"
"I think on the whole it would have been better to have gone to him. Of course that is what I should have done if I had loved him. As it was, I ran as far from him as I could get—"
"Well, don't let us waste time discussing the ought to have beens. Unless some one can prove that you were out that night, the whole incident must be suppressed. If you are arrested on any trumped up charge—and the district attorney is keener than the reporters—you must stick to your story. By the way, why didn't you tell the reporters that Frieda was in the house about the time the shot was fired?"
"I had forgotten. The house has been full of people; the neighbourhood has lived here; I have noticed her no more than if she were as wooden as she looks."
"Do you think she did it?"
"I wish I could. But she would not have had time to get into the house before I did. And the footsteps were running toward the lane at the back of the grounds."
"She is one of the swiftest dancers down in that hall where she goes with her crowd every Saturday night. I have been doing a little sleuthing on my own account, but I can't connect her up with Balfame."
"He wouldn't have looked at her."
"You never can tell. A man will often look quite hard at whatever happens to be handy. But she doesn't appear to have any sweetheart, although she's been in the country for four years. She is intimate in the home of Old Dutch and goes about with young Conrad, but he is engaged to some one else. All the boys like to dance with her. She left the hall suddenly and ran home—ostensibly wild with a toothache. If she hid in the grove to kill Balfame she could have got into the house before you did. What was she doing on the stair, anyway?"
"I didn't ask her."
"She may have been too out of breath to answer you. Or too wary. Those other footsteps—they may have been those of an accomplice; the man who fired the other pistol."
"But I would have seen her running ahead of me."
"Not necessarily. It was very dark. Your mind was stunned. You may have hesitated longer than you know before making for the house. One is liable to powerful inhibitions in great crises. Where is the girl? I think I'll have her in."
He walked the floor nervously while Mrs. Balfame went out to the kitchen. Frieda was sitting by thestove knitting. Commanded to come to the parlour, her little eyes almost closed, but she followed Mrs. Balfame and confronted Rush, who stood in the middle of the room looking tall and formidable.
"I am Mrs. Balfame's lawyer," he said without preamble. "She sent for me because you tried to blackmail her. What were you doing on the stairs when you heard Mrs. Balfame in the kitchen? You left the dance hall sometime before eight, and that could not have been more than five minutes past."
Frieda pressed her big lips together in a hard line.
"Oh, you won't speak. Well, if you don't explain to me, you will to the Grand Jury to-morrow. Or I shall get out a warrant to-night for your arrest as the murderer of David Balfame."
"Gott!" The girl's face was almost purple. She raised her knitting needles with a threatening gesture that was almost dramatic. "I did not do it. She has done it."
"What were you doing on the stairs?"
"I would heat water for my tooth."
"Cold water is the thing for an ulcerated tooth."
"I never have the toothache like that already. I am in my room many minutes before I think I go down. Then, when I am on the stairs I hear Mrs. Balfame come in."
"She has explained what you heard."
"No, she have not. I think so when we have talked this evening, but not now. She is—was, I mean, all out of her breath."
"I was terrified." Mrs. Balfame retorted so promptly that Rush flashed her a glance of admiration. Here was a woman who could take care of herself onthe witness stand. "First I thought I heard some one trying to get into the door, and then some one sneaking up the stairs."
"Oh—yes." Frieda's tones expressed no conviction. "The educated lady can think very quick. But I say that she have come in by the door, the kitchen door. Always I take the key to the hall door. She know that, and as she not know that I am in, she go out by the kitchen door. Always in the daytime when she goes to the yard she go by the hall door."
"What a pity you did not slam the door when you came in. It would have been quite natural as you were in such agony." Rush spoke sarcastically, but he was deeply perturbed. It was impossible to tell whether the girl was telling the truth or a carefully rehearsed story.
"Of course you know that if you tell that story to the police you will get yourself into serious trouble."
"I get her into trouble."
"Mrs. Balfame is above suspicion. It is not my business to warn you, or to defeat the ends of the law, of which apparently you know nothing—"
"I know someting. Last night I have tell Herr Kraus; and he say that since I have told the coroner I know notings, much better I touch the lady for five hundert and go home."
"O-h-h! That is the advice Old Dutch gave you! Splendid! I think the best thing I can do is to have you arrested bright and early to-morrow morning. Mrs. Balfame is cleared already. You may go."
She stared at him for a moment out of eyes that spat fire like two little guns in the top of a fort; then she swung herself about and retreated to the kitchen.
"That ought to make her disappear to-night. Her friends will hide her. The mere fact of her disappearance will convince the police, as well as the reporters, that she is guilty. You are all right." He spoke boyishly, and his face, no longer rigid, was full of light.
"But if she is innocent?"
"No harm done. She'll be smuggled out of the country and suspicion permanently diverted from you. That is all I care about." He caught her hands impulsively in his. "I am glad, so glad! Oh!—It is too soon now, but wait—" He was out of the house before she grasped the fact that he had arrested himself on the brim of another declaration.
Mrs. Balfame went up to bed, serene once more in the belief that her future was her own, unclouded, full of attractive possibilities for a woman of her position and intellectual attainments.
