"It is very splendid of you." Alys sighed. Their motives were mixed, of course, poor dears; brains were not their strong point, and they were all feeling young again with their sense of participation in the great local drama, but there was no questioning their loyalty, even that of Mrs. Battle, who would inherit the reins of leadership were Mrs. Balfame forced to retire. Alys wished she could be swept along with them, but her indorsement of their programme was from the head alone.
"What do the men think?" she asked.
"I guess they don't know what to think," said Mrs. Battle complacently. "They're not as clever as we are, and besides, they never could understand that type of woman. Whatever they think, though,—that is tosay, if they do suspect her,—they'll never let on. They weren't any too fond of Dave these last years, and they're no more anxious than we are to have Elsinore disgraced—especially with all those lots on the edge of the West End unsold. They're hoping for a boom every minute. The trial will be bad enough. And those terrible reporters! They've been here a dozen times."
"That reminds me," interrupted Alys. "I promised four of the best of the women reporters I would try to get them an interview with Mrs. Balfame. Do you think you could manage it? She might not listen to me. And—and—if she is a murderess, I don't think I can see her just yet."
"Youth is so hard!" Mrs. Battle sighed. "But I suppose it is as well that you, an unmarried young woman, and with your way to make, should keep in the background. But why should she see those women? Answer me that. It would be more dignified for her to ignore the press hereafter."
"Perhaps. But they are predisposed in her favour, being women, and would write her up in such a way as to make friends for her among the public. It is important, if she is to be tried for her life, that she should not be thought a monster, that she should make all the friends possible. The jury might convict her, and it would then be necessary, appeals also failing, to get up a petition."
"You always did have brains, Alys!" It was Mrs. Frew who expressed herself with emphasis. "I'll persuade her myself. Don't you really think it would be wise, Letitia?"
"I guess you're both right." Mrs. Battle stood up. "Now let's go out and have tea. I ordered it for five-thirty. New York's got nothing on us."
But Alys, protesting that her mother was old-fashioned and still prepared supper for half past six, excused herself and left the house. She found that Colonel Roosevelt had gone home and was not sorry to cover the half-mile to her own, briskly, on foot. What course she eventually should take was still unformulated, but she was glad that she had not parted with any of her deeper knowledge to those kindly women who, perhaps, would have found it the straw too many. Let Enid Balfame keep her friends if she could. Let her have the whole State on her side if she could, so long as she lost Dwight Rush!
The police, nettled by the sensational coup of the press, made a real effort to discover the identity of the man or woman who had fired the second pistol. For a time they devoted their efforts to implicating Frieda and young Kraus, but the pair emerged triumphantly from a grilling almost as severe as the third degree; furthermore, there was an absolute lack of motive. Conrad had never evinced the least interest in politics; and that Old Dutch should have commissioned the son of whom he was so proud to commit murder when gun-men could be hired for twenty-five dollars apiece was unthinkable to any one familiar with the thoroughly decent home life of the family of Kraus.
Old Dutch's establishment was more of a beer garden than a common saloon, and responsible for a very small proportion of the inebriety of the County Seat. He and his sons drank their beer at the family board, but nothing whatever behind the bar. As for Conrad, Jr., industrious, ambitious, persistent, but without a spark of initiative, obstinate and quick-tempered but amiable and rather dull, his tastes and domestic ideals as cautious as his expenditures, it was as easy to trump up a charge of murder against him because he happened to have seen Mrs. Balfame leave her house by the kitchen door a few moments before he heard the shot that killed her husband, as it was to fasten the crimeupon the unlovely Frieda because she ran home untimely with a toothache.
Frieda confessed imperturbably to her attempt to blackmail Mrs. Balfame, adding (in free translation) that while she had no desire to see her arrested and punished, she saw no reason why she should not turn the situation to her own advantage. When Papa Kraus was asked if he had counselled the girl to demand five hundred dollars as the price of her silence, he repudiated the charge with indignation, but admitted that he did remark in the course of conversation that no doubt a woman who had killed her husband would be pleased to rid herself of a witness on such easy terms, and that it was Frieda's pious intention—and his own—that the blood-money should justify itself in the coffers of the German Red Cross.
All this was very reprehensible, of course; but an imperfect sense of the minor social and legal immoralities was no argument that such blundering tactics were the natural corollary of a specific murder. To be sure, there were those that asserted with firm lips and pragmatical eyes that "anybody who will blackmail will do anything," but the police were accustomed to this line of ratiocination from the layman and knew better.
Their efforts in every direction were equally futile. Behind the Balfame Place was a lane; Elsinore Avenue was practically the eastern boundary of the town, which had grown to the south and west. There were two or three lowly dwellers in this lane, and in due course the memory of one old man was refreshed, and he guessed he remembered hearing somebody crank up a machine that night, but at what time he couldn't say. It was after seven-thirty, anyhow, for he turned in about then,and he had heard the noise just before dropping off. That might have been any time up to eight or nine, he couldn't say, as he slept with his windows shut and couldn't hear the town clock. His cottage was directly across from a point where the second assailant, running out of the grove and grounds, would have climbed the fence to the lane if he had kept in a reasonably straight line. But there had been heavy rains between the night of the shooting and the awakening of the old man's memory, and not a track nor a footstep was visible.
The police also searched the Balfame house from top to bottom for the pistol the prisoner indubitably had carried from the house to the grove; nor did they neglect the garden, yard and orchard, or any of the old wells in the neighbourhood. They even dragged a pond. Their zeal was but a further waste of time. It was then they concluded that Mrs. Balfame had gone out deliberately to meet a confederate and that he had carried off both pistols. But who was the confederate and how did he know at what hour Balfame would reach his front gate? It was as easily ascertained that Mrs. Balfame had telephoned no message—from her own house—that night as that she had received one from her husband which would give her just the opportunity she wanted. But how had she advised the other guilty one? The poor police felt as if they were lashed to a hoop driven up and down hill by a mischievous little girl. All the men who had been at Cummack's when Balfame called up his wife had left the house before he did, and proved their alibis. Even Cummack, who had "sweat blood" during the elimination process, had finally discovered that the janitor of his office-building had seen him go in and come out on that fatalnight. Did Mrs. Balfame go forth some time after Dr. Anna brought her home from the Country Club, find her partner in crime and secrete him in the grove? If so, why did she not remain in the grove with him instead of returning to the house to leave it again by the devious route that delivered her almost into the arms of young Kraus? Above all, who was the man?
