Rush slept until two o'clock the next day, after a night passed at the Paradise City Hotel in consultation with two of his future partners; they had spent Saturday in the courtroom at Dobton. He had also discovered that the jury enjoyed themselves in the winter garden after dinner, and by no means in close formation. Although nominally under guard, it would have been a simple matter to pass a note to any one of them. Two, he further discovered, had been allowed to telephone and to enter the booth alone. He had been told nothing further of the intention of Cummack and other friends of his client to "fix" the jury—had, indeed, discouraged such confidences promptly; but he saw that if the enemy desired to employ the methods of corruption they need be no more intricate than those of the men that had so much more to lose if detected.
The night had been devoted to discussion of the case; he even enjoyed a friendly hour with the district attorney, who notably relaxed on Saturdays after five o'clock; and when Rush awoke on the following afternoon he immediately resolved to dismiss the whole affair from his own mind until Monday morning. He would go into the woods and think his own thoughts. They would be dreary thoughts and imbued no doubt with cynicism, himself the target; and they had passedthat problematical stage in which the mind, no matter how harrowed, sips lingeringly at the varied banquet of the ego; in fact, Rush's personal problems were almost invariably settled in his subconsciousness, and rose automatically to confront the reasoning faculties without an instant's warning. He was too impatient for self-analysis; and he was the sum of his acts and of the clear mental processes of his conscious life.
The bright winter sun struck down through the close tree-tops and upon the brilliant surfaces of a recent fall of snow. The ground was hard and white; the branches of the trees were heavy laden. Not a sound broke the winter stillness but his footsteps on the winter snow. He had put on a heavy white sweater and cap, as he intended to walk for hours, and his nervous hands were in his pockets. He believed he should have the woods to himself, for in winter it was the Country Club and the roadhouses that were patronised on Sundays; and the trolley-car which passed the wood on the line about a quarter of a mile away had, save for himself, been empty.
His face remained grim and set until he was deep in the woods, and then it relaxed to a wave of fury and disgust, finally settled into an expression of profound despair. He was but thirty-two, and the prizes of life were for such as he, and a week later he would either be in Sing Sing or bound without hope to a woman for whom his brief sentimentalised passion was dust.
It was not execution he feared, for any clever lawyer could persuade a jury into a certain degree of leniency, but long years in prison for the sake of a dead ideal. In spite of his hard common sense and severely practicallife he would almost have welcomed the exaltation of soul which must accompany a great sacrifice impelled by perfect love. But to turn one's back on life for ever and walk deliberately into a dungeon, change one's name for a number and become a thing, for the sake of barren honour, to drag out his years with a dead soul, to despise himself for a fool, too old and too tired to console himself with a memory of a duty well done,—he felt such a sudden disgust for life and for that ill-regulated product, human nature, that he struck a heavy blow at a tree and brought a shower of snow about his head.
If he could but have continued to love the woman and accept the grim and bitter fate with joy in his soul! And if only that were the worst! If he could turn his back on life with no regret save for its lost opportunities for power and fame.
He paused in his rapid irregular walk and pushed his cap up from his ear. He half swung on his heel; then, his face settling into its familiar lines, he walked slowly toward a faint crackling that had arrested his attention.
He came presently upon the glade Alys Crumley had painted in its summer mood; the little picture hung facing his bed. The scene was white to-day; all the lovely shades of green and gold had been rubbed out and replaced with the bright sparkle of snow, and the brook was frozen. But although Rush loved the winter woods and responded to their white appeal as keenly as to their yearly renewal of verdant youth and gorgeous maturity, they left him quite unmoved at this moment. Alys Crumley, as he had half expected, stood in the little dell.
Her face was more like old ivory than ever against the dazzling whiteness of the snow and under her low fur turban. It looked both pinched and nervous, but she kept her hands in her muff. Nor did Rush remove his from his pockets, although his determination not to betray himself was subconscious. At the moment, his mind, conquering a tendency to race, informed itself merely that even in heavy winter clothes, with but a deep pink rose in her stole for colour, she managed to look dainty and alluring. It recalled visions of her on summer nights clad in the soft transparencies of lawn, with ribbons somewhere that always brought out the strange olive tints of her eyes and hair....
"I followed you," she said.
"Did you?"
"When I saw you pass in the trolley, I guessed. The Gifnings had invited me to go out to the Club with them. I asked them to put me down at a path near here."
He made no reply but continued to stare at her, recalling other pictures,—in the studio, in the green living-room,—marvelling at her endless variety, and not only of effect. Yet she was always the same, surcharged with the magnetism of youth and young womanhood.
"I—that is—I had made up my mind I must have a talk with you about certain things. You said you might go out to the Club to-day for an hour or two of hand-ball, and I had hoped to induce you to come home with me for supper. But Jack Battle told me that you had telephoned off—and when I saw you in the trolley, and caught a glimpse of your face, I guessed—"
"Yes?"
"You make it rather hard."
"What does it all matter? You are here, and I am glad that you are."
"Are you? But you intended to avoid me to-day!"
"I never intended to see you alone again if I could help it."
"I guessed that too. I met Polly Cummack this morning, and she told me she spent last evening at the jail and Mrs. Balfame confided to her that she had just definitely promised to marry you ... that you had proposed to her on the day of her arrest, and although you had faithfully obeyed her orders and not alluded to the subject since, she had thought it only kind to put you out of suspense yesterday. She naïvely added that the subject had not interested her when you first brought it up; but that you had been so wonderful and devoted since.... She means to settle quietly in New York, instead of travelling, so that she can be quite near you, and she will marry you as soon as the case has been forgotten by the public. Of course, Polly could not keep anything so interesting, and no doubt it is all over town by now."
Alys spoke steadily, with a faint ironic inflection, and she held her head very high. But her face grew more pinched, and the delicate pink of her lips faded.
