Young Bruce had had no appetite for his part in the Balfame drama. He had presented himself at the back door, however, at eight o'clock on the night of the interview with the heroine, assuming that Frieda would be moving at her usual snail's pace from the day of work toward the evening of leisure. She slammed the door in his face.
When he persisted, thrusting his cherubic countenance through the window, she threatened him with the hose. Neither failure daunted him, and he was convinced that she knew more of the case than she was willing to admit; but it was obvious that he was not the man to appeal to the fragment of heart she had brought from East Prussia. The mere fact that he looked rather German and yet was straight American—employed, moreover, by a newspaper that made no secret of its hostility to her country—satisfied him that he would not be permitted to approach her closely enough to attempt any form of persuasion. He drew the long breath of deliverance as he reached this conclusion; the bare idea that he might have to bestow a kiss upon Frieda in the heroic pursuit of duty had induced a sensation of nausea. He was an extremely fastidious young man. But even as he accepted defeat with mingled relief and chagrin, the brilliant alternative occurred to him.
He had ascertained that Frieda was intimate in thehome of Conrad Kraus, otherwise "Old Dutch," of Dobton, the County seat. Conrad, Jr., treated her as a brother should, and it was his habit to escort her home from the popular dance-hall of Elsinore on Saturday nights. Bruce had no difficulty in learning that the young German-American had been dancing with his favourite partner when her dead nerve seemed to threaten explosion and had fraternally run home with her. The energetic reporter did not wait upon the next trolley for Dobton, but hired an automobile and descended in front of Old Dutch's saloon fifteen minutes later.
Young Kraus was busy; and Bruce, after ordering beer and cheese and taking it to an occupied table, drew the information from a neighbour that Conrad, Jr., would be on duty behind the bar until midnight. It was the habit of Papa Kraus to retire promptly on the stroke of nine and take his entire family, save Conrad, with him. The eldest of the united family continued to assuage the thirst of the neighbourhood until twelve o'clock, when he shut up the front of the house and went to bed in the rear as quickly as possible; he must rise betimes and clerk in the leading grocery-store of the town. He was only twenty-two, but thrifty and hard-working and anxious to marry.
Bruce caught the next train for New York, had a brief talk with his city editor, and returned to Dobton a few moments before the closing hour of the saloon. He hung about the bar until the opportunity came to speak to Conrad unheard.
"I want a word with you as soon as you have shut up," he said without preamble.
The young German scowled at the reporter.Although a native son of Dobton, he resented the attitude of the American press as deeply as his irascible old father, and he still more deeply resented the suspicion that had hovered for a moment over the house of Kraus.
"Don't get mad till you hear what I've got to say," whispered Bruce. "There may be a cool five hundred in it for you."
Conrad glanced at the clock. It was five minutes to twelve. He stood as immobile as his duties would permit until the stroke of midnight, when he turned out the last reluctant patron, locked the door and followed the reporter down the still-illuminated street to a dark avenue in the residence quarter. Then the two fell into step.
"Now, what is it?" growled Conrad, who did not like to have his habits disturbed. "I get up—"
"That's all right. I won't keep you fifteen minutes. I want you to tell me all you know about the night of the Balfame murder."
He had taken the young German's arm and felt it stiffen. "I know nothing," was the reply.
"Oh, yes, you do. You took Frieda home and got there some little time before the shooting. You went in the side entrance to the back yard, but you could see the grove all right."
"It was a black-dark night. I could see nothing in the grove."
"Ah! You saw something else! You have been afraid to speak out, as there had been talk of your father having employed gun-men—"
"Such lies!" shrieked young Kraus.
"Of course! I know that. So does the press.That was a wild dream of the police. But all the same you thought it wouldn't be a bad idea to keep clear of the whole business. That is true. Don't attempt to deny it. You saw something that would put the law on the right track. Now, what was it? There are five hundred dollars waiting for you if you will tell the truth. I don't want anything but the truth, mind you. I don't represent a paper that pays for lies, so your honour is quite safe. So also are you."
Conrad ruminated for a few moments. He was literal and honest and wanted to be quite positive that he was not asked to do something which would make him feel uncomfortable while investing those desirable five hundred dollars in West Elsinore town lots, and could reassure himself that the truth was always right whether commercially valuable or not. He balanced the pro's and con's so long that Bruce was about to break out impatiently just as he made up his mind.
"Yes, I saw something. But I wished to say nothing. They might say that I was in it, or that I lied to protect Frieda—"
"That's all right. There was no possible connection between her and Balfame—"
Conrad went on exactly as if the reporter had not interrupted. "I had seen Frieda through the back door. She was crying with the toothache, and I heard her run upstairs. I thought I would wait a few moments. The drops she said she had might not cure her, and she might want me to go to a dentist's house with her. She had gone in the back-hall door. Suddenly I saw the kitchen door open, and as I was starting forward, I saw that it was not Frieda who came out. It was Mrs. Balfame. She closed the door behind her,and then crept past me to the back of the kitchen yard. I watched her and saw her turn suddenly and walk toward the grove. She did not make a particle of noise—"
"How do you know it was not Frieda?"
"Frieda is five-feet-three, and this was a tall woman, taller than I, and I am five-eight. I have seen Mrs. Balfame many times, and though I couldn't see her face,—she had a dark veil or scarf round it,—I knew her height and walk. Of course I watched to see what she was up to. A few moments later I heard Balfame turn in from Dawbarn Street, singing, like the fool he was, 'Tipperary,' and then I heard a shot. I guessed that Balfame had got what was coming to him, and I didn't wait to see. I tiptoed for a minute or two and then ran through the next four places at the back, and then out toward Balfame Street, for the trolley. But Frieda heard Mrs. Balfame when she came in. She was all out of breath, and, when she heard a sound on the stairs, called out before she thought, I guess, and asked Frieda if she had heard anything. But Frieda is very cautious. She had heard the shot, but she froze stiff against the wall when she heard Mrs. Balfame's voice, and said nothing. We told her afterwards that she had better keep quiet for the present."
"And you think Mrs. Balfame did it?"
"Who else? I shall not be so sorry if she goes to the chair, for a woman should always be punished the limit for killing a man, even such a man as Balfame."
"No fear of that, but we'll have a dandy case. You tell that story to the Grand Jury to-morrow, and you get your five hundred before night. Now you mustcome and get me a word with Frieda. She won't look at me, and of course she is in bed anyhow. But I must tell her there are a couple of hundred in this for her if she comes through—"
"But she'll be arrested for perjury. She testified at the coroner's inquest that she knew nothing."
"An abscessed tooth will explain her reticence on any other subject."
"Perhaps I should tell you that she came to see us to-night—last night it is now, not?—and told my papa that Lawyer Rush had frightened her, told her that she might be accused of the killing, that she had better get out. But Papa advised her to go home and fear nothing, where there was nothing to fear. He knew that if she ran away, he would be suspected again, the girl being intimate in the family; and of course the police would be hot on her trail at once. So, like the good sensible girl she is, she took the advice and went home."
