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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Mrs. Balfame, by Gertrude Franklin Horn
+Atherton
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Mrs. Balfame
+       A Novel
+
+
+Author: Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
+
+
+
+Release Date: April 13, 2012  [eBook #39443]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MRS. BALFAME***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Robert Cicconetti, Martin Pettit, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images
+generously made available by Internet Archive (http://archive.org)
+
+
+
+Note: Images of the original pages are available through
+      Internet Archive. See
+      http://archive.org/details/cu31924022059962
+
+
+
+
+
+MRS. BALFAME
+
+A Novel
+
+by
+
+GERTRUDE ATHERTON
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Logo]
+
+New York
+Frederick A. Stokes Company
+Publishers
+
+Copyright, 1916, by
+Gertrude Atherton
+
+All rights reserved, including that of translation into
+foreign languages
+
+Fourth Printing
+
+
+
+     _And woman, yea, woman, shall be terrible in story;
+       The tales too, meseemeth, shall be other than of yore.
+     For a fear there is that cometh out of woman and a glory,
+       And the hard hating voices shall encompass her no more._
+                                                 --_The Medea._
+
+
+
+
+MRS. BALFAME
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+Mrs. Balfame had made up her mind to commit murder.
+
+As she stared down at the rapt faces of the fifty-odd members of the
+Friday Club, upturned to the distinguished speaker from New York, whom
+she, as President, had introduced in those few words she so well knew
+how to choose, it occurred to her with a faint shock that this momentous
+resolution had been growing in her essentially refined and amiable mind
+for months, possibly for years; for she was not an impetuous woman.
+
+While smiling and applauding, patting her large strong hands, freshly
+gloved in virgin white, at precisely the right moment, as the sound and
+escharotic speaker laid down the Woman's Law, she permitted herself to
+wonder if the idea had not burrowed in her subconscious mind--that
+mental antiquity shop of which she had lately read so much, that she
+might expound it to the progressive ladies of the Friday Club--for at
+least half the twenty-two years of her married life.
+
+It was only last night that awakening suddenly she had realised with no
+further skirmishes and retreats of conscience or principle how she
+hated the heavy mass of flesh sleeping heavily beside her.
+
+For at least eight years, ever since their fortunes had improved and she
+had found leisure for the novels and plays of authors well-read in life,
+she had longed for a room, a separate personal existence, of her own.
+She was no dreamer, but this exclusive and ladylike apartment often had
+floated before her mental vision, chastely papered and furnished in a
+cold pale blue (she had an uneasy instinct that pink and lavender were
+immoral); and by day it should look like a boudoir. She was too wise to
+make a verbal assault upon this or any foreign word, for she found the
+stage, her only guide, strangely casual or contradictory in these minor
+details; but although her little world found no trouble in discovering
+what Mrs. Balfame increasingly knew, what she did not know they
+suspected so little that they never even discussed her limitations.
+Handicapped by circumstances early and late she might be, but she had
+managed to insinuate the belief that she was the superior in all things
+of the women around her, their born and natural leader.
+
+Mrs. Balfame had never given expression to this desire for a delitescent
+bedroom, being a woman who thought silently, spoke guardedly, and, both
+patient and philosophical, rarely permitted what she called her
+imagination to wander, or bitterness to enter her soul.
+
+The Balfames were by no means well enough off, even now, to refurnish
+the old bedrooms long since denuded by a too economical parent after his
+children had married and moved away, but a few mornings since she had
+remarked casually that as the springs of the conjugal bed were sagging
+she thought she should send it to the auction room and buy two single
+beds. Last night, lying there in the dark, she had clenched her hands
+and held her breath as she recalled David Balfame's purple flush, the
+deliberate manner in which he had set down his thick coffee cup and
+scrubbed his bristling moustache, then rolled up the stained napkin and
+pushed it into the ring before replying.
+
+His first vocative expressed all, but he was a politician and used to
+elaborating his mental processes for the benefit of befuddled
+intellects. "You'll have them springs mended," he informed his wife, who
+was smiling brilliantly and sweetly across the debris of ham and eggs,
+salt mackerel, coffee and hot breads--"that is, if they need it, which I
+haven't noticed, and I'm some heavier than you. But you'll introduce no
+more of your damned new-fangled notions into this house. It was good
+enough for my parents, and it's good enough for us. We lived for fifteen
+years without art lampshades that hurt my eyes, and rugs that trip me
+up; and these last eight or nine years, since you've been runnin' a club
+when you ain't runnin' to New York, I've had too many cold suppers to
+suit me; I've paid bills for 'teas' to that Club and I've put out money
+for fine clothes for you that I could spend a long sight better at
+election time. But I've stood all that, for I guess I'm as good a
+husband as any in God's own country; I like to see you well dressed, for
+you're still a looker--and it's good business, anyhow; and I've never
+grudged you a hired girl. But there's a limit to every man's patience. I
+draw the line at two beds. That's all there is to it."
+
+He had made a part of his speech standing, that being his accustomed
+position when laying down the law, and he now left the room with the
+heavy country slouch his wife had never been able to reform. He had no
+authority in walk or bearing, being a man more obstinate than strong,
+more cunning than firm.
+
+She was thankful that he did not bestow upon her the usual marital kiss;
+the smell of coffee on his moustache had sickened her faintly ever since
+she had ceased to love him.
+
+Or begun to hate him? She had wondered, as she lay there inhaling deeply
+to draw the blood from her head, if she ever had loved him. When a man
+and a maid are young! He had been a tall slim youth, with red cheeks and
+bright eyes, the "catch" of the village; his habits were commendable and
+he would inherit his father's store, his only brother having died a year
+earlier and his sisters married and moved West. She was pretty,
+empty-headed, as ill-educated as all girls of her class, but she kept
+her father's house neatly, she was noted even at sixteen for her pies,
+and at twenty for the dexterity and taste with which she made her own
+clothes out of practically nothing. She was by no means the ordinary
+fool of her age class and nation. But although she was incapable of
+passion, she had a thin sentimental streak, a youthful desire for a
+romance, and a cold dislike for an impending stepmother.
+
+David Balfame wooed her over the front gate and won her in the orchard;
+and the year was in its springtime. It was all as natural and inevitable
+as the measles and whooping-cough through which she nursed him during
+the first year of their marriage.
+
+She had been happy with the happiness of youth ignorance and busy hands;
+although there had been the common trials and quarrels, they had been
+quickly forgotten, for she was a woman of a serene and philosophical
+temperament; moreover, no children came, for which she felt a sort of
+cold negative gratitude. She liked children, and even attracted them,
+but she preferred that other women should bear and rear them.
+
+But all that comparative happiness was before the dawning of ambition
+and the heavier trials that preceded it.
+
+A railroad expanded the sleepy village into a lively town of some three
+thousand inhabitants, and although that meant wider interests for Mrs.
+Balfame, and an occasional trip to New York, the more intimate
+connection with a great city nearly wrecked her husband's business. His
+father was dead and he had inherited the store which had supplied the
+village with general merchandise for a generation. But by the time the
+railroad came he had grown lazy and liked to sit on the sidewalk on fine
+days, or before the stove in winter, his chair tilted back, talking
+politics with other gentlemen of comparative leisure. He was popular,
+for he had a bluff and hospitable manner; he was an authority on
+politics, and possessed an eloquent if ungrammatical tongue. For a time,
+as his business dwindled, he merely blasphemed, but just as he was
+beginning to feel really uneasy, a brother-in-law who had been the chum
+of his youth arrived from Montana and saved him from extinction and "the
+old Balfame place" from mortgage.
+
+Mr. Cummack, the brother-in-law, turned out the loafers, put Dave into
+politics, and himself called personally upon every housewife in the
+community, agreeing to keep the best of all she needed, but none of
+those articles which served as an excuse for a visit to New York or
+tempted her to delightful hours with the mail-order catalogue.
+
+Mrs. Balfame detested this bustling common efficient brother-in-law,
+although at the end of two years, the twelfth of her married life, she
+was keeping a maid-of-all-work and manicuring her nails. She treated him
+with an unswerving sweetness, a natural quality which later developed
+into the full flower of graciousness, and even gave him a temperate
+measure of gratitude. She was a just woman; and it was not long after
+his advent that she began to realise the ambition latent in her strong
+character and to enter upon a well defined plan for social leadership.
+
+She found it all astonishingly easy. Of course she never had met,
+probably never would meet, the really wealthy families that owned large
+estates in the county and haughtily entertained one another when not
+entertaining equally exclusive New Yorkers. But Mrs. Balfame did not
+waste time in envy of these people; there were old families in her own
+and neighbouring villages, proud of their three or four generations on
+the same farm, well-to-do but easy-going, democratic and, when not so
+old as to be "moss-backs," hospitable to new notions. Many, indeed, had
+built new homes in the expanding village, which bade fair to embrace
+choice bits of the farms.
+
+Mrs. Balfame always had dominated these life-long neighbours and
+associates, and the gradual newcomers were quick to recognise her power
+and her superior mind; to realise that not to know Mrs. Balfame was to
+be a commuter and no more. Everything helped her. Even the substantial
+house, inherited from her father-in-law, and still surrounded by four
+acres of land, stood at the head of the original street of the village,
+a long wide street so thickly planted with maples as old as the farms
+that from spring until Christmas the soft leafy boughs interlaced
+overhead. She had a subtle but iron will, and a quite commonplace
+personality disguised by the cold, sweet, stately and gracious manner so
+much admired by women; and she was quite unhampered by the least of that
+originality or waywardness which antagonises the orthodox. Moreover, she
+dressed her tall slender figure with unerring taste. Of course she was
+obliged to wear her smart tailored suits for two years, but they always
+looked new and were worn with an air that quite doubled their not
+insignificant price. By women she was thought very beautiful, but men,
+for the most part, passed her by.
+
+For eight years now, Mrs. Balfame had been the acknowledged leader of
+Elsinore. It was she who had founded the Friday Club, at first for
+general cultivation of mind, of late to study the obsessing subject of
+Woman. She cared not a straw for the privilege of voting; in fact, she
+thought it would be an extremely unladylike thing to do; but a leader
+must always be at the head of the procession, while discriminating
+betwixt fad and fashion.
+
+It was she who had established a connection with a respectable club in
+New York; it was she who had inveigled the substantial well-dressed and
+radical personage on the rostrum beside her to come over and homilise
+upon the subject of "The European War _vs._ Woman."
+
+The visitor had proved to her own satisfaction and that of the major
+part of her audience that the bomb which had precipitated the war had
+been made in Germany. She was proceeding complacently, despite the
+hisses of several members with German forbears, and the President had
+just exchanged a glance of amusement with a moderate neutral, who
+believed that Russia's desire to thaw out her icy feet in warm water was
+at the bottom of the mischief, when--spurred perhaps by a biting
+allusion to the atrocities engaging the press at the moment--the idea of
+murder took definite form in that clear unvisionary brain so justly
+admired by the ladies of Elsinore.
+
+Mrs. Balfame's pure profile, the purer for the still smooth contours and
+white skin of the face itself, the stately setting of the head, was
+turned toward the audience below the platform, and one admiring young
+member, who attended an art class in New York, was sketching it as a
+study in St. Cecelia's, when those six letters of fire rose smoking from
+the battle fields of Europe and took Mrs. Balfame's consciousness by
+assault: six dark and murky letters, but with no vagueness of outline.
+
+The first faint shock of surprise over, as well as the few moments of
+retrospect, she asked herself calmly: "Why not?" Over there men were
+being torn and shot to pieces by wholesale, joking across the trenches
+in their intervals of rest, to kill again when the signal was given with
+as little compunction as she herself had often aimed at a target, or
+wrung the neck of a chicken that had fed from her hand. And these were
+men, the makers of law, the self-elected rulers of the world.
+
+Mrs. Balfame had respected men mightily in her youth. Even now, although
+she both despised and hated her husband, she responded femininely to a
+fine specimen of manhood with good manners and something to talk about
+save politics and business. But these were few and infrequent in Brabant
+County. The only man she had met for years who interested her in the
+least was Dwight Rush, also a scion of one of the old farm families.
+
+Rush had been educated in the law at a northwestern university, but
+after a few years of practice in Wisconsin had accepted an offer to
+enter the most respectable law firm in his native township. He had been
+employed several times by David Balfame, who had brought him home
+informally to supper perhaps once a fortnight during the last six
+months. But, although Mrs. Balfame frankly enjoyed his society and his
+evident admiration for a beauty she knew had little attraction for his
+sex, she had all a conventional woman's dislike for irregularities,
+however innocent; and she had snubbed Mr. Rush's desire to "drop in of
+an afternoon."
+
+He barely flitted through her mind when she asked herself what did man's
+civilisation amount to, anyway, and why should women respect it? And,
+compared with the stupendous slaughter in Europe, a slaughter that would
+seem to be one of the periodicities of the world, since it is the
+composite expression of the individual male's desire to fight somebody
+just so often--what, in comparison with such a monstrous crime, would be
+the offence of making way with one obnoxious husband?
+
+Something over two years ago--when liquor began to put a fiery edge upon
+Mr. Balfame's temper--Mrs. Balfame had considered the question of
+divorce; but after several weeks of cool calculation and the exercise
+of her foresight upon the inevitable social consequences, she had put
+the idea definitely aside. It was incompatible with her plan of life.
+Only rich women, or women that were insignificant in great cities, or
+who possessed conquering gifts, or who were so advanced as to be
+indifferent, could afford the luxury of divorce. Her world was the
+eastern division of Brabant County, and while it prided itself upon its
+progressiveness, and even--among the younger women--had a gay set, and
+although suppressed scandals slid about like slimy monsters in a marsh,
+its foundations were inherited from the old Puritan stock, and it fairly
+reeked with ancient prejudices.
+
+It was a typical middle-class community with traditions, some of its
+blood too old, and made up of common human ingredients in varying
+proportions. Mrs. Balfame, enlightened by much reading and many
+matinées, applied the word _bourgeois_ to Elsinore with secret scorn,
+but with a sigh: conscious that all its prejudices were hers and that
+not for an instant could she continue to be its leader were she a
+divorced woman.
+
+Mrs. Balfame indulged in no dreams of sudden wealth. Elsinore was her
+world, and on the whole she was content, realising that life had not
+equipped her to lead the society of New York City. She liked to shop in
+Fifth Avenue--long since had she politely forgotten the mobs of
+Sixth,--to occupy an orchestra chair with a friend at a matinée, and
+take tea or chocolate at the fashionable retreats for such dissipations
+before returning to provincial Elsinore. There was a tacit agreement
+between herself and her husband that he should dine with his political
+friends in a certain restaurant behind a bar in Dobton, the county seat,
+on the Wednesday or Thursday evenings when she found it impossible to
+return to Elsinore before seven o'clock; an arrangement which he
+secretly approved of but invariably entered a protest against by coming
+home at two in the morning extremely drunk.
+
+He never attended the theatre with her, his preference being for
+vaudeville or a screaming musical comedy, for both of which
+abnormalities she had a profound contempt. She saw only the "best plays"
+herself, her choice being guided not so much by newspaper approval as by
+length of run. It must be confessed that in the eight or nine years of
+her comparative emancipation from the grinding duties of the home she
+had learned a good deal of life from the plays she saw. On the whole,
+however, she preferred sound American drama, particularly when it dealt
+with Society; for the advanced (or decadent?) pictures of life as
+presented in the imported drama, she had only a mild contempt; her first
+curiosity satisfied, she thanked God that she was a plain American.
+
+Such was Mrs. Balfame when she made up her mind to remove David Balfame,
+superfluous husband. She was quite content to reign in Elsinore, to live
+out her life there, but as a dignified and irreproachable and well-to-do
+widow. Divorce being out of the question, there was but one way to get
+rid of him: his years were but forty-four, and although he "blew up"
+with increasing frequency, to use his own choice vernacular, he was as
+healthy as an ox, and the town drunkard was rising eighty.
+
+Mrs. Balfame's friend, Dr. Anna Steuer, was now replying to the lady
+from New York. After reminding the Club that the President of the United
+States had requested his docile subjects to curb their passions and
+flaunt their neutrality, Dr. Steuer proceeded to demolish the
+anti-German attitude of the guests by reciting the long list of
+industrial, economic and scientific contributions to civilisation which
+had distinguished the German Empire since the federation of its states.
+
+Dr. Steuer was of Dutch descent, and her gifts were not forensic, but
+the key-note of her character was an intense and passionate loyalty. She
+had spent some of the most impressionable years of her life in the
+German clinics, and she cherished a romantic affection for a country
+whose natural and historic beauties no man will deny. She had
+steadfastly refused to read the "other side," pinning her faith to all
+that was best in the country of her youthful dreams. In consequence, her
+discourse, while informing, was somewhat beside the point; and had it
+not been for the deep love borne her by almost every one present, there
+would have been a polite but firm demand to give place.
+
+Mrs. Balfame was smiling encouragement when her musings took a sudden
+and arbitrary twist. Being a person who never acted on impulse, her
+decisions, after due processes of thought, were commonly irrevocable.
+The moment she had made up her mind to pass her husband on, she had
+committed herself to the act; and, even before Dr. Anna Steuer had
+claimed her superficial attention, had already erected the question,
+How?
+
+Mrs. Balfame was a woman who rarely bungled anything, and murder, she
+well knew, was the last of all acts to bungle, did the perpetrator
+desire to enjoy the freedom of his act. Being refined to her marrow, she
+shrank from all forms of brutality, and rarely, if ever, read the
+details of crime in the newspapers. The sight of blood disgusted her,
+although it did not turn her faint. She kept a pistol in her bedroom;
+burglars, particularly of late, had entered a large number of houses in
+Brabant County; but nothing would have horrified her more than to empty
+its contents into the worst of criminals.
+
+Mechanically she had run through the list of all the accepted forms of
+removing human impedimenta and rejected them, when Dr. Anna's scientific
+mind, playing along the surface of hers, shot in the arrow of suggestion
+that she belonged naturally to the type of woman that poisoned if forced
+to commit murder. It was bloodless, decent, and required no vulgar
+expenditure of energy.
+
+But healthy people, suddenly dead, were excavated and the quarry
+submitted to chemical tests; it was then--smiling brilliantly at her
+ardent pro-German friend--that Mrs. Balfame recalled a rainy evening
+some two years since. She and Dr. Anna had sat over the fire in the old
+Steuer cottage, and the doctor, who before the war never had been
+interested in anything but her friends, her science, and suffrage, had
+discoursed upon certain untraceable poisons, had even risen and taken
+down a vial from a secret cupboard above the mantel. During the same
+conversation, which naturally drifted to crime, Dr. Anna had discoursed
+upon the idiocy of doctors who poisoned with morphia, strychnine, or
+prussic acid, when not only were these organic poisons known to all
+scientific members of the profession, but they could easily remove the
+barrier to their complete happiness with cholera, smallpox, or typhus
+germs, sealed within the noncommittal capsule.
+
+Mrs. Balfame shuddered at the mere thought of any of these dreadful
+diseases, having no desire to witness human sufferings, or to run the
+risk of infection, but as she stared at Dr. Anna to-day, she made up her
+mind to procure that vial of furtive poison.
+
+So sudden was this resolution and so grim its portent that it was
+accompanied by unusual physical phenomena: she brought her sound white
+teeth together and thrust out her strong chin; her eyes became fixed in
+a hard stare and the muscles of her face seemed to menace her soft white
+skin.
+
+Alys Crumley, the young woman who had been sketching Mrs. Balfame
+instead of listening to the discussion, caught her breath and dropped
+her pencil. For the moment the pretty, ultra-refined, elegant leader of
+Elsinore society looked not like St. Cecelia but like Medea. Always
+determined, resolute, smilingly dominant, never before had she betrayed
+the secret possibilities of her nature.
+
+Miss Crumley cast a glance of startled apprehension about her, but the
+debate was just finished, every one was commenting upon the splendid
+self-control of the high participants, and repeating the New Yorker's
+last phrase: that not civilisation but man was a failure. A moment later
+Mrs. Balfame advanced to the edge of the platform, and, with her
+inimitable graciousness, invited the members of the Club to come forward
+and meet the distinguished guest. Little Miss Alys Crumley, watching
+her, listening to her pleasant shallow voice, her amused quiet laugh,
+came to the conclusion that the fearsome expression she had seen on her
+model's face had been a mere effect of light.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+The meeting of the Friday Club had been held in the Auditorium, a hall
+which accommodated moving pictures, an occasional vaudeville
+performance, political orators, and subscription balls of more than one
+social stratum. It was particularly adapted to the growing needs of the
+Friday Club, as it impressed visitors favorably, and there was a small
+room in the rear where tea could be served.
+
+It was a crisp autumn evening when the President and her committee sped
+the parting guest of this fateful day and walked briskly homeward,
+either to cook supper themselves or to prod the languid "hired girl."
+Starting in groups, they parted at successive corners, and finally Mrs.
+Balfame and Dr. Anna were alone in the old street. The doctor's offices
+were in Main Street under the Auditorium, between the Elsinore Bank and
+the Emporium drug store, but she too had inherited a cottage in what was
+now known as Elsinore Avenue, and almost at the opposite end from the
+"Old Balfame Place."
+
+"Come in," she said hospitably, as she opened a gate set superfluously
+into the low boxwood hedge. "You can 'phone to the Elks' and tell Dave
+to try the new hotel. It's ages since I've seen you."
+
+"I will!" Mrs. Balfame's prompt reply was accompanied by what was known
+in Elsinore as her inscrutable smile. "It is kind of you," she added
+politely, for even with old friends she never forgot her manners. "I
+long for a cup of your tea--if you will make it yourself. I really could
+eat nothing after those sandwiches."
+
+"I'll make it myself, all right. First because it wouldn't be fit to
+drink if I didn't, and second because it's Cassie's night out."
+
+She took the key from beneath the door-mat, and pressed an electric
+button in the hall and another in a comfortable untidy sitting-room. In
+her parents' day the sitting-room had been the front parlour, with an
+atmosphere as rigid as the horsehair furniture, but in this era of more
+elastic morals it was full of shabby comfortable furniture, a davenport
+was close to the radiator, the desk and tables were littered with
+magazines, medical reviews, and text books.
+
+"How warm and delicious," said Mrs. Balfame brightly, removing her hat
+and wraps and laying them smoothly on a chair. "I'll telephone and then
+close my eyes and think of nothing until tea is ready--I know you won't
+have me in the kitchen. What a blessed relief it will be to hear you
+sing in your funny old voice after that woman's strident tones."
+
+She made short work of telephoning. Mr. Balfame, having "just stepped
+across the street," she merely left a message for him. Dr. Anna, out in
+the kitchen, lighted the gas stove, rattled the aluminum ware, and sang
+in a booming contralto.
+
+Mrs. Balfame went through no stage formalities; she neither tiptoed to
+the door nor listened intently. From the telephone, which was on the
+desk, she walked over to the strongest looking chair, carried it to the
+discarded fireplace, mounted and peered into the little cupboard the
+canny doctor had had built into the old chimney after the furnace was
+installed. There Dr. Anna kept her experimental drugs, her mother's seed
+pearls and diamond brooch, and a roll of what she called emergency
+bills.
+
+The vial was almost in the middle of a row of bottles. Mrs. Balfame
+recognised it at once. She secreted it in the little bag that still hung
+on her arm, replaced it with another small bottle that had stood nearer
+the end of the row, closed the door and restored the chair to its proper
+place. Could anything be more simple?
+
+She was too careful of her best tailored suit to lie down, but she
+arranged herself comfortably in a corner of the davenport and closed her
+eyes. Soothed by the warmth of the room and the organ tones in the
+kitchen she drifted into a happy state of somnolence, from which she was
+aroused by the entrance of her hostess with a tray. She sprang up
+guiltily.
+
+"I had no intention of falling asleep--I meant to set the table at
+least--"
+
+"Those cat naps are what has kept you young and beautiful, while the
+rest of us have traded complexions for hides."
+
+Mrs. Balfame gracefully insisted upon clearing and laying a corner of
+the table, and the two friends sat down and chatted gaily over their tea
+and toast and preserves. Dr. Anna's face--a square face with a snub nose
+and kindly twinkling eyes--beamed as her friend complimented her upon
+the erudition she had displayed in her reply to the Club guest and added
+wistfully:
+
+"I feel as if I didn't know a thing about this war. Everybody
+contradicts everybody else, and sometimes they contradict themselves.
+I'm going over to-morrow" ("going over" meant New York in the Elsinore
+tongue) "and get all the books that have been printed on the subject,
+and read up. I do feel so ignorant."
+
+"That's a large order. When you've dug through them you'll know less
+than you could get from the headlines of the 'anti' evening papers. I'll
+hunt up a list that was given me by a patient who claims to be neutral,
+if you really want it, and leave it at your house in the morning. It's
+at the office."
+
+"Oh, please do!" Mrs. Balfame leaned eagerly across the table. "You
+know, it is my turn to read a paper Friday week, and literally I can
+think of nothing else except this terrible but most interesting war. Of
+course, I must display some real knowledge and not deal merely in
+adjectives and generalities. I'll read night and day--I suppose I can
+get all those books from two or three New York libraries?"
+
+"Enid Balfame, you are a wonder! When you buckle down to a thing! Who
+but you would take hold of a subject like that with the idea of
+mastering it in two weeks--Oh, bother!"
+
+The telephone was ringing. Dr. Anna tilted back her chair and lifted the
+receiver from the desk to her ear. She put it down almost immediately.
+"Hurry call," she said briefly, an intense professional concentration
+banishing the pleasant relaxation of a moment before. "Baby. Sorry.
+Leave the key under the door mat. Don't hurry." She was putting on her
+wraps in the hall as she called back her last words. The front door
+banged simultaneously.
+
+Mrs. Balfame piled the dishes on the tray, carried them out into the
+kitchen, washed and put them away. She was a very methodical woman and
+exquisitely neat. Although she no longer did her own kitchen work, it
+would have distressed her to leave her friend's little home at "sixes
+and sevens"; the soiled dishes would have haunted her all night, or at
+least until she fell asleep.
+
+After she had also arranged the publications on the sitting-room table
+in neat rows she put on her coat and hat, turned off all the lights,
+secreted the key as requested and walked briskly down the path. There
+was a street lamp directly in front of the gate. Its light fell on the
+face of a man emerging from the heavy shadow of the maple trees that
+bordered the avenue. She recognised her husband's lawyer, Dwight Rush.
+
+"What luck!" he exclaimed boyishly. "Now I shall talk to you for at
+least five minutes--ten, if you will walk slowly! What are you doing out
+so late alone?"
+
+Mrs. Balfame glanced apprehensively up and down the street. All the
+windows were alight, but it was too late in the season for loitering on
+verandas; even if they met any one, recognition would hardly be possible
+unless the encounter took place under a street lamp. Moreover, she was
+one of those women who while rarely terrified when alone became
+intensely feminine when a man appeared with his archaic right to shield
+and protect. She smiled graciously.
+
+"You may see me to my gate," she said.
+
+"I should think I might! A pistol at my head wouldn't keep me from
+walking these few blessed minutes with you. Seriously, it's not safe for
+you to be out alone like this. There were three burglaries last week,
+and you are just the woman to have her bag snatched."
+
+She drew closer to him, a faint accent of alarm in her voice.
+
+"I never thought of that. But Anna was called off in a hurry. I am so
+glad you happened along. Although," primly, "it wouldn't do, you know,
+for a woman of my age and position to be seen walking alone with a young
+man at night."
+
+"What nonsense! You are like Cæsar's wife, I guess. Anything you did in
+this town would seem about right. You've got them all hypnotised,
+including myself. It's the ambition of my life to know you better," he
+added in a more serious tone. "Why won't you let me call?"
+
+"It wouldn't do. If I have a nice position it's because I've always been
+so particular. If I let young men call on me, people would say that I
+was no better than that fast bunch that tangoes every night and goes to
+road houses and things." Her voice trailed off vaguely; she really knew
+very little of the doings of "gay sets," although much in the abstract
+of a too temperamental world.
+
+She made up her mind to dispose of this misguided young man once for
+all. She knew that she looked quite ten years younger than her age, and
+she was well aware that although man's passion might be business his
+pastime was the hunt.
+
+"I am thankful that I have no grown daughter to keep from running with
+that bunch," she said playfully. "Of course I might have. I am quite old
+enough."
+
+He laughed outright. Then he said the old thing which is ever new to
+the woman, and with a perceptible softening in his hard energetic voice:
+"I wonder if you really are as conventional--conventionised--as you
+perhaps think you are? You always give me the impression of being two
+women, one fast asleep deep down somewhere, the other not even
+suspecting her existence."
+
+"How pretty!" She smiled with pleasure, and she felt a faint stirring of
+coquetry, as if the ghost of her youth were rising--that far-off period
+when she put on her best ribbons and made her best pies to allure the
+marriageable swains of Elsinore. But she recalled herself quickly and
+frowned. "You must not say such things to me," she said coldly.
+
+"But I shall, and I will add that I wish you were a widow, or had never
+been married. I should propose to you this minute."
+
+"That is equivalent to saying that you wish my husband were dead. And he
+is your friend, too!"
+
+"Your husband is not my friend; he is my employer--upon occasion. At the
+moment I did not remember who was your husband. Let it go at that."
+
+"Very well."
+
+It was evident that he belonged to the type that found its amusement in
+making love to married women; but--they were within the rays of a lamp,
+and sauntering--she looked up at this pleasant exponent indulgently. She
+was quite safe, and it was by no means detestable at the age of
+forty-two to be coveted by the cleverest young man in Brabant County.
+
+The smile left her lips and she experienced a faint vibration of the
+nerves as she met the unsmiling eyes bent close above her own.
+
+Rush was almost drab in colour, but the bones of his face were large
+and his eyes were deeply set and well apart, intensely blue and
+brilliant. It was one of those narrow rigid faces the exigencies of his
+century and country have bred, the jaw long and almost as salient as
+that of a consumptive, the brow bold, the mouth hard set, the cheeks
+lean and cut with deep lines, the whole effect not only keen and clever
+but stronger than any man has consistently been since the world began.
+The curious contradiction about this type of American face is that it
+almost invariably looks younger than the years that have contributed to
+the modelling of it; such men, particularly if smoothly shaven as they
+usually are, look thirty at forty; even at fifty, if they retain their
+hair, appear but little older. When Rush's mouth was relaxed it could
+smile charmingly, and the eyes fill with playfulness and vivacity, just
+as his strident American voice could move a jury to tears by the tears
+that were in it.
+
+At this moment all the intensity of which his striking features were
+capable was concentrated in his eyes.
+
+"I'm not going to make love to you as matters stand," he said, his voice
+dry with emotion. "But I want you to divorce Dave Balfame and marry me.
+Sooner or later you will be driven to it--"
+
+"Never! I'll never be a divorced woman. Never! Never!"
+
+His steady gaze wavered and he sighed. "You said that as if you meant
+it. You think you are intellectual, and you haven't outgrown one of the
+prejudices of your Puritan grandmothers--who behaved themselves because
+women were scarce and even better treated than they are now, and because
+they would have been too mean to spend money on a divorce suit if
+divorces had come into fashion elsewhere."
+
+"You are far from complimentary!" Mrs. Balfame raised her head stiffly,
+not a little indignant at this natural display of sheer masculinity. She
+would have withdrawn her arm and hastened her steps but he held her
+back.
+
+"I don't mean to be uncomplimentary. Only, you ought to be so much more
+advanced than you are. I repeat, I shall not make downright love to you,
+for I intend to marry you one of these days. But I shall say what I
+choose. How much longer do you think you can go on living like
+this?--with a man you must despise and from whom you must suffer
+indignities--and in this hole--"
+
+"You live here--"
+
+"I came back here because I had a good offer and I like the East better
+than the West, but I have no intention of staying here. I have reason to
+believe that I shall get into a New York firm next spring; and once
+started on that race-course I purpose to come in a winner."
+
+"And you would saddle yourself with a wife many years your senior?" she
+asked wonderingly.
+
+But she thrilled again, and unconsciously moderated her gait still
+further; they were but a few steps from her home.
+
+"I am thirty-four. I am sorry that I have impressed you as looking too
+young to be taken seriously, but you will admit that if a man doesn't
+know his own mind when he is verging toward middle age, he never will.
+But if I were only twenty-five, it would make no difference. I would
+marry you like a shot. I never have given a thought to marrying before.
+Girls don't interest me. They show their hand too plainly. I've always
+had a sort of ideal and you fill it."
+
+It was characteristic of Mrs. Balfame's well-ordered mind that her
+intention to murder her husband did not intrude itself into this unique
+and provocative hour. She had never indulged in a passing desire to
+marry again, and hers was not the order of mind that somersaults. But
+she was willing to "let herself go," for the sake of the experience; for
+the first time in her twenty odd years of married life to loiter in a
+leafy shadowy street with a man who loved her and made no secret of it.
+
+"I wonder?" She stared up at him, curiosity in her eyes.
+
+"Wonder what?"
+
+"If it _is_ love?"
+
+He laughed unmusically. "I am not surprised that you ask that
+question--you, who know no more of love than if you had been a castaway
+on a desert island since the age of ten. Never mind. I've planted a
+seed. It will sprout. Think and think again. You owe me that much--and
+yourself. I know that six months hence you will have divorced Dave
+Balfame, and that you will marry me as soon as the law allows."
+
+"Never! Never!" She was laughing now, but with all the gay coquetry of
+youth, not merely the eidola of her own.
+
+They had arrived at the gate of the Balfame Place, which faced the
+avenue and a large street lamp. She put the gate between them with a
+quicker movement than she commonly indulged in and held out her hand.
+
+"No more nonsense! If I were young and free--who knows?
+But--but--forty-two!" She choked but brought it out. "Now go home and
+think over all the nice girls you know and select one quickly. I will
+make the wedding cake."
+
+"Did you suppose I didn't know your age? This is Elsinore, and its
+inhabitants are five thousand. When you and I were born--of respectably
+eminent parentage--all Brabant County numbered few more."
+
+He made no attempt to open the gate, but he raised her hand to his lips.
+Even in that rare moment he was conscious of a regret that it was such a
+large hand, and his head jerked abruptly as he flung out the recreant
+thought.
+
+"I never shall change," he said. "And you are to think and think. Now
+go. I'll watch until you are indoors."
+
+"Good night." She ran up the path, wondering if her tall slight figure
+looked as willowy as it felt. The mirror had often surprised her with
+the information that she looked quite different from the image in her
+mind. She also wondered, with some humour, why no one ever had
+discovered her apparently obvious charms before.
+
+When she was in her bedroom and electricity replaced the mellow rays of
+street lamps shining through soft and whispering leaves, Mrs. Balfame
+forgot Dwight Rush and all men save her husband.
+
+She took the vial from her bag and stared at it. In a moment a frown
+drew her serene brows together, her sweet, shallow, large grey eyes, so
+consistently admired by her own sex at least, darkened with displeasure.
+She was a bungler after all. How was the stuff to be administered? She
+racked her memory, but the casual explanation of Dr. Anna, uttered at
+least two years ago, had left not an echo. A drop in his eggs or coffee
+might be too little; more, and he might detect the foreign quantity.
+
+She removed the cork and sniffed. It was odourless, but was it
+tasteless?
+
+Obviously there was no immediate way of ascertaining save by experiment
+on Mr. Balfame. And even if it were tasteless, it might cook his blood,
+congest his face, burst his veins--she recalled snatches of Dr. Anna's
+dissertations upon "interesting cases." On the other hand, one drop
+might make him violently ill; the suspicions of any doctor might be
+aroused.
+
+She must walk warily. Murder was one of the fine arts. Those that
+cultivated it and failed followed the victim or spent the rest of their
+lives within prison walls. Thousands, it was estimated, walked the earth
+unsuspected, unapprehensive, serene and content--contemptuous of
+failures and bunglers, as are the masters in any art. Mrs. Balfame was
+proudly aware that her rôle in life was success.
+
+There was nothing to do but wait. She must have another cosy evening
+with her scientific friend and draw her on to talk of the poison. Ah!
+that made another precaution imperative.
+
+She went to the cupboard in the bathroom, rinsed a small bottle,
+transferred the precious colorless fluid, refilled the vial with water
+and returned it to her bag. To-morrow or next day she would slip into
+Dr. Anna's house and restore it to its hiding place. The poison she
+secreted on the top shelf of the bathroom cupboard.
+
+Reluctantly, for she was a prompt and methodical woman, she resigned
+herself to the prospect of David Balfame's prolonged sojourn upon the
+planet he had graced so ill. She went to bed, shrinking into the farther
+corner, but falling asleep almost immediately. Then, her hands having
+faltered, Fate borrowed the shuttle.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+A fortnight passed before Mrs. Balfame found the opportunity for a chat
+with Dr. Anna.
+
+On Saturday afternoons it was the pleasant custom of the flower of
+Elsinore to repair to the Country Club, a building of the bungalow type,
+with wide verandas, a large central hall, several smaller rooms for
+those that preferred cards to dancing, a secluded bar, a tennis
+court--flooded in winter for skating--and a golf links. It was
+charmingly situated about four miles from the town, with the woods
+behind and a glimpse of the grey Atlantic from the higher knolls.
+
+The young unmarried set that danced at the Club or in the larger of the
+home parlours every night would have monopolised the central hall of the
+bungalow on Saturdays as well had it not been for the sweet but firm
+resistance of Mrs. Balfame. Lacking in a proper sex vanity she might be,
+but she was far too proud and just to permit her own generation to be
+obliterated by mere youth. Having no children of her own, it shocked her
+fine sense of the fitness of things to watch the subservience of parents
+and the selfishness of offspring. One of the most notable results of her
+quiet determination was that she and her friends enjoyed every privilege
+of the Country Club when the mood was on them, and that a goodly number
+of the men of their own generation did not confine their attentions
+exclusively to the bar, but came out and danced with their neighbours'
+wives. The young people sniffed, but as Mrs. Balfame had founded the
+Country Club, and they were all helpless under her inflexible will and
+skilful manipulation, they never dreamed of rebellion.
+
+During the fortnight Mrs. Balfame had cunningly replaced the vial, the
+indifferent Cassie leaving the sitting-room at her disposal while she
+wrote a note reminding Dr. Anna of the promised list of war books,
+adding playfully that she had no time to waste in a busy doctor's
+waiting-room. In truth Dr. Anna was a difficult person to see at this
+time. There was an epidemic of typhoid in the county, and much illness
+among children.
+
+However, on the third Saturday after the interrupted supper, as Mrs.
+Balfame was motoring out to the Club with her friend, Mrs. Battle, wife
+of the President of the Bank of Elsinore, she saw Dr. Anna driving her
+little runabout down a branching road. With a graceful excuse she
+deserted her hostess, sprang into the humbler machine, and gaily ordered
+her friend to turn and drive to the Club.
+
+"You take a rest this afternoon," she said peremptorily. "Otherwise you
+will be a wreck when your patients need you most. You look just about
+fagged out. And I want a little of your society. I've been thinking of
+taking to a sick bed to get it."
+
+Dr. Anna looked at her brilliant friend with an expression of dumb
+gratitude and adoration. She was worth one hundred per cent. more than
+this companion of her forty years, but she never would know it. She
+regarded Enid Balfame as one of the superwomen of Earth, astray in the
+little world of Elsinore. Even when Mrs. Balfame had done her own work
+she had managed to look rare and lovely. Her hair was neatly arranged
+for the day before descent to the lower regions, and her pretty print
+frock was half covered by a white apron as immaculate as her round
+uncovered arms.
+
+And since the leader of Elsinore had "learned things" she was of an
+elegance whose differences from those of women born to grace a loftier
+sphere were merely subtle. Her fine brown hair, waved in New York, and
+coiled on the nape of her long neck, displayed her profile to the best
+possible advantage; like all women's women she set great store by her
+profile. Whenever possible it was framed in a large hat with a rolling
+brim and drooping feathers. Her severely tailored frocks made her look
+aloof and stately on the streets (and in the trains between Elsinore and
+New York); and her trim white shirt waists and duck skirts, or "one
+piece suits" for colder weather, gave her a sweet feminine appeal in the
+house. At evening entertainments she invariably wore black, cut chastely
+about the neck and draped with a floating scarf.
+
+Poor Dr. Anna, uncompromisingly plain from youth, worshipped beauty;
+moreover, a certain mental pressure of which she was quite unaware
+caused her to find in Enid Balfame her highest ideal of womanhood. She
+herself was never trim; she was always in a hurry; and the repose and
+serenity the calm and sweet dignity of this gifted being both fascinated
+and rested her. That Mrs. Balfame took all her female adorers had to
+offer and gave nothing but enhanced her worth. She knew the priceless
+value of the pedestal, and although her wonderful smile descended at
+discreet intervals her substantial feet did not.
+
+Dr. Anna, who had never been sought by men and had seen too many of
+them sick in bed to have a romantic illusion left, gave to this friend
+of her lifetime, whom the years touched only to improve--and who never
+was ill--the dog-like fidelity and love that a certain type of man
+offers at the shrine of the unattainable woman. Mrs. Balfame was
+sometimes amused, always complacent; but it must be conceded that she
+took no advantage of the blind devotion of either Dr. Anna or her
+numerous other admirers. She was far too proud to "use" people.
+
+Mrs. Balfame seldom discussed her domestic trials even with Dr. Anna,
+but this most intimate of her friends guessed that her life with her
+husband was rapidly growing unendurable. She was, naturally, the family
+doctor; she had nursed David Balfame through several gastric attacks,
+whose cause was not far to seek.
+
+But despite much that was highly artificial in her personality, Enid
+Balfame was elementally what would be called, in the vernacular of the
+day, a regular female; for a fortnight she had longed to talk about
+Dwight Rush. This was the time to gratify an innocent desire while
+watching sharply for an opportunity to play for higher stakes.
+
+"Anna!" she said abruptly, as they sped along the fine road, "women like
+and admire me so much, and I am passably good looking--young looking,
+too--what do you suppose is the reason men don't fall in love with me?
+Dave says that half the men in town are mixed up with those telephone
+and telegraph girls, and they are pretty in the commonest kind of way--"
+
+"Enid Balfame!" Dr. Anna struggled to recover her scandalised breath.
+"You! Do you put yourself in the class with those trollops? What's got
+into you? Men are men. Naturally they let your sort alone."
+
+"But I have heard more than whispers about two or three of our good
+friends--women of our age, not giddy young fools--and in our own set.
+Why do Mary Frew and Lottie Gifning go over to New York so often? Dave
+says it isn't only that women from these dull little towns go over to
+New York to meet their lovers, but that some of them are the up-town
+wives of millionaires, or the day-time wives of all sorts of men with
+money enough to run two establishments. It is a hideous world and I
+never ask for particulars, but the fact remains that Lottie and Mary and
+a few others have as many partners among the young men at the dances as
+the girls do; and I can recall hints they have thrown out that they
+could go farther if they chose."
+
+"This is a busy country," remarked Dr. Anna drily. "Men don't waste time
+chasing the prettiest of women when convinced there is nothing in it--to
+borrow the classic form. Young chaps, urged on by natural law to find
+their mate, will pursue the indifferent girl, but men looking for a
+little play after business hours will not. Why, you--you look as cold
+and chaste as Cæsar's wife. They couldn't waste five minutes on you."
+
+"That's what he said--that I was like Cæsar's wife--"
+
+"Enid!" Dr. Anna stopped the little machine and turned upon her friend,
+her weary face compact and stern. "Enid Balfame! Have you been letting a
+man make love to you?"
+
+"Well, I guess not." Mrs. Balfame tossed her head and bridled. "But the
+other night, when I left your house, Mr. Rush was passing and saw me
+home. He nearly took my breath away by asking me to get a divorce and
+marry him, but he respected me too much to make love to me."
+
+"I should hope so. The young fool!" But Dr. Anna was unspeakably
+relieved. She had turned faint at the thought that her idol might be as
+many other women whose secrets she alone knew. "What did you say to
+him?" she asked curiously, driving very slowly.
+
+"Why, that I would not be a divorced woman for anything in the world."
+
+"You're not the least bit in love with him?" asked Dr. Anna jealously.
+
+Mrs. Balfame gave her silvery shallow care-free laugh. It might have
+come from any of the machines passing, laden with young girls. "Well, I
+guess not! That sort of foolishness never did interest me. I guess my
+vanity was tickled, but vanity isn't love--by a long sight."
+
+Dr. Anna looked at the pure cold profile, the wide cool grey eyes, and
+laughed. "He did have courage, poor devil! It must have been--no, there
+was no moonlight. Must have been the suggestion of that old Lovers'
+Lane, Elsinore Avenue. But if you wanted men to make love to you, my
+dear, you could have them by the dozen. Nothing easier--for pretty women
+of any age who want to be made love to. As for Rush--" She hesitated,
+then added generously, "he has a future, I think, and could take you
+somewhere else."
+
+"I should be like a fish out of water anywhere but in Elsinore. I have
+no delusions. Forty-two is not young--that is to say, it is long past
+the adaptable age, unless a woman has spent her life on the move and
+filling it with variety. I love Elsinore as a cat loves its hearth-rug.
+And I can get to New York in an hour. I think this would be the ideal
+life with about two thousand dollars more a year, and--and--"
+
+"Dave Balfame somewhere else! Pity Sam Cummack didn't turn him into a
+travelling salesman instead of planting him here."
+
+"He's never been interested in anything in his life but politics. But I
+don't really bother about him," she added lightly. "I have him well
+trained. After all, he never comes home to lunch, he interferes with me
+very little, he goes to the Elks every night soon after dinner, and he
+falls asleep the minute he gets into bed. Why, he doesn't even snore.
+And he carries his liquor pretty well. I guess you can't expect much
+more than that after twenty-two years of matrimony. I notice that if it
+isn't one thing it's another."
+
+"Good Lord! Well, I wish he'd break his neck."
+
+"Oh, Anna!"
+
+"Well, of course I didn't mean it. But I see so many good people die--so
+many lovely children--I'm sort of callous, I guess. I make no bones of
+wishing that he'd died of typhoid fever last week, instead of poor Joe
+Morton, who had a wife and two children to support, and was the salt of
+the earth--"
+
+"You might give Dave a few germs in a capsule!" Mrs. Balfame interrupted
+in her lightest tones, although she turned her face away. "Or that
+untraceable poison you once showed me. A bottle of that would finish
+him!"
+
+"A drop and none the wiser." Dr. Anna's contralto tones were gloomy and
+morose. "Unfortunately, I am not scientific enough for cold-blooded
+murder. I'm a silly old Utopian who wishes that a plague would come and
+sweep all the undesirables from the earth and let us start fair with our
+modern wisdom. Then I suppose we'd bore one another to death until
+original sin cropped out again. Better speed up, I guess. I've a full
+evening ahead of me."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+The "smart set" of Elsinore was composed of the twelve women that could
+afford to lose most at bridge. Mrs. Balfame, who could ill afford to
+lose anything, but who was both a scientific and a lucky player,
+insisted upon moderate stakes. The other members of this inner exclusive
+circle were the wives of two bankers, three contractors, two prosperous
+merchants, one judge, one doctor, and two commuters who made their
+incomes in New York and slept in Elsinore. These ladies made it a point
+of honor to dine at seven, dress smartly and appropriately for all
+occasions, attend everything worth while to which they could obtain
+entrance in New York, pay an occasional visit to Europe, read the new
+novels and attend the symphony concerts. It is superfluous to add that
+the very foundation of the superior social status of each was a large
+house of the affluent type peculiar to the prosperous annexes of old
+communities, half brick and half wood, shallow, characterless,
+impersonal; and a fine car with a limousine top. The house stood in the
+midst of a lawn sloping to the street, unconfined by even the box hedge
+and undivided from the neighbouring grounds. The garage, little less
+pretentious than the mansion, also faced the street, for all to see.
+There was hardly a horse left in Elsinore; taxi cabs awaited the
+traveller at the station, and people that could not afford handsome cars
+purchased and enjoyed the inexpensive runabout.
+
+Mrs. Balfame had segregated her smart set for strategic reasons, but
+that did not mean that both she and they were not kindness itself to the
+less favoured. Obviously, an imposing party cannot be given by twelve
+families alone, especially when almost half their number are childless.
+On all state occasions the list of invited numbered several hundred, in
+that town of some five thousand inhabitants.
+
+It said much for the innate nobility of these wealthier dames of
+Elsinore, who read the New York society papers quite as attentively as
+they did the war news, that they submitted without a struggle to the
+dominance of a woman who never had possessed a car and whose husband's
+income was so often diverted from its natural course; but Mrs. Balfame
+not only outclassed them in inflexibility of purpose, but her family was
+as old as Brabant County; the Dawbarns had never been in what might be
+called the cavalry regiment, consisting of those few chosen ones living
+in old colonial houses set in large estates and with both roots and
+branches in the city of New York; but no one disputed their right to be
+called Captains of the infantry. And Mrs. Balfame, sole survivor in the
+direct line, had two wealthy cousins in Brooklyn.
+
+Once in a while Dr. Anna, a privileged character, and born at least in
+Brabant County, took a hand at bridge, but she was a poor player, and,
+upon the rare occasions when she found time to spend a Saturday
+afternoon at the Country Club, preferred to rest in a deep chair and
+watch the young folks flirt and dance until the informal supper was
+ready. Never had she tripped a step, but she loved youth, and it gave
+her an acute old maid's delight to observe the children grow up;
+snub-nosed, freckled-faced awkward school girls develop at a flying leap
+into slim American prettiness, enhanced with every late exaggeration of
+style. She also approved heartily, on hygienic grounds, of the friends
+of her own generation dancing, even in public, if their partners were
+not too young and their forms too cumbersome.
+
+Mrs. Balfame and Dr. Anna arrived at the Club shortly after four
+o'clock. Young people swarmed everywhere, within and without; perhaps
+twenty older matrons were sitting on the veranda knitting those
+indeterminate toilette accessories for the Belgians which always seemed
+to be about to halt at precisely the same stage of progress.
+
+Mrs. Balfame, who had set the fashion, had not brought her needles
+to-day. She went directly to the card room; but her partner for the
+tournament not having arrived, she entertained her impatient friends
+with a recent domestic episode.
+
+"I have a German servant, you know," she said, removing her wraps and
+taking her seat at the table. "A good creature and a hard worker, but
+leaden-footed and dull beyond belief. Still, I suppose even the dullest
+peasant has spite in her make-up. I have been reading tomes of books on
+the war, as you learned from painful experience yesterday; most of them,
+as it happened--a good joke on Anna that, as she gave me the list--quite
+antagonistic to Germany. One day when Frieda should have been dusting I
+caught her scowling over the chapter heads of one of them. Of course she
+reads English--she has been here several years. Day before yesterday,
+when I was knitting, she asked me whom I was knitting for, and I told
+her--for the Belgians, of course. She asked me in a sort of growl why I
+didn't knit for the homeless in East Prussia--it seems that is where she
+comes from and she has been having letters full of horrors. I seldom
+bandy words with a servant, for you can't permit the slightest
+familiarity in this country if you want to get any work out of them. But
+as she scowled as if she would like to explode a shrapnel under me, and
+as she is the third I have had in the last five months, I said
+soothingly that the newspaper correspondents had neglected the eastern
+theatre of war, but had harrowed our feelings so about the Belgians that
+we felt compelled to do what we could for them. Then I asked her--I was
+really curious--if she had no sympathy for those thousands of afflicted
+women and children, merely because they were the victims of the Germans.
+She has a big soft face with thick lips, little eyes, and a rudimentary
+nose; generally as expressionless as such a face is bound to be. But
+when I asked her this question it suddenly seemed to turn to wood--not
+actively cruel; it merely expressed the negation of all human sympathy.
+She turned without a word and slumped--pardon the expression--out of the
+room. But the breakfast was burned this morning--I had to cook another
+for poor David--and I know she did it on purpose. I am afraid I shall
+have to let her go."
+
+"I would," said Mrs. Battle, wisely. "She is probably a spy and quite
+clever."
+
+"Yes, but such a worker!" Mrs. Balfame sighed reminiscently. "And when
+you have but one servant--"
+
+The tardy partner bustled in and the game began.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+It was about six o'clock when Mrs. Balfame, steadily losing, contrary to
+all precedent, her mind concentrated, her features, like those of the
+rest of the players, as hard as the stone faces dug out of Egypt, her
+breath escaping in hissing jets, became vaguely conscious of a
+disturbance in the outer room. The young people were dancing, as was
+usual in the hour before supper, but the piano and fiddles appeared to
+be playing against the ribald interruptions of a man's voice. It was
+some time before the narrow flow of thought in Mrs. Balfame's brain was
+deflected by the powerful outer current, but suddenly she became aware
+that her partners were holding their cards suspended, and that their
+ears were cocked toward the door. Then she recognised her husband's
+voice.
+
+For a moment she lost her breath and her blood ran chill. She had been
+apprehensive for some time of a scene in public, but she had assumed
+that it would occur in a friend's house of an evening; he attended her
+nowhere else. The Club he had deserted long since; it was much too slow
+for a man of his increasing proclivities, especially in a county
+liberally provided with saloons and road houses.
+
+During the last month she had become sensible of a new hostility in his
+attitude toward her; it was as if he had suddenly penetrated her hidden
+aversion and all his masculine vanity had risen in revolt. Being a
+woman of an almost excessive tact, she had sprayed this vanity for
+twenty-two years with the delicately scented waters of flattery, but the
+springs had gone suddenly dry on that morning when she had uttered her
+simple and natural desire to bring the conjugal sleeping accommodations
+up to date.
+
+And now he had come out here to disgrace her, she immediately concluded,
+to make her a figure of fun, to destroy her social leadership. This
+might also involve him in a loss, but when a man is both drunk and angry
+his foresight grows dim and revenge is sweet.
+
+Only last night there had been an intensely disagreeable scene in
+private; that is to say, she had been dignified and slightly
+contemptuous, while he had shouted that her knitting got on his nerves,
+and the sight of all those books on the war made him sick. When the
+whole business of the country was held up by this accursed war, a man
+would like to forget it when at home. And every man had the same story,
+by God; his wife was knitting when she ought to be darning stockings;
+trying to be intellectual by concerning herself with a subject that
+concerned men alone. Mr. Balfame had always resented the Woman's Club,
+and all talk of votes for a sex that would put him and his kind out of
+business. Their intelligent interest in the war was a grievous personal
+indignity.
+
+Being a woman of clear thought and firm purpose, and of a really high
+order of moral courage, Mrs. Balfame was daunted for a moment only. She
+laid down her cards, opened the door and entered the main room of the
+club-house. There she saw, at the head of the room, a group of men
+surrounding her husband; with one exception, almost as excited as he.
+The exception was Dwight Rush who had a hand on one of Balfame's
+shoulders and appeared to be addressing him in a low tone. Little Maude
+Battle ran forward and grasped her arm.
+
+"Oh, dear Mrs. Balfame," she gasped, "do take him home. He is
+so--so--queer. He snatched three girls away from their partners, and the
+boys are so mad. And his language--oh, it was something awful."
+
+The women and girls were huddled in groups, all but Alys Crumley, who,
+Mrs. Balfame vaguely realised, was sketching. Their eyes were fixed on
+the group at the head of the room, where Rush was now trying to edge the
+burly swaying figure toward the door.
+
+Mrs. Balfame walked directly up to her flushed and infuriated spouse.
+
+"You are not well, David," she said peremptorily. "In all the years of
+our married life never have you acted like this. I am sure that you are
+getting typhoid fever--"
+
+"To hell with typhoid fever!" shouted Mr. Balfame. "I'm drunk, that's
+what. And I'll be drunker when they let me into the bar. You get out of
+this."
+
+Mrs. Balfame turned to Dr. Anna, who had marched up the room beside her.
+"I am sure it is fever," she said with decision, and the loyal Anna
+nodded sagely. "You know that liquor never affects him. We must get him
+home."
+
+"Huh!" jeered Balfame, "you two get me home! I'm not so drunk I can't
+see the joke of that. The matter with you is you think I'm disgracin'
+you, and you want to go on bein' the high cock-alorum of this bunch.
+Well, I'm sick of it, and I'm sick of bein' told to eat out when you're
+at matinées or that damned Woman's Club. Home's the place for women.
+Knittin's all right." He laughed uproariously. "But stay at home by the
+fire and knit your husband's socks. Smoke a pipe too, if you like it.
+That's what my granny did. The whole lot of you women haven't got one
+good man's brain between you, and yet you'd talk the head off the
+President of the United States--"
+
+He was about to launch upon his opinion of Elsinore society when a
+staccato cough interrupted the flow. Mrs. Balfame turned away with a
+gesture of superb disdain, although her face was livid.
+
+"The sex jealousy we have so often discussed!" Her clear tones from the
+first had carried all over the room. "He must be taken home." She looked
+at Dwight Rush and said graciously: "I am sure he will go with you. And
+he will apologise to the Club when he is himself again. I shall go back
+to our game."
+
+She held her head very high as she swept down the long room, but her jaw
+was set, her nostrils distended, a narrow strip of eye was fixed and
+glaring.
+
+An unforeseen situation had blown to flame such fires of anger as
+existed in her depths, and she was unable to extinguish them as quickly
+as she would have wished. To the intense surprise of the bridge women
+who had followed her out of the card-room and in again, she sank into a
+chair and burst into tears. But she managed to cry quietly into her
+handkerchief, and in a few moments had her voice under control.
+
+"He has disgraced me!" she exclaimed bitterly. "I must resign from the
+Club."
+
+"Well, I guess not." The ladies had crowded about her sympathetically.
+"We'll all stand up for you," cried Mrs. Battle. "The men will give him
+a good talking-to, and he'll write an apology to the Club and that will
+end it."
+
+These friends, old and more recent, were embarrassed in their genuine
+sympathy, for no one had ever seen Mrs. Balfame in tears before. Vaguely
+they regretted that, extreme as was the provocation, she should have
+descended to the level of mere womanhood. It was as if they were present
+at the opening of a new chapter in the life of Mrs. Balfame of Elsinore;
+as, in truth, they were.
+
+Mrs. Balfame blew her nose. "Pardon me," she said. "I never believed I
+should break down like this--but--but--" once more she set her teeth and
+her eyes flashed. "I have a violent headache. I must go home. I cannot
+finish the game."
+
+"I'll take you home," Dr. Anna spoke. "Oh, that beast!"
+
+The other women kissed Mrs. Balfame, straightened her hat, and escorted
+her out to the runabout which Dr. Anna brought to the rear entrance of
+the clubhouse. She smiled wearily at the group, touching her brow with a
+finger. As soon as the little car had left the grounds and was beyond
+the reach of peering eyes, she made no further attempt at self-control,
+but poured forth her inmost soul to the one person she had ever fully
+trusted. She told the doctor all the secret horror of her life, her
+hatred and loathing of David Balfame; everything, in short, but her
+determination to kill him, which in the novel excitement that had
+invaded her nervous system, she forgot.
+
+Dr. Anna, who had heard many such confessions, but who obstinately had
+hoped that her friend's case was not as bad as it appeared
+superficially, was glad that she was not driving a horse; humane as she
+was, she should have forgotten herself and lashed him to relieve her own
+feelings.
+
+"You must get a divorce," she said through her teeth. "You really must.
+I saw Rush looking at you. There is no mistaking that expression in a
+man's eyes. You must--you must divorce that brute."
+
+"I'll not!" Mrs. Balfame's composure returned abruptly. "And please
+forget that I gave way like this and--and said things." She wondered
+what she really had said. "I know I need not ask you never to mention
+it. But divorce! Oh, no. If I continue to live with him they'll be sorry
+for me and stand by me, but if I divorced him--well, I'd just be one
+more divorced woman and nothing more. Elsinore isn't Newport. Moreover,
+they'd feel I'd no further need of their sympathy. In time they'd let me
+pretty well alone."
+
+"I don't think much of your arguments," said Dr. Anna. "You could marry
+Rush and go to New York."
+
+"But you know I mean what I say. And don't worry, Anna dear." She bent
+over the astonished doctor and gave her a warm kiss. "And as I'm not
+demonstrative, you know I mean that too. You are not to worry about me.
+I've got the excuse I needed, and I'm going to buy some things at second
+hand and refurnish one of the old bedrooms and live in it. He can't say
+a word after this, and he'll be humble enough, for the men will make him
+apologise to the Club. I'll threaten him with divorce, and that alone
+will make him behave himself, for it would cost him a good deal more to
+pay me alimony than to keep the old house going--"
+
+"That isn't an argument that will have much effect on a man, usually in
+liquor. But women are queer cattle. Divorce is a great and beneficent
+institution, and here you elect to go on living under the same roof with
+a brute--Oh, well, it's your own funeral. Here we are. I've got to speed
+up and practise medicine. Am expecting a call from out at Houston's any
+minute. Baby. Good night."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+Mrs. Balfame let herself into the dark house. Saturday was Frieda's
+night out.
+
+Contrary to her economical habit, she lighted up the lower floor
+recklessly, and opened the windows; she felt an overwhelming desire for
+light and air. But as she wished to think and plan with her accustomed
+clarity she went at once to the pantry in search of food; the blood was
+still in her head.
+
+The morrow would be Sunday, and the Saturday luncheon was always
+composed of the remains of the Friday dinner. On Saturday she dined at
+the Country Club. Therefore Mrs. Balfame found nothing with which to
+accomplish her deliberate scientific purpose but dry bread and a box of
+sardines. She was opening this delectable when the front door bell rang.
+
+Her set face relaxed into a frown, but she went briskly to the door. The
+poison might be transpirable after all, and her alibi must be perfect;
+she had changed her mind about going to bed with a headache, and at ten
+o'clock, when she knew that several of her childless friends would be at
+home, she purposed to call them up and thank them sweetly and
+cheerfully.
+
+When she saw Dwight Rush on the stoop, however, she almost closed the
+door in his scowling face.
+
+"Let me in!" he commanded.
+
+"No!" She spoke with sweet severity. "I shall not. After such a scene? I
+must be more careful than ever. Go right away. I, at least, shall
+continue to be above reproach."
+
+"Oh!" He swallowed the natural expression of masculine irritation. "If
+you won't let me in I'll say what I've got to say right here. Will you
+divorce that brute and marry me? I can get you a divorce on half a dozen
+grounds."
+
+"I'll have no divorce, now or ever." Mrs. Balfame of Elsinore spoke with
+haughty finality. "I abominate the word." Then she added graciously:
+"But don't think I am unappreciative of your kindness. Now you must go
+away. The Gifnings live on the corner, and they always come home early."
+
+"A good many have left, including Balfame. He spoilt the evening." Rush
+stared at her and ground his teeth. "By God! I wish the old duelling
+days were back again. I'd call him out. If you say the word I'll pick a
+quarrel with him anyhow. He carries a gun, and there isn't a jury in
+Brabant County that wouldn't acquit me on the plea of self-defence. My
+conscience would trouble me no more than if I had shot a mad dog."
+
+Mrs. Balfame gave a little gasp, which he mistook for horror. But
+temptation had assailed her. Why not? Her own opportunity might be long
+in coming. It would be like Dave Balfame to go away and stay for a
+month. But the temptation passed swiftly. Human nature is too complex
+for any mere mortal to reduce to the rule of three. While she could
+dispose of her husband without a qualm, her conscience revolted from
+turning an upright citizen like Dwight Rush into a murderer.
+
+She closed the door abruptly, knowing that no mere verbal refusal to
+accept such an offer would be adequate, and he went slowly down the
+steps. But in a moment he ran back and a few feet down the veranda,
+thrusting his head through one of the open windows.
+
+"Just one minute!"
+
+She was passing the parlour door and paused.
+
+"Promise me that if you are in trouble you will send for me. For no one
+else; no other man, that is, but me. You owe me that much."
+
+"Yes, I promise." She spoke more softly and smiled.
+
+"And close these windows. It is not safe to leave veranda windows open
+at this hour."
+
+"I intended to close them before going up stairs. But--perhaps you will
+understand--the house when I came in seemed to reek with tobacco and
+liquor--with him!"
+
+His reply was inarticulate, but he pulled down the windows violently,
+and she locked them, smiling once more before she turned out the light.
+
+She returned to the dining-room, thinking upon food with distaste, but
+determined to eat until her head felt normal. She had no intention of
+speaking to her husband should he return, for she purposed to sleep on a
+sofa in the sewing-room and lock the door, but tones and brain must be
+lightly poised when she telephoned to her friends.
+
+The telephone bell rang. Once more she frowned, but answered the summons
+as promptly as she had opened the front door. To her amazement she heard
+her husband's voice.
+
+"Say," it said thickly, "I'm sorry. Promise not to take another drink
+for a month. Sorry, too, I've got to go to the house for a few minutes.
+Didn't intend to go home to-night--thought I'd give you time to get over
+bein' as mad as I guess you've got a right to be. But I got to go to
+Albany--politics--got to go to-night--must go home and get my grip.
+You--you--wouldn't pack it, would you? Then I needn't stay so long. Only
+got to sort some papers myself."
+
+Mrs. Balfame replied in the old wifely tones that so often had caused
+him to grit his teeth: "I never hold a man in your condition responsible
+for anything. Of course I'll pack your suitcase. What is more, I'll have
+a glass of lemonade ready, with aromatic spirits of ammonia in it. You
+must sober up before you start on a journey."
+
+"That's the ticket. You're a corker! Put in a bromide, too. I'm at
+Sam's, and I guess I'll walk over--need the air. You just go on bein'
+sweet and I'll bring you something pretty from Albany."
+
+"I want one of those new chiffon-velvet bags, and you will please get it
+in New York," she said practically. "I'll write an exact description of
+it and put it in the suitcase."
+
+"All right. Go ahead." His accents breathed profound relief, and
+although her brain was working at lightning speed, and her eyes were but
+a pale bar of light, she curled her lip scornfully at the childishness
+of man, as she hung up the receiver.
+
+She made the glass of lemonade, added the usual allowance of aromatic
+spirits of ammonia and bromide--a bottle of each was kept in the
+sideboard ready for instant use--then ran upstairs and returned with the
+colourless liquid she had purloined from Dr. Anna's cupboard.
+
+Her scientific friend had remarked that one drop would suffice, but
+being a mere female herself she doubled the dose to make sure; and then
+set the glass conspicuously in the middle of the table. The half opened
+can of sardines and the plate of bread were quite forgotten, and once
+more she ran upstairs, this time to pack his useless clothes.
+
+She performed this wifely office with efficiency, forgetting nothing,
+not even the hair tonic he was administering to a spreading bald spot, a
+bottle of digestive tablets, a pair of the brown kid gloves he affected
+when dressed up, and a volume of detective fiction. Then she wrote a
+minute description of the newest fashion in hand bags and pinned it to
+his dinner jacket. The suitcase was an alibi in itself.
+
+When she had packed it and strapped it and carried it down to the
+dining-room, returned to her room and locked the door, she realised that
+she had prolonged these commonplace duties in behalf of her nerves.
+Those well-disciplined rebels of the human system were by no means
+driven to cover, and this annoyed her excessively.
+
+She had no fear of not rising to precisely the proper pitch when she
+heard her husband fall dead in the dining-room, for she always had risen
+automatically to every occasion for which she was in any measure
+prepared, and to many that had caught her unaware. It was the ordeal of
+waiting for the climax that made her nerves jeer at her will, and she
+found that a series of pictures was marching monotonously through her
+mind, again, and again, and yet again: with that interior vision she saw
+her husband walk unsteadily up the street, swing open the gate, slam it
+defiantly, insert his latch-key; she saw his eye drawn to the light in
+the dining-room at the end of the dark hall, saw him drink the lemonade,
+drop to the floor with a fall that shook the house; she saw herself
+running down, calling out his name, shattering the glass on the floor,
+then running distractedly across the street to the Gifnings'--and again
+and still again.
+
+She had been pacing the room. It occurred to her that she could vary the
+monotony by watching for him, and she put out her light and drew aside
+the sash curtain. In a moment she caught her breath.
+
+Her room was on a corner of the house and commanded not only the front
+walk leading down to Elsinore Avenue, but the grounds on the left. In
+these grounds was a large grove of ancient maples, where, dressed in
+white, she passed many pleasant hours in summer with a book or her
+friends. The trees, with their low thick branches still laden with
+leaves, cast a heavy shade, but her gaze, moving unconsciously from the
+empty street, suddenly saw a black and moving shadow in that black and
+almost solid mass of shadows.
+
+She watched intently. A figure undoubtedly was moving from tree to tree,
+as if selecting a point of vantage, or restless from one of several
+conceivable causes.
+
+Could it be her husband, summoning his courage to enter and face her?
+She had known him in that mood. But she dismissed the suggestion. He had
+inferred from her voice that she was both weary and placated, and he was
+far more likely to come swaggering down the avenue singing one of his
+favourite tunes; he fancied his voice.
+
+Frieda never returned before midnight, and then, although she entered
+by the rear hall door and stole quietly up the back stairs, she would be
+quite without shame if confronted.
+
+Therefore, it must be a burglar.
+
+There could not have been a more welcome distraction. Mrs. Balfame was
+cool and alert at once. As an antidote to rebellious nerves awaiting the
+consummation of an unlawful act, a burglar may be recommended to the
+most amateurish assassin.
+
+Mrs. Balfame put on her heavy automobile coat, wrapped her head and face
+in a dark veil, transferred her pistol from the table drawer to a
+pocket, and went softly down the stairs. She left the house by the
+kitchen door, and, after edging round the corner stood still until her
+eyes grew accustomed to the dark. Then, once, more, she saw that moving
+shadow.
+
+She dared not risk crossing the lawn directly from the house to the
+grove, but made a long détour at the back, keeping on the grass,
+however, that her footsteps should make no noise.
+
+A moment or two and she was within the grove. She saw the shadow detach
+itself again, but it was impossible to determine its size or sex,
+although she inferred from its hard laboured breathing that the
+potential thief was a man.
+
+He appeared to be making craftily for the house, no doubt with the
+intention of opening one of the lower windows; and she stalked him with
+a newly awakened instinct, her nostrils expanding. The original resolve
+to kill her husband had induced no excitement at all; even Dwight Rush's
+love-making had thrilled her but faintly; but this adventure in the
+night, stalking a house-breaker, presently to confront him with the
+command to raise his hands, cast a momentary light upon the emotional
+moments experienced by the highly organised.
+
+Suddenly she heard her husband's voice. He was approaching Elsinore
+Avenue from one of the nearby streets, and he was singing, with
+physiological interruptions, "Tipperary," a song he had cultivated of
+late to annoy his political rival, an American of German birth and
+terrific German sympathies. He was walking quickly, as top-heavy men
+sometimes will.
+
+She drew back and crouched. To make her presence known would be to turn
+over the burglar to her husband and detain the essential victim from the
+dining-room table.
+
+She saw the shadow dodge behind a tree. Balfame appeared almost abruptly
+in the light shed by the street lamp in front of his gate; and then it
+seemed to her that she had held her breath for a lifetime before her
+ears were stunned by a sharp report, her eyes blinked at a spurt of
+fire, before she heard David Balfame give a curious sound, half moan,
+half hiccough, saw him clutch at the gate, then sink to the ground.
+
+She was hardly conscious of running, far more conscious that some one
+else was running--through the orchard and toward the back fence.
+
+Hours later, it seemed to her, she was in the kitchen closing the door
+behind her. Something curious had happened in her brain, so trained to
+orderly routine that it seldom prompted an erratic course.
+
+She should have run at once to her husband, and here she was inside the
+house, and once more listening intently. It was the fancied sound that
+swung her consciousness back to its balance. She went to the front of
+the back stairs and called sharply:
+
+"Frieda!"
+
+There was no answer.
+
+"Frieda," she called again. "Did you hear anything? I thought I heard
+some one trying to open the back door."
+
+Again there was no answer.
+
+Then, her lip curling at the idea of Frieda's return on Saturday night
+at eight o'clock, she went rapidly into the dining-room, carried the
+glass containing the lemonade into the kitchen, rinsed it thoroughly,
+and put it away.
+
+It was not until she reached her room that it occurred to her that she
+should have ascertained whether or not the key was on the inside of the
+rear hall door.
+
+But this was merely a flitting thought; there were loud and excited
+voices down by the gate. In an instant she had hung up her automobile
+cloak and veil, changed her dress for a wrapper, let down her hair and
+thrown open the window.
+
+"What is the matter?" Her tone was peremptory but apprehensive.
+
+"Matter enough!" John Gifning's voice was rough and broken. "Don't come
+out here. Mean to say you didn't hear a shot?"
+
+Two or three men were running about nearer the house. One paused under
+her window, and looked up, waving his hand vaguely.
+
+"Shot? Shot? I heard--so many tires explode--What do you mean? What is
+it?--Who--"
+
+"Here's the coroner!" cried one of the group at the gate.
+
+"Coroner?"
+
+She ran down stairs, threw open the front door and went as swiftly
+toward the gate, her hair streaming behind her.
+
+"Who is it?" she demanded.
+
+"Now--now." Mr. Gifning intercepted her and clasped her shoulder firmly.
+"You don't want to go down there--and don't take on--"
+
+She drew herself up haughtily. "I am not an hysterical woman. Who has
+been shot down at my gate?"
+
+"Well," blurted out Gifning. "I guess you'll have to know. It's poor old
+Dave."
+
+Mrs. Balfame drew herself still higher and stood quite rigid for a
+moment; then the coroner, one of her husband's friends, came up the path
+and said in a low tone to Gifning, "Take her upstairs. We're goin' to
+bring him in. He's gone, for a fact."
+
+Mr. Gifning pushed her gently along the path, as the others lifted the
+limp body and tramped slowly behind. "You go up and have a good cry," he
+said. "I'll 'phone for the Cummacks. I guess it was bound to come.
+There's been hot times in Dobton lately--"
+
+"Do you mean that he was deliberately murdered?"
+
+"Looks like it, seeing that he didn't do it himself. The damned hound
+was skulking in the grove. Of course he's made off, but we'll get him
+all right."
+
+Mrs. Balfame walked slowly up the stair, her head bowed, while the heavy
+inert mass so lately abhorrent to his wife and several politicians was
+laid on the sofa in the parlour whose evolutions had annoyed him.
+
+Mr. Gifning telephoned to the dead man's brother-in-law, then for the
+police and the undertaker.
+
+Mrs. Balfame sat down and awaited the inevitable bombardment of her
+privacy by her more intimate friends. Already shriller voices were
+mingling with the heavier tones down on the lawn and out in the avenue.
+The news seemed to have been flashed from one end of Elsinore to the
+other.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+Mrs. Balfame sat with Mrs. Battle, Mrs. Gifning, Mrs. Frew, her
+sister-in-law, Mrs. Cummack, and several of her other friends in her
+quiet bed-chamber. It was an hour after the death of David Balfame and
+she had, for the seventh time, told the story of packing her husband's
+suit case, carrying it down stairs, returning to her room to undress,
+hearing the commotion down by the gate. Yes, she had heard a report, but
+Elsinore Avenue--automobiles--exploding tires--naturally, it had meant
+nothing to her at the moment. No, he did not cry out--or if he did--her
+window was closed; it was the side window she left open at night.
+
+She had accepted a bottle of smelling salts from Mrs. Battle, but sat
+quite erect, looking stunned and frozen. Her voice was expressionless,
+wearily reiterating a few facts to gratify the curiosity of these
+well-meaning friends, as wearily listening to Lottie Gifning's
+reiteration of her own story: As the night was warmer than usual she and
+her husband and the two friends that had motored in with them had sat on
+the porch for awhile; they had heard "Dave" come singing down Dawbarn
+Street; two or three minutes later the shot. Of course the men ran over
+at once, but for at least ten minutes she was too frightened to move.
+One of the men ran for the coroner; if "poor Dave" wasn't dead they
+wanted to take him at once where he would be comfortable.
+
+Mrs. Balfame's demeanour was all these solicitous friends could have
+wished; although they enjoyed tears and emotional scenes as much as any
+women, they were gratified to be reassured that their Mrs. Balfame was
+not as other women; they still regretted her breakdown at the Club,
+although resentfully conscious of loving her the more. And if they
+wanted tears, here was Polly Cummack shedding them in abundance for the
+brother she now reproached herself for having utterly despised.
+
+Below there was a subdued hum of voices, within and without. The police
+had come tearing up in an automobile and ordered the amateur detectives
+out of the grounds; their angry voices had been heard demanding how the
+qualified fools expected the original footsteps to be detected after
+such a piece of idiocy.
+
+Mrs. Balfame had shaken her head sadly. "They'll find nothing," she
+said. "If only I had known, I could have called down to them to keep out
+of the yard."
+
+"Now, who do you suppose that is?" Mrs. Battle, who was short and stout
+and corseted to her knees, toddled over to the window and leaned out as
+two automobiles raced each other down the avenue. They stopped at the
+gate, and in a moment Mrs. Battle announced: "The New York newspaper
+men!"
+
+"Already?" Mrs. Balfame glanced at the clock and stifled a yawn. "Why,
+it's hardly an hour--"
+
+"Oh, a year or so from now they'll be coming over in bi-planes. Well, if
+our poor old boobs of police don't unearth the murderer, they will. They
+are the prize sleuths. They'll find a scent, or spin one out of their
+brains as a spider spins his web out of his little tummy--"
+
+Mrs. Cummack interrupted: "Sam is sure it is Old Dutch. He's gone with
+the constable to Dobton."
+
+Dobton, the county seat, and the centre of the political activities of
+East Brabant, intimately connected with the various "towns" by trolley
+and telephone, embraced the domicile of Mr. Konrad Kraus, amiably known
+as "Old Dutch." His home was in the rear of his flourishing saloon,
+which was the headquarters of the county Republicans. David Balfame had
+patronised--rumour said financed--the saloon of an American sired by
+Erin.
+
+Another automobile dashed up. "Sam, I think; yes, it is," cried Mrs.
+Battle.
+
+A few moments later Mr. Cummack appeared upon the threshold.
+
+"Nothin' doin'," he said gruffly. "Old Dutch's got a perfect alibi. Been
+behind the bar since six o'clock. It's up to us now to find out if he
+hired a gunman; and we're on the trail of others too. Poor Dave had his
+enemies all right."
+
+He paused and looked tentatively at his weary but heroic sister-in-law.
+His own face was haggard, and the walrus moustache he had brought out of
+the North-west was covered not only with dust but with little moist
+islands made by furtive tears. With that exquisite sympathy and
+comprehension that men have for the failings of other men, which far
+surpasseth that of woman, he had loved his imperfect friend, but he had
+a profound admiration for his sister-in-law, whom he neither loved nor
+pretended to understand. He knew her surfaces, however, as well as any
+one, and would have been deeply disappointed if she had carried herself
+in this trying hour contrary to her usual high standard of conduct. Enid
+Balfame, indeed, was almost a legend in Elsinore, and into this legend
+she could retire as into a fortress, practically impregnable.
+
+"Say, Enid," he said hesitatingly. "These reporters--the New York
+chaps--the local men wouldn't dare ask--want an interview. What do you
+say?"
+
+Mrs. Balfame merely turned her haughty head and regarded him with icy
+disdain. "Are they crazy? Or you?"
+
+"Well, not the way they look at it. You see, it's up to them to fill a
+column or two every morning, and there's nothing touches a new crime
+with a mystery. So far, they haven't got much out of this but the bare
+fact that poor Dave was shot down at his own gate, presumably by some
+one hid in the grove. An interview with the bereaved widow would make
+what they call a corking story."
+
+"Tell them to go away at once." She leaned back against her chair and
+closed her eyes. Mrs. Gifning flew to hold the salts to her nose.
+
+"Better see them," persisted Mr. Cummack. "They'll haunt the house till
+you do. They're crazy about this case--hasn't been a decent murder for
+months, nothin' much doin' in any line, and everybody sick of the war.
+The Germans take a trench in the morning papers and lose it in the
+evening--"
+
+"Sam Cummack! How dare you joke at a time like this?" His wife ran
+forward and attempted to push him out of the room, and the other ladies
+had risen and faced him with manifest indignation.
+
+Suddenly Mrs. Cummack put her arms about him and patted the top of his
+head. He had burst into tears and was rubbing his eyes on his sleeve.
+"Poor old Dave!" he sobbed. "I'm all in. But I'll find that low-down cur
+who killed him, cut him off in his prime, if it takes the last cent I've
+got."
+
+Mrs. Balfame rose and crossed to his side. She put her hand on his
+shoulder. "I never should have suspected that you had such depth of
+feeling, Sam," she said softly, "I am sure that the cowardly murderer
+will be caught and that yours will be the glory. Send those
+inconsiderate reporters away."
+
+Mr. Cummack shook his head. "As well talk of calling off the police.
+They'll be round here day and night till the man is in Dobton
+jail--longer, for they know the public will want an interview with the
+widow. Better see them, Enid."
+
+"I shall not." Mrs. Balfame put her hand to her head and reeled. "Oh, I
+am so tired! So tired! What a day. Oh, how I wish Anna were here."
+
+Three of the women caught her and led her to her chair. "Anna!" she
+reiterated. "I must have something to make me sleep--"
+
+"I'll call her up!" volunteered Mrs. Gifning. "I do hope she is at
+home--"
+
+"She was to go out to the Houston farm," interrupted Mrs. Cummack. "She
+stopped at our house on the way out--Sammy has bronchitis--"; and Mrs.
+Gifning, who was as nervous as the widow should have been, ran down to
+the telephone, elated at being the one chosen to horrify poor Dr. Anna
+while engaged in the everlasting battle for life.
+
+"I'll stay with Enid till Anna comes," volunteered Mrs. Cummack. "I
+guess she'd better be quiet. One of you might make coffee for those that
+are going to sit up--"
+
+"Frieda's doin' that," said Mr. Cummack. "They're all in the
+dining-room--"
+
+Mrs. Balfame had left the shelter of Mrs. Cummack's arm and was sitting
+very straight. "Frieda? This is her night out--"
+
+"She was in bed with a toothache, but I routed her out. Well, I'll put
+the men off till to-morrow, but better make up your mind to see them
+then."
+
+He left the room and when Mrs. Balfame was alone with her sister-in-law,
+whom she had never admitted to the sacred inner circle, but who was a
+kind forgiving soul, she smiled affectionately. "Don't be afraid that I
+shall break down," she said. "But those women had got on my nerves. It
+is too kind of you to have dismissed them, and to stay with me yourself
+till Anna comes. It has all been so terrible--and coming so soon after
+what happened at the Club. Thank heaven I did not permit myself to speak
+severely to him, and even when he telephoned for his suit case I was not
+cross--I never would hold a man who had been drinking to strict
+account--"
+
+"Don't you worry your head. He was my brother, but I guess I know what a
+trial he must have been. And if he hadn't been my brother I guess I'd
+say we wouldn't have blamed you much if you had given him a dose of lead
+yourself--"
+
+Mrs. Balfame raised her amazed eyes. But in a moment the weary ghost of
+a smile flitted over her firm mouth, and she asked almost lightly: "Do
+you then believe in removing offensive husbands?"
+
+"Well--of course I'd never have that much courage myself if Sam wasn't
+any better than he should be--he's pretty decent as men go--but I know a
+few husbands right here in Elsinore--well, if their wives gave them
+prussic acid or hot lead they wouldn't lose _my_ friendship, and I guess
+any jury would let them off."
+
+"I guess you're right." Mrs. Balfame was beginning to undress. "I think
+I'll get into bed--But it requires a lot of nerve. And the risk is
+pretty great, you know. Anna once told me of an untraceable and
+tasteless poison she had--"
+
+"Oh, Lord!" Mrs. Cummack may have been too hopelessly without style and
+ambition to be one of the arc lights of the Elsinore smart set, but she
+possessed a sense of humour, and for the moment forgot the abrupt taking
+off of her brother. "Don't let that get round. The poison wouldn't be
+safe for an hour--nor a few husbands. I think I'll warn Anna anyhow--I'm
+not sure I can keep it."
+
+The door opened softly and Mrs. Gifning's fluffy blonde head appeared.
+"I couldn't get Anna herself," she whispered. "The baby hasn't come. But
+Mr. Houston said he'd tell her as soon as it was over, and let her go.
+He was terribly shocked, and sent you his love."
+
+"Thanks, dear," murmured Mrs. Balfame. "I'll try and sleep awhile, and
+Polly has promised to sit with me till Anna comes. Good-night."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+There was a thin cry of life in the nursery of the Houston farm house.
+The mother slept and the new born was in competent hands. Mr. Houston, a
+farmer more prosperous and enterprising than his somewhat weedy
+appearance prefigured, beckoned Dr. Anna into the dining-room, where a
+sleepy but interested "hired girl" had brought hot coffee and
+sandwiches.
+
+The battle had lasted little over three hours, but every moment had been
+fraught with anxiety for the doctor and the husband. Mrs. Houston's
+heart had revealed an unsuspected weakness and the baby had not only
+neglected to head itself towards the gates of life as all proper little
+marathons should, but had exhibited a state of suspended animation for
+at least twenty minutes after its arrival at the goal.
+
+Dr. Anna dropped into a chair beside the table and covered her face with
+her hand.
+
+"I'm all in, I guess," she murmured, and the farmer put down the coffee
+pot and ran for the demijohn.
+
+"You drink this," he said peremptorily. His own hand was shaking, but he
+made no verbal attempt to release his strangled emotions until both he
+and the doctor had drunk of coffee as well as whiskey. Then, when half
+way through a thick sandwich made of slabs of bread and beef, he began
+to thank the doctor incoherently.
+
+"You are just it," he sputtered. "Just about it. And your poor back
+must be broke. You doctors do beat me, particularly you women doctors.
+I'll never say nothin' against women doctors again, though I'll tell you
+now that although poor little Aggie was dead set on you, I opposed it
+for awhile--"
+
+Dr. Anna was sitting up and smiling. She waved his apologies and
+protestations aside. "I can't think what came over me to collapse like
+that. Once or twice lately I have thought I might be getting something.
+I'll have my blood taken to-morrow. Now, I'll go home and get to bed
+quick, although that coffee has made me feel as fine as a fiddle."
+
+"Well, I needed it too, and for more reasons than you. Say--" Mr.
+Houston had risen and was pulling nervously at his short and bosky
+beard. "I got a 'phone from Mrs. Gifning a while ago. You're wanted at
+the Balfames--bad."
+
+Dr. Anna sprang to her feet, her full cheeks pale again. "Enid! What has
+happened to her?"
+
+"Oh, she's all right, I guess. It's Dave--"
+
+"Oh, another gastric attack?"
+
+"Worse and more of it. He was shot--two or three hours ago, I guess. I
+didn't ask the time--was in too big a hurry to get back to Aggie--at his
+own gate, though, I think she said."
+
+"Who did it?"
+
+"Nobody knows."
+
+"Dead?"
+
+"No one'll ever be deader."
+
+"H'm!" The color had come back to Dr. Anna's tired face and she shrugged
+her shoulders. "I'm no hypocrite, and I guess you're not either."
+
+"I'm no more a hypocrite than I am a Democrat. His yellow streak was
+gettin' wider every year. It's good riddance. Still I wish he'd died in
+his bed. I don't like the idea of a fellow citizen, good or bad, bein'
+shot down like that. It's against law and order, and if the murderer's
+caught and I'm drawn on the jury, and it's proved he done it, I'll vote
+for conviction."
+
+"Quite right," said Dr. Anna briskly, as she went out into the hall and
+put on her hat. "I suppose it's Mrs. Balfame who wants me?"
+
+"Yes, that's it. I remember. But you ought to go home and get sleep.
+There's enough women to sit up with her. The hull town likely."
+
+"But I know she wants me." Dr. Anna's face glowed softly. "I'll sleep
+there all right--on a sofa beside her bed--if she wants me to stay on."
+
+"Well, look out for yourself," he growled. "If you don't think about
+yourself a little more you'll soon have no show to think so much about
+other people. I'm goin' for the car."
+
+A few moments later he had brought the little runabout to the door,
+lighted the lamps, and given the doctor a hard grip of the hand.
+
+She returned the pressure in kind. "Now don't worry, Mr. Houston. She's
+all right, and that nurse is first rate. Don't talk to her. Aggie, I
+mean. See you to-morrow about ten."
+
+She drove rapidly out of the gate and into the road. There was a full
+moon shining and the drive was but ten miles between the farm and
+Elsinore. Her face was tired and grim. She had been in daily contact
+with typhoid fever in the poor and dirty quarter of the town. In her
+arduous life she had often experienced healthy fatigue, but nothing
+like this. Could she be coming down?
+
+She swung her thoughts to Enid Balfame, and forgot herself. Free at
+last, and while still young and lovely! Would she marry Dwight Rush? He
+had leaped into her mind simultaneously with the announcement of
+Balfame's death. But was he good enough for Enid? Was any man? Why, now
+that she was a real widow and in no need of a protector, should she
+marry at all? At any rate she could afford to wait. There were greater
+prizes to be captured by a beautiful and still girlish woman.
+
+She was glad for the first time that Enid had never had a child, for
+there was a virgin and mystic appeal in the woman that had escaped the
+common lot. Spinsters lost it, curiously enough, but a chaste and lovely
+matron, who had ignored the book of experience so liberally offered her,
+and with eyes as unalloyed as a girl's (save when flashing with
+intellectual fires)--what more distracting anomaly could the world
+offer? Only Mrs. Balfame's indifference had kept the men away--Dr. Anna
+was convinced of that. Her future was in her own hands.
+
+Dr. Anna's mind wandered to the scene of the murder. It was not
+difficult to construct, even from the meager details, and she shuddered.
+Murder! What a hideous word it was! Horrid that it should even brush the
+name of an exquisite creature like Enid Balfame. Would that Dave Balfame
+could have fallen of apoplexy while disgracing himself at the Club! But
+Anna frowned and shook the picture out of her mind. Doctors are too long
+trained in death to be haunted by its phantoms in any form.
+
+A sharp turn and the road ran beside a salt marsh, a solemn grey
+expanse that lost itself far away in the grey of the sea. Suddenly Dr.
+Anna became aware of a man walking rapidly down the road toward her. He
+carried his hat in his hand as if his head were hot on this cool autumn
+night. There was no fear of man in Dr. Anna, even on lonely country
+roads; nevertheless she had no mind to be detained, and was about to
+increase her speed, when her curiosity was excited by something
+pleasantly familiar in the tall loose figure, the almost stiffly upright
+head. A moment later and the bright moonlight revealed the white face of
+Dwight Rush.
+
+She brought the car to an abrupt halt as he too paused and nodded
+recognition.
+
+"What's the matter?" she asked sharply. "You looked as if you were
+walking to beat time itself--as if you saw a ghost to boot--"
+
+"Plenty of ghosts in my head. It aches like the dickens--"
+
+"Were you there when it happened?"
+
+"When what happened?"
+
+"What? You pretend you don't know--when all Elsinore must have known it
+within five minutes--"
+
+"I don't know what you are talking about. I followed you in from the
+Club and then took the train for Brooklyn, where I had to see a man.