"Yes?" He had turned as white as chalk, but there was neither dismay nor sarcasm in the hard stare of his eyes. His lips were folded so closely that the word barely escaped.
"I am going to say everything I have to say, if you never speak to me again. I feel as if I were standing on the point of a high rock and every side led sheer down into an abyss. It doesn't matter in the leastdown which side I fall. There is a certain satisfaction in that. But you shall listen."
"There is nothing you cannot say to me."
"And you'll not run away."
"Oh, no, I'll not run away! I shall never see you again if I can help it, but now that you are here I shall look at you and listen to the sound of your voice."
"And to what I have to say. You hate Mrs. Balfame. You are bored to death with her. You are appalled. You have found her out for what she is. You are going to marry her out of pity and because you are too honourable to desert a woman who will always be under a cloud, even if you had it in you to break your word; and because you have a twisted romantic notion about being true to an old if mistaken ideal—one of a set that has flourished like hardy old-fashioned annuals under the dry soil of hustle and ambition and devotion to your profession. You had fallen in love—or thought you had, which amounts to the same thing for the moment—after so many years of dry spiritual celibacy, and it had been a wonderful revelation—and an inner revolution that made you immensely interested in yourself for the first time. You were exalted; you lived for several months at a pitch above the normal, automatically registering other impressions but only half cognisant of them. And now—you feel that to the love born in delusion and slain by truth you owe the greatest sacrifice a man can make."
He had stared at the ground during the first part of her speech, and then raised his eyes sharply, his glance changing to amazement and a flush mounting to his hair.
"Oh!" he exclaimed. But he would make no other answer, and once more he dropped his glance to the snow.
"Are you going to marry her?"
"If she is acquitted."
"And if not?" Her voice broke out of its even register.
He made an abrupt movement, and she cried out:
"I know! I know! Polly told me—Sam tells her everything. He suspects you. He knows that Broderick does. But you don't intend to wait for his denunciation. Mrs. Balfame told that to Polly too. You intend to say you did it. She said she wouldn't let you—oh, wouldn't she!—but you had told her that you would make up a plausible story and stick to it. And I know that you can't prove an alibi. Tell me,"—she came closer and her voice was almost threatening,—"do you really intend to take that crime on your shoulders if she is convicted."
"Yes."
"Oh! Oh! Men will be sentimental fools until—well, so long as they are born of fools and women. We are made all wrong!" She threw her muff on the ground and beat her hands together. Her eyes were blazing. There was a curious red glow in their olive depths. "Well, listen to me: You are not going to do this thing, although I really believe you'd like to do it as a sort of penance. She could not prevent such a monstrous sacrifice if she would, but I can. Just bear that in mind. If you come forward with any such insane proposition, I will make a fool of you before all the world. If Mrs. Balfame is acquitted, well and good; but if she is not, then I'll betray a confidenceand run the risk of killing some one myself—but I'll get the truth. Just remember that, and keep off the witness-stand."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that I know where to get the truth."
"You mean that Dr. Anna thinks Mrs. Balfame did it—that Mrs. Balfame confessed to her and that you can make the poor woman betray her friend while she is still too weak to resist. Well, you are all wrong. I know that Mrs. Balfame did not kill Balfame. If you want the reason for my knowledge,—and I know I can trust you,—Mrs. Balfame was out that night, and she did take a revolver and fire it. I found it in the house on the night following her arrest. It was a thirty-eight. There was one bullet missing. It was found in the tree. Balfame was killed by a forty-one. She did not go out to shoot Balfame, but because she thought she saw a burglar in the grove. Her revolver went off accidentally—and she is the best shot out at the Club. But you will readily understand my reasons for suppressing these facts."
Alys had turned her profile and was staring at a tree whose limbs creaked now and again with their weight of snow, sending down a powdery shower. Her thick short lashes were almost together before a gleaming line of olive.
"Oh! Who was her confederate?"
"She hasn't the least idea as to the identity of the person beside her. It was dark, and she was too much excited. Naturally, she would be very glad to know."
"Well, suppose we dismiss that part of it. We should never get anywhere. Only—don't take the stand and make a dramatic confession."
"Dramatic?" Once more the red tide rose. His blue eyes snapped.
"Melodramatic would perhaps be the better word. Sarah and I are hot on the trail of the right word. But tell me honestly—shouldn't you feel rather a fool? It is such a very theatric—stagey—thing to do."
"Oh!" He wheeled about and kicked a fallen log. "Do you suppose I have given a thought to that aspect of it?"
"No, more is the pity, but as you have a good sense of humour, I rather wonder at it. However—these are not the only things I followed you into the woods to say."
"You had it in your mind, then, to find out if what Mrs. Balfame told Mrs. Cummack was true—that I purposed to free her one way or another?"
"Yes. I merely waited for the lead. I told you in the beginning that I did not care what I might confess to, or how angry I made you. What does it matter?"
"You cannot make me angry, although there are some things I cannot discuss with you."
"Of course not. Let us ignore Possible Sacrifice Number Two, and assume that Mrs. Balfame is acquitted,—which no doubt will be the case; few are worrying; and further assume that you will marry her; that she will marry you is the way she put it, not being an artist in words. Once more we will dismiss both subjects. Yes?"
She was stooping to recover her muff, and he noticed that her hands were shaking and that the dusky pink was in her cheeks for the first time.
"I am only too ready. But—there is little else for us to talk about!"
"Yes, there is! When people are on their deathbeds they can afford to be truthful, and you have dug your grave and mine."
She was erect once more and she looked at him steadily, although her breath was short and her cheeks blazing.
"What do you mean by that?" His eyes no longer looked like blue steel. They were flashing, and a curious wave of mobility passed over his face.