"All right. Come along. I'm not on the morning paper, but I promised the story to the boys if I could get it in time."
He hired another automobile, and they left it at the corner of Dawbarn and Orchard Streets, entering the Balfame place by the tradesmen's gate on the left, and creeping to the rear of the house. The lane behind the four acres of the little estate was full of ruts and too far away from the house for adventuring on a dark night. They had been halted by the detective on watch, but when their errand was hastily explained, he joined forces with them and even climbed a lean-to in the endeavour to rouse Miss Appel from her young and virtuous slumbers. Their combined effortscovered three hours; and that explains why the tremendous news-story appeared in the early edition of the afternoon papers instead of whetting several million morning appetites.
The interview with Frieda, who became very wide awake when the unseemly intrusion was elucidated by the trustworthy Conrad, and bargained for five hundred dollars, explains why Mrs. Balfame spent Thursday night in the County Jail behind Dobton Courthouse.
When the Dobton sheriff and his deputies came to arrest Mrs. Balfame, the wife of their old comrade in arms, all they were able to tell her was that the District Attorney had applied for the warrant immediately after the testimony before the Grand Jury of Frieda Appel and of the Krauses, father and son. What that testimony had been they could not have told her if they would, but that it had been strong and corroborative enough to insure her indictment by the Grand Jury was as manifest as it was ominous.
They arrived just as Mrs. Balfame was about to leave the house to lunch with Mrs. Cummack; Frieda had left long before it was time to prepare the midday meal. Mr. Cramb, the sheriff, shut the door behind him and in the faces of the indignant women reporters, who, less ruthless but equally loyal to their journals, wanted a "human interest" story for the stimulated public. Mrs. Balfame and her friends retreated before the posse into the parlour. Mrs. Battle wept loudly; Alys Crumley, who had come in with her mother a few moments since, fell suddenly on a chair in the corner and pressed her hands against her mouth, her horrified eyes staring at Mrs. Balfame. The other women shed tears as the equally doleful sheriff explained his errand and read the warrant. Mrs. Balfame alone was calm. She exerted herself supremely and sent so peremptory a message along her quaking nerves that it benumbedthem for the moment. She had only a faint sense of drama, but a very keen one of her own peculiar position in her little world, and she knew that in this grisly crisis of her destiny she was expected to behave as a brave and dignified woman should—a woman of whom her friends could continue to exult as head and shoulders above the common mass. She rose to the occasion.
"Don't you worry—just!" said Mr. Cramb, patting her shoulder, although he never had had the temerity to offer her his hand before, and had often "pitied Dave." "They lied, them Duytchers, for some reason or other, but they can't really have nothin' on you, and we'll find out what they're up to, double quick."
"I do not worry," said Mrs. Balfame coldly, "—although quite naturally I object to the humiliation of arrest, and of spending even a night in jail. Exactly what is the charge against me?"
The sheriff crumpled his features and cleared his throat. "Well, it's murder, I guess. It's an ugly word, but words don't mean nothin' when there's nothin' in them."
"In the first degree?" shrieked Mrs. Gifning.
Cramb nodded.
"And it don't admit of bail?" Mrs. Frew's eyes rolled wildly.
"Nothin' doin'."
Mrs. Balfame rose hurriedly. There was a horrid possibility of contagion in this room surcharged with emotion. She kissed each of her friends in turn. "It will be all right, of course," she reminded them gently. "Only men could be taken in by such a plot, and of course there are a lot of Germans on the Grand Jury—there are so many in this county. I shall have an excellent lawyer, Dave's friend, Mr. Rush. And I am sure that I shall be quite comfortable in the County Jail—it is so nice and new." But she shuddered at the vision, in spite of her fine self-control.
"You'll be treated like a queen," interposed the sheriff hastily. He was proud of her, and immensely relieved that he was not to escort an hysterical prisoner five miles to the County Seat. "You'll have the Warden's own suite, and I guess you'll be able to see your friends right along. Guess we'd better be gettin' on."
As Mrs. Balfame was leaving the room, her eyes met the horrified and puzzled gaze of Alys Crumley, and one of those obscure instincts that dart out of the subconscious mind like memories of old experiences released under high mental pressure, made her put out her hand impulsively and draw the girl to her.
"I can always be sure of your trust," she whispered. "Won't you come up and help me pack?"
Alys followed unresisting: the blow had been so sudden; she had believed so little in the power of the law to touch a woman like Mrs. Balfame, and even less that she committed the crime; for the moment she forgot her jealous hostility, remembered only that the best friend of her mother and of her own childhood was in dire straits.
Mrs. Cummack had run up ahead and was carrying two suitcases from the large closet to the bed as they entered. Her face was burning and tear-stained, but she was one of those highly efficient women of the home that rise automatically to every emergency and act while others consider. "Glad you've come too,"she said to Alys. "Open those drawers in the bureau, and I'll pick out what's needed. Of course the ridiculous charge will be dismissed in a day or two—but still! Well, if they're all idiots down there at Dobton, we can come over here and pack a trunk later. To take it now would be nonsense, and Sam'll move heaven and earth to get them to accept bail. You just put on your best black, Enid, and wear your veil so they can't snapshot you."
While she was gasping on, Mrs. Balfame, whose brain had never worked more clearly, went into the bathroom and emptied the contents of an innocent looking medicine bottle into the drain of the wash-stand. She feared young Broderick more than she feared the district attorney, who, after all, had been her husband's friend—had, in fact, eaten all of his political crumbs out of that lavish but discriminating hand. She recalled that she had always been gracious to him (at her husband's request, for she regarded him as a mere worm) when he had dined at her table, and felt sure that he would favour her secretly, whatever his obvious duty. Moreover, he was of those that spat at the very mention of the powerful Kraus, and would gladly, especially since the outbreak of the war, have run him out of the community.
Mrs. Balfame, being a brilliant exponent of that type which enjoys the unwavering admiration and loyalty of its own sex, had a corresponding belief in her friends, and rarely if ever had used the wordcatdenotatively. She called out the best in women as they of a certainty called out the best in her. Therefore, it did not occur to her either to close the bathroom door or to glance behind her. Alys Crumley, standingbefore the bureau and happening to look into the mirror, saw her empty and rinse the bottle. The suspicions of Broderick regarding the glass of lemonade flashed into the young artist's mind; and from that moment she believed in the guilt of Mrs. Balfame.
Although her hands were shaking Alys lifted from the lavender-scented drawers the severely chaste underwear of the leader of Elsinore society, and as soon as the suitcases were packed, she made haste to adjust Mrs. Balfame's veil and pin it so firmly that no more kisses could be exchanged. Of her ultimate purpose Alys had not the ghost of an idea, but kiss a woman whom she believed to be guilty of murder and whom she might possibly be driven to betray, she would not. Suddenly grown as secretive as if she had a crime of her own to conceal, she even walked out to the car with Mrs. Balfame and helped to drive away the crowding newspaper women, several of whom she recognised. They in turn bore her off, determined to get some sort of a story for the issues of the morrow.