+When I got back to Elsinore--off the train--my head ached so I knew I
+couldn't sleep--so I started out to walk it off--been walking for about
+two hours."
+
+"Dave Balfame was shot down at his own gate three or four hours ago."
+
+"Good God! Who did it? Is he dead?"
+
+"He's dead, and that's about all I can tell you. Houston went to the
+'phone but he was in such a state of mind about his wife that he didn't
+stay for particulars. Enid wanted me--it was Lottie Gifning that
+'phoned. I gathered, however, that they haven't caught the murderer
+yet."
+
+"Jove!" Rush was shaking. "I feel as if I'd been hit in the pit of the
+stomach. And I'm not one to go to pieces, either. But I've a good enough
+reason."
+
+Dr. Anna continued to stare at him. He met her gaze and wonder grew in
+his. Then the blood rushed into his face and he threw back his head.
+"What do you mean? That I did it?"
+
+"No--I don't see you committing murder--"
+
+"Not in that damned skulking way--"
+
+"Exactly. But you kind of suggest that you might know something about
+it. You might have been in the grove, or some other part of the
+grounds--with some idea of protecting Enid--"
+
+"Why should you think that?"
+
+"She told me--I didn't think it a bad idea myself--that you asked her to
+divorce Dave and marry you. But she said she wouldn't and I guess she
+meant it. Now, get in," she added briskly. "I'll drive you home and
+never say I met you. Met anybody else?"
+
+"No one."
+
+"Unless they get the right man at once, everybody who was known to have
+any reason to wish Dave Balfame out of the way will come under
+suspicion. For all you know, somebody may have guessed your secret; I
+saw it in your eyes at the clubhouse when you were trying to get Dave
+out of the room for her sake; but of course I was 'on.' Those New York
+newspaper men, however--watch out for them. They'll fine-tooth-comb the
+county for the man in the case."
+
+Rush had disposed his long legs in the little machine and it was once
+more running swiftly on the smooth road. "My brain is still too hot to
+theorise," he said. "May I smoke? What is your opinion?"
+
+"He had many political enemies; besides, these last two years he's been
+growing more and more unbearable, so I guess he had more than one in his
+own party. But it isn't unlikely that some girl did it. For some reason
+the trollops liked him, and I've met him several times of late driving
+with a red-headed minx that looks as if she could shoot on sight."
+
+"I don't mind telling you that I saw Mrs. Balfame a few minutes after
+you left her. I was boiling. Instead of piloting Balfame out to Sam's
+car I wished that I had run him behind the clubhouse and horsewhipped
+him. We are too civilised these days. I merely went to his house and
+asked his wife if she would divorce the brute and marry me. Two
+centuries ago--maybe one--I'd have picked her up and flung her on my
+horse and galloped off to the woods. We haven't improved; we've merely
+substituted the long-winded and indirect method and called it
+civilisation."
+
+"Just so. Did she let you in?"
+
+"Not she. You might know that without asking. Nor was she any nearer
+divorce than before. When I offered to pick a quarrel with him, she
+merely slammed the door in my face. But I went to the window and made
+her promise that if she were ever in trouble I should be the first
+person she would send for--"
+
+"But you weren't!" Dr. Anna's voice rang with jealous triumph. "I was
+the first. But never mind me. I've adored her for forty years, and you
+haven't known her as many weeks. Tell me, you didn't conceal yourself
+anywhere in the grounds to watch over her? She must have been all alone.
+Every servant in town takes Saturday night out."
+
+"I inferred that Sam would keep him at his house all night. Besides, I
+knew she had a pistol. Balfame told me the day he bought her one in New
+York; when those burglaries began."
+
+"Well, don't tell any one that you offered to dispose of her husband--a
+few moments before he was killed! It might make unnecessary trouble for
+a rising young lawyer."
+
+"I am quite able to do my own thinking and take care of myself," he said
+haughtily, stung by her tone. "If you choose to think me guilty, do so.
+And let me tell you that if I had done it I shouldn't put my head in the
+ash barrel."
+
+"No, but you might do your best to avoid the chair. Small blame to you.
+Well, as I said, you're safe as far as I am concerned. I wouldn't send a
+dog to the chair. That is--" she looked at him threateningly, "if you
+really do love Enid and want to marry her."
+
+"Love her? I'd marry her if she had done it herself and I'd caught her
+red-handed."
+
+"That's the real thing, I guess." She patted his hand approvingly. "I'll
+do what I can to help you. She's not a bit in love with you yet, but
+that's because she's the purest creature on earth and never would let
+herself even dream of a man she couldn't marry. She's one of the last
+grand representatives of the old Puritan stock--and when you see as much
+mean and secret infidelity, dose as many morbid hysterical women, as I
+do--Oh, Lord! No wonder I see Enid Balfame shining with cold radiance in
+the high heavens. I may idealise her a bit, but I don't care. It would
+be a sad old world if you couldn't exalt at least one human above the
+muck-ruck. Well, she likes you, and you have interested her. Just be on
+hand when she wants you, needs you. When this excitement is over and she
+is tired of female gabble, she'll turn to you naturally, if you manage
+her properly and don't butt in too soon. Quiet persistence and tact;
+that's your game. I'll put in a good word."
+
+"By George, you are a good fellow!" He leaned over and kissed her
+impulsively. As Dr. Anna felt the pressure of those warm firm lips on
+her faded cheek, she astonished herself and him by bursting into tears.
+In an instant, however, she dashed them away and gave an odd gurgling
+laugh.
+
+"Don't mind a silly old maid--who loves Enid Balfame more than life, I
+guess. And I'm a country doctor, Dwight, who's had a hard night bringing
+one more unfortunate female into the world. I feel better since I
+cried--first time since you boys used to tease me at school because I
+had cheeks like red pippins--you don't remember me over at school in
+your village. Renselaerville. I lived there for a spell, and I remember
+you. But this isn't the time for reminiscences. Where do you live? We'll
+be in the outskirts in three minutes."
+
+"I have rooms at The Brabant."
+
+"Any night clerk?"
+
+"No; it's an apartment house."
+
+"Good. We're somewhere in the small hours all right."
+
+She drove swiftly through the sleeping town, slowing down on the corner
+of Main Street and Atlantic Avenue. Rush sprang out with a word of
+thanks and walked up the avenue to The Brabant. The trees here were
+neither old nor close, for this was the quarter of the wealthy newcomers
+and of the older residents that had prospered and rebuilt. But not a
+soul was abroad, and he let himself into the bachelor apartment house
+and mounted the two flights to his rooms unseen.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+As Rush closed his own door behind him, his troubled spirit shifted its
+load. Indubitably, if Dr. Anna had not met him he should have walked
+until exhausted, and then boarded a train somewhere down the line and
+arrived in Elsinore dishevelled, haggard, altogether an object of
+suspicion. None knew better than he that in a small community the
+lightning of suspicion plays incessantly, throwing the faces of innocent
+and guilty alike into distorted relief. And he had half expected to find
+a newspaper man awaiting him in the hall below.
+
+Before turning on his lights he felt his way to the windows and drew the
+curtains close. For all he knew there might be a detective or a reporter
+sitting on the opposite fence. His legal mind, deeply versed in criminal
+law, fully appreciated his danger and warned him to arm at every point.
+
+The district attorney, one of Balfame's men, clever, ambitious, but too
+ill-educated to hope to graduate from Brabant County, or even, political
+influence lacking, to climb into the first rank at home, hated the
+brilliant newcomer who had beaten him twice during his brief term of
+office. That Rush "hailed" originally from the county only added to the
+grievance. If Brabant wasn't good enough for him in the first place, why
+hadn't he stayed where he was wanted?
+
+But Rush dismissed him from his mind as he remembered uneasily that
+Alys Crumley had been sketching out there at the Club while he had been
+wrestling with David Balfame. He knew her ambition to get a position on
+a New York newspaper as a sketch artist; but the possibility that she
+might have guessed the secret of his interest in putting an end to the
+scene, or intended to sell her drawing to one of the reporters, would
+have given him little uneasiness had the artist not been a young woman
+upon whom he had ceased to call some two months since.
+
+He had met Alys Crumley about eighteen months after he had returned to
+Brabant County and some three months after he had moved from Dobton to
+Elsinore, and at once had been attracted by her bright ambitious mind,
+combined with a real personality and an appearance both smart and
+artistic.
+
+Miss Crumley prided herself upon being unique in Elsinore, at least, and
+although her thick well-groomed hair was dressed with classic severity,
+and she wore soft gowns of an indescribable cut in the house, and at the
+evening parties of her friends, she was far too astute to depart from
+the fashion of the moment in the crucial test of street dress and hat.
+In Park Row during her brief sojourn in the newspaper world, she had
+commanded attention among the critical press women as a girl who knew
+how to dress smartly and yet add that personal touch which, when
+attempted by those lacking genius in dress, ruins the effect of the most
+extravagant tailor. Miss Crumley by no means patronised these autocrats
+of Fifth Avenue; she bought her tailored suits at the ready-made
+establishments, but like many another American girl, she knew how to
+buy, and above all, how to wear her clothes.
+
+She had taught for several years after graduating from the High School;
+then, her nerves rebelling, had abandoned this most monotonous of
+careers for newspaper work. To reporting her physique had not proved
+equal, and although she would have made an admirable fashion editor
+these enviable positions were adequately filled. On the advice of the
+star reporter of her paper, Mr. James Broderick, who, with other
+newspaper men had been entertained occasionally at tea of a Sunday
+afternoon in her charming little home in Elsinore, she had developed her
+talent for drawing during the past year; Mr. Broderick promising to
+"find her a job" as staff artist when she had improved her technique.
+
+Then Dwight Rush appeared.
+
+Miss Crumley lived with her mother in the family cottage next door to
+Dr. Anna's in Elsinore Avenue. Mrs. Crumley, who was the relict of a
+G. A. R. had eked out her pension during the schooldays of her daughter
+with fine sewing, finding most of her patrons among the newcomers. She
+also had cooked for the Woman's Exchange of Brooklyn, besides catering
+for public dinners and evening parties. For several years she enjoyed a
+complete rest; therefore, when Alys retired temporarily from the office
+of provider in order to study art, Mrs. Crumley willingly re-entered the
+industrial field. As both the practical mother and the clever daughter
+were amiable women it was a harmonious little household that Dwight Rush
+found himself drifting toward intimacy with soon after he met the young
+lady at a clubhouse dance.
+
+The living-room--Alys long since had abolished the word parlour from her
+vocabulary--was furnished in various shades of green as harmonious as
+the family temper; there was a low bookcase filled with fashionable
+literature, English and American; the magazines and reviews on the table
+were almost blatantly "highbrow," and the cool green walls were further
+embellished with a few delicate water colours conceived in the back-yard
+atelier by an individual mind if executed by a still somewhat halting
+brush.
+
+For four months Rush had been a constant visitor at the cottage. Miss
+Crumley, who was as progressively modern as an automobile factory, was
+full of enthusiasm at the moment for the cult of sexless friendship
+between a man and a maid. She had considered James Broderick at one time
+as a likely partner for a philosophic romance (the adjective Platonic
+was out of date; moreover, it implied that the cult was not as modern as
+its devotees would wish it to appear); but the brilliant (and handsome)
+young reporter not only was very busy but of a mercurial and uncertain
+temperament. Nor did he appear to be a youth of lofty ideals; from
+certain remarks, uttered casually, to make matters worse, Alys was
+forced to conclude that he despised the man who "wasted his time" only
+less than he despised the "chaser." If pretty, interesting, and
+unnotional girls came his way and liked him enough, that was "all to the
+good"; a busy newspaper man at the beck and call of a city editor had no
+time for studying over the map of a girl's soul, the lord knew; but if a
+girl wasn't a "dead game sport," then the sooner a man left the field to
+some one with more time, or a yearning for matrimony, the better. These
+remarks had been deliberately thrown out by the canny Mr. Broderick, who
+liked "the kid" and didn't want her to "get in wrong" (particularly
+with himself as he enjoyed both her society and the artistic
+living-room--and Mrs. Crumley's confections) but who saw straight
+through Alys' shifting modernities to the makings of a fine primitive
+female.
+
+But Rush was no student in sex psychology. He took Miss Crumley on her
+face value; delighted in finding a comfortable friend of the counter
+sex, and was more than amenable to her desire to cultivate in him a
+taste for modern literature; since his graduation he had hardly opened
+anything but law books, legal reviews, and the daily newspaper. She read
+aloud admirably--particularly plays--and he liked to listen; and as she
+convinced him that he was missing a good part of life, it was not long
+before he was buying for leisurely midnight consumption such work of the
+fashionable writers as was stimulating and intellectual, and at the same
+time sincere.
+
+She also took him over to several symphony concerts, and often played
+classic selections to him in the twilight. He had no objection to music,
+as it either spurred his mind into fresh activity upon problems
+besetting it, or soothed him into slumber. He loved the little room with
+the soft green shadows; it reminded him of the woods, of which he still
+was passionately fond; and he found it both homelike and safe. Other
+houses in Elsinore, larger and more luxurious, were homelike enough, but
+too often were graced by marriageable daughters, who "showed their
+hand." Rush was as little vain and conceited as a man may be, but he was
+well aware that eligible men in Elsinore were few, and that everybody
+must know that his intake, already large, must increase with the years.
+
+But--as the wise Mr. Broderick would have predicted had he not been
+interested elsewhere during this period--the tension grew too strong for
+Alys Crumley. Nervous and high-strung, with her reservoir of human
+emotions undepleted by even a hard flirtation since her early youth,
+idealistic, romantic, and imaginative, she began to realise that with
+each long uninterrupted evening--Mrs. Crumley was the most tactful of
+parents--she was growing more femininely sensitive to this man's
+magnetism and charm, to his quick responsive mind, to the mobility under
+the surface of his lean hard face, to the suggestion of indomitable
+strength which was the chief characteristic of the new American race of
+men.
+
+It was not long before she was exaggerating every attractive attribute
+he possessed until he no longer seemed what he was, a fine specimen of
+his type, but a glorified superbeing and the one desirable man on earth.
+Her sense of superiority over this "rather crude Western specimen who
+knew nothing but his job," and to whom she could teach so much, had
+protected her for a time, held her femaleness and imagination in
+abeyance, but insensibly his sheer masculinity swamped her, left her
+without a rock but pride to cling to.
+
+It was then that she showed her hand.
+
+For a time after her discovery she was merely furious with herself; she
+was twenty-six and no weakling, neither sentiment nor passion should
+master her. But this phase was brief. Infatuation is not cast out either
+by reason or pride, and very soon her mind opened to the insidious
+whisper: "Why not?" What was the career of staff artist, full of
+liberty, excitement, and good fellowship as it might be, to marriage
+with an ambitious man capable of inspiring the wildest love? Sooner or
+later had she not intended to make just such a marriage?
+
+From this inception her deductions followed in logical feminine
+sequence. If she loved him with a completeness which was both preadamic
+and neoteric, it was of course because he was consumed with a similar
+passion; in other words he was her mate. He might be too comfortable and
+content to have realised it so far, but only one awakening was possible,
+and hers was the entrancing part to reveal him to himself.
+
+She knew that while by no means a beauty, she was as far from
+commonplace in colouring at least as in style. Her eyes were an odd
+opaque olive, their tint so pronounced that it seemed to invade the pale
+ivory of her skin and the smooth masses of her hair. It was a far more
+subtle face than American women as a rule possess, and the eyes in spite
+of a curious inscrutability that might mean anything were capable of a
+play of lights directed from a battery more archaic than modern; and
+late one evening after she had read him an impassioned drama (ancient)
+and there was a dusky rose in either cheek, she turned them on.
+
+Rush immediately took fright. She had not roused a responsive spark of
+passion in him. Moreover, he was now haunted continually by the image of
+a sweet, remote, and (to him) far more mysterious woman, whom he
+worshipped as the ideal of all womanhood.
+
+There was none of the old time American suavity about Rush. He was
+abrupt, forthright, and impatient. But he was kind and innately
+chivalrous. He "let Miss Crumley down" as gently as he could; but he
+let her down. No doubt of that. In less than a week she faced the
+bewildering fact that a man could strike loose a woman's emotional
+torrents while his own depths awaited the magical touch of another. It
+was incredible, preposterous.
+
+For a time Alys, in the privacy of her atelier, raged like a fury. She
+cursed Rush, particularly when engaged in a violent struggle with the
+pride which alone held her from grovelling at his feet.
+
+She was further incensed that he had revealed her to herself as a mere
+morbid unsatisfied girl, whose quarter of a century should be crowned by
+a little family of three; and at last she doubted if she had ever loved
+him at all. That she had been a mere female principle unable to escape
+its impersonal destiny disgusted her with life, but it served to restore
+her balance and philosophy.
+
+Being a girl of brains and character she emerged from the encounter with
+pride still crested in the eyes of the man; and if his image was too
+deeply stamped into her imagination to prevent a recurrence of wild
+desire whenever she was so imprudent as to let her mind wander, she
+remembered that all great physical upheavals are followed by many minor
+shocks, and waited with what patience she could command for full
+delivery.
+
+Of the sanguinary condition of the battle ground in his young friend's
+soul Rush had a mere glimpse before she took heed and dissembled. He
+assumed that she either had fallen in love with him after the fashion of
+girls when they saw too much of a man, or that she was eager to marry
+and improve her condition. He reproached himself for thoughtlessness,
+renounced the long evenings in the pretty room with a sigh, and in his
+bachelor quarters read the books of her choice. He had a very kindly
+feeling for her, for he knew that he owed her a debt; if he had not met
+the other woman--who could tell? Moreover, as he conceived it to be his
+duty to shield her from spiteful comment, he danced with her in public
+and joined her on the street whenever they met.
+
+But if he knew nothing of the intricate and interminable ramifications
+of sex psychology, the infinite variety of moods peculiar to a woman in
+love, he was well enough aware that love is easily turned to hate,
+particularly when vanity has been deeply wounded; and although he had
+conceived a high esteem for Alys Crumley's character during the weeks of
+their intimacy, he knew that men had been mistaken in their estimate of
+women before this, and that if she discovered that he loved another
+woman she might be capable of taking the basest revenge.
+
+It was possible that she was the noblest of her sex, and he hoped she
+was, but as he considered her that night, he realised that it behooved
+him to walk warily nevertheless. By the time he could marry Enid
+Balfame, or even betray his desire to marry her, this crime would have
+passed into county history. Of the real danger he never thought.
+
+The vision evoked of Alys Crumley was accompanied by that of her home,
+and he looked round his stark bachelor quarters with a sigh.
+
+The untidy sitting-room was crowded with law books and legal reviews;
+the maid had given it up in despair long since, and only swept out the
+ashes daily and dusted once a week.
+
+In the small bedroom was an iron bed like a soldier's; neckties hung
+from the chandelier; on the bureau and table beside the bed were more
+books, several by the young British authors of the moment for whom Miss
+Crumley had communicated some of her rather perfunctory enthusiasm.
+
+He flung his clothes all over the room as he undressed. He hated
+bachelor quarters. Six months hence he would be the master of a home as
+exquisite as the woman he loved. Balfame! The man was dead, but as Rush
+thought of him his face turned almost black and his hands tingled and
+clenched. It would be long before he could hear that name mentioned
+without a hot uprush of hatred and loathing. But it subsided and he took
+a bath and "turned in."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+As Rush walked to the Elks' Club for breakfast a few hours later he felt
+that suspicion was in the very air of Elsinore, the very leaves of the
+quiet Sunday streets rustled with it. Even on Atlantic Avenue there were
+knots of men discussing the murder, and in Main Street every man that
+passed received a hard stare.
+
+Rush was thankful to observe that all looked as if they had gone to bed
+late and slept little, and when he met Sam Cummack on the steps of the
+clubhouse he realised the advantages of the habit of careful grooming to
+which the deceased's brother-in-law was quite indifferent.
+
+"Oh, Dwight!" groaned Cummack, seizing his hand. "Where were you last
+night? I'd have liked to have you round."
+
+"I was in Brooklyn and got back late. What's your opinion?"
+
+"I've had a dozen but they don't seem to hold water. I guess it was a
+gunman, imported direct--though perhaps I'm just hoping it wasn't one of
+them trollops did it--for the sake of the family as well as poor Dave's
+name. I don't want a scandal like that. Murder's bad enough, the Lord
+knows."
+
+"What sort of footsteps in the grounds?"
+
+"Every kind we've got in Elsinore, I guess. About forty people were
+runnin' round the yard before the police came. Funny that Gifning didn't
+think of that. But he says the breath was knocked out of him. Jimminy! I
+never knew anything to upset the town like this before--the county, you
+might say. The telephone's been buzzin' till the girls have threatened
+to strike. An operator fainted this morning--wonder if Dave knew her?"
+
+"Well, I am rather surprised to learn that Balfame was so popular--"
+
+"'Tain't that only--though Dave still had lots of friends in spite of
+that ugly temper he was growin'; but we've all got enemies--every last
+one of us--and to be shot down at his own gate like that--Gee, it has
+given every man in town the creeps. We must get the man quick and make
+an example of him. I hope I'm drawn."
+
+"I hope he doesn't ask me to defend him. How is Mrs. Balfame bearing
+up?"
+
+"Fine. She's as cool as they make 'em. I'd hate to be married to one of
+them cucumbers myself, but they're damned convenient in times of
+trouble. Maybe she cared a lot for Dave; who knows? At any rate we must
+make people think she did. I don't want suspicion pointing to her."
+
+"What! It is incredible that you should think of such a thing." Rush,
+always pale, had turned as white as chalk. "You can't mean that people
+are saying--"
+
+"Not yet. But we've got to be prepared for anything, especially with
+these New York newspapermen on the trail. Unless we catch the murderer
+damned quick, every last one of us that was close to Dave that can't
+prove an alibi will be suspected. Why, I walked with him for two blocks
+after he left my house--thought he might not be able to make it alone,
+and he wouldn't go in the car; then, I didn't go straight home, either.
+I went to my office to straighten out something--Oh, Lord! don't let's
+talk of it; I must have been there alone, not a soul to see me, when he
+was shot. It gives me the horrors to think of it--"
+
+"Nonsense! It was well known that you were his best friend. No one would
+think of you."
+
+"They might! They might!"
+
+"Well--about Mrs. Balfame?"
+
+"Oh, she's got the best alibi ever. She'd packed his suitcase and
+carried it downstairs, and even written a note describing some bag or
+other she wanted and pinned it to his coat. I was there when the police
+examined it. They're not saying who they're suspectin', but they're
+doin' a heap of thinkin'. Fact remains that she was alone in the front
+of the house--that mutt of a hired girl she's got was way up in the back
+part groanin' with a toothache when I routed her out. If she wasn't such
+a fright that Dave wouldn't have looked at her--Well, the police know
+that Dave wasn't what you might call a model husband; but Enid, so far
+as we all know, never rowed him. That's the most tryin' sort, though,
+and generally conceals the most hate. But she had her clubs and all the
+rest of it. Maybe she didn't care. I'm only wonderin' what Phipps
+thinks. That's the reason I want her to see the newspapermen. She might
+throw them off the scent at least. Of course, they'd rather she'd done
+it than any one--"
+
+"You won't even hint to her that she may be suspected?" interrupted
+Rush, sharply.
+
+"Oh, Lord, no. I'd never dare. Just persuade her somehow. Guess Anna or
+Polly can manage it."
+
+Rush turned and walked down the steps. "I'll go to the Elsinore to
+breakfast. The reporters are likely to show up there. I know Jim
+Broderick. We must be on the job all the time."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+To Dr. Anna alone Mrs. Balfame told the story of the night, although,
+implicit as was her trust, with certain reservations. She omitted the
+detail of the poisoned lemonade, but otherwise unburdened herself with
+freedom and relief.
+
+"Before I knew where I was," she concluded, "there was the kitchen door
+closed behind me. I can't understand why I lost my presence of mind. I
+could easily have run through the back door and out the front, and
+reached him about the time Gifning did."
+
+Dr. Anna was drinking strong coffee. It was eight o'clock, and she had
+gone downstairs and made breakfast for her friend and herself, Frieda
+having retired to her room and bolted the door. The doctor had heard the
+whole story as soon as she arrived, but after an interval of sleep had
+asked for it again.
+
+"I think it's better as it is," she said thoughtfully. "No one could
+have seen you. The moon rose late; the night at that time must have been
+pitch dark. The trees alone would have shielded you, even had any one
+been watching. Suspicion never would fall on you anyhow; you are too far
+above it, and Dave had been insulting people right and left the last
+year. But you want to avoid blackmail. The only thing that disturbs me
+is that that girl may have been on the back stairs when you came in.
+I'll come in for lunch and talk to her then. You keep to your room.
+Rest, and sleep if you can. I don't fancy you'll have early visitors.
+Everybody'll sleep late. I wish I could!"
+
+"Will you stop in and see Dr. Lequeur about yourself--"
+
+"If I can find a minute. Don't worry about me. I'm tough, and the Lord
+knows I ought to be immune."
+
+But she found no time to see a doctor in her own behalf and returned to
+the Balfame house between twelve and one. Reporters were sitting on the
+box hedge and on the doorstep. She evaded them good-naturedly, but it
+was some time before she was admitted by the rebellious Frieda, who had
+been summoned to the front door some sixteen times during the forenoon.
+
+When Dr. Anna finally found herself in the dark hall she saw that
+Frieda's face was swollen and tied up in a towel. The spectacle gave the
+doctor an instant opportunity.
+
+"The worst infliction on earth, bar none!" she announced, following the
+maid into the kitchen. "Let me take a look at it? How long have you had
+it?"
+
+"Two days," replied Frieda sullenly, unamenable to sympathy which
+offered no immediate surcease of pain.
+
+"Abscess?"
+
+"Don't know."
+
+Frieda's mental processes were slow. Before she could follow the
+doctor's the bandage was ripped off and a sharp eye was examining the
+inflamed interior of her cavernous mouth. A moment later Dr. Anna had
+opened her doctor's bag and was anointing the surroundings of the
+tortured tooth with a brown liquid.
+
+"That won't cure it," she said, "but no dentist could do more until the
+swelling is reduced. And it will save you a preliminary bill. Keep this.
+As soon as you feel you can stand it, go to Dr. Meyers, Main Street.
+Tell him I sent you. But why didn't you tell Mrs. Balfame last night?
+Why endure pain? Kind mistresses always keep such alleviatives in the
+house, and Mrs. Balfame is not the sort to mind being roused in the
+middle of the night if some one were suffering."
+
+The pain had subsided under treatment, and Frieda was restored to such
+civility as she knew. "It only got bad when I am dancing to the hall,
+and I ran home. I had some drops in my room."
+
+"Oh, I see. Did they stop the pain?"
+
+"Nix. Ache like before, but I lie down and perhaps can sleep if those
+men have not make me come downstairs to make the coffee. All night I am
+up." And she glowered with self-pity.
+
+"But when you found that your drops were no good, why didn't you run at
+once to Mrs. Balfame? You were braver than I should have been. It was
+about eight o'clock, was it not, when Mr. Balfame was shot? Mrs. Balfame
+was probably awake when you came in, even if she had gone to bed. Or
+perhaps you didn't know that she came home early?"
+
+"On Saturday nights she come home after I do. How I am to know she is
+here?"
+
+"But you might have gone to her medicine closet--in her bathroom."
+
+"When you have the pain like hot iron you think of all the good things
+for it the next day." Frieda relapsed into sullen silence; Dr. Anna
+hastily disposed of the lunch prepared for her and went upstairs.
+
+Mrs. Balfame was lying on the sofa. She had not dressed, but looked as
+trim as usual in a blue and white bathrobe; never having been a woman to
+"let herself go," she did not possess a wrapper. Her long hair hung in
+two loose braids, and she looked very pale and lovely.
+
+"Put Frieda out of your head," said Dr. Anna hurriedly; familiar voices
+ascended from the path below. "She heard nothing. You don't when you
+have a jumping toothache."
+
+"Thank heaven!"
+
+A soft knock announced several of her friends. They were dressed for
+motoring; this being Sunday, not even death must interfere with the
+cross-country refreshment of the Elsinore husband. They kissed Mrs.
+Balfame and congratulated her upon her appearance and her nerves.
+
+"But one thing must be settled right here," announced Mrs. Gifning, "and
+that is the question of your mourning. I'll go over on the eight-ten in
+the morning and see to it. But you never wear ready-made things and it
+would be a pity to waste money that way. Are you going to wear a veil at
+the inquest?"
+
+"Of course I am. Do you suppose I shall submit to being stared at by a
+curious mob and snapshotted by reporters?"
+
+"That's just what I thought. I'll bring back a smart hat and a long
+crêpe veil with me, and order your widow's outfit from one of the big
+shops; they'll have it over in time for the funeral. And you can wear
+your tailor suit to the inquest; it will be half covered by the veil."
+
+"What a good idea!" said Mrs. Balfame gratefully. "You are too kind."
+
+"Kind? Nothing! I just love to shop for other people. How lucky that
+you hadn't bought your new winter suit. It might have been blue."
+
+"It was to have been blue." There was a note of regret in Mrs. Balfame's
+voice. "Don't forget to buy me two black chiffon blouses. One very
+simple for every day; the other, really good. And something white for
+the neck. Of course I wouldn't wear it on the street; but in the
+house--black is too trying!"
+
+"Rather. Trust me. Have you black gloves--undressed kid, I mean? You
+don't want to look like an undertaker." Mrs. Balfame nodded. "That's
+all, I think. Send me a line if you think of something else. I must run
+and take Giffy for his ride. He's all broken up, poor darling. Wasn't he
+just splendid last night?" She blew a kiss along the widow's forehead
+and ran out with a light step that caused her more substantial friends
+to sigh with envy. She, too, was in the manoeuvring forties, but she had
+gone into training at thirty.
+
+"I guess we'd all better go." Mrs. Battle, with a sudden dexterous heave
+of her armoured bulk, was out of the chair and on her feet. "Now, try to
+sleep, dearie. You are just the bravest thing! But to-morrow will be
+trying. Sam Cummack says the coroner won't hold the inquest before
+afternoon, but if they do and your veil isn't here, I've got one of Ma's
+packed away in camphor that I'll get out for you. I'll get it out
+to-night and have it airing--we won't take any chances; and you sha'n't
+be annoyed by the vulgar curious."
+
+"Oh, thank you! But that is not the only ordeal. It's even more trying
+to stay in the house all these days--in this room! If I could walk in
+the grounds. But I suppose those reporters are everywhere."
+
+"They are swarming, simply swarming. And the avenue is so packed with
+automobiles you can't navigate. People have come from all over the
+country--some from New York and Brooklyn."
+
+Mrs. Balfame curled her lip with disgust. Morbid curiosity, like other
+vulgarities, was incomprehensible to her. Death, no matter how desired
+or how accomplished, should inspire hush and respect, not provide
+excitement for a Sunday afternoon.
+
+"Let us hope they will find the wretch to-day," she said impatiently.
+"That will end it, for, of course, it is the element of mystery that has
+made the case so notorious. Is there no clue?"
+
+"Not the ghost of one." Mrs. Cummack, too, was adjusting her automobile
+veil. "Sam's on the job,--I'm only taking him out for an hour or two;
+and so, of course, are the police--hot. But he's covered his tracks so
+far."
+
+"If it is a he," whispered Mrs. Battle to Mrs. Frew, as they stole
+softly down the stairs. "What about that red-head, or that telephone
+girl who fainted? They say she had to go home--"
+
+"Can you imagine caring enough for Dave Balfame--Let's get out of this,
+for heaven's sake, or I'll faint right here."
+
+The atmosphere was as depressing as the dark interior of the house, for
+it was heavy laden with the scent of flowers and death. The parlour
+doors, behind which lay David Balfame, embalmed and serene in his
+casket, were closed, but hushed whisperings came forth like the rustling
+of funeral wreaths disturbed by the vapours of decay. The devoted
+friends of the widow burst out into the sunshine almost with a cry of
+relief.
+
+Here all was as animated as a county fair. The grounds were void, save
+by patrolling police, but the avenue and adjoining streets were packed
+with every type of car from limousine to farmer's runabout, and many
+more people were afoot, staring at the house, venturing as near the
+hedge as they dared, to inspect the grove. They asked questions,
+answered them, offered theories, all in a breath, and without the
+slightest respect for any opinion save their own. A few children,
+sucking peppermint sticks, sat on the hedge.
+
+"Did you ever?" murmured Mrs. Frew to Mrs. Battle. "_Did_ you ever?" She
+shuddered with refined disgust, but felt thrilled to her marrow. "Just
+Enid's luck!" was her auxiliary but silent reflection.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+At the inquest on the following day, Mrs. Balfame, circumvested in
+crêpe, sat between Mr. and Mrs. Cummack, gracefully erect, and without
+even a nervous flutter of the hands.
+
+When called upon to testify, she told in a clear low voice the meagre
+story already known to her friends and by this time the common property
+of Elsinore and all that read the newspapers of the State.
+
+The coroner released her as quickly as possible, and called her servant
+to the stand. Although the swelling in Frieda's face had subsided
+somewhat under Dr. Anna's repeated ministrations, the tooth still
+throbbed; and she also was released after announcing resentfully that
+she'd seen "notings," heard "notings," and "didn't know notings" about
+the murder except having to get up and make coffee when she was like to
+die with the ache in her tooth.
+
+There was no one else to testify, except Cummack, who gave the hour,
+about a quarter or ten minutes to eight, when the deceased had left his
+house, and Mr. Gifning and his two guests, who testified to hearing the
+sound of Balfame's voice raised in song, followed a moment later by the
+report of a pistol. They also described minutely the position of the
+body when found. Indubitably the shot had been fired from the grove.
+
+The staff artists were forced to be content with a black sketch of a
+very long widow, who held her head high and emanated an air of chill
+repose. One reporter, camera set, forced his way to her side as she was
+about to enter Mrs. Battle's limousine and begged her plaintively to
+raise her veil; but he might as well as have addressed a somnambulist;
+Mrs. Balfame did not even snub him.
+
+"Why should they want a picture of me?" she asked Mrs. Battle,
+wonderingly. "It's poor Dave that is dead. Whoever heard of me outside
+of Elsinore?"
+
+"I guess you haven't amused yourself reading the papers. You've been
+written up as a beauty and the intellectual and social leader of
+Elsinore. Some distinction, that! The public is mighty interested in you
+all over the State and will be for several days yet, no doubt. Then
+we'll find the man and they'll forget all about the whole affair until
+the trial comes up."
+
+Mrs. Balfame, clad in full weeds, more dignified, stately and
+unapproachable than ever, ran the gauntlet of staring eyes at the church
+funeral, apparently unconscious of the immense crowd of women that had
+driven over from every township in Brabant County. That the women did
+not approve of her haughty head and tearless eyes, brilliant even behind
+the heavy crêpe, would have concerned her little if she had known it.
+Her mind was concentrated upon the future moment when this series of
+hideous ordeals would be over and she could re-enter the decent
+seclusion of private life.
+
+Mrs. Balfame may have had her faults, but a vulgar complaisance to
+publicity was not among them.
+
+She had also made up her mind sternly not to feel happy, not to rejoice
+in her freedom, not to make a plan for the future until her husband was
+in his grave. But all during that long service, while the new parson
+discoursed unctuously upon the virtues and eminence of the slain, she
+had the sensation of holding her breath.
+
+It was four days from the night of the murder before she consented to
+see the reporters. Meanwhile every suspected person had proved an alibi,
+including the red-haired Miss Foxie Bell, and the indignant and highly
+respectable Miss Mamie Russ, who officiated at the telephone. She had
+known the deceased, yes, and once or twice she had driven out to one of
+the roadhouses with him, where a number of her friends were indulging in
+a quiet Sunday afternoon tango, but she had merely looked upon him as a
+kind fatherly sort of person; and at the hour of his death she was
+asleep, as her landlady could testify.
+
+Old Dutch had indignantly repudiated the charge of employing gunmen, and
+had even attended the funeral and shed tears. Whatever the faults of the
+deceased, they were not of a nature to antagonise permanently the erring
+members of his own sex. Moreover, he had been an able politician,
+respected of his enemies, and was now glorified by his cowardly and
+untimely taking off.
+
+The local police had an uneasy suspicion that the assassin was one of
+their "pals"--in that small and democratic community, where every man
+was an Elk from the banker to the undertaker. They were quite ready to
+drop the case, loudly ascribing the deed to an ordinary housebreaker, or
+to some unknown enemy from out the impenetrable rabbit warrens of New
+York City.
+
+The newspaper men were chagrined and desperate. The Balfame Case had
+proved uncommonly magnetic to the New York public. They had done their
+best to create this interest, and now were on their mettle to "make
+good." But they were beginning to wish they had waited for at least a
+lantern's ray at the end of the dark perspective before exciting the
+public with descriptions of the winding picturesque old street of the
+ancient village of Elsinore; the stately old-time residence at its head
+which had housed (in more or less discomfort) three generations of
+Balfames, the sinister grove of trees that had sheltered the dastardly
+assassin, the prominence and political importance of David Balfame who
+had inherited this ancestral estate, and played among those trees in
+childhood; his unsuspecting and vocal return at an early hour to be shot
+down at his own gate.
+
+All this appealed acutely to a public which makes the fortune of the
+sentimental play, the "crook" play, and the "play with a punch and a
+mystery." Here was the real thing, as rural as the childhood of many of
+the Greater New York public--weary of black-hand murders and anarchist
+bombs--with a mystery as deep as any ever invented by their favourite
+authors, and in no remote district but at their very gates.
+
+If anything more were necessary to rivet their interest, there was the
+handsome and elegant (if provincial) Mrs. Balfame, as austere as a Roman
+matron, as chaste as Diana, as decently invisible in public during this
+harrowing ordeal as imported crêpe could make her. The men reporters had
+dismissed the widow with a paragraph of personal description, but the
+newspaper women had filled half a page in each of the evening journals.
+
+The press had given the public at least two columns a day of the Balfame
+murder; there had been a biography of every suspect in turn, and there
+had been the thrilling episode of the bloodhounds turned loose upon that
+trampled enclosure. But no road led anywhere, and the public, baffled
+for the moment, but still hopeful, demanded an interview with the
+interesting widow.
+
+Of course, her alibi was perfect, but all felt sure that she "knew
+something about it." Her unhappy married life was now common property,
+and if it only could be proved that she had had a lover--but the
+newspapers as has been said were discouraging upon this point. Mrs.
+Balfame (quoting the young men this time), while amiable and kind to
+all, was cold and indifferent. Men were afraid of her. The New York
+detectives had "fine-tooth-combed" Brabant County and reported
+disgustedly to their chief that she was "just one of those club women;
+no use for men at all."
+
+The reporters, however, had made up their minds to fix the crime, if
+possible, upon her. They would have compromised upon the young servant,
+but Frieda, especially with her face framed in a towel stained brown,
+and her eyes swollen above the wrenching agonies of an ulcerated tooth,
+was hopeless material. Moreover, they were convinced, after thorough
+investigation, that the deceased's gallantries, while sufficiently
+catholic, had not run to serving maids, and that of late particularly he
+had loudly hated all things German.
+
+Regarding Mrs. Balfame they held their judgment in reserve until they
+met and talked with her; but Broderick had extracted the miserable
+details of her life from his friend, Alys Crumley, as well as a lively
+description of the scene at the Country Club; they believed they could
+bring to light enough to base a sensational trial upon, whatever the
+verdict of the jury.
+
+It must not be inferred for a moment that these brilliant and
+industrious young men were bloodthirsty. They knew that if Mrs. Balfame
+had committed the crime and could be induced to make a defiant
+confession, it was more than probable that she would go scot free; that
+in no case was there more than a bare possibility of a woman of her age,
+position and appearance being sent to the chair. But it is these alert,
+resourceful, ruthless young men who make the newspapers we read with
+such interest twice a day; it is they who write the columns of "news"
+that we skip if dull (with a mental reservation to change our
+newspaper), or devour without a thought of the tireless individual
+activities that re-supply us daily with our strongest impersonal
+interests. Sometimes a trifle more sparkle or vitality, or a deeper
+note, will wring from us that facile comment, "How well written!"
+without a pause to reflect that mere good writing never made a
+newspaper, or to hazard a guess that behind the column that thrilled us
+were hours, perhaps weeks, of incessant unravelling of clues, of
+following a scent in the dark, with death at every turn. It is the
+business of reporters to furnish news of vital interest to a pampered
+public, and as so large a part of it is furnished to them by the
+weaknesses and misdeeds of mankind, what wonder that the reporters grow
+cynical and make no bones about providing clues that will lead, at the
+least, to many columns charged with suspense and sensational human
+interest!
+
+These young men knew the moment the Balfame case "broke" that it was big
+with possibilities; they scented a mystery that would be cleared by the
+arrest of no local politician; and they knew the interlocking social
+relationships of these loyal old communities. It was "up to them" to
+solve the mystery, and by a process of elimination, spurred by their own
+desire to give the public the best the market afforded, they arrived at
+Mrs. Balfame.
+
+Within forty-eight hours they were hot on her trail. Among other things,
+they discovered that she was an expert shot at a target; but did she
+keep a pistol in the house? She had used one, kept for target purpose,
+out at the Country Club, and it was impossible to verify the rumor that
+in common with many another, she had one in the house as a protection
+against burglars and tramps.
+
+At their instigation, Phipps, the local chief of police, had reluctantly
+consented to interrogate her on this point (a mere matter of form, he
+assured her), and she had replied blandly that she never had possessed a
+pistol. The chief apologised and withdrew. He was of a respectable
+Brabant family himself, and was horrified that a member of the good old
+order should even be brushed by the wing of suspicion. Being a quiet
+family man and a Republican to boot, he had never approved of Dave
+Balfame, and had only refrained from arresting him upon more than one
+occasion--notably a week or two since when he had publicly blacked the
+eye of Miss Billy Gump--out of deference to the good name of Elsinore;
+and after all, they were both Elks and had spun many a yarn in the
+comfortable clubrooms. Inheritance, circumstances, and a fine common
+contempt for the inferior brands of whiskey, had made them "stand in
+together, whatever happened." The chief had no love for Mrs. Balfame,
+for she had frozen him too often, but she was the pride of Elsinore and
+he was alert to defend her.
+
+It had never occurred to Mrs. Balfame that she would incur even a
+passing suspicion, and she had left the pistol in the pocket of her
+automobile coat. Immediately after the visit of the chief of police she
+took the pistol into the sewing-room, locked the door, covered the
+keyhole, and buried the weapon in the depths of an old sofa. As her
+large strong fingers had mended furniture many times, no one would
+suspect that this ancient piece (dating back to the first Balfame) had
+been tampered with. She performed the operation with haughty reluctance,
+but the instinct of self-preservation abides in the proudest souls, and
+Mrs. Balfame had the wit to realise that it was by far the better part
+of valour.
+
+The shooting occurred on Saturday night. By Wednesday all the horrors of
+the criminal episode were over and she felt as young as she looked, and
+at liberty to begin life again, a free and happy woman. Her mourning was
+perfect.
+
+She made up her mind to see the newspaper men and have done with it.
+They had haunted the grounds--no patrols could keep them out--sat on the
+doorstep, forced their way into the kitchen, and rung the front
+door-bell so frequently that hourly she expected the scowling Frieda to
+give notice. Mr. Cummack told her repeatedly that she might as well give
+in first as last and she finally agreed with him.
+
+It was five o'clock in the afternoon when they were admitted to the
+spacious old-fashioned parlour with its incongruous modern notes.
+
+Like many women, Mrs. Balfame had an admirable taste in dress, so long
+as she marched with the conventions, but neither the imagination nor the
+training to create the notable room. Long since she had banished the old
+"body brussels" carpet and substituted rugs subdued in colour if
+commonplace in design. The plush "set" had not gone to the auction room,
+however, but had been reupholstered with a serviceable "tapestry
+covering." A what-not still stood in one corner, and both centre-table
+and mantel were covered with marble, although the wax works that once
+embellished them were now in the garret. The wall paper, which had been
+put on the year before, was a neutral pale brown. Nevertheless, it was a
+homelike room, for there were two rocking-chairs and three easy chairs;
+and on a small side-table was Mrs. Balfame's workbasket. On the marble
+centre-table was a most artistic lamp. The curtains matched the
+furniture.
+
+There were ten reporters from New York, two from Brooklyn, three from
+Brabant County, and four correspondents. Word had been passed during the
+morning that Mrs. Balfame would see the newspaper men, and they were
+there in force; those that were not "on the job all the time" having
+loyally been notified by those that were. But they had stolen a march on
+the women. Not a "sob-sister" was in that intent file, led by James
+Broderick of _The New York Morning News_, that entered the Balfame house
+and parlour on Wednesday at five o'clock.
+
+Frieda had announced that her mistress would be "down soon," and Mr.
+Broderick immediately drew the curtains back from the four long windows,
+and placed a comfortable chair for Mrs. Balfame in a position where she
+would face both the light and her visitors. It was not the first stage
+that the astute Mr. Broderick had set; and whenever he was on a case he
+fell naturally into the position of leader; not only had he the most
+alert and driving, the most resourceful and penetrative mind, but his
+good looks and suave manner inspired confidence in the victim, and led
+him insensibly into damaging admissions. He was a tall slim young man, a
+graduate of Princeton, not yet thirty, with a regular face and warm
+colouring, and an expression so pleasant that the keenness of his eyes
+passed unnoted. In general equipment and dress he was typical of his
+kind, unless they took to drink and grew slovenly; but his more emphatic
+endowment enabled him to take the lead among a class of men whom he
+respected too thoroughly to antagonise with arrogance.
+
+"Late--to make an impression!" he growled, but young Ryder Bruce of the
+evening edition of his paper nudged him. Mrs. Balfame was on the
+staircase opposite the parlour doors.
+
+The young men stood up and watched her as she slowly descended, her
+black dress clinging to her tall rather rigid figure, her head high, her
+profile as calm as marble, her eye as devoid of expression as if
+awaiting the click of the camera.
+
+The reporters were prejudiced on the spot, so impatient are newspaper
+men of any sort of pose or attempt to impress them. As she entered the
+room she greeted them pleasantly, looking straight at them with her
+large cold eyes, and allowed herself to be conducted to a chair by the
+polite Mr. Broderick.
+
+She knew that in her high unrelieved black she looked older than common,
+but this was a deliberately calculated effect. She was not as adroit as
+she would have been after recurrent experiences with the press, but
+instinct warned her to look the dignified middle-aged widow, quite above
+the coquetry of the bare throat of fashion, or of tempering her weeds
+with soft white lawn.
+
+As Mr. Broderick made a little speech of gratitude for her gracious
+reception of the press, she appraised her guests. The greater number
+were well-groomed, well-dressed, well-bred in effect, very sure of
+themselves; altogether a striking contrast to the local reporters that
+had come in on their heels.
+
+She answered Mr. Broderick diffidently: "I have never been interviewed.
+I am afraid you will hardly find--what do you call it?--a story?--in
+me."
+
+"We don't wish to be too personal," he said gently, "but the public is
+tremendously interested in this case, and more particularly in you. It
+isn't always that it takes an interest in the wife of a murdered
+man--but--well, you see, you are such a personality in this community.
+We really must have an interesting interview." He smiled at her with a
+charming expression of masculine indulgence that made her own eyes
+soften. "You see--don't you--we hate to intrude--but--we understand that
+you had a serious quarrel with your husband on the last day of his life.
+Would you mind telling us what you did after leaving the Country Club?"
+
+She gave him a frozen stare, but recalled Mr. Cummack's warning not to
+take offence--"for remember that these men have their living to get, and
+if they fall down on their job they don't get it. Blame their paper, not
+them."
+
+"That is a surprising question," she said sweetly. "Do you expect me to
+answer it?"
+
+"Why not? Of course you read the newspapers. You know we have told the
+public of the scene at the clubhouse already--and with no detriment to
+you! It was a very dramatic scene, and every moment that you passed from
+that time until Mr. Balfame fell at his gate will be of the most
+absorbing interest to the public. In fact, they will eat it up."
+
+Mrs. Balfame shrugged her shoulders. "As a matter of fact I have not
+read a newspaper since the--" She set her lips and her eyes grew
+hard--"the crime. I know you have written a great deal about it, but it
+hasn't interested me. Well--Dr. Anna Steuer drove me home, and shortly
+after I went up to my room--"
+
+"Pardon me; let us take things in their turn. You took a box of sardines
+and some bread from the pantry, did you not?"
+
+"I did." Mrs. Balfame's tones were both puzzled and bored.
+
+"And then you were interrupted." As she raised her eyebrows, he
+continued. "The appearance of the sardine can indicated that."
+
+She gave him a brilliant smile, her substitute for the average woman's
+merry laugh. "You are teaching me how they write those intricate
+detective tales my husband was so fond of. It is true that I was
+interrupted, but it is equally true that I should probably have left the
+can as you found it in any case, for I soon realised that I was not
+hungry. I had had sandwiches at the club, and although I always think it
+best to eat something before retiring, I was hardly hungry enough for
+sardines--"
+
+"You ate sandwiches at the club? I have been out there once or twice
+and never saw--I was under the impression that during the afternoon the
+young people danced and the matrons played bridge before an early
+dinner."
+
+"Did you?" Mrs. Balfame's eyes and tones abashed even Mr. Broderick, and
+he tacked hastily: "Oh, well, that is immaterial, as the lawyers say.
+And of course you ladies may have sandwiches served in the bridge rooms.
+May I ask what interrupted you?"
+
+"My husband telephoned from Mr. Cummack's house that he was obliged to
+go to Albany at once and asked me to pack his suitcase."
+
+"Yes, we have seen the suitcase. You suggested, did you not--over the
+telephone--making him a glass of lemonade with aromatic and bromide in
+it?"
+
+Mrs. Balfame experienced an obscure thrill of alarm, but her haughty
+stare betrayed nothing. One of the reporters whose "job" it was to watch
+her hands, noted that they curved rigidly. "And may I ask how you found
+_that_ out? Really, I think I feel even more curiosity than you do."
+
+"He told it to Cummack and the other men present as a good joke, adding
+that you knew your business."
+
+"I did. The matter had passed entirely out of my mind. More momentous
+things have happened since! Well--I made the glass of lemonade and left
+it on the dining-room table; then I went upstairs and packed his
+suitcase--"
+
+"One moment. What became of that glass of lemonade? No one remembers
+having seen it, although I have made very particular inquiries."
+
+Mrs. Balfame by this time was quite cold, but her brain was working
+almost as quickly as Mr. Broderick's. She uncurved her fingers and
+smiled. But her keen brain-sword had one edge only; the other was dull
+with inexperience. She knew nothing of the vast practice of newspaper
+men in detecting the lie.
+
+"Oh--I drank it myself." She had drawn her brows for a moment as if in
+an effort of memory. "When I heard the noise outside--when I heard them
+say 'coroner'--and realised that something dreadful had happened, I ran
+downstairs. Then I suddenly felt faint and remembered the lemonade with
+the aromatic spirits of ammonia and bromide in it. I ran into the
+dining-room and drank it--fortunately!"
+
+"And what became of the glass?"
+
+"Oh!" Mrs. Balfame was now righteously indignant. "How do I know? Or any
+one else? Frieda, soon after, began to make coffee by the quart--and I
+don't doubt whisky was brought round from the Elks. Who could have
+noticed a glass more or less?"
+
+"Frieda swears she never saw it."
+
+"She has the worst memory of any servant I ever had, and that is saying
+a good deal."
+
+Mr. Broderick regarded her with admiration. He distrusted her more every
+moment, but he had realised at once that he had no ordinary woman to
+deal with, and he rejoiced in the clash of wits.
+
+The other young men were sitting forward, almost breathless, and Mrs.
+Balfame was now fully alive to the danger of her position. But all
+sensation of fear had left her. All the iron in her nature fused in the
+crucible of those terrible moments and came forth finely tempered steel.
+
+"Anything more?"
+
+"Oh--ah--yes. Would you mind telling us what you did after you had
+packed the suitcase and brought it downstairs?"
+
+"I went up to my room and began to undress for bed."
+
+"But that must have been quite fifteen minutes before Mr. Balfame's
+return. He walked from Cummack's house, which is about a mile from here.
+It was noticed that you merely had taken your dress off. Would you not
+have had time to get into bed?"
+
+"If I were a man. But I had my hair to brush--with fifty strokes; and--a
+little nightly massage, if you will have it. Besides, I had intended to
+go down and lock the front door after my husband had left."
+
+"Ah!" The admiration of the young men mounted higher. They disliked her
+coldly, if only for that lack of sex-magnetism, which men, particularly
+young men, naïve in their extensive surface psychology, take as a
+personal affront. They did not believe a word she said, and they did not
+give her and her possible fate a throb of sympathy, but they generously
+pronounced her "a wonder."
+
+Mr. Broderick took a chance shot. "And did you not during that time look
+out of the window--toward the grove?"
+
+Mrs. Balfame hesitated the fraction of a minute, then wisely returned to
+her know-nothing policy. "Why should I? Certainly not. I heard no sound
+out there. I am not in the habit of examining the grounds from my window
+at night. It is enough to go through the lower rooms before I lock up."
+
+"But your window was dark when the men ran over from Gifning's after
+hearing the shot. They remember that. Do you brush your hair--and--and
+massage in the dark?"
+
+Mrs. Balfame sat back in her chair with the resigned air of the victim
+who expects an interview with inquisitive newspaper men to last all
+night. "No. But I sometimes sit in the dark. I told you that I intended
+to sit up--partly dressed--until my husband had gone. I did not feel
+like reading, and my eyes were tired. As you know so much, you may have
+guessed that I cried a little after that trying afternoon. I do not
+often cry, and my eyes stung."
+
+"But you had forgiven your husband?"
+
+"I had forgiven him many times before. I infer that you know that also."
+
+"Mrs. Balfame, is it not true that about two years ago you contemplated
+obtaining a divorce?"
+
+This time her eyes flashed with anger. "I see that my kind friends have
+been gossiping. You would seem to have interviewed everybody in town."
+
+"Pretty nearly. But you don't seem to realise that Elsinore--Brabant
+County, for that matter--has talked of nothing else but this case for
+the last four days."
+
+"I did think of a divorce for a short time, but I never mentioned it to
+him, and as soon as I thought it all out I dismissed the idea. In the
+first place, divorce is against the principles of the school in which I
+was brought up, and in the second Mr. Balfame was a good husband in his
+way. Every woman has some sort of a heavy cross to bear, and I guess
+mine was lighter than most. The trouble is, we American women expect
+too much. I dismissed the subject so completely from my mind that I had
+practically forgotten it."
+
+"Ah--yes--we thought you might have seen some one lurking in the grove
+and gone down to investigate." This was another chance shot. He was
+hoping for a "lead."
+
+Mrs. Balfame thought him inspired.
+
+For the moment the cold brilliant eyes of the woman and the keen
+contracted eyes of the reporter met and clashed. Then Mrs. Balfame
+displayed her teeth in her sweet and charming smile. "What a truly
+masculine inference. You don't know me. If I had seen anything I should
+have flown to the telephone and called the police."
+
+"You look indomitable," murmured Mr. Broderick. "But will you tell us
+how it happened that you did not hear the shot? The men down at
+Gifning's did."
+
+"They were standing on the porch, and I think now that I did hear the
+shot. But my windows were closed. I hear tires burst constantly. And
+that was Saturday night. The machines turn off just below our gate into
+Dawbarn Street, especially if they are bound for Beryl Myrtle's road
+house."
+
+"True." Broderick leaned forward, staring at the carpet. He permitted
+the silence to last quite a minute. Even Mrs. Balfame, who had
+congratulated herself that the inquisition must be nearly over, stirred
+uneasily, so sinister was that silence.
+
+The other men knew the Broderick method too well to spoil one of his
+designs; they sat in expectant stillness and turned upon Mrs. Balfame a
+battery of eyes.
+
+Suddenly Broderick raised his head and his sharp boring gaze darted into
+hers. "I had not fully intended to tell you of a discovery made by one
+of us yesterday. We have told no one as yet--waiting for just the right
+moment to publish it. But I think I'll tell you. There is evidence that
+two revolvers were fired that night. One killed David Balfame, and a
+bullet from the other penetrated the tree before the house and slightly
+to the right of where he must have stood for a moment. Bruce here
+dug it out. Now, not only did the men at Gifning's not hear two
+shots--indicating that they were fired simultaneously--but one bullet
+came from a .38 and the other from a .41."
+
+Mrs. Balfame stood up. "Really, gentlemen, I did not consent to see you
+in order to help you solve riddles. But possibly you know better than I
+that gunmen generally travel in pairs. I am convinced that my husband--"
+(they applauded her for not saying "my poor husband") "was killed by one
+of those creatures, hired by his political enemies. Unless I can tell
+you something more of interest--if, indeed, you have found anything to
+interest the great New York public in this interview--I will ask you to
+excuse me."
+
+The young men were politely on their feet. "And you have no pistol--nor
+ever had?"
+
+She laughed outright. "Are you trying to fasten the crime on me?"
+
+"Oh, no, indeed. Only, in a case like this, one leaves no stone
+unturned--I hope you do not think we are rude."
+
+"I only just realise that quite the most polite young men I have ever
+met have been hoping to make me incriminate myself. If I had not been so
+dense I should have dismissed you long since. Good night."
+
+And, once more looking human in her just indignation, she lifted her
+proud head and swept out of the room.
+
+The young men left the house and adjourned to a private room in the rear
+of their favourite saloon. For twenty minutes they rehearsed the
+interview carefully, those that had taken notes correcting any lapses of
+memory on the part of those that had elected to watch as well as listen.
+
+Broderick and many of the men were firmly of the opinion that Mrs.
+Balfame had committed the crime; others believed that she was shielding
+some one else; the less experienced were equally positive that no guilty
+woman taken off her guard repeatedly, as she had been, could "put it
+over" like that. She had "talked and acted like an innocent woman."
+
+"She acted, all right," said Broderick. "I for one am convinced that she
+did it. But whether she did or didn't, she's got to be indicted and
+tried. This case, boys, is too big to throw away--too damned big; and
+she's already a personality to the public. She's the only one we have
+the ghost of a chance with; the only one whose arrest and trial would
+keep the interest going--"
+
+"But say!" It was the youngest reporter that interrupted. "I call it
+lowdown to fasten a crime on a possibly innocent woman--a lady--keep her
+in jail for months; try her for murder! Why, even if she were acquitted,
+she would carry the stigma through life."
+
+"Don't get sentimental, sonny," said Broderick patiently. "Sentiment is
+to the vanquished in this game. When you've been it as long as the rest
+of us you'll know that in nine cases out of ten the real solution of
+any mystery is the simplest. Balfame drank. He had a violent temper when
+drunk. He was a dog at best. She must have hated him. Look at her. We
+have reason to believe that she did hate him and that her friends knew
+it. She thought of divorce two years ago. Gave it up because she was
+afraid of losing her leadership in this provincial hole. Look at her.
+She is as proud as Lucifer. And as hard as nails. There had been an ugly
+scene at the club that afternoon. He mortified her publicly. She was so
+overcome she had to leave. I've a hunch she poisoned that lemonade and
+got it out of the way in time. She's the sort that would think of nearly
+everything. Not quite, of course. Otherwise she would never have
+invented on the spur of the moment that story about drinking it herself;
+she'd have had the assumption on tap that one of the neighbours had
+drunk it. That complication, however, is yet to prove. It merely points
+a finger at her--straight; what we've got to prove and prove quick is
+that she was out of doors when that shot was fired--"
+
+"Would you like to see her in the chair?" gasped young Loring.
+
+"Good Lord, no. Not the least danger. Women of that sort don't go to the
+chair. If she even got a term, I'd head a petition to let her out, for
+she's a dead game sport, and I'm only after good front page stuff." He
+turned to Ryder Bruce of the evening edition of his newspaper. "You make
+love to that German hired girl. She hates us all, for we represent the
+real American press--that hasn't a hyphen in it. I sensed that. And I
+don't believe she's all the fool she looks. I believe she can tell
+something--few servants that can't--and that she only pretended at the
+inquest that she knew nothing because she was nearly dead with pain and
+wanted it over. Well, she had the tooth out this morning, and at least
+she isn't quite as hideous as she was; so go to it, old boy. Get 'round
+her and do it quick. Use money if necessary. There's not a day to lose.
+Find out what she wants most--probably it's to send her sweetheart at
+the front something more substantial than mitts and bands. Got me?"
+
+"I get you," said young Bruce gloomily. "You've picked me out because
+I'm blond and round faced and can pass myself off as a German. I wish
+I'd been born an Italian. Nice job, making love to _that_. But I'll do
+it."
+
+"Good boy. Well, s'long. I'm off on a trail of my own. I'll report
+later. May be nothing in it."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+Broderick walked slowly toward Elsinore Avenue, sounding his memory for
+certain fugitive impressions, his active mind at the same time casting
+about for the current which would connect them.
+
+He looked at his watch. He was to dine with the Crumleys at seven and it
+lacked but ten minutes of the hour; nevertheless he walked more slowly
+still, his eyes staring at the ground, his brow channeled.
+
+On Sunday afternoon he had spent two hours with Alys Crumley. At first
+she had been reluctant to talk of any but the salient phases of the
+murder, but being appealed to as a "good old pal" and reminded that real
+newspaper people stood together, she finally had described the scene at
+the Country Club on the afternoon preceding Balfame's death, and shown
+him the drawing she had had the superior presence of mind to make.
+Broderick had examined every detail of that rapid but demonstrative
+sketch: the burly form at the head of the room, his condition indicated
+by an angle of the shoulders and a deft exaggeration of feature which
+recalled the facile art of the cartoonist; the strained forms of the men
+surrounding him; Mrs. Balfame heading down the room, her face set and
+terrible; the groups of women and girls in attitudes expressive of alarm
+or disgust.
+
+But when he made as if to put the sketch in his pocket she had snatched
+it from him, and he merely had shrugged his shoulders, confident that
+he could induce her to give it up should he really need it.
+
+He had questioned her regarding the scene until its outlines were as
+firm in his mind as in her own. But there had been something else--some
+impression, not obviously linked with the case: It was for that
+impression that he sounded his admirable memory; and in a moment he
+found it and stopped with a smothered exclamation.
+
+He had complimented her on the excellent likeness of Dwight Rush, whom
+he knew and liked, and remarked quite naturally that he might have sat
+for her a number of times. The dusky pink had mounted to her hair, but
+she had replied carelessly that Rush was "a common enough type."
+
+Possibly Broderick would have forgotten the blush had it not have been
+for the swift change of expression in her eyes: a certain fear followed
+by a concentrated renitence; and at the same moment he had remembered
+that he had met Rush once or twice at the Crumleys' during the summer
+and thought him quite the favoured guest.
+
+Driven only by a mild personal curiosity, he had asked her how she liked
+Rush and if she saw much of him; he recalled that she had answered with
+an elaboration of indifference that she hadn't seen him for ages and
+took no interest in him whatever.
+
+Then Broderick had drawn her on to talk of Mrs. Balfame. Yes, in common
+with all Elsinore that counted, she admired Mrs. Balfame, although she
+believed that no one really knew her, that she unconsciously lived among
+the surfaces of her nature. Her face as she marched down the clubroom
+that day, and its curious sudden transformation on that other day at
+the Friday Club when her thoughts so plainly had drifted far from the
+platitudinous speakers, indicated to Miss Crumley's temperamental mind
+"depths and possibly tragic possibilities."
+
+It was patent to Mr. Broderick's own mind that her suspicions had not
+lighted for a moment on the dead man's widow, but it also transpired in
+the course of the conversation that the young artist who had so "loved
+to sketch" the Star of Elsinore had suffered a long drop in personal
+enthusiasm. Pressed astutely, she had remarked that she guessed she was
+as broad-minded as anybody, especially since her year on the New York
+press, but she did not approve of married women claiming a right to
+share in the Great Game designed by Nature for the young of both sexes.
+
+Then the story came out: Miss Crumley, afflicted with a headache
+something over a fortnight since, and enjoying the cool night air just
+behind her front gate, had seen Mrs. Balfame come out of Dr. Steuer's
+garden next door and meet Dwight Rush face to face. He had begged to be
+allowed to see her home.
+
+Mrs. Balfame had lovely manners, she couldn't help being sweet unless
+she disliked a person, and no woman will elect to walk up a long dark
+avenue alone if a man offer to escort her.
+
+Alys would have thought nothing of it--merely assumed that Rush, being a
+comparative newcomer, had caught at the chance to make a favourable
+impression on the leader of Elsinore society--(no, he was no snob, but
+that idea just came to her), if they had not crawled, yes, _crawled_ all
+the way up the avenue.
+
+Both were vigorous people with long legs; they could have covered the
+distance to the Balfame place in three minutes. They had been more than
+ten, and as they passed under the successive lamp posts she had noted
+the man's bent head, the woman's tilted back--as she gazed up into his
+eyes, no doubt.
+
+"In this town," Miss Crumley had announced, "a woman is fast or she
+isn't. You know just where you are. There's a class that's sly about it,
+but somehow you get 'on' in time. Mrs. Balfame has stood for the highest
+and best. Mind you, I'm not saying that she ever saw Rush alone again,
+or cared a snap of her finger for him--or he for her. No doubt she felt,
+when the rare chance offered of taking a little flyer, that it was too
+good to miss. But she shouldn't have done it; that's the point. I don't
+like my idols to have feet of clay."
+
+Broderick had felt both sympathetic and amused. He knew that Alys
+Crumley was not only sweet of temper and frank, if not candid, but that
+in spite of all her desperate modernism she cherished high ideals of
+conduct; and here she was turning loose the cat that skulks somewhere in
+every commonplace female's nature.
+
+But the whole conversation had left his mind promptly. He had attached
+no significance whatever to a ten minutes' walk between a polite man and
+a woman returning alone from a friend's house on a dark night.
+
+Now every word of the conversation came back to him. Rush, he gathered,
+had gone to the Crumley house several times a week for a while, and
+then, for reasons known only to himself and Alys, had ceased his visits
+abruptly. Had she fallen in love with him? Or was it only her vanity
+that was wounded? And if Rush had dropped a girl as pretty and bright
+and winning as Alys Crumley--who improved upon acquaintance,
+moreover--what was the reason? Why had he not fallen in love with her?
+Had he loved some one else?
+
+Broderick swung his mind to the morning following the murder, when he
+had met Rush in the hall of the Elsinore Hotel. The lawyer professed
+himself as delighted to "run up against him" and invited him to
+breakfast. All this had been natural enough, and it was equally natural
+that the conversation should have but one theme.
+
+Once more Broderick sought a fugitive impression and found it. Rush, who
+was a master of words when verbal exactness was imperative, had created
+an impression in his companion's mind of the impeccability of the
+murdered man's widow.
+
+Broderick had wondered once or twice since whence came that mental
+picture of Mrs. Balfame that rose clear-cut in his memory, in spite of
+his deliberate conviction of her guilt. Other people had raved about her
+and made no impression upon the young reporter's selective and somewhat
+cynical mind; but Rush had almost accomplished his purpose!
+
+Why had he sought to accomplish it?
+
+Broderick had known Rush in and out of court for nearly two years.
+Whenever he had been on an assignment in that part of Brabant County he
+had made a point of seeking him out, and even of spending an evening
+with him if he could afford the time. He liked the unique blend of East
+and West in the man; to Broderick's keen appraising mind Rush reflected
+the very best of the two great rival bisections of the nation. He liked
+the mixture of frankness and subtlety, of simple unquestioning
+patriotism--of assumption that no country but the United States of
+America mattered in the very least--and the intense concentrated
+individualism. Of hard-headed American determination to "get there" at
+any honourable cost, of jealously hidden romanticism.
+
+Broderick was almost at the Crumley gate. He halted for a moment under
+the dark maples and glanced up the long shadowy avenue, his own narrower
+and still more jealously guarded "romantic streak" appreciating the
+possibilities on a dusky evening with a girl whose face floated for a
+moment before him. But he banished her promptly, searching his memory
+for some salient trait in Rush that he instinctively knew would
+establish the current he desired.
+
+He found it after a moment of intense concentration. Rush was the sort
+of man that loves not woman but a woman. His very friendship for Alys
+Crumley was evidence that he cared nothing for girls as girls. Only the
+exceptional drew him, and mere youth left him unmoved.
+
+Knowing Rush as he did, he felt his way rapidly toward the facts. Alys,
+woman-like, had succumbed to propinquity, and betrayed herself; Rush,
+finding his mere masculine loneliness misinterpreted, and being
+honourable to boot, had promptly withdrawn.
+
+But why? Alys would have made him a delightful and useful wife. She was
+one of those too clever girls whom celibacy made neurotic and uncertain,
+but out of whom matrimony and maternity knocked all the nonsense at once
+and finally. She would make a splendid woman.
+
+He should have thought her just the girl to allure Rush, whom he also
+knew to be fastidious and to set a high value on the good old Brabant
+blood. Moreover, it was time that Rush would be wanting the permanent
+companionship of a woman, a bright, progressive, but feminine woman. He
+had observed certain signs.
+
+Alys, apparently, had not measured up to Rush's secret ideal of the
+wholly desirable woman, nor appealed to that throbbing vein of
+romanticism which he had striven to bury beneath the dusty tomes of the
+law. What sort of woman, then, could satisfy all he desired? And had he
+found her?
+
+Broderick recalled a certain knightly exaltation in Rush's blue eyes
+which had come and gone as they discussed Mrs. Balfame, although not a
+word of the adroit concept he had built remained in the reporter's
+memory. But those eyes came back to Broderick there in the dark--the
+eyes of a man young and ardent like himself--he almost fancied he had
+seen the woman's image in them.
+
+He revived his impression of Mrs. Balfame, seen for the first time
+to-day, and contemplated it impersonally: A beautiful, a fascinating
+woman--to a man of Rush's limited experience and idealism; fastidious,
+proud, gracious, supremely poised.
+
+Nor did she look a day over thirty, although she must be a good bit
+more--he recalled the obituaries of the dead man: they had alluded to
+his marital accomplishment as covering a term of some twenty years.
+Perhaps she was his second wife--but no--nor did it matter. Rush was
+just the sort of chap to fall in love with a woman older than himself,
+if she were still young in appearance and as chastely lovely, as
+unapproachable, as Mrs. Balfame. He would idealise her very years,
+contrast them with that vague suggestion of virginity that Broderick
+recalled, of deep untroubled tides.
+
+All romantic men believe in women's unfathomed depths when in love,
+reflected the star reporter cynically, and Mrs. Balfame was just the
+sort to go until forty before having the smashing love affair of her
+life; and to inspire a similar passion in a hard-working idealist like
+Dwight Rush.
+
+Mrs. Balfame and Dwight Rush! Broderick, who now stood quite still, a
+few paces from the Crumley gate, whistled.
+
+Could Rush have fired that shot? Broderick recalled that the lawyer had
+mentioned having spent Saturday evening in Brooklyn--on business.
+
+Broderick shook his head vigorously. So far as he was concerned, Rush
+never should be asked to produce his alibi. He did not believe that Rush
+had done it, did not propose to harbour the suggestion for a moment.
+Rush was not the man to commit a cowardly murder, not even for a woman.
+If he had wanted to kill the man he would have involved himself in an
+election row, forced the bully to draw his gun, and then got in his own
+fire double quick. Standards were standards.
+
+Broderick was more convinced than ever that Mrs. Balfame had committed
+the deed, and he had established the current. His work was "cut out" for
+the evening; and without further delay he presented himself at the Widow
+Crumley's door.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+Supper was over and Broderick and Miss Crumley sat in the back yard
+studio; Mrs. Crumley had company of her own, and as Alys decried the
+vulgarity of the legendary American daughter's attitude to the
+poor-spirited American mother, she invariably retired to the background
+whenever it would enhance Mrs. Crumley's self-respect to occupy not only
+the foreground but (if her daughter had an interesting visitor) the
+entire stage. Alys, since her humiliating failure with Dwight Rush,
+clung the more passionately to her rules of conduct. They were not red
+with the blood of life, but at least they served as an anchored buoy.
+
+The atelier was hung with olive green burlap and covered with an
+artistic litter of sketches. Broderick, before settling himself into a
+comfortable chair by the stove, examined the more recent and encouraged
+her with a few words of discriminating praise.
+
+"Keep it up, Alicia. The _News_ for you next month if you are ready for
+a job. You've improved marvellously in figures, which was where you were
+weak. Miss Loys, our fashion artist, is marrying next month. You might
+as well begin with that. You'll be on the paper and can jump into
+something better when it offers."
+
+Alys nodded emphatically. "Give me work, and as soon as possible. I
+don't care much what it is. But I want work and plenty of it. It isn't
+only that I want to use my energies, but I've spent all I can afford on
+lessons and the rest of it."
+
+"I'll see to it. Your sort doesn't go begging."
+
+Broderick clipped his cigar and watched her thin profile for a moment
+without speaking.
+
+He noticed for the first time that she had lost the little flesh that
+formerly had covered her small bones, and that the pink stained the pale
+ivory of her cheeks only when conversation excited her. But if anything
+she was prettier--no, more attractive--than ever, for there was more
+depth in her face, which in spite of its subtle suggestions, had seemed
+to his critical masculine taste to be too eager, too prone to pour out
+her personality without reserve when the brain lighted up. Now there was
+a slight droop of the eyelids which might mean fatigue, but gave length
+and mystery to the strange olive eyes. Her pink mouth, with its short
+upper lip, was too small for his taste, but the modelling of her
+features in general seemed to him more cleanly defined, and the sweep of
+jaw, almost as keen as a blade, must have delighted her own artist soul.
+She was rather diminutive (to her sorrow), but the long lines she
+cultivated in her house gowns made her figure very alluring, and the
+limp and awkward grace of fashion singularly became her. She wore
+to-night a "butterfly" gown of georgette (finding, as ever, admirable
+effects in cotton since she could not afford the costly fabrics), the
+colour of the American beauty rose, and a narrow band of olive velvet
+around her thin ivory-white neck. For the moment of her absorption, as
+she stared into the coals, her attitude would have been one of complete
+repose had it not been for her restless hands. Broderick noticed, too,
+that there were darkened hollows under her eyes. "Poor kid," he thought.
+"She's been through it, all right, and put up a stiff fight. But what a
+pity."
+
+As he struck a match she rose, and, opening a drawer in the table, took
+out a box of Russian cigarettes. "I keep these here," she announced,
+"because I don't want to shock mother; and I seldom indulge these days
+in expensive habits. But I shall celebrate and smoke all evening. It is
+jolly to have you like this again, Jimmy. I heard you were engaged. Is
+it true? You would seem to have deserted every one else."
+
+Mr. Broderick coloured and looked as sheepish as a highly sophisticated
+star reporter may. "Well, not quite," he admitted. "It's been heavy
+running, and I don't have all the time there is on my hands. But--I
+hope--well, I think now it'll be pretty plain sailing--"
+
+"Good, Jimmy, good!"
+
+For a moment he, too, gazed into the coals, his eyes softening; then
+once more he banished the dainty image evoked; no nonsense for him in
+Elsinore, with the Balfame tangle to unravel to the glory of the New
+York _News_.
+
+"Alys," he said, stretching out his long legs and looking innocent and
+comfortable, "I want to have a confidential talk with you about Mrs.
+Balfame." He paused and then looked her straight in the eyes as he
+launched his bolt. "I have come to the conclusion that she shot him--"
+
+"Jim Broderick!" Alys sprang to her feet, her eyes wide and full of
+angry light. "Oh, you newspaper men!--How utterly abominable!"
+
+"Why? Sit down, my dear. Somebody did it--not? as our friends the
+Germans say. And undoubtedly that some one is the person most interested
+in getting him out of the way."
+
+"But not Mrs. Balfame! Why--I've been brought up on Mrs. Balfame. I'd as
+soon suspect my own mother."
+
+"No, my friend, you would not. Mrs. Crumley is adorable in her own way,
+but she is frankly and comfortably in her fifties. She is not a
+beautiful woman who looks fully ten years younger than she has any right
+to look. See?"
+
+"Oh--but--"
+
+"Think it over. You said the other day that you believed Mrs. Balfame to
+have unplumbed depths, or something equally popular with your sex. And
+you were horrified at her singular facial transformations no less than
+twice within a fortnight. Certainly the picture you drew of her stalking
+down the Country Club room was that of a woman in a mood for anything--"
+
+"Of a lovely well-bred woman outraged by the conduct of a drunken brute
+of a husband. But do you imagine that any woman goes through life
+without being turned into a fury now and then by her husband?"
+
+"No doubt. But, you see, the death of the brute occurred so soon after
+the transformation scene enacted behind the expressive face of the lady
+you have immortalised on paper--and no new-made devil is so complete as
+that which rises out of the debris of an angel. When your placid
+sternly-controlled women do explode, they may patch themselves together
+as swiftly as a cyclone passes, but one of the sinister faces of their
+hidden collection has been flashed momentarily before the public eye--"
+
+"Oh! Oh!"
+
+"I have tracked down every suspect, several upon whom no suspicion has
+alighted--as yet. To my mind there are only two people to whom the crime
+could be brought home."
+
+"Who is the other?"
+
+"Dwight Rush."
+
+This time Alys did not sit up with flaming eyes. To the astute gaze of
+the reporter she took herself visibly in hand. But she bit through the
+long tube between her lips. "What makes you think that?" she asked, as
+she tossed the bits into the fire and lighted another cigarette. "You
+roam too far afield for me."
+
+"He is in love with her."
+
+"With whom?"
+
+"The lady who was so opportunely, if somewhat sensationally, made a
+widow last Saturday night."
+
+"He is not! Why--how absurd you are to-night, Jim. She is a thousand
+years older than he."
+
+"How old is she--"
+
+"Forty-two. Mother sent her a birthday cake last month."
+
+"Rush is thirty-four. Who cares for eight years on the wrong side these
+days? She looks younger than he does, to say nothing of her own
+inconsiderable age; and when a woman is as lovely as Mrs. Balfame, as
+interesting as she must be with that astute mind, that subtle suggestion
+of mystery--"
+
+"You are mad, simply mad. In the first place, he has had no chance to
+find out whether she is interesting or not--if he had, all Elsinore
+would have rung with it. And--ah--"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"Come out with it. It's up to you to prove him innocent if you can."
+
+"He was in Brooklyn that evening. I met him at the Cummacks' the next
+day, and heard him say so."
+
+"Yes, that is what he is at pains to tell every one. Perhaps he can
+prove it, perhaps not. But that's not what was in your mind."
+
+"I was afraid of being misunderstood. But it is all right, for of course
+he can prove that he was in Brooklyn. I happen to know that he went to
+the Balfame house on his way back from the club Saturday evening, and
+only stayed a few minutes. I left the club just after Mrs. Balfame did,
+as I had been out there all afternoon and had promised mother to help
+her during the evening. I came in on the trolley and got off at the
+corner of Balfame and Dawbarn Streets, to finish an argument I was
+having with Harriet Bell over the possibility of Mrs. Balfame losing her
+social power through the scene out at the club--few of the members would
+care to go through such a scene a second time. Moreover, some of these
+newer rich women resent her supremacy and would like to force her to
+take a back seat.
+
+"I only talked for a few minutes after I got off the car and then walked
+quickly over to the avenue. Just as I turned the corner I saw Dwight
+Rush slam the Balfame gate and almost run up the walk. He seemed in a
+tearing hurry about something. I was standing on our porch only a few
+minutes later when he strode past--no doubt hoping to catch the
+seven-ten for Brooklyn. Now!"
+
+"Nobody would be happier than I to prove a first-class alibi for Rush--"
+
+"Who else suspects him?"
+
+"No one; and so far as I am concerned no one shall. If you want the
+whole truth, what I'm as intent on just now as big news itself is
+complete exoneration for my friend. But if he didn't do it, she did. And
+if he butted in upon her at a time like that it was because he was
+beside himself--no doubt he asked her to elope with him--get a
+divorce--"
+
+"What utter nonsense!"
+
+"Perhaps. But if she saw her chance, I'm thinking she wouldn't have
+hesitated a minute to put a bullet in Balfame. People don't turn as sick
+at the mere thought of committing murder, when there's a good chance of
+putting it over, as you may imagine. Most of us experience the impulse
+some time or other. Cowardice or circumstances safeguard us. She did it,
+take my word for it. She deliberately poisoned a glass of lemonade
+first, for Balfame to drink when he came home on his way to take the
+train for Albany. Then, something or other interfering--what, I can only
+guess at as yet--she found her chance to shoot, and shot."
+
+"Why, if all that were true, she would be a fiend."
+
+"Not necessarily. Merely a highly exasperated woman. One, moreover, who
+had locked herself up too long. Marital squabbles are safety valves, and
+I understand she let him do the rowing. But I don't care about her
+impulses. The act is enough for me. Psychology later, when I write a
+page of Sunday stuff. But you can see for yourself that if she isn't
+indicted, and pretty quick, Dwight Rush will be?"
+
+"But no one else suspects him."
+
+"Not yet. But the whole town thinks of nothing else. And as they've
+about given up all hope of the political crowd, as well as gunmen and
+tango girls, they'll veer presently toward the truth. But before they
+settle down on their idol's lofty head, they'll root about for some man
+who might easily be in love with her--although hopelessly, as a matter
+of course. Then they'll recall a thousand trifles that no doubt you too
+recall without effort."
+
+"It's true she turned to him out there, ignoring men she had known for
+years--she saw him at the house that night, if only for a few
+moments--Oh, it's too horrible! Mrs. Balfame. An Elsinore lady! And she
+has been so good to us all these hard years, helped us over and over
+again. Oh, I don't mind telling you, Jim, that I was a little bit
+jealous of her--I rather liked Rush--he was interesting and a nice male
+creature, and I was so lonely--and he stopped coming so suddenly--and
+then seeing him so delighted to meet her that night--and both of them
+dragging up the avenue as if each moment were a jewel--I've always
+thought it hateful for married women to try to cut girls out--it's so
+unnatural--but I can't hear her accused of murder--to go--Oh, it's too
+awful to talk about!"
+
+"She'd get off. Don't let that worry you. Innocent or guilty. There's no
+other way of saving Rush. Be more jealous, if that will help matters.
+He'll marry her the moment he decently can."
+
+"I don't believe he cares a bit for her. And I don't believe she will
+marry him or any one."
+
+"Oh, yes, she will. He's the sort to get what he wants--and, take it
+from me, he is mad about her. And she's at the age to be carried off her
+feet by an ardent determined lover. Make no mistake about that. Besides,
+her's is a name that she'll want to drop as soon as possible."
+
+"Jim Broderick, you know that you are deliberately playing on my female
+nature, on all the baseness you feel sure is in it. I'd always thought
+you rather subtle, diplomatic. I don't thank you for the compliment of
+frankness."
+
+"My dear girl, it is a compliment--my utter lack of diplomacy with you.
+I want to pull this big thing off for my paper, for your paper. And I
+want to save the friend of both of us. I have merely tried to prove to
+you that Mrs. Balfame is a mere human being, not a goddess, and deserves
+to pay some of the penalty of her crime, at least. Certainly, she isn't
+worth the sacrifice of Dwight Rush--"
+
+"But if he can prove his alibi--"
+
+"Suppose he couldn't. It was Saturday night. What more likely than that
+he failed to find the man he wanted? I have a dark suspicion that he
+never went near Brooklyn that night, was in no mood to think of
+business; although I don't for a moment believe he was near the Balfame
+place, or knows who did it--unless Mrs. Balfame has confessed to him.
+She is a very clever woman, not likely to linger on smugly in any fool's
+paradise. She must know that suspicion will work round to her, and
+knowing his infatuation, no doubt has consulted him."
+
+Broderick really thought nothing of the sort, but calculated his words;
+and they produced their effect. The blood rose to the girl's hair, then
+ebbed, leaving her ghastly. "He would hate her then," she whispered.
+
+"Not Rush. Another man, perhaps; but not only do things go too deep with
+a man like that for anything but time to cure, but he's chock full of
+romantic chivalry. And he's madly in love, remember; by that I mean in
+the first flush. He'd look upon her as a martyr, and immediately set to
+work to ward suspicion from her; if an alibi could not be proved for him
+he'd take the crime on his own shoulders, if the worst came to worst."
+
+"Oh! Are men really so Quixotic in these days?"
+
+"Haven't changed fundamentally since they evolved from protoplasm."
+
+"But why should all that chivalry--that magnificent passion--the first
+love of a man like that--be called out by a woman of Mrs. Balfame's age?
+Why, it's some girl's right! I don't say mine. Don't think I'm a dog in
+the manger. I'm trying not to be. But the world is full of girls--not
+foolish young things only good enough for boys, but girls in their
+twenties, bright, companionable, helpful, real mates for men--Why, it is
+unnatural, damnable!"
+
+"Yes, it is," said Broderick sympathetically. "But if human nature
+weren't a tangled wire fence electrified full of contradictions, life
+wouldn't be interesting at all. Perhaps it's a mere case of affinity,
+destiny--don't ever betray me. But there it is. As well try to explain
+the abrupt taking off of useful men in their prime, of lovely children,
+of needed mothers, of aged women who have lived exemplary lives, mainly
+for others, spending their last years with the horrors of cancer. Don't
+try to explain human passion. And she _is_ beautiful, and fresher to
+look at than girls of eighteen that tango day and night. But he must be
+saved from her as well as from arrest. Will you help me?"
+
+"What do you want me to do?"
+
+"Get further evidence about Mrs. Balfame."
+
+"I cannot, and would not if I could. Do you think I would be the means
+of fastening the crime of murder on any woman?"
+
+"You would if you were a hardened--and good--newspaper woman."
+
+"Well, I'm not. And I won't. Do your own sleuthing."
+
+"More than I are on the job, but I want your help. I don't say you can
+pick up fragments of her dress in the grove, or that you can--or
+would--worm yourself into her confidence and extract a confession. But
+you can set your wits to work and think up ways to put me on the track
+of more evidence than I've got now. Can you think of anything off-hand?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Ah? What does that intonation mean?"
+
+"Your ears are off the key."
+
+"Not mine. Tell me at once--No,"--He rose and took up his hat--"never
+mind now. Think it over. You will tell me in a day or two. Just remember
+while watching all my little seeds sprout that you can help me save a
+fine fellow and put my heel on a snake--a murderess! Paugh! There's
+nothing so obscene. Good night."
+
+She did not rise as he let himself out, but sat beside her cold stove
+thinking and crying until her mother called her to come in and go to
+bed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+Mrs. Balfame, after she dismissed the newspaper men, went up to her
+bedroom and sat very still for a long while. She was apprehensive rather
+than frightened, but she felt very sober.
+
+She had accepted the assurance of the chief of the local police that his
+inquiry regarding the pistol was a mere matter of routine, and had
+merely obeyed a normal instinct in concealing it. But she knew the
+intense interest of her community in the untimely and mysterious exit of
+one of its most notorious members, an interest raised to the superlative
+degree by the attentions of the metropolitan press; and she knew also
+that when a community is excited suspicions are rapidly translated into
+proofs, and every clue feeds the appetite for a victim.
+
+The European war was a dazzling example on the grand scale of the
+complete breakdown of intellect before the primitive passions of hatred,
+greed, envy, and the recurrent desire of man to kill, combined with that
+monstrous dilation of the ego which consoles him with a childish belief
+in his own impeccability.
+
+The newspapers of course pandered to the taste of their patrons for
+morbid vicarious excitement; she had glanced contemptuously at the
+headlines of her own "Case," and had accepted her temporary notoriety as
+a matter of course, schooled herself to patience; the ordeal was
+scarifying but of necessity brief.
+
+But these young men. They had insinuated--what had they not insinuated?
+Either they had extraordinary powers of divination, or they were a
+highly specialised branch of the detective force. They had asked
+questions and forced answers from her that made her start and shiver in
+the retrospect.
+
+Was it possible they believed she had murdered David Balfame, or were
+they merely seeking material for a few more columns before the case died
+a natural death? She had never been interviewed before, save once
+superficially as President of the Friday Club, but she knew one or two
+of the county editors, and Alys Crumley had sometimes amused her with
+stories of her experiences as a New York reporter.
+
+These young men, so well-groomed, so urbane, so charming even, all of
+them no doubt generously equipped to love and marry and protect with
+their lives the girl of their choice, were they too but the soldiers of
+an everlasting battlefield, often at bay and desperate in the trenches?
+No matter how good their work, how great their "killing," the struggle
+must be renewed daily to maintain their own footing, to advance, or at
+least to uphold, the power of their little autocracy. To them journalism
+was the most important thing in the world, and mere persons like
+herself, suddenly lifted from obscurity to the brassy peaks of notoriety
+were so much material for first page columns of the newspapers they
+served with all the loyalty of those deluded soldiers on the European
+battlefields. She understood them with an abrupt and complete clarity,
+but she hated them. They might like and even admire her, but they would
+show her no mercy if they discovered that she had been in the yard that
+night. She felt as if a pack of wolves were at her heels.
+
+But finally her brow relaxed. She shrugged her shoulders and began to
+unbutton the dense black gown that had expressed the mood the world
+demands of a four-days' widow. Let them suspect, divine what they chose.
+Not a soul on earth but Anna Steuer knew that she had been out that
+night after her return home. Even had those lynx-eyed young men sat on
+the box hedge they could not have seen her, for the avenue was well
+lighted, and the grove, the entire yard in fact, had been as black as a
+mine. Even the person skulking among those trees could not have guessed
+who she was.
+
+For a moment she had been tempted to tell them a little; that she had
+looked out and seen a moving shadow in the grove. But she had remembered
+in time that they would ask why she had reserved this testimony at the
+coroner's inquest. Her rôle was to know nothing. Indubitably the shot
+had been fired from the trees; nobody questioned that; why involve
+herself? They would discharge still another set of questions at her,
+among others why she had not telephoned for the police.
+
+As she hung up her gown she recognised the heavy footfalls of her maid
+of all work, and when Frieda knocked, bade her enter, employing those
+cool impersonal tones so resented by the European servant after a brief
+sojourn on the dedicated American soil.
+
+As the girl closed the door behind her without speaking, Mrs. Balfame
+turned sharply. She felt at a disadvantage. As her figure was reasonably
+slim, she wore a cheap corset which she washed once a month in the bath
+tub with her nailbrush; and her linen, although fresh, as ever, was of
+stout longcloth, and unrelieved by the coquetry of ribbons. She wore a
+serviceable tight petticoat of black jersey, beyond which her well-shod
+feet seemed to loom larger than her head. She was vaguely grateful that
+she had not been caught by Alys Crumley, so fond of sketching her, and
+was about to order Frieda to untie her tongue and be gone, when she
+noticed that the girl's face was no longer bound, and asked kindly:
+
+"Has the toothache gone? I hope you do not suffer any longer."
+
+Frieda lifted her small and crafty eyes and shot a suspicious glance at
+the mistress who had been so indifferent to what she believed to be the
+worst of all pains.
+
+"It's out."