"I mean that you love me now. I think you always loved me—when we spent so many hours together in perfect companionship—when you found so much in me that responded to so many of your own needs. But for the time being this was only a surface impression. It was unable to strike down to—to your soul, because between your outer and inner vision was the delusion. You had cherished some sort of ideal since boyhood, and when for the first time in your busy life you met a woman who seemed to materialise it—you never once had a half-hour's conversation with her!—you automatically rose to the opportunity to discharge a youthful obligation. Isn't that true?"
He would not answer, and she continued:
"You passed me over because you had to be rid of the delusion first, bag and baggage. There is only one way to get rid of an old delusion like that, and unconsciously you took it! The pity of it is, in our case, that you compromised yourself so promptly, instead of waiting—well, for ten weeks!"
"I had already asked Mrs. Balfame to get a divorce and marry me."
"Oh! That night you walked home with her from Dr. Anna's cottage?"
"You saw us? Yes, that was the time."
"The first time you had ever talked alone with her? I know that you dined there often, but didn't Dave usually do the talking?"
"Yes."
"And Mrs. Balfame smiled like St. Cecilia and attended to your wants."
"Oh!"
"It was like you to think you couldn't go back on even an Elsinore Avenue flirtation. But once more—it is a terrible pity that you did not delay your formal offer for ten weeks. Then you would have buried the last and the supreme folly of your youth—with a sigh perhaps, but you would have buried it. Isn't that true?"
"It is true that something incredibly youthful seems to have persisted in me beyond its proper limits, and then to have died abruptly. God knows I have no youth in me to-day."
"That may well be, but it need not have been. Youth does not die with the earlier illusions. If all had gone well, you would have been reborn into a saner and more conscious youth. Tell me—" Her voice trembled, but she moved forward resolutely and laid her muff against his chest; he could feel the working of her hands, and eyes and cheeks betrayed the excitement that pride still suppressed. "Tell me,—if you had waited, if you could have decently buried that old illusion and forgotten—and—and married me,—should you have felt very old?"
"I should have felt immortal."
He caught her hands from her muff and flung them about his neck and lifted her from the ground andkissed her as if they both stood on the pinnacle and had but a moment before plunging down to mortal death.
When he released her a trifle, his face was illuminated. It no longer looked preternaturally strong; neither did it look as young as she had seen it look in moments of mental relaxation.
"Ah!" she whispered. "This is the fusing, not when that old illusion died."
The deep flush ebbed out of his face, leaving it grey, but he did not relax the hard pressure of his arms. "Of what use," he asked bitterly, "when we have only to-day?"
"It is something to realise all of oneself if only for an hour. And you have given me my supreme hour. That was my right, for I went down into such depths as you have no knowledge of; and if I struggled out of them alone, and always in terror of surrender and demoralisation at the last moment, I have my claim on your help now, for the future is something I have never dared to face. I guessed before Polly told me—oh, I guessed! I knew you so well. In dreams, perhaps,—who knows?—our minds may have become one. When I came up out of—got past the worst, it seemed to me that I came into an extraordinary understanding of you. I can bear anything now. In a way, you will always be mine. The life of the imagination must have its satisfactions. There are worse things than living alone."
She drew down his head, but this time she put her lips to his ear.
"Now I am going to tell you a terrible secret," she said.
There had been a crowd on the day of Frieda's and young Kraus' testimony, but on Monday morning there was a mob. The road as well as the open space before the Courthouse was as solid a mass of automobiles as the police would permit, and within, even the wide staircase was packed with people, many from New York City, waving cards and demanding entrance to the Court-room, or at least the freedom to breathe.
The sheriff and his assistants, soon after the doors were opened, succeeded in forming a lane, and dragged the women reporters to the upper landing. They found the young men at their tables, cool, imperturbable, having entered through the library at the back of the Court-room. All doors were closed before ten o'clock, and the crowd without, save only the few that were fortunate enough to have come early and obtain a vantage point against the glass, gradually dwindled away, to renew the assault after luncheon. It was not only the brilliant winter day that had enticed the curious over from New York, but the rumour that Mrs. Balfame would take the stand.
The morning droned along peacefully. Cummack and several others, including Mr. Mott, were recalled and questioned further. Rush made no interruptions whatever. The Judge yawned behind his hand. The women reporters whispered to one another that Mrs.Balfame looked lovelier than ever—only different, somehow. Even Mr. Broderick looked at her uneasily once or twice and confided to Mr. Wagstaff that he believed she and Rush had something up their sleeves; she no longer looked like a marble effigy of herself, but like a woman who was sure of getting what she wanted—much too sure. Her cheeks were almost pink. That was as close as he could get to the upheavals and revolutions that had taken place in Mrs. Balfame of Elsinore; and their causes.
Immediately after luncheon, Rush showed the jury Defendant's Exhibit A: the suitcase that Mrs. Balfame had packed for her husband after his telephone message from the house of Mr. Cummack. He demonstrated that it must have been packed by a firm hand guided by a clear head, a head as far as possible from that cyclonic condition technically known as "brainstorm." When he read them the explicit directions Mrs. Balfame had written for the velvet handbag her generous husband had offered to bring from Albany, the jury craned its neck and puckered its brows. This suitcase had been examined on the night of the crime by police and reporters, the cynical men of the press characterising it later as a grand piece of bluff. But it looked very convincing in a court-room, and its innocent appeal was thrown into high relief by the indisputable fact that the murder had been committed at least half an hour later.
On the other hand, there was reason to believe that Mrs. Balfame had deliberately planned the shooting and in that case it was quite natural for her to prepare something in the nature of an alibi—that is, if a woman, and an amateur in crime, could exercise somuch foresight. The jury looked at the defendant out of the corner of its eye. Well, she, at least, looked cool enough for anything.
Then came the great moment for which the spectators had braved discomfort, indignities, and even hunger. The counsel for the defence asked Mrs. Balfame to take the stand.