Mrs. Balfame was whirled to Dobton in ten minutes—herself, she fancied, the very centre of a whirlwind. The automobile was pursued by three cars containing members of the press, which shot past just before they reached Dobton Courthouse, that the occupants might leap out and fix their cameras. Other men and women of the press stood before the locked gate of the jail yard, several holding cameras. But once more the reading public was forced to be content with an appetising news-story illustrated by a tall black mummy.
Mrs. Balfame walked past them holding her clenched hands under her veil, but to all appearance composed and indifferent. The sob-sisters were enthusiastic, and the men admired and disliked her more than ever. Your true woman always weeps when in trouble, just as she blushes and trembles when a man selects her to be his comforter through life.
The Warden and his wife, who but a few weeks since had moved into their new quarters, had moved out again without a murmur and with an unaccustomed thrill. What a blessed prospect after screaming drunks, drug-fiends and tame commercial sinners!
The doors clanged shut; Mrs. Balfame mounted the stairs hastily, and was still composed enough to exclaim with pleasure and to thank the Warden's wife, Mrs.Larks, when she saw that flowers were on the table and even on the window-sills.
"I guess you'll stand it all right," said Mrs. Larks proudly. "Just make yourself at home and I'll have your lunch up in a jiffy."
Mrs. Cummack and Mrs. Gifning had come in the car with Mrs. Balfame, and Cummack and several other men of standing arrived almost immediately to assure her, with pale disturbed faces, that they were doing their best to get her out on bail. While she was trying to eat her lunch, the telephone bell rang, and her set face became more animated as she recognised Rush's strong confident voice. He had read the news in the early edition of the afternoon papers, in New York, telephoned to Dobton and found that his immediate fear was realised and that she was in the County Jail. He commanded her to keep up her spirits and promised to be with her at four o'clock.
Then she begged her friends to go and let her rest and sleep if possible; they knew just how serious that consultation with her lawyer must be. When she was alone, however, she picked up the telephone, which stood on a side table, and called up the office of Dr. Anna Steuer. Ever since her arrest she had been dully conscious of her need of this oldest and truest of her friends. It came to her with something of a shock as she sat waiting for Central to connect, that she had leaned upon this strong and unpretentious woman far more than her calm self-satisfied mind had ever admitted.
Dr. Anna's assistant answered the call, and when she heard Mrs. Balfame's voice broke down and wept loudly.
"Oh, do be quiet," said Mrs. Balfame impatiently. "I am in no danger whatever. Connect me with the Doctor."
"Oh, it ain't only that. Poor—poor Doctor! She's been all in for days, and this morning she just collapsed, and I sent for Dr. Lequeur, and he pronounced it typhoid and sent for the ambulance and had her taken out to Brabant Hospital. The last thing she said—whispered—was to be sure not to bother you, that you would hear it soon enough—"
Mrs. Balfame hung up the receiver, which had almost fallen from her shaking hand. She turned cold with terror. Anna ill! And when she most wanted her! A little window in her brain opened reluctantly, and superstition crept in. Beyond that open window she seemed to hear the surge of a furious and irresistible tide. Had it been waiting all these years to overleap the barriers about her well ordered life and sweep her into chaos? She frowned and put her thoughts more colloquially. Had her luck changed? Was Fate against her? When she thought of Dwight Rush, it was only to shrink again. If anything happened to him—and why not? Men were killed every day by automobiles, and he had an absentminded way of walking—
She sprang to her feet and paced up and down the two rooms of the suite, determined upon composure, and angry with herself. She recovered her mental balance (so rarely disturbed by imaginative flights), but her spirits were at zero; and she was sitting with her elbows on her knees, her hands pressed to her face when Rush entered promptly at four o'clock. He was startled at the face she lifted. It looked older butindefinably more attractive. Her inviolable serenity had irritated even him at times, although she was his innocent ideal of a great lady.
The Warden, who had unlocked the door, left them alone, and Rush sat down and took both her hands in his warm reassuring grasp.
"You are not to be the least bit frightened," he said. "The great thing for you to remember is that your husband's political crowd rules, and simply laughs at your arrest. They are more positive than ever that some political enemy did it. Balfame's temper was growing shorter and shorter, and he had many enemies, even in his own party. But the crowd will pull every wire to get you off, and they can pull wires, all right—"
"But on what evidence am I arrested? What did those abominable people say to the Grand Jury? Am I never to know?"
"Well, rather. It's all in the afternoon papers, for one of the reporters got the evidence before the Grand Jury did."
He had taken off his overcoat, and he crossed the room and took from a pocket a copy ofThe Evening News. She glanced over it with her lips drawn back from her teeth. It contained not only the story the enterprising Mr. Bruce had managed to obtain from Frieda and Conrad Jr., but a corroboration of the maid's assertion that, warned by the family friend and lawyer, Mr. Dwight Rush, to disappear, she had gone to Papa Kraus for advice. Not a word, however, of blackmail.
"So the public believes already that I am a murderess! No doubt I should be convinced as readilymyself. It is all so adroit!" Mrs. Balfame spoke quietly but with intense bitterness. "I suppose I must be tried—more and still more publicity. No one will ever forget it. Do you suppose it is true young Kraus saw me that night?"
"God knows!"
He got up again and moved nervously about the room. "I wish I could be sure. That is the point to which I must give the deepest consideration—whether you are to admit or not that you went out. The Grand Jury and Gore believe it. Young Kraus has a very good name. Frieda has always been well behaved. There are six Germans on the Grand Jury, moreover. We must see that none get on the trial jury. Gore wants to believe—"
"But he was a friend of Dave's."
"Exactly. He is making much of that point. Affects to be filled with righteous wrath because you killed his dear old friend. Trust a district attorney. All they care for is to win out, and he has his spurs to win, in the bargain. I met him a few moments ago; he was about equally full of gin fizzes and the 'indisputable fact' that you are the only person in sight with a motive. Oh, don't! Don't!"
Mrs. Balfame had broken down. She flung her arms over the table and her head upon them. More than once in her life she had shed tears both diplomatic and spontaneous, but for the first time since she was a child she sobbed heavily. She felt forlorn, deserted, in awful straits.
"Anna is ill," she articulated. "Anna! My one real friend—the only one that has meant anything tome. Life has gone pretty well with me. Now everything is changed. I know that terrible things are about to happen to me."
"Not while I am alive. I heard of Dr. Anna's illness on my way to New York. Lequeur was on the train. You—you must let me take her place. I am devoted to you heart and soul. You surely know that."
"But you are not a woman. It's a woman friend I want now, a strong one like Anna. Those other women—oh, yes, they're devoted to me—have been, but they've suddenly ceased to count, somehow. Besides, they'll soon believe me guilty. I hate them all. Only Anna would have understood—and believed."