+
+"Too bad you didn't have it out at once." Mrs. Balfame hastily encased
+herself in her bath robe and sat down. "I'll take my dinner
+upstairs--why--what is it?"
+
+"I want to go home."
+
+"Home?"
+
+"To Germany."
+
+"But, of course you can't. There are a lot of German reservists in the
+country who would like to go home and fight, but they can't get past the
+British."
+
+"Some have. I could."
+
+"How? That is quite interesting."
+
+"I not tell. But I want to go."
+
+"Then go, by all means. But please wait a day or two until I get another
+girl."
+
+"Plenty girls out of job. I want to go to-morrow."
+
+"Oh, very well. But you can't expect a full month's wages, as it is you
+that is serving notice, not I."
+
+"I do not want a full month wage. I want five hundert dollar."
+
+Mrs. Balfame turned her amazed eyes upon the girl. Her first thought was
+that the creature had been driven insane by her letters from home, and
+wondered if she could overcome her if attacked. Then as she met those
+small, sharp, crafty eyes, set high in the big stolid face like little
+deadly guns in a fort, her heart missed a beat. But her own gaze, large
+and cold, did not waver, and she said satirically:
+
+"Well, I am sure I hope you will get it."
+
+"I get it--from you."
+
+Mrs. Balfame lifted her shoulders. "What next? I have contributed what
+little I can afford to the war funds. I am sorry, but I cannot
+accommodate you."
+
+"You give me five hundert dollar," reiterated the thick even voice, "or
+I tell the police you come in the back door two minutes after Mr.
+Balfame he was kilt at the front gate."
+
+Obvious danger once more turned Mrs. Balfame into pure steel. "Oh, no;
+you will tell them nothing of the sort, for it is not true. I thought I
+heard some one on the back stairs when I went down to the kitchen. As
+you know I always drink a glass of filtered water before going to bed. I
+had forgotten the episode utterly, but I remember now, I heard a noise
+outside, even imagined that some one turned the knob of the door, and
+called up to ask you if you also had heard. I did not know that anything
+had happened out in front until I returned to my room."
+
+"I see you come in the kitchen door." But the voice was not quite so
+even, the shifty glance wavered. Frieda felt suddenly the European
+peasant in the presence of the superior by divine right. Mrs. Balfame
+followed up her advantage.
+
+"You are lying--for purposes of blackmail. You did not see me come in
+the door, because I had not been outside of it. I do not even remember
+opening it to listen, although I may have done so. You saw nothing and
+cannot blackmail me. Nor would any one believe your word against mine."
+
+"I hear you come in just after me--"
+
+"Heard? Just now you said you saw."
+
+"Ach--"
+
+Mrs. Balfame had an inspiration. "My God!" she exclaimed, springing to
+her feet, "the murderer took refuge in the house, was hidden in the
+cellar or attic all night, all the next day! He may be here yet! You may
+be feeding him!"
+
+She advanced upon the staring girl whose mouth stood open. "Of course.
+Of course. You are a friend of Old Dutch. It was one of his gunmen who
+did it, and you are his accomplice. Or perhaps you killed him yourself.
+Perhaps he treated you as he treated so many girls, and you killed him
+and are trying to blackmail me for money to get out of the country."
+
+"It is a lie!" Frieda's voice was strangled with outraged virtue. "My
+man, he fight for the fatherland. Old Dutch, he will not hurt a fly. I
+would not have touch your pig of a husband. You know that, for you hate
+him yourself. I have see in the eye, in the hand. I know notings of who
+kill him, but--no, I have not see you come in the kitchen door, but I
+hear some one come in, the door shut, you call out in so strange
+voice--I believe before that you have kill him--now--now I do not
+know--"
+
+"It would be wise to know nothing,"--Mrs. Balfame's voice was charged
+with meaning--"unless you wish to be arrested as the criminal, or as an
+accomplice--after confessing that you entered the house within a moment
+or two of the shooting. Who is to say exactly when you did come in?
+Well, better keep your mouth shut. It is wise for innocent people to
+know as little about a crime as possible. Why did you testify before the
+coroner's jury that your tooth ached so you heard nothing? Why didn't
+you tell your story then?"
+
+"I was frightened, and my tooth--I can tink of notings else."
+
+"And now you think it quite safe to blackmail me?"
+
+"I want to go back to Germany--to my man--and I hate this country what
+hates Germany."
+
+"This country is neutral," said Mrs. Balfame severely. "It regards all
+the belligerents as barbarians tarred with the same brush. You Germans
+are so excitable that you imagine we hate when we merely don't care."
+This was intended to be soothing, but Frieda's brow darkened and she
+thrust out her pugnacious lips.
+
+"Germany, she is the greatest country in the whole world," she
+announced. "All the world--it muss know that."
+
+"How familiar that sounds! Just a slight variation on the old American
+brag that is quite a relief." Mrs. Balfame spoke as lightly as if she
+merely had let down the bars of her dignity out of sympathy with a
+lacerated Teuton. "Well, go back to your Germany, Frieda, if you can
+get there, but don't try to blackmail me again. I have no five hundred
+dollars to give you if I would. If you choose, you may stay your month
+out, and spend your evenings taking up a collection among your German
+friends. You are excused."
+
+She had achieved her purpose. The girl's practical mind was puzzled by
+the simple explanation of her mistress' presence in the kitchen, deeply
+impressed by the contemptuous refusal to be blackmailed. Her shoulders
+drooped and she slunk out of the room.
+
+For a moment Mrs. Balfame clung, reeling, to the back of a chair. Then
+she went downstairs and telephoned to Dwight Rush.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+The young lawyer was to call at eight o'clock. Mrs. Balfame put on her
+best black blouse in his honour; it was cut low about the throat and
+softened with a rolling collar of hemstitched white lawn. This was as
+far in the art of sex allurement as she was prepared to go; the bare
+idea of a negligée of white lace and silk, warmed by rose-colored
+shades, would have filled her with cold disgust. She was not a religious
+woman, but she had her standards.
+
+At a quarter of eight she made a careful inspection of the lower rooms;
+sleuths, professional and amateur, would not hesitate to sneak into her
+house and listen at keyholes. She inferred that the house was under
+surveillance, for she had looked from her window several times and seen
+the same man sauntering up and down that end of the avenue. No doubt
+some one watched the back doors also.
+
+Convinced that her home was still sacrosanct, she placed two chairs at a
+point in the parlour farthest from the doors leading into the hall, and
+into a room beyond which Mr. Balfame had used as an office. The doors,
+of course, would be open throughout the interview. No one should be able
+to say that she had shut herself up with a young man; on the other hand,
+it was the duty of the deceased husband's lawyer to call on the widow.
+Even if those young devils discovered that she had telephoned for him,
+what more regular than that she should wish to consult her lawyer after
+such insinuations?
+
+Rush arrived as the town clock struck eight. Frieda, who answered the
+door in her own good time, surveyed him suspiciously through a narrow
+aperture to which she applied one eye.
+
+"What you want?" she growled. "Mrs. Balfame she have seen all the
+reporters already yet."
+
+"Let the gentleman in," called Mrs. Balfame from the parlour. "This is a
+friend of my late husband."
+
+Rush was permitted to enter. He was a full minute disposing of his hat
+and overcoat in the hall, while Frieda dragged her heelless slippers
+back to the kitchen and slammed the door. His own step was not brisk as
+he left the hall for the parlour, and his face, always colourless,
+looked thin and haggard. Mrs. Balfame, as she rose and gave him her
+hand, asked solicitously:
+
+"Are you under the weather? How seedy you look. I wondered why you had
+not called--"
+
+"A touch of the grippe. Felt all in for a day or two, but am all right
+now. And although I have been very anxious to see you, I had made up my
+mind not to call unless you sent for me."
+
+"Well, I sent for you professionally," she retorted coolly. "You don't
+suppose I took your love making seriously."
+
+He flushed dully, after the manner of men with thick fair skins, and his
+hard blue eyes lost their fire as he stared at her. It was
+incomprehensible that she could misunderstand him.
+
+"It was serious enough to me. I merely stayed away, because, having
+spoken as I did, I--well, I cannot very well explain. You will remember
+that I made you promise to send for me if you were in trouble--"
+
+"I remembered!" She felt his rebuke obscurely. "It never occurred to me
+to send for any one else."
+
+"Thank you for that."
+
+"Did you mean anything but politeness when you said that you had been
+anxious to see me?"
+
+He hesitated, but he had already made up his mind that the time had come
+to put her on her guard. Besides, he inferred that she had begun herself
+to appreciate her danger.
+
+"You have read the newspapers. You saw the reporters this afternoon. Of
+course you must have guessed that they hope for a sensational trial with
+you as the heroine."
+
+"How can men--_men_--be such heartless brutes?"
+
+"Ask the public. Even that element that believes itself to be select and
+would not touch a yellow paper devours a really interesting crime in
+high life. Never mind that now. Let us get down to brass tacks. They
+want to fix the crime on you. How are they going to manage it? That is
+the question for us. Tell me exactly what they said, what they made you
+say."
+
+Mrs. Balfame gave him so circumstantial an account of the interview that
+he looked at her in admiration, although his rigid American face, that
+looked so strong, turned paler still.
+
+"What a splendid witness you would make!" He stared at the carpet for a
+moment, then flashed his eyes upward much as Broderick had done. "Tell
+me," he said softly, "is there anything you withheld from them? You know
+how safe you are with me. But I must be in a position to advise you what
+to say and to leave unsaid--if the worst comes."
+
+"You mean if I am arrested?" She had a moment of complete naturalness,
+and stared at him wildly. He leaned forward and patted her hand.
+
+"Anything is possible in a case like this. But you have nothing to fear.
+Now, will you tell me--"
+
+"Do you think I did it?"
+
+"I know that you did not. But I think you know something about it."
+
+"It would cast no light on the mystery. He was shot from that grove on a
+pitch dark night, and that is all there is to it."
+
+"Let me be the judge of that."
+
+"Very well. I had put out my light--upstairs--and, as I was nervous, I
+looked out of the window to see if Dave was coming. I so longed to have
+him come--and go! Then I happened to glance in the direction of the
+grove, and I saw some one sneaking about there--"
+
+"Yes!" He half rose, his eyes expanding, his nostrils dilating. "Go on.
+Go on."
+
+"I told you I was nervous--wrought up from that dreadful scene at the
+club. I just felt like an adventure! I slipped down stairs and out of
+the house by the kitchen door--Frieda takes the key of the back hall
+door on Saturday nights--thinking I would watch the burglar; of course
+that was what I thought he must be; and I knew that Dave would be along
+in a minute--"
+
+"How long was this after he telephoned? It would take him some time to
+walk from Cummack's; and he didn't leave at once--"
+
+"Oh, quite a while after. I was sure then that he would be along in a
+minute or two. Well--it may seem incredible to you, but I really felt
+as if excitement of that dangerous sort would be a relief."
+
+"I understand perfectly." Rush spoke with the fatuousness of man who
+believes that love and complete comprehension of the object beloved are
+natural corollaries. "But--but that is not the sort of story that goes
+down with a jury of small farmers and trades-people. They don't know
+much about your sort of nerves. But go on."
+
+"Well, I managed to get into the grove without being either seen or
+heard by that man. I am sure of that. He moved round a good deal, and I
+thought he was feeling about for some point from which he could make a
+dart for the house. Then I heard Dave in Dawbarn Street, singing. Then I
+saw him under the lamp-post. After that it all happened so quickly I can
+hardly recall it clearly enough to describe. The man near me crouched. I
+can't tell you what I thought then--if I knew he was going to shoot--or
+why I didn't cry out. Almost before I had time to think at all, he
+fired, and Dave went down."
+
+"But what about that other bullet? Are you sure there was no one else in
+the grove?"
+
+"There may have been a dozen. I heard some one running afterwards; there
+may have been more than one."
+
+"Did you have a pistol?" He spoke very softly. "Don't be afraid to tell
+me. It might easily have gone off accidentally--or something deeper than
+your consciousness may have telegraphed an imperious message to your
+hand."
+
+But Mrs. Balfame, like all artificial people, was intensely secretive,
+and only delivered herself of the unvarnished truth when it served her
+purpose best. She gave a little feminine shudder. "I never kept a pistol
+in the house. If I had, it would have been empty--just something to
+flourish at a burglar."
+
+"Ah--yes. I was going to say that I was glad of that, but I don't know
+that it matters. If you had taken a revolver out that night, loaded or
+otherwise, and confessed to it, you hardly could have escaped arrest by
+this time, even if it were a .38. And if you confessed to going out into
+the dark to stalk a man without one--that would make your adventure look
+foolhardy and purposeless--"
+
+It was evident that he was thinking aloud. She interrupted him sharply:
+
+"But you believe me?"
+
+"I believe every word you say. The more differently you act from other
+women, the more natural you seem to me. But I think you were dead right
+in suppressing the episode. It leads nowhere and would incriminate you."
+
+"It may come out yet. That is why I sent for you, not because I was
+afraid of those reporters. Frieda was on the backstairs that night when
+I came in. I thought I heard a sound and called out. I told Anna that
+night and she questioned Frieda indirectly and was satisfied that she
+had heard nothing, for although she had come home early with a
+toothache, she was suffering so intensely that she wouldn't have heard
+if the shot had been fired under her window. So I dismissed such
+misgivings as I had from my mind. But just after those reporters left
+she came up to my room and told me that she saw me come in, and tried to
+blackmail me for five hundred dollars. I soon made her admit that she
+had not seen me; but she heard me, no doubt of that. I explained
+logically why I was there--after a drink of water, and that I called out
+to her because I thought I heard some one try the door--but if those
+reporters get hold of her--"
+
+His face looked very grim. "That is bad, bad. By the way, why didn't you
+run to Balfame? That would seem the natural thing--"
+
+"I was suddenly horribly afraid. I think I knew he was dead and I didn't
+want to go near _that_. I ran like a dog back to its kennel."
+
+"It was a feminine enough thing to do." For the first time he smiled,
+and his voice, which had insensibly grown inquisitorial, softened once
+more. "It was a dreadful position to find oneself in and no mistake.
+Your instinct was right. If you had been found bending over him--still,
+as you had no weapon--"
+
+"I think on the whole it would have been better to have gone to him. Of
+course that is what I should have done if I had loved him. As it was, I
+ran as far from him as I could get--"
+
+"Well, don't let us waste time discussing the ought to have beens.
+Unless some one can prove that you were out that night, the whole
+incident must be suppressed. If you are arrested on any trumped up
+charge--and the district attorney is keener than the reporters--you must
+stick to your story. By the way, why didn't you tell the reporters that
+Frieda was in the house about the time the shot was fired?"
+
+"I had forgotten. The house has been full of people; the neighbourhood
+has lived here; I have noticed her no more than if she were as wooden as
+she looks."
+
+"Do you think she did it?"
+
+"I wish I could. But she would not have had time to get into the house
+before I did. And the footsteps were running toward the lane at the back
+of the grounds."
+
+"She is one of the swiftest dancers down in that hall where she goes
+with her crowd every Saturday night. I have been doing a little
+sleuthing on my own account, but I can't connect her up with Balfame."
+
+"He wouldn't have looked at her."
+
+"You never can tell. A man will often look quite hard at whatever
+happens to be handy. But she doesn't appear to have any sweetheart,
+although she's been in the country for four years. She is intimate in
+the home of Old Dutch and goes about with young Conrad, but he is
+engaged to some one else. All the boys like to dance with her. She left
+the hall suddenly and ran home--ostensibly wild with a toothache. If she
+hid in the grove to kill Balfame she could have got into the house
+before you did. What was she doing on the stair, anyway?"
+
+"I didn't ask her."
+
+"She may have been too out of breath to answer you. Or too wary. Those
+other footsteps--they may have been those of an accomplice; the man who
+fired the other pistol."
+
+"But I would have seen her running ahead of me."
+
+"Not necessarily. It was very dark. Your mind was stunned. You may have
+hesitated longer than you know before making for the house. One is
+liable to powerful inhibitions in great crises. Where is the girl? I
+think I'll have her in."
+
+He walked the floor nervously while Mrs. Balfame went out to the
+kitchen. Frieda was sitting by the stove knitting. Commanded to come to
+the parlour, her little eyes almost closed, but she followed Mrs.
+Balfame and confronted Rush, who stood in the middle of the room looking
+tall and formidable.
+
+"I am Mrs. Balfame's lawyer," he said without preamble. "She sent for me
+because you tried to blackmail her. What were you doing on the stairs
+when you heard Mrs. Balfame in the kitchen? You left the dance hall
+sometime before eight, and that could not have been more than five
+minutes past."
+
+Frieda pressed her big lips together in a hard line.
+
+"Oh, you won't speak. Well, if you don't explain to me, you will to the
+Grand Jury to-morrow. Or I shall get out a warrant to-night for your
+arrest as the murderer of David Balfame."
+
+"Gott!" The girl's face was almost purple. She raised her knitting
+needles with a threatening gesture that was almost dramatic. "I did not
+do it. She has done it."
+
+"What were you doing on the stairs?"
+
+"I would heat water for my tooth."
+
+"Cold water is the thing for an ulcerated tooth."
+
+"I never have the toothache like that already. I am in my room many
+minutes before I think I go down. Then, when I am on the stairs I hear
+Mrs. Balfame come in."
+
+"She has explained what you heard."
+
+"No, she have not. I think so when we have talked this evening, but not
+now. She is--was, I mean, all out of her breath."
+
+"I was terrified." Mrs. Balfame retorted so promptly that Rush flashed
+her a glance of admiration. Here was a woman who could take care of
+herself on the witness stand. "First I thought I heard some one trying
+to get into the door, and then some one sneaking up the stairs."
+
+"Oh--yes." Frieda's tones expressed no conviction. "The educated lady
+can think very quick. But I say that she have come in by the door, the
+kitchen door. Always I take the key to the hall door. She know that, and
+as she not know that I am in, she go out by the kitchen door. Always in
+the daytime when she goes to the yard she go by the hall door."
+
+"What a pity you did not slam the door when you came in. It would have
+been quite natural as you were in such agony." Rush spoke sarcastically,
+but he was deeply perturbed. It was impossible to tell whether the girl
+was telling the truth or a carefully rehearsed story.
+
+"Of course you know that if you tell that story to the police you will
+get yourself into serious trouble."
+
+"I get her into trouble."
+
+"Mrs. Balfame is above suspicion. It is not my business to warn you, or
+to defeat the ends of the law, of which apparently you know nothing--"
+
+"I know someting. Last night I have tell Herr Kraus; and he say that
+since I have told the coroner I know notings, much better I touch the
+lady for five hundert and go home."
+
+"O-h-h! That is the advice Old Dutch gave you! Splendid! I think the
+best thing I can do is to have you arrested bright and early to-morrow
+morning. Mrs. Balfame is cleared already. You may go."
+
+She stared at him for a moment out of eyes that spat fire like two
+little guns in the top of a fort; then she swung herself about and
+retreated to the kitchen.
+
+"That ought to make her disappear to-night. Her friends will hide her.
+The mere fact of her disappearance will convince the police, as well as
+the reporters, that she is guilty. You are all right." He spoke
+boyishly, and his face, no longer rigid, was full of light.
+
+"But if she is innocent?"
+
+"No harm done. She'll be smuggled out of the country and suspicion
+permanently diverted from you. That is all I care about." He caught her
+hands impulsively in his. "I am glad, so glad! Oh!--It is too soon now,
+but wait--" He was out of the house before she grasped the fact that he
+had arrested himself on the brim of another declaration.
+
+Mrs. Balfame went up to bed, serene once more in the belief that her
+future was her own, unclouded, full of attractive possibilities for a
+woman of her position and intellectual attainments.
+
+She made up her mind to take a really deep course of reading, so that
+the most spiteful should not call her superficial; moreover, she had
+been conscious more than once of certain mental dissatisfactions, of
+uneasy vacancies in a mind sufficiently awake to begin to realise the
+cheapness of its furnishings. Perhaps she would take a course in history
+at Columbia, another in psychology.
+
+As she put herself into a sturdy cotton night-gown and then brushed back
+her hair from a rather large forehead before braiding it severely for
+the night, she realised dimly that that way happiness might lie, that
+the pleasures of the intellectual life might be very great indeed. She
+wished regretfully that she could have been brilliantly educated in her
+youth. In that case she would not have married a man who would incite
+any spirited woman to seek the summary release, but would be to-day the
+wife of a judge, perhaps--some fine fellow who had showed the early
+promise that Dwight Rush must have done. If she could attract one man
+like that, at the age of forty-two, she could have had a dozen in her
+train when young if she had had the sense to appreciate them.
+
+But she was philosophical, and it was not her way to quarrel very deeply
+with herself or with life. Her long braids were as evenly plaited as
+ever.
+
+She sank into sleep, thinking of the disagreeable necessity of making
+the kitchen fire in the morning and cooking her own breakfast. Frieda of
+course would be gone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+The next morning, when Mrs. Balfame, running lightly down the back
+stairs, entered the kitchen half an hour earlier than her usual
+appearance in the dining-room, the front of her housefrock covered with
+a large apron and her sleeves pinned to the elbow, she beheld Frieda
+slicing potatoes.
+
+"Why!" The exclamation was impetuous, but her quick mind adapted itself.
+"I woke up early and thought I would come down and help," she continued
+evenly. "You have had so much to do of late."
+
+Frieda was regarding her with intense suspicion. "Never you have done
+that before," she growled. "You will see if I have the dishes by the
+dinner washed."
+
+"Nonsense. And everything is so different these days. I am hungry, too.
+I thought it would be nice to hurry breakfast."
+
+"Breakfast always is by eight. You have told me that when I come. I get
+up by half past six. First I air the house, and sweep the hall. Then I
+make the fire and put the water to boil. Then I peel the potatoes. Then
+I make the biscuit. Then I boil the eggs. Then I make the coffee--"
+
+"I know. You are marvellously systematic. But I thought you might make
+the coffee at once."
+
+"Always the coffee come last." Frieda resumed her task.
+
+"But I don't eat potatoes for breakfast."
+
+"I eat the potatoes. When they fry in the pan, then I put the biscuit in
+the oven. Then I boil the eggs and then I make the coffee. Breakfast is
+by eight o'clock."
+
+Mrs. Balfame, with a good-humoured laugh, turned to leave the kitchen.
+But her mind, alert with apprehension, cast up a memory, vague but far
+from soothing. "By the way, I seem to remember that I woke up suddenly
+in the night and heard voices down here. Did you have visitors?"
+
+Frieda flushed the deep and angry red of her infrequent moments of
+embarrassment. "I have not visitors in the night." She turned on the
+water tap, which made noise enough to discourage further attempts at
+conversation; and Mrs. Balfame, to distract her mind, dusted the
+parlour. She dared not go out into the yard and walk off her
+restlessness, for there were now two sentinels preserving what they
+believed to be a casual attitude before her gate. She would have given
+much to know whether those men were watching her movements or those of
+her servant.
+
+Immediately after breakfast, the systematic Frieda was persuaded to go
+to the railway station and buy the New York papers when the train came
+in. Frieda might be a finished product of the greatest machine shop the
+world has ever known, but she was young and she liked the bustle of life
+at the station, and the long walk down Main Street, so different from
+the aristocratic repose of Elsinore Avenue. Mrs. Balfame, watching
+behind the curtain, saw that one of the sentinels followed her. The
+other continued to lean against the lamp-post whittling a stick. Both
+she and Frieda were watched!
+
+But the disquiet induced by the not unnatural surveillance of premises
+identified with a recent crime was soon forgotten in the superior powers
+of the New York press to excite both disquiet and indignation.
+
+She had missed a photograph of herself while dusting the parlour and had
+forgiven the loyal thief as it was a remarkably pretty picture and
+portrayed a woman sweet, fashionable, and lofty. To her horror the
+picture which graced the first page of the great dailies was that of a
+hard defiant female, quite certain, without a line of letter press, to
+prejudice a public anxious to believe the worst.
+
+Tears of outraged vanity blurred her vision for a few moments before the
+full menace of that silent witness took possession of her. She knew that
+most people deteriorated under the mysterious but always fatal encounter
+of their photographs with the "staff artist," but she felt all the
+sensations of the outraged novice.
+
+A moment after she had dashed her tears away she turned pale; and when
+she finished reading the interviews the beautiful whiteness of her skin
+was disfigured by a greenish pallor.
+
+The interviews were written with a devilish cunning that protected the
+newspapers from danger of libel suit but subtly gave the public to
+understand that its appetite for a towering figure in the Balfame case
+was about to be gratified.
+
+There was no doubt that two shots had been fired from the grove
+simultaneously, and from revolvers of different calibre (picture of tree
+and gate).
+
+Was one of them--the smaller--fired by a woman? And if so, by what
+woman?
+
+Not one of the females whose names had been linked at one time or
+another with the versatile Mr. Balfame but had proved her alibi, and so
+far as was known--although of course some one as yet unsuspected may
+have climbed the back fence and hid in the grove--the only two women on
+the premises were the widow and her extraordinarily plain servant.
+
+Balfame was shot with a .41 revolver. In one of the newspapers it was
+casually and not too politely remarked that Mrs. Balfame had larger
+hands and feet than one would expect from her general elegance of figure
+and aristocratic features, and in the same rambling sentence (this was
+written by the deeply calculating Mr. Broderick) the public was informed
+that certain footprints might have been those of a large woman or of a
+medium sized man. In the next paragraph but one Mrs. Balfame's stately
+height was again commented upon, but as the public had already been
+informed that she was an expert at target practice, reiteration of this
+fact was astutely avoided.
+
+A great deal was said here and there of her composure, her large
+studiously expressionless grey eyes, her nimble mind that so often
+routed her inquisitors, but was allied to a temperament of ice and a
+manifest power of cool and deliberate calculation.
+
+The dullest reader was quickened into the belief that he was the real
+detective and that his unerring sense had carried him straight to the
+woman who had hated the murdered man and had quarrelled with him in
+public a few hours before his death.
+
+The episode of Mrs. Balfame's offer to make her husband a glass of
+doctored lemonade and the disappearance of both beverage and glass was
+not mentioned; presumably these bright young men did not believe in
+digressions or in rousing a curiosity they might not be able to appease.
+The interview concluded with a maddening hint at immediate developments.
+
+Mrs. Balfame let the papers drop to the floor one by one; when she had
+finished the last she drew her breath painfully for several moments. The
+room turned black, and it was cut by rows of bared and menacing teeth,
+infinitely multiplied.
+
+But she was not the woman to give way to fear for long, or even to
+bewilderment. There could be no real danger, and all that should concern
+her was the outrageous, the intolerably vulgar publicity. A woman whose
+good taste was both natural and cultivated, she felt this ruthless
+tossing of her sacred person into the public maw much as the more
+refined octoroons may have felt when they stood on the auction block in
+the good old days down South. She shuddered and gritted her teeth; she
+wished that she were a hysterical woman that she might find relief in
+shrieking at the top of her voice and smashing the furniture.
+
+Why, oh why, could not David Balfame have been permitted by the fate
+which had decreed his end on that particular night to enter the house
+and drink the lemonade; to die decently, painlessly, bloodlessly (she
+shrank aside when compelled to pass those blood stains on the brick
+path), as any man might die when his overtaxed heart simply stopped? She
+would have run down the moment she heard the fall, she would have
+managed to get the glass out of the way if Frieda had condescended to
+visit the scene, which was quite unlikely. She would have run over to
+Doctor Lequer, who lived next door to the Gifnings, and he would have
+sent for the coroner. Both inevitably would have pronounced the death
+due to heart failure. It was fate that had bungled, not she.
+
+She mused, however, that she should have had a duplicate glass of
+lemonade to leave half consumed on the table, as it would be recalled
+that he had expected to imbibe a soothing draught immediately upon his
+return; and adjacent liquids invariably induce suspicion in cases of
+sudden death. But that did not matter now.
+
+She set her wits to work upon the identity of her companion in the
+grove. Was it Frieda? Or an accomplice of the girl, who was already in
+the house or on the alert to direct him out by the rear pathway? But why
+Frieda? She knew the raging hate that had filled her husband since the
+declaration of war, and she knew that his rivals in politics hated him
+with increasing virulency; as they were beginning to hate everybody that
+presumed to question the right and might of Germany.
+
+But she was a woman just and sensible. Nor for a moment could she
+visualise Old Dutch or any of his tribe shooting David Balfame because
+he cursed the Kaiser and sang Tipperary. The supposition was too shallow
+to be entertained.
+
+The person in the grove had been either a bitter political rival too
+intimate with the local police to be in danger of arrest, or some woman
+who for a time may have believed herself to be his wife in the larger
+village of New York.
+
+She could have sworn that that stealthy figure so close to her was a
+man, but women's skirts were very narrow and silent these days, and
+after all she herself was as tall as the average man.
+
+Before noon the house was filled with sympathising and indignant
+friends. Cummack came up town to assure her that it was a shame; and he
+would ask Rush if those New York papers couldn't be had up for libel.
+He'd take the eleven-thirty for Dobton and consult with him.
+
+The ladies were knitting, no one more impersonally than Mrs. Balfame,
+although she was wondering if these kind friends expected to stay to
+lunch, when an automobile drove honking up to the door, and Mrs. Battle
+teetered over to the window.
+
+"For the land's sake," she exclaimed. "If it isn't the deputy sheriff
+from Dobton. Now, what do you suppose?"
+
+Mrs. Balfame stood up suddenly, and the other women sat with their
+needles suspended as if suddenly overcome by a noxious gas, with the
+exception of Mrs. Cummack, who ran over to her sister-in-law and put her
+plump arm about that easily compassed waist. Mrs. Balfame drew away
+haughtily.
+
+"I am not frightened," she said in her sweet cool voice. "I am prepared
+for anything after those newspapers--that is all."
+
+The bell pealed, and Mrs. Gifning, too curious to wait upon the
+hand-maiden, ran out and opened the front door. She returned a moment
+later with her little blue eyes snapping with excitement.
+
+"What do you think?" she gasped. "It is Frieda they want. She is being
+subpoenaed to Dobton to testify before the Grand Jury. The deputy
+sheriff is going to take her with him."
+
+Mrs. Balfame returned to her chair with such composure that no one
+suspected the sudden weakening of her knees. Instantly she realised the
+meaning of the voices she had heard in the night. Frieda had been
+"interviewed," either by the press or the police, and induced, probably
+bribed, to talk. No wonder she had not run away.
+
+But she too resumed her knitting.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+Young Bruce had had no appetite for his part in the Balfame drama. He
+had presented himself at the back door, however, at eight o'clock on the
+night of the interview with the heroine, assuming that Frieda would be
+moving at her usual snail's pace from the day of work toward the evening
+of leisure. She slammed the door in his face.
+
+When he persisted, thrusting his cherubic countenance through the
+window, she threatened him with the hose. Neither failure daunted him,
+and he was convinced that she knew more of the case than she was willing
+to admit; but it was obvious that he was not the man to appeal to the
+fragment of heart she had brought from East Prussia. The mere fact that
+he looked rather German and yet was straight American--employed,
+moreover, by a newspaper that made no secret of its hostility to her
+country--satisfied him that he would not be permitted to approach her
+closely enough to attempt any form of persuasion. He drew the long
+breath of deliverance as he reached this conclusion; the bare idea that
+he might have to bestow a kiss upon Frieda in the heroic pursuit of duty
+had induced a sensation of nausea. He was an extremely fastidious young
+man. But even as he accepted defeat with mingled relief and chagrin, the
+brilliant alternative occurred to him.
+
+He had ascertained that Frieda was intimate in the home of Conrad
+Kraus, otherwise "Old Dutch," of Dobton, the County seat. Conrad, Jr.,
+treated her as a brother should, and it was his habit to escort her home
+from the popular dance-hall of Elsinore on Saturday nights. Bruce had no
+difficulty in learning that the young German-American had been dancing
+with his favourite partner when her dead nerve seemed to threaten
+explosion and had fraternally run home with her. The energetic reporter
+did not wait upon the next trolley for Dobton, but hired an automobile
+and descended in front of Old Dutch's saloon fifteen minutes later.
+
+Young Kraus was busy; and Bruce, after ordering beer and cheese and
+taking it to an occupied table, drew the information from a neighbour
+that Conrad, Jr., would be on duty behind the bar until midnight. It was
+the habit of Papa Kraus to retire promptly on the stroke of nine and
+take his entire family, save Conrad, with him. The eldest of the united
+family continued to assuage the thirst of the neighbourhood until twelve
+o'clock, when he shut up the front of the house and went to bed in the
+rear as quickly as possible; he must rise betimes and clerk in the
+leading grocery-store of the town. He was only twenty-two, but thrifty
+and hard-working and anxious to marry.
+
+Bruce caught the next train for New York, had a brief talk with his city
+editor, and returned to Dobton a few moments before the closing hour of
+the saloon. He hung about the bar until the opportunity came to speak to
+Conrad unheard.
+
+"I want a word with you as soon as you have shut up," he said without
+preamble.
+
+The young German scowled at the reporter. Although a native son of
+Dobton, he resented the attitude of the American press as deeply as his
+irascible old father, and he still more deeply resented the suspicion
+that had hovered for a moment over the house of Kraus.
+
+"Don't get mad till you hear what I've got to say," whispered Bruce.
+"There may be a cool five hundred in it for you."
+
+Conrad glanced at the clock. It was five minutes to twelve. He stood as
+immobile as his duties would permit until the stroke of midnight, when
+he turned out the last reluctant patron, locked the door and followed
+the reporter down the still-illuminated street to a dark avenue in the
+residence quarter. Then the two fell into step.
+
+"Now, what is it?" growled Conrad, who did not like to have his habits
+disturbed. "I get up--"
+
+"That's all right. I won't keep you fifteen minutes. I want you to tell
+me all you know about the night of the Balfame murder."
+
+He had taken the young German's arm and felt it stiffen. "I know
+nothing," was the reply.
+
+"Oh, yes, you do. You took Frieda home and got there some little time
+before the shooting. You went in the side entrance to the back yard, but
+you could see the grove all right."
+
+"It was a black-dark night. I could see nothing in the grove."
+
+"Ah! You saw something else! You have been afraid to speak out, as there
+had been talk of your father having employed gun-men--"
+
+"Such lies!" shrieked young Kraus.
+
+"Of course! I know that. So does the press. That was a wild dream of
+the police. But all the same you thought it wouldn't be a bad idea to
+keep clear of the whole business. That is true. Don't attempt to deny
+it. You saw something that would put the law on the right track. Now,
+what was it? There are five hundred dollars waiting for you if you will
+tell the truth. I don't want anything but the truth, mind you. I don't
+represent a paper that pays for lies, so your honour is quite safe. So
+also are you."
+
+Conrad ruminated for a few moments. He was literal and honest and wanted
+to be quite positive that he was not asked to do something which would
+make him feel uncomfortable while investing those desirable five hundred
+dollars in West Elsinore town lots, and could reassure himself that the
+truth was always right whether commercially valuable or not. He balanced
+the pro's and con's so long that Bruce was about to break out
+impatiently just as he made up his mind.
+
+"Yes, I saw something. But I wished to say nothing. They might say that
+I was in it, or that I lied to protect Frieda--"
+
+"That's all right. There was no possible connection between her and
+Balfame--"
+
+Conrad went on exactly as if the reporter had not interrupted. "I had
+seen Frieda through the back door. She was crying with the toothache,
+and I heard her run upstairs. I thought I would wait a few moments. The
+drops she said she had might not cure her, and she might want me to go
+to a dentist's house with her. She had gone in the back-hall door.
+Suddenly I saw the kitchen door open, and as I was starting forward, I
+saw that it was not Frieda who came out. It was Mrs. Balfame. She closed
+the door behind her, and then crept past me to the back of the kitchen
+yard. I watched her and saw her turn suddenly and walk toward the grove.
+She did not make a particle of noise--"
+
+"How do you know it was not Frieda?"
+
+"Frieda is five-feet-three, and this was a tall woman, taller than I,
+and I am five-eight. I have seen Mrs. Balfame many times, and though I
+couldn't see her face,--she had a dark veil or scarf round it,--I knew
+her height and walk. Of course I watched to see what she was up to. A
+few moments later I heard Balfame turn in from Dawbarn Street, singing,
+like the fool he was, 'Tipperary,' and then I heard a shot. I guessed
+that Balfame had got what was coming to him, and I didn't wait to see. I
+tiptoed for a minute or two and then ran through the next four places at
+the back, and then out toward Balfame Street, for the trolley. But
+Frieda heard Mrs. Balfame when she came in. She was all out of breath,
+and, when she heard a sound on the stairs, called out before she
+thought, I guess, and asked Frieda if she had heard anything. But Frieda
+is very cautious. She had heard the shot, but she froze stiff against
+the wall when she heard Mrs. Balfame's voice, and said nothing. We told
+her afterwards that she had better keep quiet for the present."
+
+"And you think Mrs. Balfame did it?"
+
+"Who else? I shall not be so sorry if she goes to the chair, for a woman
+should always be punished the limit for killing a man, even such a man
+as Balfame."
+
+"No fear of that, but we'll have a dandy case. You tell that story to
+the Grand Jury to-morrow, and you get your five hundred before night.
+Now you must come and get me a word with Frieda. She won't look at me,
+and of course she is in bed anyhow. But I must tell her there are a
+couple of hundred in this for her if she comes through--"
+
+"But she'll be arrested for perjury. She testified at the coroner's
+inquest that she knew nothing."
+
+"An abscessed tooth will explain her reticence on any other subject."
+
+"Perhaps I should tell you that she came to see us to-night--last night
+it is now, not?--and told my papa that Lawyer Rush had frightened her,
+told her that she might be accused of the killing, that she had better
+get out. But Papa advised her to go home and fear nothing, where there
+was nothing to fear. He knew that if she ran away, he would be suspected
+again, the girl being intimate in the family; and of course the police
+would be hot on her trail at once. So, like the good sensible girl she
+is, she took the advice and went home."
+
+"All right. Come along. I'm not on the morning paper, but I promised the
+story to the boys if I could get it in time."
+
+He hired another automobile, and they left it at the corner of Dawbarn
+and Orchard Streets, entering the Balfame place by the tradesmen's gate
+on the left, and creeping to the rear of the house. The lane behind the
+four acres of the little estate was full of ruts and too far away from
+the house for adventuring on a dark night. They had been halted by the
+detective on watch, but when their errand was hastily explained, he
+joined forces with them and even climbed a lean-to in the endeavour to
+rouse Miss Appel from her young and virtuous slumbers. Their combined
+efforts covered three hours; and that explains why the tremendous
+news-story appeared in the early edition of the afternoon papers instead
+of whetting several million morning appetites.
+
+The interview with Frieda, who became very wide awake when the unseemly
+intrusion was elucidated by the trustworthy Conrad, and bargained for
+five hundred dollars, explains why Mrs. Balfame spent Thursday night in
+the County Jail behind Dobton Courthouse.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+When the Dobton sheriff and his deputies came to arrest Mrs. Balfame,
+the wife of their old comrade in arms, all they were able to tell her
+was that the District Attorney had applied for the warrant immediately
+after the testimony before the Grand Jury of Frieda Appel and of the
+Krauses, father and son. What that testimony had been they could not
+have told her if they would, but that it had been strong and
+corroborative enough to insure her indictment by the Grand Jury was as
+manifest as it was ominous.
+
+They arrived just as Mrs. Balfame was about to leave the house to lunch
+with Mrs. Cummack; Frieda had left long before it was time to prepare
+the midday meal. Mr. Cramb, the sheriff, shut the door behind him and in
+the faces of the indignant women reporters, who, less ruthless but
+equally loyal to their journals, wanted a "human interest" story for the
+stimulated public. Mrs. Balfame and her friends retreated before the
+posse into the parlour. Mrs. Battle wept loudly; Alys Crumley, who had
+come in with her mother a few moments since, fell suddenly on a chair in
+the corner and pressed her hands against her mouth, her horrified eyes
+staring at Mrs. Balfame. The other women shed tears as the equally
+doleful sheriff explained his errand and read the warrant. Mrs. Balfame
+alone was calm. She exerted herself supremely and sent so peremptory a
+message along her quaking nerves that it benumbed them for the moment.
+She had only a faint sense of drama, but a very keen one of her own
+peculiar position in her little world, and she knew that in this grisly
+crisis of her destiny she was expected to behave as a brave and
+dignified woman should--a woman of whom her friends could continue to
+exult as head and shoulders above the common mass. She rose to the
+occasion.
+
+"Don't you worry--just!" said Mr. Cramb, patting her shoulder, although
+he never had had the temerity to offer her his hand before, and had
+often "pitied Dave." "They lied, them Duytchers, for some reason or
+other, but they can't really have nothin' on you, and we'll find out
+what they're up to, double quick."
+
+"I do not worry," said Mrs. Balfame coldly, "--although quite naturally
+I object to the humiliation of arrest, and of spending even a night in
+jail. Exactly what is the charge against me?"
+
+The sheriff crumpled his features and cleared his throat. "Well, it's
+murder, I guess. It's an ugly word, but words don't mean nothin' when
+there's nothin' in them."
+
+"In the first degree?" shrieked Mrs. Gifning.
+
+Cramb nodded.
+
+"And it don't admit of bail?" Mrs. Frew's eyes rolled wildly.
+
+"Nothin' doin'."
+
+Mrs. Balfame rose hurriedly. There was a horrid possibility of contagion
+in this room surcharged with emotion. She kissed each of her friends in
+turn. "It will be all right, of course," she reminded them gently. "Only
+men could be taken in by such a plot, and of course there are a lot of
+Germans on the Grand Jury--there are so many in this county. I shall
+have an excellent lawyer, Dave's friend, Mr. Rush. And I am sure that I
+shall be quite comfortable in the County Jail--it is so nice and new."
+But she shuddered at the vision, in spite of her fine self-control.
+
+"You'll be treated like a queen," interposed the sheriff hastily. He was
+proud of her, and immensely relieved that he was not to escort an
+hysterical prisoner five miles to the County Seat. "You'll have the
+Warden's own suite, and I guess you'll be able to see your friends right
+along. Guess we'd better be gettin' on."
+
+As Mrs. Balfame was leaving the room, her eyes met the horrified and
+puzzled gaze of Alys Crumley, and one of those obscure instincts that
+dart out of the subconscious mind like memories of old experiences
+released under high mental pressure, made her put out her hand
+impulsively and draw the girl to her.
+
+"I can always be sure of your trust," she whispered. "Won't you come up
+and help me pack?"
+
+Alys followed unresisting: the blow had been so sudden; she had believed
+so little in the power of the law to touch a woman like Mrs. Balfame,
+and even less that she committed the crime; for the moment she forgot
+her jealous hostility, remembered only that the best friend of her
+mother and of her own childhood was in dire straits.
+
+Mrs. Cummack had run up ahead and was carrying two suitcases from the
+large closet to the bed as they entered. Her face was burning and
+tear-stained, but she was one of those highly efficient women of the
+home that rise automatically to every emergency and act while others
+consider. "Glad you've come too," she said to Alys. "Open those drawers
+in the bureau, and I'll pick out what's needed. Of course the ridiculous
+charge will be dismissed in a day or two--but still! Well, if they're
+all idiots down there at Dobton, we can come over here and pack a trunk
+later. To take it now would be nonsense, and Sam'll move heaven and
+earth to get them to accept bail. You just put on your best black, Enid,
+and wear your veil so they can't snapshot you."
+
+While she was gasping on, Mrs. Balfame, whose brain had never worked
+more clearly, went into the bathroom and emptied the contents of an
+innocent looking medicine bottle into the drain of the wash-stand. She
+feared young Broderick more than she feared the district attorney, who,
+after all, had been her husband's friend--had, in fact, eaten all of his
+political crumbs out of that lavish but discriminating hand. She
+recalled that she had always been gracious to him (at her husband's
+request, for she regarded him as a mere worm) when he had dined at her
+table, and felt sure that he would favour her secretly, whatever his
+obvious duty. Moreover, he was of those that spat at the very mention of
+the powerful Kraus, and would gladly, especially since the outbreak of
+the war, have run him out of the community.
+
+Mrs. Balfame, being a brilliant exponent of that type which enjoys the
+unwavering admiration and loyalty of its own sex, had a corresponding
+belief in her friends, and rarely if ever had used the word _cat_
+denotatively. She called out the best in women as they of a certainty
+called out the best in her. Therefore, it did not occur to her either to
+close the bathroom door or to glance behind her. Alys Crumley, standing
+before the bureau and happening to look into the mirror, saw her empty
+and rinse the bottle. The suspicions of Broderick regarding the glass of
+lemonade flashed into the young artist's mind; and from that moment she
+believed in the guilt of Mrs. Balfame.
+
+Although her hands were shaking Alys lifted from the lavender-scented
+drawers the severely chaste underwear of the leader of Elsinore society,
+and as soon as the suitcases were packed, she made haste to adjust Mrs.
+Balfame's veil and pin it so firmly that no more kisses could be
+exchanged. Of her ultimate purpose Alys had not the ghost of an idea,
+but kiss a woman whom she believed to be guilty of murder and whom she
+might possibly be driven to betray, she would not. Suddenly grown as
+secretive as if she had a crime of her own to conceal, she even walked
+out to the car with Mrs. Balfame and helped to drive away the crowding
+newspaper women, several of whom she recognised. They in turn bore her
+off, determined to get some sort of a story for the issues of the
+morrow.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+Mrs. Balfame was whirled to Dobton in ten minutes--herself, she fancied,
+the very centre of a whirlwind. The automobile was pursued by three cars
+containing members of the press, which shot past just before they
+reached Dobton Courthouse, that the occupants might leap out and fix
+their cameras. Other men and women of the press stood before the locked
+gate of the jail yard, several holding cameras. But once more the
+reading public was forced to be content with an appetising news-story
+illustrated by a tall black mummy.
+
+Mrs. Balfame walked past them holding her clenched hands under her veil,
+but to all appearance composed and indifferent. The sob-sisters were
+enthusiastic, and the men admired and disliked her more than ever. Your
+true woman always weeps when in trouble, just as she blushes and
+trembles when a man selects her to be his comforter through life.
+
+The Warden and his wife, who but a few weeks since had moved into their
+new quarters, had moved out again without a murmur and with an
+unaccustomed thrill. What a blessed prospect after screaming drunks,
+drug-fiends and tame commercial sinners!
+
+The doors clanged shut; Mrs. Balfame mounted the stairs hastily, and was
+still composed enough to exclaim with pleasure and to thank the Warden's
+wife, Mrs. Larks, when she saw that flowers were on the table and even
+on the window-sills.
+
+"I guess you'll stand it all right," said Mrs. Larks proudly. "Just make
+yourself at home and I'll have your lunch up in a jiffy."
+
+Mrs. Cummack and Mrs. Gifning had come in the car with Mrs. Balfame, and
+Cummack and several other men of standing arrived almost immediately to
+assure her, with pale disturbed faces, that they were doing their best
+to get her out on bail. While she was trying to eat her lunch, the
+telephone bell rang, and her set face became more animated as she
+recognised Rush's strong confident voice. He had read the news in the
+early edition of the afternoon papers, in New York, telephoned to Dobton
+and found that his immediate fear was realised and that she was in the
+County Jail. He commanded her to keep up her spirits and promised to be
+with her at four o'clock.
+
+Then she begged her friends to go and let her rest and sleep if
+possible; they knew just how serious that consultation with her lawyer
+must be. When she was alone, however, she picked up the telephone, which
+stood on a side table, and called up the office of Dr. Anna Steuer. Ever
+since her arrest she had been dully conscious of her need of this oldest
+and truest of her friends. It came to her with something of a shock as
+she sat waiting for Central to connect, that she had leaned upon this
+strong and unpretentious woman far more than her calm self-satisfied
+mind had ever admitted.
+
+Dr. Anna's assistant answered the call, and when she heard Mrs.
+Balfame's voice broke down and wept loudly.
+
+"Oh, do be quiet," said Mrs. Balfame impatiently. "I am in no danger
+whatever. Connect me with the Doctor."
+
+"Oh, it ain't only that. Poor--poor Doctor! She's been all in for days,
+and this morning she just collapsed, and I sent for Dr. Lequeur, and he
+pronounced it typhoid and sent for the ambulance and had her taken out
+to Brabant Hospital. The last thing she said--whispered--was to be sure
+not to bother you, that you would hear it soon enough--"
+
+Mrs. Balfame hung up the receiver, which had almost fallen from her
+shaking hand. She turned cold with terror. Anna ill! And when she most
+wanted her! A little window in her brain opened reluctantly, and
+superstition crept in. Beyond that open window she seemed to hear the
+surge of a furious and irresistible tide. Had it been waiting all these
+years to overleap the barriers about her well ordered life and sweep her
+into chaos? She frowned and put her thoughts more colloquially. Had her
+luck changed? Was Fate against her? When she thought of Dwight Rush, it
+was only to shrink again. If anything happened to him--and why not? Men
+were killed every day by automobiles, and he had an absentminded way of
+walking--
+
+She sprang to her feet and paced up and down the two rooms of the suite,
+determined upon composure, and angry with herself. She recovered her
+mental balance (so rarely disturbed by imaginative flights), but her
+spirits were at zero; and she was sitting with her elbows on her knees,
+her hands pressed to her face when Rush entered promptly at four
+o'clock. He was startled at the face she lifted. It looked older but
+indefinably more attractive. Her inviolable serenity had irritated even
+him at times, although she was his innocent ideal of a great lady.
+
+The Warden, who had unlocked the door, left them alone, and Rush sat
+down and took both her hands in his warm reassuring grasp.
+
+"You are not to be the least bit frightened," he said. "The great thing
+for you to remember is that your husband's political crowd rules, and
+simply laughs at your arrest. They are more positive than ever that some
+political enemy did it. Balfame's temper was growing shorter and
+shorter, and he had many enemies, even in his own party. But the crowd
+will pull every wire to get you off, and they can pull wires, all
+right--"
+
+"But on what evidence am I arrested? What did those abominable people
+say to the Grand Jury? Am I never to know?"
+
+"Well, rather. It's all in the afternoon papers, for one of the
+reporters got the evidence before the Grand Jury did."
+
+He had taken off his overcoat, and he crossed the room and took from a
+pocket a copy of _The Evening News_. She glanced over it with her lips
+drawn back from her teeth. It contained not only the story the
+enterprising Mr. Bruce had managed to obtain from Frieda and Conrad Jr.,
+but a corroboration of the maid's assertion that, warned by the family
+friend and lawyer, Mr. Dwight Rush, to disappear, she had gone to Papa
+Kraus for advice. Not a word, however, of blackmail.
+
+"So the public believes already that I am a murderess! No doubt I should
+be convinced as readily myself. It is all so adroit!" Mrs. Balfame
+spoke quietly but with intense bitterness. "I suppose I must be
+tried--more and still more publicity. No one will ever forget it. Do you
+suppose it is true young Kraus saw me that night?"
+
+"God knows!"
+
+He got up again and moved nervously about the room. "I wish I could be
+sure. That is the point to which I must give the deepest
+consideration--whether you are to admit or not that you went out. The
+Grand Jury and Gore believe it. Young Kraus has a very good name. Frieda
+has always been well behaved. There are six Germans on the Grand Jury,
+moreover. We must see that none get on the trial jury. Gore wants to
+believe--"
+
+"But he was a friend of Dave's."
+
+"Exactly. He is making much of that point. Affects to be filled with
+righteous wrath because you killed his dear old friend. Trust a district
+attorney. All they care for is to win out, and he has his spurs to win,
+in the bargain. I met him a few moments ago; he was about equally full
+of gin fizzes and the 'indisputable fact' that you are the only person
+in sight with a motive. Oh, don't! Don't!"
+
+Mrs. Balfame had broken down. She flung her arms over the table and her
+head upon them. More than once in her life she had shed tears both
+diplomatic and spontaneous, but for the first time since she was a child
+she sobbed heavily. She felt forlorn, deserted, in awful straits.
+
+"Anna is ill," she articulated. "Anna! My one real friend--the only one
+that has meant anything to me. Life has gone pretty well with me. Now
+everything is changed. I know that terrible things are about to happen
+to me."
+
+"Not while I am alive. I heard of Dr. Anna's illness on my way to New
+York. Lequeur was on the train. You--you must let me take her place. I
+am devoted to you heart and soul. You surely know that."
+
+"But you are not a woman. It's a woman friend I want now, a strong one
+like Anna. Those other women--oh, yes, they're devoted to me--have been,
+but they've suddenly ceased to count, somehow. Besides, they'll soon
+believe me guilty. I hate them all. Only Anna would have understood--and
+believed."
+
+Rush had been administering awkward little pats to the soft masses of
+her hair. Suddenly he realised that his faith in her complete innocence
+was by no means as stable as it had been; she had confessed to him that
+she had been in the grove that night stalking the intruder. How absurd
+to believe that she had gone out unarmed. He had read the circumstantial
+details of the reporter's interviews with Frieda and young Kraus. While
+the writers were careful not to make the downright assertion that Mrs.
+Balfame had fired the fatal shot, the public saw her in the act of
+levelling one of the pistols--so mighty is the power of the trained and
+ruthless pen.
+
+As he stood looking down upon his unexpected surrender to emotional
+excitement, he asked himself deliberately: What more natural, if she had
+a pistol in her hand and that low-lived creature presented himself
+abruptly and alone, than that it should go off of its own accord, so to
+speak, whether hers had been the bullet to penetrate that loathsome
+target or not? If so, what had she done with the pistol?
+
+He sat down and laid his hand firmly on her arm.
+
+"There is something I must tell you. It is something Frieda forgot to
+tell the reporter, but she gave it to the Grand Jury. With the help of a
+couple of extra gin fizzes, I extracted it from Gore. It is this: she
+told the Grand Jury that several times when she did her weekly cleaning
+upstairs she saw a pistol in the drawer of a table beside your bed.
+Will--won't you tell me?"
+
+He felt the arm in his clasp grow rigid, but Mrs. Balfame answered
+without a trace of her recent agitation: "I told you before that I never
+had a pistol. It would be like her to be spying about among my things,
+but I wonder she would admit it."
+
+"She is delighted with her new importance, and, I fancy, has been bribed
+to tell all she knows."
+
+"In that case she wouldn't mind telling more. And no doubt she will
+think of other sensational items before the trial. She will have
+awakened in the night after the crime and heard me drop the pistol
+between the walls, or she will have seen me loading it on the afternoon
+of the shooting."
+
+"Yes, there is no knowing when those low-grade imaginations, once
+started, will stop. Memory ceases to function in brains of that sort,
+and its place is taken by a confused jumble of induced or auto
+suggestions, which are carefully straightened out by the practised
+lawyer in rehearsals. But I almost wish that you had taken a pistol out
+that night and would tell me where to find it. I'd lose it somewhere out
+in the marsh."
+
+"I had no pistol." Not yet could she take him into her confidence to
+that extent, although she knew that he was about to stake his
+professional reputation on her acquittal.
+
+He dismissed the subject abruptly. "By the way, I gave the story of
+Frieda's attempt to blackmail you to Broderick and two other men just
+before I left town--laying emphasis on the fact that you always drank a
+glass of filtered water before going to bed. They made a wry face over
+that, but it is news and they must publish it. There are many things in
+your favour--particularly Frieda's assertion before the coroner that she
+knew nothing of the case. She is a confessed perjurer. Also, why didn't
+she answer when you called up to her, if she was on the back stairs?
+There are things that satisfy a grand jury that will not go down with a
+trial jury. Now you must, you must trust me."
+
+She looked up at him dully. But in a moment her eyes warmed and she
+smiled faintly. All the female in her responded to the traditional
+strength and power of the male. She also knew the sensitiveness of man's
+vanity and the danger either of starving it or dealing it a sudden blow.
+She sometimes felt sorry for men. It was their self-appointed task to
+run the planet, and they must be reminded just so often how wonderful
+they were, lest they lose courage; one of the several obliging
+weaknesses of which women rarely scrupled to take advantage.
+
+As she put out her hand and took his, she looked very feminine and
+sweet. Her face was flushed and tears had softened her large blue-grey
+eyes that could look so virginal and cold.
+
+"I know you will get me off. Don't imagine for a moment I doubt that; it
+is a sustaining faith that will carry me through the trial itself. But
+it is this terrible ordeal in prison that I dread--and the publicity--my
+good name dragged in the dust."
+
+"You can change that name for mine the day you are acquitted."
+
+It suddenly occurred to her that this might be a very sensible thing to
+do, and simultaneously she appreciated the fact that he possessed what
+was called charm and magnetism. Moreover, the complete devotion of even
+a passably attractive member of the over-sex in alarming predicaments
+was a very precious thing. Possibly for the first time in her life she
+experienced a sensation of gratitude, and she smiled at him so radiantly
+that he caught his breath.
+
+"No one but you could have consoled me for the loss of Anna, but you are
+not to say one word of that sort to me until I am out of this dreadful
+place. I couldn't stand the contrast! Will you promise?"
+
+"Very well."
+
+"Now will you really do something for me--get me a sleeping powder from
+the druggist? To-morrow I shall be myself again, but I _must_ sleep
+to-night."
+
+"I'll get it." His voice was matter of fact, for love made certain of
+his instincts keen if it blunted others. "That is, if you will promise
+to go to bed early and see none of these reporters, men or women. They
+are camped all over the Courthouse yard."
+
+She gave an exclamation of disgust. "I'll never see another newspaper
+person as long as I live. They are responsible for this, and I hate
+them."
+
+"Good! You shall have the powder in ten minutes. Oh, by the way, will
+you give me a written permit to pass the night in your house? I want to
+go through your husband's papers and see if I can find any clue to
+unknown enemies. He may have received threatening letters. I can obtain
+the official permission without any difficulty."
+
+She wrote the permit unsuspiciously. At nine o'clock that night he let
+himself into the Balfame house determined to find the pistol before
+morning. He knew the police would get round to the inevitable search
+some time on the following day.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+Alys Crumley entertained four of the newspaper women at a picnic lunch
+in her studio. She was grateful for the distraction from her own
+thoughts and diverted by their theories. None had seen Mrs. Balfame save
+through the medium of the staff artist, and they were inclined to accept
+the primâ facie evidence of her guilt. When Alys fetched a photograph
+from the house, however, they immediately reversed their opinion, for
+the pictured face was that of a lovely cold and well-bred woman without
+a trace of hardness or predisposition to crime. They fell in love with
+it and vowed to defend her to the best of their ability, Miss Crumley
+promising to exert her influence with the accused to obtain an interview
+for the new devotees.
+
+Before wrapping the photograph for its inevitable journey to New York,
+Alys gave it a moment of study herself, wondering if she may not have
+misinterpreted what she saw that morning. No one had worshipped at that
+shrine more devoutly than she, even during these later years of
+metropolitan concordance.
+
+"What is your theory?" asked Miss Austin of _The Evening News_. "They
+say that a lot of those men at the Elks know, but never will come
+through. Do you think it was any of those girls? It might have been some
+woman he knew in New York who followed him here for the first time--who
+would not have been recognised if seen, and got away in a waiting
+automobile."
+
+"As likely as not," said Miss Crumley indifferently. "I have heard so
+many theories advanced and rejected that I am almost as confused as the
+police. Jim Broderick says that the simplest explanation is generally
+the correct one, but while he believes Mrs. Balfame to be the natural
+solution, I happen to know her better than he does, and a good deal more
+of this community. Three or four men and one or two women would be still
+simpler explanations. Possibly--" She turned cold and almost lost her
+breath, but the impulse to put a maddening possibility into verbal form
+was irresistible. "Perhaps some man that is in love with Mrs. Balfame
+did it." And then she hated herself, for she felt as if she had thrown
+Dwight Rush to the lions.
+
+"But who? Who?" the girls were demanding, more excited over this
+picturesque solution than they had been since "the story broke." Even
+Miss Austin, who disdained to write "sob stuff" and was a graduate of
+the Columbia School of Journalism, was almost on her feet, while Miss
+Lauretta Lea, who wept vicariously for fifty thousand women three times
+a week, shrieked without shame.
+
+"Oh, fine!" "How truly enchanting!" "Dear Miss Crumley--Alys--who, who
+is the man?"
+
+"Oh, as to that, I've not an idea. Mrs. Balfame always has rather
+disdained men, and even if she were susceptible is far too
+straight-laced to permit any man to pay her compromising attentions, or
+to meet him secretly. But of course she is very pretty, still young to
+look at, so there is the possibility--"
+
+"But just run over all the marriageable men in the community--"
+
+"Oh, he might be married, you know." Alys struggled to keep the alarm
+out of her voice.
+
+"But in that case there would still be the wife to dispose of, and now,
+at least, he'd never dare kill her, or even divorce her. No, I don't
+hold to that theory. It's more like the reckless act of the unchastened
+bachelor still young enough for illusions. You must have a theory, Alys.
+Stand and deliver." Miss Austin spoke with quick insistence. She had
+detected her hostess' suppressed excitement and was convinced that the
+hint had not been thrown out at random. She also had been conscious of
+an indefinable change in her old associate, and now she noticed it in
+detail. She might be too self-respecting to dip her pen in bathos, but
+she was nevertheless young, and her imagination began playing about
+possibilities like lightning over a wire fence.
+
+The heat which confused Alys Crumley's brain was expressed by a dull
+glow in her strange olive-colored eyes, but she made a desperate effort
+to look impersonal and rather bored.
+
+"No, I have no theory: certainly it could not be any of the men
+hereabouts. Mrs. Balfame has known all of them from infancy up. Perhaps
+she met some one in New York; I don't know that she ever went to any of
+the tea-tango places--she doesn't dance; but she might have gone with
+Mrs. Gifning or Mrs. Frew, and just met some one that fell in love with
+her--Oh, you mustn't take a mere idea of mine too seriously."
+
+"Hm!" said Miss Austin. "It doesn't sound plausible. A man she met now
+and then at a tea-room! She's not the sort to drive men to distraction
+in the casual meeting--not the type. And I can't see the men that
+frequent afternoon tea-rooms working themselves up to the point of
+murder. No, if there is a man in the case, he is here; if not in
+Elsinore, then in the county; and it is some man who has known her long
+enough and seen her often enough to descend from mere admiration for her
+rather chilling type of beauty into the most desperate desire for
+possession--"
+
+Alys burst into a ringing peal of laughter. "Really, Sarah, I wonder you
+are not already famous as a fiction-story writer. How much longer do you
+propose to stick to prosaic journalism?"
+
+"I've had two stories accepted by leading magazines this month, I'd have
+you know; but your memory is short if you think journalism prosaic. It
+germinates pretty nearly all the fiction microbes that later ravage the
+popular magazines. That was what was the matter with the old
+magazines--no modern symptoms, let alone fevers--only antidotes that
+somehow didn't work. But if you won't tell, Alys, I'll find out for
+myself. If I don't find out, Jim Broderick will, and I'd give my eyes to
+get ahead of him. But we've got to catch our train, girls."
+
+They took the short cut through the hall of the dwelling, and as they
+passed the open door of the living-room, Miss Lauretta Lea exclaimed
+with pleasure at its conceit of a cool green wood. Alys could do no less
+than invite them in. While the three other reporters were walking about
+observing the charming room in detail and envying its owner, Miss Sarah
+Austin walked directly over to a framed photograph of Dwight Rush that
+stood on a side-table. He had given it to Mrs. Crumley; and Alys, who
+spared her mother all unnecessary anxiety, had not yet conceived a
+logical excuse for its removal.
+
+"Whom have we here?" demanded the searching young realist. "Don't tell
+me, Alys, that here is the secret of your desertion of the New York
+press. I'd forgive you, though, for he is precisely the type I most
+admire. The modern Samson before Delilah cuts off what little hair his
+barber leaves. But the same old Samson looking round for the same old
+Delilah--"
+
+"Really, Sarah, are you insinuating that I am a Delilah? That is too
+much!" Alys put her arm round Miss Austin's waist and smiled teasingly.
+"No wonder your newspaper stories are so bitingly realistic; the
+restraints you force upon your imagination must put it quite out of
+commission for the time being. That is Mr. Dwight Rush, quite a well
+known lawyer in Brabant already, although he has only been here about
+two years."
+
+"I thought you said all your young men had grown up in the community."
+
+"I had quite forgotten him."
+
+"Ha! Is he married?"
+
+"Oh, no. And he was born and brought up over in Rennselaerville, by the
+way, but went West to some college or university and practised out there
+for several years."
+
+"How old is he?"
+
+"Oh, about thirty-three or thirty-four."
+
+"Must have been away a good many years. Would return quite fresh--must
+have had a lot made over him here--looks clever and built for
+success--that concentrated driving type that always gets there--"
+
+"He goes very little into society and no one possibly could lionise
+him."
+
+"Is he interesting to talk to or just another specialist?"
+
+"That's about it. But he was more a friend of mother's than mine. That
+is her picture."
+
+"Oh! He likes older women, then? Looks as if he might. Never would take
+the trouble, that type, to adapt himself to girls, try to understand
+them. Could it be--Alys, you must know if he knows Mrs. Balfame!"
+
+Alys was cold again but laid violent hands on her nerves. "No better
+than he knew any one else, if as well, for Mrs. Balfame never talked to
+the younger men. She doesn't attract them, anyhow. Do you realise, dear,
+that you are asking if Mr. Rush committed murder?"
+
+"With that jaw and those nostrils, he could--oh, rather! And it is one
+of those cast-iron, passionate faces; when those men do let go--"
+
+"Oh, really!" Alys dropped her arm, and her subtle face expressed
+disdain. "Mr. Rush is quite too steel clad to be carried away even if he
+were capable of committing a low and cowardly murder. He happens to be a
+gentleman and about as astute and poised as they are made. Do please
+send your romantic imagination off on another flight."
+
+"Not I. I'm going to account for every moment he spent that night."
+
+"Would you like to see Mr. Rush go to the chair?" asked Miss Crumley
+sternly.
+
+"Oh, good Lord no." Miss Austin turned pale. "I don't believe in capital
+punishment, anyhow. No, I'll not tell a thing if I find him out. But
+how interesting to know! I'd write a corking story--fiction--about it.
+Those deep glimpses into life--into those terrible abysses of the human
+heart--no writer can become great without them."
+
+"Well, don't waste your time trying to find the criminal in this
+excellent citizen. You might set some of the newspaper men on his trail
+and blacken his name while you discovered nothing. Better get on the
+track of the potential woman in New York."
+
+"Not half so interesting. Just one of those apartment-house
+misalliances. No, I'm out for Mr. Rush, and when I have the proof, I'll
+extract a confession; but I'll dig a little grave in my brain and bury
+his secret--then when it has ripened, exhume and toss it into that
+crucible through which facts pass and come out--fiction. Get me, dear?"
+
+"You talk like a literary ghoul. But I know you don't mean a word of it.
+Good-bye, girls. Do drop in whenever you are over on the case." She
+kissed them all, and Miss Lauretta Lea exclaimed innocently:
+
+"You've lost that lovely dusky colour you had awhile ago, dear. You look
+more like old ivory than ever--old ivory and olive. I wonder all the
+artists don't paint you. I suppose every young man in Elsinore is in
+love with you. Marry, my dear, marry. I've been in this game twelve
+years. Show me a willing would-be husband and I'd take him so quick he'd
+never know what struck him. Give my hopes of being a man in the next
+incarnation for ten babies to weep over when they had croup or got lost
+in the woods of New York City. Hate sob stuff. Cut it out, kid, before
+you begin it."
+
+She talked all the way to the gate and for several yards down the
+avenue, waving a final farewell with a somewhat tragic smile.
+
+"Why doesn't that girl marry?" she asked as they walked rapidly to the
+station. "Still fresh, if she is twenty-six. I'm only thirty-four and I
+look like a hag beside her."
+
+"Maybe she can't get the man she wants," replied the potential novelist,
+who was thinking deeply.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+Alys borrowed a horse and cart from her cousin Mr. Phipps, Chief of
+Police in Elsinore, who kept a livery stable, and took the shortest cut
+into the country. She wanted to think out many things and think them out
+alone. She drove rapidly until she came within sight and sound of the
+sea. Then she let the lines lie loosely on the back of her old friend
+Colonel Roosevelt, who had been named in his fiery colt-hood, but in
+these days, save under compulsion, was as slow as American law. He
+ambled along, and Alys, in the booming stillness and the fresh salt air,
+felt the humid waves roll out of her brain. She saw clearly, but she was
+aghast and depressed.
+
+Presented by nature with an odd and arresting exterior, in color and
+feature as well as in subtlety of expression, sketched and flattered by
+such artists as she met, she had, ever since old enough for
+introspection, striven for uncommon personal developments that should
+justify her obverse and set her still farther apart from mere woman. If
+not born with an intense aversion from the commonplace (and it is safe
+to say that no one is), she had conceived it early enough to train a
+rarely plastic mind to striking viewpoints, while a natural tact saved
+her from isolation. If she had been as original as she thought herself,
+she would have antagonised many people.
+
+Assuredly a certain nobility of nature and a revulsion from all that
+was base were innate; although, soon learning of the many pitfalls
+yawning for humanity, she had assiduously cultivated these her higher
+inclinations, an enterprise measurably assisted by the equable temper,
+the feminine charm, the bright intelligence and the quick sympathies
+that made her many friends. Moreover, her freedom from the usual
+yearnings of her sex in the matter of riches and subservience to the
+race, which wreck the lives of so many women, and her love of the arts
+and delight in her own little talent, all served to deponderate the
+burden of life.
+
+She had liked many men as friends, and was proud of the fact that only
+the more intelligent were attracted to her, but she had arrived at the
+age of twenty-six without even imagining herself seriously in love, so
+intense was her idealism. This was another of her deliberate
+cultivations, for here also was she resolute that as nature had done so
+much for her, marking her as a girl apart, so should she insist upon
+having an uncommon mate. It was to this end even more than for the
+barren satisfaction of pleasing Mother Nature that she had tilled the
+garden of her mind with both science and imagination. When she loved, it
+should be like a woman, of course; she had no delusions about making
+over human nature to suit passing fashions in woman; but while she never
+ignored the vital passions that formed the basis of her unique
+personality and strong will, she was determined that they should be
+quickened only by a man who would make equal demands upon all that was
+fine in her character and aspiring in her mind.
+
+The awful collapse of this cherished structure, her spiritual house,
+under her hopeless and violent passion for Dwight Rush had almost
+demoralised her. After she had won herself to reason once more, she
+still had sat, stunned, among the ruins. It was true that Rush was all
+that she had demanded of man and that he emanated a promise of happiness
+along strictly modern lines--which was all she asked, being no romantic
+fool; but not only had she loved him unasked, sacrificing the first and
+perhaps the dearest of her dreams, to be wooed and awakened and
+surprised, but, accepting the inevitable (the man being overburdened,
+like most busy young Americans, and unselfconscious), she deliberately
+had set herself to awaken _him_--and for nought. For worse than nought:
+he had instantly taken fright and withdrawn.
+
+Of the terrific upheaval of that time, like some graveyard of the sea
+flung putrid and phosphorescent to the surface by submarine vulcanism,
+she had ceased to think as soon as her will was reinstated in command.
+Immediately she had striven to rebuild her house lest she be swamped in
+mere femaleness, so permanently demoralised that life would be quite
+unendurable. She had cultivated the heights too long. She might tumble
+off occasionally, but in no other atmosphere could she breathe deeply
+and realise herself, find any measure of content. It had occurred to her
+that if she had been born in the gutter and grown to adolescence with no
+ennobling influence, she would have developed into a notable force for
+evil. At all events, she liked to think so; many women of stainless
+lives do.
+
+She guessed this, having a saving sense of humour, but did not expand
+upon it, not being inclined to humour at the moment. Accompanying her
+resolution to be finer and better than ever, to fortify herself against
+life with some degree of satisfaction in herself, was the hope of
+complete deliverance from what she called the Dwight Rush Idea. In due
+course she had conquered the obsession, for pride and self-disgust
+served her like first-aid surgeons on the battlefield; and although she
+felt amputated and scarred, she had lost her sense of humiliation. But
+her heart still accelerated its beats when she met Rush, and no will is
+strong enough to prevent the recurrence of the mental image; only time
+can dim it. But it was not until Broderick had left her alone in her
+studio with the poisons of fear and jealousy implanted that she had
+admitted she still loved him, probably must continue to love him for
+years to come.
+
+In that hour she had hated Mrs. Balfame, although she neither believed
+her guilty nor was tempted to the dastardly course of helping to force
+the appearance of guilt upon her. And for a time that night she had
+hoped she hated Dwight Rush also, so utterly disgusted and indignant was
+she that he could prefer a faded woman of forty-odd to a unique and
+beautiful girl like herself.
+
+But once more Miss Crumley's sense of proportion enforced itself, and
+she reflected sternly that men had fallen in love with women older than
+themselves since the world began, and that some of those
+transcendent--and lasting--passions had made history. She was no green
+village girl to be astounded at the least common phase of the sexual
+adventure. It was then she had given way to tears, for although she
+might be intelligent enough to admit this most unpardonable of nature's
+informalities, she could regret it with bitterness and despair.
+
+Later had come her fear for Rush's safety. Not for a moment did she
+suspect him of the crime, but if accused of it during the process of
+elimination, there was the appalling doubt that he could prove an alibi.
+As likely as not he had missed his man in Brooklyn--she knew that he had
+expected to dine and spend the evening at the Country Club--or had not
+gone there; knowing Balfame's ugly temper when drunk, what more natural
+than that he should hide in the grounds to be near at hand in case the
+man were disposed to wreak vengeance on his wife for his own
+humiliation. It was Alys's theory that the murder was political.
+
+Until to-day! From the moment that she saw Mrs. Balfame empty and rinse
+the vial, she was convinced that Broderick was right in his deductions
+and that for some reason the terrible woman had changed her mind and
+used the revolver. It was a stupider act than she would have expected of
+Mrs. Balfame, for Dave was a man whose sudden death would excite little
+suspicion, nor would Mrs. Balfame be the woman to use a common poison.
+Her intimacy with Dr. Anna would put her on the track of one of those
+organic potions that were too subtle for chemical analysis. She had
+heard doctors talk of them herself.
+
+Then abruptly she recalled the sinister change in Mrs. Balfame's smiling
+countenance on that day she sketched her at the Friday Club; her mind
+opened and closed on the conviction that in that moment Mrs. Balfame had
+conceived the purpose of murder.
+
+But why the change of method? She dismissed the riddle. It was not for
+her to unravel. Nor did she care. The fact was enough. This good friend
+of her family was an abominable creature from whom in even mental
+contact she shuddered away with a spasm of spiritual nausea.
+
+But that was not her own problem. No doubt Mrs. Balfame would be
+acquitted; Alys hoped so, at all events, for she wanted no such a stain
+on Elsinore, where, she thanked God, she lived, although she sought
+knowledge and income in the City of New York. For the same reason, she
+had no desire that the guilty woman should pay her debt by even a brief
+term in Auburn; but all that was beside the point. What Alys felt she
+would give her soul to ravish from this thrice accursed woman, so
+formidable in her peril, were the services of Dwight Rush. If he were
+Mrs. Balfame's chief counsel he would see her constantly, and alone--for
+hours on end, perhaps, for he must consult with her, rehearse her,
+instruct her, keep up her spirits, console her. This might not be the
+whole duty of counsel, but in the circumstances no doubt she had
+underestimated, if anything. And even if he believed her guilty, he
+might in that intimacy love her the more; not only would he pity her
+profoundly and see himself her natural protector, but he would be heart
+and soul in the great case, and it would not be long before the case and
+the woman were one.
+
+If, however, Rush could be made to believe now that the woman was a
+murderess, would he not decline to take the case? He was hardly the man
+to defend man or woman whom from the outset he knew to be guilty,
+although when immersed in the case he would keep on, whatever the
+revelations. Alys believed that it was possible for her to convince him.
+She could inform him of the needle-witted Mr. Broderick's suspicions and
+of her own confirmations; and she could tell him of her certain
+knowledge that Mrs. Balfame had a revolver; she had seen it eight months
+ago, when Balfame brought it home from New York and told his wife to
+discharge it in the air if, when alone, she heard a man breaking in.
+
+It had signified little to her at the moment that Mrs. Balfame had
+denied to police and reporters that she possessed a revolver, for it
+might by chance be a .41, and it was not to be expected that even an
+innocent woman would challenge public doubt and possible arrest. But her
+denial and probable concealment of the weapon were significant to Alys
+now. She remembered that Dr. Anna had spent the early hours of Sunday
+alone with Mrs. Balfame. No doubt the wicked woman had found both relief
+and counsel in confessing to a friend like Anna Steuer, a creature so
+strong and staunch that the secret would be as safe as in her own guilty
+soul. Anna, of course, had taken the pistol and dropped it in the marsh
+when she visited Farmer Houston's wife later in the day. If she could
+but get Dr. Anna to speak.
+
+Alys raised her eyes under their bent and frowning brows and looked up
+to where the Brabant Hospital stood on rising ground beside the sea. She
+gave a gasp as she found herself turning the horse's head in that
+direction. What did she intend to do? Denounce Mrs. Balfame to Dwight
+Rush? She fancied she heard an inner crash. Could she do this and escape
+final demoralisation? Heretofore she had at least committed no act
+involving moral degradation; her upheavals had affected herself alone
+and were her inviolate secret; but if she made a last desperate throw to
+win Dwight Rush by first filling him with loathing of her rival, she
+would be committed to a course of conduct from which there would be no
+escape for months, perhaps years to come. For if she won him,--toward
+which end she must plan with every female art she knew,--she never could
+ease her soul with confession. Her only chance of keeping a man like
+that, after the first effulgence had merged into the healthy
+temperateness of practical married life, was to avoid the major
+disillusions.
+
+And if she by her own deliberate act went to pieces morally, could she
+play up? Should she even want to play up? Could one deliberately knock
+the foundations from under one's cherished spiritual structure, reared
+with infinite pains upon natural inclinations, and continue to be even a
+pale reflection of one's higher self? She might, after the first
+excitement of striving to achieve her immediate object was over, hate
+herself too deeply to love or even to live.
+
+She drew her brows more closely and expelled her breath through her
+teeth. For the moment, at least, she felt all female, ready to defy the
+future and her own soul to obtain possession of her mate. That he was
+her mate she obstinately believed, temporarily deflected from his
+natural progress toward herself by one of those powerful delusions that
+afflict every man in the course of his life. And if she did not open his
+eyes at once, the temporary deflection would merge into the straight
+course toward marriage with a she-demon....
+
+She drove into the hospital yard, threw the reins over Colonel
+Roosevelt's back and asked for the superintendent, Mrs. Dissosway, who
+happened to be her aunt.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+
+An hour later, Alys was driving through Elsinore, her mind a trifle less
+personal, as it dwelt upon her brief interview with the superintendent
+of the hospital. Mrs. Dissosway, who was devoted to her niece and
+believed her to be as exceptional as Miss Crumley in her most aspiring
+moments could have wished, had confided that she was sure poor dear Anna
+knew something about that awful crime, for in her delirious moments she
+kept uttering Enid Balfame's name in very odd tones indeed. She had
+assured and reassured the patient that there was no clue to the
+murderer; and if she kept on and asked to see Mrs. Balfame,--which,
+significantly, she had not done,--they of course would tell her that the
+friend who should have hastened to her bedside had suffered a nervous
+breakdown or sprained her ankle. It was a blessing that she was in no
+condition to testify against her idol, for it would kill her, just as it
+might be fatal now if she knew that Enid was in the County Jail.
+
+After some delicate insistence, Mrs. Dissosway had admitted that Dr.
+Anna must convince any one who listened attentively to her mutterings
+that her belief in her friend's guilt was positive, whether she had
+exact knowledge or not.
+
+"'Oh, Enid! Oh, _Enid_!' she kept repeating in such a tone of anguish
+and reproach, and then muttered: 'Poor child! What a life!' She also
+once said something about a pistol in a tone of dismay, but the other
+words I couldn't make out.
+
+"The nurses on her case," Mrs. Dissosway had concluded, "will pay no
+attention. They are too accustomed to fever patients to listen to
+ravings, and the two she will have are from other parts of the State,
+anyhow. They never heard of Mrs. Balfame before. But I have been in and
+out all day, and I know she is worrying in her poor hot mind both over
+her friend's crime and her danger--"
+
+"Then you believe Mrs. Balfame did it?" Miss Crumley had interrupted.
+
+"Yes, I do--now, anyhow; and I never was daffy about her. She barely
+remembers I am alive, living out here for the last fifteen years as I
+have done, and I am your mother's sister. I don't call her a snob; it's
+just that she don't seem to take any interest in people that ain't in
+her own set. But the Lord knows I'd never tell on her if I had the proof
+in my hand, for I don't want any of our grand old families disgraced,
+and she's been good to your mother. No, she can go free, and welcome,
+but I wish poor Anna could have been spared the knowledge of her crime,
+for it's going to be all the harder to nurse her well, and she has a bad
+case. If she has to go, she shall go in peace. I'll see to that. But
+when Enid Balfame is out, I'll take good care to let her know that she
+has another crime to carry on her conscience--if she's got one."
+
+Alys had not asked to see the patient, knowing that it would be useless,
+but Mrs. Dissosway had walked out to the cart with her, and pointing to
+a window on the first floor of the wing devoted to paying patients,
+remarked: "That's where she is, poor dear." Alys had wondered if she
+should fall low enough before this accursed case were finished to
+describe the position of that room to Broderick and insinuate what he
+might find there if he chose to hide in the little balcony and enter the
+room when the night nurse had gone out for the midnight supper. He was
+quite capable of it.
+
+But not if she could win Rush from the case, nor unless, Mrs. Balfame
+discharged, he were arrested and committed for the crime. She wished now
+that he had been arrested instead of Mrs. Balfame, for then she could
+have saved him from both punishment and the other woman without this
+awful sense of sliding slowly down-hill to choke in a poisonous slime.
+She might have been obliged to exercise a certain amount of sophistry
+even then, but she could have stood it.
+
+She was driving slowly down Atlantic Avenue when she heard her name
+called in accents of mystery and excitement. Her modest rig was passing
+the imposing mansion of Elisha Battle, bank president, and like all the
+newer homes of Elsinore the grounds were unconfined and the shallow lawn
+ended at the pavement. From one of the drawing-room windows Lottie
+Gifning slanted, and as she met Miss Crumley's eye, she beckoned
+peremptorily. The desire for solitude was still strong upon Alys, but as
+she had no excuse to advance, she wound the lines round the whip and
+went slowly up the brick walk.
+
+Mrs. Gifning opened the front door and swept her into the drawing-room,
+where six or seven other women with tense excited faces sat on the
+expensive furniture. Mrs. Battle, herself upholstered in shining
+black-and-white satin, and further clad in invisible armour, occupied a
+stately and upright chair. This throne had been made to order;
+consequently her small feet in their high-heeled pumps touched the
+floor. The large room, upon which much money had been spent, was not
+tasteless; it merely had no individuality whatever. Like many another in
+Elsinore, it set Miss Crumley's teeth on edge, but compensated her
+to-day as ever by inspiring her with a sense of remote superiority.
+
+"Dear Alys--so glad to see you!" Mrs. Battle did not rise. She was fond
+of Alys, but thought her of no consequence whatever. "Lottie saw you and
+called you in as you have always been such a friend of poor dear Enid's,
+and you know those horrid reporters, and we want to impress upon you the
+necessity of putting them off the track. We are talking the whole
+dreadful business over and trying to decide what to do."
+
+"Do?" Alys, more interested, disposed her limber uncorseted young figure
+into a low chair and for a moment diverted envious attention from the
+momentous subject in hand. "What can we do? Has bail been accepted?"
+
+"No, nor likely to be. Isn't it too awful?"
+
+"Yes, it's awful." Alys stared at the floor, but although her words
+might have been uttered by any of the ladies present, her tone was
+almost conventional. No one noticed this defection, however, and Mrs.
+Battle--after Mrs. Gifning had tiptoed to all the doors, opened them
+suddenly and closed them again,--proceeded in so low a tone that there
+was an immediate hitching of chairs over the Persian rug:
+
+"What we were debating when you came in, Alys, was whether--oh, it's too
+awful!--she did it or not. Did she or didn't she? She has a perfectly
+beautiful character--but the provocation! Few women have been tried
+more severely. And we all know what human nature is under the influence
+of sudden tremendous passion." Mrs. Battle, who never had been ruffled
+by any sort of passion, leaned against the high back of her chair, and
+elevated her eyebrows and one corner of her mouth.
+
+"Could such a crime have been unpremeditated?" asked Alys. "You forget
+that whoever did it was waiting in the grove for Balfame to come home
+from Sam's, and evidently timed to shoot as he reached the gate."
+
+"Passion, my dear child," said Mrs. Bascom, wife of the Justice for
+Brabant, speaking softly and with some diffidence, for she disliked the
+word, "can endure for quite a while once the blood is up and pounding in
+the head. It would take a good deal to work up dear Enid, but when a
+woman like that does rise to the pitch under many and abominable
+provocations, well, I guess she could stay at that pitch a good bit
+longer than all of us put together. I've thought of nothing else for
+three days and nights,--the Judge won't discuss it with me,--and I feel
+convinced that she did it."
+
+"So have and so am I," contributed Mrs. Battle, sepulchrally.
+
+"I'm afraid she did!" Mrs. Gifning heaved an abysmal sigh. "I suspected
+it when I consulted her about her mourning. She was much too cool. A
+woman who could think of two kinds of blouses she wanted the very
+morning after the tragedy, and he not out of the house, must have been
+exercising a suspicious restraint or else have reverted to the
+cold-bloodedness with which she planned the deed."
+
+"Dear Lottie, you are so psychological," murmured Mrs. Frew admiringly;
+but Mrs. Battle interrupted sharply:
+
+"I maintain that she did it in a moment of overwhelming passion. She
+would be inexcusable if she had done it in cold blood."
+
+"Well, of course I didn't mean that!" said Mrs. Gifning with asperity.
+"I guess I'm as fond of Enid Balfame as anybody in this room, and I
+guess I know what she must have gone through. What I really meant was
+that she has more courage than most folks."
+
+"Oh, that indeed!" exclaimed Mrs. Lequer, who was quite happy with her
+husband, the fashionable doctor of Brabant. "Matrimony is a terrible
+trial at best, and it's a wonder more women don't--well, it's too
+horrible to say. But I'm afraid--well, you know."
+
+There was no dissenting voice. Alys raised her eyes and glanced about
+the room. Mrs. Cummack was not present. No doubt she had been carefully
+omitted from the conference. So had four members of the inner twelve who
+were comparative newcomers in Elsinore. All of these women had known
+Enid Balfame from childhood, consistently admired her; when she was in a
+position to make her social ambitions felt, had quite naturally fallen
+into line.
+
+"Isn't it rather a hasty conclusion?" Alys asked. "There are a good many
+others who might have done it, you know."
+
+"Everybody suspected has one grand alibi." Mrs. Gifning's sigh was
+rather hypocritical this time. "We'd be only too glad to think there was
+any one else likely to be arrested. No hope! No hope!"
+
+"I suppose"--Miss Crumley's tones were tentative, although the
+irresistible words almost cost her her breath--"that there was no man in
+love with Mrs. Balfame?"
+
+"Alys Crumley!" All the women had shrieked the name, and Mrs. Battle
+swung herself to her pointed toes. "I'm most mad enough to put you right
+out. The idea of insinuating--"
+
+"Dear me, Mrs. Battle, it never occurred to me that it was worse for a
+married woman to have a man in love with her than to commit murder. I
+did not insinuate or even imagine she cared for any man, or even
+encouraged one. But such things have happened."
+
+"Not to her. And while I could forgive her for shooting a perfectly
+loathsome husband under the influence of sudden passion, I'd never
+forgive her--Enid Balfame!--if she had stooped to anything so paltry and
+common and _sinful_ as philandering; for believe me, a man doesn't
+commit murder for a woman's sake unless he is reasonably certain that he
+will have his due rewards. That is life. And how _can_ he be certain, if
+there has been no philandering. No!" Mrs. Battle was once more
+magisterial in her chair, and in command of her best Friday Club
+vocabulary. "But there is this much to be said: Enid did not necessarily
+shoot to kill,--merely to wound perhaps,--for nothing would have
+punished Dave Balfame more than a month or two in bed on gruel and
+custard. Or maybe she just didn't know what she was doing--just fired to
+relieve her feelings. I am sure it would have relieved mine after that
+scene at the Club."
+
+"Oh--I apologise. Let us assume then that Mrs. Balfame did it. How do
+you propose to act in the matter? Of course you will not accuse her,
+but shall you cut her?"
+
+"Neither the one nor the other!" Mrs. Battle brought her plump little
+hands down on the arms of the chair with a muffled but emphatic smack.
+"Never outside of this room shall we breathe our convictions, or our
+certain knowledge that she kept a revolver in her room--may I not speak
+for all?" There was a hissing murmur caused by the letter _s_. "And it
+will be no negative defence, either. We'll stand by her publicly, visit
+her constantly, keep up her spirits, never give her a hint of our
+suspicions, and attend the trial in a body. Our attitude cannot fail to
+impress the world. We are the representative women of Elsinore; we have
+known her all our lives; it is our duty to flaunt our faith in the eyes
+of the public. The moral effect will be enormous--also on the jury."
+
+"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 to
+say, 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!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+
+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 crime
+upon 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 fatal night. 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 there was 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 the _New 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 not interviewing 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 friends and 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 only person 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
+doubt his 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, who told 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 be strange 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
+condemned David 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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+
+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 the _New 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 the _News_ now, 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 attributed the
+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; and
+she 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--and distractingly 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 his heels. 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 in Brooklyn 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."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+
+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 the least 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 honest admission 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 other
+room 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
+he awaited 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 second time 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 to consciousness 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 pushed on. 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 and desired 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 polite without 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 discovered
+the 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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+
+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 the bald 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 to convict 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--"
+
+"I don't agree with you!" And arguing and scolding, they wended their
+disapproving way over to the Dobton Inn and sat them down at tables to
+make the most of their bare material.
+
+"No censorship needed here," growled Miss Austin. "She froze my very
+imagination."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+
+Rush walked up and down the room for a few moments in silence. Mrs.
+Balfame sat back and folded her hands. She was haunted by a vague sense
+of inefficiency, of having not quite risen to the occasion, but she felt
+there could be no doubt that she not only had impressed the reporters as
+an innocent woman but as a perfect lady. The rest didn't matter.
+
+"Are you really not a bit nervous?" demanded Rush, swinging on his heel
+and confronting her.
+
+"I will not permit myself to be. And except that I hate publicity, I
+really do not dread the trial. It means the beginning of the end of this
+detestable prison life. I want to be out and free. A week in a courtroom
+is not too heavy a price to pay."
+
+"Have you ever been to a murder trial?"
+
+"Of course not. Such a thing would never have occurred to me."