Everybody in the court-room save the Judge, the jury, and the cool young reporters half rose as she walked rapidly behind the jury-box, mounted the stand, took the oath, bowed to the Court and arranged herself, with her usual dignified aloofness, in the witness-chair. She felt but a slight quiver of the nerves, no apprehension whatever. She knew her story too well to be disconcerted even by the sudden wasp-like assaults of the district attorney, and she was sensible of the moral support of practically all the women in the room.
Rush asked her to tell her story in her own way to the jury, and for a time the district attorney permitted her to talk without interruption. Rush had warned her after the interview with the women reporters against delivering herself with too tripping a tongue, and his assistant had spent several hours with her in rehearsal of certain improvements upon a too perfect style. In consequence, she told a clear coherent story, in the simplest manner possible, with little dramatic breaks or hesitations now and again, but with nothing stronger than a quaver in her sweet shallow voice. When she had reached the episode of the filter and had explained to the inquisitive district attorney why she had made no mention at the coroner's inquest of the somewhat complicated episode of which it was the pivot, so to speak, she gave the same credibleexplanation the newspaper women had already offered to the public; and then, quite unexpectedly, she related the story of Frieda's attempt to blackmail her, and her indignant refusal to give the creature a dollar. Mr. Gore shouted in vain. The Judge ordered him to keep quiet and permitted the defendant to tell the story in her own way.
Mrs. Balfame apologised to the jury for relating this incident out of order, and then went on with her quiet plausible story. Her reason for not running out at once was simplicity itself. She must have been in the kitchen when the shot was fired; she had not made a point of regulating her movements by the clock as some of the witnesses for the prosecution appeared to have done, so that she was quite unable to give the jury positive information upon the subject of the exact number of minutes she had remained in the kitchen. She had washed and put away the glass, of course; she was a very methodical woman. Then she had gone upstairs, leisurely, and it was not until she was in her bedroom that she became aware of some sort of excitement out in the Avenue. Even that conveyed nothing to her, for it was Saturday night—she curled her fastidious lip. But when she heard voices directly under her window, inside the grounds, she threw it open at once and asked what had happened. Then of course she ran downstairs and out to her husband. That was all.
Even the district attorney was not able to interject a hint of the lemonade story, and so, naturally, she ignored it.
"Gemima!" whispered Mr. Broderick to his neighbour, "but she is a wonder! I never heard it betterdone, and I've seen some of the boss liars on the stand. She looks like an angel on toast, a poor, sweet, patient, martyr angel. But I'll bet five dollars to a nickel that she was just about three degrees too plausible for that jury. If she didn't do it, who did? That's what they'll ask. And who else wanted him out of the way? Have you given any thought to that proposition?" His voice was almost as steady as his keen grey eyes, and he looked straight into the wise and weary orbs of a brilliant but too inabstinent member of the crack reporter regiment who had been missing for several days. The man raised his sagging shoulders and dropped them listlessly. Then his heavy eyes were invaded by a sudden gleam.
"Say," he whispered, "that Rush is a good-looking chap—and she—I don't like those ice-boxes myself, but some men do. It's crossed my mind more than once to-day that he's got something on his—what's the matter?"
"For God's sake, hush!" Broderick's low voice was savage, his face white. "They're always likely to say that about a young lawyer when his client is handsome enough and their imaginations are excited by a mysterious murder case. He's a friend of mine, and I don't want him to get into trouble. He might not be able to prove an alibi. But I know he didn't do it because I happen to know that he is in love with another woman. I was in the same trolley with them yesterday when they came back from the woods. There was no mistaking how the land lay."
"Oh! Just so!" The other man's eyes were glittering. He looked like a hunter glancing down his gun-barrel. "I see heisa friend of yours and you'vegot his defence pat—well, I'm not going to bother my poor head until Mrs. B. is acquitted or convicted. Ta! Ta!" And he slid gently to the floor, laid his head against the infuriated Broderick's knee and went to sleep.
"I say," whispered Wagstaff, "she almost involved young Kraus, all right. He's never been quite so close to the bull's-eye before. The very fact that she didn't trump up a yarn—or Rush wouldn't let her—that she saw him when she opened the door, or that he had turned the handle, is one for her and one on him."
The Judge, who had taken a few moments' rest, re-entered, and conversation ceased. Conrad and Frieda were called in rebuttal, and encouraged to fix the time of Mrs. Balfame's departure and return as accurately as might be. Frieda asserted that Mrs. Balfame, after closing the outer door, had not remained below-stairs for more than three minutes, and Conrad declared that her exit must have been made three or four before Mr. Mott left Miss Lacke's. Of course—with quiet scorn—he had not looked at his watch. How could he in the dark? As he did not smoke he had no matches in his pocket.
That closed the day's session. The jury filed out, and no man could read aught in their weather-beaten faces save the conviction that the Paradise City Hotel was a haven of delights after a long day in the box, and they were quite equal to the feat of enjoying the dinner served there, with minds barren of the grim purpose behind this luxurious week.
It was nearly six o'clock. The court-room with its round white ceiling looked like a crypt in the soft glow of the artificial light, and the Judge, in his black silk gown, with his handsome patrician face, clean-cut but rather soft and flushed with good living, might have been an abbot seated aloft in judgment upon a recalcitrant nun. Mrs. Balfame in her crêpe completed the delusion—if the imaginative spectator glanced no further. The district attorney, who was summing up, looked more like a wasp than ever as he darted back and forth in front of the jury-box, shouting and shaking his fists. Occasionally he would hook his fingers in his waistcoat, balance himself on his heels and with a mere moderation of his rasping tones, demonstrate a contemptuous faith in the strength of his case.