She made up her mind to take a really deep course of reading, so that the most spiteful should not call her superficial; moreover, she had been conscious more than once of certain mental dissatisfactions, of uneasy vacancies in a mind sufficiently awake to begin to realise the cheapness of its furnishings. Perhaps she would take a course in history at Columbia, another in psychology.
As she put herself into a sturdy cotton night-gown and then brushed back her hair from a rather large forehead before braiding it severely for the night, she realised dimly that that way happiness might lie, that the pleasures of the intellectual life might be very great indeed. She wished regretfully that she could have been brilliantly educated in her youth. In that case she would not have married a man who would inciteany spirited woman to seek the summary release, but would be to-day the wife of a judge, perhaps—some fine fellow who had showed the early promise that Dwight Rush must have done. If she could attract one man like that, at the age of forty-two, she could have had a dozen in her train when young if she had had the sense to appreciate them.
But she was philosophical, and it was not her way to quarrel very deeply with herself or with life. Her long braids were as evenly plaited as ever.
She sank into sleep, thinking of the disagreeable necessity of making the kitchen fire in the morning and cooking her own breakfast. Frieda of course would be gone.
The next morning, when Mrs. Balfame, running lightly down the back stairs, entered the kitchen half an hour earlier than her usual appearance in the dining-room, the front of her housefrock covered with a large apron and her sleeves pinned to the elbow, she beheld Frieda slicing potatoes.
"Why!" The exclamation was impetuous, but her quick mind adapted itself. "I woke up early and thought I would come down and help," she continued evenly. "You have had so much to do of late."
Frieda was regarding her with intense suspicion. "Never you have done that before," she growled. "You will see if I have the dishes by the dinner washed."
"Nonsense. And everything is so different these days. I am hungry, too. I thought it would be nice to hurry breakfast."
"Breakfast always is by eight. You have told me that when I come. I get up by half past six. First I air the house, and sweep the hall. Then I make the fire and put the water to boil. Then I peel the potatoes. Then I make the biscuit. Then I boil the eggs. Then I make the coffee—"
"I know. You are marvellously systematic. But I thought you might make the coffee at once."
"Always the coffee come last." Frieda resumed her task.
"But I don't eat potatoes for breakfast."
"I eat the potatoes. When they fry in the pan, then I put the biscuit in the oven. Then I boil the eggs and then I make the coffee. Breakfast is by eight o'clock."
Mrs. Balfame, with a good-humoured laugh, turned to leave the kitchen. But her mind, alert with apprehension, cast up a memory, vague but far from soothing. "By the way, I seem to remember that I woke up suddenly in the night and heard voices down here. Did you have visitors?"
Frieda flushed the deep and angry red of her infrequent moments of embarrassment. "I have not visitors in the night." She turned on the water tap, which made noise enough to discourage further attempts at conversation; and Mrs. Balfame, to distract her mind, dusted the parlour. She dared not go out into the yard and walk off her restlessness, for there were now two sentinels preserving what they believed to be a casual attitude before her gate. She would have given much to know whether those men were watching her movements or those of her servant.
Immediately after breakfast, the systematic Frieda was persuaded to go to the railway station and buy the New York papers when the train came in. Frieda might be a finished product of the greatest machine shop the world has ever known, but she was young and she liked the bustle of life at the station, and the long walk down Main Street, so different from the aristocratic repose of Elsinore Avenue. Mrs. Balfame, watching behind the curtain, saw that one of the sentinels followed her. The other continued to lean against the lamp-post whittling a stick. Both she and Frieda were watched!
But the disquiet induced by the not unnatural surveillance of premises identified with a recent crime was soon forgotten in the superior powers of the New York press to excite both disquiet and indignation.
She had missed a photograph of herself while dusting the parlour and had forgiven the loyal thief as it was a remarkably pretty picture and portrayed a woman sweet, fashionable, and lofty. To her horror the picture which graced the first page of the great dailies was that of a hard defiant female, quite certain, without a line of letter press, to prejudice a public anxious to believe the worst.
Tears of outraged vanity blurred her vision for a few moments before the full menace of that silent witness took possession of her. She knew that most people deteriorated under the mysterious but always fatal encounter of their photographs with the "staff artist," but she felt all the sensations of the outraged novice.
A moment after she had dashed her tears away she turned pale; and when she finished reading the interviews the beautiful whiteness of her skin was disfigured by a greenish pallor.
The interviews were written with a devilish cunning that protected the newspapers from danger of libel suit but subtly gave the public to understand that its appetite for a towering figure in the Balfame case was about to be gratified.
There was no doubt that two shots had been fired from the grove simultaneously, and from revolvers of different calibre (picture of tree and gate).
Was one of them—the smaller—fired by a woman? And if so, by what woman?
Not one of the females whose names had been linked at one time or another with the versatile Mr. Balfame but had proved her alibi, and so far as was known—although of course some one as yet unsuspected may have climbed the back fence and hid in the grove—the only two women on the premises were the widow and her extraordinarily plain servant.