It was at this point that the police gave up, although they still maintained a pretence of activity. Not so the press. Almost daily there were interviews with public men, authors, dramatists, detectives, headed: "Did Mrs. Balfame Do It?" "What Did She Do With the Pistol?" "Was She Perchance Ambidexterous? Could She Have Fired Both Pistols at Once?" "Will She Be Acquitted?" "Was It a German Plot?" "If Guilty, Would She Be Wise to Confess And Plead Brain Storm?" The interviews and symposiums that illuminated the Sunday issues were conducted by men, but the evening papers had at least one interview or symposium a week on the subject between a sister reporter and some woman of local or national fame. Nothing could have been more intellectual than the questions asked save, possibly, the answers given.
Upon the subject of the defendant's guilt public opinion fluctuated, and was not infrequently influenced by news from the seat of war: when it looked as if the Germans were primed for a smashing victory, the doubting centred firmly upon the family of Kraus and Miss Frieda Appel; but when once more convinced that the Germans were fighting the long and losing game, the hyphenated were banished in favour of that far more interesting suspect, Mrs. Balfame. Certainly therewas nothing more amusing than trying and condemning a prisoner long before she had time to reach judge and jury, and tearing her to shreds psychologically. In Spain the people high and low still have the bull-fight; other countries have the prize-ring, these being the sole objective outlets in times of peace for that lust of blood and prey which held the spectators in a Roman arena spellbound when youths and maidens were flung to the lions. But in the vast majority of Earth's peoples this ancestral craving is forced by Civilisation to gratify itself imaginatively, and it is this cormorant in the human mind that the press feeds conscientiously and often.
In Elsinore the subject raged day and night, and the opinion of the man in the street may be summed up in the words of one of them to Mr. James Broderick of theNew York News:
"Brain storm, nothin'. She ain't that sort. She done it and done it as deliberately as hell. I ain't sayin' that she didn't have some excuse, for I despised Dave Balfame, and I guess most of us would let her off if we served on the jury, if only because we don't want this county disgraced, especially Elsinore. But that ain't got nothin' to do with it. And there's an awful lot of men who think more of their consciences than they do even of Brabant, let alone of Elsinore, where like as not all of 'em won't have been born—the jurors, I mean. I'm just wonderin'!"
Mr. Broderick met Mrs. Phipps one afternoon at Alys Crumley's. She was not a member of the inner twelve, but a staunch admirer of Mrs. Balfame, although by no means sure of her innocence.
"Maybe she did," she admitted, "since you are notinterviewing me for print. But it's yet to be proved, and if she does get off, I don't fancy she'll lose many of her friends—she wouldn't anyhow, but then if she went up, they'd have so much further to call! As for wars," she continued with apparent irrelevance, "there's this much to be said: a lot of good men may get killed, but when you think of the thousands of detestable, tyrannical, stingy, boresome husbands—well, it is to be imagined that a few widows will manage to bear up. If women all over the world refuse to come forward in one grand concerted peace movement, perhaps we can guess the reason why."
None of these seditious arguments reached Mrs. Balfame's ears, but as her friends' protestations waxed, she inferred that their doubts kept pace with those of the public. But she was more deeply touched at this unshaken loyalty than she once would have believed possible. She had assumed they would drop off, as soon as the novelty of the affair had worn thin; but not a day passed without a visit from one of them, or offerings of flowers, fruit, books and bonbons. She knew that whatever their private beliefs, the best return she could make for their passionate loyalty was to maintain the calm and lofty attitude of a Mary Stuart or Marie Antoinette awaiting decapitation. She shed not a tear in their presence. Nor did she utter a protest. If she looked tired and worn, what more natural in an active woman suddenly deprived of physical exercise (save in the jail yard at night), of sunlight, of freedom—to say nothing of mortification: she, Mrs. Balfame of Elsinore, shut up in a common jail on the vulgar charge of murder?
But in spite of the amiable devotion of her friendsand their assurances that no jury alive would convict her, and in spite of her complete faith in Dwight Rush, the prospect of several months in jail was almost insupportable to Mrs. Balfame, and haunted by horrid fears. She made up her mind again and again not to read the newspapers, and she read them morning and night. She knew what this terrible interest in her meant. Not a talesman in the length and breadth of Brabant County who could swear truthfully that he had formed no opinion on the case. Other murder cases had been tossed aside after a few days' tepid sensation, unnoticed thereafter save perfunctorily. It was her unhappy fate to prove an irresistible magnet to that monster the Public and its keeper the Press. Her hatred of both took form at times in a manner that surprised herself. She sprang out of bed at night muttering curses and pulling at her long braids of hair to relieve the congestion in her brain. She tore up the newspapers and stamped on them. She beat the bars before her windows and shook them, the while aware that if the doors of the jail were left open and the guards slept, she would do nothing so foolish as to attempt an escape.
Sometimes she wondered, dull with reaction or quick with fear, if she were losing her reason; or if she was, after all, a mere female whose starved nerves were springing up in every part of her like poisonous weeds after a long drought. Well, if that were the case, her admiring friends should never be the wiser.
But there were other moods. As time wore on, she grew to be humbly grateful to these friends, a phenomenon more puzzling than her attacks of furious rebellion. Even Sam Cummack, possibly the onlyperson who had sincerely loved the dead man and still stricken and indignant, but carefully manipulated by his wife, maintained a loud faith in her, and announced his intention to spend his last penny in bringing the real culprit to justice. Left to himself, he would in time no doubt have shared the opinion of the community, but his wife was a member of the grand army of diplomatists of the home. She was by no means sure of her sister-in-law's innocence, but she was determined that the family scandal should go no further than a trial, if Mr. Cummack's considerable influence on his fellow citizens could prevent it; and long practice upon the non-complex instrument in Mr. Cummack's head enabled her to strike whatever notes her will dictated. Mr. Cummack believed; and he not only convinced many of his wavering friends, but talked "both ways" to notable politicians in the late Mr. Balfame's party. Most of these gentlemen were convinced that "Mrs. B. done it," and were inclined to throw the weight of their influence against her if only to divert suspicion from themselves, several having experienced acute discomfort; but they agreed to "fix the jury" if Mr. Cummack and several other eminent citizens whom they inferred were "with him" would "come through in good shape." There the matter rested for the present.
Above all was Mrs. Balfame deeply, almost—but not quite—humbly grateful to Dwight Rush. Her interviews with him so far had been brief; later he would have to coach her, but at present his time was taken up with a thousand other aspects of the case, which promised to be a cause celèbre. He made love to her no more, but not for an instant did she doubthis intense personal devotion. He had, after consultation with two eminent criminal lawyers whom he could trust, decided that she should deny in toto the Kraus-Appel testimony, and stick to her original story. After all, it was her word, the word of a lady of established position in her community and of stainless character, against that of a surly German servant and her friends, all of them seething with hatred for those that were openly opposed to the cause of the Fatherland. He knew that he could make them ridiculous on the witness stand and was determined to secure a wholly American jury.