It is to be admitted that his arguments and expositions, his denunciations and satirical refutations, were quite as convincing as those of the counsel for the defence had been, such being the elasticity of the law and of the legal mind; but although an able and powerful speaker, he lacked the personal charm and magnetism, the almost tragical enthusiasm and conviction, alternating with cold deliberate logic, that had thrilled all present to the roots of their beings during the long hours of the morning. Rush, whether he lost or won, hadmade his reputation as one of the greatest pleaders ever heard at the bar of New York State. He had finished at a quarter to one. Immediately after the opening of the afternoon session Gore had darted into the breach, speaking with a dramatic rapidity for four hours. He sat down at six o'clock; and Mrs. Balfame felt as if turning to stone while the Judge, standing, charged the jury and expounded the law covering the three degrees of murder: first, second, manslaughter. It was their privilege to convict the prisoner at the bar of any of these, unless convinced of her innocence.
He dwelt at length upon the degree called manslaughter, as if the idea had occurred to him that Mrs. Balfame, justly indignant, had run out when she heard her husband's voice raised in song, and had fired from the grove by way of administering a rebuke to an erring and inconsiderate man. The second bullet had been made much of by Rush, as indicating that two people, possibly gun-men, had shot at once, but the district attorney held no such theory and had ignored the bullet found in the tree. It was apparent, however, that the Judge had given to this second bullet a certain amount of judicial consideration.
The jury filed out, not to their luxurious quarters in the Paradise City Hotel, a mile away, but to a stark and ugly room in the Court-house where they must remain in acute discomfort until they arrived at a verdict. The Judge had his dinner brought to him in a private room adjoining theirs, and even the reporters and spectators snatched a hasty meal at the Dobton hostelry, so sure were they all that the jury would return within the hour. Mrs. Balfame did not take off her hat with its heavy veil, but sat in her quarters atthe jail with several of her friends, outwardly calm, but with her mind on the rack and unable to share the dinner sent over from the Inn by Mr. Cummack for herself and her guests.
The hours passed, however, and the jury did not return. Once the head of the foreman emerged, and the sheriff, misunderstanding his surly demand for a pitcher of ice water, rushed over for Mrs. Balfame, the Judge was summoned, and the reporters, men and women, raced one another up the Court-house stairs. Mrs. Balfame, schooled to the awful ordeal of hearing herself pronounced a murderess in one form or other, but bidden by her friends to augur an acquittal from a mere three hours' deliberation, walked in with her usual quiet remoteness and took her seat. She was sent back at once.
Rush paced the road in front of the Court-house. He had little hope. He had studied their faces day by day and believed that several, at least, were persuaded of Mrs. Balfame's guilt. Mrs. Battle, Mrs. Gifning and Mrs. Cummack sat with Mrs. Balfame, who found the effort to maintain the high equilibrium demanded by her admiring friends as rasping an ordeal to her nerves as waiting for that final summons whose menace grew with every hour the jury wrangled. Finally she took off her hat and suggested that they knit, and the needles clicked through the desultory conversation until, after midnight, they all attempted to sleep.
The Judge extended himself on a sofa in the private room devoted to his use; he dared not leave the Courthouse. He told the district attorney (who told it to the sheriff, who told it to the reporters) that the jury quarrelled so persistently and so violently that he foundit impossible to sleep, and that the language they used was appalling.
Midnight came and passed. The sob-sisters, worn out, went home. Miss Sarah Austin and Miss Alys Crumley had not returned to the Court-house after dinner. The sheriff appeared at the entrance of the courtroom and announced that the last trolley would leave for Elsinore and neighbouring towns within five minutes. Most of the spectators filed sleepily out. A few of Mrs. Balfame's less intimate but equally devoted friends remained in their seats near her empty chair, and shortly after midnight the warden's wife brought them over hot coffee and sandwiches.
The reporters, having long since consumed all the chocolate and peanuts on sale below, strolled back and forth between the Court-house and the bar of the Dobton Inn. They were bored and indignant and sought the only consolation available. They returned periodically to the court-room, growing, as the hours passed, more formal, polite, silent. One lost his way in the jury-box and was steered by a court official to the sympathetic haven of his brothers.
The room itself, its floor littered with tinfoil, peanut-shells, and newspapers, its tables and chairs out of place, looked like a Coney Island excursion boat. Finally two reporters laid their heads down on a table and went to sleep, but the rest continued to address one another at long intervals, in distant tones, obeying the laws of etiquette, but with a secret and scornful reluctance.
Broderick, who was reasonably sober, had wandered in and out many times. Occasionally he walked the road with Rush, and more than once he hadendeavoured to get Miss Crumley on the telephone. He had even telephoned to the hospital to ascertain if she were there. A week ago only he had accidentally discovered that Dr. Anna had been summoned by Mrs. Balfame shortly after the murder and had passed many hours alone with her; "it being the deuce and all to extract any information from that closed corporation of Mrs. Balfame's friends." Broderick had surprised it out of a group at the Elks' Club in the course of conversation and then had set his phenomenal memory to work, with the result that he was convinced Alys Crumley held the key to the whole situation. He had gone to her house and pleaded with her to take him out to the hospital and obtain a statement from the sick woman before it was too late, representing in powerful and picturesque language the awful peril of Rush.
"I've reason to know," he had concluded, "that Cummack and two or three others have their suspicions, and there isn't a question that if the jury brings in a verdict of guilty in any degree—and they're a pigheaded lot—Rush will be arrested at once. These devoted friends of Mrs. Balfame have accumulated enough evidence to begin on. He may have gone to Brooklyn that night, but he was seen to get off the train at Elsinore about a quarter of an hour before the shooting. They've been doing a lot of quiet sleuthing, but if Mrs. Balfame is acquitted they'll let him off. They don't want any more scandal, and they like him, anyhow. But I have a hunch she won't be acquitted; and then, innocent or guilty, there'd be no saving him. So for heaven's sake, stir yourself."