Rush had been administering awkward little pats to the soft masses of her hair. Suddenly he realised that his faith in her complete innocence was by no means as stable as it had been; she had confessed to him that she had been in the grove that night stalking the intruder. How absurd to believe that she had gone out unarmed. He had read the circumstantial details of the reporter's interviews with Frieda and young Kraus. While the writers were careful not to make the downright assertion that Mrs. Balfame had fired the fatal shot, the public saw her in the act of levelling one of the pistols—so mighty is the power of the trained and ruthless pen.
As he stood looking down upon his unexpected surrender to emotional excitement, he asked himself deliberately: What more natural, if she had a pistol in her hand and that low-lived creature presented himself abruptly and alone, than that it should go off of its own accord, so to speak, whether hers had been the bulletto penetrate that loathsome target or not? If so, what had she done with the pistol?
He sat down and laid his hand firmly on her arm.
"There is something I must tell you. It is something Frieda forgot to tell the reporter, but she gave it to the Grand Jury. With the help of a couple of extra gin fizzes, I extracted it from Gore. It is this: she told the Grand Jury that several times when she did her weekly cleaning upstairs she saw a pistol in the drawer of a table beside your bed. Will—won't you tell me?"
He felt the arm in his clasp grow rigid, but Mrs. Balfame answered without a trace of her recent agitation: "I told you before that I never had a pistol. It would be like her to be spying about among my things, but I wonder she would admit it."
"She is delighted with her new importance, and, I fancy, has been bribed to tell all she knows."
"In that case she wouldn't mind telling more. And no doubt she will think of other sensational items before the trial. She will have awakened in the night after the crime and heard me drop the pistol between the walls, or she will have seen me loading it on the afternoon of the shooting."
"Yes, there is no knowing when those low-grade imaginations, once started, will stop. Memory ceases to function in brains of that sort, and its place is taken by a confused jumble of induced or auto suggestions, which are carefully straightened out by the practised lawyer in rehearsals. But I almost wish that you had taken a pistol out that night and would tell me where to find it. I'd lose it somewhere out in the marsh."
"I had no pistol." Not yet could she take him intoher confidence to that extent, although she knew that he was about to stake his professional reputation on her acquittal.
He dismissed the subject abruptly. "By the way, I gave the story of Frieda's attempt to blackmail you to Broderick and two other men just before I left town—laying emphasis on the fact that you always drank a glass of filtered water before going to bed. They made a wry face over that, but it is news and they must publish it. There are many things in your favour—particularly Frieda's assertion before the coroner that she knew nothing of the case. She is a confessed perjurer. Also, why didn't she answer when you called up to her, if she was on the back stairs? There are things that satisfy a grand jury that will not go down with a trial jury. Now you must, you must trust me."
She looked up at him dully. But in a moment her eyes warmed and she smiled faintly. All the female in her responded to the traditional strength and power of the male. She also knew the sensitiveness of man's vanity and the danger either of starving it or dealing it a sudden blow. She sometimes felt sorry for men. It was their self-appointed task to run the planet, and they must be reminded just so often how wonderful they were, lest they lose courage; one of the several obliging weaknesses of which women rarely scrupled to take advantage.
As she put out her hand and took his, she looked very feminine and sweet. Her face was flushed and tears had softened her large blue-grey eyes that could look so virginal and cold.
"I know you will get me off. Don't imagine for a moment I doubt that; it is a sustaining faith that willcarry me through the trial itself. But it is this terrible ordeal in prison that I dread—and the publicity—my good name dragged in the dust."
"You can change that name for mine the day you are acquitted."
It suddenly occurred to her that this might be a very sensible thing to do, and simultaneously she appreciated the fact that he possessed what was called charm and magnetism. Moreover, the complete devotion of even a passably attractive member of the over-sex in alarming predicaments was a very precious thing. Possibly for the first time in her life she experienced a sensation of gratitude, and she smiled at him so radiantly that he caught his breath.
"No one but you could have consoled me for the loss of Anna, but you are not to say one word of that sort to me until I am out of this dreadful place. I couldn't stand the contrast! Will you promise?"
"Very well."
"Now will you really do something for me—get me a sleeping powder from the druggist? To-morrow I shall be myself again, but Imustsleep to-night."
"I'll get it." His voice was matter of fact, for love made certain of his instincts keen if it blunted others. "That is, if you will promise to go to bed early and see none of these reporters, men or women. They are camped all over the Courthouse yard."
She gave an exclamation of disgust. "I'll never see another newspaper person as long as I live. They are responsible for this, and I hate them."
"Good! You shall have the powder in ten minutes. Oh, by the way, will you give me a written permit to pass the night in your house? I want to go throughyour husband's papers and see if I can find any clue to unknown enemies. He may have received threatening letters. I can obtain the official permission without any difficulty."
She wrote the permit unsuspiciously. At nine o'clock that night he let himself into the Balfame house determined to find the pistol before morning. He knew the police would get round to the inevitable search some time on the following day.
Alys Crumley entertained four of the newspaper women at a picnic lunch in her studio. She was grateful for the distraction from her own thoughts and diverted by their theories. None had seen Mrs. Balfame save through the medium of the staff artist, and they were inclined to accept the primâ facie evidence of her guilt. When Alys fetched a photograph from the house, however, they immediately reversed their opinion, for the pictured face was that of a lovely cold and well-bred woman without a trace of hardness or predisposition to crime. They fell in love with it and vowed to defend her to the best of their ability, Miss Crumley promising to exert her influence with the accused to obtain an interview for the new devotees.
Before wrapping the photograph for its inevitable journey to New York, Alys gave it a moment of study herself, wondering if she may not have misinterpreted what she saw that morning. No one had worshipped at that shrine more devoutly than she, even during these later years of metropolitan concordance.
"What is your theory?" asked Miss Austin ofThe Evening News. "They say that a lot of those men at the Elks know, but never will come through. Do you think it was any of those girls? It might have been some woman he knew in New York who followedhim here for the first time—who would not have been recognised if seen, and got away in a waiting automobile."
"As likely as not," said Miss Crumley indifferently. "I have heard so many theories advanced and rejected that I am almost as confused as the police. Jim Broderick says that the simplest explanation is generally the correct one, but while he believes Mrs. Balfame to be the natural solution, I happen to know her better than he does, and a good deal more of this community. Three or four men and one or two women would be still simpler explanations. Possibly—" She turned cold and almost lost her breath, but the impulse to put a maddening possibility into verbal form was irresistible. "Perhaps some man that is in love with Mrs. Balfame did it." And then she hated herself, for she felt as if she had thrown Dwight Rush to the lions.
"But who? Who?" the girls were demanding, more excited over this picturesque solution than they had been since "the story broke." Even Miss Austin, who disdained to write "sob stuff" and was a graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism, was almost on her feet, while Miss Lauretta Lea, who wept vicariously for fifty thousand women three times a week, shrieked without shame.