+
+Rush sighed. She had no imagination. But as her counsel he reminded
+himself that he should be grateful for the lack; he wanted no scenes,
+either in the courtroom or here in the imminent hours. But he would have
+welcomed a little more feminine shrinking, appeal to his superior
+strength. Even when he had worshipped her from afar, she had never moved
+him so powerfully as on the day of her arrest when she had flung herself
+over the table in an abandonment to despair as complete as the most
+exacting male could wish. That incident had long since taken on the
+shifting outlines of a dream. If she had felt any tremors since then
+she had concealed them from him.
+
+"Tell me," he asked almost wistfully, "are you not terribly frightened
+at times? You are alone here so much. And it has been an experience to
+try even a strong man's nerves."
+
+"Women nowadays really have better nerves than men. We not only lead a
+far fuller and more varied life than our predecessors, but you men work
+at such a terrific strain that it is a wonder you retain any control of
+your nerves at all. I will admit that I did have attacks of fear at
+first. It was all so strange and odd. But I got over them. You can get
+used to anything, I guess. And I have a strong will. I just made myself
+think about something else. This war has been a godsend. Have you
+noticed my new maps? I've really read about twenty war books, besides
+all the editorials, and they have given me a distaste for lighter
+reading, and really developed my--my--intellect. That seems such a big
+word. And then I've knitted dozens of things for the children and
+soldiers, and felt as if I were of some use for the first time in my
+life."
+
+She glanced at him shyly, as he stared through the bars of one of the
+windows. The suppressions of a lifetime made it impossible to betray any
+depth of feeling save under terrible stress. She was ashamed of her
+breakdown before him on the day of her arrest, but she was conscious of
+the wish that she were able to infuse her cool even tones with warmth,
+to make them tremulous at the right moment; but if she attempted to
+betray something of her newer self even in her eyes, self-consciousness
+overcame her and she dropped the lids almost in a panic.
+
+She wondered if love broke down those cliffs of ice that seemed to
+encompass a new-born soul. Or was it merely that the other members of
+her personal company, mature, jealous, self-sufficient, resented the
+intrusion of this shrinking alien? They had got on quite well without
+it; they felt no yearning for possible complications, readjustments.
+With all their quiet force they discouraged the stranger. Before any of
+the supreme experiences, including love, they might be routed, the new
+force might spring up in an instant like a flower from the magic soils
+of India--but not while the conventions bulwarked them. Their sum was
+Mrs. Balfame of Elsinore, and not for a moment did they permit
+themselves to forget it.
+
+Moreover, it was quite true that she had conquered her first
+apprehensions and welcomed the trial as the initial step toward freedom.
+Her poise had always been remarkable, the result in part of a
+self-centred life and a will driven relentlessly in a narrow groove.
+More than ever was she determined to sit through those long days in the
+courtroom with the cold aloofness of the unfortunate women of history.
+The very ascents she had made of secret and solitary heights alone would
+have restored her poise, for she felt on far more friendly terms with
+herself than when living with a wretch she loathed, and dreaming of no
+higher altitudes then complete success in Elsinore. But she wished for
+the first time that she were a younger woman, or had made those ascents
+many years ago; she would have liked to reveal herself spontaneously to
+this interesting young man who was so deeply in love with her.
+
+Suddenly she wondered if he were as ardently in love with her as in
+that brief period when they had talked of themselves. Not loving him in
+return, she had been content with lip-service, the sure knowledge that
+all his fine abilities were at work upon the obstacles to her freedom;
+and she would have been deeply annoyed if he had broken the pact made on
+the day of her arrest and reiterated his devotion and his hopes.
+
+But significant happenings--omissions--a certain flatness.... She turned
+her head sharply and looked at him. He was still staring moodily through
+the bars.
+
+If far too diffident to show the best that was in her, she found it
+comparatively simple to practice the feminine art of angling, albeit
+with a somewhat heavy hand.
+
+She asked softly: "Don't you think I did the wise thing to tell them I
+intended to travel as soon as I was acquitted? It surely would be in
+better taste than to settle down here--in that house!"
+
+"Did you mean it? The intention would make a good impression on the
+public, certainly."
+
+"Why, of course I meant it. I am not a good hand at saying things merely
+for effect."
+
+"Where shall you go? Europe is rather impossible."
+
+"Oh, not altogether. There is always Italy. And there is no danger from
+Zeppelins in the interior of Great Britain. And there is Spain--"
+
+"I think Europe a very good place for women to keep away from until the
+war is over. Any of the nations may become involved at any
+minute--ourselves, for that matter. Better follow the advice of
+advertisers and see America first."
+
+"Yes, I could visit the Expositions in California, and camp for a while
+in Glacier Park, and there are the Yellowstone and Grand Cañon--but all
+that would only consume a few months--and then there is this winter to
+think of. What I feel I should do is to stay away for a year, at
+least--"
+
+"You could live very pleasantly in Southern California."
+
+"I should be very conspicuous in those small fashionable settlements.
+The case has been telegraphed all over the country, and I have seen
+dreadful pictures of myself in several Western papers."
+
+"Well, you might live quietly in New York until the war is over. There
+is no better place to hide--if you avoid the restaurants and theatres.
+And after all, even a _cause célèbre_ is quickly forgotten if there is
+no aftermath. But I certainly advise against even sailing for Europe
+until peace is declared. There is always the danger of mines and too
+enthusiastic submarines."
+
+She turned quite cold and stared at her hands. They were well-shaped but
+large, and they looked like blocks of white marble on her black gown. He
+was still at the window, and his tone was listless. She had a curious
+sense of panic in the region of her heart. But instantly she curled her
+lip with defiant scorn. Was she the woman to fancy herself in love with
+a man the moment she seemed to be in danger of losing him? Besides, no
+doubt, the poor man was tired, and too absorbed in the case to have any
+room in him for the moods of the lover. Only a foolish impulsive woman
+would in conditions like the present try to rouse a dormant passion.
+When she was free, and he as well, his heart would automatically take
+precedence once more and he would plead ardently for the privilege of
+marrying her. That was quite in order.
+
+She rose briskly. "Let me show you this map," she said. "It is the very
+latest--Letitia Battle brought it to me two days ago. And do smoke."
+
+"Thanks, but I must go over and watch those girls. Yes, it is a fine
+map. This war certainly is a godsend! Good luck. Keep up those splendid
+spirits. You're all right."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+
+"Oyez, oyez, oyez! The Supreme Court of the State of New York County of
+Brabant trial term is now in session all people having business with
+this court may draw near and give their attention _and they shall be
+heard_."
+
+The court crier delivered his morning oration in one breathless
+sentence, the last five words of which only have ever been captured by
+mortal ears. The roll of the jury was called. The first witness stood on
+the step of the witness-stand and swore by the everlasting God that the
+testimony he would give in the trial of the People of the State of New
+York against the defendant would be the truth, the whole truth and
+nothing but the truth, and then he seated himself in the chair. The
+trial of Mrs. Balfame began.
+
+It had taken three days to select a jury. If Rush was determined to keep
+out Germans, Mr. Gore, the district attorney, was equally reluctant to
+admit to the box any man whom he suspected of being under commands from
+his wife to get on that jury and acquit Mrs. Balfame, if he had to
+imperil his immortal soul. He also harboured suspicions of felonious
+activities on the part of Mr. Sam Cummack and certain other patriotic
+citizens less devoted to the cause of justice than to Elsinore. In
+consequence the questions were not only uncommonly searching, but both
+the district attorney and the defendant's counsel exhausted their
+peremptory challenges.
+
+The talesmen that had crowded the courtroom beyond the railing were for
+the most part farmers and tradesmen, but there were not a few "prominent
+residents," including rooted Brabantites and busy commuters. The last
+answered without hesitation that they had followed the case closely from
+the first and formed an unalterable opinion; then, dismissed, rushed off
+and caught a late train for New York. Those of Mrs. Balfame's own class
+would have been passed cheerfully by Mr. Rush, but in spite of their
+careless avowals that they had been too busy to follow the case, or had
+found it impossible to reach any conclusion, they were peremptorily
+challenged by the district attorney. They, too, went to New York, not on
+business, and returned to their hearthstones as late as possible.
+
+Finally a jury of almost excessively "plain men" were chosen after long
+and weary hours of wrangling. They were all married; their ages ranged
+from forty-five to fifty; not one looked as if he had an illusion left
+in regard to the sex that had shared his burdens for a quarter of a
+century, or, German or no German, he had any leniency in him for a woman
+who had presumed to abbreviate the career of a man. But at least they
+were real Americans, with reputations for straight dealing, and good
+old-fashioned ideals of justice, irrespective of sex. Rush doubted if
+any of them could be "fixed" by Mr. Cummack or the able politicians
+whose services he had bespoken, although the sternest visages often hid
+unsuspected weak spots; but after all his best chance was with honest
+men whose soft spots were of another sort.
+
+So naïve had been the eagerness of the German-American talesmen to get
+on the jury that Rush had had little difficulty in demonstrating their
+unfitness for duty. These were too thrifty to go to New York and stood
+in no fear of their wives, but they avoided the _gemütlich_ resort of
+Old Dutch until the trial was over.
+
+Throughout this ordeal Mrs. Balfame sat immovable, impassive, her face a
+white bas-relief against the heavy black crêpe of her veil, which hung
+like a black panel between her profile and the western light. Her chair
+was at the foot of the long table which stood beneath the two tiers of
+the jury-box and was reserved for counsel, the district attorney, the
+assistants and clerks. Her calm grey eyes looked straight ahead,
+interested apparently in nothing but the empty witness-stand, on the
+right of the jury and the left of the judge. She knew that the
+reporters, and the few outsiders that had managed to crowd in with the
+talesmen, scarcely took their eyes from her face, and that the staff
+artists were sketching her. All her complacency had fled before certain
+phases of this preliminary ordeal for which no one had thought to
+prepare her. The constant reiteration of that question of horrid
+significance: "Have you any objection to capital punishment as practised
+in this State?" struck at the roots of her courage, enhanced her prison
+pallor; and that immovable battery of eyes, hostile, or coldly
+observant, critical, appraising, made her long to grind her teeth, to
+rise in her chair and tell those men and women, insolent in their
+freedom, what she thought of their vulgar insensibility. But not for
+nothing had she schooled herself, and not for a moment did her nerves
+really threaten revolt. She had taken her second sleeping powder on the
+night preceding the opening of the trial, but on the third morning she
+awakened with the momentary wish that she had preserved Dr. Anna's
+poison, or could summon death in any form rather than go over to that
+courthouse and be tried for her life. For the first time she understood
+the full significance of her condition.
+
+But Mrs. Battle, Mrs. Cummack and Mrs. Gifning, when they bustled in to
+"buck her up," congratulated her upon "not having a nerve in her body";
+and although she had felt she must surely faint at the end of the
+underground tunnel between the jail and the rear of the courthouse, she
+had walked into that room of dread import upstairs with her head erect,
+her eyes level, and her hands steady. She may have built a fool's
+paradise for herself, assisted by her well-meaning friends, during the
+past ten weeks, and dwelt in it smugly; but as it fell about her ears
+she stood erect with a real courage that strengthened her soul for any
+further shocks and surprises this terrible immediate future of hers
+might hold.
+
+On the first day, although she never glanced at a talesman, she had
+listened eagerly to every question, every answer, every challenge. As
+the third day wore on, she felt only weariness of mind, and gratitude
+that she had a strong back. She was determined to sit erect and immobile
+if the trial lasted a month. And not only was her personal pride
+involved. Circumstances had delivered her to the public eye, therefore
+should it receive an indelible impression of a worthy representative of
+the middle-class American of the smaller town, so little unlike the
+women of the wealthier class, and capable of gracing any position to
+which fate might call her--a type the United States of America alone has
+bred; also of a woman whose courage and dignity had never been surpassed
+by any man brought to the bar of justice on the awful charge of murder.
+
+She knew that this attitude, as well as her statuesque appearance, would
+antagonise the men reporters but enchant her loyal friends, the women.
+Her estimate was very shrewd. The poor sob sisters, squeezed in wherever
+they could find a vacant chair, or even a half of one (all the tables
+being reserved for the men), surrendered in a body to her cold beauty,
+her superb indifference, soul and pen. A unanimous verdict of guilty
+brought in by that gum-chewing small-headed jury merely would petrify
+these women's belief in her innocence. She was vicarious romance; for
+women that write too much have little time to live and no impulse to
+murder any one in the world but the city editor.
+
+On the morning of the fourth day, the space between the enclosure and
+the walls of the courtroom was filled with spectators from all over the
+county, many of them personal friends of Mrs. Balfame; but New York City
+would not become vitally interested until the business of examining the
+minor witnesses was concluded. Behind and at the left of Mrs. Balfame
+were the members of her intimate circle. Occasionally they whispered to
+her, and she smiled so sweetly and with such serene composure that even
+the men reporters admitted she looked younger and more feminine--and
+more handsome--than on that day of the interview which had proved her
+undoing.
+
+"But she did it all right," they assured one another. They must believe
+in her guilt or suffer twinges in that highly civilised and possibly
+artificial section of the brain tabulated as conscience. Their fixed
+theory was that she had mixed the poison for Balfame and then, being in
+a highly nervous state, and apprehensive that he would capriciously
+refuse to drink it, had snatched her pistol as she heard his voice in
+the distance, dashed downstairs and out into the grove, and fired with
+her established accuracy.
+
+She had had plenty of time between the crime and her arrest to pass the
+pistol to one of her friends, or even to slip out at night and drop it
+in the marsh.
+
+As to the shot that had missed Balfame and entered the tree: it was
+either by one of those coincidences more frequent in fact than in
+fiction that another enemy of Balfame's had been lurking in the grove,
+intent upon murder; or the bullet hole was older than they had inferred.
+The idea of a lover they scoffed at openly. And it was one of the
+established facts, as they reminded their sisters of the press, that the
+worst women in history had looked like angels, statues or babies; they
+had also possessed powerful sex magnetism, and this the handsome
+defendant wholly lacked.
+
+The theory of the women reporters was far simpler. She hadn't done it
+and that was the end of it.
+
+The judge, a tall imposing man with inherited features and accumulated
+flesh, very stately and remote in his flowing silk gown, looked
+unspeakably bored for three days, but was visibly hopeful as he swept up
+to his seat on the rostrum on Thursday morning. As the justice for
+Brabant, Mr. Bascom, had not been on speaking terms with the deceased,
+and as his wife was one of the defendant's closest friends, an eminent
+Supreme Court justice from one of the large neighbouring cities had been
+assigned to the case.
+
+The reporters of the evening newspapers, were packed closely about a
+long table parallel with the one just below the jury-box, and behind
+were four or five smaller tables dedicated to the morning stars. A large
+number of favoured spectators had found seats within the railings, but a
+passage was kept open for the boys who came up at regular intervals to
+get copy from the "evening table" for the telegraph operator below
+stairs.
+
+Broderick's seat beneath the rostrum commanded both the witness-box and
+Mrs. Balfame. He had used his influence to have Alys Crumley assigned to
+the position of artist for the Woman's Page of the _News_, and she and
+Sarah Austin shared a chair.
+
+The trial began. Dr. Lequer established the fact of the death, described
+the course of the bullet, demonstrating that it had been fired by some
+one concealed in the grove. A surveyor followed and exhibited to the
+jury a map of the house and grounds. Three of the younger members of the
+Country Club, Mr. John Bradshaw Battle, cashier of the Elsinore Bank;
+Mr. Lemuel Cummack, son of Elsinore's esteemed citizen, Mr. Sam Cummack;
+and Mr. Leonard Corfine, a commuter, had been subpoenaed after a
+matching of wits. Overawed by the solemnity of the oath, they gave a
+circumstantial account of the quarrel which had preceded the murder but
+a few hours--all, in spite of constant interruptions from the
+defendant's counsel, conveying the impression, however unwillingly, that
+Mrs. Balfame had been livid with wrath and the man who had been her
+husband insufferable. It was a master-stroke of the district attorney
+to open his case with the damaging testimony of two members of the loyal
+Elsinore families. As for Mr. Corfine, although born and brought up
+without the pale, he had been graciously received upon electing to build
+his nest in Elsinore and his young wife was one of Mrs. Balfame's
+meekest admirers.
+
+Mr. Broderick muttered, "H'm! H'm!" and Mr. Bruce squirmed round from
+the "evening table" and jerked his eyebrows at his senior. "Bad! Bad!"
+muttered Mr. Broderick's neighbour. "But watch her nerve. Can you beat
+it? She hasn't batted an eyelash."
+
+Two former servants that had preceded Frieda in the Balfame menage
+testified that the household consisted of three people only, the master
+and mistress and the one in help. A gardener came three times a week in
+the morning. No, none of the old spare rooms was now furnished, and the
+Balfames never had had visitors overnight.
+
+The prosecution rested, and Mr. Rush approached the bar according to
+usage and asked that the case be dismissed. The judge ruled that it
+should proceed; and immediately after the noon recess the first witness
+for the defence was called. This was Mr. Cummack, and he testified
+vigorously to the harmonious relations of the deceased and his amiable
+wife; that Mrs. Balfame--who was always pale--had treated the episode
+out at the Club in the casual manner observed by all seasoned and
+intelligent wives, the conversation over the telephone in his house
+proving that the domestic heavens were swept clean of storm-clouds; and
+that the deceased had departed for his home quite happy and singing at
+the top of his lungs. He had often remarked jocularly (his was a cheery
+and jocular temperament) that he expected to die with his boots on,
+especially since he had taken to bawling Tipperary in the face of
+American Germany.
+
+It is not to be imagined that Mr. Cummack was able to deliver himself of
+this valuable testimony without frequent and indignant interruptions
+from the district attorney, whose "irrelevant, incompetent and
+immaterial" rang through the courtroom like the chorus of a Gilbert and
+Sullivan opera. Mr. Gore, a wasp of a man with snapping black eyes and a
+rasping voice emitted through his higher nasal passages, succeeded in
+having much of this testimony stricken out, but not before the wily Mr.
+Rush, who stood on tiptoe, as alert and nervous as a race horse at the
+grandstand, had by his adroit swift questions fairly flung it into the
+jury-box. It was of the utmost importance with an obstinate provincial
+jury to establish at once a favourable general impression of the
+prisoner.
+
+When, in the theatre, a trial scene is depicted, it is necessary to
+interpose dramatic episodes, but no one misses these adventitious
+incidents in a real trial for murder, so dramatic is the bare fact that
+a human being is battling for his life. When the prisoner at the bar is
+a woman reasonably young and good looking, the interest is so intense
+and complete that the sudden intrusion of one of the incidents which
+have become the staples of the theatre, such as the real culprit rushing
+into the courtroom and confessing himself, a suicide in the witness-box,
+or dramatic conduct on the part of the defendant, would be resented by
+the spectators, as an anti-climax. Real drama is too logical and grimly
+progressive to tolerate the extrinsic.
+
+The three other men who had been at Mr. Cummack's house that night were
+called, and corroborated his story. They all wore an expression of
+gentle amusement as if the bare idea of the stately and elegant Mrs.
+Balfame descending to play even a passive rôle in a domestic row was as
+unthinkable as that any woman could find aught in David Balfame to rouse
+her to ire.
+
+"By Jove!" whispered Mr. Broderick to Mr. Wagstaff of the _Morning
+Flag_, "just figure to yourself what the line would be if she had been
+caught red-handed and was putting up a defence of temporary insanity
+caused by the well-known proclivities of that beast. A good subject for
+a cartoon would be Dave Balfame in heaven with a tin halo on,
+whitewashing Mrs. B., weeds and all. The human mind is nothing but a
+sewer."
+
+The afternoon session was also enlivened by the testimony of several of
+the ladies who had been members of the bridge party on the day of Mr.
+Balfame's unseemly conduct at the Club. They testified that although
+Mrs. Balfame naturally dissolved upon her return to the card-room, there
+had been nothing whatever in her demeanour to suggest seething passion.
+Mrs. Battle, who was an imposing figure in the witness chair, her
+greater bulk being above the waist, tossed her head and asseverated with
+refined emphasis that Mrs. Balfame was one of those rare and exquisite
+beings that are temperamentally incapable of passion of any sort. Her
+immediate return to her home was prompted more by delicacy than even by
+pain. Miss Crumley's pencil faltered as she listened. She could not
+give a jeering public even a faithful outline of a woman as devoted to
+the sacred cause of friendship and Elsinore as Mrs. Battle.
+
+The testimony of none of these ladies was more emphatic than that of
+Mrs. Bascom, wife of the supplanted justice, and she added unexpectedly
+that she had been so upset herself that she too had left the clubhouse
+immediately, and, her swift car passing Dr. Anna Steuer's little
+runabout, she had seen Mrs. Balfame chatting pleasantly and without a
+trace of recent emotion.
+
+Mrs. Balfame almost relaxed the set curves of her mouth at this
+surprising statement. She recalled that a car had passed and that she
+had wondered at the time if any one had noticed her extreme agitation.
+She kept her muscles in order, but unconsciously her eyes followed Mrs.
+Bascom, as she left the witness-chair, with an expression of puzzled
+gratitude.
+
+The District Attorney turned to the reporters with a short sardonic
+laugh, and Mr. Broderick shook his head as he murmured to Mr. Wagstaff:
+
+"Can you beat that? And yet they say women don't stand by one another."
+
+"Good for the whole game, I guess," replied the young _Flag_ star, who
+was enamoured of a very pretty suffragette.
+
+The Judge rose, and the afternoon session was over. The great case of
+The People vs. Mrs. Balfame rested until the following morning.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+
+Mrs. Balfame walked back through the now familiar tunnel more hopeful
+and elated than any one in the courtroom would have inferred from her
+chiselled manner.
+
+"I almost feel that I have the courage to look at the sketches of myself
+in the papers," she said lightly to Rush, who escorted her. "I haven't
+dared open a paper since Monday morning."
+
+"Better not." Rush also was in high spirits. "Keep your mental mercury
+as high as possible. It doesn't matter, anyhow. You'll be clear in less
+than a week. The impression all those splendid friends of yours created
+knocked the prosecution silly."
+
+"I have not once glanced at the jury," said Mrs. Balfame proudly, "and I
+never shall. All I was conscious of was that they were chewing gum, and
+that the man above me snorts constantly."
+
+"That's Houston. He's likely to be predisposed in your favour on account
+of your intimacy with Dr. Anna. And he's a just man, of some
+intelligence. I fancy none of them is in the mood to be too hard on any
+one, for they are having a fine vacation in the Paradise City Hotel.
+Each has a big room with a soft bed and rich and delicate food three
+times a day. If they don't get indigestion they will be inclined to
+mercy on general principles. I engineered the housing of them. Gore was
+all for putting them up at the Dobton Inn, where they would have grown
+as vicious as starved dogs. I won my point by reminding him that certain
+men of that sort try to get on a jury for the sake of having a rest and
+a soft time, and if they aren't coddled, they are equal to falling ill
+and forcing the court to begin the trial over again. You're all right."
+
+They were in the jail sitting-room, and she stood with her head thrown
+back and her eyes shining. The moment they had entered she had removed
+her heavy hat and veil and run her hands through her crushed hair. Rush,
+who was very nervous and excited, made a swift motion forward as if to
+seize her hands. But it was only later, when alone, that she realised
+that possibly she had brushed aside an opportunity to rekindle a flame
+which she alternately feared and doubted was burning low; she was not
+thinking of him and exclaimed happily:
+
+"It is quite a wonderful sensation to feel that you have made friends
+like that. My! how they did lie! And so convincingly! For a moment I was
+quite the outsider and deeply impressed with the weakness of the case
+against the accused. Here they come. I feel as if I never really loved
+them before." And she ran to the door to admit the elated trio who that
+day had made their noblest sacrifice to the cause of friendship. Mrs.
+Balfame kissed them and embraced them, and dried their excited tears,
+while Rush, his contemptible part in the day's drama forgotten, slunk
+down the stairs and out of the jail.
+
+He met Alys Crumley as she was about to board the trolley for Elsinore,
+and she stepped back and congratulated him warmly.
+
+"Your brain worked like blades of chain lightning," she said with real
+enthusiasm. "I know you have only begun, but I can well imagine--wasn't
+Mrs. Balfame delighted?"
+
+"With her friends' testimony," he replied gloomily. "I don't seem to
+come in."
+
+There are some impulses, born of sudden opportunity, too strong for
+mortal powers of resistance. "Come home to supper," said Miss Crumley,
+with the same spontaneous warmth. "You look so tired, and Mother
+promised me Maryland chicken and waffles. Besides, I want to show you my
+drawings. I am so proud of being a staff artist."
+
+"I'll come," said Rush promptly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+
+The following day was also taken by the examination of witnesses for the
+defence. Dr. Lequer, who had been called in occasionally by the Balfames
+when Dr. Anna was unavailable, and who was also an old friend of the
+family, asserted that so far as he knew there never had been a quarrel
+between husband and wife. Mrs. Balfame, in fact, was unique in his
+experience, inasmuch as she never looked depressed nor shed tears.
+
+He was followed by a woman who had been general housemaid in the Balfame
+home for three years. She had left it to reward the devotion of a
+plumber, and between her and Frieda there had been a long line of the
+usual incompetents. Mrs. Figg testified with an enthusiasm which
+triumphed over nerves and grammar that although she guessed Mr. Balfame
+was about like other husbands, especially at breakfast, Mrs. Balfame was
+too easy-going to mind. She'd never seen her mad. Yes, she was an
+exacting mistress, all right, terrible particular, and she never sat
+with the hired girl in the kitchen and gossiped, and you couldn't take a
+liberty with her like you could with some; but that was just her way,
+naturally proud and silent-like. She was terrible economical but a kind
+mistress, as she didn't scold and follow up, once she was sure the girl
+would suit, and not a bit mean about evenings and afternoons off. She
+did up her own room and dusted the downstairs rooms, except for the
+weekly cleaning. No, she never'd seen no pistol. It wasn't her way to
+look in bureau drawers. No, she'd never seen or heard any jealousy,
+tempers, and so forth, and had always taken it for granted that Mrs.
+Balfame wasn't on to Mr. Balfame's doings--or if she was, she didn't
+care. There was lots like that.
+
+The district attorney snarled and trumpeted throughout this placid
+recital, but Mrs. Figg took no notice of him whatever. She had been
+thoroughly drilled, and looked straight into the sparkling blue eyes of
+Mr. Rush as if hypnotised.
+
+Other minor witnesses consumed the afternoon, and once more Mrs. Balfame
+returned to the jail with glowing eyes. The women reporters were elated.
+The men made no comment as they filed out of the courtroom, but their
+whole bearing expressed a lofty and quiet scorn.
+
+"It's fine! fine!" exclaimed Cummack, sitting down beside Rush at the
+table below the empty jury-box. "But I do wish Dr. Anna was available.
+She stands head and shoulders above every one else in the estimation of
+these jurymen; she doctored the children and confined the wives of
+pretty near all of them. There's no stone she wouldn't leave unturned."
+
+"She's pretty bad, isn't she?" asked Rush. "Would there be any chance at
+all of getting a deposition--in case things went wrong?"
+
+"Things ain't goin' wrong; but as for Anna, she's out of it, and
+everything else, I guess. I was out to the hospital yesterday, for I've
+had her in mind; but although she was better for a time, she's worse
+again. But say--what do you think I discovered? Those damned newspaper
+men have been hangin' round out there. That young devil Broderick--"
+
+Rush was sitting up very straight, his eyes glittering. "But he surely
+hasn't been able to see her? I don't believe any sort of graft would get
+by Mrs. Dissosway--"
+
+"You bet he hasn't been able to see Anna, and just now they're not
+leaving her for a moment alone, like they did at first. But Broderick
+seems to have the idea wedged in his brain that Mrs. Balfame confessed
+to Anna and that poor old Doc lost the pistol somewhere out in the
+marsh--"
+
+Rush made an exclamation of disgust. "I can't understand Broderick. He's
+got his trial all right, and it isn't like him to hound a woman--"
+
+"I said as much to him, and though he wouldn't talk much, I just
+gathered from something he let fall that he was afraid if the crime
+wasn't well fixed onto Enid some innocent person he thought a lot more
+of might come under suspicion. Can you guess who he had in mind?"
+
+Rush pushed back his chair and sprang to his feet. "Good Lord, no. One
+case at a time is all my brain is equal to." He was almost out of the
+empty courtroom when Cummack caught him firmly by the shoulder.
+
+"Say, Dwight," he said with evident embarrassment, "hold on a minute.
+I've just got to tell you that somehow or other I sensed _you_ when
+Broderick was trying to put me off. There are a good many things;
+they've been comin' back--"
+
+Rush turned the hard glittering blue of his eyes full upon Mr. Cummack,
+whose shrewd but kindly gaze faltered for a moment. "Do you believe I
+did it?" demanded Rush.
+
+"Well, no, not exactly--that is, I'd know that if you had done it, it
+would have been because you'd got the idea into your head that Enid was
+having an awful row to hoe, or because he'd attacked her that night. It
+wouldn't have been for no mean personal reason, and no one knows better
+than I that the blood goes to the head terrible easy at your age and
+when a beautiful woman is in question. If I'd guessed it before, I'm
+free to say I'd have rushed your arrest in order to spare Enid, if for
+no other reason. But as it's gone so far and she's sure to get off,--and
+you wouldn't stand much show,--the matter had best stay where it is;
+particularly--well, I may as well tell you Enid sort of confided to
+Polly that you had offered to cover her name with yours as soon as she
+got out; and if you've been in love with her all this time, as I guess
+you have been--well, Dave can't be brought back. And--well, I've lived
+out West and it isn't so uncommon there for a man to shoot on sight when
+he's mad about a woman and a few other things at the same time. Dave was
+my friend, but I guess I understand."
+
+Rush had withdrawn stiffly from the friendly hand laid on his shoulder.
+"I have asked Mrs. Balfame to marry me," he said. "But she has by no
+means consented."
+
+"But she means to. Don't let it worry you. Women are queer cattle. Nail
+her the next time she's in the melting mood. She gets 'em oftener than
+she ever did before, and I guess you see her alone often enough."
+
+"Oh, yes, I've seen her alone nearly every day for ten weeks."
+
+Cummack narrowed his eyes, and his face, generally relaxed and amiable,
+grew stern and menacing. "You don't love her!" he exclaimed. "You don't!
+Like many another damned fool, you've compromised your very life for a
+woman, only to be disenchanted by seeing too much of her. But by God
+you've got to marry her--"
+
+They were standing at the head of the winding stair in the rotunda, and
+several of the reporters were still in front of the telephone booth
+below.
+
+"Hush!" said the lawyer peremptorily. "I mean to marry Mrs. Balfame if
+she accepts the proposal I made to her the day she was arrested. I have
+said nothing to warrant your jumping to the conclusion that I no longer
+wish to marry her. But by God! if you ever dare to threaten me again--"
+And he raised his fist so menacingly, his set face was so tense and
+white, his eyes bore such a painful resemblance to hot coals, that
+Cummack retreated hastily.
+
+"All right! All right!" he called up from the first turning. "Don't
+fancy I think I could. And what's passed between us is sacred. S'long."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+
+On the morrow the first witness called by the prosecution in rebuttal
+was old Kraus, and now it was Mr. Rush's turn to shout "Immaterial,
+Irrelevant and Incompetent," so that it was well-nigh impossible for the
+jury to do more than guess what the choleric person with a strong German
+accent was talking about. The district attorney fought valiantly to draw
+forth the story of Frieda's nocturnal visit to the Kraus home in search
+of advice after hearing Mrs. Balfame enter the kitchen from the yard,
+but his efforts ended in a shouting contest between the prosecution and
+the defence, both deserting their positions before the jury-box and
+wrangling before the Judge like two angry school-boys. Alys Crumley
+longed to laugh aloud, but not so the Judge. He asked them curtly how he
+was to know what was their point of dispute if they both talked at once.
+He then commanded Mr. Rush to state in as few words as possible what he
+was objecting to; and when the counsel for the defence had stated his
+purely legal reasons for blocking this purely hearsay testimony, the
+Judge abruptly threw Mr. Kraus out of court. Rush, flushed and
+triumphant, returned to his chair below the jury-box, and Mr. Gore
+sulkily called the name of Miss Frieda Appel.
+
+There was no question of poor Frieda's making a good personal impression
+upon spectators or jury, no matter how worthy her motives. She had saved
+almost every penny of her wages since coming to America; it had been
+her lover's intention to emigrate to Brabant County as soon as his term
+of service was over, and her housewifely intention to greet him with a
+furnished cottage. Since the war began, she had sent all her savings to
+East Prussia lest her people starve.
+
+Dress in any circumstances would never tempt her. Economy was her
+religion, and she cherished no illusions about her face and form. To-day
+she wore a skirt of an old voluminous cut and a jacket with high
+puckered sleeves. The colour had once been brown. Her coarse blonde hair
+met her eyebrows in a thick bang, and its high knob was surmounted by a
+sailor hat a size too small. Her thick-set body was uncorseted, and her
+indeterminate features were lost in the width and flatness of her face.
+Only the little eyes beneath the heavy thatch of hair alternately glowed
+dully and spat fire.
+
+The Judge sternly suppressed the titter that ran over the court-room as
+this caricature mounted the witness-stand, and the district attorney, in
+spite of frequent interruptions, elicited a remarkably clear and
+coherent statement. The Judge sustained him, for here was a real
+witness, and Miss Appel not only had been as thoroughly rehearsed as
+Mrs. Figg, but she had a neat precise little mind set with rows of
+pigeonholes that ejected their contents in routine when her coach
+pressed the cognate button.
+
+She had come home abruptly from the dance-hall as she had an
+insupportable toothache--had run all the way, as she had some
+toothache-drops in her room. She was in such agony she hardly had
+noticed that her friend Conrad Kraus was behind her. When she reached
+her room she had applied the drops, and to her horror they made the pain
+worse. After walking the floor for perhaps ten minutes--she didn't know
+or care whether it was ten or fifteen minutes--she was just starting to
+go down-stairs and heat some water for her bag when she heard the
+kitchen door open and shut. She held her breath and did not answer when
+Mrs. Balfame called, as she feared she was wanted and was determined to
+do nothing for anybody while her tooth ached like that.
+
+Mrs. Balfame's voice had sounded quite breathless, as if she had been
+running. In a moment Frieda heard her go into the dining-room then back
+to the kitchen, and turn on the tap,--not the filter, which made no
+noise,--and then she heard one glass clink against another on the pantry
+shelf. After that, Mrs. Balfame went upstairs from the front hall and
+the witness returned to her room and threw herself on the bed, where she
+remained until Mr. Cummack came and asked her to go downstairs and make
+coffee. By this time her tooth ached so she didn't care what she did.
+
+Cross-questioned, she admitted that Mrs. Balfame was in the habit of
+drinking a glass of filtered water the last thing at night. No, she had
+not heard her go out, but only come in. But why, if Mrs. Balfame saw
+nothing outside to frighten her, or if she hadn't been out, was she so
+short of breath? As may be imagined, mere speculation on Miss Appel's
+part was cut short by Mr. Rush, who interrupted her constantly. Yes, she
+had heard what she now knew had been a shot but she had paid no
+attention. Who would, with a red-hot iron forcing one's tooth down
+through one's jaw?
+
+Even the scornful questions of counsel which forced her to admit that
+she had lied to the coroner neither perturbed her nor made any
+impression on jury, press, or spectators. Every one present had suffered
+from toothache, and two farmers in the box showed their tusks in an
+appreciative grin when she replied tartly that she didn't know or care
+anything that day but tooth, tooth, tooth. It was manifest that she was
+far too conservative to have had it out at once, to say nothing of the
+cost.
+
+The only question she was not prepared for was the abrupt challenge of
+Mr. Rush as to how she could prove that young Kraus had followed her if
+she had neither seen nor spoken to him during that short run from Main
+Street. But although she was visibly perturbed at being confronted with
+a set of words to which no neat little pigeon-hole responded, it was so
+evident she was firmly convinced her friend had accompanied her, that
+for Rush to make too much of his solitary point would prejudice his
+case, and he let her go.
+
+Conrad Jr. followed, and his story was equally straightforward. He also
+made a good impression. True, he had a very small closely cropped head,
+with eyes too small and ears too large, but he held himself with
+arrogance, and he was well dressed in a new grey suit and pink shirt.
+Born in the United States, it was manifest that he was proud not only of
+being an American citizen but of the country's choicest vintage. He had
+been sent to the public school until he was sixteen, had studied
+conscientiously, and his grammar was quite as good as that of the
+District Attorney, who in emotional moments confused his negatives. But,
+even Rush, whose advantages had been as superior as his natural
+equipment, became a good nasal American when excited, opened into
+vowels, and freely translated _you_ into _yer_. It is these persistent
+characteristics, so racy of the soil, which cheer us when apprehending
+that our original Americanism may in time be obliterated by the foreign
+influx.
+
+No, said young Kraus, he had no sentimental interest in Frieda. (He
+smiled.) And he was engaged to a young lady to whom he had been
+attentive for three years. But he felt like a brother to Frieda; she had
+come to his father's house direct from Germany, their families having
+been friends for generations. It was not only his duty but his pleasure
+to dance with her, she being "the best of the bunch down at the hall."
+
+As he was dancing with her when her toothache became unendurable, it was
+natural that he should see her home; in fact, he always saw her home
+when it was convenient. Of course if he had to catch the last trolley
+for Dobton in a hurry, that was another matter.
+
+When she had entered the house, he had waited, thinking she might want
+some other drops or possibly a dentist. Once when he had had a
+toothache, he had been obliged to go to a dentist's house at night. His
+papa had sent him, and naturally he thought of it as a possibility in
+Frieda's case.
+
+Then the kitchen door opened and a woman came out.
+
+At this point the interest in the court-room became intense. Even the
+blasé young reporters sat forward, their pencils poised. The Judge
+wheeled his chair to the right and stared down fixedly at the back of
+young Kraus' head. The district attorney balanced himself on his heels,
+his thumbs hooked in the sleeves of his vest, and Rush stood with his
+back curved as if to spring down the witness' throat with a wild yell
+of "Immaterial, irrelevant and incompetent." Only Mrs. Balfame sat like
+a statue that had neither eyes to see nor ears to hear.
+
+Yes, Mr. Kraus recognised Mrs. Balfame's figure and walk. She was one in
+a thousand for looks, and taller than many men. She had on a long dark
+ulster and a black scarf round her head. The kitchen light was behind
+her--
+
+Here there was another furious contest between the chief counsel and the
+district attorney, but the Judge ordered the young man (who had consumed
+a toothpick imperturbably) to proceed with his story. Mrs. Balfame had
+slipped round the corner of the house, listened intently, walked for a
+minute toward the back of the grounds,--he could just see the moving
+shadow in the darkness,--turned abruptly and entered the grove.
+Naturally interested, he waited to see what she was up to; and
+then--possibly three or four minutes later--he heard Balfame singing
+"Tipperary," and a moment or two after that the shot,--one shot, not
+two; he took no stock in the theory that there had been two
+shots,--followed by loud voices from the other side of the avenue.
+
+Then he "beat it," that being his natural instinct at the moment. His
+papa had taught him to be cautious and to keep clear of other people's
+fights. He had never been close up against a crime, and he hoped he
+never should be. He walked through the adjoining grounds at the back and
+then into Balfame Street and took the next trolley home. He didn't feel
+like dancing after what he guessed had happened.
+
+No, he had heard no sound of running footsteps, but he stood for a
+moment near the back fence of the Lequer place; there were people in the
+library until some man ran in calling for the doctor to come at
+once--and he did see a car leave the lane behind the Balfame place. He
+had thought nothing of it, however, as automobiles were everywhere all
+the time. No, he hadn't tried to see whether the car was driven by a man
+or woman or how many occupants it had. Not only was the night very dark
+(as far as he remembered, the car had no lamps), but his one idea was to
+get out of the neighbourhood.
+
+Rush put him through a grilling cross-examination, and although he could
+not shake his testimony, he made use of all his practised arts to
+exhibit the youth as a sorry coward who ran away when he heard a
+revolver-shot instead of rushing with the common instinct of American
+manhood to ascertain if it were the woman herself who had been the
+victim. How much had he been paid to give this testimony withheld at the
+coroner's inquest? Young Kraus' ruddy hues had deepened to purple some
+time since, and he shouted back that he had come forward only when that
+woman's lying friends were trying to fasten the crime upon his innocent
+papa. Here he was sternly admonished by the Judge to confine his answers
+to "Yes" and "No" unless he could control his temper. Rush forced him to
+reiterate that he had not had a glimpse of Mrs. Balfame's face that
+night, that he never had spoken to her at any time; and the lawyer
+remarked crushingly that the young man's brain must have been in a
+hopelessly confused state if he saw a car leave the lane so soon after
+the shooting--a car, moreover, without lights--and failed to connect
+this phenomenon with the immediately previous sound of a pistol-shot.
+It was evident that his brain moved so slowly that it had taken him
+almost a week to put a good story together.
+
+Young Kraus left the stand with his inborn sense of superiority over
+mere Americans severely shaken, but although his small angry eyes
+encountered more than one sneer, and many of those hostile spectators
+looked as if they would laugh outright were it not for their awe of the
+Judge, he had injured Mrs. Balfame far more than himself. Few believed
+him to be lying or that he had seen a vision, not a real woman, leave
+the Balfame house by the kitchen door. He was known to have been as
+sober as usual on the night of the dance, and as the evidence against
+his father had been regarded as fantastic from the first, there was no
+conceivable cause for him to lie.
+
+Mr. Gifning, Mr. Battle and Mr. Carden, who were the first to reach
+Balfame, after he fell, were forced by the district attorney to give
+damning evidence against Mrs. Balfame. Her room was in the front of the
+house; if in it, she could have heard the shot as plainly as they on Mr.
+Gifning's veranda. But she did not come downstairs or manifest herself
+in any way until they had had time to summon the coroner (who to be sure
+lived round the corner) and Dr. Lequeur. It must have been quite six
+minutes before she opened her window and demanded the reason for the
+disturbance at her gate. At least, it had seemed that long. No, they
+never confused a revolver-shot with a bursting tire. They had when cars
+first came into use, but they had learned to differentiate long since.
+
+When Mr. Rush asked them sarcastically why one at least of the party had
+not searched the grove and attempted to capture the murderer, they
+replied they had by no means been sure that the shot had come from the
+grove. It might have come from anywhere. It was only after the doctor's
+examination that the direction of the bullet had been agreed upon. Later
+they did search the grove with a dark-lantern brought from Mrs.
+Gifning's house; in fact, they searched every inch of the grounds, and
+their only reward was abuse from the police.
+
+These three witnesses, examined after the noon recess, occupied very
+little time. It was at ten minutes to four that the district attorney
+electrified every one in the courtroom by calling to the stand a man
+whose name up to that moment had not been mentioned in the case. The
+reporters looked deeply annoyed; even Mrs. Balfame raised her head a
+trifle higher as if listening; Rush's pale face was paler, the lines in
+it seemed deeper, as he sprang to his feet, alert at once, his nostrils
+expanding. The district attorney balanced himself on his heels, his
+thumbs in his waistcoat armholes, a grin of triumph on his sharp little
+face.
+
+The name called was James Mott, and it was borne by a highly reputable
+drummer who had made sales for many years to houses carrying general
+merchandise, including that of Balfame & Cummack. Mr. Mott was as well
+known in Brabant County as any of its inhabitants; in fact, he was
+engaged to an estimable young lady of Elsinore, and hence, so it soon
+transpired, had happened to be in town on the fatal night. For once the
+acumen of the district attorney had proved more penetrating than that of
+the brilliant counsel for the defence.
+
+Mr. Mott took the stand. He was a clean-shaven upstanding American with
+the keen eye and grim mouth of the travelling salesman who knows that he
+must do or die. He looked as honest as urbane, and for the first time
+Mrs. Balfame's heart sank; and her hands, so the women reporters noted
+for the benefit of the public, clenched for a full minute.
+
+Although Rush stood with his head stretched forward, he thought it wise
+to let the man tell his story in his own way. Interruptions would have
+been of little avail; the Judge would sustain the district attorney if
+it were patent the witness were telling the truth; and as he was
+completely in the dark himself it were better to wait until he got a
+promising lead. He knew that no man's brain could work more quickly than
+his.
+
+Mr. Mott being solemnly sworn, deposed that on the night of the shooting
+he had been taking supper with his friend Miss Lacke, who lived at
+Number 3 Dawbarn Street, just round the corner from Elsinore Avenue. He
+left her house at a little before eight, as he was obliged to catch the
+eight-ten for New York. As he closed the gate behind him, he saw David
+Balfame walk unsteadily past, shouting "Tipperary"; and being a friend
+of many years' standing, had concluded to follow and see Balfame safely
+inside the house. He would lose but a minute or two, and it seemed to
+him a decent act, for it was possible the man might fall and hurt
+himself before he reached his home. Mott was so close behind him that he
+must have just escaped the shot or shots himself, and although he jumped
+backward he saw distinctly somebody run out of the grove and toward the
+back of the house. Whether it was a man or a woman he had no idea, but
+the figure was tall--yes far taller than either young Kraus or Frieda.
+Then, he said, he doubled on his tracks and got back into Dawbarn Street
+as quickly as he could. He blushed as he admitted this, but added that
+he knew from the shouts on Gifning's veranda that men were hastening to
+Balfame's aid, and he had to catch the eight-ten or lose his night train
+to the West and a big piece of business. Moreover, he didn't like the
+idea of giving testimony against anybody; he abhorred the institution of
+capital punishment. For the same reason he did not come forward until
+the District Attorney ferreted him out, as he was afraid the running
+figure might have been Mrs. Balfame and she was the last person he
+wished to harm, innocent or guilty.
+
+No one could doubt that he told the truth and hated to tell it. Nor
+could any one jump to the conclusion that he was the assassin; he had as
+little motive for killing Balfame as any of the other men of Brabant
+County with whom he had been for years on the same cordial terms.
+
+All that Rush could do was to make him admit that perhaps he was
+naturally confused by the flash, the report almost in his ear, the man
+sinking at his feet, and only fancied he saw a running form; the
+delusion would be natural in the circumstances, particularly as his
+thoughts seemed to have been concentrated upon getting out of the way.
+Mr. Mott admitted almost too eagerly that this might be true, but added
+that when the district attorney, who was a cousin of Miss Lacke, as well
+as an old friend of his own, had squeezed the story out of him bit by
+bit (the form of extraction was supplied by Mr. Rush), that had been his
+impression; he seemed to have that tall running figure imprinted upon
+his retina, as it were. Of course it might be just imagination. He
+wished to God he could swear it was. When asked sharply if even one of
+his parents was German, he recovered his poise and replied haughtily
+that he was straight American and as pro-Allies as the best man in the
+country. He had never entered Old Dutch's beer garden; his choice was a
+hotel bar, anyhow; he avoided saloons.
+
+Rush had a diabolical power of making a witness look ridiculous, but the
+American mind is essentially a just mind, normally unemotional, and a
+very magnet for facts. As the Judge adjourned the court until Monday the
+sob-sisters trailed out dejectedly, after a vain endeavour to get close
+to Mrs. Balfame; the young men sauntered forth with their heads in the
+air, and Rush's lips were so closely pressed together that his face
+looked pure granite. As a matter of fact, his heart felt like water.
+
+Mrs. Balfame, who had not permitted herself to show a flicker of
+interest while Mott was on the stand, rose as the Judge left the room.
+She smiled upon each of her friends separately and kissed the prominent
+ladies of Elsinore who had sat beside her throughout that trying day.
+
+"Please don't come over to the jail," she said. "I know you are worn
+out, and I have a bad headache. I must lie down. But do please come
+to-morrow. You are all too good. Thank you so much."
+
+Then with a faint smile and a light step she followed the sheriff
+through the long tunnel, a horrible vision dancing before her eyes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+
+When Rush arrived at the sitting-room of the jail's private suite he
+found Mrs. Balfame, not in tears as he had nervously anticipated, but
+distraught, pacing the room, her hands in her disordered hair.
+
+"I am done for! done for!" she cried as Rush hastily closed the door.
+"It would have been better if I had told the truth in the
+beginning--that I _had_ gone out that night. It was not such a bad
+excuse,--that I thought I saw a burglar down there,--and it was God's
+truth. Or I could have said I was walking about the grounds because I
+had a headache--"
+
+"It never would have gone down. If I could have discovered who the other
+person in the grove was--found him and his forty-one-calibre revolver,
+well and good. Failing that, our line of defence is the best possible. I
+will admit, though," he too was pacing the room,--"it looks bad to-day,
+pretty bad. There isn't the ghost of a chance to prove Mott was the man.
+Gore has the time to the minute he left Susie Lacke's; you must have
+gone out some time before--"
+
+"Oh, he didn't do it. I've not thought it for a moment. No such luck. It
+was some enemy who went straight to New York--in that car. But
+I--I--Auburn--the electric chair--they all believed--Oh, my God! God!"
+
+She had tossed her arms above her head then flung herself down before
+the table, her face upon them, rocking her body back and forth. Her
+voice was deep with horror and despair, her abandonment far more
+complete than on the day of her arrest; and wrought up himself, Rush was
+stirred with the echo of all he had felt that day. In the semi-intimacy
+of these past ten weeks, when he had talked with her for hours at a
+time, she had disillusioned him in many ways, bored him, forced him to
+admit that her lovely shell concealed an uninteresting mind, and that
+the only depths in her personality that he was permitted to glimpse were
+such as to make him shrink, by no means to excite that fascination even
+in repulsion peculiar to the faults of a more passionate nature. He
+still thought her the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, however,
+and if it was beauty which now left him cold, his admiration of her had
+been renewed these last three days when her manner and appearance in
+court had been beyond all praise. He had excoriated himself for his
+fickleness, his contemptible failure as a lover; and the more he hated
+himself the more grimly determined he was to behave precisely as if he
+still loved and revered her as he had when ready to sacrifice life
+itself for her sake. He was in such an _impasse_ that he cared little
+what became of himself.
+
+He leaned over the table and pressed his hands hard on her arms.
+
+"Listen!" he said peremptorily. "You never will go to Auburn. You will
+leave this jail not later than the middle of next week, a free woman. If
+I cannot get you off by my address to the jury,--and it will be the
+supreme effort of my life,--I'll take the stand and swear that I
+committed the murder myself."
+
+"What?" She lifted her head and stared up at him. His face was set, but
+his eyes glowed like blue coals.
+
+"Yes. I can put it over, all right. You remember I went to your house
+from the Club that day. Nobody saw me go; no one saw me leave. From the
+moment I left you, until the following morning, no one--no one that I
+know of--saw me that night, except Dr. Anna. We met out on the road
+leading to Houston's farm, and she drove me in. She believes I did it.
+So does Cummack, and if necessary he will manage to get an affidavit
+from her--"
+
+Mrs. Balfame had sprung to her feet. "Did you do it? Did you?"
+
+"Aha! I can make even you believe it. No, I did not, but I couldn't
+prove an alibi if my life depended upon it. I can make the Judge and the
+jury believe--"
+
+"And do you think I would permit--"
+
+"They will believe me. And Dr. Anna--who would doubt her testimony that
+my appearance and conduct were highly suspicious that night on the marsh
+road? And what could you disprove? There was a man in that grove, was
+there not?"
+
+"Yes, but not you; I don't know why, but I could swear to that. I
+shall--if you do anything so mad--tell the whole truth about myself."
+
+"What good would that do? Balfame was killed with a forty-one revolver.
+Yours was a thirty-eight."
+
+"How do you know that?"
+
+"I found it the night I spent in your house--the night of your arrest. I
+knew that you never would have gone out to head off a burglar without a
+revolver--any more than the jury would have believed it. I found the
+pistol. Never mind the long and many details of the search. It is in my
+safe. I kept it on the off chance that it might be necessary to produce
+it after all."
+
+"But I fired at him. I hardly knew that I was firing, until I felt the
+revolver in my hand go off. Perhaps it was a suggestion from that tense
+figure so close to me, intent upon murder. Perhaps I merely felt I
+must--must--I have never been able to analyse what I did feel in those
+terrible seconds. It doesn't matter. I did. And you? You know I fired
+with intent to kill. Did you guess at once?"
+
+"Oh, yes. But it doesn't matter. You were not yourself, of course. You
+had what is called an inhibition--as maddened people have when fighting
+their way out of a burning theatre. I only wish you had told me. I--that
+is to say, it is never fair to keep your counsel in the dark."
+
+"You mean you wish I had not lied!" She caught him up with swift
+intuition. "Well, to-day I would not, but then--well, I was full of
+pettiness, it seems to me now. But although I am far even yet from being
+a fine woman,--I know that!--I am not a poor enough creature to let you
+die for me. Oh, you are far too good for me. I never dreamed that a man
+would go as far as that for a woman in these days. I thought it was only
+in books--"
+
+"The veriest trash is inspired by the actual occurrences of life--which
+is pretty much the same in books as out. And I guess men haven't changed
+much since the world began, so far as making fools of themselves about a
+woman is concerned."
+
+As she stood with one hand pressed hard against the table she was far
+more deeply moved than a few moments since by fear, although outwardly
+calm. She had climbed far out of her old self within these prison walls,
+but she saw steeper heights before her, and she welcomed them.
+
+"Then," she said deliberately, "I must cure you. Before I went out, I
+had prepared that glass of lemonade and put poison in it. I had planned
+for several weeks to kill him when a favourable opportunity arrived. I
+had stolen a secret poison from Anna--out of that chimney cupboard
+Cassie described. You see that I am a potential murderer,--and a
+cold-blooded one,--even if by a curious irony of fate some one else
+committed the deed. Now do you think I am worth giving up your life
+for--going to the electric chair--"
+
+"Suppose we postpone further argument until the necessity arises--if it
+ever does. I fully expect you to be triumphantly acquitted. Tell me"--he
+looked at her curiously, for he divined something of her inner
+revolutions and hated himself the more that he was interested only as
+every good lawyer must be in human nature,--"could you do that in cold
+blood again?"
+
+"No--not that way--never. I might let a pistol go off under the same
+provocation--that is bad enough."
+
+"Oh, no. Remove the restraints of a lifetime--or perhaps it is merely a
+matter of vibration and striking the right key."
+
+"And do you mean that--you still want to marry me?"
+
+"Yes," he answered steadily. "Certainly I do."
+
+"Ah!" Once more she wondered if he still loved her. But she had been too
+sure of him and of herself to harbour doubt for more than a passing
+moment. She had come to the conclusion that he had merely taken her at
+her word, and she knew the specialising instinct of the busy American.
+She had, indeed, wondered if it were not the strongest instinct he
+possessed. And in spite of her new humility, she had suffered no loss of
+confidence in herself as a woman. She vaguely felt that she had lost
+something of this man's esteem, but trusted to time and her own charm to
+dim the impression. For she had made up her mind to marry him. Not only
+would it be the wisest possible move after acquittal,--a decent time
+after,--but during sleepless hours she had come to the conclusion that
+she loved this brilliant knightly young man as deeply as it was in her
+power to love any one. And after this terrible experience and the many
+changes it had wrought within her, she wanted to be happy.
+
+He had taken up his hat. She crossed the room swiftly and laid her hand
+on his arm. "I could not stand one word of love-making in jail," she
+said, smiling up at him graciously, although her eyes were serious. "But
+it is only fair to tell you now that if I am acquitted I will marry
+you."
+
+And stabbed with a pang of bitter regret that he felt not the least
+impulse to scout her authority and seize her in his arms, he bent over
+her hand and kissed it with cold lips, but with an air of complete
+gallantry.
+
+"Thank you," he said, and went out.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+
+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 passed that 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
+practical life 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 least
+down 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 confidence and 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 and kissed 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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+
+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 so much 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 credible
+explanation 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 better done, 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 he _is_ a friend of yours
+and you've got 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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+
+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, had made 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 at the 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 found it 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 had
+endeavoured 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. She says 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 done _my_ best, 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."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+
+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
+gentle and 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 as the 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 the _New 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 turned abruptly 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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII
+
+
+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--for _me_. 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--_what_ am 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 was Anna'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.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MRS. BALFAME***
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+<head>
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" />
+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Mrs. Balfame, by Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton</title>
+    <style type="text/css">
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+<body>
+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, Mrs. Balfame, by Gertrude Franklin Horn
+Atherton</h1>
+<pre>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: Mrs. Balfame</p>
+<p>       A Novel</p>
+<p>Author: Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton</p>
+<p>Release Date: April 13, 2012  [eBook #39443]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MRS. BALFAME***</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h4>E-text prepared by Robert Cicconetti, Martin Pettit,<br />
+    and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br />
+    (<a href="http://www.pgdp.net">http://www.pgdp.net</a>)<br />
+    from page images generously made available by<br />
+    Internet Archive<br />
+    (<a href="http://archive.org">http://archive.org</a>)</h4>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<table border="0" style="background-color: #dde;margin: 0 auto;" cellpadding="10">
+  <tr>
+    <td valign="top">
+      Note:
+    </td>
+    <td>
+      Images of the original pages are available through
+      Internet Archive. See
+      <a href="http://archive.org/details/cu31924022059962">
+      http://archive.org/details/cu31924022059962</a>
+	</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class = "mynote"><p class="center">Transcriber's Note:<br /><br />
+A Table of Contents has been added for the reader's convenience.<br /></p></div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h1><span>MRS. BALFAME<br /><br /><span class="smaller"><i>A Novel</i></span></span><br /><span id="id1">BY</span> <span>GERTRUDE ATHERTON</span></h1>
+
+<p class="tbrk">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="center"><img src="images/logo.jpg" width='163' height='200' alt="Logo" /></div>
+
+<p class="tbrk">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="center">NEW YORK<br />FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY<br />PUBLISHERS</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p class="center"><i>Copyright, 1916, by</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Gertrude Atherton</span></p>
+
+<hr class="smler" />
+
+<p class="center"><i>All rights reserved, including that of translation into<br />
+foreign languages</i></p>
+
+<p class="tbrk">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="center">FOURTH PRINTING</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<div><i>And woman, yea, woman, shall be terrible in story;</i></div>
+<div class="i1"><i>The tales too, meseemeth, shall be other than of yore.</i></div>
+<div><i>For a fear there is that cometh out of woman and a glory,</i></div>
+<div class="i1"><i>And the hard hating voices shall encompass her no more.</i></div>
+<div><span class="s15">&nbsp;</span>&mdash;<i>The Medea.</i></div>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p class="bold2">MRS. BALFAME</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><span>CONTENTS</span></h2>
+
+<table summary="CONTENTS">
+  <tr>
+    <td></td>
+    <td><span class="smaller">PAGE</span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="left">CHAPTER I</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="left">CHAPTER II</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_16">16</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="left">CHAPTER III</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_29">29</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="left">CHAPTER IV</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_37">37</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="left">CHAPTER V</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_41">41</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="left">CHAPTER VI</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_48">48</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="left">CHAPTER VII</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_59">59</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="left">CHAPTER VIII</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_66">66</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="left">CHAPTER IX</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_76">76</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="left">CHAPTER X</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_86">86</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="left">CHAPTER XI</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_90">90</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="left">CHAPTER XII</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_97">97</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="left">CHAPTER XIII</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_118">118</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="left">CHAPTER XIV</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_126">126</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="left">CHAPTER XV</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_137">137</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="left">CHAPTER XVI</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_145">145</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="left">CHAPTER XVII</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_157">157</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="left">CHAPTER XVIII</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_165">165</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="left">CHAPTER XIX</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_172">172</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="left">CHAPTER XX</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_177">177</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="left">CHAPTER XXI</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_187">187</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="left">CHAPTER XXII</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_195">195</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="left">CHAPTER XXIII</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_203">203</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="left">CHAPTER XXIV</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_213">213</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="left">CHAPTER XXV</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_225">225</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="left">CHAPTER XXVI</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_233">233</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="left">CHAPTER XXVII</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_247">247</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="left">CHAPTER XXVIII</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_255">255</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="left">CHAPTER XXIX</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_261">261</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="left">CHAPTER XXX</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_272">272</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="left">CHAPTER XXXI</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_275">275</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="left">CHAPTER XXXII</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_280">280</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="left">CHAPTER XXXIII</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_292">292</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="left">CHAPTER XXXIV</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_298">298</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="left">CHAPTER XXXV</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_310">310</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="left">CHAPTER XXXVI</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_316">316</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="left">CHAPTER XXXVII</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_322">322</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="left">CHAPTER XXXVIII&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_332">332</a></td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>MRS. BALFAME</span></h2>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER I</span></h2>
+
+<p>Mrs. Balfame had made up her mind to commit murder.</p>
+
+<p>As she stared down at the rapt faces of the fifty-odd members of the
+Friday Club, upturned to the distinguished speaker from New York, whom
+she, as President, had introduced in those few words she so well knew
+how to choose, it occurred to her with a faint shock that this momentous
+resolution had been growing in her essentially refined and amiable mind
+for months, possibly for years; for she was not an impetuous woman.</p>
+
+<p>While smiling and applauding, patting her large strong hands, freshly
+gloved in virgin white, at precisely the right moment, as the sound and
+escharotic speaker laid down the Woman's Law, she permitted herself to
+wonder if the idea had not burrowed in her subconscious mind&mdash;that
+mental antiquity shop of which she had lately read so much, that she
+might expound it to the progressive ladies of the Friday Club&mdash;for at
+least half the twenty-two years of her married life.</p>
+
+<p>It was only last night that awakening suddenly she had realised with no
+further skirmishes and retreats of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span> conscience or principle how she
+hated the heavy mass of flesh sleeping heavily beside her.</p>
+
+<p>For at least eight years, ever since their fortunes had improved and she
+had found leisure for the novels and plays of authors well-read in life,
+she had longed for a room, a separate personal existence, of her own.
+She was no dreamer, but this exclusive and ladylike apartment often had
+floated before her mental vision, chastely papered and furnished in a
+cold pale blue (she had an uneasy instinct that pink and lavender were
+immoral); and by day it should look like a boudoir. She was too wise to
+make a verbal assault upon this or any foreign word, for she found the
+stage, her only guide, strangely casual or contradictory in these minor
+details; but although her little world found no trouble in discovering
+what Mrs. Balfame increasingly knew, what she did not know they
+suspected so little that they never even discussed her limitations.
+Handicapped by circumstances early and late she might be, but she had
+managed to insinuate the belief that she was the superior in all things
+of the women around her, their born and natural leader.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Balfame had never given expression to this desire for a delitescent
+bedroom, being a woman who thought silently, spoke guardedly, and, both
+patient and philosophical, rarely permitted what she called her
+imagination to wander, or bitterness to enter her soul.</p>
+
+<p>The Balfames were by no means well enough off, even now, to refurnish
+the old bedrooms long since denuded by a too economical parent after his
+children had married and moved away, but a few mornings since she had
+remarked casually that as the springs of the conjugal bed were sagging
+she thought she should send it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span> to the auction room and buy two single
+beds. Last night, lying there in the dark, she had clenched her hands
+and held her breath as she recalled David Balfame's purple flush, the
+deliberate manner in which he had set down his thick coffee cup and
+scrubbed his bristling moustache, then rolled up the stained napkin and
+pushed it into the ring before replying.</p>
+
+<p>His first vocative expressed all, but he was a politician and used to
+elaborating his mental processes for the benefit of befuddled
+intellects. "You'll have them springs mended," he informed his wife, who
+was smiling brilliantly and sweetly across the debris of ham and eggs,
+salt mackerel, coffee and hot breads&mdash;"that is, if they need it, which I
+haven't noticed, and I'm some heavier than you. But you'll introduce no
+more of your damned new-fangled notions into this house. It was good
+enough for my parents, and it's good enough for us. We lived for fifteen
+years without art lampshades that hurt my eyes, and rugs that trip me
+up; and these last eight or nine years, since you've been runnin' a club
+when you ain't runnin' to New York, I've had too many cold suppers to
+suit me; I've paid bills for 'teas' to that Club and I've put out money
+for fine clothes for you that I could spend a long sight better at
+election time. But I've stood all that, for I guess I'm as good a
+husband as any in God's own country; I like to see you well dressed, for
+you're still a looker&mdash;and it's good business, anyhow; and I've never
+grudged you a hired girl. But there's a limit to every man's patience. I
+draw the line at two beds. That's all there is to it."</p>
+
+<p>He had made a part of his speech standing, that being his accustomed
+position when laying down the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> law, and he now left the room with the
+heavy country slouch his wife had never been able to reform. He had no
+authority in walk or bearing, being a man more obstinate than strong,
+more cunning than firm.</p>
+
+<p>She was thankful that he did not bestow upon her the usual marital kiss;
+the smell of coffee on his moustache had sickened her faintly ever since
+she had ceased to love him.</p>
+
+<p>Or begun to hate him? She had wondered, as she lay there inhaling deeply
+to draw the blood from her head, if she ever had loved him. When a man
+and a maid are young! He had been a tall slim youth, with red cheeks and
+bright eyes, the "catch" of the village; his habits were commendable and
+he would inherit his father's store, his only brother having died a year
+earlier and his sisters married and moved West. She was pretty,
+empty-headed, as ill-educated as all girls of her class, but she kept
+her father's house neatly, she was noted even at sixteen for her pies,
+and at twenty for the dexterity and taste with which she made her own
+clothes out of practically nothing. She was by no means the ordinary
+fool of her age class and nation. But although she was incapable of
+passion, she had a thin sentimental streak, a youthful desire for a
+romance, and a cold dislike for an impending stepmother.</p>
+
+<p>David Balfame wooed her over the front gate and won her in the orchard;
+and the year was in its springtime. It was all as natural and inevitable
+as the measles and whooping-cough through which she nursed him during
+the first year of their marriage.</p>
+
+<p>She had been happy with the happiness of youth ignorance and busy hands;
+although there had been the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span> common trials and quarrels, they had been
+quickly forgotten, for she was a woman of a serene and philosophical
+temperament; moreover, no children came, for which she felt a sort of
+cold negative gratitude. She liked children, and even attracted them,
+but she preferred that other women should bear and rear them.</p>
+
+<p>But all that comparative happiness was before the dawning of ambition
+and the heavier trials that preceded it.</p>
+
+<p>A railroad expanded the sleepy village into a lively town of some three
+thousand inhabitants, and although that meant wider interests for Mrs.
+Balfame, and an occasional trip to New York, the more intimate
+connection with a great city nearly wrecked her husband's business. His
+father was dead and he had inherited the store which had supplied the
+village with general merchandise for a generation. But by the time the
+railroad came he had grown lazy and liked to sit on the sidewalk on fine
+days, or before the stove in winter, his chair tilted back, talking
+politics with other gentlemen of comparative leisure. He was popular,
+for he had a bluff and hospitable manner; he was an authority on
+politics, and possessed an eloquent if ungrammatical tongue. For a time,
+as his business dwindled, he merely blasphemed, but just as he was
+beginning to feel really uneasy, a brother-in-law who had been the chum
+of his youth arrived from Montana and saved him from extinction and "the
+old Balfame place" from mortgage.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Cummack, the brother-in-law, turned out the loafers, put Dave into
+politics, and himself called personally upon every housewife in the
+community, agreeing to keep the best of all she needed, but none of
+those<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> articles which served as an excuse for a visit to New York or
+tempted her to delightful hours with the mail-order catalogue.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Balfame detested this bustling common efficient brother-in-law,
+although at the end of two years, the twelfth of her married life, she
+was keeping a maid-of-all-work and manicuring her nails. She treated him
+with an unswerving sweetness, a natural quality which later developed
+into the full flower of graciousness, and even gave him a temperate
+measure of gratitude. She was a just woman; and it was not long after
+his advent that she began to realise the ambition latent in her strong
+character and to enter upon a well defined plan for social leadership.</p>
+
+<p>She found it all astonishingly easy. Of course she never had met,
+probably never would meet, the really wealthy families that owned large
+estates in the county and haughtily entertained one another when not
+entertaining equally exclusive New Yorkers. But Mrs. Balfame did not
+waste time in envy of these people; there were old families in her own
+and neighbouring villages, proud of their three or four generations on
+the same farm, well-to-do but easy-going, democratic and, when not so
+old as to be "moss-backs," hospitable to new notions. Many, indeed, had
+built new homes in the expanding village, which bade fair to embrace
+choice bits of the farms.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Balfame always had dominated these life-long neighbours and
+associates, and the gradual newcomers were quick to recognise her power
+and her superior mind; to realise that not to know Mrs. Balfame was to
+be a commuter and no more. Everything helped her. Even the substantial
+house, inherited from her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span> father-in-law, and still surrounded by four
+acres of land, stood at the head of the original street of the village,
+a long wide street so thickly planted with maples as old as the farms
+that from spring until Christmas the soft leafy boughs interlaced
+overhead. She had a subtle but iron will, and a quite commonplace
+personality disguised by the cold, sweet, stately and gracious manner so
+much admired by women; and she was quite unhampered by the least of that
+originality or waywardness which antagonises the orthodox. Moreover, she
+dressed her tall slender figure with unerring taste. Of course she was
+obliged to wear her smart tailored suits for two years, but they always
+looked new and were worn with an air that quite doubled their not
+insignificant price. By women she was thought very beautiful, but men,
+for the most part, passed her by.</p>
+
+<p>For eight years now, Mrs. Balfame had been the acknowledged leader of
+Elsinore. It was she who had founded the Friday Club, at first for
+general cultivation of mind, of late to study the obsessing subject of
+Woman. She cared not a straw for the privilege of voting; in fact, she
+thought it would be an extremely unladylike thing to do; but a leader
+must always be at the head of the procession, while discriminating
+betwixt fad and fashion.</p>
+
+<p>It was she who had established a connection with a respectable club in
+New York; it was she who had inveigled the substantial well-dressed and
+radical personage on the rostrum beside her to come over and homilise
+upon the subject of "The European War <i>vs.</i> Woman."</p>
+
+<p>The visitor had proved to her own satisfaction and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> that of the major
+part of her audience that the bomb which had precipitated the war had
+been made in Germany. She was proceeding complacently, despite the
+hisses of several members with German forbears, and the President had
+just exchanged a glance of amusement with a moderate neutral, who
+believed that Russia's desire to thaw out her icy feet in warm water was
+at the bottom of the mischief, when&mdash;spurred perhaps by a biting
+allusion to the atrocities engaging the press at the moment&mdash;the idea of
+murder took definite form in that clear unvisionary brain so justly
+admired by the ladies of Elsinore.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Balfame's pure profile, the purer for the still smooth contours and
+white skin of the face itself, the stately setting of the head, was
+turned toward the audience below the platform, and one admiring young
+member, who attended an art class in New York, was sketching it as a
+study in St. Cecelia's, when those six letters of fire rose smoking from
+the battle fields of Europe and took Mrs. Balfame's consciousness by
+assault: six dark and murky letters, but with no vagueness of outline.</p>
+
+<p>The first faint shock of surprise over, as well as the few moments of
+retrospect, she asked herself calmly: "Why not?" Over there men were
+being torn and shot to pieces by wholesale, joking across the trenches
+in their intervals of rest, to kill again when the signal was given with
+as little compunction as she herself had often aimed at a target, or
+wrung the neck of a chicken that had fed from her hand. And these were
+men, the makers of law, the self-elected rulers of the world.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Balfame had respected men mightily in her youth. Even now, although
+she both despised and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span> hated her husband, she responded femininely to a
+fine specimen of manhood with good manners and something to talk about
+save politics and business. But these were few and infrequent in Brabant
+County. The only man she had met for years who interested her in the
+least was Dwight Rush, also a scion of one of the old farm families.</p>
+
+<p>Rush had been educated in the law at a northwestern university, but
+after a few years of practice in Wisconsin had accepted an offer to
+enter the most respectable law firm in his native township. He had been
+employed several times by David Balfame, who had brought him home
+informally to supper perhaps once a fortnight during the last six
+months. But, although Mrs. Balfame frankly enjoyed his society and his
+evident admiration for a beauty she knew had little attraction for his
+sex, she had all a conventional woman's dislike for irregularities,
+however innocent; and she had snubbed Mr. Rush's desire to "drop in of
+an afternoon."</p>
+
+<p>He barely flitted through her mind when she asked herself what did man's
+civilisation amount to, anyway, and why should women respect it? And,
+compared with the stupendous slaughter in Europe, a slaughter that would
+seem to be one of the periodicities of the world, since it is the
+composite expression of the individual male's desire to fight somebody
+just so often&mdash;what, in comparison with such a monstrous crime, would be
+the offence of making way with one obnoxious husband?</p>
+
+<p>Something over two years ago&mdash;when liquor began to put a fiery edge upon
+Mr. Balfame's temper&mdash;Mrs. Balfame had considered the question of
+divorce; but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> after several weeks of cool calculation and the exercise
+of her foresight upon the inevitable social consequences, she had put
+the idea definitely aside. It was incompatible with her plan of life.
+Only rich women, or women that were insignificant in great cities, or
+who possessed conquering gifts, or who were so advanced as to be
+indifferent, could afford the luxury of divorce. Her world was the
+eastern division of Brabant County, and while it prided itself upon its
+progressiveness, and even&mdash;among the younger women&mdash;had a gay set, and
+although suppressed scandals slid about like slimy monsters in a marsh,
+its foundations were inherited from the old Puritan stock, and it fairly
+reeked with ancient prejudices.</p>
+
+<p>It was a typical middle-class community with traditions, some of its
+blood too old, and made up of common human ingredients in varying
+proportions. Mrs. Balfame, enlightened by much reading and many
+matin&eacute;es, applied the word <i>bourgeois</i> to Elsinore with secret scorn,
+but with a sigh: conscious that all its prejudices were hers and that
+not for an instant could she continue to be its leader were she a
+divorced woman.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Balfame indulged in no dreams of sudden wealth. Elsinore was her
+world, and on the whole she was content, realising that life had not
+equipped her to lead the society of New York City. She liked to shop in
+Fifth Avenue&mdash;long since had she politely forgotten the mobs of
+Sixth,&mdash;to occupy an orchestra chair with a friend at a matin&eacute;e, and
+take tea or chocolate at the fashionable retreats for such dissipations
+before returning to provincial Elsinore. There was a tacit agreement
+between herself and her husband that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> he should dine with his political
+friends in a certain restaurant behind a bar in Dobton, the county seat,
+on the Wednesday or Thursday evenings when she found it impossible to
+return to Elsinore before seven o'clock; an arrangement which he
+secretly approved of but invariably entered a protest against by coming
+home at two in the morning extremely drunk.</p>
+
+<p>He never attended the theatre with her, his preference being for
+vaudeville or a screaming musical comedy, for both of which
+abnormalities she had a profound contempt. She saw only the "best plays"
+herself, her choice being guided not so much by newspaper approval as by
+length of run. It must be confessed that in the eight or nine years of
+her comparative emancipation from the grinding duties of the home she
+had learned a good deal of life from the plays she saw. On the whole,
+however, she preferred sound American drama, particularly when it dealt
+with Society; for the advanced (or decadent?) pictures of life as
+presented in the imported drama, she had only a mild contempt; her first
+curiosity satisfied, she thanked God that she was a plain American.</p>
+
+<p>Such was Mrs. Balfame when she made up her mind to remove David Balfame,
+superfluous husband. She was quite content to reign in Elsinore, to live
+out her life there, but as a dignified and irreproachable and well-to-do
+widow. Divorce being out of the question, there was but one way to get
+rid of him: his years were but forty-four, and although he "blew up"
+with increasing frequency, to use his own choice vernacular, he was as
+healthy as an ox, and the town drunkard was rising eighty.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Balfame's friend, Dr. Anna Steuer, was now<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> replying to the lady
+from New York. After reminding the Club that the President of the United
+States had requested his docile subjects to curb their passions and
+flaunt their neutrality, Dr. Steuer proceeded to demolish the
+anti-German attitude of the guests by reciting the long list of
+industrial, economic and scientific contributions to civilisation which
+had distinguished the German Empire since the federation of its states.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Steuer was of Dutch descent, and her gifts were not forensic, but
+the key-note of her character was an intense and passionate loyalty. She
+had spent some of the most impressionable years of her life in the
+German clinics, and she cherished a romantic affection for a country
+whose natural and historic beauties no man will deny. She had
+steadfastly refused to read the "other side," pinning her faith to all
+that was best in the country of her youthful dreams. In consequence, her
+discourse, while informing, was somewhat beside the point; and had it
+not been for the deep love borne her by almost every one present, there
+would have been a polite but firm demand to give place.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Balfame was smiling encouragement when her musings took a sudden
+and arbitrary twist. Being a person who never acted on impulse, her
+decisions, after due processes of thought, were commonly irrevocable.
+The moment she had made up her mind to pass her husband on, she had
+committed herself to the act; and, even before Dr. Anna Steuer had
+claimed her superficial attention, had already erected the question,
+How?</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Balfame was a woman who rarely bungled anything, and murder, she
+well knew, was the last of all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> acts to bungle, did the perpetrator
+desire to enjoy the freedom of his act. Being refined to her marrow, she
+shrank from all forms of brutality, and rarely, if ever, read the
+details of crime in the newspapers. The sight of blood disgusted her,
+although it did not turn her faint. She kept a pistol in her bedroom;
+burglars, particularly of late, had entered a large number of houses in
+Brabant County; but nothing would have horrified her more than to empty
+its contents into the worst of criminals.</p>
+
+<p>Mechanically she had run through the list of all the accepted forms of
+removing human impedimenta and rejected them, when Dr. Anna's scientific
+mind, playing along the surface of hers, shot in the arrow of suggestion
+that she belonged naturally to the type of woman that poisoned if forced
+to commit murder. It was bloodless, decent, and required no vulgar
+expenditure of energy.</p>
+
+<p>But healthy people, suddenly dead, were excavated and the quarry
+submitted to chemical tests; it was then&mdash;smiling brilliantly at her
+ardent pro-German friend&mdash;that Mrs. Balfame recalled a rainy evening
+some two years since. She and Dr. Anna had sat over the fire in the old
+Steuer cottage, and the doctor, who before the war never had been
+interested in anything but her friends, her science, and suffrage, had
+discoursed upon certain untraceable poisons, had even risen and taken
+down a vial from a secret cupboard above the mantel. During the same
+conversation, which naturally drifted to crime, Dr. Anna had discoursed
+upon the idiocy of doctors who poisoned with morphia, strychnine, or
+prussic acid, when not only were these organic poisons known to all
+scientific <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span>members of the profession, but they could easily remove the
+barrier to their complete happiness with cholera, smallpox, or typhus
+germs, sealed within the noncommittal capsule.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Balfame shuddered at the mere thought of any of these dreadful
+diseases, having no desire to witness human sufferings, or to run the
+risk of infection, but as she stared at Dr. Anna to-day, she made up her
+mind to procure that vial of furtive poison.</p>
+
+<p>So sudden was this resolution and so grim its portent that it was
+accompanied by unusual physical phenomena: she brought her sound white
+teeth together and thrust out her strong chin; her eyes became fixed in
+a hard stare and the muscles of her face seemed to menace her soft white
+skin.</p>
+
+<p>Alys Crumley, the young woman who had been sketching Mrs. Balfame
+instead of listening to the discussion, caught her breath and dropped
+her pencil. For the moment the pretty, ultra-refined, elegant leader of
+Elsinore society looked not like St. Cecelia but like Medea. Always
+determined, resolute, smilingly dominant, never before had she betrayed
+the secret possibilities of her nature.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Crumley cast a glance of startled apprehension about her, but the
+debate was just finished, every one was commenting upon the splendid
+self-control of the high participants, and repeating the New Yorker's
+last phrase: that not civilisation but man was a failure. A moment later
+Mrs. Balfame advanced to the edge of the platform, and, with her
+inimitable graciousness, invited the members of the Club to come forward
+and meet the distinguished guest. Little Miss Alys <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span>Crumley, watching
+her, listening to her pleasant shallow voice, her amused quiet laugh,
+came to the conclusion that the fearsome expression she had seen on her
+model's face had been a mere effect of light.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER II</span></h2>
+
+<p>The meeting of the Friday Club had been held in the Auditorium, a hall
+which accommodated moving pictures, an occasional vaudeville
+performance, political orators, and subscription balls of more than one
+social stratum. It was particularly adapted to the growing needs of the
+Friday Club, as it impressed visitors favorably, and there was a small
+room in the rear where tea could be served.</p>
+
+<p>It was a crisp autumn evening when the President and her committee sped
+the parting guest of this fateful day and walked briskly homeward,
+either to cook supper themselves or to prod the languid "hired girl."
+Starting in groups, they parted at successive corners, and finally Mrs.
+Balfame and Dr. Anna were alone in the old street. The doctor's offices
+were in Main Street under the Auditorium, between the Elsinore Bank and
+the Emporium drug store, but she too had inherited a cottage in what was
+now known as Elsinore Avenue, and almost at the opposite end from the
+"Old Balfame Place."</p>
+
+<p>"Come in," she said hospitably, as she opened a gate set superfluously
+into the low boxwood hedge. "You can 'phone to the Elks' and tell Dave
+to try the new hotel. It's ages since I've seen you."</p>
+
+<p>"I will!" Mrs. Balfame's prompt reply was accompanied by what was known
+in Elsinore as her inscrutable smile. "It is kind of you," she added<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span>
+politely, for even with old friends she never forgot her manners. "I
+long for a cup of your tea&mdash;if you will make it yourself. I really could
+eat nothing after those sandwiches."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll make it myself, all right. First because it wouldn't be fit to
+drink if I didn't, and second because it's Cassie's night out."</p>
+
+<p>She took the key from beneath the door-mat, and pressed an electric
+button in the hall and another in a comfortable untidy sitting-room. In
+her parents' day the sitting-room had been the front parlour, with an
+atmosphere as rigid as the horsehair furniture, but in this era of more
+elastic morals it was full of shabby comfortable furniture, a davenport
+was close to the radiator, the desk and tables were littered with
+magazines, medical reviews, and text books.</p>
+
+<p>"How warm and delicious," said Mrs. Balfame brightly, removing her hat
+and wraps and laying them smoothly on a chair. "I'll telephone and then
+close my eyes and think of nothing until tea is ready&mdash;I know you won't
+have me in the kitchen. What a blessed relief it will be to hear you
+sing in your funny old voice after that woman's strident tones."</p>
+
+<p>She made short work of telephoning. Mr. Balfame, having "just stepped
+across the street," she merely left a message for him. Dr. Anna, out in
+the kitchen, lighted the gas stove, rattled the aluminum ware, and sang
+in a booming contralto.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Balfame went through no stage formalities; she neither tiptoed to
+the door nor listened intently. From the telephone, which was on the
+desk, she walked over to the strongest looking chair, carried it to the
+discarded fireplace, mounted and peered into the little<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> cupboard the
+canny doctor had had built into the old chimney after the furnace was
+installed. There Dr. Anna kept her experimental drugs, her mother's seed
+pearls and diamond brooch, and a roll of what she called emergency
+bills.</p>
+
+<p>The vial was almost in the middle of a row of bottles. Mrs. Balfame
+recognised it at once. She secreted it in the little bag that still hung
+on her arm, replaced it with another small bottle that had stood nearer
+the end of the row, closed the door and restored the chair to its proper
+place. Could anything be more simple?</p>
+
+<p>She was too careful of her best tailored suit to lie down, but she
+arranged herself comfortably in a corner of the davenport and closed her
+eyes. Soothed by the warmth of the room and the organ tones in the
+kitchen she drifted into a happy state of somnolence, from which she was
+aroused by the entrance of her hostess with a tray. She sprang up
+guiltily.</p>
+
+<p>"I had no intention of falling asleep&mdash;I meant to set the table at
+least&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Those cat naps are what has kept you young and beautiful, while the
+rest of us have traded complexions for hides."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Balfame gracefully insisted upon clearing and laying a corner of
+the table, and the two friends sat down and chatted gaily over their tea
+and toast and preserves. Dr. Anna's face&mdash;a square face with a snub nose
+and kindly twinkling eyes&mdash;beamed as her friend complimented her upon
+the erudition she had displayed in her reply to the Club guest and added
+wistfully:</p>
+
+<p>"I feel as if I didn't know a thing about this war.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> Everybody
+contradicts everybody else, and sometimes they contradict themselves.
+I'm going over to-morrow" ("going over" meant New York in the Elsinore
+tongue) "and get all the books that have been printed on the subject,
+and read up. I do feel so ignorant."</p>
+
+<p>"That's a large order. When you've dug through them you'll know less
+than you could get from the headlines of the 'anti' evening papers. I'll
+hunt up a list that was given me by a patient who claims to be neutral,
+if you really want it, and leave it at your house in the morning. It's
+at the office."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, please do!" Mrs. Balfame leaned eagerly across the table. "You
+know, it is my turn to read a paper Friday week, and literally I can
+think of nothing else except this terrible but most interesting war. Of
+course, I must display some real knowledge and not deal merely in
+adjectives and generalities. I'll read night and day&mdash;I suppose I can
+get all those books from two or three New York libraries?"</p>
+
+<p>"Enid Balfame, you are a wonder! When you buckle down to a thing! Who
+but you would take hold of a subject like that with the idea of
+mastering it in two weeks&mdash;Oh, bother!"</p>
+
+<p>The telephone was ringing. Dr. Anna tilted back her chair and lifted the
+receiver from the desk to her ear. She put it down almost immediately.
+"Hurry call," she said briefly, an intense professional concentration
+banishing the pleasant relaxation of a moment before. "Baby. Sorry.
+Leave the key under the door mat. Don't hurry." She was putting on her
+wraps in the hall as she called back her last words. The front door
+banged simultaneously.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span></p><p>Mrs. Balfame piled the dishes on the tray, carried them out into the
+kitchen, washed and put them away. She was a very methodical woman and
+exquisitely neat. Although she no longer did her own kitchen work, it
+would have distressed her to leave her friend's little home at "sixes
+and sevens"; the soiled dishes would have haunted her all night, or at
+least until she fell asleep.</p>
+
+<p>After she had also arranged the publications on the sitting-room table
+in neat rows she put on her coat and hat, turned off all the lights,
+secreted the key as requested and walked briskly down the path. There
+was a street lamp directly in front of the gate. Its light fell on the
+face of a man emerging from the heavy shadow of the maple trees that
+bordered the avenue. She recognised her husband's lawyer, Dwight Rush.</p>
+
+<p>"What luck!" he exclaimed boyishly. "Now I shall talk to you for at
+least five minutes&mdash;ten, if you will walk slowly! What are you doing out
+so late alone?"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Balfame glanced apprehensively up and down the street. All the
+windows were alight, but it was too late in the season for loitering on
+verandas; even if they met any one, recognition would hardly be possible
+unless the encounter took place under a street lamp. Moreover, she was
+one of those women who while rarely terrified when alone became
+intensely feminine when a man appeared with his archaic right to shield
+and protect. She smiled graciously.</p>
+
+<p>"You may see me to my gate," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"I should think I might! A pistol at my head wouldn't keep me from
+walking these few blessed minutes with you. Seriously, it's not safe for
+you to be out alone like this. There were three burglaries last<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> week,
+and you are just the woman to have her bag snatched."</p>
+
+<p>She drew closer to him, a faint accent of alarm in her voice.</p>
+
+<p>"I never thought of that. But Anna was called off in a hurry. I am so
+glad you happened along. Although," primly, "it wouldn't do, you know,
+for a woman of my age and position to be seen walking alone with a young
+man at night."</p>
+
+<p>"What nonsense! You are like C&aelig;sar's wife, I guess. Anything you did in
+this town would seem about right. You've got them all hypnotised,
+including myself. It's the ambition of my life to know you better," he
+added in a more serious tone. "Why won't you let me call?"</p>
+
+<p>"It wouldn't do. If I have a nice position it's because I've always been
+so particular. If I let young men call on me, people would say that I
+was no better than that fast bunch that tangoes every night and goes to
+road houses and things." Her voice trailed off vaguely; she really knew
+very little of the doings of "gay sets," although much in the abstract
+of a too temperamental world.</p>
+
+<p>She made up her mind to dispose of this misguided young man once for
+all. She knew that she looked quite ten years younger than her age, and
+she was well aware that although man's passion might be business his
+pastime was the hunt.</p>
+
+<p>"I am thankful that I have no grown daughter to keep from running with
+that bunch," she said playfully. "Of course I might have. I am quite old
+enough."</p>
+
+<p>He laughed outright. Then he said the old thing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> which is ever new to
+the woman, and with a perceptible softening in his hard energetic voice:
+"I wonder if you really are as conventional&mdash;conventionised&mdash;as you
+perhaps think you are? You always give me the impression of being two
+women, one fast asleep deep down somewhere, the other not even
+suspecting her existence."</p>
+
+<p>"How pretty!" She smiled with pleasure, and she felt a faint stirring of
+coquetry, as if the ghost of her youth were rising&mdash;that far-off period
+when she put on her best ribbons and made her best pies to allure the
+marriageable swains of Elsinore. But she recalled herself quickly and
+frowned. "You must not say such things to me," she said coldly.</p>
+
+<p>"But I shall, and I will add that I wish you were a widow, or had never
+been married. I should propose to you this minute."</p>
+
+<p>"That is equivalent to saying that you wish my husband were dead. And he
+is your friend, too!"</p>
+
+<p>"Your husband is not my friend; he is my employer&mdash;upon occasion. At the
+moment I did not remember who was your husband. Let it go at that."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well."</p>
+
+<p>It was evident that he belonged to the type that found its amusement in
+making love to married women; but&mdash;they were within the rays of a lamp,
+and sauntering&mdash;she looked up at this pleasant exponent indulgently. She
+was quite safe, and it was by no means detestable at the age of
+forty-two to be coveted by the cleverest young man in Brabant County.</p>
+
+<p>The smile left her lips and she experienced a faint vibration of the
+nerves as she met the unsmiling eyes bent close above her own.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span></p><p>Rush was almost drab in colour, but the bones of his face were large
+and his eyes were deeply set and well apart, intensely blue and
+brilliant. It was one of those narrow rigid faces the exigencies of his
+century and country have bred, the jaw long and almost as salient as
+that of a consumptive, the brow bold, the mouth hard set, the cheeks
+lean and cut with deep lines, the whole effect not only keen and clever
+but stronger than any man has consistently been since the world began.
+The curious contradiction about this type of American face is that it
+almost invariably looks younger than the years that have contributed to
+the modelling of it; such men, particularly if smoothly shaven as they
+usually are, look thirty at forty; even at fifty, if they retain their
+hair, appear but little older. When Rush's mouth was relaxed it could
+smile charmingly, and the eyes fill with playfulness and vivacity, just
+as his strident American voice could move a jury to tears by the tears
+that were in it.</p>
+
+<p>At this moment all the intensity of which his striking features were
+capable was concentrated in his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not going to make love to you as matters stand," he said, his voice
+dry with emotion. "But I want you to divorce Dave Balfame and marry me.