But Alys had replied: "I have besought my aunt, and she will not permit Dr. Anna to be disturbed. Shesays her only chance for life is a tranquil mind, and that the shock of hearing that Enid Balfame was on trial for murder would kill her—let alone asking her to do her best to send her to the chair. I've donemybest, but it seems hopeless."
This conversation had taken place on Thursday. To-day was Tuesday. They were very reticent at the hospital, but he had reason to believe that Dr. Anna had taken a turn for the worse. Could Alys Crumley be out there, and could she have taken that minx Sarah Austin with her? It would be just like a girl to go back on a good pal like himself and hand a signal triumph over to another girl, who would get out of the game the minute some fellow with money enough offered to marry her. He ground his teeth.
He was standing near the doors of the court-room and staring at the clock whose hands pointed to a quarter to one. Suddenly he heard his name called from below. He sauntered out and leaned over the balustrade. A weary page was ascending when he caught sight of the star reporter.
"Brabant Hospital wants you on the 'phone," he announced, with supreme indifference.
Broderick leaped down the winding stair and into the booth. It seemed to him that his very ears were quivering as he listened to Alys Crumley's faint agitated voice. "Come out quickly and bring a stenographer," it said. "And suppose you ask Mr. Rush to come too. Just tell the sheriff—to—to postpone things a bit if the jury should be ready to come in before you return. Hurry, Jim, hurry."
It was two o'clock and ten minutes. The eleven remaining spectators, one of them a woman in evening dress, were sound asleep. The sheriff was pacing up and down with his hands behind his back, his perturbed glance ranging between the clock and the door leading into the jury-room. Occasionally he slipped on a bit of the debris and kicked it aside. The reporters slumbered at their tables or stared moodily ahead. One gnawed his pencil; another tore leaves of copy paper into morsels and laboriously built something that looked like a child's house of blocks. Outside it was deathly still. The snow was falling softly. It was too early for a cock-crow. Occasionally some one snored. The footfalls of the sheriff made no noise.
Suddenly every reporter present sat up with the scent of blood in his nostrils. Their ears twitched. The fumes blew out of their highly organised brains like mist before a bracing wind. An automobile was dashing down the road, its horn shrieking a series of brief peremptory notes, which sounded like "Wait! Wait! Wait!"
It came to an abrupt halt before the Court-house door, and almost simultaneously Wagstaff, who had wandered forth once more, ran up the stairs and into the court-room.
"There's something in the wind, boys," he cried,smoothing his hair and steering carefully for his chair. "Rush, Broderick, three other men, Sarah Austin and Alys Crumley, were in that car. They've all gone straight to the Judge. Something big is going to break, as sure as death."
The sheriff retired hastily to the region behind the court-room.
The young men adjusted their chairs, arranged their copy-paper neatly, and sharpened their pencils. Mrs. Balfame's friends went forward to the door behind the jury-box which led to the tunnel. Even the sleepy spectators sat up nervously.
Ten minutes passed. Then the sheriff, his face now stolid and important, bustled in and across to the jury-room, opened the door and summoned the occupants. In every stage of dishabille they filed sullenly in; the sheriff went through the tunnel for Mrs. Balfame.
The Judge, without his gown and his hair ruffled, was in his seat when the prisoner entered. She came hurriedly, her great repose broken, her face grey. Rush, who had entered behind the Judge, met her and whispered:
"You are free. But you will need all your self-control. Don't let them have a story in the morning papers of a breakdown at the last moment."
Mrs. Battle, Mrs. Gifning and Mrs. Cummack, who were far more excited than she, took heart at his words, patted their dishevelled hair and motioned to their husbands, summoned from the Dobton Inn, to draw closer. Whatever the issue, they felt the need of masculine support, albeit they scowled at the obvious form that masculine needs had taken.
Mrs. Balfame had looked dully at Rush as he spoke.Between fatigue and the nervous strain of maintaining the superwoman pitch for the benefit of her friends, her mind was confused. She could only mutter, "I'll try. Is—is—it really—all right?"
"You'll be free and for ever exonerated in half an hour."
Mrs. Balfame sank back in her chair, thinking that half an hour was a long time, a terribly long time. How long did it usually take a jury to pronounce a prisoner not guilty?
Sitting before the table in front of her were two men whom she vaguely recognised. Behind them was the man she hated most now that her husband was dead, the reporter Broderick. And beside him were Alys Crumley and Miss Austin. What did it all mean? She drew a sigh. It didn't matter much. She was so tired, so tired. When it was over she would sleep for a week and see no one—not even Dwight Rush.
The district attorney was on his feet, his face as black as if in the first stages of a poisonous fever. Neither he nor any one in the court-room threw Mrs. Balfame a glance. All eyes were on the Judge, who rose and made a short address to the jury.
"New evidence has just been brought to the notice of the court," he said. "It is of sufficient importance to warrant its immediate consideration, and the case is therefore reopened for this purpose. It is for you, however, to pass upon its worth. Mr. Rush will take the stand."
"May it please your honour," shrieked Mr. Gore, "I protest that this case has already been submitted to the jury, and that it is altogether out of order to reopen it."
"That is a matter within the discretion of the court," replied the Judge sharply; he had slept but fitfully and was not in his accustomed mood of remote judicial calm. "Mr. Rush will take the stand and proceed without interruption."
Rush ascended to the witness-box and was sworn. Mrs. Balfame half rose, dropped back into her chair with another sigh. There could be but one explanation of this strange procedure. Rush had discovered that the jury was hostile and was about to incriminate himself. She could do nothing. She had brought up the subject only yesterday, and he had replied curtly that he had taken the pistol from his safe and hidden it elsewhere. And she was too tired to feel that anything mattered much but the prospect of a week's rest. Later she could exonerate him in one way or another.