"Oh, fine!" "How truly enchanting!" "Dear Miss Crumley—Alys—who, who is the man?"
"Oh, as to that, I've not an idea. Mrs. Balfame always has rather disdained men, and even if she were susceptible is far too straight-laced to permit any man to pay her compromising attentions, or to meet him secretly. But of course she is very pretty, still young to look at, so there is the possibility—"
"But just run over all the marriageable men in the community—"
"Oh, he might be married, you know." Alys struggled to keep the alarm out of her voice.
"But in that case there would still be the wife to dispose of, and now, at least, he'd never dare kill her, or even divorce her. No, I don't hold to that theory. It's more like the reckless act of the unchastened bachelor still young enough for illusions. You must have a theory, Alys. Stand and deliver." Miss Austin spoke with quick insistence. She had detected her hostess' suppressed excitement and was convinced that the hint had not been thrown out at random. She also had been conscious of an indefinable change in her old associate, and now she noticed it in detail. She might be too self-respecting to dip her pen in bathos, but she was nevertheless young, and her imagination began playing about possibilities like lightning over a wire fence.
The heat which confused Alys Crumley's brain was expressed by a dull glow in her strange olive-colored eyes, but she made a desperate effort to look impersonal and rather bored.
"No, I have no theory: certainly it could not be any of the men hereabouts. Mrs. Balfame has known all of them from infancy up. Perhaps she met some one in New York; I don't know that she ever went to any of the tea-tango places—she doesn't dance; but she might have gone with Mrs. Gifning or Mrs. Frew, and just met some one that fell in love with her—Oh, you mustn't take a mere idea of mine too seriously."
"Hm!" said Miss Austin. "It doesn't sound plausible. A man she met now and then at a tea-room!She's not the sort to drive men to distraction in the casual meeting—not the type. And I can't see the men that frequent afternoon tea-rooms working themselves up to the point of murder. No, if there is a man in the case, he is here; if not in Elsinore, then in the county; and it is some man who has known her long enough and seen her often enough to descend from mere admiration for her rather chilling type of beauty into the most desperate desire for possession—"
Alys burst into a ringing peal of laughter. "Really, Sarah, I wonder you are not already famous as a fiction-story writer. How much longer do you propose to stick to prosaic journalism?"
"I've had two stories accepted by leading magazines this month, I'd have you know; but your memory is short if you think journalism prosaic. It germinates pretty nearly all the fiction microbes that later ravage the popular magazines. That was what was the matter with the old magazines—no modern symptoms, let alone fevers—only antidotes that somehow didn't work. But if you won't tell, Alys, I'll find out for myself. If I don't find out, Jim Broderick will, and I'd give my eyes to get ahead of him. But we've got to catch our train, girls."
They took the short cut through the hall of the dwelling, and as they passed the open door of the living-room, Miss Lauretta Lea exclaimed with pleasure at its conceit of a cool green wood. Alys could do no less than invite them in. While the three other reporters were walking about observing the charming room in detail and envying its owner, Miss Sarah Austin walked directly over to a framed photograph of Dwight Rush that stood on a side-table. He had given it to Mrs.Crumley; and Alys, who spared her mother all unnecessary anxiety, had not yet conceived a logical excuse for its removal.
"Whom have we here?" demanded the searching young realist. "Don't tell me, Alys, that here is the secret of your desertion of the New York press. I'd forgive you, though, for he is precisely the type I most admire. The modern Samson before Delilah cuts off what little hair his barber leaves. But the same old Samson looking round for the same old Delilah—"
"Really, Sarah, are you insinuating that I am a Delilah? That is too much!" Alys put her arm round Miss Austin's waist and smiled teasingly. "No wonder your newspaper stories are so bitingly realistic; the restraints you force upon your imagination must put it quite out of commission for the time being. That is Mr. Dwight Rush, quite a well known lawyer in Brabant already, although he has only been here about two years."
"I thought you said all your young men had grown up in the community."
"I had quite forgotten him."
"Ha! Is he married?"
"Oh, no. And he was born and brought up over in Rennselaerville, by the way, but went West to some college or university and practised out there for several years."
"How old is he?"
"Oh, about thirty-three or thirty-four."
"Must have been away a good many years. Would return quite fresh—must have had a lot made over him here—looks clever and built for success—that concentrated driving type that always gets there—"
"He goes very little into society and no one possibly could lionise him."
"Is he interesting to talk to or just another specialist?"
"That's about it. But he was more a friend of mother's than mine. That is her picture."
"Oh! He likes older women, then? Looks as if he might. Never would take the trouble, that type, to adapt himself to girls, try to understand them. Could it be—Alys, you must know if he knows Mrs. Balfame!"
Alys was cold again but laid violent hands on her nerves. "No better than he knew any one else, if as well, for Mrs. Balfame never talked to the younger men. She doesn't attract them, anyhow. Do you realise, dear, that you are asking if Mr. Rush committed murder?"
"With that jaw and those nostrils, he could—oh, rather! And it is one of those cast-iron, passionate faces; when those men do let go—"
"Oh, really!" Alys dropped her arm, and her subtle face expressed disdain. "Mr. Rush is quite too steel clad to be carried away even if he were capable of committing a low and cowardly murder. He happens to be a gentleman and about as astute and poised as they are made. Do please send your romantic imagination off on another flight."
"Not I. I'm going to account for every moment he spent that night."
"Would you like to see Mr. Rush go to the chair?" asked Miss Crumley sternly.
"Oh, good Lord no." Miss Austin turned pale. "I don't believe in capital punishment, anyhow. No,I'll not tell a thing if I find him out. But how interesting to know! I'd write a corking story—fiction—about it. Those deep glimpses into life—into those terrible abysses of the human heart—no writer can become great without them."
"Well, don't waste your time trying to find the criminal in this excellent citizen. You might set some of the newspaper men on his trail and blacken his name while you discovered nothing. Better get on the track of the potential woman in New York."
"Not half so interesting. Just one of those apartment-house misalliances. No, I'm out for Mr. Rush, and when I have the proof, I'll extract a confession; but I'll dig a little grave in my brain and bury his secret—then when it has ripened, exhume and toss it into that crucible through which facts pass and come out—fiction. Get me, dear?"
"You talk like a literary ghoul. But I know you don't mean a word of it. Good-bye, girls. Do drop in whenever you are over on the case." She kissed them all, and Miss Lauretta Lea exclaimed innocently:
"You've lost that lovely dusky colour you had awhile ago, dear. You look more like old ivory than ever—old ivory and olive. I wonder all the artists don't paint you. I suppose every young man in Elsinore is in love with you. Marry, my dear, marry. I've been in this game twelve years. Show me a willing would-be husband and I'd take him so quick he'd never know what struck him. Give my hopes of being a man in the next incarnation for ten babies to weep over when they had croup or got lost in the woods of New York City. Hate sob stuff. Cut it out, kid, before you begin it."