It was some three weeks after Mrs. Balfame's arrest that another blow fell. Dr. Anna's Cassie suddenly remembered that a fortnight or so before the murder Mrs. Balfame had called at the cottage one morning and asked permission to go into the living-room and write a note to the doctor. A moment or two after she had shut herself in, Cassie had gone out to the porch with her broom, and as she wore felt slippers and the front door stood open, she had made no noise. It was quite by accident that she had glanced through the window, and there she had seen Mrs. Balfame standing on a chair before a little cupboard in the chimney placing a bottle carefully between two other bottles. She had fully intended to tell her mistress of this strange performance, but as the doctor those days came home for but a few hours' sleep and too tired to be spoken to, not even taking her meals there, Cassie had postponed her little sensation and finally forgotten it.
When she did recall the incident under the pressure of the general obsession, she told it to a friend, whotold it to another, who again imparted it, so that in due course it reached the ears of the alert Mr. Broderick. It was then he informed the public of the lost glass of lemonade and all the incidents pertaining thereto that had come to his knowledge. Mrs. Balfame's slightly "absurd explanation" was emphasised.
Once more the police were "on the job." The restored bottle was analysed and, ominously, found to contain plain water. Every bottle in the house of Mrs. Balfame was carried to the chemist. Mrs. Balfame laughed grimly at these sturdy efforts, but she knew that the story diminished her chance of acquittal. The public now condemned her almost to a man. The evidence would not be allowed in court,—Rush would see to that,—but every juror would have read it and formed his own opinion. Somewhat to her surprise Rush asked her for no explanation of this episode, and she thought it best not to volunteer one. To her other friends she dismissed the whole thing casually as a lie, no doubt inspired.
As the skies grew blacker, however, her courage mounted higher. Knitting calmed her nerves, and she had many long and lonely hours for meditation. Her friends kept her supplied with all the new novels, but her mind was more inclined to the war books, which she read seriously for the first time. On the whole, however, she preferred to knit for the wretched victims, and to think.
No one can suffer such a sudden and extreme change in his daily habits as a long sojourn in jail on the charge of murder without forming a new and possibly an astonished acquaintance with his inner self, and without undergoing what, superficially, appear to bestrange changes, but are merely developments along new-laid tracks in sections of the brain hitherto regarded as waste lands.
Mrs. Balfame of Brabant County Jail was surprised to discover that she looked back upon Mrs. Balfame of Elsinore as a person of small aims, and rather too smugly bourgeoise. The world of Elsinore!
And all those artificial interests and occupations! How bored she really must have been, playing with subjects that either should have interested her profoundly or not at all. And for what purpose? Merely to keep a step ahead of other women of greater wealth or possible ambitions. Her astonishment at not finding herself all-sufficient, as well as her new sense of gratitude, bred humility which in turn shed a warm rain upon a frozen and discouraged sense of humour. While giving her friends all credit for their noble loyalty, she was quite aware that they were enjoying themselves solemnly and that no small proportion of their loyalty was inspired by gratitude. She recalled their composite expression in the hour of her arrest. They had fancied themselves deeply agitated, but as a matter of fact they were dilated with pride.
Why had she cared so much to lead these women in all things, to be Mrs. Balfame of Elsinore? To return to such an existence was unthinkable.
In spite of the fact that her own tragedy dwarfed somewhat her interest in the great war, she saw life in something like its true proportions; she knew that if acquitted she would be capable for the first time of a broad impersonal outlook and of really developing her intellect. With more than a remnant of the cold-blooded and inexorable will which had condemnedDavid Balfame to death by the medium of Dr. Anna's secret poison, she seriously considered taking advantage of young Rush's infatuation, changing her notorious name for his and receiving the protection that her awakened femininity craved. At other times she was equally convinced that she would marry no man again. She could live in Europe on her small income, travel, improve her mind. Europe would be vastly interesting after the war, if one avoided beggars and impromptu graveyards.
But although she was deeply interested in herself, and gratified that she possessed real courage, and that it had come through the fire tempered and hardened, there were moments, particularly in the night, and if the profound stillness were rent with the shrieks of drunken maniacs, when she was terribly frightened; and in spite of the American tradition which has set at liberty so many guilty women, she would stare at the awful vision of the electric chair and herself strapped in it.
Rush wheeled and looked sharply behind him. For several weeks he had experienced the recurrent sensation of being followed, but until to-night he had been too absorbed to give a vague suspicion definite form. He stood still, and was immediately aware that somebody else had halted, after withdrawing into the shade of one of the trees that lined Atlantic Avenue. He approached this figure swiftly, but almost at his first step it detached itself and strolled forward. Rush saw that it was a woman, and then recognised Miss Sarah Austin of theNew York Evening News. He recalled that she had approached him several times with the request for an interview with Mrs. Balfame; and that she had taxed his politeness by trying to draw him into a discussion of the case.
"Oh, good evening," he said grimly. "I turned back because it occurred to me that I was being followed."
"I was following you," Miss Austin retorted coolly. "I saw you turn into the Avenue two blocks up, and tried to overtake you—I don't like to be out so late alone, especially in this haunted village. The knowledge that everybody in it is thinking of that murder nearly all the time has a curious psychological effect. Won't you walk as far as Alys Crumley's with me?"
"Certainly!" Rush, wondering if all women were liars, fell into step.
"I've been given a roving commission in the Balfame case," continued Miss Austin in her impersonal businesslike manner, which, combined with her youth and good looks, had surprised guarded facts from men as wary as Rush. "Not to hunt for additional evidence, of course, but stuff for good stories. I've had a number of dandy interviews with prominent Elsinore women, as you may have seen if you condescend to glance at the Woman's Page. Isn't it wonderful how they stand by her?"
"Why not? They believe her to be innocent, as of course she is."
"How automatically you said that! I wonder if you really believe it—unless, of course, you know who did do it. But in that case you would produce the real culprit. What a tangle it is! A lawyer has to believe in his client's innocence, I suppose, unless he's quite an uncommon jury actor. I don't know what to believe, myself. But of one thing I am convinced: Alys Crumley knows something—something positive."
Rush, who had paid little attention to her chatter, which he rightly assumed to be a mere verbal process of "leading up," turned to her sharply.
"What do you mean by that?"
"That she knows something. She's over on theNewsnow, understudying the fashion editor before taking charge, and we lunch together nearly every day. She's so changed from what she was a year ago, when she was the life of the crowd—so naïve in her eagerness to become a real metropolitan, and yet so quick and keen she had us all on our mettle. Great girl, Alys! At first, when I met her here again, I attributedthe change to the same old reason—a man. I still believe she has had some heart-racking experience, but there's something else—I didn't notice it so much that first day—but since—well, she's carrying a mental burden of some sort. Alys has a damask cheek, as you may have noticed, but nowadays there's a worm in the bud. And those olive eyes of hers have a way of leaving you suddenly and travelling a thousand miles with an expression that isn't just blank. They will look as grimly determined as if she were about to turn her conscience loose, and in a moment this will relax into an expression of curious irresolution—for her: Alys always knows pretty well what she wants. So, as this mystery must be in her consciousness pretty well all the time, when she is at home, at least, I feel sure she knows something but is of two minds about telling it to the police."