The newspaper men were as sober and alert as if the hour were ten in the morning. With their abnormal news-sense they anticipated a complete surprise. To do them justice, they were quite indifferent to the possibility of Mrs. Balfame's release. If it were news, Big News, that was all that mattered.
As Rush took the witness-chair, the lines in his pallid face looked as if cut to the bone, but he addressed the jury in strong clear tones. He told them that two days since he had been informed by Miss Alys Crumley that Dr. Anna Steuer had positive knowledge bearing upon the crime for which Mrs. Balfame had been unjustly arrested and thrust into jail, but that they were afraid to tell her of her friend's tragic situation lest it shatter her slender hold on life. She was very ill again after a relapse, although quite conscious, and their only hope was in perfect peace of mind.
If she recovered, Mrs. Dissosway, in whom alone she had confided, had felt sure she would give the testimony which must set Mrs. Balfame at liberty if the jury convicted her. On the other hand, Mrs. Dissosway had promised her niece that if the doctors agreed that Dr. Steuer's death was but a matter of hours and there was a real danger of Mrs. Balfame's conviction, she would tell the dying woman the truth and take the consequences.
Shortly after the case had gone to the jury, Miss Crumley and Miss Sarah Austin had gone out to the hospital, satisfied that Dr. Anna had but a few hours to live. But it was not until Miss Crumley had persuaded her relative that the delayed verdict of the jury meant conviction for Mrs. Balfame that the superintendent, who was a lifelong friend of Dr. Anna Steuer, had given Miss Crumley permission to send for a stenographer and the witnesses she desired. Miss Crumley had therefore telephoned at once to Mr. Broderick, as she knew he would be sure to be in or near the courtroom, and asked him to bring the witness and a stenographer.
They had reached the hospital in fifteen minutes. Dr. MacDougal had met them at the door of Dr. Steuer's room and informed them that the news of her friend's predicament had been broken to the patient, after administering stimulants, and that she had consented immediately to make a statement.
"It took her some time to make this statement," continued Mr. Rush. "She was very weak, and stimulants had to be given repeatedly. But in due course it was completed, signed, and witnessed by Mr. Broderick and the two physicians present.I shall read it to you with the permission of the court."
He then read them the ante-mortem statement of Dr. Anna Steuer:
"I shot David Balfame.
"I make this statement at once lest I prove to be unable to add the explanation of my motives, and I herewith sign it."
Signed and witnessed.
The statement continued:
"I had known for a long time that my beloved friend's life with this wretch was insupportable, but although I urged her repeatedly to divorce him and she refused, it never entered my head to kill him nor any one else. I had spent my life trying to heal, and to give comfort where my patient's sufferings were of the mind as well as of the body. I had carried Balfame through several gastric attacks, caused by his disreputable life, with as much professional enthusiasm as if he had been the best of husbands. To have removed him during one of these would have been a simple matter.
"But that day out at the Country Club when he insulted the loveliest and most nearly perfect being on this earth, with the deliberate intent to ruin her position—the little all she had in the world that mattered—something snapped in my head. I almost struck him then and there. And when, during the ride home, Enid for the first time told me the hideous details of her life with that man all the blood in my body seemed to surge up and through my brain. He deserved death, and only death could free her. But how could this be accomplished? Too proud and too obdurate in her principles for the divorce-court, she was also too gentleand good and fastidious, in spite of her remarkable will, to strike him down herself.
"While waiting for a summons to the Houston farm, I paid several calls, and the last was at the Cummacks', one of the children being ill. As I came downstairs from the nursery I heard the conversation at the telephone—Balfame's drunken compliment to his wife. He said he would walk home. It was then that the definite impulse came to me, and I acted without an instant's hesitation. I always carried a revolver, for I was forced to take many long and lonely rides in my country practice. I drove straight to the lane behind the Balfame place, left the car, put out the lights, and climbed the back fence. It was very dark, but I had been familiar with the grounds all my life and I had no difficulty in finding the grove. I waited, moving about restlessly, for I wanted to have it over and go out to the Houston farm.
"He came after what had seemed to be hours of waiting, singing at the top of his voice. Mr. Rush tells me there is talk of two pistols having been fired that night, and that a bullet from a thirty-eight-calibre pistol entered a tree just to the left of the gate. I heard no one else in the grove. My revolver was a forty-one and can be found in the drawer of my desk at home. I fired at Balfame the moment he reached the gate. I vaguely remember seeing another figure almost beside him, but as Balfame fell I ran for the lane and my car. I had no intention of giving myself up. I knew that the crime would be laid to political enemies, who, no doubt, could produce alibis. This proved to be the case, and when I broke down and was carried to the hospital it was with the assurance of public belief in gun-men asthe perpetrators of the crime. That Enid Balfame, that serene and splendid woman, whose life has been a miracle of good taste and high sense of duty, would be accused never crossed my mind.
"No, it is impossible for me to say with truth that I repent. I might have, once. But these last six months! Millions of men in the greatest civilisations of earth are killing one another daily for no reason whatever save that man, who seeks to direct the destinies of the world, is a complete and pitiful failure. Why, pray, should a woman repent having broken one of his laws and removed one of the most worthless and abominable of his sex, who had made the life of a beloved friend past enduring? Moreover, I have saved hundreds of lives at the risk of my own. I die in peace.
"This statement is made with full knowledge of impending death and without hope of recovery."
"This ante-mortem statement," concluded Mr. Rush, "was taken down in longhand by the stenographer who sits below, and signed by Anna Steuer, M.D., of Elsinore, Brabant County, State of New York. It was witnessed by Drs. MacDougal and Meyers, who accompanied me from the hospital to the Court-house. Mr. Broderick of theNew York News, as I mentioned before, also heard the confession and affixed his signature."