+Sooner or later you will be driven to it&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Never! I'll never be a divorced woman. Never! Never!"</p>
+
+<p>His steady gaze wavered and he sighed. "You said that as if you meant
+it. You think you are intellectual, and you haven't outgrown one of the
+prejudices of your Puritan grandmothers&mdash;who behaved themselves because
+women were scarce and even better treated than they are now, and because
+they would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> have been too mean to spend money on a divorce suit if
+divorces had come into fashion elsewhere."</p>
+
+<p>"You are far from complimentary!" Mrs. Balfame raised her head stiffly,
+not a little indignant at this natural display of sheer masculinity. She
+would have withdrawn her arm and hastened her steps but he held her
+back.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't mean to be uncomplimentary. Only, you ought to be so much more
+advanced than you are. I repeat, I shall not make downright love to you,
+for I intend to marry you one of these days. But I shall say what I
+choose. How much longer do you think you can go on living like
+this?&mdash;with a man you must despise and from whom you must suffer
+indignities&mdash;and in this hole&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You live here&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I came back here because I had a good offer and I like the East better
+than the West, but I have no intention of staying here. I have reason to
+believe that I shall get into a New York firm next spring; and once
+started on that race-course I purpose to come in a winner."</p>
+
+<p>"And you would saddle yourself with a wife many years your senior?" she
+asked wonderingly.</p>
+
+<p>But she thrilled again, and unconsciously moderated her gait still
+further; they were but a few steps from her home.</p>
+
+<p>"I am thirty-four. I am sorry that I have impressed you as looking too
+young to be taken seriously, but you will admit that if a man doesn't
+know his own mind when he is verging toward middle age, he never will.
+But if I were only twenty-five, it would make no difference. I would
+marry you like a shot. I never<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> have given a thought to marrying before.
+Girls don't interest me. They show their hand too plainly. I've always
+had a sort of ideal and you fill it."</p>
+
+<p>It was characteristic of Mrs. Balfame's well-ordered mind that her
+intention to murder her husband did not intrude itself into this unique
+and provocative hour. She had never indulged in a passing desire to
+marry again, and hers was not the order of mind that somersaults. But
+she was willing to "let herself go," for the sake of the experience; for
+the first time in her twenty odd years of married life to loiter in a
+leafy shadowy street with a man who loved her and made no secret of it.</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder?" She stared up at him, curiosity in her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Wonder what?"</p>
+
+<p>"If it <i>is</i> love?"</p>
+
+<p>He laughed unmusically. "I am not surprised that you ask that
+question&mdash;you, who know no more of love than if you had been a castaway
+on a desert island since the age of ten. Never mind. I've planted a
+seed. It will sprout. Think and think again. You owe me that much&mdash;and
+yourself. I know that six months hence you will have divorced Dave
+Balfame, and that you will marry me as soon as the law allows."</p>
+
+<p>"Never! Never!" She was laughing now, but with all the gay coquetry of
+youth, not merely the eidola of her own.</p>
+
+<p>They had arrived at the gate of the Balfame Place, which faced the
+avenue and a large street lamp. She put the gate between them with a
+quicker movement than she commonly indulged in and held out her hand.</p>
+
+<p>"No more nonsense! If I were young and free<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span>&mdash;who knows?
+But&mdash;but&mdash;forty-two!" She choked but brought it out. "Now go home and
+think over all the nice girls you know and select one quickly. I will
+make the wedding cake."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you suppose I didn't know your age? This is Elsinore, and its
+inhabitants are five thousand. When you and I were born&mdash;of respectably
+eminent parentage&mdash;all Brabant County numbered few more."</p>
+
+<p>He made no attempt to open the gate, but he raised her hand to his lips.
+Even in that rare moment he was conscious of a regret that it was such a
+large hand, and his head jerked abruptly as he flung out the recreant
+thought.</p>
+
+<p>"I never shall change," he said. "And you are to think and think. Now
+go. I'll watch until you are indoors."</p>
+
+<p>"Good night." She ran up the path, wondering if her tall slight figure
+looked as willowy as it felt. The mirror had often surprised her with
+the information that she looked quite different from the image in her
+mind. She also wondered, with some humour, why no one ever had
+discovered her apparently obvious charms before.</p>
+
+<p>When she was in her bedroom and electricity replaced the mellow rays of
+street lamps shining through soft and whispering leaves, Mrs. Balfame
+forgot Dwight Rush and all men save her husband.</p>
+
+<p>She took the vial from her bag and stared at it. In a moment a frown
+drew her serene brows together, her sweet, shallow, large grey eyes, so
+consistently admired by her own sex at least, darkened with displeasure.
+She was a bungler after all. How was the stuff to be administered? She
+racked her memory, but the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> casual explanation of Dr. Anna, uttered at
+least two years ago, had left not an echo. A drop in his eggs or coffee
+might be too little; more, and he might detect the foreign quantity.</p>
+
+<p>She removed the cork and sniffed. It was odourless, but was it
+tasteless?</p>
+
+<p>Obviously there was no immediate way of ascertaining save by experiment
+on Mr. Balfame. And even if it were tasteless, it might cook his blood,
+congest his face, burst his veins&mdash;she recalled snatches of Dr. Anna's
+dissertations upon "interesting cases." On the other hand, one drop
+might make him violently ill; the suspicions of any doctor might be
+aroused.</p>
+
+<p>She must walk warily. Murder was one of the fine arts. Those that
+cultivated it and failed followed the victim or spent the rest of their
+lives within prison walls. Thousands, it was estimated, walked the earth
+unsuspected, unapprehensive, serene and content&mdash;contemptuous of
+failures and bunglers, as are the masters in any art. Mrs. Balfame was
+proudly aware that her r&ocirc;le in life was success.</p>
+
+<p>There was nothing to do but wait. She must have another cosy evening
+with her scientific friend and draw her on to talk of the poison. Ah!
+that made another precaution imperative.</p>
+
+<p>She went to the cupboard in the bathroom, rinsed a small bottle,
+transferred the precious colorless fluid, refilled the vial with water
+and returned it to her bag. To-morrow or next day she would slip into
+Dr. Anna's house and restore it to its hiding place. The poison she
+secreted on the top shelf of the bathroom cupboard.</p>
+
+<p>Reluctantly, for she was a prompt and methodical woman, she resigned
+herself to the prospect of David<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> Balfame's prolonged sojourn upon the
+planet he had graced so ill. She went to bed, shrinking into the farther
+corner, but falling asleep almost immediately. Then, her hands having
+faltered, Fate borrowed the shuttle.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER III</span></h2>
+
+<p>A fortnight passed before Mrs. Balfame found the opportunity for a chat
+with Dr. Anna.</p>
+
+<p>On Saturday afternoons it was the pleasant custom of the flower of
+Elsinore to repair to the Country Club, a building of the bungalow type,
+with wide verandas, a large central hall, several smaller rooms for
+those that preferred cards to dancing, a secluded bar, a tennis
+court&mdash;flooded in winter for skating&mdash;and a golf links. It was
+charmingly situated about four miles from the town, with the woods
+behind and a glimpse of the grey Atlantic from the higher knolls.</p>
+
+<p>The young unmarried set that danced at the Club or in the larger of the
+home parlours every night would have monopolised the central hall of the
+bungalow on Saturdays as well had it not been for the sweet but firm
+resistance of Mrs. Balfame. Lacking in a proper sex vanity she might be,
+but she was far too proud and just to permit her own generation to be
+obliterated by mere youth. Having no children of her own, it shocked her
+fine sense of the fitness of things to watch the subservience of parents
+and the selfishness of offspring. One of the most notable results of her
+quiet determination was that she and her friends enjoyed every privilege
+of the Country Club when the mood was on them, and that a goodly number
+of the men of their own generation did not confine their attentions
+exclusively to the bar, but came out and danced with their <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span>neighbours'
+wives. The young people sniffed, but as Mrs. Balfame had founded the
+Country Club, and they were all helpless under her inflexible will and
+skilful manipulation, they never dreamed of rebellion.</p>
+
+<p>During the fortnight Mrs. Balfame had cunningly replaced the vial, the
+indifferent Cassie leaving the sitting-room at her disposal while she
+wrote a note reminding Dr. Anna of the promised list of war books,
+adding playfully that she had no time to waste in a busy doctor's
+waiting-room. In truth Dr. Anna was a difficult person to see at this
+time. There was an epidemic of typhoid in the county, and much illness
+among children.</p>
+
+<p>However, on the third Saturday after the interrupted supper, as Mrs.
+Balfame was motoring out to the Club with her friend, Mrs. Battle, wife
+of the President of the Bank of Elsinore, she saw Dr. Anna driving her
+little runabout down a branching road. With a graceful excuse she
+deserted her hostess, sprang into the humbler machine, and gaily ordered
+her friend to turn and drive to the Club.</p>
+
+<p>"You take a rest this afternoon," she said peremptorily. "Otherwise you
+will be a wreck when your patients need you most. You look just about
+fagged out. And I want a little of your society. I've been thinking of
+taking to a sick bed to get it."</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Anna looked at her brilliant friend with an expression of dumb
+gratitude and adoration. She was worth one hundred per cent. more than
+this companion of her forty years, but she never would know it. She
+regarded Enid Balfame as one of the superwomen of Earth, astray in the
+little world of Elsinore. Even when Mrs. Balfame had done her own work
+she had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> managed to look rare and lovely. Her hair was neatly arranged
+for the day before descent to the lower regions, and her pretty print
+frock was half covered by a white apron as immaculate as her round
+uncovered arms.</p>
+
+<p>And since the leader of Elsinore had "learned things" she was of an
+elegance whose differences from those of women born to grace a loftier
+sphere were merely subtle. Her fine brown hair, waved in New York, and
+coiled on the nape of her long neck, displayed her profile to the best
+possible advantage; like all women's women she set great store by her
+profile. Whenever possible it was framed in a large hat with a rolling
+brim and drooping feathers. Her severely tailored frocks made her look
+aloof and stately on the streets (and in the trains between Elsinore and
+New York); and her trim white shirt waists and duck skirts, or "one
+piece suits" for colder weather, gave her a sweet feminine appeal in the
+house. At evening entertainments she invariably wore black, cut chastely
+about the neck and draped with a floating scarf.</p>
+
+<p>Poor Dr. Anna, uncompromisingly plain from youth, worshipped beauty;
+moreover, a certain mental pressure of which she was quite unaware
+caused her to find in Enid Balfame her highest ideal of womanhood. She
+herself was never trim; she was always in a hurry; and the repose and
+serenity the calm and sweet dignity of this gifted being both fascinated
+and rested her. That Mrs. Balfame took all her female adorers had to
+offer and gave nothing but enhanced her worth. She knew the priceless
+value of the pedestal, and although her wonderful smile descended at
+discreet intervals her substantial feet did not.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span></p><p>Dr. Anna, who had never been sought by men and had seen too many of
+them sick in bed to have a romantic illusion left, gave to this friend
+of her lifetime, whom the years touched only to improve&mdash;and who never
+was ill&mdash;the dog-like fidelity and love that a certain type of man
+offers at the shrine of the unattainable woman. Mrs. Balfame was
+sometimes amused, always complacent; but it must be conceded that she
+took no advantage of the blind devotion of either Dr. Anna or her
+numerous other admirers. She was far too proud to "use" people.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Balfame seldom discussed her domestic trials even with Dr. Anna,
+but this most intimate of her friends guessed that her life with her
+husband was rapidly growing unendurable. She was, naturally, the family
+doctor; she had nursed David Balfame through several gastric attacks,
+whose cause was not far to seek.</p>
+
+<p>But despite much that was highly artificial in her personality, Enid
+Balfame was elementally what would be called, in the vernacular of the
+day, a regular female; for a fortnight she had longed to talk about
+Dwight Rush. This was the time to gratify an innocent desire while
+watching sharply for an opportunity to play for higher stakes.</p>
+
+<p>"Anna!" she said abruptly, as they sped along the fine road, "women like
+and admire me so much, and I am passably good looking&mdash;young looking,
+too&mdash;what do you suppose is the reason men don't fall in love with me?
+Dave says that half the men in town are mixed up with those telephone
+and telegraph girls, and they are pretty in the commonest kind of way&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Enid Balfame!" Dr. Anna struggled to recover her scandalised breath.
+"You! Do you put <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span>yourself in the class with those trollops? What's got
+into you? Men are men. Naturally they let your sort alone."</p>
+
+<p>"But I have heard more than whispers about two or three of our good
+friends&mdash;women of our age, not giddy young fools&mdash;and in our own set.
+Why do Mary Frew and Lottie Gifning go over to New York so often? Dave
+says it isn't only that women from these dull little towns go over to
+New York to meet their lovers, but that some of them are the up-town
+wives of millionaires, or the day-time wives of all sorts of men with
+money enough to run two establishments. It is a hideous world and I
+never ask for particulars, but the fact remains that Lottie and Mary and
+a few others have as many partners among the young men at the dances as
+the girls do; and I can recall hints they have thrown out that they
+could go farther if they chose."</p>
+
+<p>"This is a busy country," remarked Dr. Anna drily. "Men don't waste time
+chasing the prettiest of women when convinced there is nothing in it&mdash;to
+borrow the classic form. Young chaps, urged on by natural law to find
+their mate, will pursue the indifferent girl, but men looking for a
+little play after business hours will not. Why, you&mdash;you look as cold
+and chaste as C&aelig;sar's wife. They couldn't waste five minutes on you."</p>
+
+<p>"That's what he said&mdash;that I was like C&aelig;sar's wife&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Enid!" Dr. Anna stopped the little machine and turned upon her friend,
+her weary face compact and stern. "Enid Balfame! Have you been letting a
+man make love to you?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span></p><p>"Well, I guess not." Mrs. Balfame tossed her head and bridled. "But the
+other night, when I left your house, Mr. Rush was passing and saw me
+home. He nearly took my breath away by asking me to get a divorce and
+marry him, but he respected me too much to make love to me."</p>
+
+<p>"I should hope so. The young fool!" But Dr. Anna was unspeakably
+relieved. She had turned faint at the thought that her idol might be as
+many other women whose secrets she alone knew. "What did you say to
+him?" she asked curiously, driving very slowly.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, that I would not be a divorced woman for anything in the world."</p>
+
+<p>"You're not the least bit in love with him?" asked Dr. Anna jealously.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Balfame gave her silvery shallow care-free laugh. It might have
+come from any of the machines passing, laden with young girls. "Well, I
+guess not! That sort of foolishness never did interest me. I guess my
+vanity was tickled, but vanity isn't love&mdash;by a long sight."</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Anna looked at the pure cold profile, the wide cool grey eyes, and
+laughed. "He did have courage, poor devil! It must have been&mdash;no, there
+was no moonlight. Must have been the suggestion of that old Lovers'
+Lane, Elsinore Avenue. But if you wanted men to make love to you, my
+dear, you could have them by the dozen. Nothing easier&mdash;for pretty women
+of any age who want to be made love to. As for Rush&mdash;" She hesitated,
+then added generously, "he has a future, I think, and could take you
+somewhere else."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span></p><p>"I should be like a fish out of water anywhere but in Elsinore. I have
+no delusions. Forty-two is not young&mdash;that is to say, it is long past
+the adaptable age, unless a woman has spent her life on the move and
+filling it with variety. I love Elsinore as a cat loves its hearth-rug.
+And I can get to New York in an hour. I think this would be the ideal
+life with about two thousand dollars more a year, and&mdash;and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Dave Balfame somewhere else! Pity Sam Cummack didn't turn him into a
+travelling salesman instead of planting him here."</p>
+
+<p>"He's never been interested in anything in his life but politics. But I
+don't really bother about him," she added lightly. "I have him well
+trained. After all, he never comes home to lunch, he interferes with me
+very little, he goes to the Elks every night soon after dinner, and he
+falls asleep the minute he gets into bed. Why, he doesn't even snore.
+And he carries his liquor pretty well. I guess you can't expect much
+more than that after twenty-two years of matrimony. I notice that if it
+isn't one thing it's another."</p>
+
+<p>"Good Lord! Well, I wish he'd break his neck."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Anna!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, of course I didn't mean it. But I see so many good people die&mdash;so
+many lovely children&mdash;I'm sort of callous, I guess. I make no bones of
+wishing that he'd died of typhoid fever last week, instead of poor Joe
+Morton, who had a wife and two children to support, and was the salt of
+the earth&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You might give Dave a few germs in a capsule!" Mrs. Balfame interrupted
+in her lightest tones, although she turned her face away. "Or that
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span>untraceable poison you once showed me. A bottle of that would finish
+him!"</p>
+
+<p>"A drop and none the wiser." Dr. Anna's contralto tones were gloomy and
+morose. "Unfortunately, I am not scientific enough for cold-blooded
+murder. I'm a silly old Utopian who wishes that a plague would come and
+sweep all the undesirables from the earth and let us start fair with our
+modern wisdom. Then I suppose we'd bore one another to death until
+original sin cropped out again. Better speed up, I guess. I've a full
+evening ahead of me."</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER IV</span></h2>
+
+<p>The "smart set" of Elsinore was composed of the twelve women that could
+afford to lose most at bridge. Mrs. Balfame, who could ill afford to
+lose anything, but who was both a scientific and a lucky player,
+insisted upon moderate stakes. The other members of this inner exclusive
+circle were the wives of two bankers, three contractors, two prosperous
+merchants, one judge, one doctor, and two commuters who made their
+incomes in New York and slept in Elsinore. These ladies made it a point
+of honor to dine at seven, dress smartly and appropriately for all
+occasions, attend everything worth while to which they could obtain
+entrance in New York, pay an occasional visit to Europe, read the new
+novels and attend the symphony concerts. It is superfluous to add that
+the very foundation of the superior social status of each was a large
+house of the affluent type peculiar to the prosperous annexes of old
+communities, half brick and half wood, shallow, characterless,
+impersonal; and a fine car with a limousine top. The house stood in the
+midst of a lawn sloping to the street, unconfined by even the box hedge
+and undivided from the neighbouring grounds. The garage, little less
+pretentious than the mansion, also faced the street, for all to see.
+There was hardly a horse left in Elsinore; taxi cabs awaited the
+traveller at the station, and people that could not afford handsome cars
+purchased and enjoyed the inexpensive runabout.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span></p><p>Mrs. Balfame had segregated her smart set for strategic reasons, but
+that did not mean that both she and they were not kindness itself to the
+less favoured. Obviously, an imposing party cannot be given by twelve
+families alone, especially when almost half their number are childless.
+On all state occasions the list of invited numbered several hundred, in
+that town of some five thousand inhabitants.</p>
+
+<p>It said much for the innate nobility of these wealthier dames of
+Elsinore, who read the New York society papers quite as attentively as
+they did the war news, that they submitted without a struggle to the
+dominance of a woman who never had possessed a car and whose husband's
+income was so often diverted from its natural course; but Mrs. Balfame
+not only outclassed them in inflexibility of purpose, but her family was
+as old as Brabant County; the Dawbarns had never been in what might be
+called the cavalry regiment, consisting of those few chosen ones living
+in old colonial houses set in large estates and with both roots and
+branches in the city of New York; but no one disputed their right to be
+called Captains of the infantry. And Mrs. Balfame, sole survivor in the
+direct line, had two wealthy cousins in Brooklyn.</p>
+
+<p>Once in a while Dr. Anna, a privileged character, and born at least in
+Brabant County, took a hand at bridge, but she was a poor player, and,
+upon the rare occasions when she found time to spend a Saturday
+afternoon at the Country Club, preferred to rest in a deep chair and
+watch the young folks flirt and dance until the informal supper was
+ready. Never had she tripped a step, but she loved youth, and it gave
+her an acute old maid's delight to observe the children<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> grow up;
+snub-nosed, freckled-faced awkward school girls develop at a flying leap
+into slim American prettiness, enhanced with every late exaggeration of
+style. She also approved heartily, on hygienic grounds, of the friends
+of her own generation dancing, even in public, if their partners were
+not too young and their forms too cumbersome.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Balfame and Dr. Anna arrived at the Club shortly after four
+o'clock. Young people swarmed everywhere, within and without; perhaps
+twenty older matrons were sitting on the veranda knitting those
+indeterminate toilette accessories for the Belgians which always seemed
+to be about to halt at precisely the same stage of progress.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Balfame, who had set the fashion, had not brought her needles
+to-day. She went directly to the card room; but her partner for the
+tournament not having arrived, she entertained her impatient friends
+with a recent domestic episode.</p>
+
+<p>"I have a German servant, you know," she said, removing her wraps and
+taking her seat at the table. "A good creature and a hard worker, but
+leaden-footed and dull beyond belief. Still, I suppose even the dullest
+peasant has spite in her make-up. I have been reading tomes of books on
+the war, as you learned from painful experience yesterday; most of them,
+as it happened&mdash;a good joke on Anna that, as she gave me the list&mdash;quite
+antagonistic to Germany. One day when Frieda should have been dusting I
+caught her scowling over the chapter heads of one of them. Of course she
+reads English&mdash;she has been here several years. Day before yesterday,
+when I was knitting, she asked me whom I was knitting for, and I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> told
+her&mdash;for the Belgians, of course. She asked me in a sort of growl why I
+didn't knit for the homeless in East Prussia&mdash;it seems that is where she
+comes from and she has been having letters full of horrors. I seldom
+bandy words with a servant, for you can't permit the slightest
+familiarity in this country if you want to get any work out of them. But
+as she scowled as if she would like to explode a shrapnel under me, and
+as she is the third I have had in the last five months, I said
+soothingly that the newspaper correspondents had neglected the eastern
+theatre of war, but had harrowed our feelings so about the Belgians that
+we felt compelled to do what we could for them. Then I asked her&mdash;I was
+really curious&mdash;if she had no sympathy for those thousands of afflicted
+women and children, merely because they were the victims of the Germans.
+She has a big soft face with thick lips, little eyes, and a rudimentary
+nose; generally as expressionless as such a face is bound to be. But
+when I asked her this question it suddenly seemed to turn to wood&mdash;not
+actively cruel; it merely expressed the negation of all human sympathy.
+She turned without a word and slumped&mdash;pardon the expression&mdash;out of the
+room. But the breakfast was burned this morning&mdash;I had to cook another
+for poor David&mdash;and I know she did it on purpose. I am afraid I shall
+have to let her go."</p>
+
+<p>"I would," said Mrs. Battle, wisely. "She is probably a spy and quite
+clever."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but such a worker!" Mrs. Balfame sighed reminiscently. "And when
+you have but one servant&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The tardy partner bustled in and the game began.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER V</span></h2>
+
+<p>It was about six o'clock when Mrs. Balfame, steadily losing, contrary to
+all precedent, her mind concentrated, her features, like those of the
+rest of the players, as hard as the stone faces dug out of Egypt, her
+breath escaping in hissing jets, became vaguely conscious of a
+disturbance in the outer room. The young people were dancing, as was
+usual in the hour before supper, but the piano and fiddles appeared to
+be playing against the ribald interruptions of a man's voice. It was
+some time before the narrow flow of thought in Mrs. Balfame's brain was
+deflected by the powerful outer current, but suddenly she became aware
+that her partners were holding their cards suspended, and that their
+ears were cocked toward the door. Then she recognised her husband's
+voice.</p>
+
+<p>For a moment she lost her breath and her blood ran chill. She had been
+apprehensive for some time of a scene in public, but she had assumed
+that it would occur in a friend's house of an evening; he attended her
+nowhere else. The Club he had deserted long since; it was much too slow
+for a man of his increasing proclivities, especially in a county
+liberally provided with saloons and road houses.</p>
+
+<p>During the last month she had become sensible of a new hostility in his
+attitude toward her; it was as if he had suddenly penetrated her hidden
+aversion and all his masculine vanity had risen in revolt. Being a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span>
+woman of an almost excessive tact, she had sprayed this vanity for
+twenty-two years with the delicately scented waters of flattery, but the
+springs had gone suddenly dry on that morning when she had uttered her
+simple and natural desire to bring the conjugal sleeping accommodations
+up to date.</p>
+
+<p>And now he had come out here to disgrace her, she immediately concluded,
+to make her a figure of fun, to destroy her social leadership. This
+might also involve him in a loss, but when a man is both drunk and angry
+his foresight grows dim and revenge is sweet.</p>
+
+<p>Only last night there had been an intensely disagreeable scene in
+private; that is to say, she had been dignified and slightly
+contemptuous, while he had shouted that her knitting got on his nerves,
+and the sight of all those books on the war made him sick. When the
+whole business of the country was held up by this accursed war, a man
+would like to forget it when at home. And every man had the same story,
+by God; his wife was knitting when she ought to be darning stockings;
+trying to be intellectual by concerning herself with a subject that
+concerned men alone. Mr. Balfame had always resented the Woman's Club,
+and all talk of votes for a sex that would put him and his kind out of
+business. Their intelligent interest in the war was a grievous personal
+indignity.</p>
+
+<p>Being a woman of clear thought and firm purpose, and of a really high
+order of moral courage, Mrs. Balfame was daunted for a moment only. She
+laid down her cards, opened the door and entered the main room of the
+club-house. There she saw, at the head of the room, a group of men
+surrounding her husband; with one exception, almost as excited as he.
+The <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span>exception was Dwight Rush who had a hand on one of Balfame's
+shoulders and appeared to be addressing him in a low tone. Little Maude
+Battle ran forward and grasped her arm.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, dear Mrs. Balfame," she gasped, "do take him home. He is
+so&mdash;so&mdash;queer. He snatched three girls away from their partners, and the
+boys are so mad. And his language&mdash;oh, it was something awful."</p>
+
+<p>The women and girls were huddled in groups, all but Alys Crumley, who,
+Mrs. Balfame vaguely realised, was sketching. Their eyes were fixed on
+the group at the head of the room, where Rush was now trying to edge the
+burly swaying figure toward the door.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Balfame walked directly up to her flushed and infuriated spouse.</p>
+
+<p>"You are not well, David," she said peremptorily. "In all the years of
+our married life never have you acted like this. I am sure that you are
+getting typhoid fever&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"To hell with typhoid fever!" shouted Mr. Balfame. "I'm drunk, that's
+what. And I'll be drunker when they let me into the bar. You get out of
+this."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Balfame turned to Dr. Anna, who had marched up the room beside her.
+"I am sure it is fever," she said with decision, and the loyal Anna
+nodded sagely. "You know that liquor never affects him. We must get him
+home."</p>
+
+<p>"Huh!" jeered Balfame, "you two get me home! I'm not so drunk I can't
+see the joke of that. The matter with you is you think I'm disgracin'
+you, and you want to go on bein' the high cock-alorum of this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> bunch.
+Well, I'm sick of it, and I'm sick of bein' told to eat out when you're
+at matin&eacute;es or that damned Woman's Club. Home's the place for women.
+Knittin's all right." He laughed uproariously. "But stay at home by the
+fire and knit your husband's socks. Smoke a pipe too, if you like it.
+That's what my granny did. The whole lot of you women haven't got one
+good man's brain between you, and yet you'd talk the head off the
+President of the United States&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He was about to launch upon his opinion of Elsinore society when a
+staccato cough interrupted the flow. Mrs. Balfame turned away with a
+gesture of superb disdain, although her face was livid.</p>
+
+<p>"The sex jealousy we have so often discussed!" Her clear tones from the
+first had carried all over the room. "He must be taken home." She looked
+at Dwight Rush and said graciously: "I am sure he will go with you. And
+he will apologise to the Club when he is himself again. I shall go back
+to our game."</p>
+
+<p>She held her head very high as she swept down the long room, but her jaw
+was set, her nostrils distended, a narrow strip of eye was fixed and
+glaring.</p>
+
+<p>An unforeseen situation had blown to flame such fires of anger as
+existed in her depths, and she was unable to extinguish them as quickly
+as she would have wished. To the intense surprise of the bridge women
+who had followed her out of the card-room and in again, she sank into a
+chair and burst into tears. But she managed to cry quietly into her
+handkerchief, and in a few moments had her voice under control.</p>
+
+<p>"He has disgraced me!" she exclaimed bitterly. "I must resign from the
+Club."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I guess not." The ladies had crowded about<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> her sympathetically.
+"We'll all stand up for you," cried Mrs. Battle. "The men will give him
+a good talking-to, and he'll write an apology to the Club and that will
+end it."</p>
+
+<p>These friends, old and more recent, were embarrassed in their genuine
+sympathy, for no one had ever seen Mrs. Balfame in tears before. Vaguely
+they regretted that, extreme as was the provocation, she should have
+descended to the level of mere womanhood. It was as if they were present
+at the opening of a new chapter in the life of Mrs. Balfame of Elsinore;
+as, in truth, they were.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Balfame blew her nose. "Pardon me," she said. "I never believed I
+should break down like this&mdash;but&mdash;but&mdash;" once more she set her teeth and
+her eyes flashed. "I have a violent headache. I must go home. I cannot
+finish the game."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll take you home," Dr. Anna spoke. "Oh, that beast!"</p>
+
+<p>The other women kissed Mrs. Balfame, straightened her hat, and escorted
+her out to the runabout which Dr. Anna brought to the rear entrance of
+the clubhouse. She smiled wearily at the group, touching her brow with a
+finger. As soon as the little car had left the grounds and was beyond
+the reach of peering eyes, she made no further attempt at self-control,
+but poured forth her inmost soul to the one person she had ever fully
+trusted. She told the doctor all the secret horror of her life, her
+hatred and loathing of David Balfame; everything, in short, but her
+determination to kill him, which in the novel excitement that had
+invaded her nervous system, she forgot.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Anna, who had heard many such confessions,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> but who obstinately had
+hoped that her friend's case was not as bad as it appeared
+superficially, was glad that she was not driving a horse; humane as she
+was, she should have forgotten herself and lashed him to relieve her own
+feelings.</p>
+
+<p>"You must get a divorce," she said through her teeth. "You really must.
+I saw Rush looking at you. There is no mistaking that expression in a
+man's eyes. You must&mdash;you must divorce that brute."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll not!" Mrs. Balfame's composure returned abruptly. "And please
+forget that I gave way like this and&mdash;and said things." She wondered
+what she really had said. "I know I need not ask you never to mention
+it. But divorce! Oh, no. If I continue to live with him they'll be sorry
+for me and stand by me, but if I divorced him&mdash;well, I'd just be one
+more divorced woman and nothing more. Elsinore isn't Newport. Moreover,
+they'd feel I'd no further need of their sympathy. In time they'd let me
+pretty well alone."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think much of your arguments," said Dr. Anna. "You could marry
+Rush and go to New York."</p>
+
+<p>"But you know I mean what I say. And don't worry, Anna dear." She bent
+over the astonished doctor and gave her a warm kiss. "And as I'm not
+demonstrative, you know I mean that too. You are not to worry about me.
+I've got the excuse I needed, and I'm going to buy some things at second
+hand and refurnish one of the old bedrooms and live in it. He can't say
+a word after this, and he'll be humble enough, for the men will make him
+apologise to the Club. I'll threaten him with divorce, and that alone
+will make<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> him behave himself, for it would cost him a good deal more to
+pay me alimony than to keep the old house going&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"That isn't an argument that will have much effect on a man, usually in
+liquor. But women are queer cattle. Divorce is a great and beneficent
+institution, and here you elect to go on living under the same roof with
+a brute&mdash;Oh, well, it's your own funeral. Here we are. I've got to speed
+up and practise medicine. Am expecting a call from out at Houston's any
+minute. Baby. Good night."</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER VI</span></h2>
+
+<p>Mrs. Balfame let herself into the dark house. Saturday was Frieda's
+night out.</p>
+
+<p>Contrary to her economical habit, she lighted up the lower floor
+recklessly, and opened the windows; she felt an overwhelming desire for
+light and air. But as she wished to think and plan with her accustomed
+clarity she went at once to the pantry in search of food; the blood was
+still in her head.</p>
+
+<p>The morrow would be Sunday, and the Saturday luncheon was always
+composed of the remains of the Friday dinner. On Saturday she dined at
+the Country Club. Therefore Mrs. Balfame found nothing with which to
+accomplish her deliberate scientific purpose but dry bread and a box of
+sardines. She was opening this delectable when the front door bell rang.</p>
+
+<p>Her set face relaxed into a frown, but she went briskly to the door. The
+poison might be transpirable after all, and her alibi must be perfect;
+she had changed her mind about going to bed with a headache, and at ten
+o'clock, when she knew that several of her childless friends would be at
+home, she purposed to call them up and thank them sweetly and
+cheerfully.</p>
+
+<p>When she saw Dwight Rush on the stoop, however, she almost closed the
+door in his scowling face.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me in!" he commanded.</p>
+
+<p>"No!" She spoke with sweet severity. "I shall not. After such a scene? I
+must be more careful<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> than ever. Go right away. I, at least, shall
+continue to be above reproach."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" He swallowed the natural expression of masculine irritation. "If
+you won't let me in I'll say what I've got to say right here. Will you
+divorce that brute and marry me? I can get you a divorce on half a dozen
+grounds."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll have no divorce, now or ever." Mrs. Balfame of Elsinore spoke with
+haughty finality. "I abominate the word." Then she added graciously:
+"But don't think I am unappreciative of your kindness. Now you must go
+away. The Gifnings live on the corner, and they always come home early."</p>
+
+<p>"A good many have left, including Balfame. He spoilt the evening." Rush
+stared at her and ground his teeth. "By God! I wish the old duelling
+days were back again. I'd call him out. If you say the word I'll pick a
+quarrel with him anyhow. He carries a gun, and there isn't a jury in
+Brabant County that wouldn't acquit me on the plea of self-defence. My
+conscience would trouble me no more than if I had shot a mad dog."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Balfame gave a little gasp, which he mistook for horror. But
+temptation had assailed her. Why not? Her own opportunity might be long
+in coming. It would be like Dave Balfame to go away and stay for a
+month. But the temptation passed swiftly. Human nature is too complex
+for any mere mortal to reduce to the rule of three. While she could
+dispose of her husband without a qualm, her conscience revolted from
+turning an upright citizen like Dwight Rush into a murderer.</p>
+
+<p>She closed the door abruptly, knowing that no mere<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> verbal refusal to
+accept such an offer would be adequate, and he went slowly down the
+steps. But in a moment he ran back and a few feet down the veranda,
+thrusting his head through one of the open windows.</p>
+
+<p>"Just one minute!"</p>
+
+<p>She was passing the parlour door and paused.</p>
+
+<p>"Promise me that if you are in trouble you will send for me. For no one
+else; no other man, that is, but me. You owe me that much."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I promise." She spoke more softly and smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"And close these windows. It is not safe to leave veranda windows open
+at this hour."</p>
+
+<p>"I intended to close them before going up stairs. But&mdash;perhaps you will
+understand&mdash;the house when I came in seemed to reek with tobacco and
+liquor&mdash;with him!"</p>
+
+<p>His reply was inarticulate, but he pulled down the windows violently,
+and she locked them, smiling once more before she turned out the light.</p>
+
+<p>She returned to the dining-room, thinking upon food with distaste, but
+determined to eat until her head felt normal. She had no intention of
+speaking to her husband should he return, for she purposed to sleep on a
+sofa in the sewing-room and lock the door, but tones and brain must be
+lightly poised when she telephoned to her friends.</p>
+
+<p>The telephone bell rang. Once more she frowned, but answered the summons
+as promptly as she had opened the front door. To her amazement she heard
+her husband's voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Say," it said thickly, "I'm sorry. Promise not to take another drink
+for a month. Sorry, too, I've got<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> to go to the house for a few minutes.
+Didn't intend to go home to-night&mdash;thought I'd give you time to get over
+bein' as mad as I guess you've got a right to be. But I got to go to
+Albany&mdash;politics&mdash;got to go to-night&mdash;must go home and get my grip.
+You&mdash;you&mdash;wouldn't pack it, would you? Then I needn't stay so long. Only
+got to sort some papers myself."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Balfame replied in the old wifely tones that so often had caused
+him to grit his teeth: "I never hold a man in your condition responsible
+for anything. Of course I'll pack your suitcase. What is more, I'll have
+a glass of lemonade ready, with aromatic spirits of ammonia in it. You
+must sober up before you start on a journey."</p>
+
+<p>"That's the ticket. You're a corker! Put in a bromide, too. I'm at
+Sam's, and I guess I'll walk over&mdash;need the air. You just go on bein'
+sweet and I'll bring you something pretty from Albany."</p>
+
+<p>"I want one of those new chiffon-velvet bags, and you will please get it
+in New York," she said practically. "I'll write an exact description of
+it and put it in the suitcase."</p>
+
+<p>"All right. Go ahead." His accents breathed profound relief, and
+although her brain was working at lightning speed, and her eyes were but
+a pale bar of light, she curled her lip scornfully at the childishness
+of man, as she hung up the receiver.</p>
+
+<p>She made the glass of lemonade, added the usual allowance of aromatic
+spirits of ammonia and bromide&mdash;a bottle of each was kept in the
+sideboard ready for instant use&mdash;then ran upstairs and returned with the
+colourless liquid she had purloined from Dr. Anna's cupboard.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span></p><p>Her scientific friend had remarked that one drop would suffice, but
+being a mere female herself she doubled the dose to make sure; and then
+set the glass conspicuously in the middle of the table. The half opened
+can of sardines and the plate of bread were quite forgotten, and once
+more she ran upstairs, this time to pack his useless clothes.</p>
+
+<p>She performed this wifely office with efficiency, forgetting nothing,
+not even the hair tonic he was administering to a spreading bald spot, a
+bottle of digestive tablets, a pair of the brown kid gloves he affected
+when dressed up, and a volume of detective fiction. Then she wrote a
+minute description of the newest fashion in hand bags and pinned it to
+his dinner jacket. The suitcase was an alibi in itself.</p>
+
+<p>When she had packed it and strapped it and carried it down to the
+dining-room, returned to her room and locked the door, she realised that
+she had prolonged these commonplace duties in behalf of her nerves.
+Those well-disciplined rebels of the human system were by no means
+driven to cover, and this annoyed her excessively.</p>
+
+<p>She had no fear of not rising to precisely the proper pitch when she
+heard her husband fall dead in the dining-room, for she always had risen
+automatically to every occasion for which she was in any measure
+prepared, and to many that had caught her unaware. It was the ordeal of
+waiting for the climax that made her nerves jeer at her will, and she
+found that a series of pictures was marching monotonously through her
+mind, again, and again, and yet again: with that interior vision she saw
+her husband walk unsteadily up the street, swing open the gate, slam it
+defiantly, insert<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> his latch-key; she saw his eye drawn to the light in
+the dining-room at the end of the dark hall, saw him drink the lemonade,
+drop to the floor with a fall that shook the house; she saw herself
+running down, calling out his name, shattering the glass on the floor,
+then running distractedly across the street to the Gifnings'&mdash;and again
+and still again.</p>
+
+<p>She had been pacing the room. It occurred to her that she could vary the
+monotony by watching for him, and she put out her light and drew aside
+the sash curtain. In a moment she caught her breath.</p>
+
+<p>Her room was on a corner of the house and commanded not only the front
+walk leading down to Elsinore Avenue, but the grounds on the left. In
+these grounds was a large grove of ancient maples, where, dressed in
+white, she passed many pleasant hours in summer with a book or her
+friends. The trees, with their low thick branches still laden with
+leaves, cast a heavy shade, but her gaze, moving unconsciously from the
+empty street, suddenly saw a black and moving shadow in that black and
+almost solid mass of shadows.</p>
+
+<p>She watched intently. A figure undoubtedly was moving from tree to tree,
+as if selecting a point of vantage, or restless from one of several
+conceivable causes.</p>
+
+<p>Could it be her husband, summoning his courage to enter and face her?
+She had known him in that mood. But she dismissed the suggestion. He had
+inferred from her voice that she was both weary and placated, and he was
+far more likely to come swaggering down the avenue singing one of his
+favourite tunes; he fancied his voice.</p>
+
+<p>Frieda never returned before midnight, and then,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> although she entered
+by the rear hall door and stole quietly up the back stairs, she would be
+quite without shame if confronted.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore, it must be a burglar.</p>
+
+<p>There could not have been a more welcome distraction. Mrs. Balfame was
+cool and alert at once. As an antidote to rebellious nerves awaiting the
+consummation of an unlawful act, a burglar may be recommended to the
+most amateurish assassin.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Balfame put on her heavy automobile coat, wrapped her head and face
+in a dark veil, transferred her pistol from the table drawer to a
+pocket, and went softly down the stairs. She left the house by the
+kitchen door, and, after edging round the corner stood still until her
+eyes grew accustomed to the dark. Then, once, more, she saw that moving
+shadow.</p>
+
+<p>She dared not risk crossing the lawn directly from the house to the
+grove, but made a long d&eacute;tour at the back, keeping on the grass,
+however, that her footsteps should make no noise.</p>
+
+<p>A moment or two and she was within the grove. She saw the shadow detach
+itself again, but it was impossible to determine its size or sex,
+although she inferred from its hard laboured breathing that the
+potential thief was a man.</p>
+
+<p>He appeared to be making craftily for the house, no doubt with the
+intention of opening one of the lower windows; and she stalked him with
+a newly awakened instinct, her nostrils expanding. The original resolve
+to kill her husband had induced no excitement at all; even Dwight Rush's
+love-making had thrilled her but faintly; but this adventure in the
+night, stalking a house-breaker, presently to confront him with the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span>command to raise his hands, cast a momentary light upon the emotional
+moments experienced by the highly organised.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly she heard her husband's voice. He was approaching Elsinore
+Avenue from one of the nearby streets, and he was singing, with
+physiological interruptions, "Tipperary," a song he had cultivated of
+late to annoy his political rival, an American of German birth and
+terrific German sympathies. He was walking quickly, as top-heavy men
+sometimes will.</p>
+
+<p>She drew back and crouched. To make her presence known would be to turn
+over the burglar to her husband and detain the essential victim from the
+dining-room table.</p>
+
+<p>She saw the shadow dodge behind a tree. Balfame appeared almost abruptly
+in the light shed by the street lamp in front of his gate; and then it
+seemed to her that she had held her breath for a lifetime before her
+ears were stunned by a sharp report, her eyes blinked at a spurt of
+fire, before she heard David Balfame give a curious sound, half moan,
+half hiccough, saw him clutch at the gate, then sink to the ground.</p>
+
+<p>She was hardly conscious of running, far more conscious that some one
+else was running&mdash;through the orchard and toward the back fence.</p>
+
+<p>Hours later, it seemed to her, she was in the kitchen closing the door
+behind her. Something curious had happened in her brain, so trained to
+orderly routine that it seldom prompted an erratic course.</p>
+
+<p>She should have run at once to her husband, and here she was inside the
+house, and once more listening intently. It was the fancied sound that
+swung her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> consciousness back to its balance. She went to the front of
+the back stairs and called sharply:</p>
+
+<p>"Frieda!"</p>
+
+<p>There was no answer.</p>
+
+<p>"Frieda," she called again. "Did you hear anything? I thought I heard
+some one trying to open the back door."</p>
+
+<p>Again there was no answer.</p>
+
+<p>Then, her lip curling at the idea of Frieda's return on Saturday night
+at eight o'clock, she went rapidly into the dining-room, carried the
+glass containing the lemonade into the kitchen, rinsed it thoroughly,
+and put it away.</p>
+
+<p>It was not until she reached her room that it occurred to her that she
+should have ascertained whether or not the key was on the inside of the
+rear hall door.</p>
+
+<p>But this was merely a flitting thought; there were loud and excited
+voices down by the gate. In an instant she had hung up her automobile
+cloak and veil, changed her dress for a wrapper, let down her hair and
+thrown open the window.</p>
+
+<p>"What is the matter?" Her tone was peremptory but apprehensive.</p>
+
+<p>"Matter enough!" John Gifning's voice was rough and broken. "Don't come
+out here. Mean to say you didn't hear a shot?"</p>
+
+<p>Two or three men were running about nearer the house. One paused under
+her window, and looked up, waving his hand vaguely.</p>
+
+<p>"Shot? Shot? I heard&mdash;so many tires explode&mdash;What do you mean? What is
+it?&mdash;Who&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Here's the coroner!" cried one of the group at the gate.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span></p><p>"Coroner?"</p>
+
+<p>She ran down stairs, threw open the front door and went as swiftly
+toward the gate, her hair streaming behind her.</p>
+
+<p>"Who is it?" she demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"Now&mdash;now." Mr. Gifning intercepted her and clasped her shoulder firmly.
+"You don't want to go down there&mdash;and don't take on&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She drew herself up haughtily. "I am not an hysterical woman. Who has
+been shot down at my gate?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well," blurted out Gifning. "I guess you'll have to know. It's poor old
+Dave."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Balfame drew herself still higher and stood quite rigid for a
+moment; then the coroner, one of her husband's friends, came up the path
+and said in a low tone to Gifning, "Take her upstairs. We're goin' to
+bring him in. He's gone, for a fact."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Gifning pushed her gently along the path, as the others lifted the
+limp body and tramped slowly behind. "You go up and have a good cry," he
+said. "I'll 'phone for the Cummacks. I guess it was bound to come.
+There's been hot times in Dobton lately&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean that he was deliberately murdered?"</p>
+
+<p>"Looks like it, seeing that he didn't do it himself. The damned hound
+was skulking in the grove. Of course he's made off, but we'll get him
+all right."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Balfame walked slowly up the stair, her head bowed, while the heavy
+inert mass so lately abhorrent to his wife and several politicians was
+laid on the sofa in the parlour whose evolutions had annoyed him.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Gifning telephoned to the dead man's brother-in-law, then for the
+police and the undertaker.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span></p><p>Mrs. Balfame sat down and awaited the inevitable bombardment of her
+privacy by her more intimate friends. Already shriller voices were
+mingling with the heavier tones down on the lawn and out in the avenue.
+The news seemed to have been flashed from one end of Elsinore to the other.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER VII</span></h2>
+
+<p>Mrs. Balfame sat with Mrs. Battle, Mrs. Gifning, Mrs. Frew, her
+sister-in-law, Mrs. Cummack, and several of her other friends in her
+quiet bed-chamber. It was an hour after the death of David Balfame and
+she had, for the seventh time, told the story of packing her husband's
+suit case, carrying it down stairs, returning to her room to undress,
+hearing the commotion down by the gate. Yes, she had heard a report, but
+Elsinore Avenue&mdash;automobiles&mdash;exploding tires&mdash;naturally, it had meant
+nothing to her at the moment. No, he did not cry out&mdash;or if he did&mdash;her
+window was closed; it was the side window she left open at night.</p>
+
+<p>She had accepted a bottle of smelling salts from Mrs. Battle, but sat
+quite erect, looking stunned and frozen. Her voice was expressionless,
+wearily reiterating a few facts to gratify the curiosity of these
+well-meaning friends, as wearily listening to Lottie Gifning's
+reiteration of her own story: As the night was warmer than usual she and
+her husband and the two friends that had motored in with them had sat on
+the porch for awhile; they had heard "Dave" come singing down Dawbarn
+Street; two or three minutes later the shot. Of course the men ran over
+at once, but for at least ten minutes she was too frightened to move.
+One of the men ran for the coroner; if "poor Dave" wasn't dead<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> they
+wanted to take him at once where he would be comfortable.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Balfame's demeanour was all these solicitous friends could have
+wished; although they enjoyed tears and emotional scenes as much as any
+women, they were gratified to be reassured that their Mrs. Balfame was
+not as other women; they still regretted her breakdown at the Club,
+although resentfully conscious of loving her the more. And if they
+wanted tears, here was Polly Cummack shedding them in abundance for the
+brother she now reproached herself for having utterly despised.</p>
+
+<p>Below there was a subdued hum of voices, within and without. The police
+had come tearing up in an automobile and ordered the amateur detectives
+out of the grounds; their angry voices had been heard demanding how the
+qualified fools expected the original footsteps to be detected after
+such a piece of idiocy.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Balfame had shaken her head sadly. "They'll find nothing," she
+said. "If only I had known, I could have called down to them to keep out
+of the yard."</p>
+
+<p>"Now, who do you suppose that is?" Mrs. Battle, who was short and stout
+and corseted to her knees, toddled over to the window and leaned out as
+two automobiles raced each other down the avenue. They stopped at the
+gate, and in a moment Mrs. Battle announced: "The New York newspaper
+men!"</p>
+
+<p>"Already?" Mrs. Balfame glanced at the clock and stifled a yawn. "Why,
+it's hardly an hour&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, a year or so from now they'll be coming over in bi-planes. Well, if
+our poor old boobs of police don't unearth the murderer, they will. They
+are the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> prize sleuths. They'll find a scent, or spin one out of their
+brains as a spider spins his web out of his little tummy&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Cummack interrupted: "Sam is sure it is Old Dutch. He's gone with
+the constable to Dobton."</p>
+
+<p>Dobton, the county seat, and the centre of the political activities of
+East Brabant, intimately connected with the various "towns" by trolley
+and telephone, embraced the domicile of Mr. Konrad Kraus, amiably known
+as "Old Dutch." His home was in the rear of his flourishing saloon,
+which was the headquarters of the county Republicans. David Balfame had
+patronised&mdash;rumour said financed&mdash;the saloon of an American sired by
+Erin.</p>
+
+<p>Another automobile dashed up. "Sam, I think; yes, it is," cried Mrs.
+Battle.</p>
+
+<p>A few moments later Mr. Cummack appeared upon the threshold.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothin' doin'," he said gruffly. "Old Dutch's got a perfect alibi. Been
+behind the bar since six o'clock. It's up to us now to find out if he
+hired a gunman; and we're on the trail of others too. Poor Dave had his
+enemies all right."</p>
+
+<p>He paused and looked tentatively at his weary but heroic sister-in-law.
+His own face was haggard, and the walrus moustache he had brought out of
+the North-west was covered not only with dust but with little moist
+islands made by furtive tears. With that exquisite sympathy and
+comprehension that men have for the failings of other men, which far
+surpasseth that of woman, he had loved his imperfect friend, but he had
+a profound admiration for his sister-in-law, whom he neither loved nor
+pretended to understand.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> He knew her surfaces, however, as well as any
+one, and would have been deeply disappointed if she had carried herself
+in this trying hour contrary to her usual high standard of conduct. Enid
+Balfame, indeed, was almost a legend in Elsinore, and into this legend
+she could retire as into a fortress, practically impregnable.</p>
+
+<p>"Say, Enid," he said hesitatingly. "These reporters&mdash;the New York
+chaps&mdash;the local men wouldn't dare ask&mdash;want an interview. What do you
+say?"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Balfame merely turned her haughty head and regarded him with icy
+disdain. "Are they crazy? Or you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, not the way they look at it. You see, it's up to them to fill a
+column or two every morning, and there's nothing touches a new crime
+with a mystery. So far, they haven't got much out of this but the bare
+fact that poor Dave was shot down at his own gate, presumably by some
+one hid in the grove. An interview with the bereaved widow would make
+what they call a corking story."</p>
+
+<p>"Tell them to go away at once." She leaned back against her chair and
+closed her eyes. Mrs. Gifning flew to hold the salts to her nose.</p>
+
+<p>"Better see them," persisted Mr. Cummack. "They'll haunt the house till
+you do. They're crazy about this case&mdash;hasn't been a decent murder for
+months, nothin' much doin' in any line, and everybody sick of the war.
+The Germans take a trench in the morning papers and lose it in the
+evening&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Sam Cummack! How dare you joke at a time<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> like this?" His wife ran
+forward and attempted to push him out of the room, and the other ladies
+had risen and faced him with manifest indignation.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly Mrs. Cummack put her arms about him and patted the top of his
+head. He had burst into tears and was rubbing his eyes on his sleeve.
+"Poor old Dave!" he sobbed. "I'm all in. But I'll find that low-down cur
+who killed him, cut him off in his prime, if it takes the last cent I've
+got."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Balfame rose and crossed to his side. She put her hand on his
+shoulder. "I never should have suspected that you had such depth of
+feeling, Sam," she said softly, "I am sure that the cowardly murderer
+will be caught and that yours will be the glory. Send those
+inconsiderate reporters away."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Cummack shook his head. "As well talk of calling off the police.
+They'll be round here day and night till the man is in Dobton
+jail&mdash;longer, for they know the public will want an interview with the
+widow. Better see them, Enid."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall not." Mrs. Balfame put her hand to her head and reeled. "Oh, I
+am so tired! So tired! What a day. Oh, how I wish Anna were here."</p>
+
+<p>Three of the women caught her and led her to her chair. "Anna!" she
+reiterated. "I must have something to make me sleep&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll call her up!" volunteered Mrs. Gifning. "I do hope she is at
+home&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"She was to go out to the Houston farm," interrupted Mrs. Cummack. "She
+stopped at our house on the way out&mdash;Sammy has bronchitis&mdash;"; and Mrs.
+Gifning, who was as nervous as the widow should have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> been, ran down to
+the telephone, elated at being the one chosen to horrify poor Dr. Anna
+while engaged in the everlasting battle for life.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll stay with Enid till Anna comes," volunteered Mrs. Cummack. "I
+guess she'd better be quiet. One of you might make coffee for those that
+are going to sit up&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Frieda's doin' that," said Mr. Cummack. "They're all in the
+dining-room&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Balfame had left the shelter of Mrs. Cummack's arm and was sitting
+very straight. "Frieda? This is her night out&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"She was in bed with a toothache, but I routed her out. Well, I'll put
+the men off till to-morrow, but better make up your mind to see them
+then."</p>
+
+<p>He left the room and when Mrs. Balfame was alone with her sister-in-law,
+whom she had never admitted to the sacred inner circle, but who was a
+kind forgiving soul, she smiled affectionately. "Don't be afraid that I
+shall break down," she said. "But those women had got on my nerves. It
+is too kind of you to have dismissed them, and to stay with me yourself
+till Anna comes. It has all been so terrible&mdash;and coming so soon after
+what happened at the Club. Thank heaven I did not permit myself to speak
+severely to him, and even when he telephoned for his suit case I was not
+cross&mdash;I never would hold a man who had been drinking to strict
+account&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you worry your head. He was my brother, but I guess I know what a
+trial he must have been. And if he hadn't been my brother I guess I'd
+say we wouldn't have blamed you much if you had given him a dose of lead
+yourself&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span></p><p>Mrs. Balfame raised her amazed eyes. But in a moment the weary ghost of
+a smile flitted over her firm mouth, and she asked almost lightly: "Do
+you then believe in removing offensive husbands?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well&mdash;of course I'd never have that much courage myself if Sam wasn't
+any better than he should be&mdash;he's pretty decent as men go&mdash;but I know a
+few husbands right here in Elsinore&mdash;well, if their wives gave them
+prussic acid or hot lead they wouldn't lose <i>my</i> friendship, and I guess
+any jury would let them off."</p>
+
+<p>"I guess you're right." Mrs. Balfame was beginning to undress. "I think
+I'll get into bed&mdash;But it requires a lot of nerve. And the risk is
+pretty great, you know. Anna once told me of an untraceable and
+tasteless poison she had&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Lord!" Mrs. Cummack may have been too hopelessly without style and
+ambition to be one of the arc lights of the Elsinore smart set, but she
+possessed a sense of humour, and for the moment forgot the abrupt taking
+off of her brother. "Don't let that get round. The poison wouldn't be
+safe for an hour&mdash;nor a few husbands. I think I'll warn Anna anyhow&mdash;I'm
+not sure I can keep it."</p>
+
+<p>The door opened softly and Mrs. Gifning's fluffy blonde head appeared.
+"I couldn't get Anna herself," she whispered. "The baby hasn't come. But
+Mr. Houston said he'd tell her as soon as it was over, and let her go.
+He was terribly shocked, and sent you his love."</p>
+
+<p>"Thanks, dear," murmured Mrs. Balfame. "I'll try and sleep awhile, and
+Polly has promised to sit with me till Anna comes. Good-night."</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER VIII</span></h2>
+
+<p>There was a thin cry of life in the nursery of the Houston farm house.
+The mother slept and the new born was in competent hands. Mr. Houston, a
+farmer more prosperous and enterprising than his somewhat weedy
+appearance prefigured, beckoned Dr. Anna into the dining-room, where a
+sleepy but interested "hired girl" had brought hot coffee and
+sandwiches.</p>
+
+<p>The battle had lasted little over three hours, but every moment had been
+fraught with anxiety for the doctor and the husband. Mrs. Houston's
+heart had revealed an unsuspected weakness and the baby had not only
+neglected to head itself towards the gates of life as all proper little
+marathons should, but had exhibited a state of suspended animation for
+at least twenty minutes after its arrival at the goal.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Anna dropped into a chair beside the table and covered her face with
+her hand.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm all in, I guess," she murmured, and the farmer put down the coffee
+pot and ran for the demijohn.</p>
+
+<p>"You drink this," he said peremptorily. His own hand was shaking, but he
+made no verbal attempt to release his strangled emotions until both he
+and the doctor had drunk of coffee as well as whiskey. Then, when half
+way through a thick sandwich made of slabs of bread and beef, he began
+to thank the doctor incoherently.</p>
+
+<p>"You are just it," he sputtered. "Just about it.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> And your poor back
+must be broke. You doctors do beat me, particularly you women doctors.
+I'll never say nothin' against women doctors again, though I'll tell you
+now that although poor little Aggie was dead set on you, I opposed it
+for awhile&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Anna was sitting up and smiling. She waved his apologies and
+protestations aside. "I can't think what came over me to collapse like
+that. Once or twice lately I have thought I might be getting something.
+I'll have my blood taken to-morrow. Now, I'll go home and get to bed
+quick, although that coffee has made me feel as fine as a fiddle."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I needed it too, and for more reasons than you. Say&mdash;" Mr.
+Houston had risen and was pulling nervously at his short and bosky
+beard. "I got a 'phone from Mrs. Gifning a while ago. You're wanted at
+the Balfames&mdash;bad."</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Anna sprang to her feet, her full cheeks pale again. "Enid! What has
+happened to her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, she's all right, I guess. It's Dave&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, another gastric attack?"</p>
+
+<p>"Worse and more of it. He was shot&mdash;two or three hours ago, I guess. I
+didn't ask the time&mdash;was in too big a hurry to get back to Aggie&mdash;at his
+own gate, though, I think she said."</p>
+
+<p>"Who did it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nobody knows."</p>
+
+<p>"Dead?"</p>
+
+<p>"No one'll ever be deader."</p>
+
+<p>"H'm!" The color had come back to Dr. Anna's tired face and she shrugged
+her shoulders. "I'm no hypocrite, and I guess you're not either."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm no more a hypocrite than I am a Democrat.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> His yellow streak was
+gettin' wider every year. It's good riddance. Still I wish he'd died in
+his bed. I don't like the idea of a fellow citizen, good or bad, bein'
+shot down like that. It's against law and order, and if the murderer's
+caught and I'm drawn on the jury, and it's proved he done it, I'll vote
+for conviction."</p>
+
+<p>"Quite right," said Dr. Anna briskly, as she went out into the hall and
+put on her hat. "I suppose it's Mrs. Balfame who wants me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, that's it. I remember. But you ought to go home and get sleep.
+There's enough women to sit up with her. The hull town likely."</p>
+
+<p>"But I know she wants me." Dr. Anna's face glowed softly. "I'll sleep
+there all right&mdash;on a sofa beside her bed&mdash;if she wants me to stay on."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, look out for yourself," he growled. "If you don't think about
+yourself a little more you'll soon have no show to think so much about
+other people. I'm goin' for the car."</p>
+
+<p>A few moments later he had brought the little runabout to the door,
+lighted the lamps, and given the doctor a hard grip of the hand.</p>
+
+<p>She returned the pressure in kind. "Now don't worry, Mr. Houston. She's
+all right, and that nurse is first rate. Don't talk to her. Aggie, I
+mean. See you to-morrow about ten."</p>
+
+<p>She drove rapidly out of the gate and into the road. There was a full
+moon shining and the drive was but ten miles between the farm and
+Elsinore. Her face was tired and grim. She had been in daily contact
+with typhoid fever in the poor and dirty quarter of the town. In her
+arduous life she had often <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span>experienced healthy fatigue, but nothing
+like this. Could she be coming down?</p>
+
+<p>She swung her thoughts to Enid Balfame, and forgot herself. Free at
+last, and while still young and lovely! Would she marry Dwight Rush? He
+had leaped into her mind simultaneously with the announcement of
+Balfame's death. But was he good enough for Enid? Was any man? Why, now
+that she was a real widow and in no need of a protector, should she
+marry at all? At any rate she could afford to wait. There were greater
+prizes to be captured by a beautiful and still girlish woman.</p>
+
+<p>She was glad for the first time that Enid had never had a child, for
+there was a virgin and mystic appeal in the woman that had escaped the
+common lot. Spinsters lost it, curiously enough, but a chaste and lovely
+matron, who had ignored the book of experience so liberally offered her,
+and with eyes as unalloyed as a girl's (save when flashing with
+intellectual fires)&mdash;what more distracting anomaly could the world
+offer? Only Mrs. Balfame's indifference had kept the men away&mdash;Dr. Anna
+was convinced of that. Her future was in her own hands.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Anna's mind wandered to the scene of the murder. It was not
+difficult to construct, even from the meager details, and she shuddered.
+Murder! What a hideous word it was! Horrid that it should even brush the
+name of an exquisite creature like Enid Balfame. Would that Dave Balfame
+could have fallen of apoplexy while disgracing himself at the Club! But
+Anna frowned and shook the picture out of her mind. Doctors are too long
+trained in death to be haunted by its phantoms in any form.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span></p><p>A sharp turn and the road ran beside a salt marsh, a solemn grey
+expanse that lost itself far away in the grey of the sea. Suddenly Dr.
+Anna became aware of a man walking rapidly down the road toward her. He
+carried his hat in his hand as if his head were hot on this cool autumn
+night. There was no fear of man in Dr. Anna, even on lonely country
+roads; nevertheless she had no mind to be detained, and was about to
+increase her speed, when her curiosity was excited by something
+pleasantly familiar in the tall loose figure, the almost stiffly upright
+head. A moment later and the bright moonlight revealed the white face of
+Dwight Rush.</p>
+
+<p>She brought the car to an abrupt halt as he too paused and nodded
+recognition.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter?" she asked sharply. "You looked as if you were
+walking to beat time itself&mdash;as if you saw a ghost to boot&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Plenty of ghosts in my head. It aches like the dickens&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Were you there when it happened?"</p>
+
+<p>"When what happened?"</p>
+
+<p>"What? You pretend you don't know&mdash;when all Elsinore must have known it
+within five minutes&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know what you are talking about. I followed you in from the
+Club and then took the train for Brooklyn, where I had to see a man.
+When I got back to Elsinore&mdash;off the train&mdash;my head ached so I knew I
+couldn't sleep&mdash;so I started out to walk it off&mdash;been walking for about
+two hours."</p>
+
+<p>"Dave Balfame was shot down at his own gate three or four hours ago."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span></p><p>"Good God! Who did it? Is he dead?"</p>
+
+<p>"He's dead, and that's about all I can tell you. Houston went to the
+'phone but he was in such a state of mind about his wife that he didn't
+stay for particulars. Enid wanted me&mdash;it was Lottie Gifning that
+'phoned. I gathered, however, that they haven't caught the murderer
+yet."</p>
+
+<p>"Jove!" Rush was shaking. "I feel as if I'd been hit in the pit of the
+stomach. And I'm not one to go to pieces, either. But I've a good enough
+reason."</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Anna continued to stare at him. He met her gaze and wonder grew in
+his. Then the blood rushed into his face and he threw back his head.
+"What do you mean? That I did it?"</p>
+
+<p>"No&mdash;I don't see you committing murder&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Not in that damned skulking way&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Exactly. But you kind of suggest that you might know something about
+it. You might have been in the grove, or some other part of the
+grounds&mdash;with some idea of protecting Enid&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Why should you think that?"</p>
+
+<p>"She told me&mdash;I didn't think it a bad idea myself&mdash;that you asked her to
+divorce Dave and marry you. But she said she wouldn't and I guess she
+meant it. Now, get in," she added briskly. "I'll drive you home and
+never say I met you. Met anybody else?"</p>
+
+<p>"No one."</p>
+
+<p>"Unless they get the right man at once, everybody who was known to have
+any reason to wish Dave Balfame out of the way will come under
+suspicion. For all you know, somebody may have guessed your secret; I
+saw it in your eyes at the clubhouse when you were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> trying to get Dave
+out of the room for her sake; but of course I was 'on.' Those New York
+newspaper men, however&mdash;watch out for them. They'll fine-tooth-comb the
+county for the man in the case."</p>
+
+<p>Rush had disposed his long legs in the little machine and it was once
+more running swiftly on the smooth road. "My brain is still too hot to
+theorise," he said. "May I smoke? What is your opinion?"</p>
+
+<p>"He had many political enemies; besides, these last two years he's been
+growing more and more unbearable, so I guess he had more than one in his
+own party. But it isn't unlikely that some girl did it. For some reason
+the trollops liked him, and I've met him several times of late driving
+with a red-headed minx that looks as if she could shoot on sight."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't mind telling you that I saw Mrs. Balfame a few minutes after
+you left her. I was boiling. Instead of piloting Balfame out to Sam's
+car I wished that I had run him behind the clubhouse and horsewhipped
+him. We are too civilised these days. I merely went to his house and
+asked his wife if she would divorce the brute and marry me. Two
+centuries ago&mdash;maybe one&mdash;I'd have picked her up and flung her on my
+horse and galloped off to the woods. We haven't improved; we've merely
+substituted the long-winded and indirect method and called it
+civilisation."</p>
+
+<p>"Just so. Did she let you in?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not she. You might know that without asking. Nor was she any nearer
+divorce than before. When I offered to pick a quarrel with him, she
+merely slammed the door in my face. But I went to the window and made
+her promise that if she were ever in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> trouble I should be the first
+person she would send for&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"But you weren't!" Dr. Anna's voice rang with jealous triumph. "I was
+the first. But never mind me. I've adored her for forty years, and you
+haven't known her as many weeks. Tell me, you didn't conceal yourself
+anywhere in the grounds to watch over her? She must have been all alone.
+Every servant in town takes Saturday night out."</p>
+
+<p>"I inferred that Sam would keep him at his house all night. Besides, I
+knew she had a pistol. Balfame told me the day he bought her one in New
+York; when those burglaries began."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, don't tell any one that you offered to dispose of her husband&mdash;a
+few moments before he was killed! It might make unnecessary trouble for
+a rising young lawyer."</p>
+
+<p>"I am quite able to do my own thinking and take care of myself," he said
+haughtily, stung by her tone. "If you choose to think me guilty, do so.
+And let me tell you that if I had done it I shouldn't put my head in the
+ash barrel."</p>
+
+<p>"No, but you might do your best to avoid the chair. Small blame to you.
+Well, as I said, you're safe as far as I am concerned. I wouldn't send a
+dog to the chair. That is&mdash;" she looked at him threateningly, "if you
+really do love Enid and want to marry her."</p>
+
+<p>"Love her? I'd marry her if she had done it herself and I'd caught her
+red-handed."</p>
+
+<p>"That's the real thing, I guess." She patted his hand approvingly. "I'll
+do what I can to help you. She's not a bit in love with you yet, but
+that's because she's the purest creature on earth and never would let<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span>
+herself even dream of a man she couldn't marry. She's one of the last
+grand representatives of the old Puritan stock&mdash;and when you see as much
+mean and secret infidelity, dose as many morbid hysterical women, as I
+do&mdash;Oh, Lord! No wonder I see Enid Balfame shining with cold radiance in
+the high heavens. I may idealise her a bit, but I don't care. It would
+be a sad old world if you couldn't exalt at least one human above the
+muck-ruck. Well, she likes you, and you have interested her. Just be on
+hand when she wants you, needs you. When this excitement is over and she
+is tired of female gabble, she'll turn to you naturally, if you manage
+her properly and don't butt in too soon. Quiet persistence and tact;
+that's your game. I'll put in a good word."</p>
+
+<p>"By George, you are a good fellow!" He leaned over and kissed her
+impulsively. As Dr. Anna felt the pressure of those warm firm lips on
+her faded cheek, she astonished herself and him by bursting into tears.
+In an instant, however, she dashed them away and gave an odd gurgling
+laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't mind a silly old maid&mdash;who loves Enid Balfame more than life, I
+guess. And I'm a country doctor, Dwight, who's had a hard night bringing
+one more unfortunate female into the world. I feel better since I
+cried&mdash;first time since you boys used to tease me at school because I
+had cheeks like red pippins&mdash;you don't remember me over at school in
+your village. Renselaerville. I lived there for a spell, and I remember
+you. But this isn't the time for reminiscences. Where do you live? We'll
+be in the outskirts in three minutes."</p>
+
+<p>"I have rooms at The Brabant."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span></p><p>"Any night clerk?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; it's an apartment house."</p>
+
+<p>"Good. We're somewhere in the small hours all right."</p>
+
+<p>She drove swiftly through the sleeping town, slowing down on the corner
+of Main Street and Atlantic Avenue. Rush sprang out with a word of
+thanks and walked up the avenue to The Brabant. The trees here were
+neither old nor close, for this was the quarter of the wealthy newcomers
+and of the older residents that had prospered and rebuilt. But not a
+soul was abroad, and he let himself into the bachelor apartment house
+and mounted the two flights to his rooms unseen.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER IX</span></h2>
+
+<p>As Rush closed his own door behind him, his troubled spirit shifted its
+load. Indubitably, if Dr. Anna had not met him he should have walked
+until exhausted, and then boarded a train somewhere down the line and
+arrived in Elsinore dishevelled, haggard, altogether an object of
+suspicion. None knew better than he that in a small community the
+lightning of suspicion plays incessantly, throwing the faces of innocent
+and guilty alike into distorted relief. And he had half expected to find
+a newspaper man awaiting him in the hall below.</p>
+
+<p>Before turning on his lights he felt his way to the windows and drew the
+curtains close. For all he knew there might be a detective or a reporter
+sitting on the opposite fence. His legal mind, deeply versed in criminal
+law, fully appreciated his danger and warned him to arm at every point.</p>
+
+<p>The district attorney, one of Balfame's men, clever, ambitious, but too
+ill-educated to hope to graduate from Brabant County, or even, political
+influence lacking, to climb into the first rank at home, hated the
+brilliant newcomer who had beaten him twice during his brief term of
+office. That Rush "hailed" originally from the county only added to the
+grievance. If Brabant wasn't good enough for him in the first place, why
+hadn't he stayed where he was wanted?</p>
+
+<p>But Rush dismissed him from his mind as he <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span>remembered uneasily that
+Alys Crumley had been sketching out there at the Club while he had been
+wrestling with David Balfame. He knew her ambition to get a position on
+a New York newspaper as a sketch artist; but the possibility that she
+might have guessed the secret of his interest in putting an end to the
+scene, or intended to sell her drawing to one of the reporters, would
+have given him little uneasiness had the artist not been a young woman
+upon whom he had ceased to call some two months since.</p>
+
+<p>He had met Alys Crumley about eighteen months after he had returned to
+Brabant County and some three months after he had moved from Dobton to
+Elsinore, and at once had been attracted by her bright ambitious mind,
+combined with a real personality and an appearance both smart and
+artistic.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Crumley prided herself upon being unique in Elsinore, at least, and
+although her thick well-groomed hair was dressed with classic severity,
+and she wore soft gowns of an indescribable cut in the house, and at the
+evening parties of her friends, she was far too astute to depart from
+the fashion of the moment in the crucial test of street dress and hat.
+In Park Row during her brief sojourn in the newspaper world, she had
+commanded attention among the critical press women as a girl who knew
+how to dress smartly and yet add that personal touch which, when
+attempted by those lacking genius in dress, ruins the effect of the most
+extravagant tailor. Miss Crumley by no means patronised these autocrats
+of Fifth Avenue; she bought her tailored suits at the ready-made
+establishments, but like many another American girl, she knew how to
+buy, and above all, how to wear her clothes.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span></p><p>She had taught for several years after graduating from the High School;
+then, her nerves rebelling, had abandoned this most monotonous of
+careers for newspaper work. To reporting her physique had not proved
+equal, and although she would have made an admirable fashion editor
+these enviable positions were adequately filled. On the advice of the
+star reporter of her paper, Mr. James Broderick, who, with other
+newspaper men had been entertained occasionally at tea of a Sunday
+afternoon in her charming little home in Elsinore, she had developed her
+talent for drawing during the past year; Mr. Broderick promising to
+"find her a job" as staff artist when she had improved her technique.</p>
+
+<p>Then Dwight Rush appeared.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Crumley lived with her mother in the family cottage next door to
+Dr. Anna's in Elsinore Avenue. Mrs. Crumley, who was the relict of a
+G. A. R. had eked out her pension during the schooldays of her daughter
+with fine sewing, finding most of her patrons among the newcomers. She
+also had cooked for the Woman's Exchange of Brooklyn, besides catering
+for public dinners and evening parties. For several years she enjoyed a
+complete rest; therefore, when Alys retired temporarily from the office
+of provider in order to study art, Mrs. Crumley willingly re-entered the
+industrial field. As both the practical mother and the clever daughter
+were amiable women it was a harmonious little household that Dwight Rush
+found himself drifting toward intimacy with soon after he met the young
+lady at a clubhouse dance.</p>
+
+<p>The living-room&mdash;Alys long since had abolished the word parlour from her
+vocabulary&mdash;was furnished in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> various shades of green as harmonious as
+the family temper; there was a low bookcase filled with fashionable
+literature, English and American; the magazines and reviews on the table
+were almost blatantly "highbrow," and the cool green walls were further
+embellished with a few delicate water colours conceived in the back-yard
+atelier by an individual mind if executed by a still somewhat halting
+brush.</p>
+
+<p>For four months Rush had been a constant visitor at the cottage. Miss
+Crumley, who was as progressively modern as an automobile factory, was
+full of enthusiasm at the moment for the cult of sexless friendship
+between a man and a maid. She had considered James Broderick at one time
+as a likely partner for a philosophic romance (the adjective Platonic
+was out of date; moreover, it implied that the cult was not as modern as
+its devotees would wish it to appear); but the brilliant (and handsome)
+young reporter not only was very busy but of a mercurial and uncertain
+temperament. Nor did he appear to be a youth of lofty ideals; from
+certain remarks, uttered casually, to make matters worse, Alys was
+forced to conclude that he despised the man who "wasted his time" only
+less than he despised the "chaser." If pretty, interesting, and
+unnotional girls came his way and liked him enough, that was "all to the
+good"; a busy newspaper man at the beck and call of a city editor had no
+time for studying over the map of a girl's soul, the lord knew; but if a
+girl wasn't a "dead game sport," then the sooner a man left the field to
+some one with more time, or a yearning for matrimony, the better. These
+remarks had been deliberately thrown out by the canny Mr. Broderick, who
+liked "the kid" and didn't want her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> to "get in wrong" (particularly
+with himself as he enjoyed both her society and the artistic
+living-room&mdash;and Mrs. Crumley's confections) but who saw straight
+through Alys' shifting modernities to the makings of a fine primitive
+female.</p>
+
+<p>But Rush was no student in sex psychology. He took Miss Crumley on her
+face value; delighted in finding a comfortable friend of the counter
+sex, and was more than amenable to her desire to cultivate in him a
+taste for modern literature; since his graduation he had hardly opened
+anything but law books, legal reviews, and the daily newspaper. She read
+aloud admirably&mdash;particularly plays&mdash;and he liked to listen; and as she
+convinced him that he was missing a good part of life, it was not long
+before he was buying for leisurely midnight consumption such work of the
+fashionable writers as was stimulating and intellectual, and at the same
+time sincere.</p>
+
+<p>She also took him over to several symphony concerts, and often played
+classic selections to him in the twilight. He had no objection to music,
+as it either spurred his mind into fresh activity upon problems
+besetting it, or soothed him into slumber. He loved the little room with
+the soft green shadows; it reminded him of the woods, of which he still
+was passionately fond; and he found it both homelike and safe. Other
+houses in Elsinore, larger and more luxurious, were homelike enough, but
+too often were graced by marriageable daughters, who "showed their
+hand." Rush was as little vain and conceited as a man may be, but he was
+well aware that eligible men in Elsinore were few, and that everybody
+must know that his intake, already large, must increase with the years.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span></p><p>But&mdash;as the wise Mr. Broderick would have predicted had he not been
+interested elsewhere during this period&mdash;the tension grew too strong for
+Alys Crumley. Nervous and high-strung, with her reservoir of human
+emotions undepleted by even a hard flirtation since her early youth,
+idealistic, romantic, and imaginative, she began to realise that with
+each long uninterrupted evening&mdash;Mrs. Crumley was the most tactful of
+parents&mdash;she was growing more femininely sensitive to this man's
+magnetism and charm, to his quick responsive mind, to the mobility under
+the surface of his lean hard face, to the suggestion of indomitable
+strength which was the chief characteristic of the new American race of
+men.</p>
+
+<p>It was not long before she was exaggerating every attractive attribute
+he possessed until he no longer seemed what he was, a fine specimen of
+his type, but a glorified superbeing and the one desirable man on earth.
+Her sense of superiority over this "rather crude Western specimen who
+knew nothing but his job," and to whom she could teach so much, had
+protected her for a time, held her femaleness and imagination in
+abeyance, but insensibly his sheer masculinity swamped her, left her
+without a rock but pride to cling to.</p>
+
+<p>It was then that she showed her hand.</p>
+
+<p>For a time after her discovery she was merely furious with herself; she
+was twenty-six and no weakling, neither sentiment nor passion should
+master her. But this phase was brief. Infatuation is not cast out either
+by reason or pride, and very soon her mind opened to the insidious
+whisper: "Why not?" What was the career of staff artist, full of
+liberty, excitement, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> good fellowship as it might be, to marriage
+with an ambitious man capable of inspiring the wildest love? Sooner or
+later had she not intended to make just such a marriage?</p>
+
+<p>From this inception her deductions followed in logical feminine
+sequence. If she loved him with a completeness which was both preadamic
+and neoteric, it was of course because he was consumed with a similar
+passion; in other words he was her mate. He might be too comfortable and
+content to have realised it so far, but only one awakening was possible,
+and hers was the entrancing part to reveal him to himself.</p>
+
+<p>She knew that while by no means a beauty, she was as far from
+commonplace in colouring at least as in style. Her eyes were an odd
+opaque olive, their tint so pronounced that it seemed to invade the pale
+ivory of her skin and the smooth masses of her hair. It was a far more
+subtle face than American women as a rule possess, and the eyes in spite
+of a curious inscrutability that might mean anything were capable of a
+play of lights directed from a battery more archaic than modern; and
+late one evening after she had read him an impassioned drama (ancient)
+and there was a dusky rose in either cheek, she turned them on.</p>
+
+<p>Rush immediately took fright. She had not roused a responsive spark of
+passion in him. Moreover, he was now haunted continually by the image of
+a sweet, remote, and (to him) far more mysterious woman, whom he
+worshipped as the ideal of all womanhood.</p>
+
+<p>There was none of the old time American suavity about Rush. He was
+abrupt, forthright, and impatient. But he was kind and innately
+chivalrous. He "let Miss Crumley down" as gently as he could; but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> he
+let her down. No doubt of that. In less than a week she faced the
+bewildering fact that a man could strike loose a woman's emotional
+torrents while his own depths awaited the magical touch of another. It
+was incredible, preposterous.</p>
+
+<p>For a time Alys, in the privacy of her atelier, raged like a fury. She
+cursed Rush, particularly when engaged in a violent struggle with the
+pride which alone held her from grovelling at his feet.</p>
+
+<p>She was further incensed that he had revealed her to herself as a mere
+morbid unsatisfied girl, whose quarter of a century should be crowned by
+a little family of three; and at last she doubted if she had ever loved
+him at all. That she had been a mere female principle unable to escape
+its impersonal destiny disgusted her with life, but it served to restore
+her balance and philosophy.</p>
+
+<p>Being a girl of brains and character she emerged from the encounter with
+pride still crested in the eyes of the man; and if his image was too
+deeply stamped into her imagination to prevent a recurrence of wild
+desire whenever she was so imprudent as to let her mind wander, she
+remembered that all great physical upheavals are followed by many minor
+shocks, and waited with what patience she could command for full
+delivery.</p>
+
+<p>Of the sanguinary condition of the battle ground in his young friend's
+soul Rush had a mere glimpse before she took heed and dissembled. He
+assumed that she either had fallen in love with him after the fashion of
+girls when they saw too much of a man, or that she was eager to marry
+and improve her condition. He reproached himself for thoughtlessness,
+renounced the long evenings in the pretty room with a sigh, and in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> his
+bachelor quarters read the books of her choice. He had a very kindly
+feeling for her, for he knew that he owed her a debt; if he had not met
+the other woman&mdash;who could tell? Moreover, as he conceived it to be his
+duty to shield her from spiteful comment, he danced with her in public
+and joined her on the street whenever they met.</p>
+
+<p>But if he knew nothing of the intricate and interminable ramifications
+of sex psychology, the infinite variety of moods peculiar to a woman in
+love, he was well enough aware that love is easily turned to hate,
+particularly when vanity has been deeply wounded; and although he had
+conceived a high esteem for Alys Crumley's character during the weeks of
+their intimacy, he knew that men had been mistaken in their estimate of
+women before this, and that if she discovered that he loved another
+woman she might be capable of taking the basest revenge.</p>
+
+<p>It was possible that she was the noblest of her sex, and he hoped she
+was, but as he considered her that night, he realised that it behooved
+him to walk warily nevertheless. By the time he could marry Enid
+Balfame, or even betray his desire to marry her, this crime would have
+passed into county history. Of the real danger he never thought.</p>
+
+<p>The vision evoked of Alys Crumley was accompanied by that of her home,
+and he looked round his stark bachelor quarters with a sigh.</p>
+
+<p>The untidy sitting-room was crowded with law books and legal reviews;
+the maid had given it up in despair long since, and only swept out the
+ashes daily and dusted once a week.</p>
+
+<p>In the small bedroom was an iron bed like a soldier's;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> neckties hung
+from the chandelier; on the bureau and table beside the bed were more
+books, several by the young British authors of the moment for whom Miss
+Crumley had communicated some of her rather perfunctory enthusiasm.</p>
+
+<p>He flung his clothes all over the room as he undressed. He hated
+bachelor quarters. Six months hence he would be the master of a home as
+exquisite as the woman he loved. Balfame! The man was dead, but as Rush
+thought of him his face turned almost black and his hands tingled and
+clenched. It would be long before he could hear that name mentioned
+without a hot uprush of hatred and loathing. But it subsided and he took
+a bath and "turned in."</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER X</span></h2>
+
+<p>As Rush walked to the Elks' Club for breakfast a few hours later he felt
+that suspicion was in the very air of Elsinore, the very leaves of the
+quiet Sunday streets rustled with it. Even on Atlantic Avenue there were
+knots of men discussing the murder, and in Main Street every man that
+passed received a hard stare.</p>
+
+<p>Rush was thankful to observe that all looked as if they had gone to bed
+late and slept little, and when he met Sam Cummack on the steps of the
+clubhouse he realised the advantages of the habit of careful grooming to
+which the deceased's brother-in-law was quite indifferent.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Dwight!" groaned Cummack, seizing his hand. "Where were you last
+night? I'd have liked to have you round."</p>
+
+<p>"I was in Brooklyn and got back late. What's your opinion?"</p>
+
+<p>"I've had a dozen but they don't seem to hold water. I guess it was a
+gunman, imported direct&mdash;though perhaps I'm just hoping it wasn't one of
+them trollops did it&mdash;for the sake of the family as well as poor Dave's
+name. I don't want a scandal like that. Murder's bad enough, the Lord
+knows."</p>
+
+<p>"What sort of footsteps in the grounds?"</p>
+
+<p>"Every kind we've got in Elsinore, I guess. About<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> forty people were
+runnin' round the yard before the police came. Funny that Gifning didn't
+think of that. But he says the breath was knocked out of him. Jimminy! I
+never knew anything to upset the town like this before&mdash;the county, you
+might say. The telephone's been buzzin' till the girls have threatened
+to strike. An operator fainted this morning&mdash;wonder if Dave knew her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I am rather surprised to learn that Balfame was so popular&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"'Tain't that only&mdash;though Dave still had lots of friends in spite of
+that ugly temper he was growin'; but we've all got enemies&mdash;every last
+one of us&mdash;and to be shot down at his own gate like that&mdash;Gee, it has
+given every man in town the creeps. We must get the man quick and make
+an example of him. I hope I'm drawn."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope he doesn't ask me to defend him. How is Mrs. Balfame bearing
+up?"</p>
+
+<p>"Fine. She's as cool as they make 'em. I'd hate to be married to one of
+them cucumbers myself, but they're damned convenient in times of
+trouble. Maybe she cared a lot for Dave; who knows? At any rate we must
+make people think she did. I don't want suspicion pointing to her."</p>
+
+<p>"What! It is incredible that you should think of such a thing." Rush,
+always pale, had turned as white as chalk. "You can't mean that people
+are saying&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Not yet. But we've got to be prepared for anything, especially with
+these New York newspapermen on the trail. Unless we catch the murderer
+damned quick, every last one of us that was close to Dave that can't
+prove an alibi will be suspected. Why, I walked<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> with him for two blocks
+after he left my house&mdash;thought he might not be able to make it alone,
+and he wouldn't go in the car; then, I didn't go straight home, either.
+I went to my office to straighten out something&mdash;Oh, Lord! don't let's
+talk of it; I must have been there alone, not a soul to see me, when he
+was shot. It gives me the horrors to think of it&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense! It was well known that you were his best friend. No one would
+think of you."</p>
+
+<p>"They might! They might!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well&mdash;about Mrs. Balfame?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, she's got the best alibi ever. She'd packed his suitcase and
+carried it downstairs, and even written a note describing some bag or
+other she wanted and pinned it to his coat. I was there when the police
+examined it. They're not saying who they're suspectin', but they're
+doin' a heap of thinkin'. Fact remains that she was alone in the front
+of the house&mdash;that mutt of a hired girl she's got was way up in the back
+part groanin' with a toothache when I routed her out. If she wasn't such
+a fright that Dave wouldn't have looked at her&mdash;Well, the police know
+that Dave wasn't what you might call a model husband; but Enid, so far
+as we all know, never rowed him. That's the most tryin' sort, though,
+and generally conceals the most hate. But she had her clubs and all the
+rest of it. Maybe she didn't care. I'm only wonderin' what Phipps
+thinks. That's the reason I want her to see the newspapermen. She might
+throw them off the scent at least. Of course, they'd rather she'd done
+it than any one&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You won't even hint to her that she may be suspected?" interrupted
+Rush, sharply.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span></p><p>"Oh, Lord, no. I'd never dare. Just persuade her somehow. Guess Anna or
+Polly can manage it."</p>
+
+<p>Rush turned and walked down the steps. "I'll go to the Elsinore to
+breakfast. The reporters are likely to show up there. I know Jim
+Broderick. We must be on the job all the time."</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER XI</span></h2>
+
+<p>To Dr. Anna alone Mrs. Balfame told the story of the night, although,
+implicit as was her trust, with certain reservations. She omitted the
+detail of the poisoned lemonade, but otherwise unburdened herself with
+freedom and relief.</p>
+
+<p>"Before I knew where I was," she concluded, "there was the kitchen door
+closed behind me. I can't understand why I lost my presence of mind. I
+could easily have run through the back door and out the front, and
+reached him about the time Gifning did."</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Anna was drinking strong coffee. It was eight o'clock, and she had
+gone downstairs and made breakfast for her friend and herself, Frieda
+having retired to her room and bolted the door. The doctor had heard the
+whole story as soon as she arrived, but after an interval of sleep had
+asked for it again.</p>
+
+<p>"I think it's better as it is," she said thoughtfully. "No one could
+have seen you. The moon rose late; the night at that time must have been
+pitch dark. The trees alone would have shielded you, even had any one
+been watching. Suspicion never would fall on you anyhow; you are too far
+above it, and Dave had been insulting people right and left the last
+year. But you want to avoid blackmail. The only thing that disturbs me
+is that that girl may have been on the back stairs when you came in.
+I'll come in for lunch and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> talk to her then. You keep to your room.
+Rest, and sleep if you can. I don't fancy you'll have early visitors.
+Everybody'll sleep late. I wish I could!"</p>
+
+<p>"Will you stop in and see Dr. Lequeur about yourself&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"If I can find a minute. Don't worry about me. I'm tough, and the Lord
+knows I ought to be immune."</p>
+
+<p>But she found no time to see a doctor in her own behalf and returned to
+the Balfame house between twelve and one. Reporters were sitting on the
+box hedge and on the doorstep. She evaded them good-naturedly, but it
+was some time before she was admitted by the rebellious Frieda, who had
+been summoned to the front door some sixteen times during the forenoon.</p>
+
+<p>When Dr. Anna finally found herself in the dark hall she saw that
+Frieda's face was swollen and tied up in a towel. The spectacle gave the
+doctor an instant opportunity.</p>
+
+<p>"The worst infliction on earth, bar none!" she announced, following the
+maid into the kitchen. "Let me take a look at it? How long have you had
+it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Two days," replied Frieda sullenly, unamenable to sympathy which
+offered no immediate surcease of pain.</p>
+
+<p>"Abscess?"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't know."</p>
+
+<p>Frieda's mental processes were slow. Before she could follow the
+doctor's the bandage was ripped off and a sharp eye was examining the
+inflamed interior of her cavernous mouth. A moment later Dr. Anna had
+opened her doctor's bag and was anointing the surroundings of the
+tortured tooth with a brown liquid.</p>
+
+<p>"That won't cure it," she said, "but no dentist could<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> do more until the
+swelling is reduced. And it will save you a preliminary bill. Keep this.
+As soon as you feel you can stand it, go to Dr. Meyers, Main Street.
+Tell him I sent you. But why didn't you tell Mrs. Balfame last night?
+Why endure pain? Kind mistresses always keep such alleviatives in the
+house, and Mrs. Balfame is not the sort to mind being roused in the
+middle of the night if some one were suffering."</p>
+
+<p>The pain had subsided under treatment, and Frieda was restored to such
+civility as she knew. "It only got bad when I am dancing to the hall,
+and I ran home. I had some drops in my room."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I see. Did they stop the pain?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nix. Ache like before, but I lie down and perhaps can sleep if those
+men have not make me come downstairs to make the coffee. All night I am
+up." And she glowered with self-pity.</p>
+
+<p>"But when you found that your drops were no good, why didn't you run at
+once to Mrs. Balfame? You were braver than I should have been. It was
+about eight o'clock, was it not, when Mr. Balfame was shot? Mrs. Balfame
+was probably awake when you came in, even if she had gone to bed. Or
+perhaps you didn't know that she came home early?"</p>
+
+<p>"On Saturday nights she come home after I do. How I am to know she is
+here?"</p>
+
+<p>"But you might have gone to her medicine closet&mdash;in her bathroom."</p>
+
+<p>"When you have the pain like hot iron you think of all the good things
+for it the next day." Frieda relapsed into sullen silence; Dr. Anna
+hastily disposed of the lunch prepared for her and went upstairs.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Balfame was lying on the sofa. She had not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> dressed, but looked as
+trim as usual in a blue and white bathrobe; never having been a woman to
+"let herself go," she did not possess a wrapper. Her long hair hung in
+two loose braids, and she looked very pale and lovely.</p>
+
+<p>"Put Frieda out of your head," said Dr. Anna hurriedly; familiar voices
+ascended from the path below. "She heard nothing. You don't when you
+have a jumping toothache."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank heaven!"</p>
+
+<p>A soft knock announced several of her friends. They were dressed for
+motoring; this being Sunday, not even death must interfere with the
+cross-country refreshment of the Elsinore husband. They kissed Mrs.