"Have you any object in telling me this? I thought you modern women who have deserted the mere home for the working world of men prided yourselves upon a new code of loyalty to one another."
"That's a nasty one! I'm not disloyal to Alys. Others have noticed that there's something big and grim on her mind, as well as I. Jim Broderick is always after her to open up. I have a very distinct reason for telling you. In fact, I have tried to get a word with you for some time."
"Have you been following me? Were—were—you in Brooklyn yesterday?"
"Yes, to both questions." Her voice shook, but her eyes challenged him imperiously; they were under the bright lights of Main Street. "I'll tell you what I believe Alys knows: that you killed David Balfame; andshe can't make up her mind to betray you even to liberate an innocent woman."
He was taken unawares, but she could detect no relaxation in his strong face; on the contrary, it set more grimly.
"And what are you up to?" he asked.
"To find the proof for myself, and get ahead of Jim Broderick."
"I know of no one so convinced of Mrs. Balfame's guilt as Broderick."
"That's all right, but a man with as keen a scent as that is likely to find the real trail any minute."
"And you believe I did it?"
"I think there are reasons for believing it."
"I won't ask you for them. It doesn't matter, particularly. What interests me is to know whether you believe that if I had committed the crime of murder I would let a woman suffer in my stead."
Miss Austin cerebrated.
"No," she admitted unwillingly, "you don't strike one as that sort. But then you might argue that she is reasonably sure of acquittal and you would have scant hope of escaping the chair."
Rush laughed aloud. It was a harsh sound, but there was no nervousness in it, and he continued to look interrogatively at Miss Austin. He had barely noticed her before, but he observed that she was a handsome girl with a clean-cut honest face, a bright detecting eye, and the slim well-set-up figure of an athletic boy. Her peculiar type of good looks was displayed to its best advantage by the smartly tailored suit.
"You hardly look the sort to run a man down," he murmured, and this time he smiled.
"One gets mighty keen on the chase in this business." They turned into the deep shade of Elsinore Avenue, and she stood still and lowered her voice. "If you would tell me," she said, "I'd swear never to betray you."
"Then why ask me to confess?"
"Oh—it sounds rather banal—but I want to write fiction, big fiction, and I want to come up against the big tragedies and secrets of the human soul. If you would tell me the whole story, exactly how you have felt at every stage and phase before and since, I feel almost sure that I could write as big a book as Dostoiewsky's "Crime and Punishment"—not half so long, of course. If we learn from other nations, we can teach them a thing or two in return. You may ask what you are to expect in return for a dangerous confidence. I not only never would betray you, but I'd make it my study to divert suspicion from pointing your way. I could do it, too. You are safe as far as Alys is concerned. The secret is oppressing her terribly, and she's driven by the fear that her conscience will suddenly revolt and force her to speak out—particularly if Mrs. Balfame broke down in jail, to say nothing of a possible conviction—not that I believe anything short of conviction would open her lips. You are the last person on earth she would hand over to the law; it seems odd to me you can't realise that for yourself."
"Realise what?"
"Oh, I've no patience with men! I never did share the platitudinous belief in propinquity. Why, Alys has turned half the heads in Park Row. Even the austere city editor is beginning to hover. How any man could pass a live wire like Alys Crumley by—anddistractingly pretty—for a woman old enough to be her mother!"
He caught his breath.
"What do you mean by that?"
"Mrs. Balfame."
"And yet you accuse me of letting her lie in prison bearing the burden of my crime?"
"As the only way to possess her ultimately."
"And how many, may I ask, are saying that I am in love with my client?"
"Not a soul—save, possibly, Alys to herself. She doesn't seem to have much enthusiasm for the Star of Elsinore. Provincial people are too funny for words. Maybe we New Yorkers are also provincial in our tendency to forget there is any other America. I intend to cultivate the open mind; a writer must, I think. So you see just how in earnest I am. Don't you believe you could trust me? All the world knows that a newspaper person is the safest depository on earth for a secret."
"Oh, I have the most touching confidence in your honour, and the most profound admiration for your candour, and the deepest sympathy for ambitions so natural to one afflicted with genius. I am only wondering whether if I gave you the information you seem to need you would permit Mrs. Balfame to remain in jail and stand trial for her life."
"You are not to laugh at me! Yes, I should. Because I know that she has ninety-nine chances out of a hundred to get off, and that if she were condemned you would come forward at once and tell the truth."
"And you really believe I did it?" His hands were in his pockets, and he was balancing himself on hisheels. There was certainly nothing tense about his tall loose figure, but the light of the street lamp, filtered through a low branch, threw shadows on his face that made it look pallid and as darkly hollowed as the face of an elderly actress in a moving picture. To Miss Sarah Austin he looked like a guilty man engaged in the honourable art of bluffing, but her mounting irritation precluded pity.
"Yes, Mr. Rush, I do. It is to my mind the one logical explanation—"
"You mean the logical fictional—"
"I'm no writer of detective stories—"
"Just like a novel then?"
"Ah! That I admit. The great novel is a logical transcript of life. The incidents rise out of the characters, react upon them, are as inevitable as the personal endowments, peculiarities, and contradictions. Understand your characters, and you can't go wrong."
"You are the cleverest young woman I ever met. For that reason I feel convinced you need no such adventitious aid as confession from a murderer. You will work it out—your premises being dead right—far better by yourself. It's the contradictions you mentioned I am thinking of, both in life and character."
"You are laughing at me. It's no laughing matter!"
"By God, it isn't. But you couldn't expect me to plump out a confession like that without taking a night to think it over."
"If you don't tell me, I warn you I'll find out for myself. And then I'll give it to my newspaper. To begin with, I'll find out if you really did see any one inBrooklyn that Saturday night. I'll discover the name of everybody you know in Brooklyn."
"That's a large order. I fear the case will be over."
"I'll set the whole swarm on the case. But if you will tell me the truth, you will be quite safe."
"The cause of literature might influence me were it not that I fear to be thought a coward—by my fair blackmailer."
"Oh! How dare you? Why, I don't want your secret to use against you. I thought I explained—how dare you!"
"I humbly beg pardon. Perhaps as it is such a new and flattering variety, it deserves a new name. I suppose the legal mind becomes hopelessly automatic in its deductions—"
"Oh, good night!"
They were at the Crumley gate. Rush opened it and passed in behind her. "I think I too will call on Miss Crumley," he said. "I have been too busy to call on any one for weeks, but to-night I must take a rest, and I can imagine no rest so complete as an evening in Miss Crumley's studio. I see a light in there—let us go round and not disturb Mrs. Crumley."