Balfame was shot with a .41 revolver. In one of the newspapers it was casually and not too politely remarked that Mrs. Balfame had larger hands and feet than one would expect from her general elegance of figure and aristocratic features, and in the same rambling sentence (this was written by the deeply calculating Mr. Broderick) the public was informed that certain footprints might have been those of a large woman or of a medium sized man. In the next paragraph but one Mrs. Balfame's stately height was again commented upon, but as the public had already been informed that she was an expert at target practice, reiteration of this fact was astutely avoided.
A great deal was said here and there of her composure, her large studiously expressionless grey eyes, her nimble mind that so often routed her inquisitors, but was allied to a temperament of ice and a manifest power of cool and deliberate calculation.
The dullest reader was quickened into the belief that he was the real detective and that his unerring sense had carried him straight to the woman who had hated the murdered man and had quarrelled with him in public a few hours before his death.
The episode of Mrs. Balfame's offer to make her husband a glass of doctored lemonade and the disappearance of both beverage and glass was notmentioned; presumably these bright young men did not believe in digressions or in rousing a curiosity they might not be able to appease. The interview concluded with a maddening hint at immediate developments.
Mrs. Balfame let the papers drop to the floor one by one; when she had finished the last she drew her breath painfully for several moments. The room turned black, and it was cut by rows of bared and menacing teeth, infinitely multiplied.
But she was not the woman to give way to fear for long, or even to bewilderment. There could be no real danger, and all that should concern her was the outrageous, the intolerably vulgar publicity. A woman whose good taste was both natural and cultivated, she felt this ruthless tossing of her sacred person into the public maw much as the more refined octoroons may have felt when they stood on the auction block in the good old days down South. She shuddered and gritted her teeth; she wished that she were a hysterical woman that she might find relief in shrieking at the top of her voice and smashing the furniture.
Why, oh why, could not David Balfame have been permitted by the fate which had decreed his end on that particular night to enter the house and drink the lemonade; to die decently, painlessly, bloodlessly (she shrank aside when compelled to pass those blood stains on the brick path), as any man might die when his overtaxed heart simply stopped? She would have run down the moment she heard the fall, she would have managed to get the glass out of the way if Frieda had condescended to visit the scene, which was quite unlikely. She would have run over to DoctorLequer, who lived next door to the Gifnings, and he would have sent for the coroner. Both inevitably would have pronounced the death due to heart failure. It was fate that had bungled, not she.
She mused, however, that she should have had a duplicate glass of lemonade to leave half consumed on the table, as it would be recalled that he had expected to imbibe a soothing draught immediately upon his return; and adjacent liquids invariably induce suspicion in cases of sudden death. But that did not matter now.
She set her wits to work upon the identity of her companion in the grove. Was it Frieda? Or an accomplice of the girl, who was already in the house or on the alert to direct him out by the rear pathway? But why Frieda? She knew the raging hate that had filled her husband since the declaration of war, and she knew that his rivals in politics hated him with increasing virulency; as they were beginning to hate everybody that presumed to question the right and might of Germany.
But she was a woman just and sensible. Nor for a moment could she visualise Old Dutch or any of his tribe shooting David Balfame because he cursed the Kaiser and sang Tipperary. The supposition was too shallow to be entertained.
The person in the grove had been either a bitter political rival too intimate with the local police to be in danger of arrest, or some woman who for a time may have believed herself to be his wife in the larger village of New York.
She could have sworn that that stealthy figure so close to her was a man, but women's skirts were verynarrow and silent these days, and after all she herself was as tall as the average man.
Before noon the house was filled with sympathising and indignant friends. Cummack came up town to assure her that it was a shame; and he would ask Rush if those New York papers couldn't be had up for libel. He'd take the eleven-thirty for Dobton and consult with him.
The ladies were knitting, no one more impersonally than Mrs. Balfame, although she was wondering if these kind friends expected to stay to lunch, when an automobile drove honking up to the door, and Mrs. Battle teetered over to the window.
"For the land's sake," she exclaimed. "If it isn't the deputy sheriff from Dobton. Now, what do you suppose?"
Mrs. Balfame stood up suddenly, and the other women sat with their needles suspended as if suddenly overcome by a noxious gas, with the exception of Mrs. Cummack, who ran over to her sister-in-law and put her plump arm about that easily compassed waist. Mrs. Balfame drew away haughtily.
"I am not frightened," she said in her sweet cool voice. "I am prepared for anything after those newspapers—that is all."
The bell pealed, and Mrs. Gifning, too curious to wait upon the hand-maiden, ran out and opened the front door. She returned a moment later with her little blue eyes snapping with excitement.
"What do you think?" she gasped. "It is Frieda they want. She is being subpœnaed to Dobton to testify before the Grand Jury. The deputy sheriff is going to take her with him."
Mrs. Balfame returned to her chair with such composure that no one suspected the sudden weakening of her knees. Instantly she realised the meaning of the voices she had heard in the night. Frieda had been "interviewed," either by the press or the police, and induced, probably bribed, to talk. No wonder she had not run away.
But she too resumed her knitting.