+Balfame and congratulated her upon her appearance and her nerves.</p>
+
+<p>"But one thing must be settled right here," announced Mrs. Gifning, "and
+that is the question of your mourning. I'll go over on the eight-ten in
+the morning and see to it. But you never wear ready-made things and it
+would be a pity to waste money that way. Are you going to wear a veil at
+the inquest?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I am. Do you suppose I shall submit to being stared at by a
+curious mob and snapshotted by reporters?"</p>
+
+<p>"That's just what I thought. I'll bring back a smart hat and a long
+cr&ecirc;pe veil with me, and order your widow's outfit from one of the big
+shops; they'll have it over in time for the funeral. And you can wear
+your tailor suit to the inquest; it will be half covered by the veil."</p>
+
+<p>"What a good idea!" said Mrs. Balfame gratefully. "You are too kind."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span></p><p>"Kind? Nothing! I just love to shop for other people. How lucky that
+you hadn't bought your new winter suit. It might have been blue."</p>
+
+<p>"It was to have been blue." There was a note of regret in Mrs. Balfame's
+voice. "Don't forget to buy me two black chiffon blouses. One very
+simple for every day; the other, really good. And something white for
+the neck. Of course I wouldn't wear it on the street; but in the
+house&mdash;black is too trying!"</p>
+
+<p>"Rather. Trust me. Have you black gloves&mdash;undressed kid, I mean? You
+don't want to look like an undertaker." Mrs. Balfame nodded. "That's
+all, I think. Send me a line if you think of something else. I must run
+and take Giffy for his ride. He's all broken up, poor darling. Wasn't he
+just splendid last night?" She blew a kiss along the widow's forehead
+and ran out with a light step that caused her more substantial friends
+to sigh with envy. She, too, was in the man&oelig;uvring forties, but she
+had gone into training at thirty.</p>
+
+<p>"I guess we'd all better go." Mrs. Battle, with a sudden dexterous heave
+of her armoured bulk, was out of the chair and on her feet. "Now, try to
+sleep, dearie. You are just the bravest thing! But to-morrow will be
+trying. Sam Cummack says the coroner won't hold the inquest before
+afternoon, but if they do and your veil isn't here, I've got one of Ma's
+packed away in camphor that I'll get out for you. I'll get it out
+to-night and have it airing&mdash;we won't take any chances; and you sha'n't
+be annoyed by the vulgar curious."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, thank you! But that is not the only ordeal. It's even more trying
+to stay in the house all these days<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span>&mdash;in this room! If I could walk in
+the grounds. But I suppose those reporters are everywhere."</p>
+
+<p>"They are swarming, simply swarming. And the avenue is so packed with
+automobiles you can't navigate. People have come from all over the
+country&mdash;some from New York and Brooklyn."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Balfame curled her lip with disgust. Morbid curiosity, like other
+vulgarities, was incomprehensible to her. Death, no matter how desired
+or how accomplished, should inspire hush and respect, not provide
+excitement for a Sunday afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>"Let us hope they will find the wretch to-day," she said impatiently.
+"That will end it, for, of course, it is the element of mystery that has
+made the case so notorious. Is there no clue?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not the ghost of one." Mrs. Cummack, too, was adjusting her automobile
+veil. "Sam's on the job,&mdash;I'm only taking him out for an hour or two;
+and so, of course, are the police&mdash;hot. But he's covered his tracks so
+far."</p>
+
+<p>"If it is a he," whispered Mrs. Battle to Mrs. Frew, as they stole
+softly down the stairs. "What about that red-head, or that telephone
+girl who fainted? They say she had to go home&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Can you imagine caring enough for Dave Balfame&mdash;Let's get out of this,
+for heaven's sake, or I'll faint right here."</p>
+
+<p>The atmosphere was as depressing as the dark interior of the house, for
+it was heavy laden with the scent of flowers and death. The parlour
+doors, behind which lay David Balfame, embalmed and serene in his
+casket, were closed, but hushed whisperings came forth like the rustling
+of funeral wreaths disturbed by the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> vapours of decay. The devoted
+friends of the widow burst out into the sunshine almost with a cry of
+relief.</p>
+
+<p>Here all was as animated as a county fair. The grounds were void, save
+by patrolling police, but the avenue and adjoining streets were packed
+with every type of car from limousine to farmer's runabout, and many
+more people were afoot, staring at the house, venturing as near the
+hedge as they dared, to inspect the grove. They asked questions,
+answered them, offered theories, all in a breath, and without the
+slightest respect for any opinion save their own. A few children,
+sucking peppermint sticks, sat on the hedge.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you ever?" murmured Mrs. Frew to Mrs. Battle. "<i>Did</i> you ever?" She
+shuddered with refined disgust, but felt thrilled to her marrow. "Just
+Enid's luck!" was her auxiliary but silent reflection.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER XII</span></h2>
+
+<p>At the inquest on the following day, Mrs. Balfame, circumvested in
+cr&ecirc;pe, sat between Mr. and Mrs. Cummack, gracefully erect, and without
+even a nervous flutter of the hands.</p>
+
+<p>When called upon to testify, she told in a clear low voice the meagre
+story already known to her friends and by this time the common property
+of Elsinore and all that read the newspapers of the State.</p>
+
+<p>The coroner released her as quickly as possible, and called her servant
+to the stand. Although the swelling in Frieda's face had subsided
+somewhat under Dr. Anna's repeated ministrations, the tooth still
+throbbed; and she also was released after announcing resentfully that
+she'd seen "notings," heard "notings," and "didn't know notings" about
+the murder except having to get up and make coffee when she was like to
+die with the ache in her tooth.</p>
+
+<p>There was no one else to testify, except Cummack, who gave the hour,
+about a quarter or ten minutes to eight, when the deceased had left his
+house, and Mr. Gifning and his two guests, who testified to hearing the
+sound of Balfame's voice raised in song, followed a moment later by the
+report of a pistol. They also described minutely the position of the
+body when found. Indubitably the shot had been fired from the grove.</p>
+
+<p>The staff artists were forced to be content with a black sketch of a
+very long widow, who held her head<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span> high and emanated an air of chill
+repose. One reporter, camera set, forced his way to her side as she was
+about to enter Mrs. Battle's limousine and begged her plaintively to
+raise her veil; but he might as well as have addressed a somnambulist;
+Mrs. Balfame did not even snub him.</p>
+
+<p>"Why should they want a picture of me?" she asked Mrs. Battle,
+wonderingly. "It's poor Dave that is dead. Whoever heard of me outside
+of Elsinore?"</p>
+
+<p>"I guess you haven't amused yourself reading the papers. You've been
+written up as a beauty and the intellectual and social leader of
+Elsinore. Some distinction, that! The public is mighty interested in you
+all over the State and will be for several days yet, no doubt. Then
+we'll find the man and they'll forget all about the whole affair until
+the trial comes up."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Balfame, clad in full weeds, more dignified, stately and
+unapproachable than ever, ran the gauntlet of staring eyes at the church
+funeral, apparently unconscious of the immense crowd of women that had
+driven over from every township in Brabant County. That the women did
+not approve of her haughty head and tearless eyes, brilliant even behind
+the heavy cr&ecirc;pe, would have concerned her little if she had known it.
+Her mind was concentrated upon the future moment when this series of
+hideous ordeals would be over and she could re-enter the decent
+seclusion of private life.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Balfame may have had her faults, but a vulgar complaisance to
+publicity was not among them.</p>
+
+<p>She had also made up her mind sternly not to feel happy, not to rejoice
+in her freedom, not to make a plan for the future until her husband was
+in his grave. But all during that long service, while the new parson
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span>discoursed unctuously upon the virtues and eminence of the slain, she
+had the sensation of holding her breath.</p>
+
+<p>It was four days from the night of the murder before she consented to
+see the reporters. Meanwhile every suspected person had proved an alibi,
+including the red-haired Miss Foxie Bell, and the indignant and highly
+respectable Miss Mamie Russ, who officiated at the telephone. She had
+known the deceased, yes, and once or twice she had driven out to one of
+the roadhouses with him, where a number of her friends were indulging in
+a quiet Sunday afternoon tango, but she had merely looked upon him as a
+kind fatherly sort of person; and at the hour of his death she was
+asleep, as her landlady could testify.</p>
+
+<p>Old Dutch had indignantly repudiated the charge of employing gunmen, and
+had even attended the funeral and shed tears. Whatever the faults of the
+deceased, they were not of a nature to antagonise permanently the erring
+members of his own sex. Moreover, he had been an able politician,
+respected of his enemies, and was now glorified by his cowardly and
+untimely taking off.</p>
+
+<p>The local police had an uneasy suspicion that the assassin was one of
+their "pals"&mdash;in that small and democratic community, where every man
+was an Elk from the banker to the undertaker. They were quite ready to
+drop the case, loudly ascribing the deed to an ordinary housebreaker, or
+to some unknown enemy from out the impenetrable rabbit warrens of New
+York City.</p>
+
+<p>The newspaper men were chagrined and desperate. The Balfame Case had
+proved uncommonly magnetic to the New York public. They had done their
+best to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> create this interest, and now were on their mettle to "make
+good." But they were beginning to wish they had waited for at least a
+lantern's ray at the end of the dark perspective before exciting the
+public with descriptions of the winding picturesque old street of the
+ancient village of Elsinore; the stately old-time residence at its head
+which had housed (in more or less discomfort) three generations of
+Balfames, the sinister grove of trees that had sheltered the dastardly
+assassin, the prominence and political importance of David Balfame who
+had inherited this ancestral estate, and played among those trees in
+childhood; his unsuspecting and vocal return at an early hour to be shot
+down at his own gate.</p>
+
+<p>All this appealed acutely to a public which makes the fortune of the
+sentimental play, the "crook" play, and the "play with a punch and a
+mystery." Here was the real thing, as rural as the childhood of many of
+the Greater New York public&mdash;weary of black-hand murders and anarchist
+bombs&mdash;with a mystery as deep as any ever invented by their favourite
+authors, and in no remote district but at their very gates.</p>
+
+<p>If anything more were necessary to rivet their interest, there was the
+handsome and elegant (if provincial) Mrs. Balfame, as austere as a Roman
+matron, as chaste as Diana, as decently invisible in public during this
+harrowing ordeal as imported cr&ecirc;pe could make her. The men reporters had
+dismissed the widow with a paragraph of personal description, but the
+newspaper women had filled half a page in each of the evening journals.</p>
+
+<p>The press had given the public at least two columns a day of the Balfame
+murder; there had been a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span>biography of every suspect in turn, and there
+had been the thrilling episode of the bloodhounds turned loose upon that
+trampled enclosure. But no road led anywhere, and the public, baffled
+for the moment, but still hopeful, demanded an interview with the
+interesting widow.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, her alibi was perfect, but all felt sure that she "knew
+something about it." Her unhappy married life was now common property,
+and if it only could be proved that she had had a lover&mdash;but the
+newspapers as has been said were discouraging upon this point. Mrs.
+Balfame (quoting the young men this time), while amiable and kind to
+all, was cold and indifferent. Men were afraid of her. The New York
+detectives had "fine-tooth-combed" Brabant County and reported
+disgustedly to their chief that she was "just one of those club women;
+no use for men at all."</p>
+
+<p>The reporters, however, had made up their minds to fix the crime, if
+possible, upon her. They would have compromised upon the young servant,
+but Frieda, especially with her face framed in a towel stained brown,
+and her eyes swollen above the wrenching agonies of an ulcerated tooth,
+was hopeless material. Moreover, they were convinced, after thorough
+investigation, that the deceased's gallantries, while sufficiently
+catholic, had not run to serving maids, and that of late particularly he
+had loudly hated all things German.</p>
+
+<p>Regarding Mrs. Balfame they held their judgment in reserve until they
+met and talked with her; but Broderick had extracted the miserable
+details of her life from his friend, Alys Crumley, as well as a lively
+description of the scene at the Country Club; they believed they could
+bring to light enough to base a sensational trial upon, whatever the
+verdict of the jury.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span></p><p>It must not be inferred for a moment that these brilliant and
+industrious young men were bloodthirsty. They knew that if Mrs. Balfame
+had committed the crime and could be induced to make a defiant
+confession, it was more than probable that she would go scot free; that
+in no case was there more than a bare possibility of a woman of her age,
+position and appearance being sent to the chair. But it is these alert,
+resourceful, ruthless young men who make the newspapers we read with
+such interest twice a day; it is they who write the columns of "news"
+that we skip if dull (with a mental reservation to change our
+newspaper), or devour without a thought of the tireless individual
+activities that re-supply us daily with our strongest impersonal
+interests. Sometimes a trifle more sparkle or vitality, or a deeper
+note, will wring from us that facile comment, "How well written!"
+without a pause to reflect that mere good writing never made a
+newspaper, or to hazard a guess that behind the column that thrilled us
+were hours, perhaps weeks, of incessant unravelling of clues, of
+following a scent in the dark, with death at every turn. It is the
+business of reporters to furnish news of vital interest to a pampered
+public, and as so large a part of it is furnished to them by the
+weaknesses and misdeeds of mankind, what wonder that the reporters grow
+cynical and make no bones about providing clues that will lead, at the
+least, to many columns charged with suspense and sensational human
+interest!</p>
+
+<p>These young men knew the moment the Balfame case "broke" that it was big
+with possibilities; they scented a mystery that would be cleared by the
+arrest<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> of no local politician; and they knew the interlocking social
+relationships of these loyal old communities. It was "up to them" to
+solve the mystery, and by a process of elimination, spurred by their own
+desire to give the public the best the market afforded, they arrived at
+Mrs. Balfame.</p>
+
+<p>Within forty-eight hours they were hot on her trail. Among other things,
+they discovered that she was an expert shot at a target; but did she
+keep a pistol in the house? She had used one, kept for target purpose,
+out at the Country Club, and it was impossible to verify the rumor that
+in common with many another, she had one in the house as a protection
+against burglars and tramps.</p>
+
+<p>At their instigation, Phipps, the local chief of police, had reluctantly
+consented to interrogate her on this point (a mere matter of form, he
+assured her), and she had replied blandly that she never had possessed a
+pistol. The chief apologised and withdrew. He was of a respectable
+Brabant family himself, and was horrified that a member of the good old
+order should even be brushed by the wing of suspicion. Being a quiet
+family man and a Republican to boot, he had never approved of Dave
+Balfame, and had only refrained from arresting him upon more than one
+occasion&mdash;notably a week or two since when he had publicly blacked the
+eye of Miss Billy Gump&mdash;out of deference to the good name of Elsinore;
+and after all, they were both Elks and had spun many a yarn in the
+comfortable clubrooms. Inheritance, circumstances, and a fine common
+contempt for the inferior brands of whiskey, had made them "stand in
+together, whatever happened." The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> chief had no love for Mrs. Balfame,
+for she had frozen him too often, but she was the pride of Elsinore and
+he was alert to defend her.</p>
+
+<p>It had never occurred to Mrs. Balfame that she would incur even a
+passing suspicion, and she had left the pistol in the pocket of her
+automobile coat. Immediately after the visit of the chief of police she
+took the pistol into the sewing-room, locked the door, covered the
+keyhole, and buried the weapon in the depths of an old sofa. As her
+large strong fingers had mended furniture many times, no one would
+suspect that this ancient piece (dating back to the first Balfame) had
+been tampered with. She performed the operation with haughty reluctance,
+but the instinct of self-preservation abides in the proudest souls, and
+Mrs. Balfame had the wit to realise that it was by far the better part
+of valour.</p>
+
+<p>The shooting occurred on Saturday night. By Wednesday all the horrors of
+the criminal episode were over and she felt as young as she looked, and
+at liberty to begin life again, a free and happy woman. Her mourning was
+perfect.</p>
+
+<p>She made up her mind to see the newspaper men and have done with it.
+They had haunted the grounds&mdash;no patrols could keep them out&mdash;sat on the
+doorstep, forced their way into the kitchen, and rung the front
+door-bell so frequently that hourly she expected the scowling Frieda to
+give notice. Mr. Cummack told her repeatedly that she might as well give
+in first as last and she finally agreed with him.</p>
+
+<p>It was five o'clock in the afternoon when they were admitted to the
+spacious old-fashioned parlour with its incongruous modern notes.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span></p><p>Like many women, Mrs. Balfame had an admirable taste in dress, so long
+as she marched with the conventions, but neither the imagination nor the
+training to create the notable room. Long since she had banished the old
+"body brussels" carpet and substituted rugs subdued in colour if
+commonplace in design. The plush "set" had not gone to the auction room,
+however, but had been reupholstered with a serviceable "tapestry
+covering." A what-not still stood in one corner, and both centre-table
+and mantel were covered with marble, although the wax works that once
+embellished them were now in the garret. The wall paper, which had been
+put on the year before, was a neutral pale brown. Nevertheless, it was a
+homelike room, for there were two rocking-chairs and three easy chairs;
+and on a small side-table was Mrs. Balfame's workbasket. On the marble
+centre-table was a most artistic lamp. The curtains matched the
+furniture.</p>
+
+<p>There were ten reporters from New York, two from Brooklyn, three from
+Brabant County, and four correspondents. Word had been passed during the
+morning that Mrs. Balfame would see the newspaper men, and they were
+there in force; those that were not "on the job all the time" having
+loyally been notified by those that were. But they had stolen a march on
+the women. Not a "sob-sister" was in that intent file, led by James
+Broderick of <i>The New York Morning News</i>, that entered the Balfame house
+and parlour on Wednesday at five o'clock.</p>
+
+<p>Frieda had announced that her mistress would be "down soon," and Mr.
+Broderick immediately drew the curtains back from the four long windows,
+and placed a comfortable chair for Mrs. Balfame in a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span>position where she
+would face both the light and her visitors. It was not the first stage
+that the astute Mr. Broderick had set; and whenever he was on a case he
+fell naturally into the position of leader; not only had he the most
+alert and driving, the most resourceful and penetrative mind, but his
+good looks and suave manner inspired confidence in the victim, and led
+him insensibly into damaging admissions. He was a tall slim young man, a
+graduate of Princeton, not yet thirty, with a regular face and warm
+colouring, and an expression so pleasant that the keenness of his eyes
+passed unnoted. In general equipment and dress he was typical of his
+kind, unless they took to drink and grew slovenly; but his more emphatic
+endowment enabled him to take the lead among a class of men whom he
+respected too thoroughly to antagonise with arrogance.</p>
+
+<p>"Late&mdash;to make an impression!" he growled, but young Ryder Bruce of the
+evening edition of his paper nudged him. Mrs. Balfame was on the
+staircase opposite the parlour doors.</p>
+
+<p>The young men stood up and watched her as she slowly descended, her
+black dress clinging to her tall rather rigid figure, her head high, her
+profile as calm as marble, her eye as devoid of expression as if
+awaiting the click of the camera.</p>
+
+<p>The reporters were prejudiced on the spot, so impatient are newspaper
+men of any sort of pose or attempt to impress them. As she entered the
+room she greeted them pleasantly, looking straight at them with her
+large cold eyes, and allowed herself to be conducted to a chair by the
+polite Mr. Broderick.</p>
+
+<p>She knew that in her high unrelieved black she looked older than common,
+but this was a deliberately <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span>calculated effect. She was not as adroit as
+she would have been after recurrent experiences with the press, but
+instinct warned her to look the dignified middle-aged widow, quite above
+the coquetry of the bare throat of fashion, or of tempering her weeds
+with soft white lawn.</p>
+
+<p>As Mr. Broderick made a little speech of gratitude for her gracious
+reception of the press, she appraised her guests. The greater number
+were well-groomed, well-dressed, well-bred in effect, very sure of
+themselves; altogether a striking contrast to the local reporters that
+had come in on their heels.</p>
+
+<p>She answered Mr. Broderick diffidently: "I have never been interviewed.
+I am afraid you will hardly find&mdash;what do you call it?&mdash;a story?&mdash;in
+me."</p>
+
+<p>"We don't wish to be too personal," he said gently, "but the public is
+tremendously interested in this case, and more particularly in you. It
+isn't always that it takes an interest in the wife of a murdered
+man&mdash;but&mdash;well, you see, you are such a personality in this community.
+We really must have an interesting interview." He smiled at her with a
+charming expression of masculine indulgence that made her own eyes
+soften. "You see&mdash;don't you&mdash;we hate to intrude&mdash;but&mdash;we understand that
+you had a serious quarrel with your husband on the last day of his life.
+Would you mind telling us what you did after leaving the Country Club?"</p>
+
+<p>She gave him a frozen stare, but recalled Mr. Cummack's warning not to
+take offence&mdash;"for remember that these men have their living to get, and
+if they fall down on their job they don't get it. Blame their paper, not
+them."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span></p><p>"That is a surprising question," she said sweetly. "Do you expect me to
+answer it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why not? Of course you read the newspapers. You know we have told the
+public of the scene at the clubhouse already&mdash;and with no detriment to
+you! It was a very dramatic scene, and every moment that you passed from
+that time until Mr. Balfame fell at his gate will be of the most
+absorbing interest to the public. In fact, they will eat it up."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Balfame shrugged her shoulders. "As a matter of fact I have not
+read a newspaper since the&mdash;" She set her lips and her eyes grew
+hard&mdash;"the crime. I know you have written a great deal about it, but it
+hasn't interested me. Well&mdash;Dr. Anna Steuer drove me home, and shortly
+after I went up to my room&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Pardon me; let us take things in their turn. You took a box of sardines
+and some bread from the pantry, did you not?"</p>
+
+<p>"I did." Mrs. Balfame's tones were both puzzled and bored.</p>
+
+<p>"And then you were interrupted." As she raised her eyebrows, he
+continued. "The appearance of the sardine can indicated that."</p>
+
+<p>She gave him a brilliant smile, her substitute for the average woman's
+merry laugh. "You are teaching me how they write those intricate
+detective tales my husband was so fond of. It is true that I was
+interrupted, but it is equally true that I should probably have left the
+can as you found it in any case, for I soon realised that I was not
+hungry. I had had sandwiches at the club, and although I always think it
+best to eat something before retiring, I was hardly hungry enough for
+sardines&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span></p><p>"You ate sandwiches at the club? I have been out there once or twice
+and never saw&mdash;I was under the impression that during the afternoon the
+young people danced and the matrons played bridge before an early
+dinner."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you?" Mrs. Balfame's eyes and tones abashed even Mr. Broderick, and
+he tacked hastily: "Oh, well, that is immaterial, as the lawyers say.
+And of course you ladies may have sandwiches served in the bridge rooms.
+May I ask what interrupted you?"</p>
+
+<p>"My husband telephoned from Mr. Cummack's house that he was obliged to
+go to Albany at once and asked me to pack his suitcase."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, we have seen the suitcase. You suggested, did you not&mdash;over the
+telephone&mdash;making him a glass of lemonade with aromatic and bromide in
+it?"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Balfame experienced an obscure thrill of alarm, but her haughty
+stare betrayed nothing. One of the reporters whose "job" it was to watch
+her hands, noted that they curved rigidly. "And may I ask how you found
+<i>that</i> out? Really, I think I feel even more curiosity than you do."</p>
+
+<p>"He told it to Cummack and the other men present as a good joke, adding
+that you knew your business."</p>
+
+<p>"I did. The matter had passed entirely out of my mind. More momentous
+things have happened since! Well&mdash;I made the glass of lemonade and left
+it on the dining-room table; then I went upstairs and packed his
+suitcase&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"One moment. What became of that glass of lemonade? No one remembers
+having seen it, although I have made very particular inquiries."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span></p><p>Mrs. Balfame by this time was quite cold, but her brain was working
+almost as quickly as Mr. Broderick's. She uncurved her fingers and
+smiled. But her keen brain-sword had one edge only; the other was dull
+with inexperience. She knew nothing of the vast practice of newspaper
+men in detecting the lie.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh&mdash;I drank it myself." She had drawn her brows for a moment as if in
+an effort of memory. "When I heard the noise outside&mdash;when I heard them
+say 'coroner'&mdash;and realised that something dreadful had happened, I ran
+downstairs. Then I suddenly felt faint and remembered the lemonade with
+the aromatic spirits of ammonia and bromide in it. I ran into the
+dining-room and drank it&mdash;fortunately!"</p>
+
+<p>"And what became of the glass?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" Mrs. Balfame was now righteously indignant. "How do I know? Or any
+one else? Frieda, soon after, began to make coffee by the quart&mdash;and I
+don't doubt whisky was brought round from the Elks. Who could have
+noticed a glass more or less?"</p>
+
+<p>"Frieda swears she never saw it."</p>
+
+<p>"She has the worst memory of any servant I ever had, and that is saying
+a good deal."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Broderick regarded her with admiration. He distrusted her more every
+moment, but he had realised at once that he had no ordinary woman to
+deal with, and he rejoiced in the clash of wits.</p>
+
+<p>The other young men were sitting forward, almost breathless, and Mrs.
+Balfame was now fully alive to the danger of her position. But all
+sensation of fear had left her. All the iron in her nature fused in the
+crucible of those terrible moments and came forth finely tempered steel.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span></p><p>"Anything more?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh&mdash;ah&mdash;yes. Would you mind telling us what you did after you had
+packed the suitcase and brought it downstairs?"</p>
+
+<p>"I went up to my room and began to undress for bed."</p>
+
+<p>"But that must have been quite fifteen minutes before Mr. Balfame's
+return. He walked from Cummack's house, which is about a mile from here.
+It was noticed that you merely had taken your dress off. Would you not
+have had time to get into bed?"</p>
+
+<p>"If I were a man. But I had my hair to brush&mdash;with fifty strokes; and&mdash;a
+little nightly massage, if you will have it. Besides, I had intended to
+go down and lock the front door after my husband had left."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" The admiration of the young men mounted higher. They disliked her
+coldly, if only for that lack of sex-magnetism, which men, particularly
+young men, na&iuml;ve in their extensive surface psychology, take as a
+personal affront. They did not believe a word she said, and they did not
+give her and her possible fate a throb of sympathy, but they generously
+pronounced her "a wonder."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Broderick took a chance shot. "And did you not during that time look
+out of the window&mdash;toward the grove?"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Balfame hesitated the fraction of a minute, then wisely returned to
+her know-nothing policy. "Why should I? Certainly not. I heard no sound
+out there. I am not in the habit of examining the grounds from my window
+at night. It is enough to go through the lower rooms before I lock up."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span></p><p>"But your window was dark when the men ran over from Gifning's after
+hearing the shot. They remember that. Do you brush your hair&mdash;and&mdash;and
+massage in the dark?"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Balfame sat back in her chair with the resigned air of the victim
+who expects an interview with inquisitive newspaper men to last all
+night. "No. But I sometimes sit in the dark. I told you that I intended
+to sit up&mdash;partly dressed&mdash;until my husband had gone. I did not feel
+like reading, and my eyes were tired. As you know so much, you may have
+guessed that I cried a little after that trying afternoon. I do not
+often cry, and my eyes stung."</p>
+
+<p>"But you had forgiven your husband?"</p>
+
+<p>"I had forgiven him many times before. I infer that you know that also."</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Balfame, is it not true that about two years ago you contemplated
+obtaining a divorce?"</p>
+
+<p>This time her eyes flashed with anger. "I see that my kind friends have
+been gossiping. You would seem to have interviewed everybody in town."</p>
+
+<p>"Pretty nearly. But you don't seem to realise that Elsinore&mdash;Brabant
+County, for that matter&mdash;has talked of nothing else but this case for
+the last four days."</p>
+
+<p>"I did think of a divorce for a short time, but I never mentioned it to
+him, and as soon as I thought it all out I dismissed the idea. In the
+first place, divorce is against the principles of the school in which I
+was brought up, and in the second Mr. Balfame was a good husband in his
+way. Every woman has some sort of a heavy cross to bear, and I guess
+mine was lighter than most. The trouble is, we American women expect
+too<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> much. I dismissed the subject so completely from my mind that I had
+practically forgotten it."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah&mdash;yes&mdash;we thought you might have seen some one lurking in the grove
+and gone down to investigate." This was another chance shot. He was
+hoping for a "lead."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Balfame thought him inspired.</p>
+
+<p>For the moment the cold brilliant eyes of the woman and the keen
+contracted eyes of the reporter met and clashed. Then Mrs. Balfame
+displayed her teeth in her sweet and charming smile. "What a truly
+masculine inference. You don't know me. If I had seen anything I should
+have flown to the telephone and called the police."</p>
+
+<p>"You look indomitable," murmured Mr. Broderick. "But will you tell us
+how it happened that you did not hear the shot? The men down at
+Gifning's did."</p>
+
+<p>"They were standing on the porch, and I think now that I did hear the
+shot. But my windows were closed. I hear tires burst constantly. And
+that was Saturday night. The machines turn off just below our gate into
+Dawbarn Street, especially if they are bound for Beryl Myrtle's road
+house."</p>
+
+<p>"True." Broderick leaned forward, staring at the carpet. He permitted
+the silence to last quite a minute. Even Mrs. Balfame, who had
+congratulated herself that the inquisition must be nearly over, stirred
+uneasily, so sinister was that silence.</p>
+
+<p>The other men knew the Broderick method too well to spoil one of his
+designs; they sat in expectant stillness and turned upon Mrs. Balfame a
+battery of eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly Broderick raised his head and his sharp boring gaze darted into
+hers. "I had not fully <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span>intended to tell you of a discovery made by one
+of us yesterday. We have told no one as yet&mdash;waiting for just the right
+moment to publish it. But I think I'll tell you. There is evidence that
+two revolvers were fired that night. One killed David Balfame, and a
+bullet from the other penetrated the tree before the house and slightly
+to the right of where he must have stood for a moment. Bruce here dug it
+out. Now, not only did the men at Gifning's not hear two
+shots&mdash;indicating that they were fired simultaneously&mdash;but one bullet
+came from a .38 and the other from a .41."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Balfame stood up. "Really, gentlemen, I did not consent to see you
+in order to help you solve riddles. But possibly you know better than I
+that gunmen generally travel in pairs. I am convinced that my husband&mdash;"
+(they applauded her for not saying "my poor husband") "was killed by one
+of those creatures, hired by his political enemies. Unless I can tell
+you something more of interest&mdash;if, indeed, you have found anything to
+interest the great New York public in this interview&mdash;I will ask you to
+excuse me."</p>
+
+<p>The young men were politely on their feet. "And you have no pistol&mdash;nor
+ever had?"</p>
+
+<p>She laughed outright. "Are you trying to fasten the crime on me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, indeed. Only, in a case like this, one leaves no stone
+unturned&mdash;I hope you do not think we are rude."</p>
+
+<p>"I only just realise that quite the most polite young men I have ever
+met have been hoping to make me incriminate myself. If I had not been so
+dense I should have dismissed you long since. Good night."</p>
+
+<p>And, once more looking human in her just <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span>indignation, she lifted her
+proud head and swept out of the room.</p>
+
+<p>The young men left the house and adjourned to a private room in the rear
+of their favourite saloon. For twenty minutes they rehearsed the
+interview carefully, those that had taken notes correcting any lapses of
+memory on the part of those that had elected to watch as well as listen.</p>
+
+<p>Broderick and many of the men were firmly of the opinion that Mrs.
+Balfame had committed the crime; others believed that she was shielding
+some one else; the less experienced were equally positive that no guilty
+woman taken off her guard repeatedly, as she had been, could "put it
+over" like that. She had "talked and acted like an innocent woman."</p>
+
+<p>"She acted, all right," said Broderick. "I for one am convinced that she
+did it. But whether she did or didn't, she's got to be indicted and
+tried. This case, boys, is too big to throw away&mdash;too damned big; and
+she's already a personality to the public. She's the only one we have
+the ghost of a chance with; the only one whose arrest and trial would
+keep the interest going&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"But say!" It was the youngest reporter that interrupted. "I call it
+lowdown to fasten a crime on a possibly innocent woman&mdash;a lady&mdash;keep her
+in jail for months; try her for murder! Why, even if she were acquitted,
+she would carry the stigma through life."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't get sentimental, sonny," said Broderick patiently. "Sentiment is
+to the vanquished in this game. When you've been it as long as the rest
+of us you'll know that in nine cases out of ten the real solution<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> of
+any mystery is the simplest. Balfame drank. He had a violent temper when
+drunk. He was a dog at best. She must have hated him. Look at her. We
+have reason to believe that she did hate him and that her friends knew
+it. She thought of divorce two years ago. Gave it up because she was
+afraid of losing her leadership in this provincial hole. Look at her.
+She is as proud as Lucifer. And as hard as nails. There had been an ugly
+scene at the club that afternoon. He mortified her publicly. She was so
+overcome she had to leave. I've a hunch she poisoned that lemonade and
+got it out of the way in time. She's the sort that would think of nearly
+everything. Not quite, of course. Otherwise she would never have
+invented on the spur of the moment that story about drinking it herself;
+she'd have had the assumption on tap that one of the neighbours had
+drunk it. That complication, however, is yet to prove. It merely points
+a finger at her&mdash;straight; what we've got to prove and prove quick is
+that she was out of doors when that shot was fired&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Would you like to see her in the chair?" gasped young Loring.</p>
+
+<p>"Good Lord, no. Not the least danger. Women of that sort don't go to the
+chair. If she even got a term, I'd head a petition to let her out, for
+she's a dead game sport, and I'm only after good front page stuff." He
+turned to Ryder Bruce of the evening edition of his newspaper. "You make
+love to that German hired girl. She hates us all, for we represent the
+real American press&mdash;that hasn't a hyphen in it. I sensed that. And I
+don't believe she's all the fool she looks. I believe she can tell
+something&mdash;few servants that can't&mdash;and that she only pretended at the
+inquest that she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> knew nothing because she was nearly dead with pain and
+wanted it over. Well, she had the tooth out this morning, and at least
+she isn't quite as hideous as she was; so go to it, old boy. Get 'round
+her and do it quick. Use money if necessary. There's not a day to lose.
+Find out what she wants most&mdash;probably it's to send her sweetheart at
+the front something more substantial than mitts and bands. Got me?"</p>
+
+<p>"I get you," said young Bruce gloomily. "You've picked me out because
+I'm blond and round faced and can pass myself off as a German. I wish
+I'd been born an Italian. Nice job, making love to <i>that</i>. But I'll do
+it."</p>
+
+<p>"Good boy. Well, s'long. I'm off on a trail of my own. I'll report
+later. May be nothing in it."</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER XIII</span></h2>
+
+<p>Broderick walked slowly toward Elsinore Avenue, sounding his memory for
+certain fugitive impressions, his active mind at the same time casting
+about for the current which would connect them.</p>
+
+<p>He looked at his watch. He was to dine with the Crumleys at seven and it
+lacked but ten minutes of the hour; nevertheless he walked more slowly
+still, his eyes staring at the ground, his brow channeled.</p>
+
+<p>On Sunday afternoon he had spent two hours with Alys Crumley. At first
+she had been reluctant to talk of any but the salient phases of the
+murder, but being appealed to as a "good old pal" and reminded that real
+newspaper people stood together, she finally had described the scene at
+the Country Club on the afternoon preceding Balfame's death, and shown
+him the drawing she had had the superior presence of mind to make.
+Broderick had examined every detail of that rapid but demonstrative
+sketch: the burly form at the head of the room, his condition indicated
+by an angle of the shoulders and a deft exaggeration of feature which
+recalled the facile art of the cartoonist; the strained forms of the men
+surrounding him; Mrs. Balfame heading down the room, her face set and
+terrible; the groups of women and girls in attitudes expressive of alarm
+or disgust.</p>
+
+<p>But when he made as if to put the sketch in his pocket she had snatched
+it from him, and he merely had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> shrugged his shoulders, confident that
+he could induce her to give it up should he really need it.</p>
+
+<p>He had questioned her regarding the scene until its outlines were as
+firm in his mind as in her own. But there had been something else&mdash;some
+impression, not obviously linked with the case: It was for that
+impression that he sounded his admirable memory; and in a moment he
+found it and stopped with a smothered exclamation.</p>
+
+<p>He had complimented her on the excellent likeness of Dwight Rush, whom
+he knew and liked, and remarked quite naturally that he might have sat
+for her a number of times. The dusky pink had mounted to her hair, but
+she had replied carelessly that Rush was "a common enough type."</p>
+
+<p>Possibly Broderick would have forgotten the blush had it not have been
+for the swift change of expression in her eyes: a certain fear followed
+by a concentrated renitence; and at the same moment he had remembered
+that he had met Rush once or twice at the Crumleys' during the summer
+and thought him quite the favoured guest.</p>
+
+<p>Driven only by a mild personal curiosity, he had asked her how she liked
+Rush and if she saw much of him; he recalled that she had answered with
+an elaboration of indifference that she hadn't seen him for ages and
+took no interest in him whatever.</p>
+
+<p>Then Broderick had drawn her on to talk of Mrs. Balfame. Yes, in common
+with all Elsinore that counted, she admired Mrs. Balfame, although she
+believed that no one really knew her, that she unconsciously lived among
+the surfaces of her nature. Her face as she marched down the clubroom
+that day, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> its curious sudden transformation on that other day at
+the Friday Club when her thoughts so plainly had drifted far from the
+platitudinous speakers, indicated to Miss Crumley's temperamental mind
+"depths and possibly tragic possibilities."</p>
+
+<p>It was patent to Mr. Broderick's own mind that her suspicions had not
+lighted for a moment on the dead man's widow, but it also transpired in
+the course of the conversation that the young artist who had so "loved
+to sketch" the Star of Elsinore had suffered a long drop in personal
+enthusiasm. Pressed astutely, she had remarked that she guessed she was
+as broad-minded as anybody, especially since her year on the New York
+press, but she did not approve of married women claiming a right to
+share in the Great Game designed by Nature for the young of both sexes.</p>
+
+<p>Then the story came out: Miss Crumley, afflicted with a headache
+something over a fortnight since, and enjoying the cool night air just
+behind her front gate, had seen Mrs. Balfame come out of Dr. Steuer's
+garden next door and meet Dwight Rush face to face. He had begged to be
+allowed to see her home.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Balfame had lovely manners, she couldn't help being sweet unless
+she disliked a person, and no woman will elect to walk up a long dark
+avenue alone if a man offer to escort her.</p>
+
+<p>Alys would have thought nothing of it&mdash;merely assumed that Rush, being a
+comparative newcomer, had caught at the chance to make a favourable
+impression on the leader of Elsinore society&mdash;(no, he was no snob, but
+that idea just came to her), if they had not crawled, yes, <i>crawled</i> all
+the way up the avenue.</p>
+
+<p>Both were vigorous people with long legs; they could<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> have covered the
+distance to the Balfame place in three minutes. They had been more than
+ten, and as they passed under the successive lamp posts she had noted
+the man's bent head, the woman's tilted back&mdash;as she gazed up into his
+eyes, no doubt.</p>
+
+<p>"In this town," Miss Crumley had announced, "a woman is fast or she
+isn't. You know just where you are. There's a class that's sly about it,
+but somehow you get 'on' in time. Mrs. Balfame has stood for the highest
+and best. Mind you, I'm not saying that she ever saw Rush alone again,
+or cared a snap of her finger for him&mdash;or he for her. No doubt she felt,
+when the rare chance offered of taking a little flyer, that it was too
+good to miss. But she shouldn't have done it; that's the point. I don't
+like my idols to have feet of clay."</p>
+
+<p>Broderick had felt both sympathetic and amused. He knew that Alys
+Crumley was not only sweet of temper and frank, if not candid, but that
+in spite of all her desperate modernism she cherished high ideals of
+conduct; and here she was turning loose the cat that skulks somewhere in
+every commonplace female's nature.</p>
+
+<p>But the whole conversation had left his mind promptly. He had attached
+no significance whatever to a ten minutes' walk between a polite man and
+a woman returning alone from a friend's house on a dark night.</p>
+
+<p>Now every word of the conversation came back to him. Rush, he gathered,
+had gone to the Crumley house several times a week for a while, and
+then, for reasons known only to himself and Alys, had ceased his visits
+abruptly. Had she fallen in love with him? Or was it only her vanity
+that was wounded? And if<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> Rush had dropped a girl as pretty and bright
+and winning as Alys Crumley&mdash;who improved upon acquaintance,
+moreover&mdash;what was the reason? Why had he not fallen in love with her?
+Had he loved some one else?</p>
+
+<p>Broderick swung his mind to the morning following the murder, when he
+had met Rush in the hall of the Elsinore Hotel. The lawyer professed
+himself as delighted to "run up against him" and invited him to
+breakfast. All this had been natural enough, and it was equally natural
+that the conversation should have but one theme.</p>
+
+<p>Once more Broderick sought a fugitive impression and found it. Rush, who
+was a master of words when verbal exactness was imperative, had created
+an impression in his companion's mind of the impeccability of the
+murdered man's widow.</p>
+
+<p>Broderick had wondered once or twice since whence came that mental
+picture of Mrs. Balfame that rose clear-cut in his memory, in spite of
+his deliberate conviction of her guilt. Other people had raved about her
+and made no impression upon the young reporter's selective and somewhat
+cynical mind; but Rush had almost accomplished his purpose!</p>
+
+<p>Why had he sought to accomplish it?</p>
+
+<p>Broderick had known Rush in and out of court for nearly two years.
+Whenever he had been on an assignment in that part of Brabant County he
+had made a point of seeking him out, and even of spending an evening
+with him if he could afford the time. He liked the unique blend of East
+and West in the man; to Broderick's keen appraising mind Rush reflected
+the very best of the two great rival bisections of the nation. He<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> liked
+the mixture of frankness and subtlety, of simple unquestioning
+patriotism&mdash;of assumption that no country but the United States of
+America mattered in the very least&mdash;and the intense concentrated
+individualism. Of hard-headed American determination to "get there" at
+any honourable cost, of jealously hidden romanticism.</p>
+
+<p>Broderick was almost at the Crumley gate. He halted for a moment under
+the dark maples and glanced up the long shadowy avenue, his own narrower
+and still more jealously guarded "romantic streak" appreciating the
+possibilities on a dusky evening with a girl whose face floated for a
+moment before him. But he banished her promptly, searching his memory
+for some salient trait in Rush that he instinctively knew would
+establish the current he desired.</p>
+
+<p>He found it after a moment of intense concentration. Rush was the sort
+of man that loves not woman but a woman. His very friendship for Alys
+Crumley was evidence that he cared nothing for girls as girls. Only the
+exceptional drew him, and mere youth left him unmoved.</p>
+
+<p>Knowing Rush as he did, he felt his way rapidly toward the facts. Alys,
+woman-like, had succumbed to propinquity, and betrayed herself; Rush,
+finding his mere masculine loneliness misinterpreted, and being
+honourable to boot, had promptly withdrawn.</p>
+
+<p>But why? Alys would have made him a delightful and useful wife. She was
+one of those too clever girls whom celibacy made neurotic and uncertain,
+but out of whom matrimony and maternity knocked all the nonsense at once
+and finally. She would make a splendid woman.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span></p><p>He should have thought her just the girl to allure Rush, whom he also
+knew to be fastidious and to set a high value on the good old Brabant
+blood. Moreover, it was time that Rush would be wanting the permanent
+companionship of a woman, a bright, progressive, but feminine woman. He
+had observed certain signs.</p>
+
+<p>Alys, apparently, had not measured up to Rush's secret ideal of the
+wholly desirable woman, nor appealed to that throbbing vein of
+romanticism which he had striven to bury beneath the dusty tomes of the
+law. What sort of woman, then, could satisfy all he desired? And had he
+found her?</p>
+
+<p>Broderick recalled a certain knightly exaltation in Rush's blue eyes
+which had come and gone as they discussed Mrs. Balfame, although not a
+word of the adroit concept he had built remained in the reporter's
+memory. But those eyes came back to Broderick there in the dark&mdash;the
+eyes of a man young and ardent like himself&mdash;he almost fancied he had
+seen the woman's image in them.</p>
+
+<p>He revived his impression of Mrs. Balfame, seen for the first time
+to-day, and contemplated it impersonally: A beautiful, a fascinating
+woman&mdash;to a man of Rush's limited experience and idealism; fastidious,
+proud, gracious, supremely poised.</p>
+
+<p>Nor did she look a day over thirty, although she must be a good bit
+more&mdash;he recalled the obituaries of the dead man: they had alluded to
+his marital accomplishment as covering a term of some twenty years.
+Perhaps she was his second wife&mdash;but no&mdash;nor did it matter. Rush was
+just the sort of chap to fall in love with a woman older than himself,
+if she were still young in appearance and as chastely lovely, as
+unapproachable,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> as Mrs. Balfame. He would idealise her very years,
+contrast them with that vague suggestion of virginity that Broderick
+recalled, of deep untroubled tides.</p>
+
+<p>All romantic men believe in women's unfathomed depths when in love,
+reflected the star reporter cynically, and Mrs. Balfame was just the
+sort to go until forty before having the smashing love affair of her
+life; and to inspire a similar passion in a hard-working idealist like
+Dwight Rush.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Balfame and Dwight Rush! Broderick, who now stood quite still, a
+few paces from the Crumley gate, whistled.</p>
+
+<p>Could Rush have fired that shot? Broderick recalled that the lawyer had
+mentioned having spent Saturday evening in Brooklyn&mdash;on business.</p>
+
+<p>Broderick shook his head vigorously. So far as he was concerned, Rush
+never should be asked to produce his alibi. He did not believe that Rush
+had done it, did not propose to harbour the suggestion for a moment.
+Rush was not the man to commit a cowardly murder, not even for a woman.
+If he had wanted to kill the man he would have involved himself in an
+election row, forced the bully to draw his gun, and then got in his own
+fire double quick. Standards were standards.</p>
+
+<p>Broderick was more convinced than ever that Mrs. Balfame had committed
+the deed, and he had established the current. His work was "cut out" for
+the evening; and without further delay he presented himself at the Widow
+Crumley's door.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER XIV</span></h2>
+
+<p>Supper was over and Broderick and Miss Crumley sat in the back yard
+studio; Mrs. Crumley had company of her own, and as Alys decried the
+vulgarity of the legendary American daughter's attitude to the
+poor-spirited American mother, she invariably retired to the background
+whenever it would enhance Mrs. Crumley's self-respect to occupy not only
+the foreground but (if her daughter had an interesting visitor) the
+entire stage. Alys, since her humiliating failure with Dwight Rush,
+clung the more passionately to her rules of conduct. They were not red
+with the blood of life, but at least they served as an anchored buoy.</p>
+
+<p>The atelier was hung with olive green burlap and covered with an
+artistic litter of sketches. Broderick, before settling himself into a
+comfortable chair by the stove, examined the more recent and encouraged
+her with a few words of discriminating praise.</p>
+
+<p>"Keep it up, Alicia. The <i>News</i> for you next month if you are ready for
+a job. You've improved marvellously in figures, which was where you were
+weak. Miss Loys, our fashion artist, is marrying next month. You might
+as well begin with that. You'll be on the paper and can jump into
+something better when it offers."</p>
+
+<p>Alys nodded emphatically. "Give me work, and as soon as possible. I
+don't care much what it is. But<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> I want work and plenty of it. It isn't
+only that I want to use my energies, but I've spent all I can afford on
+lessons and the rest of it."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll see to it. Your sort doesn't go begging."</p>
+
+<p>Broderick clipped his cigar and watched her thin profile for a moment
+without speaking.</p>
+
+<p>He noticed for the first time that she had lost the little flesh that
+formerly had covered her small bones, and that the pink stained the pale
+ivory of her cheeks only when conversation excited her. But if anything
+she was prettier&mdash;no, more attractive&mdash;than ever, for there was more
+depth in her face, which in spite of its subtle suggestions, had seemed
+to his critical masculine taste to be too eager, too prone to pour out
+her personality without reserve when the brain lighted up. Now there was
+a slight droop of the eyelids which might mean fatigue, but gave length
+and mystery to the strange olive eyes. Her pink mouth, with its short
+upper lip, was too small for his taste, but the modelling of her
+features in general seemed to him more cleanly defined, and the sweep of
+jaw, almost as keen as a blade, must have delighted her own artist soul.
+She was rather diminutive (to her sorrow), but the long lines she
+cultivated in her house gowns made her figure very alluring, and the
+limp and awkward grace of fashion singularly became her. She wore
+to-night a "butterfly" gown of georgette (finding, as ever, admirable
+effects in cotton since she could not afford the costly fabrics), the
+colour of the American beauty rose, and a narrow band of olive velvet
+around her thin ivory-white neck. For the moment of her absorption, as
+she stared into the coals, her attitude would have been one of complete
+repose had it not been for her <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span>restless hands. Broderick noticed, too,
+that there were darkened hollows under her eyes. "Poor kid," he thought.
+"She's been through it, all right, and put up a stiff fight. But what a pity."</p>
+
+<p>As he struck a match she rose, and, opening a drawer in the table, took
+out a box of Russian cigarettes. "I keep these here," she announced,
+"because I don't want to shock mother; and I seldom indulge these days
+in expensive habits. But I shall celebrate and smoke all evening. It is
+jolly to have you like this again, Jimmy. I heard you were engaged. Is
+it true? You would seem to have deserted every one else."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Broderick coloured and looked as sheepish as a highly sophisticated
+star reporter may. "Well, not quite," he admitted. "It's been heavy
+running, and I don't have all the time there is on my hands. But&mdash;I
+hope&mdash;well, I think now it'll be pretty plain sailing&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Good, Jimmy, good!"</p>
+
+<p>For a moment he, too, gazed into the coals, his eyes softening; then
+once more he banished the dainty image evoked; no nonsense for him in
+Elsinore, with the Balfame tangle to unravel to the glory of the New
+York <i>News</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"Alys," he said, stretching out his long legs and looking innocent and
+comfortable, "I want to have a confidential talk with you about Mrs.
+Balfame." He paused and then looked her straight in the eyes as he
+launched his bolt. "I have come to the conclusion that she shot him&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Jim Broderick!" Alys sprang to her feet, her eyes wide and full of
+angry light. "Oh, you newspaper men!&mdash;How utterly abominable!"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span></p><p>"Why? Sit down, my dear. Somebody did it&mdash;not? as our friends the
+Germans say. And undoubtedly that some one is the person most interested
+in getting him out of the way."</p>
+
+<p>"But not Mrs. Balfame! Why&mdash;I've been brought up on Mrs. Balfame. I'd as
+soon suspect my own mother."</p>
+
+<p>"No, my friend, you would not. Mrs. Crumley is adorable in her own way,
+but she is frankly and comfortably in her fifties. She is not a
+beautiful woman who looks fully ten years younger than she has any right
+to look. See?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh&mdash;but&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Think it over. You said the other day that you believed Mrs. Balfame to
+have unplumbed depths, or something equally popular with your sex. And
+you were horrified at her singular facial transformations no less than
+twice within a fortnight. Certainly the picture you drew of her stalking
+down the Country Club room was that of a woman in a mood for anything&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Of a lovely well-bred woman outraged by the conduct of a drunken brute
+of a husband. But do you imagine that any woman goes through life
+without being turned into a fury now and then by her husband?"</p>
+
+<p>"No doubt. But, you see, the death of the brute occurred so soon after
+the transformation scene enacted behind the expressive face of the lady
+you have immortalised on paper&mdash;and no new-made devil is so complete as
+that which rises out of the debris of an angel. When your placid
+sternly-controlled women do explode, they may patch themselves together
+as swiftly as a cyclone passes, but one of the sinister faces of their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span>
+hidden collection has been flashed momentarily before the public eye&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! Oh!"</p>
+
+<p>"I have tracked down every suspect, several upon whom no suspicion has
+alighted&mdash;as yet. To my mind there are only two people to whom the crime
+could be brought home."</p>
+
+<p>"Who is the other?"</p>
+
+<p>"Dwight Rush."</p>
+
+<p>This time Alys did not sit up with flaming eyes. To the astute gaze of
+the reporter she took herself visibly in hand. But she bit through the
+long tube between her lips. "What makes you think that?" she asked, as
+she tossed the bits into the fire and lighted another cigarette. "You
+roam too far afield for me."</p>
+
+<p>"He is in love with her."</p>
+
+<p>"With whom?"</p>
+
+<p>"The lady who was so opportunely, if somewhat sensationally, made a
+widow last Saturday night."</p>
+
+<p>"He is not! Why&mdash;how absurd you are to-night, Jim. She is a thousand
+years older than he."</p>
+
+<p>"How old is she&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Forty-two. Mother sent her a birthday cake last month."</p>
+
+<p>"Rush is thirty-four. Who cares for eight years on the wrong side these
+days? She looks younger than he does, to say nothing of her own
+inconsiderable age; and when a woman is as lovely as Mrs. Balfame, as
+interesting as she must be with that astute mind, that subtle suggestion
+of mystery&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You are mad, simply mad. In the first place, he has had no chance to
+find out whether she is interesting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> or not&mdash;if he had, all Elsinore
+would have rung with it. And&mdash;ah&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing."</p>
+
+<p>"Come out with it. It's up to you to prove him innocent if you can."</p>
+
+<p>"He was in Brooklyn that evening. I met him at the Cummacks' the next
+day, and heard him say so."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, that is what he is at pains to tell every one. Perhaps he can
+prove it, perhaps not. But that's not what was in your mind."</p>
+
+<p>"I was afraid of being misunderstood. But it is all right, for of course
+he can prove that he was in Brooklyn. I happen to know that he went to
+the Balfame house on his way back from the club Saturday evening, and
+only stayed a few minutes. I left the club just after Mrs. Balfame did,
+as I had been out there all afternoon and had promised mother to help
+her during the evening. I came in on the trolley and got off at the
+corner of Balfame and Dawbarn Streets, to finish an argument I was
+having with Harriet Bell over the possibility of Mrs. Balfame losing her
+social power through the scene out at the club&mdash;few of the members would
+care to go through such a scene a second time. Moreover, some of these
+newer rich women resent her supremacy and would like to force her to
+take a back seat.</p>
+
+<p>"I only talked for a few minutes after I got off the car and then walked
+quickly over to the avenue. Just as I turned the corner I saw Dwight
+Rush slam the Balfame gate and almost run up the walk. He seemed in a
+tearing hurry about something. I was standing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> on our porch only a few
+minutes later when he strode past&mdash;no doubt hoping to catch the
+seven-ten for Brooklyn. Now!"</p>
+
+<p>"Nobody would be happier than I to prove a first-class alibi for Rush&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Who else suspects him?"</p>
+
+<p>"No one; and so far as I am concerned no one shall. If you want the
+whole truth, what I'm as intent on just now as big news itself is
+complete exoneration for my friend. But if he didn't do it, she did. And
+if he butted in upon her at a time like that it was because he was
+beside himself&mdash;no doubt he asked her to elope with him&mdash;get a
+divorce&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What utter nonsense!"</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps. But if she saw her chance, I'm thinking she wouldn't have
+hesitated a minute to put a bullet in Balfame. People don't turn as sick
+at the mere thought of committing murder, when there's a good chance of
+putting it over, as you may imagine. Most of us experience the impulse
+some time or other. Cowardice or circumstances safeguard us. She did it,
+take my word for it. She deliberately poisoned a glass of lemonade
+first, for Balfame to drink when he came home on his way to take the
+train for Albany. Then, something or other interfering&mdash;what, I can only
+guess at as yet&mdash;she found her chance to shoot, and shot."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, if all that were true, she would be a fiend."</p>
+
+<p>"Not necessarily. Merely a highly exasperated woman. One, moreover, who
+had locked herself up too long. Marital squabbles are safety valves, and
+I understand she let him do the rowing. But I don't care about her
+impulses. The act is enough for me.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> Psychology later, when I write a
+page of Sunday stuff. But you can see for yourself that if she isn't
+indicted, and pretty quick, Dwight Rush will be?"</p>
+
+<p>"But no one else suspects him."</p>
+
+<p>"Not yet. But the whole town thinks of nothing else. And as they've
+about given up all hope of the political crowd, as well as gunmen and
+tango girls, they'll veer presently toward the truth. But before they
+settle down on their idol's lofty head, they'll root about for some man
+who might easily be in love with her&mdash;although hopelessly, as a matter
+of course. Then they'll recall a thousand trifles that no doubt you too
+recall without effort."</p>
+
+<p>"It's true she turned to him out there, ignoring men she had known for
+years&mdash;she saw him at the house that night, if only for a few
+moments&mdash;Oh, it's too horrible! Mrs. Balfame. An Elsinore lady! And she
+has been so good to us all these hard years, helped us over and over
+again. Oh, I don't mind telling you, Jim, that I was a little bit
+jealous of her&mdash;I rather liked Rush&mdash;he was interesting and a nice male
+creature, and I was so lonely&mdash;and he stopped coming so suddenly&mdash;and
+then seeing him so delighted to meet her that night&mdash;and both of them
+dragging up the avenue as if each moment were a jewel&mdash;I've always
+thought it hateful for married women to try to cut girls out&mdash;it's so
+unnatural&mdash;but I can't hear her accused of murder&mdash;to go&mdash;Oh, it's too
+awful to talk about!"</p>
+
+<p>"She'd get off. Don't let that worry you. Innocent or guilty. There's no
+other way of saving Rush. Be more jealous, if that will help matters.
+He'll marry her the moment he decently can."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span></p><p>"I don't believe he cares a bit for her. And I don't believe she will
+marry him or any one."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, she will. He's the sort to get what he wants&mdash;and, take it
+from me, he is mad about her. And she's at the age to be carried off her
+feet by an ardent determined lover. Make no mistake about that. Besides,
+her's is a name that she'll want to drop as soon as possible."</p>
+
+<p>"Jim Broderick, you know that you are deliberately playing on my female
+nature, on all the baseness you feel sure is in it. I'd always thought
+you rather subtle, diplomatic. I don't thank you for the compliment of
+frankness."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear girl, it is a compliment&mdash;my utter lack of diplomacy with you.
+I want to pull this big thing off for my paper, for your paper. And I
+want to save the friend of both of us. I have merely tried to prove to
+you that Mrs. Balfame is a mere human being, not a goddess, and deserves
+to pay some of the penalty of her crime, at least. Certainly, she isn't
+worth the sacrifice of Dwight Rush&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"But if he can prove his alibi&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Suppose he couldn't. It was Saturday night. What more likely than that
+he failed to find the man he wanted? I have a dark suspicion that he
+never went near Brooklyn that night, was in no mood to think of
+business; although I don't for a moment believe he was near the Balfame
+place, or knows who did it&mdash;unless Mrs. Balfame has confessed to him.
+She is a very clever woman, not likely to linger on smugly in any fool's
+paradise. She must know that suspicion will work round to her, and
+knowing his infatuation, no doubt has consulted him."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span></p><p>Broderick really thought nothing of the sort, but calculated his words;
+and they produced their effect. The blood rose to the girl's hair, then
+ebbed, leaving her ghastly. "He would hate her then," she whispered.</p>
+
+<p>"Not Rush. Another man, perhaps; but not only do things go too deep with
+a man like that for anything but time to cure, but he's chock full of
+romantic chivalry. And he's madly in love, remember; by that I mean in
+the first flush. He'd look upon her as a martyr, and immediately set to
+work to ward suspicion from her; if an alibi could not be proved for him
+he'd take the crime on his own shoulders, if the worst came to worst."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! Are men really so Quixotic in these days?"</p>
+
+<p>"Haven't changed fundamentally since they evolved from protoplasm."</p>
+
+<p>"But why should all that chivalry&mdash;that magnificent passion&mdash;the first
+love of a man like that&mdash;be called out by a woman of Mrs. Balfame's age?
+Why, it's some girl's right! I don't say mine. Don't think I'm a dog in
+the manger. I'm trying not to be. But the world is full of girls&mdash;not
+foolish young things only good enough for boys, but girls in their
+twenties, bright, companionable, helpful, real mates for men&mdash;Why, it is
+unnatural, damnable!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it is," said Broderick sympathetically. "But if human nature
+weren't a tangled wire fence electrified full of contradictions, life
+wouldn't be interesting at all. Perhaps it's a mere case of affinity,
+destiny&mdash;don't ever betray me. But there it is. As well try to explain
+the abrupt taking off of useful men in their prime, of lovely children,
+of needed mothers, of aged women who have lived exemplary lives, mainly
+for others, spending their last years with the horrors of cancer. Don't
+try to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> explain human passion. And she <i>is</i> beautiful, and fresher to
+look at than girls of eighteen that tango day and night. But he must be
+saved from her as well as from arrest. Will you help me?"</p>
+
+<p>"What do you want me to do?"</p>
+
+<p>"Get further evidence about Mrs. Balfame."</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot, and would not if I could. Do you think I would be the means
+of fastening the crime of murder on any woman?"</p>
+
+<p>"You would if you were a hardened&mdash;and good&mdash;newspaper woman."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'm not. And I won't. Do your own sleuthing."</p>
+
+<p>"More than I are on the job, but I want your help. I don't say you can
+pick up fragments of her dress in the grove, or that you can&mdash;or
+would&mdash;worm yourself into her confidence and extract a confession. But
+you can set your wits to work and think up ways to put me on the track
+of more evidence than I've got now. Can you think of anything off-hand?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah? What does that intonation mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"Your ears are off the key."</p>
+
+<p>"Not mine. Tell me at once&mdash;No,"&mdash;He rose and took up his hat&mdash;"never
+mind now. Think it over. You will tell me in a day or two. Just remember
+while watching all my little seeds sprout that you can help me save a
+fine fellow and put my heel on a snake&mdash;a murderess! Paugh! There's
+nothing so obscene. Good night."</p>
+
+<p>She did not rise as he let himself out, but sat beside her cold stove
+thinking and crying until her mother called her to come in and go to bed.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER XV</span></h2>
+
+<p>Mrs. Balfame, after she dismissed the newspaper men, went up to her
+bedroom and sat very still for a long while. She was apprehensive rather
+than frightened, but she felt very sober.</p>
+
+<p>She had accepted the assurance of the chief of the local police that his
+inquiry regarding the pistol was a mere matter of routine, and had
+merely obeyed a normal instinct in concealing it. But she knew the
+intense interest of her community in the untimely and mysterious exit of
+one of its most notorious members, an interest raised to the superlative
+degree by the attentions of the metropolitan press; and she knew also
+that when a community is excited suspicions are rapidly translated into
+proofs, and every clue feeds the appetite for a victim.</p>
+
+<p>The European war was a dazzling example on the grand scale of the
+complete breakdown of intellect before the primitive passions of hatred,
+greed, envy, and the recurrent desire of man to kill, combined with that
+monstrous dilation of the ego which consoles him with a childish belief
+in his own impeccability.</p>
+
+<p>The newspapers of course pandered to the taste of their patrons for
+morbid vicarious excitement; she had glanced contemptuously at the
+headlines of her own "Case," and had accepted her temporary notoriety as
+a matter of course, schooled herself to patience; the ordeal was
+scarifying but of necessity brief.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span></p><p>But these young men. They had insinuated&mdash;what had they not insinuated?
+Either they had extraordinary powers of divination, or they were a
+highly specialised branch of the detective force. They had asked
+questions and forced answers from her that made her start and shiver in
+the retrospect.</p>
+
+<p>Was it possible they believed she had murdered David Balfame, or were
+they merely seeking material for a few more columns before the case died
+a natural death? She had never been interviewed before, save once
+superficially as President of the Friday Club, but she knew one or two
+of the county editors, and Alys Crumley had sometimes amused her with
+stories of her experiences as a New York reporter.</p>
+
+<p>These young men, so well-groomed, so urbane, so charming even, all of
+them no doubt generously equipped to love and marry and protect with
+their lives the girl of their choice, were they too but the soldiers of
+an everlasting battlefield, often at bay and desperate in the trenches?
+No matter how good their work, how great their "killing," the struggle
+must be renewed daily to maintain their own footing, to advance, or at
+least to uphold, the power of their little autocracy. To them journalism
+was the most important thing in the world, and mere persons like
+herself, suddenly lifted from obscurity to the brassy peaks of notoriety
+were so much material for first page columns of the newspapers they
+served with all the loyalty of those deluded soldiers on the European
+battlefields. She understood them with an abrupt and complete clarity,
+but she hated them. They might like and even admire her, but they would
+show her no mercy if they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span> discovered that she had been in the yard that
+night. She felt as if a pack of wolves were at her heels.</p>
+
+<p>But finally her brow relaxed. She shrugged her shoulders and began to
+unbutton the dense black gown that had expressed the mood the world
+demands of a four-days' widow. Let them suspect, divine what they chose.
+Not a soul on earth but Anna Steuer knew that she had been out that
+night after her return home. Even had those lynx-eyed young men sat on
+the box hedge they could not have seen her, for the avenue was well
+lighted, and the grove, the entire yard in fact, had been as black as a
+mine. Even the person skulking among those trees could not have guessed
+who she was.</p>
+
+<p>For a moment she had been tempted to tell them a little; that she had
+looked out and seen a moving shadow in the grove. But she had remembered
+in time that they would ask why she had reserved this testimony at the
+coroner's inquest. Her r&ocirc;le was to know nothing. Indubitably the shot
+had been fired from the trees; nobody questioned that; why involve
+herself? They would discharge still another set of questions at her,
+among others why she had not telephoned for the police.</p>
+
+<p>As she hung up her gown she recognised the heavy footfalls of her maid
+of all work, and when Frieda knocked, bade her enter, employing those
+cool impersonal tones so resented by the European servant after a brief
+sojourn on the dedicated American soil.</p>
+
+<p>As the girl closed the door behind her without speaking, Mrs. Balfame
+turned sharply. She felt at a disadvantage. As her figure was reasonably
+slim, she wore a cheap corset which she washed once a month<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> in the bath
+tub with her nailbrush; and her linen, although fresh, as ever, was of
+stout longcloth, and unrelieved by the coquetry of ribbons. She wore a
+serviceable tight petticoat of black jersey, beyond which her well-shod
+feet seemed to loom larger than her head. She was vaguely grateful that
+she had not been caught by Alys Crumley, so fond of sketching her, and
+was about to order Frieda to untie her tongue and be gone, when she
+noticed that the girl's face was no longer bound, and asked kindly:</p>
+
+<p>"Has the toothache gone? I hope you do not suffer any longer."</p>
+
+<p>Frieda lifted her small and crafty eyes and shot a suspicious glance at
+the mistress who had been so indifferent to what she believed to be the
+worst of all pains.</p>
+
+<p>"It's out."</p>
+
+<p>"Too bad you didn't have it out at once." Mrs. Balfame hastily encased
+herself in her bath robe and sat down. "I'll take my dinner
+upstairs&mdash;why&mdash;what is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I want to go home."</p>
+
+<p>"Home?"</p>
+
+<p>"To Germany."</p>
+
+<p>"But, of course you can't. There are a lot of German reservists in the
+country who would like to go home and fight, but they can't get past the
+British."</p>
+
+<p>"Some have. I could."</p>
+
+<p>"How? That is quite interesting."</p>
+
+<p>"I not tell. But I want to go."</p>
+
+<p>"Then go, by all means. But please wait a day or two until I get another
+girl."</p>
+
+<p>"Plenty girls out of job. I want to go to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span></p><p>"Oh, very well. But you can't expect a full month's wages, as it is you
+that is serving notice, not I."</p>
+
+<p>"I do not want a full month wage. I want five hundert dollar."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Balfame turned her amazed eyes upon the girl. Her first thought was
+that the creature had been driven insane by her letters from home, and
+wondered if she could overcome her if attacked. Then as she met those
+small, sharp, crafty eyes, set high in the big stolid face like little
+deadly guns in a fort, her heart missed a beat. But her own gaze, large
+and cold, did not waver, and she said satirically:</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I am sure I hope you will get it."</p>
+
+<p>"I get it&mdash;from you."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Balfame lifted her shoulders. "What next? I have contributed what
+little I can afford to the war funds. I am sorry, but I cannot
+accommodate you."</p>
+
+<p>"You give me five hundert dollar," reiterated the thick even voice, "or
+I tell the police you come in the back door two minutes after Mr.
+Balfame he was kilt at the front gate."</p>
+
+<p>Obvious danger once more turned Mrs. Balfame into pure steel. "Oh, no;
+you will tell them nothing of the sort, for it is not true. I thought I
+heard some one on the back stairs when I went down to the kitchen. As
+you know I always drink a glass of filtered water before going to bed. I
+had forgotten the episode utterly, but I remember now, I heard a noise
+outside, even imagined that some one turned the knob of the door, and
+called up to ask you if you also had heard. I did not know that anything
+had happened out in front until I returned to my room."</p>
+
+<p>"I see you come in the kitchen door." But the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> voice was not quite so
+even, the shifty glance wavered. Frieda felt suddenly the European
+peasant in the presence of the superior by divine right. Mrs. Balfame
+followed up her advantage.</p>
+
+<p>"You are lying&mdash;for purposes of blackmail. You did not see me come in
+the door, because I had not been outside of it. I do not even remember
+opening it to listen, although I may have done so. You saw nothing and
+cannot blackmail me. Nor would any one believe your word against mine."</p>
+
+<p>"I hear you come in just after me&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Heard? Just now you said you saw."</p>
+
+<p>"Ach&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Balfame had an inspiration. "My God!" she exclaimed, springing to
+her feet, "the murderer took refuge in the house, was hidden in the
+cellar or attic all night, all the next day! He may be here yet! You may
+be feeding him!"</p>
+
+<p>She advanced upon the staring girl whose mouth stood open. "Of course.
+Of course. You are a friend of Old Dutch. It was one of his gunmen who
+did it, and you are his accomplice. Or perhaps you killed him yourself.
+Perhaps he treated you as he treated so many girls, and you killed him
+and are trying to blackmail me for money to get out of the country."</p>
+
+<p>"It is a lie!" Frieda's voice was strangled with outraged virtue. "My
+man, he fight for the fatherland. Old Dutch, he will not hurt a fly. I
+would not have touch your pig of a husband. You know that, for you hate
+him yourself. I have see in the eye, in the hand. I know notings of who
+kill him, but&mdash;no, I have not see you come in the kitchen door, but I
+hear some one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> come in, the door shut, you call out in so strange
+voice&mdash;I believe before that you have kill him&mdash;now&mdash;now I do not
+know&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"It would be wise to know nothing,"&mdash;Mrs. Balfame's voice was charged
+with meaning&mdash;"unless you wish to be arrested as the criminal, or as an
+accomplice&mdash;after confessing that you entered the house within a moment
+or two of the shooting. Who is to say exactly when you did come in?
+Well, better keep your mouth shut. It is wise for innocent people to
+know as little about a crime as possible. Why did you testify before the
+coroner's jury that your tooth ached so you heard nothing? Why didn't
+you tell your story then?"</p>
+
+<p>"I was frightened, and my tooth&mdash;I can tink of notings else."</p>
+
+<p>"And now you think it quite safe to blackmail me?"</p>
+
+<p>"I want to go back to Germany&mdash;to my man&mdash;and I hate this country what
+hates Germany."</p>
+
+<p>"This country is neutral," said Mrs. Balfame severely. "It regards all
+the belligerents as barbarians tarred with the same brush. You Germans
+are so excitable that you imagine we hate when we merely don't care."
+This was intended to be soothing, but Frieda's brow darkened and she
+thrust out her pugnacious lips.</p>
+
+<p>"Germany, she is the greatest country in the whole world," she
+announced. "All the world&mdash;it muss know that."</p>
+
+<p>"How familiar that sounds! Just a slight variation on the old American
+brag that is quite a relief." Mrs. Balfame spoke as lightly as if she
+merely had let down the bars of her dignity out of sympathy with a
+lacerated Teuton. "Well, go back to your Germany, Frieda, if<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> you can
+get there, but don't try to blackmail me again. I have no five hundred
+dollars to give you if I would. If you choose, you may stay your month
+out, and spend your evenings taking up a collection among your German
+friends. You are excused."</p>
+
+<p>She had achieved her purpose. The girl's practical mind was puzzled by
+the simple explanation of her mistress' presence in the kitchen, deeply
+impressed by the contemptuous refusal to be blackmailed. Her shoulders
+drooped and she slunk out of the room.</p>
+
+<p>For a moment Mrs. Balfame clung, reeling, to the back of a chair. Then
+she went downstairs and telephoned to Dwight Rush.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER XVI</span></h2>
+
+<p>The young lawyer was to call at eight o'clock. Mrs. Balfame put on her
+best black blouse in his honour; it was cut low about the throat and
+softened with a rolling collar of hemstitched white lawn. This was as
+far in the art of sex allurement as she was prepared to go; the bare
+idea of a neglig&eacute;e of white lace and silk, warmed by rose-colored
+shades, would have filled her with cold disgust. She was not a religious
+woman, but she had her standards.</p>
+
+<p>At a quarter of eight she made a careful inspection of the lower rooms;
+sleuths, professional and amateur, would not hesitate to sneak into her
+house and listen at keyholes. She inferred that the house was under
+surveillance, for she had looked from her window several times and seen
+the same man sauntering up and down that end of the avenue. No doubt
+some one watched the back doors also.</p>
+
+<p>Convinced that her home was still sacrosanct, she placed two chairs at a
+point in the parlour farthest from the doors leading into the hall, and
+into a room beyond which Mr. Balfame had used as an office. The doors,
+of course, would be open throughout the interview. No one should be able
+to say that she had shut herself up with a young man; on the other hand,
+it was the duty of the deceased husband's lawyer to call on the widow.
+Even if those young devils discovered that she had telephoned for him,
+what more regular than<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> that she should wish to consult her lawyer after
+such insinuations?</p>
+
+<p>Rush arrived as the town clock struck eight. Frieda, who answered the
+door in her own good time, surveyed him suspiciously through a narrow
+aperture to which she applied one eye.</p>
+
+<p>"What you want?" she growled. "Mrs. Balfame she have seen all the
+reporters already yet."</p>
+
+<p>"Let the gentleman in," called Mrs. Balfame from the parlour. "This is a
+friend of my late husband."</p>
+
+<p>Rush was permitted to enter. He was a full minute disposing of his hat
+and overcoat in the hall, while Frieda dragged her heelless slippers
+back to the kitchen and slammed the door. His own step was not brisk as
+he left the hall for the parlour, and his face, always colourless,
+looked thin and haggard. Mrs. Balfame, as she rose and gave him her
+hand, asked solicitously:</p>
+
+<p>"Are you under the weather? How seedy you look. I wondered why you had
+not called&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"A touch of the grippe. Felt all in for a day or two, but am all right
+now. And although I have been very anxious to see you, I had made up my
+mind not to call unless you sent for me."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I sent for you professionally," she retorted coolly. "You don't
+suppose I took your love making seriously."</p>
+
+<p>He flushed dully, after the manner of men with thick fair skins, and his
+hard blue eyes lost their fire as he stared at her. It was
+incomprehensible that she could misunderstand him.</p>
+
+<p>"It was serious enough to me. I merely stayed away, because, having
+spoken as I did, I&mdash;well, I cannot very well explain. You will remember
+that I made<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> you promise to send for me if you were in trouble&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I remembered!" She felt his rebuke obscurely. "It never occurred to me
+to send for any one else."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you for that."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you mean anything but politeness when you said that you had been
+anxious to see me?"</p>
+
+<p>He hesitated, but he had already made up his mind that the time had come
+to put her on her guard. Besides, he inferred that she had begun herself
+to appreciate her danger.</p>
+
+<p>"You have read the newspapers. You saw the reporters this afternoon. Of
+course you must have guessed that they hope for a sensational trial with
+you as the heroine."</p>
+
+<p>"How can men&mdash;<i>men</i>&mdash;be such heartless brutes?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ask the public. Even that element that believes itself to be select and
+would not touch a yellow paper devours a really interesting crime in
+high life. Never mind that now. Let us get down to brass tacks. They
+want to fix the crime on you. How are they going to manage it? That is
+the question for us. Tell me exactly what they said, what they made you
+say."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Balfame gave him so circumstantial an account of the interview that
+he looked at her in admiration, although his rigid American face, that
+looked so strong, turned paler still.</p>
+
+<p>"What a splendid witness you would make!" He stared at the carpet for a
+moment, then flashed his eyes upward much as Broderick had done. "Tell
+me," he said softly, "is there anything you withheld from them? You know
+how safe you are with me. But I must be in a position to advise you what
+to say and to leave unsaid&mdash;if the worst comes."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span></p><p>"You mean if I am arrested?" She had a moment of complete naturalness,
+and stared at him wildly. He leaned forward and patted her hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Anything is possible in a case like this. But you have nothing to fear.
+Now, will you tell me&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think I did it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I know that you did not. But I think you know something about it."</p>
+
+<p>"It would cast no light on the mystery. He was shot from that grove on a
+pitch dark night, and that is all there is to it."</p>
+
+<p>"Let me be the judge of that."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well. I had put out my light&mdash;upstairs&mdash;and, as I was nervous, I
+looked out of the window to see if Dave was coming. I so longed to have
+him come&mdash;and go! Then I happened to glance in the direction of the
+grove, and I saw some one sneaking about there&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes!" He half rose, his eyes expanding, his nostrils dilating. "Go on.
+Go on."</p>
+
+<p>"I told you I was nervous&mdash;wrought up from that dreadful scene at the
+club. I just felt like an adventure! I slipped down stairs and out of
+the house by the kitchen door&mdash;Frieda takes the key of the back hall
+door on Saturday nights&mdash;thinking I would watch the burglar; of course
+that was what I thought he must be; and I knew that Dave would be along
+in a minute&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"How long was this after he telephoned? It would take him some time to
+walk from Cummack's; and he didn't leave at once&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, quite a while after. I was sure then that he would be along in a
+minute or two. Well&mdash;it may<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> seem incredible to you, but I really felt
+as if excitement of that dangerous sort would be a relief."</p>
+
+<p>"I understand perfectly." Rush spoke with the fatuousness of man who
+believes that love and complete comprehension of the object beloved are
+natural corollaries. "But&mdash;but that is not the sort of story that goes
+down with a jury of small farmers and trades-people. They don't know
+much about your sort of nerves. But go on."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I managed to get into the grove without being either seen or
+heard by that man. I am sure of that. He moved round a good deal, and I
+thought he was feeling about for some point from which he could make a
+dart for the house. Then I heard Dave in Dawbarn Street, singing. Then I
+saw him under the lamp-post. After that it all happened so quickly I can
+hardly recall it clearly enough to describe. The man near me crouched. I
+can't tell you what I thought then&mdash;if I knew he was going to shoot&mdash;or
+why I didn't cry out. Almost before I had time to think at all, he
+fired, and Dave went down."</p>
+
+<p>"But what about that other bullet? Are you sure there was no one else in
+the grove?"</p>
+
+<p>"There may have been a dozen. I heard some one running afterwards; there
+may have been more than one."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you have a pistol?" He spoke very softly. "Don't be afraid to tell
+me. It might easily have gone off accidentally&mdash;or something deeper than
+your consciousness may have telegraphed an imperious message to your
+hand."</p>
+
+<p>But Mrs. Balfame, like all artificial people, was intensely secretive,
+and only delivered herself of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span>unvarnished truth when it served her
+purpose best. She gave a little feminine shudder. "I never kept a pistol
+in the house. If I had, it would have been empty&mdash;just something to
+flourish at a burglar."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah&mdash;yes. I was going to say that I was glad of that, but I don't know
+that it matters. If you had taken a revolver out that night, loaded or
+otherwise, and confessed to it, you hardly could have escaped arrest by
+this time, even if it were a .38. And if you confessed to going out into
+the dark to stalk a man without one&mdash;that would make your adventure look
+foolhardy and purposeless&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>It was evident that he was thinking aloud. She interrupted him sharply:</p>
+
+<p>"But you believe me?"</p>
+
+<p>"I believe every word you say. The more differently you act from other
+women, the more natural you seem to me. But I think you were dead right
+in suppressing the episode. It leads nowhere and would incriminate you."</p>
+
+<p>"It may come out yet. That is why I sent for you, not because I was
+afraid of those reporters. Frieda was on the backstairs that night when
+I came in. I thought I heard a sound and called out. I told Anna that
+night and she questioned Frieda indirectly and was satisfied that she
+had heard nothing, for although she had come home early with a
+toothache, she was suffering so intensely that she wouldn't have heard
+if the shot had been fired under her window. So I dismissed such
+misgivings as I had from my mind. But just after those reporters left
+she came up to my room and told me that she saw me come in, and tried to
+blackmail me for five hundred dollars. I soon made her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> admit that she
+had not seen me; but she heard me, no doubt of that. I explained
+logically why I was there&mdash;after a drink of water, and that I called out
+to her because I thought I heard some one try the door&mdash;but if those
+reporters get hold of her&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>His face looked very grim. "That is bad, bad. By the way, why didn't you
+run to Balfame? That would seem the natural thing&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I was suddenly horribly afraid. I think I knew he was dead and I didn't
+want to go near <i>that</i>. I ran like a dog back to its kennel."</p>
+
+<p>"It was a feminine enough thing to do." For the first time he smiled,
+and his voice, which had insensibly grown inquisitorial, softened once
+more. "It was a dreadful position to find oneself in and no mistake.
+Your instinct was right. If you had been found bending over him&mdash;still,
+as you had no weapon&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I think on the whole it would have been better to have gone to him. Of
+course that is what I should have done if I had loved him. As it was, I
+ran as far from him as I could get&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, don't let us waste time discussing the ought to have beens.
+Unless some one can prove that you were out that night, the whole
+incident must be suppressed. If you are arrested on any trumped up
+charge&mdash;and the district attorney is keener than the reporters&mdash;you must
+stick to your story. By the way, why didn't you tell the reporters that
+Frieda was in the house about the time the shot was fired?"</p>
+
+<p>"I had forgotten. The house has been full of people; the neighbourhood
+has lived here; I have noticed her no more than if she were as wooden as
+she looks."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think she did it?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span></p><p>"I wish I could. But she would not have had time to get into the house
+before I did. And the footsteps were running toward the lane at the back
+of the grounds."</p>
+
+<p>"She is one of the swiftest dancers down in that hall where she goes
+with her crowd every Saturday night. I have been doing a little
+sleuthing on my own account, but I can't connect her up with Balfame."</p>
+
+<p>"He wouldn't have looked at her."</p>
+
+<p>"You never can tell. A man will often look quite hard at whatever
+happens to be handy. But she doesn't appear to have any sweetheart,
+although she's been in the country for four years. She is intimate in
+the home of Old Dutch and goes about with young Conrad, but he is
+engaged to some one else. All the boys like to dance with her. She left
+the hall suddenly and ran home&mdash;ostensibly wild with a toothache. If she
+hid in the grove to kill Balfame she could have got into the house
+before you did. What was she doing on the stair, anyway?"</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't ask her."</p>
+
+<p>"She may have been too out of breath to answer you. Or too wary. Those
+other footsteps&mdash;they may have been those of an accomplice; the man who
+fired the other pistol."</p>
+
+<p>"But I would have seen her running ahead of me."</p>
+
+<p>"Not necessarily. It was very dark. Your mind was stunned. You may have
+hesitated longer than you know before making for the house. One is
+liable to powerful inhibitions in great crises. Where is the girl? I
+think I'll have her in."</p>
+
+<p>He walked the floor nervously while Mrs. Balfame went out to the
+kitchen. Frieda was sitting by the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> stove knitting. Commanded to come to
+the parlour, her little eyes almost closed, but she followed Mrs.
+Balfame and confronted Rush, who stood in the middle of the room looking
+tall and formidable.</p>
+
+<p>"I am Mrs. Balfame's lawyer," he said without preamble. "She sent for me
+because you tried to blackmail her. What were you doing on the stairs
+when you heard Mrs. Balfame in the kitchen? You left the dance hall
+sometime before eight, and that could not have been more than five
+minutes past."</p>
+
+<p>Frieda pressed her big lips together in a hard line.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you won't speak. Well, if you don't explain to me, you will to the
+Grand Jury to-morrow. Or I shall get out a warrant to-night for your
+arrest as the murderer of David Balfame."</p>
+
+<p>"Gott!" The girl's face was almost purple. She raised her knitting
+needles with a threatening gesture that was almost dramatic. "I did not
+do it. She has done it."</p>
+
+<p>"What were you doing on the stairs?"</p>
+
+<p>"I would heat water for my tooth."</p>
+
+<p>"Cold water is the thing for an ulcerated tooth."</p>
+
+<p>"I never have the toothache like that already. I am in my room many
+minutes before I think I go down. Then, when I am on the stairs I hear
+Mrs. Balfame come in."</p>
+
+<p>"She has explained what you heard."</p>
+
+<p>"No, she have not. I think so when we have talked this evening, but not
+now. She is&mdash;was, I mean, all out of her breath."</p>
+
+<p>"I was terrified." Mrs. Balfame retorted so promptly that Rush flashed
+her a glance of admiration. Here was a woman who could take care of
+herself on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> the witness stand. "First I thought I heard some one trying
+to get into the door, and then some one sneaking up the stairs."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh&mdash;yes." Frieda's tones expressed no conviction. "The educated lady
+can think very quick. But I say that she have come in by the door, the
+kitchen door. Always I take the key to the hall door. She know that, and
+as she not know that I am in, she go out by the kitchen door. Always in
+the daytime when she goes to the yard she go by the hall door."</p>
+
+<p>"What a pity you did not slam the door when you came in. It would have
+been quite natural as you were in such agony." Rush spoke sarcastically,
+but he was deeply perturbed. It was impossible to tell whether the girl
+was telling the truth or a carefully rehearsed story.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course you know that if you tell that story to the police you will
+get yourself into serious trouble."</p>
+
+<p>"I get her into trouble."</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Balfame is above suspicion. It is not my business to warn you, or
+to defeat the ends of the law, of which apparently you know nothing&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I know someting. Last night I have tell Herr Kraus; and he say that
+since I have told the coroner I know notings, much better I touch the
+lady for five hundert and go home."</p>
+
+<p>"O-h-h! That is the advice Old Dutch gave you! Splendid! I think the
+best thing I can do is to have you arrested bright and early to-morrow
+morning. Mrs. Balfame is cleared already. You may go."</p>
+
+<p>She stared at him for a moment out of eyes that spat fire like two
+little guns in the top of a fort; then she swung herself about and
+retreated to the kitchen.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span></p><p>"That ought to make her disappear to-night. Her friends will hide her.
+The mere fact of her disappearance will convince the police, as well as
+the reporters, that she is guilty. You are all right." He spoke
+boyishly, and his face, no longer rigid, was full of light.</p>
+
+<p>"But if she is innocent?"</p>
+
+<p>"No harm done. She'll be smuggled out of the country and suspicion
+permanently diverted from you. That is all I care about." He caught her
+hands impulsively in his. "I am glad, so glad! Oh!&mdash;It is too soon now,
+but wait&mdash;" He was out of the house before she grasped the fact that he
+had arrested himself on the brim of another declaration.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Balfame went up to bed, serene once more in the belief that her
+future was her own, unclouded, full of attractive possibilities for a
+woman of her position and intellectual attainments.</p>
+
+<p>She made up her mind to take a really deep course of reading, so that
+the most spiteful should not call her superficial; moreover, she had
+been conscious more than once of certain mental dissatisfactions, of
+uneasy vacancies in a mind sufficiently awake to begin to realise the
+cheapness of its furnishings. Perhaps she would take a course in history
+at Columbia, another in psychology.</p>
+
+<p>As she put herself into a sturdy cotton night-gown and then brushed back
+her hair from a rather large forehead before braiding it severely for
+the night, she realised dimly that that way happiness might lie, that
+the pleasures of the intellectual life might be very great indeed. She
+wished regretfully that she could have been brilliantly educated in her
+youth. In that case she would not have married a man who would incite<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span>
+any spirited woman to seek the summary release, but would be to-day the
+wife of a judge, perhaps&mdash;some fine fellow who had showed the early
+promise that Dwight Rush must have done. If she could attract one man
+like that, at the age of forty-two, she could have had a dozen in her
+train when young if she had had the sense to appreciate them.</p>
+
+<p>But she was philosophical, and it was not her way to quarrel very deeply
+with herself or with life. Her long braids were as evenly plaited as
+ever.</p>
+
+<p>She sank into sleep, thinking of the disagreeable necessity of making
+the kitchen fire in the morning and cooking her own breakfast. Frieda of
+course would be gone.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER XVII</span></h2>
+
+<p>The next morning, when Mrs. Balfame, running lightly down the back
+stairs, entered the kitchen half an hour earlier than her usual
+appearance in the dining-room, the front of her housefrock covered with
+a large apron and her sleeves pinned to the elbow, she beheld Frieda
+slicing potatoes.</p>
+
+<p>"Why!" The exclamation was impetuous, but her quick mind adapted itself.
+"I woke up early and thought I would come down and help," she continued
+evenly. "You have had so much to do of late."</p>
+
+<p>Frieda was regarding her with intense suspicion. "Never you have done
+that before," she growled. "You will see if I have the dishes by the
+dinner washed."</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense. And everything is so different these days. I am hungry, too.
+I thought it would be nice to hurry breakfast."</p>
+
+<p>"Breakfast always is by eight. You have told me that when I come. I get
+up by half past six. First I air the house, and sweep the hall. Then I
+make the fire and put the water to boil. Then I peel the potatoes. Then
+I make the biscuit. Then I boil the eggs. Then I make the coffee&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I know. You are marvellously systematic. But I thought you might make
+the coffee at once."</p>
+
+<p>"Always the coffee come last." Frieda resumed her task.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span></p><p>"But I don't eat potatoes for breakfast."</p>
+
+<p>"I eat the potatoes. When they fry in the pan, then I put the biscuit in
+the oven. Then I boil the eggs and then I make the coffee. Breakfast is
+by eight o'clock."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Balfame, with a good-humoured laugh, turned to leave the kitchen.