He handed the sheets to the jury and stepped down. For a moment there was no sound but the scratching of pencils on the opposite side of the room and the faint rustle of paper in the jury-box. Mrs. Balfame had drawn her veil across her face and sat huddled in her chair.
The two doctors and Broderick took the stand briefly,the former testifying that Dr. Steuer had been of clear and sound mind when she made and signed her statement. Then the district attorney stood up, and in lifeless tones—Dr. Anna had been his family's most cherished friend—asked if there was any prospect of the self-confessed criminal being examined further. Rush went over to Mrs. Balfame and pressed his hand hard upon her shoulder.
"May it please your honour," he said, "Dr. Anna Steuer expired before we left the hospital."
Again there was a furious scratching of pens. Not a reporter glanced at Mrs. Balfame. They had forgotten her existence. The Judge asked the jury if they wished to retire once more for deliberation. The foreman faced about. The other eleven shook their heads with decision.
The Judge dismissed them and congratulated the defendant, who had risen and stood clutching the back of her chair. The reporters raced one another down the stairs to the telegraph-offices and telephone-booths.
It was physically impossible for Mrs. Balfame to faint, or to lose self-control for more than a moment at a time. She drew away from the friends that crowded about her, one or two of the women hysterical.
"I shall ask Mr. Rush to take me over to the jail for a few moments," she said in her clear cold voice. "I must put a few things together, and I wish to have a few words alone with Mr. Rush." She turned to the dazed Mr. Cummack. "Take Polly home," she said peremptorily. "Mr. Rush will drive me over later."
"All right, Enid." He tucked Mrs. Cummack under his arm. "Your room's been ready for a week."
As Rush was about to follow his client he turnedabruptly and exchanged a long look with Alys Crumley. Both faces were pallid and drawn with fatigue but their eyes for that swift moment blazed with resentment and despair.
When Rush and Mrs. Balfame reached the jail sitting-room she mechanically removed her heavy hat and veil and sank into a chair.
"Is it true that Anna is dead?"
Her voice was as toneless as the district attorney's had been.
"Yes—and we can only be grateful."
"And she did that for me—forme. How strange! How very, very strange!"
"It has been done before in the history of the world." Rush too was very tired.
"But a woman—"
"I fancy you were the romance of poor Anna's life. She indulged in no dreams of the usual sort, with her plain face and squat figure. No doubt she had centred all her romantic yearnings and all her maternal cravings on you. She thought you perfect—unequalled—"
"I! I!"
She sprang to her feet and thrust her head forward, her eyes coming to life with resentment and wonder.
"What—whatam I that two people—two people like you and Anna Steuer—should be ready to die for me? Why, I have never thought of a mortal being but myself! Anna must have been born with dotage in her brain. She knew me all my life. She saw me organise charities, give to the poor what I could afford,find work for the deserving now and again, and she heard me read absurd compositions before the Friday Club upon the duty of Women to Society; but she must have known that all were mere details in my scheme of life and that I was the most selfish creature that ever breathed."
Rush shrugged his shoulders, although he was watching her with a quickened interest. "Why try to analyse? The gift to inspire devotion—fascination—is as determinate as the gift to write a poem or compose a symphony. It has existed in some of the worst men and women that have ever lived. You are not that—not by a long sight—"
"Oh, no! I am not one of the worst women that have ever lived. Do you know what I am, how I see myself to-night? I am merely a commonplace woman everlastingly anxious to do the 'right thing.' That is the beginning and the end of me, with the exception of a brief aberration—a release under stress of those anti-social instincts that are deep in every mortal and exhibited by every child that ever lived. Oh, I am one of civilisation's proudest products, for I never had the slightest difficulty with those inherited impulses before. Nor will they ever rise again. I've even 'improved' during my long hours of solitude in this room, but it's all of a piece. I've not changed. We none of us do that. I shall live and die a commonplace woman trying to do the 'right thing.'"
"Oh—let us go now. You must rest. You are very tired."
"I was. But it has passed. The shock of Anna's statement and death brought me up standing. I shall sail for Europe to-morrow, if there is a boat. It wasAnna's constant regret that she could not go to the battlefields and nurse, but she would not leave those that depended upon her here. In some small measure I can take her place. They give a first course in London I am told. And I am strong, very strong."
She paused abruptly and moved forward and took his hand.
"Good night and good-bye," she said. "I shall sleep here to-night. And please understand that you are free."
"What do you mean?" Rush's face set like a mask, but the colour mounted. The grip of his hand was merely nervous, and when she withdrew hers his unconsciously went to his hip and steadied itself.
"I mean that so far as lies in my power I shall harm no one again as long as I live. Moreover, I have seen how it was with you for some time, although I would not admit it, for I intended to marry you. Perhaps I should have done so if it had not been for Anna. It took that to lift me quite out of myself and enable me to see myself and all things relating to me in their true proportions—for once. It is my moment—If I am ever to have one. You no longer love me, and if you did I should not marry you. I say nothing of the injustice to yourself—I could not take the risk of disillusioning you." She laughed a little nervously. "I fancy I have done that already. But it does not matter. Go and marry some girl near your own age who will be a companion, not an ideal with heart and brain as well as feet of clay."
"You are excited," said Rush brusquely, although his heart was hammering, and singing youth poured through his veins. "I shall leave you now—"
"You will say good-bye to me now, and that is the last word. I'll telephone my plans to Cummack in the morning. There is no reason for us to meet again. To me you will always be a very wonderful and beautiful memory, for it is something—be sure I appreciate just what it does mean—to have embodied a romantic illusion if only for an hour. Now good-bye once more; and find your real happiness as quickly as you can."
She had opened the door. She pushed him gently out into the corridor, closed the door and locked it. Mrs. Balfame was alone with the crushing burden of her soul.