Miss Austin remained but a few moments in the studio. She was embarrassed and angry, and Rush was not the sole object of her wrath: she anathematised herself not only for permitting her literary enthusiasm to carry her to the point of attempting coercion and running the risk of being called bad names by an expert in crime, but for speaking out impulsively in the first place and throwing her cards on the table. It had been her intention to cultivate the wretch's acquaintance and lead him on with excessive subtlety; but he had proved impervious to her maidenly hints that she would like to know him better; equally so to her boyish invitation to come over some evening and meet a number of the newspaper girls who were all fighting for his client. Fifteen minutes alone with him in the quiet streets of Elsinore at night was an opportunity that might never come again, and she had surrendered to impulse.
She was now more deeply convinced than ever that he had killed David Balfame, but although she had no intention of denouncing him even if she found her proofs in the course of persistent sleuthing, she thought it wise to "keep him guessing," as the uneasiness of mind caused by this constant pressure from without might eventually drive him to her for counsel and aid. Like all healthy young American writers of fiction, she was an incurable optimist, and as yet untempered in theleast by the practical experiences of a New York reporter.
After a few moments' desultory conversation, she announced that she "must run," and as Alys opened the door, Miss Austin turned to the lawyer, who had risen and stood by the stove.
"Good night, Mr. Rush," she said sweetly. "So glad you are defending poor Mrs. Balfame, but you know I never did believe she did it, and I have good reason to hope that we shall all know the truth in about a fortnight."
Rush bowed politely, as she did not offer her hand. "You would save me much trouble and Mrs. Balfame much expense. I wish you all good luck."
Her brows met and her dark grey eyes turned black, but she swung on her heel and marched out with her head in the air. Rush remained behind, as it was evident the two girls wanted a last mysterious word together.
Alys returned in a few moments, and with a swift step. Her face was radiant. She too held her head high, but as if she lifted her face to drink in some magic elixir of the night. This was the first time she had seen Rush since he had immersed himself in the case, and now he had come to her unasked, and as naturally as in the old days when weary with work and the sordid revelations of the courts. Her mercurial spirits, which had hung low in the scale for weeks, had gone up with a rush that filled her with a reckless unreasoning happiness. Perhaps intimacy with Mrs. Balfame had disillusioned him in little ways. Perhaps he had discovered the truth for himself and despised her for a cold-blooded liar where he might have forgiven her honestadmission of the actual crime. It would be just like his exaggerated idealism. There never was any love that could not be killed by transgression of some pet prejudice, some violation of secret fastidiousness. At all events, he was here and with every appearance of spending a long evening. What did the rest matter?
He was still standing as she entered, staring at a water colour of a bit of the woods west of Elsinore. The trees were stately and old, the shadows green and shot with the gold of some stray beam of the sun dancing down through that heavy canopy with Puckish triumph. A rocky brook crossed the glade, and behind was a subtle suggestion of the uninterrupted forest, deserted and absolutely still. Rush had recognised the spot.
"My village, Rennselaerville, is on the other side," he said, turning a boyish face to Alys. "I have been fourteen again for a few moments. Last summer I only got a day off now and again to loaf in those woods. I wish I had been with you when you painted this."
She unhooked the picture and handed it to him. "Please let me give it to you. I'd like so much if you would hang it in one of your rooms,—say behind your desk,—so that when you are tired or puzzled you can wheel about and lose yourself for a moment. I am sure it wouldn't be a bad substitute for the real thing."
She spoke with a shy eagerness and an entire absence of coquetry. He put out both hands for the picture.
"I should think it wouldn't. It is just like you to think of it. Indeed I will accept it." And he remembered how many cases he had forgotten under her kindly tact, both in this cool green studio and that otherroom of woodland shades in the cottage. He was wondering if he had not been a conceited ass and misconstrued an increasing warmth of friendship in this fine impulsive creature, when he remembered Miss Austin's insinuations and sat down abruptly, recalled to the object of his visit.
Alys had invited him to smoke but had not produced her box of Russian cigarettes. Miss Austin, who was determined to keep her nerves in order and her efficiency at high-water mark, did not smoke, and Rush had his prejudices. While he puffed away at his cigar and stretched his long legs out to the fire, she leaned back against a mass of pillows on the divan and congratulated herself that she had put on a charming primrose-yellow gown in honour of her Aunt Dissosway and two other guests entertained by her mother at supper. It was rhythmical in its harmony with the olives of the room and of her own rare colouring.
Rush, who had been studying his picture, looked up and smiled at the other picture on the divan. In the soft lamplight Alys' smooth dark hair looked as olive as her eyes, and there was a faint stain of pink on the ivory of her cheeks. Beneath the lace that covered her slender bust was a delicate note of ribbons and fine lawn, and the little feet in pointed bronze slippers showed through transparent stockings. More by instinct than calculated effect Alys on such occasions managed to create an aura of fastidious and dainty femininity while stopping short of invitation.
Rush scowled as his mind leaped to the substantial and sensibly clad feet of his beautiful client, and to a pile of stout unribboned underwear that had been brought into the jail sitting-room one day when heawaited her tardy appearance. For the first time he wondered if such things really counted in human happiness—not so much, perhaps, for the artistic delight in them that a plain man like himself might be able to feel as for all that they stood: the elusive but auspicious signal.
He shook himself angrily and sat up.
"Your young friend thinks I murdered Balfame," he announced.
Alys started under this frontal attack, but smiled ironically. "I knew she had conceived some such nonsensical theory, mainly because she wanted to have it so. Sarah intends to be a novelist."
"So she did me the honour to confide. She even promised me all the immunity that lay within her jurisdiction if I would reward her with a full confession."
"Really, she is too absurd. Don't let it worry you. You have nothing to fear."
"I'm not so sure."
Alys sat up as rigidly as if armoured like Mrs. Battle. "What do you mean?" she breathed.
"Miss Austin has arrived at the conclusion that I am in love with Mrs. Balfame. She is an outsider with no data whatever to work on; it is reasonable to suppose that sooner or later our good fellow citizens will work round to the same theory."
"That is just the one theory they never will conceive or accept. They know better. That sort of thing never was in Mrs. Balfame's line. The women know that if she doesn't exactly hate men, she has a quiet but profound contempt for them. I wish you could have seen them—her particular crowd—at Mrs. Battle's the day of the arrest. Just to draw them out,I suggested that some man who was in love with her might have fired the shot. They nearly annihilated me. Mrs. Balfame, guilty of the crime of murder or not, is fairly screwed on her pedestal so far as the women are concerned. As for the men, such a theory will never occur to them for the simple reason that not one has ever been attracted by her; she's the very last woman they would expect any man to commit murder for."