+But her mind, alert with apprehension, cast up a memory, vague but far
+from soothing. "By the way, I seem to remember that I woke up suddenly
+in the night and heard voices down here. Did you have visitors?"</p>
+
+<p>Frieda flushed the deep and angry red of her infrequent moments of
+embarrassment. "I have not visitors in the night." She turned on the
+water tap, which made noise enough to discourage further attempts at
+conversation; and Mrs. Balfame, to distract her mind, dusted the
+parlour. She dared not go out into the yard and walk off her
+restlessness, for there were now two sentinels preserving what they
+believed to be a casual attitude before her gate. She would have given
+much to know whether those men were watching her movements or those of
+her servant.</p>
+
+<p>Immediately after breakfast, the systematic Frieda was persuaded to go
+to the railway station and buy the New York papers when the train came
+in. Frieda might be a finished product of the greatest machine shop the
+world has ever known, but she was young and she liked the bustle of life
+at the station, and the long walk down Main Street, so different from
+the aristocratic repose of Elsinore Avenue. Mrs. Balfame, watching
+behind the curtain, saw that one of the sentinels followed her. The
+other continued to lean against the lamp-post whittling a stick. Both
+she and Frieda were watched!</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span></p><p>But the disquiet induced by the not unnatural surveillance of premises
+identified with a recent crime was soon forgotten in the superior powers
+of the New York press to excite both disquiet and indignation.</p>
+
+<p>She had missed a photograph of herself while dusting the parlour and had
+forgiven the loyal thief as it was a remarkably pretty picture and
+portrayed a woman sweet, fashionable, and lofty. To her horror the
+picture which graced the first page of the great dailies was that of a
+hard defiant female, quite certain, without a line of letter press, to
+prejudice a public anxious to believe the worst.</p>
+
+<p>Tears of outraged vanity blurred her vision for a few moments before the
+full menace of that silent witness took possession of her. She knew that
+most people deteriorated under the mysterious but always fatal encounter
+of their photographs with the "staff artist," but she felt all the
+sensations of the outraged novice.</p>
+
+<p>A moment after she had dashed her tears away she turned pale; and when
+she finished reading the interviews the beautiful whiteness of her skin
+was disfigured by a greenish pallor.</p>
+
+<p>The interviews were written with a devilish cunning that protected the
+newspapers from danger of libel suit but subtly gave the public to
+understand that its appetite for a towering figure in the Balfame case
+was about to be gratified.</p>
+
+<p>There was no doubt that two shots had been fired from the grove
+simultaneously, and from revolvers of different calibre (picture of tree
+and gate).</p>
+
+<p>Was one of them&mdash;the smaller&mdash;fired by a woman? And if so, by what
+woman?</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span></p><p>Not one of the females whose names had been linked at one time or
+another with the versatile Mr. Balfame but had proved her alibi, and so
+far as was known&mdash;although of course some one as yet unsuspected may
+have climbed the back fence and hid in the grove&mdash;the only two women on
+the premises were the widow and her extraordinarily plain servant.</p>
+
+<p>Balfame was shot with a .41 revolver. In one of the newspapers it was
+casually and not too politely remarked that Mrs. Balfame had larger
+hands and feet than one would expect from her general elegance of figure
+and aristocratic features, and in the same rambling sentence (this was
+written by the deeply calculating Mr. Broderick) the public was informed
+that certain footprints might have been those of a large woman or of a
+medium sized man. In the next paragraph but one Mrs. Balfame's stately
+height was again commented upon, but as the public had already been
+informed that she was an expert at target practice, reiteration of this
+fact was astutely avoided.</p>
+
+<p>A great deal was said here and there of her composure, her large
+studiously expressionless grey eyes, her nimble mind that so often
+routed her inquisitors, but was allied to a temperament of ice and a
+manifest power of cool and deliberate calculation.</p>
+
+<p>The dullest reader was quickened into the belief that he was the real
+detective and that his unerring sense had carried him straight to the
+woman who had hated the murdered man and had quarrelled with him in
+public a few hours before his death.</p>
+
+<p>The episode of Mrs. Balfame's offer to make her husband a glass of
+doctored lemonade and the disappearance of both beverage and glass was
+not <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span>mentioned; presumably these bright young men did not believe in
+digressions or in rousing a curiosity they might not be able to appease.
+The interview concluded with a maddening hint at immediate developments.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Balfame let the papers drop to the floor one by one; when she had
+finished the last she drew her breath painfully for several moments. The
+room turned black, and it was cut by rows of bared and menacing teeth,
+infinitely multiplied.</p>
+
+<p>But she was not the woman to give way to fear for long, or even to
+bewilderment. There could be no real danger, and all that should concern
+her was the outrageous, the intolerably vulgar publicity. A woman whose
+good taste was both natural and cultivated, she felt this ruthless
+tossing of her sacred person into the public maw much as the more
+refined octoroons may have felt when they stood on the auction block in
+the good old days down South. She shuddered and gritted her teeth; she
+wished that she were a hysterical woman that she might find relief in
+shrieking at the top of her voice and smashing the furniture.</p>
+
+<p>Why, oh why, could not David Balfame have been permitted by the fate
+which had decreed his end on that particular night to enter the house
+and drink the lemonade; to die decently, painlessly, bloodlessly (she
+shrank aside when compelled to pass those blood stains on the brick
+path), as any man might die when his overtaxed heart simply stopped? She
+would have run down the moment she heard the fall, she would have
+managed to get the glass out of the way if Frieda had condescended to
+visit the scene, which was quite unlikely. She would have run over to
+Doctor<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span> Lequer, who lived next door to the Gifnings, and he would have
+sent for the coroner. Both inevitably would have pronounced the death
+due to heart failure. It was fate that had bungled, not she.</p>
+
+<p>She mused, however, that she should have had a duplicate glass of
+lemonade to leave half consumed on the table, as it would be recalled
+that he had expected to imbibe a soothing draught immediately upon his
+return; and adjacent liquids invariably induce suspicion in cases of
+sudden death. But that did not matter now.</p>
+
+<p>She set her wits to work upon the identity of her companion in the
+grove. Was it Frieda? Or an accomplice of the girl, who was already in
+the house or on the alert to direct him out by the rear pathway? But why
+Frieda? She knew the raging hate that had filled her husband since the
+declaration of war, and she knew that his rivals in politics hated him
+with increasing virulency; as they were beginning to hate everybody that
+presumed to question the right and might of Germany.</p>
+
+<p>But she was a woman just and sensible. Nor for a moment could she
+visualise Old Dutch or any of his tribe shooting David Balfame because
+he cursed the Kaiser and sang Tipperary. The supposition was too shallow
+to be entertained.</p>
+
+<p>The person in the grove had been either a bitter political rival too
+intimate with the local police to be in danger of arrest, or some woman
+who for a time may have believed herself to be his wife in the larger
+village of New York.</p>
+
+<p>She could have sworn that that stealthy figure so close to her was a
+man, but women's skirts were very<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span> narrow and silent these days, and
+after all she herself was as tall as the average man.</p>
+
+<p>Before noon the house was filled with sympathising and indignant
+friends. Cummack came up town to assure her that it was a shame; and he
+would ask Rush if those New York papers couldn't be had up for libel.
+He'd take the eleven-thirty for Dobton and consult with him.</p>
+
+<p>The ladies were knitting, no one more impersonally than Mrs. Balfame,
+although she was wondering if these kind friends expected to stay to
+lunch, when an automobile drove honking up to the door, and Mrs. Battle
+teetered over to the window.</p>
+
+<p>"For the land's sake," she exclaimed. "If it isn't the deputy sheriff
+from Dobton. Now, what do you suppose?"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Balfame stood up suddenly, and the other women sat with their
+needles suspended as if suddenly overcome by a noxious gas, with the
+exception of Mrs. Cummack, who ran over to her sister-in-law and put her
+plump arm about that easily compassed waist. Mrs. Balfame drew away
+haughtily.</p>
+
+<p>"I am not frightened," she said in her sweet cool voice. "I am prepared
+for anything after those newspapers&mdash;that is all."</p>
+
+<p>The bell pealed, and Mrs. Gifning, too curious to wait upon the
+hand-maiden, ran out and opened the front door. She returned a moment
+later with her little blue eyes snapping with excitement.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you think?" she gasped. "It is Frieda they want. She is being
+subp&oelig;naed to Dobton to testify before the Grand Jury. The deputy
+sheriff is going to take her with him."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span></p><p>Mrs. Balfame returned to her chair with such composure that no one
+suspected the sudden weakening of her knees. Instantly she realised the
+meaning of the voices she had heard in the night. Frieda had been
+"interviewed," either by the press or the police, and induced, probably
+bribed, to talk. No wonder she had not run away.</p>
+
+<p>But she too resumed her knitting.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER XVIII</span></h2>
+
+<p>Young Bruce had had no appetite for his part in the Balfame drama. He
+had presented himself at the back door, however, at eight o'clock on the
+night of the interview with the heroine, assuming that Frieda would be
+moving at her usual snail's pace from the day of work toward the evening
+of leisure. She slammed the door in his face.</p>
+
+<p>When he persisted, thrusting his cherubic countenance through the
+window, she threatened him with the hose. Neither failure daunted him,
+and he was convinced that she knew more of the case than she was willing
+to admit; but it was obvious that he was not the man to appeal to the
+fragment of heart she had brought from East Prussia. The mere fact that
+he looked rather German and yet was straight American&mdash;employed,
+moreover, by a newspaper that made no secret of its hostility to her
+country&mdash;satisfied him that he would not be permitted to approach her
+closely enough to attempt any form of persuasion. He drew the long
+breath of deliverance as he reached this conclusion; the bare idea that
+he might have to bestow a kiss upon Frieda in the heroic pursuit of duty
+had induced a sensation of nausea. He was an extremely fastidious young
+man. But even as he accepted defeat with mingled relief and chagrin, the
+brilliant alternative occurred to him.</p>
+
+<p>He had ascertained that Frieda was intimate in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> home of Conrad
+Kraus, otherwise "Old Dutch," of Dobton, the County seat. Conrad, Jr.,
+treated her as a brother should, and it was his habit to escort her home
+from the popular dance-hall of Elsinore on Saturday nights. Bruce had no
+difficulty in learning that the young German-American had been dancing
+with his favourite partner when her dead nerve seemed to threaten
+explosion and had fraternally run home with her. The energetic reporter
+did not wait upon the next trolley for Dobton, but hired an automobile
+and descended in front of Old Dutch's saloon fifteen minutes later.</p>
+
+<p>Young Kraus was busy; and Bruce, after ordering beer and cheese and
+taking it to an occupied table, drew the information from a neighbour
+that Conrad, Jr., would be on duty behind the bar until midnight. It was
+the habit of Papa Kraus to retire promptly on the stroke of nine and
+take his entire family, save Conrad, with him. The eldest of the united
+family continued to assuage the thirst of the neighbourhood until twelve
+o'clock, when he shut up the front of the house and went to bed in the
+rear as quickly as possible; he must rise betimes and clerk in the
+leading grocery-store of the town. He was only twenty-two, but thrifty
+and hard-working and anxious to marry.</p>
+
+<p>Bruce caught the next train for New York, had a brief talk with his city
+editor, and returned to Dobton a few moments before the closing hour of
+the saloon. He hung about the bar until the opportunity came to speak to
+Conrad unheard.</p>
+
+<p>"I want a word with you as soon as you have shut up," he said without
+preamble.</p>
+
+<p>The young German scowled at the reporter. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span>Although a native son of
+Dobton, he resented the attitude of the American press as deeply as his
+irascible old father, and he still more deeply resented the suspicion
+that had hovered for a moment over the house of Kraus.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't get mad till you hear what I've got to say," whispered Bruce.
+"There may be a cool five hundred in it for you."</p>
+
+<p>Conrad glanced at the clock. It was five minutes to twelve. He stood as
+immobile as his duties would permit until the stroke of midnight, when
+he turned out the last reluctant patron, locked the door and followed
+the reporter down the still-illuminated street to a dark avenue in the
+residence quarter. Then the two fell into step.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, what is it?" growled Conrad, who did not like to have his habits
+disturbed. "I get up&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"That's all right. I won't keep you fifteen minutes. I want you to tell
+me all you know about the night of the Balfame murder."</p>
+
+<p>He had taken the young German's arm and felt it stiffen. "I know
+nothing," was the reply.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, you do. You took Frieda home and got there some little time
+before the shooting. You went in the side entrance to the back yard, but
+you could see the grove all right."</p>
+
+<p>"It was a black-dark night. I could see nothing in the grove."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! You saw something else! You have been afraid to speak out, as there
+had been talk of your father having employed gun-men&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Such lies!" shrieked young Kraus.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course! I know that. So does the press.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> That was a wild dream of
+the police. But all the same you thought it wouldn't be a bad idea to
+keep clear of the whole business. That is true. Don't attempt to deny
+it. You saw something that would put the law on the right track. Now,
+what was it? There are five hundred dollars waiting for you if you will
+tell the truth. I don't want anything but the truth, mind you. I don't
+represent a paper that pays for lies, so your honour is quite safe. So
+also are you."</p>
+
+<p>Conrad ruminated for a few moments. He was literal and honest and wanted
+to be quite positive that he was not asked to do something which would
+make him feel uncomfortable while investing those desirable five hundred
+dollars in West Elsinore town lots, and could reassure himself that the
+truth was always right whether commercially valuable or not. He balanced
+the pro's and con's so long that Bruce was about to break out
+impatiently just as he made up his mind.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I saw something. But I wished to say nothing. They might say that
+I was in it, or that I lied to protect Frieda&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"That's all right. There was no possible connection between her and
+Balfame&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Conrad went on exactly as if the reporter had not interrupted. "I had
+seen Frieda through the back door. She was crying with the toothache,
+and I heard her run upstairs. I thought I would wait a few moments. The
+drops she said she had might not cure her, and she might want me to go
+to a dentist's house with her. She had gone in the back-hall door.
+Suddenly I saw the kitchen door open, and as I was starting forward, I
+saw that it was not Frieda who came out. It was Mrs. Balfame. She closed
+the door behind her,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span> and then crept past me to the back of the kitchen
+yard. I watched her and saw her turn suddenly and walk toward the grove.
+She did not make a particle of noise&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"How do you know it was not Frieda?"</p>
+
+<p>"Frieda is five-feet-three, and this was a tall woman, taller than I,
+and I am five-eight. I have seen Mrs. Balfame many times, and though I
+couldn't see her face,&mdash;she had a dark veil or scarf round it,&mdash;I knew
+her height and walk. Of course I watched to see what she was up to. A
+few moments later I heard Balfame turn in from Dawbarn Street, singing,
+like the fool he was, 'Tipperary,' and then I heard a shot. I guessed
+that Balfame had got what was coming to him, and I didn't wait to see. I
+tiptoed for a minute or two and then ran through the next four places at
+the back, and then out toward Balfame Street, for the trolley. But
+Frieda heard Mrs. Balfame when she came in. She was all out of breath,
+and, when she heard a sound on the stairs, called out before she
+thought, I guess, and asked Frieda if she had heard anything. But Frieda
+is very cautious. She had heard the shot, but she froze stiff against
+the wall when she heard Mrs. Balfame's voice, and said nothing. We told
+her afterwards that she had better keep quiet for the present."</p>
+
+<p>"And you think Mrs. Balfame did it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Who else? I shall not be so sorry if she goes to the chair, for a woman
+should always be punished the limit for killing a man, even such a man
+as Balfame."</p>
+
+<p>"No fear of that, but we'll have a dandy case. You tell that story to
+the Grand Jury to-morrow, and you get your five hundred before night.
+Now you must<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> come and get me a word with Frieda. She won't look at me,
+and of course she is in bed anyhow. But I must tell her there are a
+couple of hundred in this for her if she comes through&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"But she'll be arrested for perjury. She testified at the coroner's
+inquest that she knew nothing."</p>
+
+<p>"An abscessed tooth will explain her reticence on any other subject."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps I should tell you that she came to see us to-night&mdash;last night
+it is now, not?&mdash;and told my papa that Lawyer Rush had frightened her,
+told her that she might be accused of the killing, that she had better
+get out. But Papa advised her to go home and fear nothing, where there
+was nothing to fear. He knew that if she ran away, he would be suspected
+again, the girl being intimate in the family; and of course the police
+would be hot on her trail at once. So, like the good sensible girl she
+is, she took the advice and went home."</p>
+
+<p>"All right. Come along. I'm not on the morning paper, but I promised the
+story to the boys if I could get it in time."</p>
+
+<p>He hired another automobile, and they left it at the corner of Dawbarn
+and Orchard Streets, entering the Balfame place by the tradesmen's gate
+on the left, and creeping to the rear of the house. The lane behind the
+four acres of the little estate was full of ruts and too far away from
+the house for adventuring on a dark night. They had been halted by the
+detective on watch, but when their errand was hastily explained, he
+joined forces with them and even climbed a lean-to in the endeavour to
+rouse Miss Appel from her young and virtuous slumbers. Their combined
+efforts <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span>covered three hours; and that explains why the tremendous
+news-story appeared in the early edition of the afternoon papers instead
+of whetting several million morning appetites.</p>
+
+<p>The interview with Frieda, who became very wide awake when the unseemly
+intrusion was elucidated by the trustworthy Conrad, and bargained for
+five hundred dollars, explains why Mrs. Balfame spent Thursday night in
+the County Jail behind Dobton Courthouse.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER XIX</span></h2>
+
+<p>When the Dobton sheriff and his deputies came to arrest Mrs. Balfame,
+the wife of their old comrade in arms, all they were able to tell her
+was that the District Attorney had applied for the warrant immediately
+after the testimony before the Grand Jury of Frieda Appel and of the
+Krauses, father and son. What that testimony had been they could not
+have told her if they would, but that it had been strong and
+corroborative enough to insure her indictment by the Grand Jury was as
+manifest as it was ominous.</p>
+
+<p>They arrived just as Mrs. Balfame was about to leave the house to lunch
+with Mrs. Cummack; Frieda had left long before it was time to prepare
+the midday meal. Mr. Cramb, the sheriff, shut the door behind him and in
+the faces of the indignant women reporters, who, less ruthless but
+equally loyal to their journals, wanted a "human interest" story for the
+stimulated public. Mrs. Balfame and her friends retreated before the
+posse into the parlour. Mrs. Battle wept loudly; Alys Crumley, who had
+come in with her mother a few moments since, fell suddenly on a chair in
+the corner and pressed her hands against her mouth, her horrified eyes
+staring at Mrs. Balfame. The other women shed tears as the equally
+doleful sheriff explained his errand and read the warrant. Mrs. Balfame
+alone was calm. She exerted herself supremely and sent so peremptory a
+message along her quaking nerves that it benumbed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> them for the moment.
+She had only a faint sense of drama, but a very keen one of her own
+peculiar position in her little world, and she knew that in this grisly
+crisis of her destiny she was expected to behave as a brave and
+dignified woman should&mdash;a woman of whom her friends could continue to
+exult as head and shoulders above the common mass. She rose to the
+occasion.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you worry&mdash;just!" said Mr. Cramb, patting her shoulder, although
+he never had had the temerity to offer her his hand before, and had
+often "pitied Dave." "They lied, them Duytchers, for some reason or
+other, but they can't really have nothin' on you, and we'll find out
+what they're up to, double quick."</p>
+
+<p>"I do not worry," said Mrs. Balfame coldly, "&mdash;although quite naturally
+I object to the humiliation of arrest, and of spending even a night in
+jail. Exactly what is the charge against me?"</p>
+
+<p>The sheriff crumpled his features and cleared his throat. "Well, it's
+murder, I guess. It's an ugly word, but words don't mean nothin' when
+there's nothin' in them."</p>
+
+<p>"In the first degree?" shrieked Mrs. Gifning.</p>
+
+<p>Cramb nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"And it don't admit of bail?" Mrs. Frew's eyes rolled wildly.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothin' doin'."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Balfame rose hurriedly. There was a horrid possibility of contagion
+in this room surcharged with emotion. She kissed each of her friends in
+turn. "It will be all right, of course," she reminded them gently. "Only
+men could be taken in by such a plot, and of course there are a lot of
+Germans on the Grand Jury<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span>&mdash;there are so many in this county. I shall
+have an excellent lawyer, Dave's friend, Mr. Rush. And I am sure that I
+shall be quite comfortable in the County Jail&mdash;it is so nice and new."
+But she shuddered at the vision, in spite of her fine self-control.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll be treated like a queen," interposed the sheriff hastily. He was
+proud of her, and immensely relieved that he was not to escort an
+hysterical prisoner five miles to the County Seat. "You'll have the
+Warden's own suite, and I guess you'll be able to see your friends right
+along. Guess we'd better be gettin' on."</p>
+
+<p>As Mrs. Balfame was leaving the room, her eyes met the horrified and
+puzzled gaze of Alys Crumley, and one of those obscure instincts that
+dart out of the subconscious mind like memories of old experiences
+released under high mental pressure, made her put out her hand
+impulsively and draw the girl to her.</p>
+
+<p>"I can always be sure of your trust," she whispered. "Won't you come up
+and help me pack?"</p>
+
+<p>Alys followed unresisting: the blow had been so sudden; she had believed
+so little in the power of the law to touch a woman like Mrs. Balfame,
+and even less that she committed the crime; for the moment she forgot
+her jealous hostility, remembered only that the best friend of her
+mother and of her own childhood was in dire straits.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Cummack had run up ahead and was carrying two suitcases from the
+large closet to the bed as they entered. Her face was burning and
+tear-stained, but she was one of those highly efficient women of the
+home that rise automatically to every emergency and act while others
+consider. "Glad you've come too,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span> she said to Alys. "Open those drawers
+in the bureau, and I'll pick out what's needed. Of course the ridiculous
+charge will be dismissed in a day or two&mdash;but still! Well, if they're
+all idiots down there at Dobton, we can come over here and pack a trunk
+later. To take it now would be nonsense, and Sam'll move heaven and
+earth to get them to accept bail. You just put on your best black, Enid,
+and wear your veil so they can't snapshot you."</p>
+
+<p>While she was gasping on, Mrs. Balfame, whose brain had never worked
+more clearly, went into the bathroom and emptied the contents of an
+innocent looking medicine bottle into the drain of the wash-stand. She
+feared young Broderick more than she feared the district attorney, who,
+after all, had been her husband's friend&mdash;had, in fact, eaten all of his
+political crumbs out of that lavish but discriminating hand. She
+recalled that she had always been gracious to him (at her husband's
+request, for she regarded him as a mere worm) when he had dined at her
+table, and felt sure that he would favour her secretly, whatever his
+obvious duty. Moreover, he was of those that spat at the very mention of
+the powerful Kraus, and would gladly, especially since the outbreak of
+the war, have run him out of the community.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Balfame, being a brilliant exponent of that type which enjoys the
+unwavering admiration and loyalty of its own sex, had a corresponding
+belief in her friends, and rarely if ever had used the word <i>cat</i>
+denotatively. She called out the best in women as they of a certainty
+called out the best in her. Therefore, it did not occur to her either to
+close the bathroom door or to glance behind her. Alys Crumley, standing
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span>before the bureau and happening to look into the mirror, saw her empty
+and rinse the bottle. The suspicions of Broderick regarding the glass of
+lemonade flashed into the young artist's mind; and from that moment she
+believed in the guilt of Mrs. Balfame.</p>
+
+<p>Although her hands were shaking Alys lifted from the lavender-scented
+drawers the severely chaste underwear of the leader of Elsinore society,
+and as soon as the suitcases were packed, she made haste to adjust Mrs.
+Balfame's veil and pin it so firmly that no more kisses could be
+exchanged. Of her ultimate purpose Alys had not the ghost of an idea,
+but kiss a woman whom she believed to be guilty of murder and whom she
+might possibly be driven to betray, she would not. Suddenly grown as
+secretive as if she had a crime of her own to conceal, she even walked
+out to the car with Mrs. Balfame and helped to drive away the crowding
+newspaper women, several of whom she recognised. They in turn bore her
+off, determined to get some sort of a story for the issues of the morrow.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER XX</span></h2>
+
+<p>Mrs. Balfame was whirled to Dobton in ten minutes&mdash;herself, she fancied,
+the very centre of a whirlwind. The automobile was pursued by three cars
+containing members of the press, which shot past just before they
+reached Dobton Courthouse, that the occupants might leap out and fix
+their cameras. Other men and women of the press stood before the locked
+gate of the jail yard, several holding cameras. But once more the
+reading public was forced to be content with an appetising news-story
+illustrated by a tall black mummy.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Balfame walked past them holding her clenched hands under her veil,
+but to all appearance composed and indifferent. The sob-sisters were
+enthusiastic, and the men admired and disliked her more than ever. Your
+true woman always weeps when in trouble, just as she blushes and
+trembles when a man selects her to be his comforter through life.</p>
+
+<p>The Warden and his wife, who but a few weeks since had moved into their
+new quarters, had moved out again without a murmur and with an
+unaccustomed thrill. What a blessed prospect after screaming drunks,
+drug-fiends and tame commercial sinners!</p>
+
+<p>The doors clanged shut; Mrs. Balfame mounted the stairs hastily, and was
+still composed enough to exclaim with pleasure and to thank the Warden's
+wife, Mrs.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span> Larks, when she saw that flowers were on the table and even
+on the window-sills.</p>
+
+<p>"I guess you'll stand it all right," said Mrs. Larks proudly. "Just make
+yourself at home and I'll have your lunch up in a jiffy."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Cummack and Mrs. Gifning had come in the car with Mrs. Balfame, and
+Cummack and several other men of standing arrived almost immediately to
+assure her, with pale disturbed faces, that they were doing their best
+to get her out on bail. While she was trying to eat her lunch, the
+telephone bell rang, and her set face became more animated as she
+recognised Rush's strong confident voice. He had read the news in the
+early edition of the afternoon papers, in New York, telephoned to Dobton
+and found that his immediate fear was realised and that she was in the
+County Jail. He commanded her to keep up her spirits and promised to be
+with her at four o'clock.</p>
+
+<p>Then she begged her friends to go and let her rest and sleep if
+possible; they knew just how serious that consultation with her lawyer
+must be. When she was alone, however, she picked up the telephone, which
+stood on a side table, and called up the office of Dr. Anna Steuer. Ever
+since her arrest she had been dully conscious of her need of this oldest
+and truest of her friends. It came to her with something of a shock as
+she sat waiting for Central to connect, that she had leaned upon this
+strong and unpretentious woman far more than her calm self-satisfied
+mind had ever admitted.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Anna's assistant answered the call, and when she heard Mrs.
+Balfame's voice broke down and wept loudly.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span></p><p>"Oh, do be quiet," said Mrs. Balfame impatiently. "I am in no danger
+whatever. Connect me with the Doctor."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it ain't only that. Poor&mdash;poor Doctor! She's been all in for days,
+and this morning she just collapsed, and I sent for Dr. Lequeur, and he
+pronounced it typhoid and sent for the ambulance and had her taken out
+to Brabant Hospital. The last thing she said&mdash;whispered&mdash;was to be sure
+not to bother you, that you would hear it soon enough&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Balfame hung up the receiver, which had almost fallen from her
+shaking hand. She turned cold with terror. Anna ill! And when she most
+wanted her! A little window in her brain opened reluctantly, and
+superstition crept in. Beyond that open window she seemed to hear the
+surge of a furious and irresistible tide. Had it been waiting all these
+years to overleap the barriers about her well ordered life and sweep her
+into chaos? She frowned and put her thoughts more colloquially. Had her
+luck changed? Was Fate against her? When she thought of Dwight Rush, it
+was only to shrink again. If anything happened to him&mdash;and why not? Men
+were killed every day by automobiles, and he had an absentminded way of
+walking&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>She sprang to her feet and paced up and down the two rooms of the suite,
+determined upon composure, and angry with herself. She recovered her
+mental balance (so rarely disturbed by imaginative flights), but her
+spirits were at zero; and she was sitting with her elbows on her knees,
+her hands pressed to her face when Rush entered promptly at four
+o'clock. He was startled at the face she lifted. It looked older but
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span>indefinably more attractive. Her inviolable serenity had irritated even
+him at times, although she was his innocent ideal of a great lady.</p>
+
+<p>The Warden, who had unlocked the door, left them alone, and Rush sat
+down and took both her hands in his warm reassuring grasp.</p>
+
+<p>"You are not to be the least bit frightened," he said. "The great thing
+for you to remember is that your husband's political crowd rules, and
+simply laughs at your arrest. They are more positive than ever that some
+political enemy did it. Balfame's temper was growing shorter and
+shorter, and he had many enemies, even in his own party. But the crowd
+will pull every wire to get you off, and they can pull wires, all
+right&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"But on what evidence am I arrested? What did those abominable people
+say to the Grand Jury? Am I never to know?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, rather. It's all in the afternoon papers, for one of the
+reporters got the evidence before the Grand Jury did."</p>
+
+<p>He had taken off his overcoat, and he crossed the room and took from a
+pocket a copy of <i>The Evening News</i>. She glanced over it with her lips
+drawn back from her teeth. It contained not only the story the
+enterprising Mr. Bruce had managed to obtain from Frieda and Conrad Jr.,
+but a corroboration of the maid's assertion that, warned by the family
+friend and lawyer, Mr. Dwight Rush, to disappear, she had gone to Papa
+Kraus for advice. Not a word, however, of blackmail.</p>
+
+<p>"So the public believes already that I am a murderess! No doubt I should
+be convinced as readily <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span>myself. It is all so adroit!" Mrs. Balfame
+spoke quietly but with intense bitterness. "I suppose I must be
+tried&mdash;more and still more publicity. No one will ever forget it. Do you
+suppose it is true young Kraus saw me that night?"</p>
+
+<p>"God knows!"</p>
+
+<p>He got up again and moved nervously about the room. "I wish I could be
+sure. That is the point to which I must give the deepest
+consideration&mdash;whether you are to admit or not that you went out. The
+Grand Jury and Gore believe it. Young Kraus has a very good name. Frieda
+has always been well behaved. There are six Germans on the Grand Jury,
+moreover. We must see that none get on the trial jury. Gore wants to
+believe&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"But he was a friend of Dave's."</p>
+
+<p>"Exactly. He is making much of that point. Affects to be filled with
+righteous wrath because you killed his dear old friend. Trust a district
+attorney. All they care for is to win out, and he has his spurs to win,
+in the bargain. I met him a few moments ago; he was about equally full
+of gin fizzes and the 'indisputable fact' that you are the only person
+in sight with a motive. Oh, don't! Don't!"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Balfame had broken down. She flung her arms over the table and her
+head upon them. More than once in her life she had shed tears both
+diplomatic and spontaneous, but for the first time since she was a child
+she sobbed heavily. She felt forlorn, deserted, in awful straits.</p>
+
+<p>"Anna is ill," she articulated. "Anna! My one real friend&mdash;the only one
+that has meant anything to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> me. Life has gone pretty well with me. Now
+everything is changed. I know that terrible things are about to happen
+to me."</p>
+
+<p>"Not while I am alive. I heard of Dr. Anna's illness on my way to New
+York. Lequeur was on the train. You&mdash;you must let me take her place. I
+am devoted to you heart and soul. You surely know that."</p>
+
+<p>"But you are not a woman. It's a woman friend I want now, a strong one
+like Anna. Those other women&mdash;oh, yes, they're devoted to me&mdash;have been,
+but they've suddenly ceased to count, somehow. Besides, they'll soon
+believe me guilty. I hate them all. Only Anna would have understood&mdash;and
+believed."</p>
+
+<p>Rush had been administering awkward little pats to the soft masses of
+her hair. Suddenly he realised that his faith in her complete innocence
+was by no means as stable as it had been; she had confessed to him that
+she had been in the grove that night stalking the intruder. How absurd
+to believe that she had gone out unarmed. He had read the circumstantial
+details of the reporter's interviews with Frieda and young Kraus. While
+the writers were careful not to make the downright assertion that Mrs.
+Balfame had fired the fatal shot, the public saw her in the act of
+levelling one of the pistols&mdash;so mighty is the power of the trained and
+ruthless pen.</p>
+
+<p>As he stood looking down upon his unexpected surrender to emotional
+excitement, he asked himself deliberately: What more natural, if she had
+a pistol in her hand and that low-lived creature presented himself
+abruptly and alone, than that it should go off of its own accord, so to
+speak, whether hers had been the bullet<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> to penetrate that loathsome
+target or not? If so, what had she done with the pistol?</p>
+
+<p>He sat down and laid his hand firmly on her arm.</p>
+
+<p>"There is something I must tell you. It is something Frieda forgot to
+tell the reporter, but she gave it to the Grand Jury. With the help of a
+couple of extra gin fizzes, I extracted it from Gore. It is this: she
+told the Grand Jury that several times when she did her weekly cleaning
+upstairs she saw a pistol in the drawer of a table beside your bed.
+Will&mdash;won't you tell me?"</p>
+
+<p>He felt the arm in his clasp grow rigid, but Mrs. Balfame answered
+without a trace of her recent agitation: "I told you before that I never
+had a pistol. It would be like her to be spying about among my things,
+but I wonder she would admit it."</p>
+
+<p>"She is delighted with her new importance, and, I fancy, has been bribed
+to tell all she knows."</p>
+
+<p>"In that case she wouldn't mind telling more. And no doubt she will
+think of other sensational items before the trial. She will have
+awakened in the night after the crime and heard me drop the pistol
+between the walls, or she will have seen me loading it on the afternoon
+of the shooting."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, there is no knowing when those low-grade imaginations, once
+started, will stop. Memory ceases to function in brains of that sort,
+and its place is taken by a confused jumble of induced or auto
+suggestions, which are carefully straightened out by the practised
+lawyer in rehearsals. But I almost wish that you had taken a pistol out
+that night and would tell me where to find it. I'd lose it somewhere out
+in the marsh."</p>
+
+<p>"I had no pistol." Not yet could she take him into<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> her confidence to
+that extent, although she knew that he was about to stake his
+professional reputation on her acquittal.</p>
+
+<p>He dismissed the subject abruptly. "By the way, I gave the story of
+Frieda's attempt to blackmail you to Broderick and two other men just
+before I left town&mdash;laying emphasis on the fact that you always drank a
+glass of filtered water before going to bed. They made a wry face over
+that, but it is news and they must publish it. There are many things in
+your favour&mdash;particularly Frieda's assertion before the coroner that she
+knew nothing of the case. She is a confessed perjurer. Also, why didn't
+she answer when you called up to her, if she was on the back stairs?
+There are things that satisfy a grand jury that will not go down with a
+trial jury. Now you must, you must trust me."</p>
+
+<p>She looked up at him dully. But in a moment her eyes warmed and she
+smiled faintly. All the female in her responded to the traditional
+strength and power of the male. She also knew the sensitiveness of man's
+vanity and the danger either of starving it or dealing it a sudden blow.
+She sometimes felt sorry for men. It was their self-appointed task to
+run the planet, and they must be reminded just so often how wonderful
+they were, lest they lose courage; one of the several obliging
+weaknesses of which women rarely scrupled to take advantage.</p>
+
+<p>As she put out her hand and took his, she looked very feminine and
+sweet. Her face was flushed and tears had softened her large blue-grey
+eyes that could look so virginal and cold.</p>
+
+<p>"I know you will get me off. Don't imagine for a moment I doubt that; it
+is a sustaining faith that will<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> carry me through the trial itself. But
+it is this terrible ordeal in prison that I dread&mdash;and the publicity&mdash;my
+good name dragged in the dust."</p>
+
+<p>"You can change that name for mine the day you are acquitted."</p>
+
+<p>It suddenly occurred to her that this might be a very sensible thing to
+do, and simultaneously she appreciated the fact that he possessed what
+was called charm and magnetism. Moreover, the complete devotion of even
+a passably attractive member of the over-sex in alarming predicaments
+was a very precious thing. Possibly for the first time in her life she
+experienced a sensation of gratitude, and she smiled at him so radiantly
+that he caught his breath.</p>
+
+<p>"No one but you could have consoled me for the loss of Anna, but you are
+not to say one word of that sort to me until I am out of this dreadful
+place. I couldn't stand the contrast! Will you promise?"</p>
+
+<p>"Very well."</p>
+
+<p>"Now will you really do something for me&mdash;get me a sleeping powder from
+the druggist? To-morrow I shall be myself again, but I <i>must</i> sleep
+to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll get it." His voice was matter of fact, for love made certain of
+his instincts keen if it blunted others. "That is, if you will promise
+to go to bed early and see none of these reporters, men or women. They
+are camped all over the Courthouse yard."</p>
+
+<p>She gave an exclamation of disgust. "I'll never see another newspaper
+person as long as I live. They are responsible for this, and I hate
+them."</p>
+
+<p>"Good! You shall have the powder in ten minutes. Oh, by the way, will
+you give me a written permit to pass the night in your house? I want to
+go through<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> your husband's papers and see if I can find any clue to
+unknown enemies. He may have received threatening letters. I can obtain
+the official permission without any difficulty."</p>
+
+<p>She wrote the permit unsuspiciously. At nine o'clock that night he let
+himself into the Balfame house determined to find the pistol before
+morning. He knew the police would get round to the inevitable search
+some time on the following day.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER XXI</span></h2>
+
+<p>Alys Crumley entertained four of the newspaper women at a picnic lunch
+in her studio. She was grateful for the distraction from her own
+thoughts and diverted by their theories. None had seen Mrs. Balfame save
+through the medium of the staff artist, and they were inclined to accept
+the prim&acirc; facie evidence of her guilt. When Alys fetched a photograph
+from the house, however, they immediately reversed their opinion, for
+the pictured face was that of a lovely cold and well-bred woman without
+a trace of hardness or predisposition to crime. They fell in love with
+it and vowed to defend her to the best of their ability, Miss Crumley
+promising to exert her influence with the accused to obtain an interview
+for the new devotees.</p>
+
+<p>Before wrapping the photograph for its inevitable journey to New York,
+Alys gave it a moment of study herself, wondering if she may not have
+misinterpreted what she saw that morning. No one had worshipped at that
+shrine more devoutly than she, even during these later years of
+metropolitan concordance.</p>
+
+<p>"What is your theory?" asked Miss Austin of <i>The Evening News</i>. "They
+say that a lot of those men at the Elks know, but never will come
+through. Do you think it was any of those girls? It might have been some
+woman he knew in New York who followed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> him here for the first time&mdash;who
+would not have been recognised if seen, and got away in a waiting
+automobile."</p>
+
+<p>"As likely as not," said Miss Crumley indifferently. "I have heard so
+many theories advanced and rejected that I am almost as confused as the
+police. Jim Broderick says that the simplest explanation is generally
+the correct one, but while he believes Mrs. Balfame to be the natural
+solution, I happen to know her better than he does, and a good deal more
+of this community. Three or four men and one or two women would be still
+simpler explanations. Possibly&mdash;" She turned cold and almost lost her
+breath, but the impulse to put a maddening possibility into verbal form
+was irresistible. "Perhaps some man that is in love with Mrs. Balfame
+did it." And then she hated herself, for she felt as if she had thrown
+Dwight Rush to the lions.</p>
+
+<p>"But who? Who?" the girls were demanding, more excited over this
+picturesque solution than they had been since "the story broke." Even
+Miss Austin, who disdained to write "sob stuff" and was a graduate of
+the Columbia School of Journalism, was almost on her feet, while Miss
+Lauretta Lea, who wept vicariously for fifty thousand women three times
+a week, shrieked without shame.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, fine!" "How truly enchanting!" "Dear Miss Crumley&mdash;Alys&mdash;who, who
+is the man?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, as to that, I've not an idea. Mrs. Balfame always has rather
+disdained men, and even if she were susceptible is far too
+straight-laced to permit any man to pay her compromising attentions, or
+to meet him secretly. But of course she is very pretty, still young to
+look at, so there is the possibility&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span></p><p>"But just run over all the marriageable men in the community&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, he might be married, you know." Alys struggled to keep the alarm
+out of her voice.</p>
+
+<p>"But in that case there would still be the wife to dispose of, and now,
+at least, he'd never dare kill her, or even divorce her. No, I don't
+hold to that theory. It's more like the reckless act of the unchastened
+bachelor still young enough for illusions. You must have a theory, Alys.
+Stand and deliver." Miss Austin spoke with quick insistence. She had
+detected her hostess' suppressed excitement and was convinced that the
+hint had not been thrown out at random. She also had been conscious of
+an indefinable change in her old associate, and now she noticed it in
+detail. She might be too self-respecting to dip her pen in bathos, but
+she was nevertheless young, and her imagination began playing about
+possibilities like lightning over a wire fence.</p>
+
+<p>The heat which confused Alys Crumley's brain was expressed by a dull
+glow in her strange olive-colored eyes, but she made a desperate effort
+to look impersonal and rather bored.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I have no theory: certainly it could not be any of the men
+hereabouts. Mrs. Balfame has known all of them from infancy up. Perhaps
+she met some one in New York; I don't know that she ever went to any of
+the tea-tango places&mdash;she doesn't dance; but she might have gone with
+Mrs. Gifning or Mrs. Frew, and just met some one that fell in love with
+her&mdash;Oh, you mustn't take a mere idea of mine too seriously."</p>
+
+<p>"Hm!" said Miss Austin. "It doesn't sound plausible. A man she met now
+and then at a tea-room!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> She's not the sort to drive men to distraction
+in the casual meeting&mdash;not the type. And I can't see the men that
+frequent afternoon tea-rooms working themselves up to the point of
+murder. No, if there is a man in the case, he is here; if not in
+Elsinore, then in the county; and it is some man who has known her long
+enough and seen her often enough to descend from mere admiration for her
+rather chilling type of beauty into the most desperate desire for
+possession&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Alys burst into a ringing peal of laughter. "Really, Sarah, I wonder you
+are not already famous as a fiction-story writer. How much longer do you
+propose to stick to prosaic journalism?"</p>
+
+<p>"I've had two stories accepted by leading magazines this month, I'd have
+you know; but your memory is short if you think journalism prosaic. It
+germinates pretty nearly all the fiction microbes that later ravage the
+popular magazines. That was what was the matter with the old
+magazines&mdash;no modern symptoms, let alone fevers&mdash;only antidotes that
+somehow didn't work. But if you won't tell, Alys, I'll find out for
+myself. If I don't find out, Jim Broderick will, and I'd give my eyes to
+get ahead of him. But we've got to catch our train, girls."</p>
+
+<p>They took the short cut through the hall of the dwelling, and as they
+passed the open door of the living-room, Miss Lauretta Lea exclaimed
+with pleasure at its conceit of a cool green wood. Alys could do no less
+than invite them in. While the three other reporters were walking about
+observing the charming room in detail and envying its owner, Miss Sarah
+Austin walked directly over to a framed photograph of Dwight Rush that
+stood on a side-table. He had given it to Mrs.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> Crumley; and Alys, who
+spared her mother all unnecessary anxiety, had not yet conceived a
+logical excuse for its removal.</p>
+
+<p>"Whom have we here?" demanded the searching young realist. "Don't tell
+me, Alys, that here is the secret of your desertion of the New York
+press. I'd forgive you, though, for he is precisely the type I most
+admire. The modern Samson before Delilah cuts off what little hair his
+barber leaves. But the same old Samson looking round for the same old
+Delilah&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Really, Sarah, are you insinuating that I am a Delilah? That is too
+much!" Alys put her arm round Miss Austin's waist and smiled teasingly.
+"No wonder your newspaper stories are so bitingly realistic; the
+restraints you force upon your imagination must put it quite out of
+commission for the time being. That is Mr. Dwight Rush, quite a well
+known lawyer in Brabant already, although he has only been here about
+two years."</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you said all your young men had grown up in the community."</p>
+
+<p>"I had quite forgotten him."</p>
+
+<p>"Ha! Is he married?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no. And he was born and brought up over in Rennselaerville, by the
+way, but went West to some college or university and practised out there
+for several years."</p>
+
+<p>"How old is he?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, about thirty-three or thirty-four."</p>
+
+<p>"Must have been away a good many years. Would return quite fresh&mdash;must
+have had a lot made over him here&mdash;looks clever and built for
+success&mdash;that concentrated driving type that always gets there&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span></p><p>"He goes very little into society and no one possibly could lionise
+him."</p>
+
+<p>"Is he interesting to talk to or just another specialist?"</p>
+
+<p>"That's about it. But he was more a friend of mother's than mine. That
+is her picture."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! He likes older women, then? Looks as if he might. Never would take
+the trouble, that type, to adapt himself to girls, try to understand
+them. Could it be&mdash;Alys, you must know if he knows Mrs. Balfame!"</p>
+
+<p>Alys was cold again but laid violent hands on her nerves. "No better
+than he knew any one else, if as well, for Mrs. Balfame never talked to
+the younger men. She doesn't attract them, anyhow. Do you realise, dear,
+that you are asking if Mr. Rush committed murder?"</p>
+
+<p>"With that jaw and those nostrils, he could&mdash;oh, rather! And it is one
+of those cast-iron, passionate faces; when those men do let go&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, really!" Alys dropped her arm, and her subtle face expressed
+disdain. "Mr. Rush is quite too steel clad to be carried away even if he
+were capable of committing a low and cowardly murder. He happens to be a
+gentleman and about as astute and poised as they are made. Do please
+send your romantic imagination off on another flight."</p>
+
+<p>"Not I. I'm going to account for every moment he spent that night."</p>
+
+<p>"Would you like to see Mr. Rush go to the chair?" asked Miss Crumley
+sternly.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, good Lord no." Miss Austin turned pale. "I don't believe in capital
+punishment, anyhow. No,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span> I'll not tell a thing if I find him out. But
+how interesting to know! I'd write a corking story&mdash;fiction&mdash;about it.
+Those deep glimpses into life&mdash;into those terrible abysses of the human
+heart&mdash;no writer can become great without them."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, don't waste your time trying to find the criminal in this
+excellent citizen. You might set some of the newspaper men on his trail
+and blacken his name while you discovered nothing. Better get on the
+track of the potential woman in New York."</p>
+
+<p>"Not half so interesting. Just one of those apartment-house
+misalliances. No, I'm out for Mr. Rush, and when I have the proof, I'll
+extract a confession; but I'll dig a little grave in my brain and bury
+his secret&mdash;then when it has ripened, exhume and toss it into that
+crucible through which facts pass and come out&mdash;fiction. Get me, dear?"</p>
+
+<p>"You talk like a literary ghoul. But I know you don't mean a word of it.
+Good-bye, girls. Do drop in whenever you are over on the case." She
+kissed them all, and Miss Lauretta Lea exclaimed innocently:</p>
+
+<p>"You've lost that lovely dusky colour you had awhile ago, dear. You look
+more like old ivory than ever&mdash;old ivory and olive. I wonder all the
+artists don't paint you. I suppose every young man in Elsinore is in
+love with you. Marry, my dear, marry. I've been in this game twelve
+years. Show me a willing would-be husband and I'd take him so quick he'd
+never know what struck him. Give my hopes of being a man in the next
+incarnation for ten babies to weep over when they had croup or got lost
+in the woods of New York City. Hate sob stuff. Cut it out, kid, before
+you begin it."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span></p><p>She talked all the way to the gate and for several yards down the
+avenue, waving a final farewell with a somewhat tragic smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Why doesn't that girl marry?" she asked as they walked rapidly to the
+station. "Still fresh, if she is twenty-six. I'm only thirty-four and I
+look like a hag beside her."</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe she can't get the man she wants," replied the potential novelist,
+who was thinking deeply.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER XXII</span></h2>
+
+<p>Alys borrowed a horse and cart from her cousin Mr. Phipps, Chief of
+Police in Elsinore, who kept a livery stable, and took the shortest cut
+into the country. She wanted to think out many things and think them out
+alone. She drove rapidly until she came within sight and sound of the
+sea. Then she let the lines lie loosely on the back of her old friend
+Colonel Roosevelt, who had been named in his fiery colt-hood, but in
+these days, save under compulsion, was as slow as American law. He
+ambled along, and Alys, in the booming stillness and the fresh salt air,
+felt the humid waves roll out of her brain. She saw clearly, but she was
+aghast and depressed.</p>
+
+<p>Presented by nature with an odd and arresting exterior, in color and
+feature as well as in subtlety of expression, sketched and flattered by
+such artists as she met, she had, ever since old enough for
+introspection, striven for uncommon personal developments that should
+justify her obverse and set her still farther apart from mere woman. If
+not born with an intense aversion from the commonplace (and it is safe
+to say that no one is), she had conceived it early enough to train a
+rarely plastic mind to striking viewpoints, while a natural tact saved
+her from isolation. If she had been as original as she thought herself,
+she would have antagonised many people.</p>
+
+<p>Assuredly a certain nobility of nature and a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span>revulsion from all that
+was base were innate; although, soon learning of the many pitfalls
+yawning for humanity, she had assiduously cultivated these her higher
+inclinations, an enterprise measurably assisted by the equable temper,
+the feminine charm, the bright intelligence and the quick sympathies
+that made her many friends. Moreover, her freedom from the usual
+yearnings of her sex in the matter of riches and subservience to the
+race, which wreck the lives of so many women, and her love of the arts
+and delight in her own little talent, all served to deponderate the
+burden of life.</p>
+
+<p>She had liked many men as friends, and was proud of the fact that only
+the more intelligent were attracted to her, but she had arrived at the
+age of twenty-six without even imagining herself seriously in love, so
+intense was her idealism. This was another of her deliberate
+cultivations, for here also was she resolute that as nature had done so
+much for her, marking her as a girl apart, so should she insist upon
+having an uncommon mate. It was to this end even more than for the
+barren satisfaction of pleasing Mother Nature that she had tilled the
+garden of her mind with both science and imagination. When she loved, it
+should be like a woman, of course; she had no delusions about making
+over human nature to suit passing fashions in woman; but while she never
+ignored the vital passions that formed the basis of her unique
+personality and strong will, she was determined that they should be
+quickened only by a man who would make equal demands upon all that was
+fine in her character and aspiring in her mind.</p>
+
+<p>The awful collapse of this cherished structure, her spiritual house,
+under her hopeless and violent passion<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span> for Dwight Rush had almost
+demoralised her. After she had won herself to reason once more, she
+still had sat, stunned, among the ruins. It was true that Rush was all
+that she had demanded of man and that he emanated a promise of happiness
+along strictly modern lines&mdash;which was all she asked, being no romantic
+fool; but not only had she loved him unasked, sacrificing the first and
+perhaps the dearest of her dreams, to be wooed and awakened and
+surprised, but, accepting the inevitable (the man being overburdened,
+like most busy young Americans, and unselfconscious), she deliberately
+had set herself to awaken <i>him</i>&mdash;and for nought. For worse than nought:
+he had instantly taken fright and withdrawn.</p>
+
+<p>Of the terrific upheaval of that time, like some graveyard of the sea
+flung putrid and phosphorescent to the surface by submarine vulcanism,
+she had ceased to think as soon as her will was reinstated in command.
+Immediately she had striven to rebuild her house lest she be swamped in
+mere femaleness, so permanently demoralised that life would be quite
+unendurable. She had cultivated the heights too long. She might tumble
+off occasionally, but in no other atmosphere could she breathe deeply
+and realise herself, find any measure of content. It had occurred to her
+that if she had been born in the gutter and grown to adolescence with no
+ennobling influence, she would have developed into a notable force for
+evil. At all events, she liked to think so; many women of stainless
+lives do.</p>
+
+<p>She guessed this, having a saving sense of humour, but did not expand
+upon it, not being inclined to humour at the moment. Accompanying her
+resolution to be finer and better than ever, to fortify herself against<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span>
+life with some degree of satisfaction in herself, was the hope of
+complete deliverance from what she called the Dwight Rush Idea. In due
+course she had conquered the obsession, for pride and self-disgust
+served her like first-aid surgeons on the battlefield; and although she
+felt amputated and scarred, she had lost her sense of humiliation. But
+her heart still accelerated its beats when she met Rush, and no will is
+strong enough to prevent the recurrence of the mental image; only time
+can dim it. But it was not until Broderick had left her alone in her
+studio with the poisons of fear and jealousy implanted that she had
+admitted she still loved him, probably must continue to love him for
+years to come.</p>
+
+<p>In that hour she had hated Mrs. Balfame, although she neither believed
+her guilty nor was tempted to the dastardly course of helping to force
+the appearance of guilt upon her. And for a time that night she had
+hoped she hated Dwight Rush also, so utterly disgusted and indignant was
+she that he could prefer a faded woman of forty-odd to a unique and
+beautiful girl like herself.</p>
+
+<p>But once more Miss Crumley's sense of proportion enforced itself, and
+she reflected sternly that men had fallen in love with women older than
+themselves since the world began, and that some of those
+transcendent&mdash;and lasting&mdash;passions had made history. She was no green
+village girl to be astounded at the least common phase of the sexual
+adventure. It was then she had given way to tears, for although she
+might be intelligent enough to admit this most unpardonable of nature's
+informalities, she could regret it with bitterness and despair.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span></p><p>Later had come her fear for Rush's safety. Not for a moment did she
+suspect him of the crime, but if accused of it during the process of
+elimination, there was the appalling doubt that he could prove an alibi.
+As likely as not he had missed his man in Brooklyn&mdash;she knew that he had
+expected to dine and spend the evening at the Country Club&mdash;or had not
+gone there; knowing Balfame's ugly temper when drunk, what more natural
+than that he should hide in the grounds to be near at hand in case the
+man were disposed to wreak vengeance on his wife for his own
+humiliation. It was Alys's theory that the murder was political.</p>
+
+<p>Until to-day! From the moment that she saw Mrs. Balfame empty and rinse
+the vial, she was convinced that Broderick was right in his deductions
+and that for some reason the terrible woman had changed her mind and
+used the revolver. It was a stupider act than she would have expected of
+Mrs. Balfame, for Dave was a man whose sudden death would excite little
+suspicion, nor would Mrs. Balfame be the woman to use a common poison.
+Her intimacy with Dr. Anna would put her on the track of one of those
+organic potions that were too subtle for chemical analysis. She had
+heard doctors talk of them herself.</p>
+
+<p>Then abruptly she recalled the sinister change in Mrs. Balfame's smiling
+countenance on that day she sketched her at the Friday Club; her mind
+opened and closed on the conviction that in that moment Mrs. Balfame had
+conceived the purpose of murder.</p>
+
+<p>But why the change of method? She dismissed the riddle. It was not for
+her to unravel. Nor did she care. The fact was enough. This good friend
+of her family was an abominable creature from whom in even<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> mental
+contact she shuddered away with a spasm of spiritual nausea.</p>
+
+<p>But that was not her own problem. No doubt Mrs. Balfame would be
+acquitted; Alys hoped so, at all events, for she wanted no such a stain
+on Elsinore, where, she thanked God, she lived, although she sought
+knowledge and income in the City of New York. For the same reason, she
+had no desire that the guilty woman should pay her debt by even a brief
+term in Auburn; but all that was beside the point. What Alys felt she
+would give her soul to ravish from this thrice accursed woman, so
+formidable in her peril, were the services of Dwight Rush. If he were
+Mrs. Balfame's chief counsel he would see her constantly, and alone&mdash;for
+hours on end, perhaps, for he must consult with her, rehearse her,
+instruct her, keep up her spirits, console her. This might not be the
+whole duty of counsel, but in the circumstances no doubt she had
+underestimated, if anything. And even if he believed her guilty, he
+might in that intimacy love her the more; not only would he pity her
+profoundly and see himself her natural protector, but he would be heart
+and soul in the great case, and it would not be long before the case and
+the woman were one.</p>
+
+<p>If, however, Rush could be made to believe now that the woman was a
+murderess, would he not decline to take the case? He was hardly the man
+to defend man or woman whom from the outset he knew to be guilty,
+although when immersed in the case he would keep on, whatever the
+revelations. Alys believed that it was possible for her to convince him.
+She could inform him of the needle-witted Mr. Broderick's suspicions and
+of her own confirmations; and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> she could tell him of her certain
+knowledge that Mrs. Balfame had a revolver; she had seen it eight months
+ago, when Balfame brought it home from New York and told his wife to
+discharge it in the air if, when alone, she heard a man breaking in.</p>
+
+<p>It had signified little to her at the moment that Mrs. Balfame had
+denied to police and reporters that she possessed a revolver, for it
+might by chance be a .41, and it was not to be expected that even an
+innocent woman would challenge public doubt and possible arrest. But her
+denial and probable concealment of the weapon were significant to Alys
+now. She remembered that Dr. Anna had spent the early hours of Sunday
+alone with Mrs. Balfame. No doubt the wicked woman had found both relief
+and counsel in confessing to a friend like Anna Steuer, a creature so
+strong and staunch that the secret would be as safe as in her own guilty
+soul. Anna, of course, had taken the pistol and dropped it in the marsh
+when she visited Farmer Houston's wife later in the day. If she could
+but get Dr. Anna to speak.</p>
+
+<p>Alys raised her eyes under their bent and frowning brows and looked up
+to where the Brabant Hospital stood on rising ground beside the sea. She
+gave a gasp as she found herself turning the horse's head in that
+direction. What did she intend to do? Denounce Mrs. Balfame to Dwight
+Rush? She fancied she heard an inner crash. Could she do this and escape
+final demoralisation? Heretofore she had at least committed no act
+involving moral degradation; her upheavals had affected herself alone
+and were her inviolate secret; but if she made a last desperate throw to
+win Dwight Rush by first filling him with loathing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span> of her rival, she
+would be committed to a course of conduct from which there would be no
+escape for months, perhaps years to come. For if she won him,&mdash;toward
+which end she must plan with every female art she knew,&mdash;she never could
+ease her soul with confession. Her only chance of keeping a man like
+that, after the first effulgence had merged into the healthy
+temperateness of practical married life, was to avoid the major
+disillusions.</p>
+
+<p>And if she by her own deliberate act went to pieces morally, could she
+play up? Should she even want to play up? Could one deliberately knock
+the foundations from under one's cherished spiritual structure, reared
+with infinite pains upon natural inclinations, and continue to be even a
+pale reflection of one's higher self? She might, after the first
+excitement of striving to achieve her immediate object was over, hate
+herself too deeply to love or even to live.</p>
+
+<p>She drew her brows more closely and expelled her breath through her
+teeth. For the moment, at least, she felt all female, ready to defy the
+future and her own soul to obtain possession of her mate. That he was
+her mate she obstinately believed, temporarily deflected from his
+natural progress toward herself by one of those powerful delusions that
+afflict every man in the course of his life. And if she did not open his
+eyes at once, the temporary deflection would merge into the straight
+course toward marriage with a she-demon....</p>
+
+<p>She drove into the hospital yard, threw the reins over Colonel
+Roosevelt's back and asked for the superintendent, Mrs. Dissosway, who
+happened to be her aunt.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER XXIII</span></h2>
+
+<p>An hour later, Alys was driving through Elsinore, her mind a trifle less
+personal, as it dwelt upon her brief interview with the superintendent
+of the hospital. Mrs. Dissosway, who was devoted to her niece and
+believed her to be as exceptional as Miss Crumley in her most aspiring
+moments could have wished, had confided that she was sure poor dear Anna
+knew something about that awful crime, for in her delirious moments she
+kept uttering Enid Balfame's name in very odd tones indeed. She had
+assured and reassured the patient that there was no clue to the
+murderer; and if she kept on and asked to see Mrs. Balfame,&mdash;which,
+significantly, she had not done,&mdash;they of course would tell her that the
+friend who should have hastened to her bedside had suffered a nervous
+breakdown or sprained her ankle. It was a blessing that she was in no
+condition to testify against her idol, for it would kill her, just as it
+might be fatal now if she knew that Enid was in the County Jail.</p>
+
+<p>After some delicate insistence, Mrs. Dissosway had admitted that Dr.
+Anna must convince any one who listened attentively to her mutterings
+that her belief in her friend's guilt was positive, whether she had
+exact knowledge or not.</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, Enid! Oh, <i>Enid</i>!' she kept repeating in such a tone of anguish
+and reproach, and then muttered: 'Poor child! What a life!' She also
+once<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span> said something about a pistol in a tone of dismay, but the other
+words I couldn't make out.</p>
+
+<p>"The nurses on her case," Mrs. Dissosway had concluded, "will pay no
+attention. They are too accustomed to fever patients to listen to
+ravings, and the two she will have are from other parts of the State,
+anyhow. They never heard of Mrs. Balfame before. But I have been in and
+out all day, and I know she is worrying in her poor hot mind both over
+her friend's crime and her danger&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Then you believe Mrs. Balfame did it?" Miss Crumley had interrupted.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I do&mdash;now, anyhow; and I never was daffy about her. She barely
+remembers I am alive, living out here for the last fifteen years as I
+have done, and I am your mother's sister. I don't call her a snob; it's
+just that she don't seem to take any interest in people that ain't in
+her own set. But the Lord knows I'd never tell on her if I had the proof
+in my hand, for I don't want any of our grand old families disgraced,
+and she's been good to your mother. No, she can go free, and welcome,
+but I wish poor Anna could have been spared the knowledge of her crime,
+for it's going to be all the harder to nurse her well, and she has a bad
+case. If she has to go, she shall go in peace. I'll see to that. But
+when Enid Balfame is out, I'll take good care to let her know that she
+has another crime to carry on her conscience&mdash;if she's got one."</p>
+
+<p>Alys had not asked to see the patient, knowing that it would be useless,
+but Mrs. Dissosway had walked out to the cart with her, and pointing to
+a window on the first floor of the wing devoted to paying patients,
+remarked: "That's where she is, poor dear." Alys<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span> had wondered if she
+should fall low enough before this accursed case were finished to
+describe the position of that room to Broderick and insinuate what he
+might find there if he chose to hide in the little balcony and enter the
+room when the night nurse had gone out for the midnight supper. He was
+quite capable of it.</p>
+
+<p>But not if she could win Rush from the case, nor unless, Mrs. Balfame
+discharged, he were arrested and committed for the crime. She wished now
+that he had been arrested instead of Mrs. Balfame, for then she could
+have saved him from both punishment and the other woman without this
+awful sense of sliding slowly down-hill to choke in a poisonous slime.
+She might have been obliged to exercise a certain amount of sophistry
+even then, but she could have stood it.</p>
+
+<p>She was driving slowly down Atlantic Avenue when she heard her name
+called in accents of mystery and excitement. Her modest rig was passing
+the imposing mansion of Elisha Battle, bank president, and like all the
+newer homes of Elsinore the grounds were unconfined and the shallow lawn
+ended at the pavement. From one of the drawing-room windows Lottie
+Gifning slanted, and as she met Miss Crumley's eye, she beckoned
+peremptorily. The desire for solitude was still strong upon Alys, but as
+she had no excuse to advance, she wound the lines round the whip and
+went slowly up the brick walk.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gifning opened the front door and swept her into the drawing-room,
+where six or seven other women with tense excited faces sat on the
+expensive furniture. Mrs. Battle, herself upholstered in shining
+black-and-white satin, and further clad in invisible armour, occupied a
+stately and upright chair. This throne had been<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> made to order;
+consequently her small feet in their high-heeled pumps touched the
+floor. The large room, upon which much money had been spent, was not
+tasteless; it merely had no individuality whatever. Like many another in
+Elsinore, it set Miss Crumley's teeth on edge, but compensated her
+to-day as ever by inspiring her with a sense of remote superiority.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear Alys&mdash;so glad to see you!" Mrs. Battle did not rise. She was fond
+of Alys, but thought her of no consequence whatever. "Lottie saw you and
+called you in as you have always been such a friend of poor dear Enid's,
+and you know those horrid reporters, and we want to impress upon you the
+necessity of putting them off the track. We are talking the whole
+dreadful business over and trying to decide what to do."</p>
+
+<p>"Do?" Alys, more interested, disposed her limber uncorseted young figure
+into a low chair and for a moment diverted envious attention from the
+momentous subject in hand. "What can we do? Has bail been accepted?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, nor likely to be. Isn't it too awful?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it's awful." Alys stared at the floor, but although her words
+might have been uttered by any of the ladies present, her tone was
+almost conventional. No one noticed this defection, however, and Mrs.
+Battle&mdash;after Mrs. Gifning had tiptoed to all the doors, opened them
+suddenly and closed them again,&mdash;proceeded in so low a tone that there
+was an immediate hitching of chairs over the Persian rug:</p>
+
+<p>"What we were debating when you came in, Alys, was whether&mdash;oh, it's too
+awful!&mdash;she did it or not. Did she or didn't she? She has a perfectly
+beautiful<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> character&mdash;but the provocation! Few women have been tried
+more severely. And we all know what human nature is under the influence
+of sudden tremendous passion." Mrs. Battle, who never had been ruffled
+by any sort of passion, leaned against the high back of her chair, and
+elevated her eyebrows and one corner of her mouth.</p>
+
+<p>"Could such a crime have been unpremeditated?" asked Alys. "You forget
+that whoever did it was waiting in the grove for Balfame to come home
+from Sam's, and evidently timed to shoot as he reached the gate."</p>
+
+<p>"Passion, my dear child," said Mrs. Bascom, wife of the Justice for
+Brabant, speaking softly and with some diffidence, for she disliked the
+word, "can endure for quite a while once the blood is up and pounding in
+the head. It would take a good deal to work up dear Enid, but when a
+woman like that does rise to the pitch under many and abominable
+provocations, well, I guess she could stay at that pitch a good bit
+longer than all of us put together. I've thought of nothing else for
+three days and nights,&mdash;the Judge won't discuss it with me,&mdash;and I feel
+convinced that she did it."</p>
+
+<p>"So have and so am I," contributed Mrs. Battle, sepulchrally.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid she did!" Mrs. Gifning heaved an abysmal sigh. "I suspected
+it when I consulted her about her mourning. She was much too cool. A
+woman who could think of two kinds of blouses she wanted the very
+morning after the tragedy, and he not out of the house, must have been
+exercising a suspicious restraint or else have reverted to the
+cold-bloodedness with which she planned the deed."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span></p><p>"Dear Lottie, you are so psychological," murmured Mrs. Frew admiringly;
+but Mrs. Battle interrupted sharply:</p>
+
+<p>"I maintain that she did it in a moment of overwhelming passion. She
+would be inexcusable if she had done it in cold blood."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, of course I didn't mean that!" said Mrs. Gifning with asperity.
+"I guess I'm as fond of Enid Balfame as anybody in this room, and I
+guess I know what she must have gone through. What I really meant was
+that she has more courage than most folks."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, that indeed!" exclaimed Mrs. Lequer, who was quite happy with her
+husband, the fashionable doctor of Brabant. "Matrimony is a terrible
+trial at best, and it's a wonder more women don't&mdash;well, it's too
+horrible to say. But I'm afraid&mdash;well, you know."</p>
+
+<p>There was no dissenting voice. Alys raised her eyes and glanced about
+the room. Mrs. Cummack was not present. No doubt she had been carefully
+omitted from the conference. So had four members of the inner twelve who
+were comparative newcomers in Elsinore. All of these women had known
+Enid Balfame from childhood, consistently admired her; when she was in a
+position to make her social ambitions felt, had quite naturally fallen
+into line.</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't it rather a hasty conclusion?" Alys asked. "There are a good many
+others who might have done it, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"Everybody suspected has one grand alibi." Mrs. Gifning's sigh was
+rather hypocritical this time. "We'd be only too glad to think there was
+any one else likely to be arrested. No hope! No hope!"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span></p><p>"I suppose"&mdash;Miss Crumley's tones were tentative, although the
+irresistible words almost cost her her breath&mdash;"that there was no man in
+love with Mrs. Balfame?"</p>
+
+<p>"Alys Crumley!" All the women had shrieked the name, and Mrs. Battle
+swung herself to her pointed toes. "I'm most mad enough to put you right
+out. The idea of insinuating&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Dear me, Mrs. Battle, it never occurred to me that it was worse for a
+married woman to have a man in love with her than to commit murder. I
+did not insinuate or even imagine she cared for any man, or even
+encouraged one. But such things have happened."</p>
+
+<p>"Not to her. And while I could forgive her for shooting a perfectly
+loathsome husband under the influence of sudden passion, I'd never
+forgive her&mdash;Enid Balfame!&mdash;if she had stooped to anything so paltry and
+common and <i>sinful</i> as philandering; for believe me, a man doesn't
+commit murder for a woman's sake unless he is reasonably certain that he
+will have his due rewards. That is life. And how <i>can</i> he be certain, if
+there has been no philandering. No!" Mrs. Battle was once more
+magisterial in her chair, and in command of her best Friday Club
+vocabulary. "But there is this much to be said: Enid did not necessarily
+shoot to kill,&mdash;merely to wound perhaps,&mdash;for nothing would have
+punished Dave Balfame more than a month or two in bed on gruel and
+custard. Or maybe she just didn't know what she was doing&mdash;just fired to
+relieve her feelings. I am sure it would have relieved mine after that
+scene at the Club."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh&mdash;I apologise. Let us assume then that Mrs. Balfame did it. How do
+you propose to act in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> matter? Of course you will not accuse her,
+but shall you cut her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Neither the one nor the other!" Mrs. Battle brought her plump little
+hands down on the arms of the chair with a muffled but emphatic smack.
+"Never outside of this room shall we breathe our convictions, or our
+certain knowledge that she kept a revolver in her room&mdash;may I not speak
+for all?" There was a hissing murmur caused by the letter <i>s</i>. "And it
+will be no negative defence, either. We'll stand by her publicly, visit
+her constantly, keep up her spirits, never give her a hint of our
+suspicions, and attend the trial in a body. Our attitude cannot fail to
+impress the world. We are the representative women of Elsinore; we have
+known her all our lives; it is our duty to flaunt our faith in the eyes
+of the public. The moral effect will be enormous&mdash;also on the jury."</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"What do the men think?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"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,&mdash;that is to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span>
+say, if they do suspect her,&mdash;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&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;and&mdash;if she is a murderess, I don't think I can see her just yet."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span></p><p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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!</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER XXIV</span></h2>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 crime<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span>
+upon the unlovely Frieda because she ran home untimely with a toothache.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;and his own&mdash;that
+the blood-money should justify itself in the coffers of the German Red
+Cross.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;from her own
+house&mdash;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 fatal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span> night. 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?</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 there<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span> was 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.</p>
+
+<p>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 the <i>New York News</i>:</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;the jurors, I mean. I'm just
+wonderin'!"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe she did," she admitted, "since you are not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span> interviewing 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&mdash;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&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;to
+say nothing of mortification: she, Mrs. Balfame of Elsinore, shut up in
+a common jail on the vulgar charge of murder?</p>
+
+<p>But in spite of the amiable devotion of her friends<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span> and 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 only <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span>person 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.</p>
+
+<p>Above all was Mrs. Balfame deeply, almost&mdash;but not quite&mdash;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
+cel&egrave;bre. He made love to her no more, but not for an instant did she
+doubt<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span> his 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>When she did recall the incident under the pressure of the general
+obsession, she told it to a friend, who<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span> told 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.</p>
+
+<p>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,&mdash;Rush would see to that,&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span> strange changes, but are
+merely developments along new-laid tracks in sections of the brain
+hitherto regarded as waste lands.</p>
+
+<p>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!</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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
+condemned<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span> David 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER XXV</span></h2>
+
+<p>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 the <i>New York Evening
+News</i>. 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.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, good evening," he said grimly. "I turned back because it occurred
+to me that I was being followed."</p>
+
+<p>"I was following you," Miss Austin retorted coolly. "I saw you turn into
+the Avenue two blocks up, and tried to overtake you&mdash;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?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly!" Rush, wondering if all women were liars, fell into step.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span></p><p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why not? They believe her to be innocent, as of course she is."</p>
+
+<p>"How automatically you said that! I wonder if you really believe
+it&mdash;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&mdash;something positive."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean by that?"</p>
+
+<p>"That she knows something. She's over on the <i>News</i> now, 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&mdash;so na&iuml;ve 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 attributed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span> the
+change to the same old reason&mdash;a man. I still believe she has had some
+heart-racking experience, but there's something else&mdash;I didn't notice it
+so much that first day&mdash;but since&mdash;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&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Have you been following me? Were&mdash;were&mdash;you in Brooklyn yesterday?"</p>
+
+<p>"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; and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span>
+she can't make up her mind to betray you even to liberate an innocent
+woman."</p>
+
+<p>He was taken unawares, but she could detect no relaxation in his strong
+face; on the contrary, it set more grimly.</p>
+
+<p>"And what are you up to?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"To find the proof for myself, and get ahead of Jim Broderick."</p>
+
+<p>"I know of no one so convinced of Mrs. Balfame's guilt as Broderick."</p>
+
+<p>"That's all right, but a man with as keen a scent as that is likely to
+find the real trail any minute."</p>
+
+<p>"And you believe I did it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think there are reasons for believing it."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Austin cerebrated.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"You hardly look the sort to run a man down," he murmured, and this time
+he smiled.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span></p><p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Then why ask me to confess?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh&mdash;it sounds rather banal&mdash;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"&mdash;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&mdash;particularly if Mrs. Balfame
+broke down in jail, to say nothing of a possible conviction&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"Realise what?"</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span>distractingly pretty&mdash;for a
+woman old enough to be her mother!"</p>
+
+<p>He caught his breath.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean by that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Balfame."</p>
+
+<p>"And yet you accuse me of letting her lie in prison bearing the burden
+of my crime?"</p>
+
+<p>"As the only way to possess her ultimately."</p>
+
+<p>"And how many, may I ask, are saying that I am in love with my client?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not a soul&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"And you really believe I did it?" His hands were in his pockets, and he
+was balancing himself on his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span> heels. 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.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Mr. Rush, I do. It is to my mind the one logical explanation&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You mean the logical fictional&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm no writer of detective stories&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Just like a novel then?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;your premises being dead right&mdash;far
+better by yourself. It's the contradictions you mentioned I am thinking
+of, both in life and character."</p>
+
+<p>"You are laughing at me. It's no laughing matter!"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"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 in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span> Brooklyn that Saturday night. I'll discover the name
+of everybody you know in Brooklyn."</p>
+
+<p>"That's a large order. I fear the case will be over."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll set the whole swarm on the case. But if you will tell me the
+truth, you will be quite safe."</p>
+
+<p>"The cause of literature might influence me were it not that I fear to
+be thought a coward&mdash;by my fair blackmailer."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! How dare you? Why, I don't want your secret to use against you. I
+thought I explained&mdash;how dare you!"</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, good night!"</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;let us go round and not disturb Mrs. Crumley."</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER XXVI</span></h2>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span> least by the
+practical experiences of a New York reporter.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 honest<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span> admission 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?</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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,&mdash;say
+behind your desk,&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>She spoke with a shy eagerness and an entire absence of coquetry. He put
+out both hands for the picture.</p>
+
+<p>"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 other<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span>
+room 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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
+he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span> awaited her tardy appearance. For the first time he wondered if such
+things really counted in human happiness&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>He shook himself angrily and sat up.</p>
+
+<p>"Your young friend thinks I murdered Balfame," he announced.</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Really, she is too absurd. Don't let it worry you. You have nothing to
+fear."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not so sure."</p>
+
+<p>Alys sat up as rigidly as if armoured like Mrs. Battle. "What do you
+mean?" she breathed.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;her
+particular crowd&mdash;at Mrs. Battle's the day of the arrest. Just to draw
+them out,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span> 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."</p>
+
+<p>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!</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>"Cummack and several of the other men are, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span>besides Balfame's old
+political pals&mdash;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&mdash;against her acquittal, having no
+desire to see suspicion pointing at his house again. He is just the old
+sentimentalist to settle on me."</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;from overwork and other things&mdash;tramped for
+hours until I met Dr. Anna out by the marsh and she drove me in&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Dr. Anna?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, and I have reason to believe she thinks I shot Balfame, but she
+would never denounce any one if she could help it."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you are all wrong. She believes&mdash;like everybody else&mdash;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 second<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span> time on Sunday. I haven't told Mother,
+as she is one of the few that believe Mrs. Balfame innocent&mdash;but when
+Dr. Anna is coherent at all, that is the impression my aunt
+gets&mdash;but&mdash;Oh&mdash;of course she's only guessing like everybody else. She
+couldn't know&mdash;she was out at the Houston farm&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Rush was sitting up very straight.</p>
+
+<p>"Has any one been permitted to see her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course not."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course as her lawyer you must persuade yourself that she is."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span></p><p>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.</p>
+
+<p>He stood up and walked about the room for a moment, and then halted
+directly in front of her.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know anything?" he asked abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>"About what? Do you think I suspect you?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, I don't. I mean Mrs. Balfame."</p>
+
+<p>"I told you we all believe she did it. We can't help ourselves."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't understand the attitude of any of you women who were her
+friends, her intimates. You&mdash;they, rather&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"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 to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span>consciousness of them and begin to
+develop them with the power and skill of the Orientals&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Beg pardon, but let's keep to the present."</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Why poisoners? You don't mean to say they take any stock in that story
+of the poisoned lemonade?"</p>
+
+<p>And before Alys could collect her startled faculties she had stammered:
+"Oh, of course, not. They laugh at that. Balfame was shot&mdash;what's the
+use of&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>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 pushed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span> on. 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.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you told Jim Broderick that Dr. Anna accuses Mrs. Balfame?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course not. He would be climbing the porch the first dark night."</p>
+
+<p>"Have you been tempted to tell him?"</p>
+
+<p>She shrank farther back and looked up at him under lowered lids.
+"Tempted? What&mdash;why should I? Well, I haven't told him, or any one. That
+is all that matters."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!"</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;hallucinations, generally&mdash;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&mdash;perhaps proof."</p>
+
+<p>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 and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span> desired had come&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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?"</p>
+
+<p>"What has that to do with it?"</p>
+
+<p>"It has its bearings."</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;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&mdash;distraction&mdash;is
+imperative, now and again&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"It would be too delightful if you would come here when you wanted
+both." Her tones were polite <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span>without being eager, but she found it
+impossible to smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I will; but I shall ignore the subject we are discussing&mdash;rest
+doesn't lie precisely that way! For that reason we'll finish up now. Why
+do you believe Mrs. Balfame guilty?"</p>
+
+<p>"If I could prove to you that she was, would you throw over the case?"</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>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?"</p>
+
+<p>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?"</p>
+
+<p>"Now?"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;and then&mdash;well, our local pride may be
+absurd, but there it is. We must watch Jim Broderick. He has discovered<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span>
+the intimacy between Dr. Anna and Mrs. Balfame, and also&mdash;what all know
+here&mdash;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&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER XXVII</span></h2>
+
+<p>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&mdash;not only the four depending upon Miss Crumley, but
+a representative of every Woman's Page in New York and Brooklyn.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>She bowed composedly and, with a slight diffident smile, walked to the
+chair reserved for her. Her weeds were relieved by white cr&ecirc;pe 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.</p>
+
+<p>It was an ordeal, and she drew a long breath.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span></p><p>"You&mdash;you wish to interview me?"</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;ah!"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span></p><p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span></p><p>Mrs. Balfame looked at her counsel with a gracious deference, and he
+nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I suppose I should begin with the scene at the Club&mdash;that is to
+say, I do not care to speak of it in detail,&mdash;quite aside from a natural
+regard for good taste,&mdash;but it seems to have been given a unique
+importance."</p>
+
+<p>"Just so," said Miss Austin encouragingly. "Do let us have your version.
+The public simply longs for it."</p>
+
+<p>"Well&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span></p><p>"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&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>As Miss Austin asked a few questions in the endeavour to inject some
+essence of personality into the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span> bald 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.</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"But you are not terrified&mdash;of&mdash;of the outcome? We know and rejoice that
+the chances are all in your favour, but men are so queer."</p>
+
+<p>"I am not in the least terrified. It is impossible to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span> convict an
+innocent woman in this country; and then"&mdash;inclining her head graciously
+to the watchful Rush,&mdash;"I have the first criminal lawyer in Brabant
+County to defend me. It is a detestable thought,&mdash;to be stared at in the
+courtroom as if I were an object in a museum,&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. And would you mind telling us something of your plans? Shall you
+continue to live in Elsinore?"</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;and valued&mdash;during this long term of incarceration. But I must
+travel for a while."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span> 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."</p>
+
+<p>"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,&mdash;or couldn't be,&mdash;and so she was trying
+to be literary&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't agree with you!" And arguing and scolding, they wended their
+disapproving way over to the Dobton Inn and sat them down at tables to
+make the most of their bare material.</p>
+
+<p>"No censorship needed here," growled Miss Austin. "She froze my very
+imagination."</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER XXVIII</span></h2>
+
+<p>Rush walked up and down the room for a few moments in silence. Mrs.
+Balfame sat back and folded her hands. She was haunted by a vague sense
+of inefficiency, of having not quite risen to the occasion, but she felt
+there could be no doubt that she not only had impressed the reporters as
+an innocent woman but as a perfect lady. The rest didn't matter.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you really not a bit nervous?" demanded Rush, swinging on his heel
+and confronting her.</p>
+
+<p>"I will not permit myself to be. And except that I hate publicity, I
+really do not dread the trial. It means the beginning of the end of this
+detestable prison life. I want to be out and free. A week in a courtroom
+is not too heavy a price to pay."</p>
+
+<p>"Have you ever been to a murder trial?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course not. Such a thing would never have occurred to me."</p>
+
+<p>Rush sighed. She had no imagination. But as her counsel he reminded
+himself that he should be grateful for the lack; he wanted no scenes,
+either in the courtroom or here in the imminent hours. But he would have
+welcomed a little more feminine shrinking, appeal to his superior
+strength. Even when he had worshipped her from afar, she had never moved
+him so powerfully as on the day of her arrest when she had flung herself
+over the table in an abandonment to despair as complete as the most
+exacting male could wish. That incident had long since taken on the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span>shifting outlines of a dream. If she had felt any tremors since then
+she had concealed them from him.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me," he asked almost wistfully, "are you not terribly frightened
+at times? You are alone here so much. And it has been an experience to
+try even a strong man's nerves."</p>
+
+<p>"Women nowadays really have better nerves than men. We not only lead a
+far fuller and more varied life than our predecessors, but you men work
+at such a terrific strain that it is a wonder you retain any control of
+your nerves at all. I will admit that I did have attacks of fear at
+first. It was all so strange and odd. But I got over them. You can get
+used to anything, I guess. And I have a strong will. I just made myself
+think about something else. This war has been a godsend. Have you
+noticed my new maps? I've really read about twenty war books, besides
+all the editorials, and they have given me a distaste for lighter
+reading, and really developed my&mdash;my&mdash;intellect. That seems such a big
+word. And then I've knitted dozens of things for the children and
+soldiers, and felt as if I were of some use for the first time in my
+life."</p>
+
+<p>She glanced at him shyly, as he stared through the bars of one of the
+windows. The suppressions of a lifetime made it impossible to betray any
+depth of feeling save under terrible stress. She was ashamed of her
+breakdown before him on the day of her arrest, but she was conscious of
+the wish that she were able to infuse her cool even tones with warmth,
+to make them tremulous at the right moment; but if she attempted to
+betray something of her newer self even in her eyes, self-consciousness
+overcame her and she dropped the lids almost in a panic.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span></p><p>She wondered if love broke down those cliffs of ice that seemed to
+encompass a new-born soul. Or was it merely that the other members of
+her personal company, mature, jealous, self-sufficient, resented the
+intrusion of this shrinking alien? They had got on quite well without
+it; they felt no yearning for possible complications, readjustments.
+With all their quiet force they discouraged the stranger. Before any of
+the supreme experiences, including love, they might be routed, the new
+force might spring up in an instant like a flower from the magic soils
+of India&mdash;but not while the conventions bulwarked them. Their sum was
+Mrs. Balfame of Elsinore, and not for a moment did they permit
+themselves to forget it.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, it was quite true that she had conquered her first
+apprehensions and welcomed the trial as the initial step toward freedom.
+Her poise had always been remarkable, the result in part of a
+self-centred life and a will driven relentlessly in a narrow groove.
+More than ever was she determined to sit through those long days in the
+courtroom with the cold aloofness of the unfortunate women of history.
+The very ascents she had made of secret and solitary heights alone would
+have restored her poise, for she felt on far more friendly terms with
+herself than when living with a wretch she loathed, and dreaming of no
+higher altitudes then complete success in Elsinore. But she wished for
+the first time that she were a younger woman, or had made those ascents
+many years ago; she would have liked to reveal herself spontaneously to
+this interesting young man who was so deeply in love with her.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly she wondered if he were as ardently in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span> love with her as in
+that brief period when they had talked of themselves. Not loving him in
+return, she had been content with lip-service, the sure knowledge that
+all his fine abilities were at work upon the obstacles to her freedom;
+and she would have been deeply annoyed if he had broken the pact made on
+the day of her arrest and reiterated his devotion and his hopes.</p>
+
+<p>But significant happenings&mdash;omissions&mdash;a certain flatness.... She turned
+her head sharply and looked at him. He was still staring moodily through
+the bars.</p>
+
+<p>If far too diffident to show the best that was in her, she found it
+comparatively simple to practice the feminine art of angling, albeit
+with a somewhat heavy hand.</p>
+
+<p>She asked softly: "Don't you think I did the wise thing to tell them I
+intended to travel as soon as I was acquitted? It surely would be in
+better taste than to settle down here&mdash;in that house!"</p>
+
+<p>"Did you mean it? The intention would make a good impression on the
+public, certainly."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, of course I meant it. I am not a good hand at saying things merely
+for effect."</p>
+
+<p>"Where shall you go? Europe is rather impossible."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, not altogether. There is always Italy. And there is no danger from
+Zeppelins in the interior of Great Britain. And there is Spain&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I think Europe a very good place for women to keep away from until the
+war is over. Any of the nations may become involved at any
+minute&mdash;ourselves, for that matter. Better follow the advice of
+advertisers and see America first."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I could visit the Expositions in California,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span> and camp for a while
+in Glacier Park, and there are the Yellowstone and Grand Ca&ntilde;on&mdash;but all
+that would only consume a few months&mdash;and then there is this winter to
+think of. What I feel I should do is to stay away for a year, at
+least&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You could live very pleasantly in Southern California."</p>
+
+<p>"I should be very conspicuous in those small fashionable settlements.
+The case has been telegraphed all over the country, and I have seen
+dreadful pictures of myself in several Western papers."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you might live quietly in New York until the war is over. There
+is no better place to hide&mdash;if you avoid the restaurants and theatres.
+And after all, even a <i>cause c&eacute;l&egrave;bre</i> is quickly forgotten if there is
+no aftermath. But I certainly advise against even sailing for Europe
+until peace is declared. There is always the danger of mines and too
+enthusiastic submarines."</p>
+
+<p>She turned quite cold and stared at her hands. They were well-shaped but
+large, and they looked like blocks of white marble on her black gown. He
+was still at the window, and his tone was listless. She had a curious
+sense of panic in the region of her heart. But instantly she curled her
+lip with defiant scorn. Was she the woman to fancy herself in love with
+a man the moment she seemed to be in danger of losing him? Besides, no
+doubt, the poor man was tired, and too absorbed in the case to have any
+room in him for the moods of the lover. Only a foolish impulsive woman
+would in conditions like the present try to rouse a dormant passion.
+When she was free, and he as well, his heart would automatically take
+precedence once more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span> and he would plead ardently for the privilege of
+marrying her. That was quite in order.</p>
+
+<p>She rose briskly. "Let me show you this map," she said. "It is the very
+latest&mdash;Letitia Battle brought it to me two days ago. And do smoke."</p>
+
+<p>"Thanks, but I must go over and watch those girls. Yes, it is a fine
+map. This war certainly is a godsend! Good luck. Keep up those splendid
+spirits. You're all right."</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER XXIX</span></h2>
+
+<p>"Oyez, oyez, oyez! The Supreme Court of the State of New York County of
+Brabant trial term is now in session all people having business with
+this court may draw near and give their attention <i>and they shall be
+heard</i>."</p>
+
+<p>The court crier delivered his morning oration in one breathless
+sentence, the last five words of which only have ever been captured by
+mortal ears. The roll of the jury was called. The first witness stood on
+the step of the witness-stand and swore by the everlasting God that the
+testimony he would give in the trial of the People of the State of New
+York against the defendant would be the truth, the whole truth and
+nothing but the truth, and then he seated himself in the chair. The
+trial of Mrs. Balfame began.</p>
+
+<p>It had taken three days to select a jury. If Rush was determined to keep
+out Germans, Mr. Gore, the district attorney, was equally reluctant to
+admit to the box any man whom he suspected of being under commands from
+his wife to get on that jury and acquit Mrs. Balfame, if he had to
+imperil his immortal soul. He also harboured suspicions of felonious
+activities on the part of Mr. Sam Cummack and certain other patriotic
+citizens less devoted to the cause of justice than to Elsinore. In
+consequence the questions were not only uncommonly searching, but both
+the district <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span>attorney and the defendant's counsel exhausted their
+peremptory challenges.</p>
+
+<p>The talesmen that had crowded the courtroom beyond the railing were for
+the most part farmers and tradesmen, but there were not a few "prominent
+residents," including rooted Brabantites and busy commuters. The last
+answered without hesitation that they had followed the case closely from
+the first and formed an unalterable opinion; then, dismissed, rushed off
+and caught a late train for New York. Those of Mrs. Balfame's own class
+would have been passed cheerfully by Mr. Rush, but in spite of their
+careless avowals that they had been too busy to follow the case, or had
+found it impossible to reach any conclusion, they were peremptorily
+challenged by the district attorney. They, too, went to New York, not on
+business, and returned to their hearthstones as late as possible.</p>
+
+<p>Finally a jury of almost excessively "plain men" were chosen after long
+and weary hours of wrangling. They were all married; their ages ranged
+from forty-five to fifty; not one looked as if he had an illusion left
+in regard to the sex that had shared his burdens for a quarter of a
+century, or, German or no German, he had any leniency in him for a woman
+who had presumed to abbreviate the career of a man. But at least they
+were real Americans, with reputations for straight dealing, and good
+old-fashioned ideals of justice, irrespective of sex. Rush doubted if
+any of them could be "fixed" by Mr. Cummack or the able politicians
+whose services he had bespoken, although the sternest visages often hid
+unsuspected weak spots; but after all his best chance was with honest
+men whose soft spots were of another sort.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span></p><p>So na&iuml;ve had been the eagerness of the German-American talesmen to get
+on the jury that Rush had had little difficulty in demonstrating their
+unfitness for duty. These were too thrifty to go to New York and stood
+in no fear of their wives, but they avoided the <i>gem&uuml;tlich</i> resort of
+Old Dutch until the trial was over.</p>
+
+<p>Throughout this ordeal Mrs. Balfame sat immovable, impassive, her face a
+white bas-relief against the heavy black cr&ecirc;pe of her veil, which hung
+like a black panel between her profile and the western light. Her chair
+was at the foot of the long table which stood beneath the two tiers of
+the jury-box and was reserved for counsel, the district attorney, the
+assistants and clerks. Her calm grey eyes looked straight ahead,
+interested apparently in nothing but the empty witness-stand, on the
+right of the jury and the left of the judge. She knew that the
+reporters, and the few outsiders that had managed to crowd in with the
+talesmen, scarcely took their eyes from her face, and that the staff
+artists were sketching her. All her complacency had fled before certain
+phases of this preliminary ordeal for which no one had thought to
+prepare her. The constant reiteration of that question of horrid
+significance: "Have you any objection to capital punishment as practised
+in this State?" struck at the roots of her courage, enhanced her prison
+pallor; and that immovable battery of eyes, hostile, or coldly
+observant, critical, appraising, made her long to grind her teeth, to
+rise in her chair and tell those men and women, insolent in their
+freedom, what she thought of their vulgar insensibility. But not for
+nothing had she schooled herself, and not for a moment did her nerves
+really threaten revolt. She had taken her second sleeping<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span> powder on the
+night preceding the opening of the trial, but on the third morning she
+awakened with the momentary wish that she had preserved Dr. Anna's
+poison, or could summon death in any form rather than go over to that
+courthouse and be tried for her life. For the first time she understood
+the full significance of her condition.</p>
+
+<p>But Mrs. Battle, Mrs. Cummack and Mrs. Gifning, when they bustled in to
+"buck her up," congratulated her upon "not having a nerve in her body";
+and although she had felt she must surely faint at the end of the
+underground tunnel between the jail and the rear of the courthouse, she
+had walked into that room of dread import upstairs with her head erect,
+her eyes level, and her hands steady. She may have built a fool's
+paradise for herself, assisted by her well-meaning friends, during the
+past ten weeks, and dwelt in it smugly; but as it fell about her ears
+she stood erect with a real courage that strengthened her soul for any
+further shocks and surprises this terrible immediate future of hers
+might hold.</p>
+
+<p>On the first day, although she never glanced at a talesman, she had
+listened eagerly to every question, every answer, every challenge. As
+the third day wore on, she felt only weariness of mind, and gratitude
+that she had a strong back. She was determined to sit erect and immobile
+if the trial lasted a month. And not only was her personal pride
+involved. Circumstances had delivered her to the public eye, therefore
+should it receive an indelible impression of a worthy representative of
+the middle-class American of the smaller town, so little unlike the
+women of the wealthier class, and capable of gracing any position to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span>
+which fate might call her&mdash;a type the United States of America alone has
+bred; also of a woman whose courage and dignity had never been surpassed
+by any man brought to the bar of justice on the awful charge of murder.</p>
+
+<p>She knew that this attitude, as well as her statuesque appearance, would
+antagonise the men reporters but enchant her loyal friends, the women.