She talked all the way to the gate and for several yards down the avenue, waving a final farewell with a somewhat tragic smile.
"Why doesn't that girl marry?" she asked as they walked rapidly to the station. "Still fresh, if she is twenty-six. I'm only thirty-four and I look like a hag beside her."
"Maybe she can't get the man she wants," replied the potential novelist, who was thinking deeply.
Alys borrowed a horse and cart from her cousin Mr. Phipps, Chief of Police in Elsinore, who kept a livery stable, and took the shortest cut into the country. She wanted to think out many things and think them out alone. She drove rapidly until she came within sight and sound of the sea. Then she let the lines lie loosely on the back of her old friend Colonel Roosevelt, who had been named in his fiery colt-hood, but in these days, save under compulsion, was as slow as American law. He ambled along, and Alys, in the booming stillness and the fresh salt air, felt the humid waves roll out of her brain. She saw clearly, but she was aghast and depressed.
Presented by nature with an odd and arresting exterior, in color and feature as well as in subtlety of expression, sketched and flattered by such artists as she met, she had, ever since old enough for introspection, striven for uncommon personal developments that should justify her obverse and set her still farther apart from mere woman. If not born with an intense aversion from the commonplace (and it is safe to say that no one is), she had conceived it early enough to train a rarely plastic mind to striking viewpoints, while a natural tact saved her from isolation. If she had been as original as she thought herself, she would have antagonised many people.
Assuredly a certain nobility of nature and arevulsion from all that was base were innate; although, soon learning of the many pitfalls yawning for humanity, she had assiduously cultivated these her higher inclinations, an enterprise measurably assisted by the equable temper, the feminine charm, the bright intelligence and the quick sympathies that made her many friends. Moreover, her freedom from the usual yearnings of her sex in the matter of riches and subservience to the race, which wreck the lives of so many women, and her love of the arts and delight in her own little talent, all served to deponderate the burden of life.
She had liked many men as friends, and was proud of the fact that only the more intelligent were attracted to her, but she had arrived at the age of twenty-six without even imagining herself seriously in love, so intense was her idealism. This was another of her deliberate cultivations, for here also was she resolute that as nature had done so much for her, marking her as a girl apart, so should she insist upon having an uncommon mate. It was to this end even more than for the barren satisfaction of pleasing Mother Nature that she had tilled the garden of her mind with both science and imagination. When she loved, it should be like a woman, of course; she had no delusions about making over human nature to suit passing fashions in woman; but while she never ignored the vital passions that formed the basis of her unique personality and strong will, she was determined that they should be quickened only by a man who would make equal demands upon all that was fine in her character and aspiring in her mind.
The awful collapse of this cherished structure, her spiritual house, under her hopeless and violent passionfor Dwight Rush had almost demoralised her. After she had won herself to reason once more, she still had sat, stunned, among the ruins. It was true that Rush was all that she had demanded of man and that he emanated a promise of happiness along strictly modern lines—which was all she asked, being no romantic fool; but not only had she loved him unasked, sacrificing the first and perhaps the dearest of her dreams, to be wooed and awakened and surprised, but, accepting the inevitable (the man being overburdened, like most busy young Americans, and unselfconscious), she deliberately had set herself to awakenhim—and for nought. For worse than nought: he had instantly taken fright and withdrawn.
Of the terrific upheaval of that time, like some graveyard of the sea flung putrid and phosphorescent to the surface by submarine vulcanism, she had ceased to think as soon as her will was reinstated in command. Immediately she had striven to rebuild her house lest she be swamped in mere femaleness, so permanently demoralised that life would be quite unendurable. She had cultivated the heights too long. She might tumble off occasionally, but in no other atmosphere could she breathe deeply and realise herself, find any measure of content. It had occurred to her that if she had been born in the gutter and grown to adolescence with no ennobling influence, she would have developed into a notable force for evil. At all events, she liked to think so; many women of stainless lives do.
She guessed this, having a saving sense of humour, but did not expand upon it, not being inclined to humour at the moment. Accompanying her resolution to be finer and better than ever, to fortify herself againstlife with some degree of satisfaction in herself, was the hope of complete deliverance from what she called the Dwight Rush Idea. In due course she had conquered the obsession, for pride and self-disgust served her like first-aid surgeons on the battlefield; and although she felt amputated and scarred, she had lost her sense of humiliation. But her heart still accelerated its beats when she met Rush, and no will is strong enough to prevent the recurrence of the mental image; only time can dim it. But it was not until Broderick had left her alone in her studio with the poisons of fear and jealousy implanted that she had admitted she still loved him, probably must continue to love him for years to come.
In that hour she had hated Mrs. Balfame, although she neither believed her guilty nor was tempted to the dastardly course of helping to force the appearance of guilt upon her. And for a time that night she had hoped she hated Dwight Rush also, so utterly disgusted and indignant was she that he could prefer a faded woman of forty-odd to a unique and beautiful girl like herself.
But once more Miss Crumley's sense of proportion enforced itself, and she reflected sternly that men had fallen in love with women older than themselves since the world began, and that some of those transcendent—and lasting—passions had made history. She was no green village girl to be astounded at the least common phase of the sexual adventure. It was then she had given way to tears, for although she might be intelligent enough to admit this most unpardonable of nature's informalities, she could regret it with bitterness and despair.
Later had come her fear for Rush's safety. Not for a moment did she suspect him of the crime, but if accused of it during the process of elimination, there was the appalling doubt that he could prove an alibi. As likely as not he had missed his man in Brooklyn—she knew that he had expected to dine and spend the evening at the Country Club—or had not gone there; knowing Balfame's ugly temper when drunk, what more natural than that he should hide in the grounds to be near at hand in case the man were disposed to wreak vengeance on his wife for his own humiliation. It was Alys's theory that the murder was political.
Until to-day! From the moment that she saw Mrs. Balfame empty and rinse the vial, she was convinced that Broderick was right in his deductions and that for some reason the terrible woman had changed her mind and used the revolver. It was a stupider act than she would have expected of Mrs. Balfame, for Dave was a man whose sudden death would excite little suspicion, nor would Mrs. Balfame be the woman to use a common poison. Her intimacy with Dr. Anna would put her on the track of one of those organic potions that were too subtle for chemical analysis. She had heard doctors talk of them herself.
Then abruptly she recalled the sinister change in Mrs. Balfame's smiling countenance on that day she sketched her at the Friday Club; her mind opened and closed on the conviction that in that moment Mrs. Balfame had conceived the purpose of murder.
But why the change of method? She dismissed the riddle. It was not for her to unravel. Nor did she care. The fact was enough. This good friend of her family was an abominable creature from whom in evenmental contact she shuddered away with a spasm of spiritual nausea.