Rush, wondering if these observations were dictated by venom or a mere regard for facts, shot a veiled glance at the divan; Miss Crumley's soft carefully de-Americanised voice had not sharpened, but her face was very mobile for all its reserve. She was looking almost aggressively impersonal and had sunk back against the high pillows in a limp indolent line. Facts, of course!
"It is very like a political campaign," said he. "Nobody is quite sane in this town just now, and the wildest conclusions are bound to be jumped at. It is not only embryo novelists that have romantic imaginations. Just reflect that I am Mrs. Balfame's counsel, that I am still a young man and unmarried, and that she is a beautiful woman and looks many years younger than her age. There you are."
Alys made an abrupt change of position which in one less graceful would have suggested a wriggle. However, her voice remained impersonal. "But this community, including her friends, believe that she did it. They want her to get off, but they have settled the question in their own minds and are not looking around for any one else."
"Cummack and several of the other men are,besides Balfame's old political pals—and his enemies, for that matter. Old Dutch, who is far shrewder than his son, is by no means certain of Mrs. Balfame's guilt and has put a detective on the job—against her acquittal, having no desire to see suspicion pointing at his house again. He is just the old sentimentalist to settle on me."
He saw the pink fade out of her cheeks, leaving her face like cold ivory, but she answered steadily: "You have your alibi. You went to Brooklyn that evening to keep an appointment."
"I don't mind telling you that although I went to Brooklyn that night I did not see the man I was after. I went on the spur of the moment, more because I wanted to get out of Elsinore than anything else; I didn't have time to telephone before catching the train, but when I left it in Brooklyn, I telephoned and found that he had gone to New York. I gave no name; it was a matter of no importance. Then as there was no one else I cared to talk to I took the next train back, and as my head ached and I felt as nervous as a cat—from overwork and other things—tramped for hours until I met Dr. Anna out by the marsh and she drove me in—"
"Dr. Anna?"
"Yes, and I have reason to believe she thinks I shot Balfame, but she would never denounce any one if she could help it."
"Oh, you are all wrong. She believes—like everybody else—that Mrs. Balfame did it. My Aunt Dissosway is superintendent out there and has been listening to her delirious mutterings; she's never mentioned you. I drove out there for the secondtime on Sunday. I haven't told Mother, as she is one of the few that believe Mrs. Balfame innocent—but when Dr. Anna is coherent at all, that is the impression my aunt gets—but—Oh—of course she's only guessing like everybody else. She couldn't know—she was out at the Houston farm—"
Rush was sitting up very straight.
"Has any one been permitted to see her?"
"Of course not."
"Not that it would matter. Delirious people all have insane fancies. But I don't believe she had any such idea before she came down, and besides it is not true. Mrs. Balfame is innocent."
"Of course as her lawyer you must persuade yourself that she is."
"If I had not believed in her, I would not have taken the case, great as my desire would be to help her. I am no good at pleading against my convictions; I'd fail with the jury. If I had believed her guilty, I should have got her the best counsel possible and helped him all I could."
Alys had a curious sense of physical paralysis, or of spiritual dissociation from her body, she made no attempt to decide which; but that the cause was an intense nervous excitement she was well aware. As she stared at him with dilated eyes, he was suddenly convinced that Miss Austin was right in assuming that Alys had some secret and important knowledge bearing upon the crime. Was her reticence due to the common Elsinore loyalty? If so, why her reserve with him who would have parted with his life rather than with any facts that still further would incriminate Mrs. Balfame.
Then in a flash he understood, for his keen faculties were on edge, concentrated to one point, and as sensitive as magnets. He recalled his high estimate of this girl during the weeks of their intimacy, and the instinctive doubts that had assailed him in his rooms on the night of the murder. And as he realised the fierce battle that was raging in that passionate but disciplined soul, he knew that she loved him, and he scorned himself for attributing her former tentative advances to calculation or that compound of nerves and imagination which so many women call love. She had given him her heart, and it had betrayed her. But while the knowledge gave him an unexpected thrill, he ruthlessly determined to try and to test her to the utmost.
He stood up and walked about the room for a moment, and then halted directly in front of her.
"Do you know anything?" he asked abruptly.
"About what? Do you think I suspect you?"
"No, I don't. I mean Mrs. Balfame."
"I told you we all believe she did it. We can't help ourselves."
"I don't understand the attitude of any of you women who were her friends, her intimates. You—they, rather—have let her lead this community for years, believed her to be little short of perfection. And now with one accord they accept her guilt as a matter of course."
"I think they came to with a sort of shock and realised they never had understood her at all. She had them hypnotised. I think she's one of those Occidentals with terrible latent powers for whom new laws will have to be made when they awake toconsciousness of them and begin to develop them with the power and skill of the Orientals—"
"Beg pardon, but let's keep to the present."
"Well, I mean it rather excites them to be able to believe, not so much that she did it, as that she was capable of it, that while uniformly sweet and serene, she had those terrible secreted depths. She reminds one of Lucrezia Borgia, or Catherine de Medici—"
"Why poisoners? You don't mean to say they take any stock in that story of the poisoned lemonade?"
And before Alys could collect her startled faculties she had stammered: "Oh, of course, not. They laugh at that. Balfame was shot—what's the use of—the water in the vial no doubt was put there to rinse it, and Dr. Anna absently put it back in place. I merely mentioned the names of the first wicked women that occurred to me. Somehow Mrs. Balfame suggests that historic tribe to our friends. No doubt this crime in their midst has irritated what little imagination they have."
Her chest was rising under quick heartbeats, stirring the soft nest of ribbon and lawn under the lace of her gown, a part of the picture that he did not appreciate until later; at the moment he was observing her dilated eyes, the strained muscles of her nostrils and mouth. He found himself interested in feminine psychology for the first time in his life; and as he hated a liar above all transgressors, he wondered why he inconsistently delighted in not being able to comprehend this complex little creature, and at the same time hoped, his own breathing almost as irregular as hers, that she would continue to lie. But he pushedon. He had a dim sense that far more tremendous issues were at stake than further proof of his client's guilt, and deep in his soul was an ache to feel reassured that staggering old ideals might yet be reinforced with vitality.
"Have you told Jim Broderick that Dr. Anna accuses Mrs. Balfame?"
"Of course not. He would be climbing the porch the first dark night."
"Have you been tempted to tell him?"
She shrank farther back and looked up at him under lowered lids. "Tempted? What—why should I? Well, I haven't told him, or any one. That is all that matters."
"Exactly. I only meant, of course, that I have a reprehensible masculine disbelief in the ability of a woman to keep a secret. I might have known you would be the exception, as you are to so many rules. And I mean that. But Broderick is an old friend of yours and preternaturally keen on the case."
"Oh!"