But that was not her own problem. No doubt Mrs. Balfame would be acquitted; Alys hoped so, at all events, for she wanted no such a stain on Elsinore, where, she thanked God, she lived, although she sought knowledge and income in the City of New York. For the same reason, she had no desire that the guilty woman should pay her debt by even a brief term in Auburn; but all that was beside the point. What Alys felt she would give her soul to ravish from this thrice accursed woman, so formidable in her peril, were the services of Dwight Rush. If he were Mrs. Balfame's chief counsel he would see her constantly, and alone—for hours on end, perhaps, for he must consult with her, rehearse her, instruct her, keep up her spirits, console her. This might not be the whole duty of counsel, but in the circumstances no doubt she had underestimated, if anything. And even if he believed her guilty, he might in that intimacy love her the more; not only would he pity her profoundly and see himself her natural protector, but he would be heart and soul in the great case, and it would not be long before the case and the woman were one.
If, however, Rush could be made to believe now that the woman was a murderess, would he not decline to take the case? He was hardly the man to defend man or woman whom from the outset he knew to be guilty, although when immersed in the case he would keep on, whatever the revelations. Alys believed that it was possible for her to convince him. She could inform him of the needle-witted Mr. Broderick's suspicions and of her own confirmations; andshe could tell him of her certain knowledge that Mrs. Balfame had a revolver; she had seen it eight months ago, when Balfame brought it home from New York and told his wife to discharge it in the air if, when alone, she heard a man breaking in.
It had signified little to her at the moment that Mrs. Balfame had denied to police and reporters that she possessed a revolver, for it might by chance be a .41, and it was not to be expected that even an innocent woman would challenge public doubt and possible arrest. But her denial and probable concealment of the weapon were significant to Alys now. She remembered that Dr. Anna had spent the early hours of Sunday alone with Mrs. Balfame. No doubt the wicked woman had found both relief and counsel in confessing to a friend like Anna Steuer, a creature so strong and staunch that the secret would be as safe as in her own guilty soul. Anna, of course, had taken the pistol and dropped it in the marsh when she visited Farmer Houston's wife later in the day. If she could but get Dr. Anna to speak.
Alys raised her eyes under their bent and frowning brows and looked up to where the Brabant Hospital stood on rising ground beside the sea. She gave a gasp as she found herself turning the horse's head in that direction. What did she intend to do? Denounce Mrs. Balfame to Dwight Rush? She fancied she heard an inner crash. Could she do this and escape final demoralisation? Heretofore she had at least committed no act involving moral degradation; her upheavals had affected herself alone and were her inviolate secret; but if she made a last desperate throw to win Dwight Rush by first filling him with loathingof her rival, she would be committed to a course of conduct from which there would be no escape for months, perhaps years to come. For if she won him,—toward which end she must plan with every female art she knew,—she never could ease her soul with confession. Her only chance of keeping a man like that, after the first effulgence had merged into the healthy temperateness of practical married life, was to avoid the major disillusions.
And if she by her own deliberate act went to pieces morally, could she play up? Should she even want to play up? Could one deliberately knock the foundations from under one's cherished spiritual structure, reared with infinite pains upon natural inclinations, and continue to be even a pale reflection of one's higher self? She might, after the first excitement of striving to achieve her immediate object was over, hate herself too deeply to love or even to live.
She drew her brows more closely and expelled her breath through her teeth. For the moment, at least, she felt all female, ready to defy the future and her own soul to obtain possession of her mate. That he was her mate she obstinately believed, temporarily deflected from his natural progress toward herself by one of those powerful delusions that afflict every man in the course of his life. And if she did not open his eyes at once, the temporary deflection would merge into the straight course toward marriage with a she-demon....
She drove into the hospital yard, threw the reins over Colonel Roosevelt's back and asked for the superintendent, Mrs. Dissosway, who happened to be her aunt.
An hour later, Alys was driving through Elsinore, her mind a trifle less personal, as it dwelt upon her brief interview with the superintendent of the hospital. Mrs. Dissosway, who was devoted to her niece and believed her to be as exceptional as Miss Crumley in her most aspiring moments could have wished, had confided that she was sure poor dear Anna knew something about that awful crime, for in her delirious moments she kept uttering Enid Balfame's name in very odd tones indeed. She had assured and reassured the patient that there was no clue to the murderer; and if she kept on and asked to see Mrs. Balfame,—which, significantly, she had not done,—they of course would tell her that the friend who should have hastened to her bedside had suffered a nervous breakdown or sprained her ankle. It was a blessing that she was in no condition to testify against her idol, for it would kill her, just as it might be fatal now if she knew that Enid was in the County Jail.
After some delicate insistence, Mrs. Dissosway had admitted that Dr. Anna must convince any one who listened attentively to her mutterings that her belief in her friend's guilt was positive, whether she had exact knowledge or not.
"'Oh, Enid! Oh,Enid!' she kept repeating in such a tone of anguish and reproach, and then muttered: 'Poor child! What a life!' She also oncesaid something about a pistol in a tone of dismay, but the other words I couldn't make out.
"The nurses on her case," Mrs. Dissosway had concluded, "will pay no attention. They are too accustomed to fever patients to listen to ravings, and the two she will have are from other parts of the State, anyhow. They never heard of Mrs. Balfame before. But I have been in and out all day, and I know she is worrying in her poor hot mind both over her friend's crime and her danger—"
"Then you believe Mrs. Balfame did it?" Miss Crumley had interrupted.
"Yes, I do—now, anyhow; and I never was daffy about her. She barely remembers I am alive, living out here for the last fifteen years as I have done, and I am your mother's sister. I don't call her a snob; it's just that she don't seem to take any interest in people that ain't in her own set. But the Lord knows I'd never tell on her if I had the proof in my hand, for I don't want any of our grand old families disgraced, and she's been good to your mother. No, she can go free, and welcome, but I wish poor Anna could have been spared the knowledge of her crime, for it's going to be all the harder to nurse her well, and she has a bad case. If she has to go, she shall go in peace. I'll see to that. But when Enid Balfame is out, I'll take good care to let her know that she has another crime to carry on her conscience—if she's got one."
Alys had not asked to see the patient, knowing that it would be useless, but Mrs. Dissosway had walked out to the cart with her, and pointing to a window on the first floor of the wing devoted to paying patients, remarked: "That's where she is, poor dear." Alyshad wondered if she should fall low enough before this accursed case were finished to describe the position of that room to Broderick and insinuate what he might find there if he chose to hide in the little balcony and enter the room when the night nurse had gone out for the midnight supper. He was quite capable of it.
But not if she could win Rush from the case, nor unless, Mrs. Balfame discharged, he were arrested and committed for the crime. She wished now that he had been arrested instead of Mrs. Balfame, for then she could have saved him from both punishment and the other woman without this awful sense of sliding slowly down-hill to choke in a poisonous slime. She might have been obliged to exercise a certain amount of sophistry even then, but she could have stood it.