"You haven't told me why you in particular believe so firmly in my client's guilt. You are the last person to be influenced by either the ravings of a typhoid patient—hallucinations, generally—or any of the sentimental and romantic theories of these half-baked women that spend their leisure taking on flesh, playing bridge, and running over to New York. If you believe Mrs. Balfame is guilty you must have some fairly good reason—perhaps proof."
She could not guess that he was trying her; she imagined his insistence due to apprehension, a desire to know the worst. The hour she had dreaded anddesired had come—and she had almost let its opportunities escape! These last weeks in New York filled with work and novel distraction had repoised her, unconsciously. She had begun to doubt, some time since, if she would be able to violate her old standards when the test came; but not for a moment had she ceased with all the concentrated forces of her being to long for his desertion of Mrs. Balfame. And if she had rejoiced sometimes that she was incapable of a demoralising act, she had at others been equally disgusted with her failure in inexorable purpose. She told herself that the big brains were ruthless, able to hold down and out of sight one side of the character they governed while giving the hidden forces for evil full play; never in wantonness, of course, but in sternly calculated necessity. She had a suspicion that this was just the form of greatness Mrs. Balfame possessed, and it increased her disesteem of self and inspired her with a second form of jealousy.
The bitter tides were welling to the surface once more. She asked abruptly: "Is Sarah Austin's theory true? Are you in love with Mrs. Balfame?"
"What has that to do with it?"
"It has its bearings."
"I don't think I should be expected to answer that question. I can say this, however: that as long as she is my client and in jail, I shall have no time to think of personal matters—of love, above all. My job is to get her off, and it occupies about sixteen hours out of the twenty-four. I oughtn't to be here, but relief—distraction—is imperative, now and again—"
"It would be too delightful if you would come here when you wanted both." Her tones were politewithout being eager, but she found it impossible to smile.
"Yes, I will; but I shall ignore the subject we are discussing—rest doesn't lie precisely that way! For that reason we'll finish up now. Why do you believe Mrs. Balfame guilty?"
"If I could prove to you that she was, would you throw over the case?"
He hesitated and regarded her fixedly for a moment through narrowed lids. "Yes," he said finally. "I would get one of the men whose firm I expect to join the first of the year to take the case."
She sat erect once more and twisted her hands together, but tried to smile impersonally as she returned his gaze. "Would you then have time to love her?"
Again he hesitated, although he was beginning to hate himself; he felt as if he had some beautiful wild thing of his woods in a trap, but an imperious inner necessity urged him on. "Probably not. Now will you tell me?"
"Now?"
She slipped to the floor and confronted him, holding her small head very high. No doubt the upward movement was unconscious in its expression, but he thought her very lovely and proud as she stood there, and for the first time he took note of the subtlety in that delicate mobile face.
"I really know nothing," she said lightly. "It is just this: if you or any other innocent person were in danger, I should feel called upon to unravel certain clues. Naturally I should make no move otherwise. Mrs. Balfame is an old friend of ours—and then—well, our local pride may be absurd, but there it is. We must watch Jim Broderick. He has discoveredthe intimacy between Dr. Anna and Mrs. Balfame, and also—what all know here—that they were alone together during those last morning hours following the murder. I'll warn my aunt. He really couldn't get at her—not now, at all events; what he is after, of course, is not so much corroboration, but a new and sensational story to keep the case going. And, of course, as it was the press that ran Mrs. Balfame to earth, a statement from a woman of Dr. Anna's standing justifying it would be an immense triumph."
She had moved over to a table against the farther wall, and she struck a match and applied it to the wick of an alcohol lamp. "I am going to make you a cup of tea. It will rest without overstimulating you, and you must go right from here to bed. I'm sorry Mother doesn't keep whisky in the house—"
"I don't drink when I'm on a case. That's one advantage I generally have over the other side. It will be delightful to drink tea with you once more, although I'm free to say that outside of this house I never drank a cup of tea in my life."
The atmosphere was as agreeably light as if ponderable clouds had suddenly rolled out of the room. Two young people drew up to a smaller table and drank several cups of tea that had stood three minutes, nibbled excellent biscuit, and talked about the War.
Three days before the date set for the opening of the trial, Mrs. Balfame deferred to the advice of her counsel and friends and received the women reporters—not only the four depending upon Miss Crumley, but a representative of every Woman's Page in New York and Brooklyn.
They presented themselves in a body at three o'clock in the afternoon and were conducted upstairs by the fluttered Mrs. Larks, who had anticipated them with all the chairs in the jail. They crowded into the little sitting-room, and were given time to dispose themselves before the door leading into the bedroom opened and Mrs. Balfame entered.
She bowed composedly and, with a slight diffident smile, walked to the chair reserved for her. Her weeds were relieved by white crêpe at the neck and wrists, but to two of the newspaper women who had interviewed her a year since as the founder of the Friday and the Country clubs, she had lost her haunting air of girlhood; there was not a line in her beautiful skin nor a gleam of silver in her abundant brown hair, but she had suddenly entered upon the full maturity of her years, and what she may have lost in charm they decided she had gained in subtle force. The other women agreed that she looked as cold and chaste as Diana, quite incapable of any of those mortal passions that drive fallible Earthians into crime.
It was an ordeal, and she drew a long breath.
"You—you wish to interview me?"
Miss Sarah Austin, whose brilliant parts were generally recognised and whose creative fervour was suspected by few, had been elected to the office of spokeswoman and replied promptly:
"Indeed we do, Mrs. Balfame, and before asking you any of the tiresome questions without which there could be no interview, we should be glad to know if you read the woman's pages in our newspapers and realise that we are all friends and shout our belief in your innocence from the housetops?"
"Yes, oh yes," murmured Mrs. Balfame stiffly, but with a more spontaneous smile. "That is the reason I finally consented to see you. I do not like being interviewed. But you have been very kind, and I am grateful."
There was a deep murmur, and after Miss Austin had thanked her prettily for her appreciation of their modest efforts, she continued in a brisk and businesslike manner: "Now, Mrs. Balfame, what we should like is your story. We have been warned by Mr. Rush that we cannot ask you whom you suspect, much less the reasons upon which you found your suspicions—ah!"
Her final vocative was expressed in an angry gurgle. Rush had entered. He was so close to panic at the prospect of facing a roomful of women unsupported by a single male that his face was almost terrifying in its strength, but it had suddenly occurred to him that although these girls had agreed to write their interviews at the Dobton Inn and submit them to his censorship, it was possible one or more would slip over to New York, bent upon sheer sensationalism.
"You must excuse me," he said with a valiant assault upon the lighter mood, "but my client is in the witness box, you see, and must be protected by counsel."
Miss Austin swung about and faced him with a faint satiric smile. "Oh, very well," she said. "You may stay; but I for one shall not adjust my hat."
It is a curious fact that newspaper women are seldom, if ever, of the masculine type; their sheer femininity, indeed, is almost as invariable as their air of physical weariness. Not one of the little company laughed with a more than perfunctory appreciation of their captain's wit, and several stared at Rush, fascinated by his harsh masculinity, the peculiar atmosphere of tense-alertness in which he seemed to have his being, the magnetism which was more an emanation from an almost perpetual concentration of his mental forces than from any of the lighter physical attributes. He folded his arms and leaned against the door, and it is only fair to the cause of woman to state that hardly one of these, whose ages ranged from twenty to thirty-six, was unwomanly enough, despite the fact that she earned her bread in daily competition with man, to give Mrs. Balfame her whole attention thereafter. While keeping their business heads, they uncovered a corner of their hearts to the sun, and quickened, however faintly, in its glow.
"Now," Miss Austin resumed, "we will, counsel permitting, ask you to give us your story of that night. As you have been misquoted and there has been so much speculative stuff published about you, there surely can be no objection to that." And she squared her shoulders upon Mr. Rush.
Mrs. Balfame looked at her counsel with a gracious deference, and he nodded.
"No harm in that," he said curtly. "Tell them practically the story you would tell if you took the stand. There's only one story to tell, and it is as well the public should bear it in mind while reading the reports of the witnesses for the prosecution."
"That means he's rehearsed her," whispered Miss Lauretta Lea, who had reported many trials, to Miss Tracy, who was a novice. "But that's all right."
"Well, I suppose I should begin with the scene at the Club—that is to say, I do not care to speak of it in detail,—quite aside from a natural regard for good taste,—but it seems to have been given a unique importance."
"Just so," said Miss Austin encouragingly. "Do let us have your version. The public simply longs for it."
"Well—I should tell you first that, although my husband was sometimes irritable, he really was a good husband and we never had any vulgar quarrels. It was only when he was not quite himself that he sometimes said more than he meant, and he never quite forgot himself as he did that day out at the Country Club.
"I was playing bridge in one of the smaller rooms when I heard his voice pitched in a very excited key. I knew that something unusual had occurred, and went out into the large central room at once. There I saw him at the upper end of the room surrounded by several of the men, who were apparently trying to induce him to leave. He was shouting and saying such extraordinary things that my first impression was that he was ill or had lost his mind.
"I reasoned with him, and as it did no good and as I was deeply hurt and mortified, I left him to the men and returned to the bridge-room. There, in spite of the kindness of my friends, I found I was too overcome to play, and Dr. Anna Steuer offered to drive me home. That is all, as far as the scene at the clubhouse is concerned, except that I cannot sufficiently emphasise that he never had acted in a similar manner before. If he had, I should not have continued to live with him—not that I should have obtained a divorce, for I do not approve of the institution; but I should have moved out. I have a little money of my own, left me by my father."
"Ah—yes. Thanks. And after you were in your own house? Do you mind? Of course, we have read the story you told the men, but we should like our own story. Perhaps you may have thought of some other points since."
"Yes, there are one or two. I had entirely forgotten in the agitation of that time that I went below, after packing my husband's suitcase, to get a drink of filtered water and thought I heard some one try the kitchen door. I also thought I heard some one upstairs, and called the name of my maid. Of course, a good deal will be made of this omission, but considering the terrible circumstances and the fact that I never had been interviewed before, I do not find it in the least remarkable.
"But, of course, you want me to begin at the beginning." And in her pleasant shallow voice, she told the story she had immediately concocted for her friends.
As Miss Austin asked a few questions in the endeavour to inject some essence of personality into thebald story, Rush permitted the sensation of dismay with which he had listened to take implacable form. He never had heard a less convincing story on the witness stand. Mrs. Balfame had talked glibly, far too glibly. It was evident to the least initiated that she had been rehearsed. Was her mind really as colourless as her voice? Had she no sense of drama? He had hoped that the excitement of this interview, coming after weeks of supreme monotony, would kindle her to animation and a natural enrichment of vocabulary; and, witnessing its effect upon these friendly women, she would be encouraged to simulate both on the witness-stand. It was a pity, he reflected bitterly, that a woman who could lie to her counsel with such a fine front of innocence could not "put over" the large dramatic lie that would help him so materially in his difficult task.
Miss Austin, despairing of colour, made a shift with psychology. "Would you mind telling us, Mrs. Balfame, if you feel a very great dread of the trial? We realise that it must loom a terrible ordeal."
"Oh, of course, the mere thought of all that publicity horrifies me whenever I permit myself to think of it, but it has to be, and that is the end of it, since the real culprit will not come forward. But I feel confident I shall not break down under the strain. I might have done so if the trial had followed immediately upon my arrest, but all these weeks in jail have prepared me for anything."
"But you are not terrified—of—of the outcome? We know and rejoice that the chances are all in your favour, but men are so queer."
"I am not in the least terrified. It is impossible toconvict an innocent woman in this country; and then"—inclining her head graciously to the watchful Rush,—"I have the first criminal lawyer in Brabant County to defend me. It is a detestable thought,—to be stared at in the courtroom as if I were an object in a museum,—but I shall keep thinking that in a few days at most it will be over and that I shall then return to the private life I love."
"Yes. And would you mind telling us something of your plans? Shall you continue to live in Elsinore?"
"I shall go far away, to Europe, if possible. I suppose I shall return in time. Of course" (in hasty afterthought) "I should not be contented for very long without my friends; they have grown to be doubly valuable—and valued—during this long term of incarceration. But I must travel for a while."
"That is quite natural. How normal you are, dear Mrs. Balfame!" It was Miss Lauretta Lea who spoke up with enthusiasm. "You are just a sweet, serene, normal woman who couldn't commit a violent act if you tried. Be sure the public shall see you as you are. I don't wonder your friends adore you. Don't mind being stared at. The more people that see you, the more friends you will have."
Her eyes moved to Rush, and she was rewarded by a smile that expressed relief. She was a very experienced reporter and knew exactly how he felt.
"And believe me," she said as they trooped down the stairs, having passed before the Balfame throne and received a limp handshake of dismissal, "that poor man's worried half to death. He'll get about as much help from her on the stand as he would from a tired codfish.But she really is a divinely sweet woman and lovely to look at, and so I'll sob over her for all I'm worth and seclude from the cynical and the sentimental that she has distilled crystal in her veins."
"Did you ever know such a perfectly rotten interview!" Miss Austin was scowling fiercely. "The men did a thousand times better because they took her by surprise, but even they cursed her. I figure out she has made up her Friday Club mind to look the marble goddess minus every female instinct, including a natural desire to shoot a brute of a husband. But I wish she had brain enough to put it over with some pep. She was afraid to be dramatic,—or couldn't be,—and so she was trying to be literary—"