She was driving slowly down Atlantic Avenue when she heard her name called in accents of mystery and excitement. Her modest rig was passing the imposing mansion of Elisha Battle, bank president, and like all the newer homes of Elsinore the grounds were unconfined and the shallow lawn ended at the pavement. From one of the drawing-room windows Lottie Gifning slanted, and as she met Miss Crumley's eye, she beckoned peremptorily. The desire for solitude was still strong upon Alys, but as she had no excuse to advance, she wound the lines round the whip and went slowly up the brick walk.
Mrs. Gifning opened the front door and swept her into the drawing-room, where six or seven other women with tense excited faces sat on the expensive furniture. Mrs. Battle, herself upholstered in shining black-and-white satin, and further clad in invisible armour, occupied a stately and upright chair. This throne had beenmade to order; consequently her small feet in their high-heeled pumps touched the floor. The large room, upon which much money had been spent, was not tasteless; it merely had no individuality whatever. Like many another in Elsinore, it set Miss Crumley's teeth on edge, but compensated her to-day as ever by inspiring her with a sense of remote superiority.
"Dear Alys—so glad to see you!" Mrs. Battle did not rise. She was fond of Alys, but thought her of no consequence whatever. "Lottie saw you and called you in as you have always been such a friend of poor dear Enid's, and you know those horrid reporters, and we want to impress upon you the necessity of putting them off the track. We are talking the whole dreadful business over and trying to decide what to do."
"Do?" Alys, more interested, disposed her limber uncorseted young figure into a low chair and for a moment diverted envious attention from the momentous subject in hand. "What can we do? Has bail been accepted?"
"No, nor likely to be. Isn't it too awful?"
"Yes, it's awful." Alys stared at the floor, but although her words might have been uttered by any of the ladies present, her tone was almost conventional. No one noticed this defection, however, and Mrs. Battle—after Mrs. Gifning had tiptoed to all the doors, opened them suddenly and closed them again,—proceeded in so low a tone that there was an immediate hitching of chairs over the Persian rug:
"What we were debating when you came in, Alys, was whether—oh, it's too awful!—she did it or not. Did she or didn't she? She has a perfectly beautifulcharacter—but the provocation! Few women have been tried more severely. And we all know what human nature is under the influence of sudden tremendous passion." Mrs. Battle, who never had been ruffled by any sort of passion, leaned against the high back of her chair, and elevated her eyebrows and one corner of her mouth.
"Could such a crime have been unpremeditated?" asked Alys. "You forget that whoever did it was waiting in the grove for Balfame to come home from Sam's, and evidently timed to shoot as he reached the gate."
"Passion, my dear child," said Mrs. Bascom, wife of the Justice for Brabant, speaking softly and with some diffidence, for she disliked the word, "can endure for quite a while once the blood is up and pounding in the head. It would take a good deal to work up dear Enid, but when a woman like that does rise to the pitch under many and abominable provocations, well, I guess she could stay at that pitch a good bit longer than all of us put together. I've thought of nothing else for three days and nights,—the Judge won't discuss it with me,—and I feel convinced that she did it."
"So have and so am I," contributed Mrs. Battle, sepulchrally.
"I'm afraid she did!" Mrs. Gifning heaved an abysmal sigh. "I suspected it when I consulted her about her mourning. She was much too cool. A woman who could think of two kinds of blouses she wanted the very morning after the tragedy, and he not out of the house, must have been exercising a suspicious restraint or else have reverted to the cold-bloodedness with which she planned the deed."
"Dear Lottie, you are so psychological," murmured Mrs. Frew admiringly; but Mrs. Battle interrupted sharply:
"I maintain that she did it in a moment of overwhelming passion. She would be inexcusable if she had done it in cold blood."
"Well, of course I didn't mean that!" said Mrs. Gifning with asperity. "I guess I'm as fond of Enid Balfame as anybody in this room, and I guess I know what she must have gone through. What I really meant was that she has more courage than most folks."
"Oh, that indeed!" exclaimed Mrs. Lequer, who was quite happy with her husband, the fashionable doctor of Brabant. "Matrimony is a terrible trial at best, and it's a wonder more women don't—well, it's too horrible to say. But I'm afraid—well, you know."
There was no dissenting voice. Alys raised her eyes and glanced about the room. Mrs. Cummack was not present. No doubt she had been carefully omitted from the conference. So had four members of the inner twelve who were comparative newcomers in Elsinore. All of these women had known Enid Balfame from childhood, consistently admired her; when she was in a position to make her social ambitions felt, had quite naturally fallen into line.
"Isn't it rather a hasty conclusion?" Alys asked. "There are a good many others who might have done it, you know."
"Everybody suspected has one grand alibi." Mrs. Gifning's sigh was rather hypocritical this time. "We'd be only too glad to think there was any one else likely to be arrested. No hope! No hope!"
"I suppose"—Miss Crumley's tones were tentative, although the irresistible words almost cost her her breath—"that there was no man in love with Mrs. Balfame?"
"Alys Crumley!" All the women had shrieked the name, and Mrs. Battle swung herself to her pointed toes. "I'm most mad enough to put you right out. The idea of insinuating—"
"Dear me, Mrs. Battle, it never occurred to me that it was worse for a married woman to have a man in love with her than to commit murder. I did not insinuate or even imagine she cared for any man, or even encouraged one. But such things have happened."
"Not to her. And while I could forgive her for shooting a perfectly loathsome husband under the influence of sudden passion, I'd never forgive her—Enid Balfame!—if she had stooped to anything so paltry and common andsinfulas philandering; for believe me, a man doesn't commit murder for a woman's sake unless he is reasonably certain that he will have his due rewards. That is life. And howcanhe be certain, if there has been no philandering. No!" Mrs. Battle was once more magisterial in her chair, and in command of her best Friday Club vocabulary. "But there is this much to be said: Enid did not necessarily shoot to kill,—merely to wound perhaps,—for nothing would have punished Dave Balfame more than a month or two in bed on gruel and custard. Or maybe she just didn't know what she was doing—just fired to relieve her feelings. I am sure it would have relieved mine after that scene at the Club."
"Oh—I apologise. Let us assume then that Mrs. Balfame did it. How do you propose to act in thematter? Of course you will not accuse her, but shall you cut her?"
"Neither the one nor the other!" Mrs. Battle brought her plump little hands down on the arms of the chair with a muffled but emphatic smack. "Never outside of this room shall we breathe our convictions, or our certain knowledge that she kept a revolver in her room—may I not speak for all?" There was a hissing murmur caused by the letters. "And it will be no negative defence, either. We'll stand by her publicly, visit her constantly, keep up her spirits, never give her a hint of our suspicions, and attend the trial in a body. Our attitude cannot fail to impress the world. We are the representative women of Elsinore; we have known her all our lives; it is our duty to flaunt our faith in the eyes of the public. The moral effect will be enormous—also on the jury."