+Her estimate was very shrewd. The poor sob sisters, squeezed in wherever
+they could find a vacant chair, or even a half of one (all the tables
+being reserved for the men), surrendered in a body to her cold beauty,
+her superb indifference, soul and pen. A unanimous verdict of guilty
+brought in by that gum-chewing small-headed jury merely would petrify
+these women's belief in her innocence. She was vicarious romance; for
+women that write too much have little time to live and no impulse to
+murder any one in the world but the city editor.</p>
+
+<p>On the morning of the fourth day, the space between the enclosure and
+the walls of the courtroom was filled with spectators from all over the
+county, many of them personal friends of Mrs. Balfame; but New York City
+would not become vitally interested until the business of examining the
+minor witnesses was concluded. Behind and at the left of Mrs. Balfame
+were the members of her intimate circle. Occasionally they whispered to
+her, and she smiled so sweetly and with such serene composure that even
+the men reporters admitted she looked younger and more feminine&mdash;and
+more handsome&mdash;than on that day of the interview which had proved her
+undoing.</p>
+
+<p>"But she did it all right," they assured one another.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span> They must believe
+in her guilt or suffer twinges in that highly civilised and possibly
+artificial section of the brain tabulated as conscience. Their fixed
+theory was that she had mixed the poison for Balfame and then, being in
+a highly nervous state, and apprehensive that he would capriciously
+refuse to drink it, had snatched her pistol as she heard his voice in
+the distance, dashed downstairs and out into the grove, and fired with
+her established accuracy.</p>
+
+<p>She had had plenty of time between the crime and her arrest to pass the
+pistol to one of her friends, or even to slip out at night and drop it
+in the marsh.</p>
+
+<p>As to the shot that had missed Balfame and entered the tree: it was
+either by one of those coincidences more frequent in fact than in
+fiction that another enemy of Balfame's had been lurking in the grove,
+intent upon murder; or the bullet hole was older than they had inferred.
+The idea of a lover they scoffed at openly. And it was one of the
+established facts, as they reminded their sisters of the press, that the
+worst women in history had looked like angels, statues or babies; they
+had also possessed powerful sex magnetism, and this the handsome
+defendant wholly lacked.</p>
+
+<p>The theory of the women reporters was far simpler. She hadn't done it
+and that was the end of it.</p>
+
+<p>The judge, a tall imposing man with inherited features and accumulated
+flesh, very stately and remote in his flowing silk gown, looked
+unspeakably bored for three days, but was visibly hopeful as he swept up
+to his seat on the rostrum on Thursday morning. As the justice for
+Brabant, Mr. Bascom, had not been on speaking terms with the deceased,
+and as his wife was one of the defendant's closest friends, an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span> eminent
+Supreme Court justice from one of the large neighbouring cities had been
+assigned to the case.</p>
+
+<p>The reporters of the evening newspapers, were packed closely about a
+long table parallel with the one just below the jury-box, and behind
+were four or five smaller tables dedicated to the morning stars. A large
+number of favoured spectators had found seats within the railings, but a
+passage was kept open for the boys who came up at regular intervals to
+get copy from the "evening table" for the telegraph operator below
+stairs.</p>
+
+<p>Broderick's seat beneath the rostrum commanded both the witness-box and
+Mrs. Balfame. He had used his influence to have Alys Crumley assigned to
+the position of artist for the Woman's Page of the <i>News</i>, and she and
+Sarah Austin shared a chair.</p>
+
+<p>The trial began. Dr. Lequer established the fact of the death, described
+the course of the bullet, demonstrating that it had been fired by some
+one concealed in the grove. A surveyor followed and exhibited to the
+jury a map of the house and grounds. Three of the younger members of the
+Country Club, Mr. John Bradshaw Battle, cashier of the Elsinore Bank;
+Mr. Lemuel Cummack, son of Elsinore's esteemed citizen, Mr. Sam Cummack;
+and Mr. Leonard Corfine, a commuter, had been subp&oelig;naed after a
+matching of wits. Overawed by the solemnity of the oath, they gave a
+circumstantial account of the quarrel which had preceded the murder but
+a few hours&mdash;all, in spite of constant interruptions from the
+defendant's counsel, conveying the impression, however unwillingly, that
+Mrs. Balfame had been livid with wrath and the man who had been her
+husband insufferable. It was a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span> master-stroke of the district attorney
+to open his case with the damaging testimony of two members of the loyal
+Elsinore families. As for Mr. Corfine, although born and brought up
+without the pale, he had been graciously received upon electing to build
+his nest in Elsinore and his young wife was one of Mrs. Balfame's
+meekest admirers.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Broderick muttered, "H'm! H'm!" and Mr. Bruce squirmed round from
+the "evening table" and jerked his eyebrows at his senior. "Bad! Bad!"
+muttered Mr. Broderick's neighbour. "But watch her nerve. Can you beat
+it? She hasn't batted an eyelash."</p>
+
+<p>Two former servants that had preceded Frieda in the Balfame menage
+testified that the household consisted of three people only, the master
+and mistress and the one in help. A gardener came three times a week in
+the morning. No, none of the old spare rooms was now furnished, and the
+Balfames never had had visitors overnight.</p>
+
+<p>The prosecution rested, and Mr. Rush approached the bar according to
+usage and asked that the case be dismissed. The judge ruled that it
+should proceed; and immediately after the noon recess the first witness
+for the defence was called. This was Mr. Cummack, and he testified
+vigorously to the harmonious relations of the deceased and his amiable
+wife; that Mrs. Balfame&mdash;who was always pale&mdash;had treated the episode
+out at the Club in the casual manner observed by all seasoned and
+intelligent wives, the conversation over the telephone in his house
+proving that the domestic heavens were swept clean of storm-clouds; and
+that the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span> deceased had departed for his home quite happy and singing at
+the top of his lungs. He had often remarked jocularly (his was a cheery
+and jocular temperament) that he expected to die with his boots on,
+especially since he had taken to bawling Tipperary in the face of
+American Germany.</p>
+
+<p>It is not to be imagined that Mr. Cummack was able to deliver himself of
+this valuable testimony without frequent and indignant interruptions
+from the district attorney, whose "irrelevant, incompetent and
+immaterial" rang through the courtroom like the chorus of a Gilbert and
+Sullivan opera. Mr. Gore, a wasp of a man with snapping black eyes and a
+rasping voice emitted through his higher nasal passages, succeeded in
+having much of this testimony stricken out, but not before the wily Mr.
+Rush, who stood on tiptoe, as alert and nervous as a race horse at the
+grandstand, had by his adroit swift questions fairly flung it into the
+jury-box. It was of the utmost importance with an obstinate provincial
+jury to establish at once a favourable general impression of the
+prisoner.</p>
+
+<p>When, in the theatre, a trial scene is depicted, it is necessary to
+interpose dramatic episodes, but no one misses these adventitious
+incidents in a real trial for murder, so dramatic is the bare fact that
+a human being is battling for his life. When the prisoner at the bar is
+a woman reasonably young and good looking, the interest is so intense
+and complete that the sudden intrusion of one of the incidents which
+have become the staples of the theatre, such as the real culprit rushing
+into the courtroom and confessing himself, a suicide in the witness-box,
+or dramatic conduct on the part of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span> the defendant, would be resented by
+the spectators, as an anti-climax. Real drama is too logical and grimly
+progressive to tolerate the extrinsic.</p>
+
+<p>The three other men who had been at Mr. Cummack's house that night were
+called, and corroborated his story. They all wore an expression of
+gentle amusement as if the bare idea of the stately and elegant Mrs.
+Balfame descending to play even a passive r&ocirc;le in a domestic row was as
+unthinkable as that any woman could find aught in David Balfame to rouse
+her to ire.</p>
+
+<p>"By Jove!" whispered Mr. Broderick to Mr. Wagstaff of the <i>Morning
+Flag</i>, "just figure to yourself what the line would be if she had been
+caught red-handed and was putting up a defence of temporary insanity
+caused by the well-known proclivities of that beast. A good subject for
+a cartoon would be Dave Balfame in heaven with a tin halo on,
+whitewashing Mrs. B., weeds and all. The human mind is nothing but a
+sewer."</p>
+
+<p>The afternoon session was also enlivened by the testimony of several of
+the ladies who had been members of the bridge party on the day of Mr.
+Balfame's unseemly conduct at the Club. They testified that although
+Mrs. Balfame naturally dissolved upon her return to the card-room, there
+had been nothing whatever in her demeanour to suggest seething passion.
+Mrs. Battle, who was an imposing figure in the witness chair, her
+greater bulk being above the waist, tossed her head and asseverated with
+refined emphasis that Mrs. Balfame was one of those rare and exquisite
+beings that are temperamentally incapable of passion of any sort. Her
+immediate return to her home was prompted more by delicacy than even by
+pain. Miss Crumley's pencil<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span> faltered as she listened. She could not
+give a jeering public even a faithful outline of a woman as devoted to
+the sacred cause of friendship and Elsinore as Mrs. Battle.</p>
+
+<p>The testimony of none of these ladies was more emphatic than that of
+Mrs. Bascom, wife of the supplanted justice, and she added unexpectedly
+that she had been so upset herself that she too had left the clubhouse
+immediately, and, her swift car passing Dr. Anna Steuer's little
+runabout, she had seen Mrs. Balfame chatting pleasantly and without a
+trace of recent emotion.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Balfame almost relaxed the set curves of her mouth at this
+surprising statement. She recalled that a car had passed and that she
+had wondered at the time if any one had noticed her extreme agitation.
+She kept her muscles in order, but unconsciously her eyes followed Mrs.
+Bascom, as she left the witness-chair, with an expression of puzzled
+gratitude.</p>
+
+<p>The District Attorney turned to the reporters with a short sardonic
+laugh, and Mr. Broderick shook his head as he murmured to Mr. Wagstaff:</p>
+
+<p>"Can you beat that? And yet they say women don't stand by one another."</p>
+
+<p>"Good for the whole game, I guess," replied the young <i>Flag</i> star, who
+was enamoured of a very pretty suffragette.</p>
+
+<p>The Judge rose, and the afternoon session was over. The great case of
+The People vs. Mrs. Balfame rested until the following morning.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER XXX</span></h2>
+
+<p>Mrs. Balfame walked back through the now familiar tunnel more hopeful
+and elated than any one in the courtroom would have inferred from her
+chiselled manner.</p>
+
+<p>"I almost feel that I have the courage to look at the sketches of myself
+in the papers," she said lightly to Rush, who escorted her. "I haven't
+dared open a paper since Monday morning."</p>
+
+<p>"Better not." Rush also was in high spirits. "Keep your mental mercury
+as high as possible. It doesn't matter, anyhow. You'll be clear in less
+than a week. The impression all those splendid friends of yours created
+knocked the prosecution silly."</p>
+
+<p>"I have not once glanced at the jury," said Mrs. Balfame proudly, "and I
+never shall. All I was conscious of was that they were chewing gum, and
+that the man above me snorts constantly."</p>
+
+<p>"That's Houston. He's likely to be predisposed in your favour on account
+of your intimacy with Dr. Anna. And he's a just man, of some
+intelligence. I fancy none of them is in the mood to be too hard on any
+one, for they are having a fine vacation in the Paradise City Hotel.
+Each has a big room with a soft bed and rich and delicate food three
+times a day. If they don't get indigestion they will be inclined to
+mercy on general principles. I engineered the housing of them. Gore was
+all for putting them up at the Dobton<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span> Inn, where they would have grown
+as vicious as starved dogs. I won my point by reminding him that certain
+men of that sort try to get on a jury for the sake of having a rest and
+a soft time, and if they aren't coddled, they are equal to falling ill
+and forcing the court to begin the trial over again. You're all right."</p>
+
+<p>They were in the jail sitting-room, and she stood with her head thrown
+back and her eyes shining. The moment they had entered she had removed
+her heavy hat and veil and run her hands through her crushed hair. Rush,
+who was very nervous and excited, made a swift motion forward as if to
+seize her hands. But it was only later, when alone, that she realised
+that possibly she had brushed aside an opportunity to rekindle a flame
+which she alternately feared and doubted was burning low; she was not
+thinking of him and exclaimed happily:</p>
+
+<p>"It is quite a wonderful sensation to feel that you have made friends
+like that. My! how they did lie! And so convincingly! For a moment I was
+quite the outsider and deeply impressed with the weakness of the case
+against the accused. Here they come. I feel as if I never really loved
+them before." And she ran to the door to admit the elated trio who that
+day had made their noblest sacrifice to the cause of friendship. Mrs.
+Balfame kissed them and embraced them, and dried their excited tears,
+while Rush, his contemptible part in the day's drama forgotten, slunk
+down the stairs and out of the jail.</p>
+
+<p>He met Alys Crumley as she was about to board the trolley for Elsinore,
+and she stepped back and congratulated him warmly.</p>
+
+<p>"Your brain worked like blades of chain lightning,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span> she said with real
+enthusiasm. "I know you have only begun, but I can well imagine&mdash;wasn't
+Mrs. Balfame delighted?"</p>
+
+<p>"With her friends' testimony," he replied gloomily. "I don't seem to come in."</p>
+
+<p>There are some impulses, born of sudden opportunity, too strong for
+mortal powers of resistance. "Come home to supper," said Miss Crumley,
+with the same spontaneous warmth. "You look so tired, and Mother
+promised me Maryland chicken and waffles. Besides, I want to show you my
+drawings. I am so proud of being a staff artist."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll come," said Rush promptly.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER XXXI</span></h2>
+
+<p>The following day was also taken by the examination of witnesses for the
+defence. Dr. Lequer, who had been called in occasionally by the Balfames
+when Dr. Anna was unavailable, and who was also an old friend of the
+family, asserted that so far as he knew there never had been a quarrel
+between husband and wife. Mrs. Balfame, in fact, was unique in his
+experience, inasmuch as she never looked depressed nor shed tears.</p>
+
+<p>He was followed by a woman who had been general housemaid in the Balfame
+home for three years. She had left it to reward the devotion of a
+plumber, and between her and Frieda there had been a long line of the
+usual incompetents. Mrs. Figg testified with an enthusiasm which
+triumphed over nerves and grammar that although she guessed Mr. Balfame
+was about like other husbands, especially at breakfast, Mrs. Balfame was
+too easy-going to mind. She'd never seen her mad. Yes, she was an
+exacting mistress, all right, terrible particular, and she never sat
+with the hired girl in the kitchen and gossiped, and you couldn't take a
+liberty with her like you could with some; but that was just her way,
+naturally proud and silent-like. She was terrible economical but a kind
+mistress, as she didn't scold and follow up, once she was sure the girl
+would suit, and not a bit mean about evenings and afternoons off. She
+did up her own room and dusted<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span> the downstairs rooms, except for the
+weekly cleaning. No, she never'd seen no pistol. It wasn't her way to
+look in bureau drawers. No, she'd never seen or heard any jealousy,
+tempers, and so forth, and had always taken it for granted that Mrs.
+Balfame wasn't on to Mr. Balfame's doings&mdash;or if she was, she didn't
+care. There was lots like that.</p>
+
+<p>The district attorney snarled and trumpeted throughout this placid
+recital, but Mrs. Figg took no notice of him whatever. She had been
+thoroughly drilled, and looked straight into the sparkling blue eyes of
+Mr. Rush as if hypnotised.</p>
+
+<p>Other minor witnesses consumed the afternoon, and once more Mrs. Balfame
+returned to the jail with glowing eyes. The women reporters were elated.
+The men made no comment as they filed out of the courtroom, but their
+whole bearing expressed a lofty and quiet scorn.</p>
+
+<p>"It's fine! fine!" exclaimed Cummack, sitting down beside Rush at the
+table below the empty jury-box. "But I do wish Dr. Anna was available.
+She stands head and shoulders above every one else in the estimation of
+these jurymen; she doctored the children and confined the wives of
+pretty near all of them. There's no stone she wouldn't leave unturned."</p>
+
+<p>"She's pretty bad, isn't she?" asked Rush. "Would there be any chance at
+all of getting a deposition&mdash;in case things went wrong?"</p>
+
+<p>"Things ain't goin' wrong; but as for Anna, she's out of it, and
+everything else, I guess. I was out to the hospital yesterday, for I've
+had her in mind; but although she was better for a time, she's worse
+again.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span> But say&mdash;what do you think I discovered? Those damned newspaper
+men have been hangin' round out there. That young devil Broderick&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Rush was sitting up very straight, his eyes glittering. "But he surely
+hasn't been able to see her? I don't believe any sort of graft would get
+by Mrs. Dissosway&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You bet he hasn't been able to see Anna, and just now they're not
+leaving her for a moment alone, like they did at first. But Broderick
+seems to have the idea wedged in his brain that Mrs. Balfame confessed
+to Anna and that poor old Doc lost the pistol somewhere out in the
+marsh&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Rush made an exclamation of disgust. "I can't understand Broderick. He's
+got his trial all right, and it isn't like him to hound a woman&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I said as much to him, and though he wouldn't talk much, I just
+gathered from something he let fall that he was afraid if the crime
+wasn't well fixed onto Enid some innocent person he thought a lot more
+of might come under suspicion. Can you guess who he had in mind?"</p>
+
+<p>Rush pushed back his chair and sprang to his feet. "Good Lord, no. One
+case at a time is all my brain is equal to." He was almost out of the
+empty courtroom when Cummack caught him firmly by the shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"Say, Dwight," he said with evident embarrassment, "hold on a minute.
+I've just got to tell you that somehow or other I sensed <i>you</i> when
+Broderick was trying to put me off. There are a good many things;
+they've been comin' back&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Rush turned the hard glittering blue of his eyes full<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span> upon Mr. Cummack,
+whose shrewd but kindly gaze faltered for a moment. "Do you believe I
+did it?" demanded Rush.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, no, not exactly&mdash;that is, I'd know that if you had done it, it
+would have been because you'd got the idea into your head that Enid was
+having an awful row to hoe, or because he'd attacked her that night. It
+wouldn't have been for no mean personal reason, and no one knows better
+than I that the blood goes to the head terrible easy at your age and
+when a beautiful woman is in question. If I'd guessed it before, I'm
+free to say I'd have rushed your arrest in order to spare Enid, if for
+no other reason. But as it's gone so far and she's sure to get off,&mdash;and
+you wouldn't stand much show,&mdash;the matter had best stay where it is;
+particularly&mdash;well, I may as well tell you Enid sort of confided to
+Polly that you had offered to cover her name with yours as soon as she
+got out; and if you've been in love with her all this time, as I guess
+you have been&mdash;well, Dave can't be brought back. And&mdash;well, I've lived
+out West and it isn't so uncommon there for a man to shoot on sight when
+he's mad about a woman and a few other things at the same time. Dave was
+my friend, but I guess I understand."</p>
+
+<p>Rush had withdrawn stiffly from the friendly hand laid on his shoulder.
+"I have asked Mrs. Balfame to marry me," he said. "But she has by no
+means consented."</p>
+
+<p>"But she means to. Don't let it worry you. Women are queer cattle. Nail
+her the next time she's in the melting mood. She gets 'em oftener than
+she ever did before, and I guess you see her alone often enough."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span></p><p>"Oh, yes, I've seen her alone nearly every day for ten weeks."</p>
+
+<p>Cummack narrowed his eyes, and his face, generally relaxed and amiable,
+grew stern and menacing. "You don't love her!" he exclaimed. "You don't!
+Like many another damned fool, you've compromised your very life for a
+woman, only to be disenchanted by seeing too much of her. But by God
+you've got to marry her&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>They were standing at the head of the winding stair in the rotunda, and
+several of the reporters were still in front of the telephone booth
+below.</p>
+
+<p>"Hush!" said the lawyer peremptorily. "I mean to marry Mrs. Balfame if
+she accepts the proposal I made to her the day she was arrested. I have
+said nothing to warrant your jumping to the conclusion that I no longer
+wish to marry her. But by God! if you ever dare to threaten me again&mdash;"
+And he raised his fist so menacingly, his set face was so tense and
+white, his eyes bore such a painful resemblance to hot coals, that
+Cummack retreated hastily.</p>
+
+<p>"All right! All right!" he called up from the first turning. "Don't
+fancy I think I could. And what's passed between us is sacred. S'long."</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER XXXII</span></h2>
+
+<p>On the morrow the first witness called by the prosecution in rebuttal
+was old Kraus, and now it was Mr. Rush's turn to shout "Immaterial,
+Irrelevant and Incompetent," so that it was well-nigh impossible for the
+jury to do more than guess what the choleric person with a strong German
+accent was talking about. The district attorney fought valiantly to draw
+forth the story of Frieda's nocturnal visit to the Kraus home in search
+of advice after hearing Mrs. Balfame enter the kitchen from the yard,
+but his efforts ended in a shouting contest between the prosecution and
+the defence, both deserting their positions before the jury-box and
+wrangling before the Judge like two angry school-boys. Alys Crumley
+longed to laugh aloud, but not so the Judge. He asked them curtly how he
+was to know what was their point of dispute if they both talked at once.
+He then commanded Mr. Rush to state in as few words as possible what he
+was objecting to; and when the counsel for the defence had stated his
+purely legal reasons for blocking this purely hearsay testimony, the
+Judge abruptly threw Mr. Kraus out of court. Rush, flushed and
+triumphant, returned to his chair below the jury-box, and Mr. Gore
+sulkily called the name of Miss Frieda Appel.</p>
+
+<p>There was no question of poor Frieda's making a good personal impression
+upon spectators or jury, no matter how worthy her motives. She had saved
+almost<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span> every penny of her wages since coming to America; it had been
+her lover's intention to emigrate to Brabant County as soon as his term
+of service was over, and her housewifely intention to greet him with a
+furnished cottage. Since the war began, she had sent all her savings to
+East Prussia lest her people starve.</p>
+
+<p>Dress in any circumstances would never tempt her. Economy was her
+religion, and she cherished no illusions about her face and form. To-day
+she wore a skirt of an old voluminous cut and a jacket with high
+puckered sleeves. The colour had once been brown. Her coarse blonde hair
+met her eyebrows in a thick bang, and its high knob was surmounted by a
+sailor hat a size too small. Her thick-set body was uncorseted, and her
+indeterminate features were lost in the width and flatness of her face.
+Only the little eyes beneath the heavy thatch of hair alternately glowed
+dully and spat fire.</p>
+
+<p>The Judge sternly suppressed the titter that ran over the court-room as
+this caricature mounted the witness-stand, and the district attorney, in
+spite of frequent interruptions, elicited a remarkably clear and
+coherent statement. The Judge sustained him, for here was a real
+witness, and Miss Appel not only had been as thoroughly rehearsed as
+Mrs. Figg, but she had a neat precise little mind set with rows of
+pigeonholes that ejected their contents in routine when her coach
+pressed the cognate button.</p>
+
+<p>She had come home abruptly from the dance-hall as she had an
+insupportable toothache&mdash;had run all the way, as she had some
+toothache-drops in her room. She was in such agony she hardly had
+noticed that her friend Conrad Kraus was behind her. When she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span> reached
+her room she had applied the drops, and to her horror they made the pain
+worse. After walking the floor for perhaps ten minutes&mdash;she didn't know
+or care whether it was ten or fifteen minutes&mdash;she was just starting to
+go down-stairs and heat some water for her bag when she heard the
+kitchen door open and shut. She held her breath and did not answer when
+Mrs. Balfame called, as she feared she was wanted and was determined to
+do nothing for anybody while her tooth ached like that.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Balfame's voice had sounded quite breathless, as if she had been
+running. In a moment Frieda heard her go into the dining-room then back
+to the kitchen, and turn on the tap,&mdash;not the filter, which made no
+noise,&mdash;and then she heard one glass clink against another on the pantry
+shelf. After that, Mrs. Balfame went upstairs from the front hall and
+the witness returned to her room and threw herself on the bed, where she
+remained until Mr. Cummack came and asked her to go downstairs and make
+coffee. By this time her tooth ached so she didn't care what she did.</p>
+
+<p>Cross-questioned, she admitted that Mrs. Balfame was in the habit of
+drinking a glass of filtered water the last thing at night. No, she had
+not heard her go out, but only come in. But why, if Mrs. Balfame saw
+nothing outside to frighten her, or if she hadn't been out, was she so
+short of breath? As may be imagined, mere speculation on Miss Appel's
+part was cut short by Mr. Rush, who interrupted her constantly. Yes, she
+had heard what she now knew had been a shot but she had paid no
+attention. Who would, with a red-hot iron forcing one's tooth down
+through one's jaw?</p>
+
+<p>Even the scornful questions of counsel which forced<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span> her to admit that
+she had lied to the coroner neither perturbed her nor made any
+impression on jury, press, or spectators. Every one present had suffered
+from toothache, and two farmers in the box showed their tusks in an
+appreciative grin when she replied tartly that she didn't know or care
+anything that day but tooth, tooth, tooth. It was manifest that she was
+far too conservative to have had it out at once, to say nothing of the
+cost.</p>
+
+<p>The only question she was not prepared for was the abrupt challenge of
+Mr. Rush as to how she could prove that young Kraus had followed her if
+she had neither seen nor spoken to him during that short run from Main
+Street. But although she was visibly perturbed at being confronted with
+a set of words to which no neat little pigeon-hole responded, it was so
+evident she was firmly convinced her friend had accompanied her, that
+for Rush to make too much of his solitary point would prejudice his
+case, and he let her go.</p>
+
+<p>Conrad Jr. followed, and his story was equally straightforward. He also
+made a good impression. True, he had a very small closely cropped head,
+with eyes too small and ears too large, but he held himself with
+arrogance, and he was well dressed in a new grey suit and pink shirt.
+Born in the United States, it was manifest that he was proud not only of
+being an American citizen but of the country's choicest vintage. He had
+been sent to the public school until he was sixteen, had studied
+conscientiously, and his grammar was quite as good as that of the
+District Attorney, who in emotional moments confused his negatives. But,
+even Rush, whose advantages had been as superior as his natural
+equipment, became a good nasal American when<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span> excited, opened into
+vowels, and freely translated <i>you</i> into <i>yer</i>. It is these persistent
+characteristics, so racy of the soil, which cheer us when apprehending
+that our original Americanism may in time be obliterated by the foreign
+influx.</p>
+
+<p>No, said young Kraus, he had no sentimental interest in Frieda. (He
+smiled.) And he was engaged to a young lady to whom he had been
+attentive for three years. But he felt like a brother to Frieda; she had
+come to his father's house direct from Germany, their families having
+been friends for generations. It was not only his duty but his pleasure
+to dance with her, she being "the best of the bunch down at the hall."</p>
+
+<p>As he was dancing with her when her toothache became unendurable, it was
+natural that he should see her home; in fact, he always saw her home
+when it was convenient. Of course if he had to catch the last trolley
+for Dobton in a hurry, that was another matter.</p>
+
+<p>When she had entered the house, he had waited, thinking she might want
+some other drops or possibly a dentist. Once when he had had a
+toothache, he had been obliged to go to a dentist's house at night. His
+papa had sent him, and naturally he thought of it as a possibility in
+Frieda's case.</p>
+
+<p>Then the kitchen door opened and a woman came out.</p>
+
+<p>At this point the interest in the court-room became intense. Even the
+blas&eacute; young reporters sat forward, their pencils poised. The Judge
+wheeled his chair to the right and stared down fixedly at the back of
+young Kraus' head. The district attorney balanced himself on his heels,
+his thumbs hooked in the sleeves of his vest, and Rush stood with his
+back curved as if to spring<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span> down the witness' throat with a wild yell
+of "Immaterial, irrelevant and incompetent." Only Mrs. Balfame sat like
+a statue that had neither eyes to see nor ears to hear.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, Mr. Kraus recognised Mrs. Balfame's figure and walk. She was one in
+a thousand for looks, and taller than many men. She had on a long dark
+ulster and a black scarf round her head. The kitchen light was behind
+her&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Here there was another furious contest between the chief counsel and the
+district attorney, but the Judge ordered the young man (who had consumed
+a toothpick imperturbably) to proceed with his story. Mrs. Balfame had
+slipped round the corner of the house, listened intently, walked for a
+minute toward the back of the grounds,&mdash;he could just see the moving
+shadow in the darkness,&mdash;turned abruptly and entered the grove.
+Naturally interested, he waited to see what she was up to; and
+then&mdash;possibly three or four minutes later&mdash;he heard Balfame singing
+"Tipperary," and a moment or two after that the shot,&mdash;one shot, not
+two; he took no stock in the theory that there had been two
+shots,&mdash;followed by loud voices from the other side of the avenue.</p>
+
+<p>Then he "beat it," that being his natural instinct at the moment. His
+papa had taught him to be cautious and to keep clear of other people's
+fights. He had never been close up against a crime, and he hoped he
+never should be. He walked through the adjoining grounds at the back and
+then into Balfame Street and took the next trolley home. He didn't feel
+like dancing after what he guessed had happened.</p>
+
+<p>No, he had heard no sound of running footsteps, but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span> he stood for a
+moment near the back fence of the Lequer place; there were people in the
+library until some man ran in calling for the doctor to come at
+once&mdash;and he did see a car leave the lane behind the Balfame place. He
+had thought nothing of it, however, as automobiles were everywhere all
+the time. No, he hadn't tried to see whether the car was driven by a man
+or woman or how many occupants it had. Not only was the night very dark
+(as far as he remembered, the car had no lamps), but his one idea was to
+get out of the neighbourhood.</p>
+
+<p>Rush put him through a grilling cross-examination, and although he could
+not shake his testimony, he made use of all his practised arts to
+exhibit the youth as a sorry coward who ran away when he heard a
+revolver-shot instead of rushing with the common instinct of American
+manhood to ascertain if it were the woman herself who had been the
+victim. How much had he been paid to give this testimony withheld at the
+coroner's inquest? Young Kraus' ruddy hues had deepened to purple some
+time since, and he shouted back that he had come forward only when that
+woman's lying friends were trying to fasten the crime upon his innocent
+papa. Here he was sternly admonished by the Judge to confine his answers
+to "Yes" and "No" unless he could control his temper. Rush forced him to
+reiterate that he had not had a glimpse of Mrs. Balfame's face that
+night, that he never had spoken to her at any time; and the lawyer
+remarked crushingly that the young man's brain must have been in a
+hopelessly confused state if he saw a car leave the lane so soon after
+the shooting&mdash;a car, moreover, without lights&mdash;and failed to connect
+this phenomenon with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span> the immediately previous sound of a pistol-shot.
+It was evident that his brain moved so slowly that it had taken him
+almost a week to put a good story together.</p>
+
+<p>Young Kraus left the stand with his inborn sense of superiority over
+mere Americans severely shaken, but although his small angry eyes
+encountered more than one sneer, and many of those hostile spectators
+looked as if they would laugh outright were it not for their awe of the
+Judge, he had injured Mrs. Balfame far more than himself. Few believed
+him to be lying or that he had seen a vision, not a real woman, leave
+the Balfame house by the kitchen door. He was known to have been as
+sober as usual on the night of the dance, and as the evidence against
+his father had been regarded as fantastic from the first, there was no
+conceivable cause for him to lie.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Gifning, Mr. Battle and Mr. Carden, who were the first to reach
+Balfame, after he fell, were forced by the district attorney to give
+damning evidence against Mrs. Balfame. Her room was in the front of the
+house; if in it, she could have heard the shot as plainly as they on Mr.
+Gifning's veranda. But she did not come downstairs or manifest herself
+in any way until they had had time to summon the coroner (who to be sure
+lived round the corner) and Dr. Lequeur. It must have been quite six
+minutes before she opened her window and demanded the reason for the
+disturbance at her gate. At least, it had seemed that long. No, they
+never confused a revolver-shot with a bursting tire. They had when cars
+first came into use, but they had learned to differentiate long since.</p>
+
+<p>When Mr. Rush asked them sarcastically why one at least of the party had
+not searched the grove and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span>attempted to capture the murderer, they
+replied they had by no means been sure that the shot had come from the
+grove. It might have come from anywhere. It was only after the doctor's
+examination that the direction of the bullet had been agreed upon. Later
+they did search the grove with a dark-lantern brought from Mrs.
+Gifning's house; in fact, they searched every inch of the grounds, and
+their only reward was abuse from the police.</p>
+
+<p>These three witnesses, examined after the noon recess, occupied very
+little time. It was at ten minutes to four that the district attorney
+electrified every one in the courtroom by calling to the stand a man
+whose name up to that moment had not been mentioned in the case. The
+reporters looked deeply annoyed; even Mrs. Balfame raised her head a
+trifle higher as if listening; Rush's pale face was paler, the lines in
+it seemed deeper, as he sprang to his feet, alert at once, his nostrils
+expanding. The district attorney balanced himself on his heels, his
+thumbs in his waistcoat armholes, a grin of triumph on his sharp little
+face.</p>
+
+<p>The name called was James Mott, and it was borne by a highly reputable
+drummer who had made sales for many years to houses carrying general
+merchandise, including that of Balfame &amp; Cummack. Mr. Mott was as well
+known in Brabant County as any of its inhabitants; in fact, he was
+engaged to an estimable young lady of Elsinore, and hence, so it soon
+transpired, had happened to be in town on the fatal night. For once the
+acumen of the district attorney had proved more penetrating than that of
+the brilliant counsel for the defence.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Mott took the stand. He was a clean-shaven<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span> upstanding American with
+the keen eye and grim mouth of the travelling salesman who knows that he
+must do or die. He looked as honest as urbane, and for the first time
+Mrs. Balfame's heart sank; and her hands, so the women reporters noted
+for the benefit of the public, clenched for a full minute.</p>
+
+<p>Although Rush stood with his head stretched forward, he thought it wise
+to let the man tell his story in his own way. Interruptions would have
+been of little avail; the Judge would sustain the district attorney if
+it were patent the witness were telling the truth; and as he was
+completely in the dark himself it were better to wait until he got a
+promising lead. He knew that no man's brain could work more quickly than
+his.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Mott being solemnly sworn, deposed that on the night of the shooting
+he had been taking supper with his friend Miss Lacke, who lived at
+Number 3 Dawbarn Street, just round the corner from Elsinore Avenue. He
+left her house at a little before eight, as he was obliged to catch the
+eight-ten for New York. As he closed the gate behind him, he saw David
+Balfame walk unsteadily past, shouting "Tipperary"; and being a friend
+of many years' standing, had concluded to follow and see Balfame safely
+inside the house. He would lose but a minute or two, and it seemed to
+him a decent act, for it was possible the man might fall and hurt
+himself before he reached his home. Mott was so close behind him that he
+must have just escaped the shot or shots himself, and although he jumped
+backward he saw distinctly somebody run out of the grove and toward the
+back of the house. Whether it was a man or a woman he had no idea, but
+the figure was tall&mdash;yes far taller than either young Kraus or Frieda.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span>
+Then, he said, he doubled on his tracks and got back into Dawbarn Street
+as quickly as he could. He blushed as he admitted this, but added that
+he knew from the shouts on Gifning's veranda that men were hastening to
+Balfame's aid, and he had to catch the eight-ten or lose his night train
+to the West and a big piece of business. Moreover, he didn't like the
+idea of giving testimony against anybody; he abhorred the institution of
+capital punishment. For the same reason he did not come forward until
+the District Attorney ferreted him out, as he was afraid the running
+figure might have been Mrs. Balfame and she was the last person he
+wished to harm, innocent or guilty.</p>
+
+<p>No one could doubt that he told the truth and hated to tell it. Nor
+could any one jump to the conclusion that he was the assassin; he had as
+little motive for killing Balfame as any of the other men of Brabant
+County with whom he had been for years on the same cordial terms.</p>
+
+<p>All that Rush could do was to make him admit that perhaps he was
+naturally confused by the flash, the report almost in his ear, the man
+sinking at his feet, and only fancied he saw a running form; the
+delusion would be natural in the circumstances, particularly as his
+thoughts seemed to have been concentrated upon getting out of the way.
+Mr. Mott admitted almost too eagerly that this might be true, but added
+that when the district attorney, who was a cousin of Miss Lacke, as well
+as an old friend of his own, had squeezed the story out of him bit by
+bit (the form of extraction was supplied by Mr. Rush), that had been his
+impression; he seemed to have that tall running figure imprinted upon
+his retina, as it were. Of course it might be just imagination.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span> He
+wished to God he could swear it was. When asked sharply if even one of
+his parents was German, he recovered his poise and replied haughtily
+that he was straight American and as pro-Allies as the best man in the
+country. He had never entered Old Dutch's beer garden; his choice was a
+hotel bar, anyhow; he avoided saloons.</p>
+
+<p>Rush had a diabolical power of making a witness look ridiculous, but the
+American mind is essentially a just mind, normally unemotional, and a
+very magnet for facts. As the Judge adjourned the court until Monday the
+sob-sisters trailed out dejectedly, after a vain endeavour to get close
+to Mrs. Balfame; the young men sauntered forth with their heads in the
+air, and Rush's lips were so closely pressed together that his face
+looked pure granite. As a matter of fact, his heart felt like water.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Balfame, who had not permitted herself to show a flicker of
+interest while Mott was on the stand, rose as the Judge left the room.
+She smiled upon each of her friends separately and kissed the prominent
+ladies of Elsinore who had sat beside her throughout that trying day.</p>
+
+<p>"Please don't come over to the jail," she said. "I know you are worn
+out, and I have a bad headache. I must lie down. But do please come
+to-morrow. You are all too good. Thank you so much."</p>
+
+<p>Then with a faint smile and a light step she followed the sheriff
+through the long tunnel, a horrible vision dancing before her eyes.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER XXXIII</span></h2>
+
+<p>When Rush arrived at the sitting-room of the jail's private suite he
+found Mrs. Balfame, not in tears as he had nervously anticipated, but
+distraught, pacing the room, her hands in her disordered hair.</p>
+
+<p>"I am done for! done for!" she cried as Rush hastily closed the door.
+"It would have been better if I had told the truth in the
+beginning&mdash;that I <i>had</i> gone out that night. It was not such a bad
+excuse,&mdash;that I thought I saw a burglar down there,&mdash;and it was God's
+truth. Or I could have said I was walking about the grounds because I
+had a headache&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"It never would have gone down. If I could have discovered who the other
+person in the grove was&mdash;found him and his forty-one-calibre revolver,
+well and good. Failing that, our line of defence is the best possible. I
+will admit, though," he too was pacing the room,&mdash;"it looks bad to-day,
+pretty bad. There isn't the ghost of a chance to prove Mott was the man.
+Gore has the time to the minute he left Susie Lacke's; you must have
+gone out some time before&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, he didn't do it. I've not thought it for a moment. No such luck. It
+was some enemy who went straight to New York&mdash;in that car. But
+I&mdash;I&mdash;Auburn&mdash;the electric chair&mdash;they all believed&mdash;Oh, my God! God!"</p>
+
+<p>She had tossed her arms above her head then flung herself down before
+the table, her face upon them,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span> rocking her body back and forth. Her
+voice was deep with horror and despair, her abandonment far more
+complete than on the day of her arrest; and wrought up himself, Rush was
+stirred with the echo of all he had felt that day. In the semi-intimacy
+of these past ten weeks, when he had talked with her for hours at a
+time, she had disillusioned him in many ways, bored him, forced him to
+admit that her lovely shell concealed an uninteresting mind, and that
+the only depths in her personality that he was permitted to glimpse were
+such as to make him shrink, by no means to excite that fascination even
+in repulsion peculiar to the faults of a more passionate nature. He
+still thought her the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, however,
+and if it was beauty which now left him cold, his admiration of her had
+been renewed these last three days when her manner and appearance in
+court had been beyond all praise. He had excoriated himself for his
+fickleness, his contemptible failure as a lover; and the more he hated
+himself the more grimly determined he was to behave precisely as if he
+still loved and revered her as he had when ready to sacrifice life
+itself for her sake. He was in such an <i>impasse</i> that he cared little
+what became of himself.</p>
+
+<p>He leaned over the table and pressed his hands hard on her arms.</p>
+
+<p>"Listen!" he said peremptorily. "You never will go to Auburn. You will
+leave this jail not later than the middle of next week, a free woman. If
+I cannot get you off by my address to the jury,&mdash;and it will be the
+supreme effort of my life,&mdash;I'll take the stand and swear that I
+committed the murder myself."</p>
+
+<p>"What?" She lifted her head and stared up at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span> him. His face was set, but
+his eyes glowed like blue coals.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I can put it over, all right. You remember I went to your house
+from the Club that day. Nobody saw me go; no one saw me leave. From the
+moment I left you, until the following morning, no one&mdash;no one that I
+know of&mdash;saw me that night, except Dr. Anna. We met out on the road
+leading to Houston's farm, and she drove me in. She believes I did it.
+So does Cummack, and if necessary he will manage to get an affidavit
+from her&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Balfame had sprung to her feet. "Did you do it? Did you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Aha! I can make even you believe it. No, I did not, but I couldn't
+prove an alibi if my life depended upon it. I can make the Judge and the
+jury believe&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"And do you think I would permit&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"They will believe me. And Dr. Anna&mdash;who would doubt her testimony that
+my appearance and conduct were highly suspicious that night on the marsh
+road? And what could you disprove? There was a man in that grove, was
+there not?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but not you; I don't know why, but I could swear to that. I
+shall&mdash;if you do anything so mad&mdash;tell the whole truth about myself."</p>
+
+<p>"What good would that do? Balfame was killed with a forty-one revolver.
+Yours was a thirty-eight."</p>
+
+<p>"How do you know that?"</p>
+
+<p>"I found it the night I spent in your house&mdash;the night of your arrest. I
+knew that you never would have gone out to head off a burglar without a
+revolver&mdash;any more than the jury would have believed it. I found the
+pistol. Never mind the long and many <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span>details of the search. It is in my
+safe. I kept it on the off chance that it might be necessary to produce
+it after all."</p>
+
+<p>"But I fired at him. I hardly knew that I was firing, until I felt the
+revolver in my hand go off. Perhaps it was a suggestion from that tense
+figure so close to me, intent upon murder. Perhaps I merely felt I
+must&mdash;must&mdash;I have never been able to analyse what I did feel in those
+terrible seconds. It doesn't matter. I did. And you? You know I fired
+with intent to kill. Did you guess at once?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes. But it doesn't matter. You were not yourself, of course. You
+had what is called an inhibition&mdash;as maddened people have when fighting
+their way out of a burning theatre. I only wish you had told me. I&mdash;that
+is to say, it is never fair to keep your counsel in the dark."</p>
+
+<p>"You mean you wish I had not lied!" She caught him up with swift
+intuition. "Well, to-day I would not, but then&mdash;well, I was full of
+pettiness, it seems to me now. But although I am far even yet from being
+a fine woman,&mdash;I know that!&mdash;I am not a poor enough creature to let you
+die for me. Oh, you are far too good for me. I never dreamed that a man
+would go as far as that for a woman in these days. I thought it was only
+in books&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"The veriest trash is inspired by the actual occurrences of life&mdash;which
+is pretty much the same in books as out. And I guess men haven't changed
+much since the world began, so far as making fools of themselves about a
+woman is concerned."</p>
+
+<p>As she stood with one hand pressed hard against the table she was far
+more deeply moved than a few <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span>moments since by fear, although outwardly
+calm. She had climbed far out of her old self within these prison walls,
+but she saw steeper heights before her, and she welcomed them.</p>
+
+<p>"Then," she said deliberately, "I must cure you. Before I went out, I
+had prepared that glass of lemonade and put poison in it. I had planned
+for several weeks to kill him when a favourable opportunity arrived. I
+had stolen a secret poison from Anna&mdash;out of that chimney cupboard
+Cassie described. You see that I am a potential murderer,&mdash;and a
+cold-blooded one,&mdash;even if by a curious irony of fate some one else
+committed the deed. Now do you think I am worth giving up your life
+for&mdash;going to the electric chair&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Suppose we postpone further argument until the necessity arises&mdash;if it
+ever does. I fully expect you to be triumphantly acquitted. Tell me"&mdash;he
+looked at her curiously, for he divined something of her inner
+revolutions and hated himself the more that he was interested only as
+every good lawyer must be in human nature,&mdash;"could you do that in cold
+blood again?"</p>
+
+<p>"No&mdash;not that way&mdash;never. I might let a pistol go off under the same
+provocation&mdash;that is bad enough."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no. Remove the restraints of a lifetime&mdash;or perhaps it is merely a
+matter of vibration and striking the right key."</p>
+
+<p>"And do you mean that&mdash;you still want to marry me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he answered steadily. "Certainly I do."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" Once more she wondered if he still loved her. But she had been too
+sure of him and of herself to harbour doubt for more than a passing
+moment.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span> She had come to the conclusion that he had merely taken her at
+her word, and she knew the specialising instinct of the busy American.
+She had, indeed, wondered if it were not the strongest instinct he
+possessed. And in spite of her new humility, she had suffered no loss of
+confidence in herself as a woman. She vaguely felt that she had lost
+something of this man's esteem, but trusted to time and her own charm to
+dim the impression. For she had made up her mind to marry him. Not only
+would it be the wisest possible move after acquittal,&mdash;a decent time
+after,&mdash;but during sleepless hours she had come to the conclusion that
+she loved this brilliant knightly young man as deeply as it was in her
+power to love any one. And after this terrible experience and the many
+changes it had wrought within her, she wanted to be happy.</p>
+
+<p>He had taken up his hat. She crossed the room swiftly and laid her hand
+on his arm. "I could not stand one word of love-making in jail," she
+said, smiling up at him graciously, although her eyes were serious. "But
+it is only fair to tell you now that if I am acquitted I will marry
+you."</p>
+
+<p>And stabbed with a pang of bitter regret that he felt not the least
+impulse to scout her authority and seize her in his arms, he bent over
+her hand and kissed it with cold lips, but with an air of complete gallantry.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you," he said, and went out.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER XXXIV</span></h2>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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 passed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span> that 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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
+practical<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span> life 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,&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span></p><p>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....</p>
+
+<p>"I followed you," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>He made no reply but continued to stare at her, recalling other
+pictures,&mdash;in the studio, in the green living-room,&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;that is&mdash;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&mdash;and
+when I saw you in the trolley, and caught a glimpse of your face, I
+guessed&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span></p><p>"You make it rather hard."</p>
+
+<p>"What does it all matter? You are here, and I am glad that you are."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you? But you intended to avoid me to-day!"</p>
+
+<p>"I never intended to see you alone again if I could help it."</p>
+
+<p>"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 na&iuml;vely 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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"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 least<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span>
+down which side I fall. There is a certain satisfaction in that. But you
+shall listen."</p>
+
+<p>"There is nothing you cannot say to me."</p>
+
+<p>"And you'll not run away."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;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&mdash;or thought you had, which amounts to the same thing for
+the moment&mdash;after so many years of dry spiritual celibacy, and it had
+been a wonderful revelation&mdash;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&mdash;you feel that to the love born in delusion and slain by truth you
+owe the greatest sacrifice a man can make."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span></p><p>"Oh!" he exclaimed. But he would make no other answer, and once more he
+dropped his glance to the snow.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you going to marry her?"</p>
+
+<p>"If she is acquitted."</p>
+
+<p>"And if not?" Her voice broke out of its even register.</p>
+
+<p>He made an abrupt movement, and she cried out:</p>
+
+<p>"I know! I know! Polly told me&mdash;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&mdash;oh, wouldn't she!&mdash;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,"&mdash;she came closer and her
+voice was almost threatening,&mdash;"do you really intend to take that crime
+on your shoulders if she is convicted."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! Oh! Men will be sentimental fools until&mdash;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 confidence<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span> and run the risk of
+killing some one myself&mdash;but I'll get the truth. Just remember that, and
+keep off the witness-stand."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"I mean that I know where to get the truth."</p>
+
+<p>"You mean that Dr. Anna thinks Mrs. Balfame did it&mdash;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,&mdash;and I know I can trust you,&mdash;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&mdash;and
+she is the best shot out at the Club. But you will readily understand my
+reasons for suppressing these facts."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! Who was her confederate?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, suppose we dismiss that part of it. We should never get anywhere.
+Only&mdash;don't take the stand and make a dramatic confession."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span></p><p>"Dramatic?" Once more the red tide rose. His blue eyes snapped.</p>
+
+<p>"Melodramatic would perhaps be the better word. Sarah and I are hot on
+the trail of the right word. But tell me honestly&mdash;shouldn't you feel
+rather a fool? It is such a very theatric&mdash;stagey&mdash;thing to do."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" He wheeled about and kicked a fallen log. "Do you suppose I have
+given a thought to that aspect of it?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, more is the pity, but as you have a good sense of humour, I rather
+wonder at it. However&mdash;these are not the only things I followed you into
+the woods to say."</p>
+
+<p>"You had it in your mind, then, to find out if what Mrs. Balfame told
+Mrs. Cummack was true&mdash;that I purposed to free her one way or another?"</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>"You cannot make me angry, although there are some things I cannot
+discuss with you."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course not. Let us ignore Possible Sacrifice Number Two, and assume
+that Mrs. Balfame is acquitted,&mdash;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?"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"I am only too ready. But&mdash;there is little else for us to talk about!"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span></p><p>"Yes, there is! When people are on their deathbeds they can afford to
+be truthful, and you have dug your grave and mine."</p>
+
+<p>She was erect once more and she looked at him steadily, although her
+breath was short and her cheeks blazing.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"I mean that you love me now. I think you always loved me&mdash;when we spent
+so many hours together in perfect companionship&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;you never once had a half-hour's conversation with
+her!&mdash;you automatically rose to the opportunity to discharge a youthful
+obligation. Isn't that true?"</p>
+
+<p>He would not answer, and she continued:</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;well, for
+ten weeks!"</p>
+
+<p>"I had already asked Mrs. Balfame to get a divorce and marry me."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! That night you walked home with her from Dr. Anna's cottage?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span></p><p>"You saw us? Yes, that was the time."</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"And Mrs. Balfame smiled like St. Cecilia and attended to your wants."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!"</p>
+
+<p>"It was like you to think you couldn't go back on even an Elsinore
+Avenue flirtation. But once more&mdash;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&mdash;with a sigh perhaps, but you
+would have buried it. Isn't that true?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;" 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,&mdash;if you had waited, if
+you could have decently buried that old illusion and forgotten&mdash;and&mdash;and
+married me,&mdash;should you have felt very old?"</p>
+
+<p>"I should have felt immortal."</p>
+
+<p>He caught her hands from her muff and flung them about his neck and
+lifted her from the ground and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span> kissed her as if they both stood on the
+pinnacle and had but a moment before plunging down to mortal death.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" she whispered. "This is the fusing, not when that old illusion
+died."</p>
+
+<p>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?"</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;oh, I guessed!
+I knew you so well. In dreams, perhaps,&mdash;who knows?&mdash;our minds may have
+become one. When I came up out of&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>She drew down his head, but this time she put her lips to his ear.</p>
+
+<p>"Now I am going to tell you a terrible secret," she said.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER XXXV</span></h2>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span> Balfame looked lovelier
+than ever&mdash;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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;that is, if a
+woman, and an amateur in crime, could exercise so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span> much foresight. The
+jury looked at the defendant out of the corner of its eye. Well, she, at
+least, looked cool enough for anything.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 credible
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span>explanation 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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>Even the district attorney was not able to interject a hint of the
+lemonade story, and so, naturally, she ignored it.</p>
+
+<p>"Gemima!" whispered Mr. Broderick to his neighbour, "but she is a
+wonder! I never heard it better<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span> done, 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.</p>
+
+<p>"Say," he whispered, "that Rush is a good-looking chap&mdash;and she&mdash;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&mdash;what's the matter?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! Just so!" The other man's eyes were glittering. He looked like a
+hunter glancing down his gun-barrel. "I see he <i>is</i> a friend of yours
+and you've<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span> got his defence pat&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;or Rush wouldn't let her&mdash;that she
+saw him when she opened the door, or that he had turned the handle, is
+one for her and one on him."</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;with quiet scorn&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER XXXVI</span></h2>
+
+<p>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 cr&ecirc;pe completed the delusion&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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, had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span> made 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span> the 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 found<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span> it impossible
+to sleep, and that the language they used was appalling.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Broderick, who was reasonably sober, had wandered in and out many times.
+Occasionally he walked the road with Rush, and more than once he had
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span>endeavoured 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.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;and they're a
+pigheaded lot&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>But Alys had replied: "I have besought my aunt, and she will not permit
+Dr. Anna to be disturbed. She<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span> says 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&mdash;let alone asking her to do her best to
+send her to the chair. I've done <i>my</i> best, but it seems hopeless."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Brabant Hospital wants you on the 'phone," he announced, with supreme indifference.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;to&mdash;to postpone things a bit if the jury should be ready to
+come in before you return. Hurry, Jim, hurry."</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER XXXVII</span></h2>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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!"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"There's something in the wind, boys," he cried,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span> 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."</p>
+
+<p>The sheriff retired hastily to the region behind the court-room.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Balfame had looked dully at Rush as he spoke.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span> 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&mdash;is&mdash;it really&mdash;all right?"</p>
+
+<p>"You'll be free and for ever exonerated in half an hour."</p>
+
+<p>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?</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;not even Dwight Rush.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span></p><p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span></p><p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span> I shall read it to you with the permission of
+the court."</p>
+
+<p>He then read them the ante-mortem statement of Dr. Anna Steuer:</p>
+
+<p>"I shot David Balfame.</p>
+
+<p>"I make this statement at once lest I prove to be unable to add the
+explanation of my motives, and I herewith sign it."</p>
+
+<p>Signed and witnessed.</p>
+
+<p>The statement continued:</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;the little all she had in the world that
+mattered&mdash;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
+gentle<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</a></span> and good and fastidious, in spite of her remarkable will, to
+strike him down herself.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"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 as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[Pg 329]</a></span> the 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.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"This statement is made with full knowledge of impending death and
+without hope of recovery."</p>
+
+<p>"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 the <i>New York News</i>, as I mentioned
+before, also heard the confession and affixed his signature."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>The two doctors and Broderick took the stand briefly,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[Pg 330]</a></span> 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&mdash;Dr. Anna had been his family's most cherished
+friend&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"May it please your honour," he said, "Dr. Anna Steuer expired before we
+left the hospital."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"All right, Enid." He tucked Mrs. Cummack under his arm. "Your room's
+been ready for a week."</p>
+
+<p>As Rush was about to follow his client he turned<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[Pg 331]</a></span> abruptly 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.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[Pg 332]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER XXXVIII</span></h2>
+
+<p>When Rush and Mrs. Balfame reached the jail sitting-room she
+mechanically removed her heavy hat and veil and sank into a chair.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it true that Anna is dead?"</p>
+
+<p>Her voice was as toneless as the district attorney's had been.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;and we can only be grateful."</p>
+
+<p>"And she did that for me&mdash;for <i>me</i>. How strange! How very, very
+strange!"</p>
+
+<p>"It has been done before in the history of the world." Rush too was very
+tired.</p>
+
+<p>"But a woman&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;unequalled&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I! I!"</p>
+
+<p>She sprang to her feet and thrust her head forward, her eyes coming to
+life with resentment and wonder.</p>
+
+<p>"What&mdash;<i>what</i> am I that two people&mdash;two people like you and Anna
+Steuer&mdash;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,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[Pg 333]</a></span> 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."</p>
+
+<p>Rush shrugged his shoulders, although he was watching her with a
+quickened interest. "Why try to analyse? The gift to inspire
+devotion&mdash;fascination&mdash;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&mdash;not by a long sight&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;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.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh&mdash;let us go now. You must rest. You are very tired."</p>
+
+<p>"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 was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[Pg 334]</a></span> Anna'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."</p>
+
+<p>She paused abruptly and moved forward and took his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Good night and good-bye," she said. "I shall sleep here to-night. And
+please understand that you are free."</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;for once. It is my moment&mdash;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&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"You are excited," said Rush brusquely, although his heart was
+hammering, and singing youth poured through his veins. "I shall leave
+you now&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[Pg 335]</a></span></p><p>"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&mdash;be sure I appreciate just what it does
+mean&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p class="tbrk">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MRS. BALFAME***</p>
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Mrs. Balfame, by Gertrude Franklin Horn
+Atherton
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Mrs. Balfame
+       A Novel
+
+
+Author: Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
+
+
+
+Release Date: April 13, 2012  [eBook #39443]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MRS. BALFAME***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Robert Cicconetti, Martin Pettit, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images
+generously made available by Internet Archive (http://archive.org)
+
+
+
+Note: Images of the original pages are available through
+      Internet Archive. See
+      http://archive.org/details/cu31924022059962
+
+
+
+
+
+MRS. BALFAME
+
+A Novel
+
+by
+
+GERTRUDE ATHERTON
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Logo]
+
+New York
+Frederick A. Stokes Company
+Publishers
+
+Copyright, 1916, by
+Gertrude Atherton
+
+All rights reserved, including that of translation into
+foreign languages
+
+Fourth Printing
+
+
+
+     _And woman, yea, woman, shall be terrible in story;
+       The tales too, meseemeth, shall be other than of yore.
+     For a fear there is that cometh out of woman and a glory,
+       And the hard hating voices shall encompass her no more._
+                                                 --_The Medea._
+
+
+
+
+MRS. BALFAME
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+Mrs. Balfame had made up her mind to commit murder.
+
+As she stared down at the rapt faces of the fifty-odd members of the
+Friday Club, upturned to the distinguished speaker from New York, whom
+she, as President, had introduced in those few words she so well knew
+how to choose, it occurred to her with a faint shock that this momentous
+resolution had been growing in her essentially refined and amiable mind
+for months, possibly for years; for she was not an impetuous woman.
+
+While smiling and applauding, patting her large strong hands, freshly
+gloved in virgin white, at precisely the right moment, as the sound and
+escharotic speaker laid down the Woman's Law, she permitted herself to
+wonder if the idea had not burrowed in her subconscious mind--that
+mental antiquity shop of which she had lately read so much, that she
+might expound it to the progressive ladies of the Friday Club--for at
+least half the twenty-two years of her married life.
+
+It was only last night that awakening suddenly she had realised with no
+further skirmishes and retreats of conscience or principle how she
+hated the heavy mass of flesh sleeping heavily beside her.
+
+For at least eight years, ever since their fortunes had improved and she
+had found leisure for the novels and plays of authors well-read in life,
+she had longed for a room, a separate personal existence, of her own.
+She was no dreamer, but this exclusive and ladylike apartment often had
+floated before her mental vision, chastely papered and furnished in a
+cold pale blue (she had an uneasy instinct that pink and lavender were
+immoral); and by day it should look like a boudoir. She was too wise to
+make a verbal assault upon this or any foreign word, for she found the
+stage, her only guide, strangely casual or contradictory in these minor
+details; but although her little world found no trouble in discovering
+what Mrs. Balfame increasingly knew, what she did not know they
+suspected so little that they never even discussed her limitations.
+Handicapped by circumstances early and late she might be, but she had
+managed to insinuate the belief that she was the superior in all things
+of the women around her, their born and natural leader.
+
+Mrs. Balfame had never given expression to this desire for a delitescent
+bedroom, being a woman who thought silently, spoke guardedly, and, both
+patient and philosophical, rarely permitted what she called her
+imagination to wander, or bitterness to enter her soul.
+
+The Balfames were by no means well enough off, even now, to refurnish
+the old bedrooms long since denuded by a too economical parent after his
+children had married and moved away, but a few mornings since she had
+remarked casually that as the springs of the conjugal bed were sagging
+she thought she should send it to the auction room and buy two single
+beds. Last night, lying there in the dark, she had clenched her hands
+and held her breath as she recalled David Balfame's purple flush, the
+deliberate manner in which he had set down his thick coffee cup and
+scrubbed his bristling moustache, then rolled up the stained napkin and
+pushed it into the ring before replying.
+
+His first vocative expressed all, but he was a politician and used to
+elaborating his mental processes for the benefit of befuddled
+intellects. "You'll have them springs mended," he informed his wife, who
+was smiling brilliantly and sweetly across the debris of ham and eggs,
+salt mackerel, coffee and hot breads--"that is, if they need it, which I
+haven't noticed, and I'm some heavier than you. But you'll introduce no
+more of your damned new-fangled notions into this house. It was good
+enough for my parents, and it's good enough for us. We lived for fifteen
+years without art lampshades that hurt my eyes, and rugs that trip me
+up; and these last eight or nine years, since you've been runnin' a club
+when you ain't runnin' to New York, I've had too many cold suppers to
+suit me; I've paid bills for 'teas' to that Club and I've put out money
+for fine clothes for you that I could spend a long sight better at
+election time. But I've stood all that, for I guess I'm as good a
+husband as any in God's own country; I like to see you well dressed, for
+you're still a looker--and it's good business, anyhow; and I've never
+grudged you a hired girl. But there's a limit to every man's patience. I
+draw the line at two beds. That's all there is to it."
+
+He had made a part of his speech standing, that being his accustomed
+position when laying down the law, and he now left the room with the
+heavy country slouch his wife had never been able to reform. He had no
+authority in walk or bearing, being a man more obstinate than strong,
+more cunning than firm.
+
+She was thankful that he did not bestow upon her the usual marital kiss;
+the smell of coffee on his moustache had sickened her faintly ever since
+she had ceased to love him.
+
+Or begun to hate him? She had wondered, as she lay there inhaling deeply
+to draw the blood from her head, if she ever had loved him. When a man
+and a maid are young! He had been a tall slim youth, with red cheeks and
+bright eyes, the "catch" of the village; his habits were commendable and
+he would inherit his father's store, his only brother having died a year
+earlier and his sisters married and moved West. She was pretty,
+empty-headed, as ill-educated as all girls of her class, but she kept
+her father's house neatly, she was noted even at sixteen for her pies,
+and at twenty for the dexterity and taste with which she made her own
+clothes out of practically nothing. She was by no means the ordinary
+fool of her age class and nation. But although she was incapable of
+passion, she had a thin sentimental streak, a youthful desire for a
+romance, and a cold dislike for an impending stepmother.
+
+David Balfame wooed her over the front gate and won her in the orchard;
+and the year was in its springtime. It was all as natural and inevitable
+as the measles and whooping-cough through which she nursed him during
+the first year of their marriage.
+
+She had been happy with the happiness of youth ignorance and busy hands;
+although there had been the common trials and quarrels, they had been
+quickly forgotten, for she was a woman of a serene and philosophical
+temperament; moreover, no children came, for which she felt a sort of
+cold negative gratitude. She liked children, and even attracted them,
+but she preferred that other women should bear and rear them.
+
+But all that comparative happiness was before the dawning of ambition
+and the heavier trials that preceded it.
+
+A railroad expanded the sleepy village into a lively town of some three
+thousand inhabitants, and although that meant wider interests for Mrs.
+Balfame, and an occasional trip to New York, the more intimate
+connection with a great city nearly wrecked her husband's business. His
+father was dead and he had inherited the store which had supplied the
+village with general merchandise for a generation. But by the time the
+railroad came he had grown lazy and liked to sit on the sidewalk on fine
+days, or before the stove in winter, his chair tilted back, talking
+politics with other gentlemen of comparative leisure. He was popular,
+for he had a bluff and hospitable manner; he was an authority on
+politics, and possessed an eloquent if ungrammatical tongue. For a time,
+as his business dwindled, he merely blasphemed, but just as he was
+beginning to feel really uneasy, a brother-in-law who had been the chum
+of his youth arrived from Montana and saved him from extinction and "the
+old Balfame place" from mortgage.
+
+Mr. Cummack, the brother-in-law, turned out the loafers, put Dave into
+politics, and himself called personally upon every housewife in the
+community, agreeing to keep the best of all she needed, but none of
+those articles which served as an excuse for a visit to New York or
+tempted her to delightful hours with the mail-order catalogue.
+
+Mrs. Balfame detested this bustling common efficient brother-in-law,
+although at the end of two years, the twelfth of her married life, she
+was keeping a maid-of-all-work and manicuring her nails. She treated him
+with an unswerving sweetness, a natural quality which later developed
+into the full flower of graciousness, and even gave him a temperate
+measure of gratitude. She was a just woman; and it was not long after
+his advent that she began to realise the ambition latent in her strong
+character and to enter upon a well defined plan for social leadership.
+
+She found it all astonishingly easy. Of course she never had met,
+probably never would meet, the really wealthy families that owned large
+estates in the county and haughtily entertained one another when not
+entertaining equally exclusive New Yorkers. But Mrs. Balfame did not
+waste time in envy of these people; there were old families in her own
+and neighbouring villages, proud of their three or four generations on
+the same farm, well-to-do but easy-going, democratic and, when not so
+old as to be "moss-backs," hospitable to new notions. Many, indeed, had
+built new homes in the expanding village, which bade fair to embrace
+choice bits of the farms.
+
+Mrs. Balfame always had dominated these life-long neighbours and
+associates, and the gradual newcomers were quick to recognise her power
+and her superior mind; to realise that not to know Mrs. Balfame was to
+be a commuter and no more. Everything helped her. Even the substantial
+house, inherited from her father-in-law, and still surrounded by four
+acres of land, stood at the head of the original street of the village,
+a long wide street so thickly planted with maples as old as the farms
+that from spring until Christmas the soft leafy boughs interlaced
+overhead. She had a subtle but iron will, and a quite commonplace
+personality disguised by the cold, sweet, stately and gracious manner so
+much admired by women; and she was quite unhampered by the least of that
+originality or waywardness which antagonises the orthodox. Moreover, she
+dressed her tall slender figure with unerring taste. Of course she was
+obliged to wear her smart tailored suits for two years, but they always
+looked new and were worn with an air that quite doubled their not
+insignificant price. By women she was thought very beautiful, but men,
+for the most part, passed her by.
+
+For eight years now, Mrs. Balfame had been the acknowledged leader of
+Elsinore. It was she who had founded the Friday Club, at first for
+general cultivation of mind, of late to study the obsessing subject of
+Woman. She cared not a straw for the privilege of voting; in fact, she
+thought it would be an extremely unladylike thing to do; but a leader
+must always be at the head of the procession, while discriminating
+betwixt fad and fashion.
+
+It was she who had established a connection with a respectable club in
+New York; it was she who had inveigled the substantial well-dressed and
+radical personage on the rostrum beside her to come over and homilise
+upon the subject of "The European War _vs._ Woman."
+
+The visitor had proved to her own satisfaction and that of the major
+part of her audience that the bomb which had precipitated the war had
+been made in Germany. She was proceeding complacently, despite the
+hisses of several members with German forbears, and the President had
+just exchanged a glance of amusement with a moderate neutral, who
+believed that Russia's desire to thaw out her icy feet in warm water was
+at the bottom of the mischief, when--spurred perhaps by a biting
+allusion to the atrocities engaging the press at the moment--the idea of
+murder took definite form in that clear unvisionary brain so justly
+admired by the ladies of Elsinore.
+
+Mrs. Balfame's pure profile, the purer for the still smooth contours and
+white skin of the face itself, the stately setting of the head, was
+turned toward the audience below the platform, and one admiring young
+member, who attended an art class in New York, was sketching it as a
+study in St. Cecelia's, when those six letters of fire rose smoking from
+the battle fields of Europe and took Mrs. Balfame's consciousness by
+assault: six dark and murky letters, but with no vagueness of outline.
+
+The first faint shock of surprise over, as well as the few moments of
+retrospect, she asked herself calmly: "Why not?" Over there men were
+being torn and shot to pieces by wholesale, joking across the trenches
+in their intervals of rest, to kill again when the signal was given with
+as little compunction as she herself had often aimed at a target, or
+wrung the neck of a chicken that had fed from her hand. And these were
+men, the makers of law, the self-elected rulers of the world.
+
+Mrs. Balfame had respected men mightily in her youth. Even now, although
+she both despised and hated her husband, she responded femininely to a
+fine specimen of manhood with good manners and something to talk about
+save politics and business. But these were few and infrequent in Brabant
+County. The only man she had met for years who interested her in the
+least was Dwight Rush, also a scion of one of the old farm families.
+
+Rush had been educated in the law at a northwestern university, but
+after a few years of practice in Wisconsin had accepted an offer to
+enter the most respectable law firm in his native township. He had been
+employed several times by David Balfame, who had brought him home
+informally to supper perhaps once a fortnight during the last six
+months. But, although Mrs. Balfame frankly enjoyed his society and his
+evident admiration for a beauty she knew had little attraction for his
+sex, she had all a conventional woman's dislike for irregularities,
+however innocent; and she had snubbed Mr. Rush's desire to "drop in of
+an afternoon."
+
+He barely flitted through her mind when she asked herself what did man's
+civilisation amount to, anyway, and why should women respect it? And,
+compared with the stupendous slaughter in Europe, a slaughter that would
+seem to be one of the periodicities of the world, since it is the
+composite expression of the individual male's desire to fight somebody
+just so often--what, in comparison with such a monstrous crime, would be
+the offence of making way with one obnoxious husband?
+
+Something over two years ago--when liquor began to put a fiery edge upon
+Mr. Balfame's temper--Mrs. Balfame had considered the question of
+divorce; but after several weeks of cool calculation and the exercise
+of her foresight upon the inevitable social consequences, she had put
+the idea definitely aside. It was incompatible with her plan of life.
+Only rich women, or women that were insignificant in great cities, or
+who possessed conquering gifts, or who were so advanced as to be
+indifferent, could afford the luxury of divorce. Her world was the
+eastern division of Brabant County, and while it prided itself upon its
+progressiveness, and even--among the younger women--had a gay set, and
+although suppressed scandals slid about like slimy monsters in a marsh,
+its foundations were inherited from the old Puritan stock, and it fairly
+reeked with ancient prejudices.
+
+It was a typical middle-class community with traditions, some of its
+blood too old, and made up of common human ingredients in varying
+proportions. Mrs. Balfame, enlightened by much reading and many
+matinees, applied the word _bourgeois_ to Elsinore with secret scorn,
+but with a sigh: conscious that all its prejudices were hers and that
+not for an instant could she continue to be its leader were she a
+divorced woman.
+
+Mrs. Balfame indulged in no dreams of sudden wealth. Elsinore was her
+world, and on the whole she was content, realising that life had not
+equipped her to lead the society of New York City. She liked to shop in
+Fifth Avenue--long since had she politely forgotten the mobs of
+Sixth,--to occupy an orchestra chair with a friend at a matinee, and
+take tea or chocolate at the fashionable retreats for such dissipations
+before returning to provincial Elsinore. There was a tacit agreement
+between herself and her husband that he should dine with his political
+friends in a certain restaurant behind a bar in Dobton, the county seat,
+on the Wednesday or Thursday evenings when she found it impossible to
+return to Elsinore before seven o'clock; an arrangement which he
+secretly approved of but invariably entered a protest against by coming
+home at two in the morning extremely drunk.
+
+He never attended the theatre with her, his preference being for
+vaudeville or a screaming musical comedy, for both of which
+abnormalities she had a profound contempt. She saw only the "best plays"
+herself, her choice being guided not so much by newspaper approval as by
+length of run. It must be confessed that in the eight or nine years of
+her comparative emancipation from the grinding duties of the home she
+had learned a good deal of life from the plays she saw. On the whole,
+however, she preferred sound American drama, particularly when it dealt
+with Society; for the advanced (or decadent?) pictures of life as
+presented in the imported drama, she had only a mild contempt; her first
+curiosity satisfied, she thanked God that she was a plain American.
+
+Such was Mrs. Balfame when she made up her mind to remove David Balfame,
+superfluous husband. She was quite content to reign in Elsinore, to live
+out her life there, but as a dignified and irreproachable and well-to-do
+widow. Divorce being out of the question, there was but one way to get
+rid of him: his years were but forty-four, and although he "blew up"
+with increasing frequency, to use his own choice vernacular, he was as
+healthy as an ox, and the town drunkard was rising eighty.
+
+Mrs. Balfame's friend, Dr. Anna Steuer, was now replying to the lady
+from New York. After reminding the Club that the President of the United
+States had requested his docile subjects to curb their passions and
+flaunt their neutrality, Dr. Steuer proceeded to demolish the
+anti-German attitude of the guests by reciting the long list of
+industrial, economic and scientific contributions to civilisation which
+had distinguished the German Empire since the federation of its states.
+
+Dr. Steuer was of Dutch descent, and her gifts were not forensic, but
+the key-note of her character was an intense and passionate loyalty. She
+had spent some of the most impressionable years of her life in the
+German clinics, and she cherished a romantic affection for a country
+whose natural and historic beauties no man will deny. She had
+steadfastly refused to read the "other side," pinning her faith to all
+that was best in the country of her youthful dreams. In consequence, her
+discourse, while informing, was somewhat beside the point; and had it
+not been for the deep love borne her by almost every one present, there
+would have been a polite but firm demand to give place.
+
+Mrs. Balfame was smiling encouragement when her musings took a sudden
+and arbitrary twist. Being a person who never acted on impulse, her
+decisions, after due processes of thought, were commonly irrevocable.
+The moment she had made up her mind to pass her husband on, she had
+committed herself to the act; and, even before Dr. Anna Steuer had
+claimed her superficial attention, had already erected the question,
+How?
+
+Mrs. Balfame was a woman who rarely bungled anything, and murder, she
+well knew, was the last of all acts to bungle, did the perpetrator
+desire to enjoy the freedom of his act. Being refined to her marrow, she
+shrank from all forms of brutality, and rarely, if ever, read the
+details of crime in the newspapers. The sight of blood disgusted her,
+although it did not turn her faint. She kept a pistol in her bedroom;
+burglars, particularly of late, had entered a large number of houses in
+Brabant County; but nothing would have horrified her more than to empty
+its contents into the worst of criminals.
+
+Mechanically she had run through the list of all the accepted forms of
+removing human impedimenta and rejected them, when Dr. Anna's scientific
+mind, playing along the surface of hers, shot in the arrow of suggestion
+that she belonged naturally to the type of woman that poisoned if forced
+to commit murder. It was bloodless, decent, and required no vulgar
+expenditure of energy.
+
+But healthy people, suddenly dead, were excavated and the quarry
+submitted to chemical tests; it was then--smiling brilliantly at her
+ardent pro-German friend--that Mrs. Balfame recalled a rainy evening
+some two years since. She and Dr. Anna had sat over the fire in the old
+Steuer cottage, and the doctor, who before the war never had been
+interested in anything but her friends, her science, and suffrage, had
+discoursed upon certain untraceable poisons, had even risen and taken
+down a vial from a secret cupboard above the mantel. During the same
+conversation, which naturally drifted to crime, Dr. Anna had discoursed
+upon the idiocy of doctors who poisoned with morphia, strychnine, or
+prussic acid, when not only were these organic poisons known to all
+scientific members of the profession, but they could easily remove the
+barrier to their complete happiness with cholera, smallpox, or typhus
+germs, sealed within the noncommittal capsule.
+
+Mrs. Balfame shuddered at the mere thought of any of these dreadful
+diseases, having no desire to witness human sufferings, or to run the
+risk of infection, but as she stared at Dr. Anna to-day, she made up her
+mind to procure that vial of furtive poison.
+
+So sudden was this resolution and so grim its portent that it was
+accompanied by unusual physical phenomena: she brought her sound white
+teeth together and thrust out her strong chin; her eyes became fixed in
+a hard stare and the muscles of her face seemed to menace her soft white
+skin.
+
+Alys Crumley, the young woman who had been sketching Mrs. Balfame
+instead of listening to the discussion, caught her breath and dropped
+her pencil. For the moment the pretty, ultra-refined, elegant leader of
+Elsinore society looked not like St. Cecelia but like Medea. Always
+determined, resolute, smilingly dominant, never before had she betrayed
+the secret possibilities of her nature.
+
+Miss Crumley cast a glance of startled apprehension about her, but the
+debate was just finished, every one was commenting upon the splendid
+self-control of the high participants, and repeating the New Yorker's
+last phrase: that not civilisation but man was a failure. A moment later
+Mrs. Balfame advanced to the edge of the platform, and, with her
+inimitable graciousness, invited the members of the Club to come forward
+and meet the distinguished guest. Little Miss Alys Crumley, watching
+her, listening to her pleasant shallow voice, her amused quiet laugh,
+came to the conclusion that the fearsome expression she had seen on her
+model's face had been a mere effect of light.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+The meeting of the Friday Club had been held in the Auditorium, a hall
+which accommodated moving pictures, an occasional vaudeville
+performance, political orators, and subscription balls of more than one
+social stratum. It was particularly adapted to the growing needs of the
+Friday Club, as it impressed visitors favorably, and there was a small
+room in the rear where tea could be served.
+
+It was a crisp autumn evening when the President and her committee sped
+the parting guest of this fateful day and walked briskly homeward,
+either to cook supper themselves or to prod the languid "hired girl."
+Starting in groups, they parted at successive corners, and finally Mrs.
+Balfame and Dr. Anna were alone in the old street. The doctor's offices
+were in Main Street under the Auditorium, between the Elsinore Bank and
+the Emporium drug store, but she too had inherited a cottage in what was
+now known as Elsinore Avenue, and almost at the opposite end from the
+"Old Balfame Place."
+
+"Come in," she said hospitably, as she opened a gate set superfluously
+into the low boxwood hedge. "You can 'phone to the Elks' and tell Dave
+to try the new hotel. It's ages since I've seen you."
+
+"I will!" Mrs. Balfame's prompt reply was accompanied by what was known
+in Elsinore as her inscrutable smile. "It is kind of you," she added
+politely, for even with old friends she never forgot her manners. "I
+long for a cup of your tea--if you will make it yourself. I really could
+eat nothing after those sandwiches."
+
+"I'll make it myself, all right. First because it wouldn't be fit to
+drink if I didn't, and second because it's Cassie's night out."
+
+She took the key from beneath the door-mat, and pressed an electric
+button in the hall and another in a comfortable untidy sitting-room. In
+her parents' day the sitting-room had been the front parlour, with an
+atmosphere as rigid as the horsehair furniture, but in this era of more
+elastic morals it was full of shabby comfortable furniture, a davenport
+was close to the radiator, the desk and tables were littered with
+magazines, medical reviews, and text books.
+
+"How warm and delicious," said Mrs. Balfame brightly, removing her hat
+and wraps and laying them smoothly on a chair. "I'll telephone and then
+close my eyes and think of nothing until tea is ready--I know you won't
+have me in the kitchen. What a blessed relief it will be to hear you
+sing in your funny old voice after that woman's strident tones."
+
+She made short work of telephoning. Mr. Balfame, having "just stepped
+across the street," she merely left a message for him. Dr. Anna, out in
+the kitchen, lighted the gas stove, rattled the aluminum ware, and sang
+in a booming contralto.
+
+Mrs. Balfame went through no stage formalities; she neither tiptoed to
+the door nor listened intently. From the telephone, which was on the
+desk, she walked over to the strongest looking chair, carried it to the
+discarded fireplace, mounted and peered into the little cupboard the
+canny doctor had had built into the old chimney after the furnace was
+installed. There Dr. Anna kept her experimental drugs, her mother's seed
+pearls and diamond brooch, and a roll of what she called emergency
+bills.
+
+The vial was almost in the middle of a row of bottles. Mrs. Balfame
+recognised it at once. She secreted it in the little bag that still hung
+on her arm, replaced it with another small bottle that had stood nearer
+the end of the row, closed the door and restored the chair to its proper
+place. Could anything be more simple?
+
+She was too careful of her best tailored suit to lie down, but she
+arranged herself comfortably in a corner of the davenport and closed her
+eyes. Soothed by the warmth of the room and the organ tones in the
+kitchen she drifted into a happy state of somnolence, from which she was
+aroused by the entrance of her hostess with a tray. She sprang up
+guiltily.
+
+"I had no intention of falling asleep--I meant to set the table at
+least--"
+
+"Those cat naps are what has kept you young and beautiful, while the
+rest of us have traded complexions for hides."
+
+Mrs. Balfame gracefully insisted upon clearing and laying a corner of
+the table, and the two friends sat down and chatted gaily over their tea
+and toast and preserves. Dr. Anna's face--a square face with a snub nose
+and kindly twinkling eyes--beamed as her friend complimented her upon
+the erudition she had displayed in her reply to the Club guest and added
+wistfully:
+
+"I feel as if I didn't know a thing about this war. Everybody
+contradicts everybody else, and sometimes they contradict themselves.
+I'm going over to-morrow" ("going over" meant New York in the Elsinore
+tongue) "and get all the books that have been printed on the subject,
+and read up. I do feel so ignorant."
+
+"That's a large order. When you've dug through them you'll know less
+than you could get from the headlines of the 'anti' evening papers. I'll
+hunt up a list that was given me by a patient who claims to be neutral,
+if you really want it, and leave it at your house in the morning. It's
+at the office."
+
+"Oh, please do!" Mrs. Balfame leaned eagerly across the table. "You
+know, it is my turn to read a paper Friday week, and literally I can
+think of nothing else except this terrible but most interesting war. Of
+course, I must display some real knowledge and not deal merely in
+adjectives and generalities. I'll read night and day--I suppose I can
+get all those books from two or three New York libraries?"
+
+"Enid Balfame, you are a wonder! When you buckle down to a thing! Who
+but you would take hold of a subject like that with the idea of
+mastering it in two weeks--Oh, bother!"
+
+The telephone was ringing. Dr. Anna tilted back her chair and lifted the
+receiver from the desk to her ear. She put it down almost immediately.
+"Hurry call," she said briefly, an intense professional concentration
+banishing the pleasant relaxation of a moment before. "Baby. Sorry.
+Leave the key under the door mat. Don't hurry." She was putting on her
+wraps in the hall as she called back her last words. The front door
+banged simultaneously.
+
+Mrs. Balfame piled the dishes on the tray, carried them out into the
+kitchen, washed and put them away. She was a very methodical woman and
+exquisitely neat. Although she no longer did her own kitchen work, it
+would have distressed her to leave her friend's little home at "sixes
+and sevens"; the soiled dishes would have haunted her all night, or at
+least until she fell asleep.
+
+After she had also arranged the publications on the sitting-room table
+in neat rows she put on her coat and hat, turned off all the lights,
+secreted the key as requested and walked briskly down the path. There
+was a street lamp directly in front of the gate. Its light fell on the
+face of a man emerging from the heavy shadow of the maple trees that
+bordered the avenue. She recognised her husband's lawyer, Dwight Rush.
+
+"What luck!" he exclaimed boyishly. "Now I shall talk to you for at
+least five minutes--ten, if you will walk slowly! What are you doing out
+so late alone?"
+
+Mrs. Balfame glanced apprehensively up and down the street. All the
+windows were alight, but it was too late in the season for loitering on
+verandas; even if they met any one, recognition would hardly be possible
+unless the encounter took place under a street lamp. Moreover, she was
+one of those women who while rarely terrified when alone became
+intensely feminine when a man appeared with his archaic right to shield
+and protect. She smiled graciously.
+
+"You may see me to my gate," she said.
+
+"I should think I might! A pistol at my head wouldn't keep me from
+walking these few blessed minutes with you. Seriously, it's not safe for
+you to be out alone like this. There were three burglaries last week,
+and you are just the woman to have her bag snatched."
+
+She drew closer to him, a faint accent of alarm in her voice.
+
+"I never thought of that. But Anna was called off in a hurry. I am so
+glad you happened along. Although," primly, "it wouldn't do, you know,
+for a woman of my age and position to be seen walking alone with a young
+man at night."
+
+"What nonsense! You are like Caesar's wife, I guess. Anything you did in
+this town would seem about right. You've got them all hypnotised,
+including myself. It's the ambition of my life to know you better," he
+added in a more serious tone. "Why won't you let me call?"
+
+"It wouldn't do. If I have a nice position it's because I've always been
+so particular. If I let young men call on me, people would say that I
+was no better than that fast bunch that tangoes every night and goes to
+road houses and things." Her voice trailed off vaguely; she really knew
+very little of the doings of "gay sets," although much in the abstract
+of a too temperamental world.
+
+She made up her mind to dispose of this misguided young man once for
+all. She knew that she looked quite ten years younger than her age, and
+she was well aware that although man's passion might be business his
+pastime was the hunt.
+
+"I am thankful that I have no grown daughter to keep from running with
+that bunch," she said playfully. "Of course I might have. I am quite old
+enough."
+
+He laughed outright. Then he said the old thing which is ever new to
+the woman, and with a perceptible softening in his hard energetic voice:
+"I wonder if you really are as conventional--conventionised--as you
+perhaps think you are? You always give me the impression of being two
+women, one fast asleep deep down somewhere, the other not even
+suspecting her existence."
+
+"How pretty!" She smiled with pleasure, and she felt a faint stirring of
+coquetry, as if the ghost of her youth were rising--that far-off period
+when she put on her best ribbons and made her best pies to allure the
+marriageable swains of Elsinore. But she recalled herself quickly and
+frowned. "You must not say such things to me," she said coldly.
+
+"But I shall, and I will add that I wish you were a widow, or had never
+been married. I should propose to you this minute."
+
+"That is equivalent to saying that you wish my husband were dead. And he
+is your friend, too!"
+
+"Your husband is not my friend; he is my employer--upon occasion. At the
+moment I did not remember who was your husband. Let it go at that."
+
+"Very well."
+
+It was evident that he belonged to the type that found its amusement in
+making love to married women; but--they were within the rays of a lamp,
+and sauntering--she looked up at this pleasant exponent indulgently. She
+was quite safe, and it was by no means detestable at the age of
+forty-two to be coveted by the cleverest young man in Brabant County.
+
+The smile left her lips and she experienced a faint vibration of the
+nerves as she met the unsmiling eyes bent close above her own.
+
+Rush was almost drab in colour, but the bones of his face were large
+and his eyes were deeply set and well apart, intensely blue and
+brilliant. It was one of those narrow rigid faces the exigencies of his
+century and country have bred, the jaw long and almost as salient as
+that of a consumptive, the brow bold, the mouth hard set, the cheeks
+lean and cut with deep lines, the whole effect not only keen and clever
+but stronger than any man has consistently been since the world began.
+The curious contradiction about this type of American face is that it
+almost invariably looks younger than the years that have contributed to
+the modelling of it; such men, particularly if smoothly shaven as they
+usually are, look thirty at forty; even at fifty, if they retain their
+hair, appear but little older. When Rush's mouth was relaxed it could
+smile charmingly, and the eyes fill with playfulness and vivacity, just
+as his strident American voice could move a jury to tears by the tears
+that were in it.
+
+At this moment all the intensity of which his striking features were
+capable was concentrated in his eyes.
+
+"I'm not going to make love to you as matters stand," he said, his voice
+dry with emotion. "But I want you to divorce Dave Balfame and marry me.
+Sooner or later you will be driven to it--"
+
+"Never! I'll never be a divorced woman. Never! Never!"
+
+His steady gaze wavered and he sighed. "You said that as if you meant
+it. You think you are intellectual, and you haven't outgrown one of the
+prejudices of your Puritan grandmothers--who behaved themselves because
+women were scarce and even better treated than they are now, and because
+they would have been too mean to spend money on a divorce suit if
+divorces had come into fashion elsewhere."
+
+"You are far from complimentary!" Mrs. Balfame raised her head stiffly,
+not a little indignant at this natural display of sheer masculinity. She
+would have withdrawn her arm and hastened her steps but he held her
+back.
+
+"I don't mean to be uncomplimentary. Only, you ought to be so much more
+advanced than you are. I repeat, I shall not make downright love to you,
+for I intend to marry you one of these days. But I shall say what I
+choose. How much longer do you think you can go on living like
+this?--with a man you must despise and from whom you must suffer
+indignities--and in this hole--"
+
+"You live here--"
+
+"I came back here because I had a good offer and I like the East better
+than the West, but I have no intention of staying here. I have reason to
+believe that I shall get into a New York firm next spring; and once
+started on that race-course I purpose to come in a winner."
+
+"And you would saddle yourself with a wife many years your senior?" she
+asked wonderingly.
+
+But she thrilled again, and unconsciously moderated her gait still
+further; they were but a few steps from her home.
+
+"I am thirty-four. I am sorry that I have impressed you as looking too
+young to be taken seriously, but you will admit that if a man doesn't
+know his own mind when he is verging toward middle age, he never will.
+But if I were only twenty-five, it would make no difference. I would
+marry you like a shot. I never have given a thought to marrying before.
+Girls don't interest me. They show their hand too plainly. I've always
+had a sort of ideal and you fill it."
+
+It was characteristic of Mrs. Balfame's well-ordered mind that her
+intention to murder her husband did not intrude itself into this unique
+and provocative hour. She had never indulged in a passing desire to
+marry again, and hers was not the order of mind that somersaults. But
+she was willing to "let herself go," for the sake of the experience; for
+the first time in her twenty odd years of married life to loiter in a
+leafy shadowy street with a man who loved her and made no secret of it.
+
+"I wonder?" She stared up at him, curiosity in her eyes.
+
+"Wonder what?"
+
+"If it _is_ love?"
+
+He laughed unmusically. "I am not surprised that you ask that
+question--you, who know no more of love than if you had been a castaway
+on a desert island since the age of ten. Never mind. I've planted a
+seed. It will sprout. Think and think again. You owe me that much--and
+yourself. I know that six months hence you will have divorced Dave
+Balfame, and that you will marry me as soon as the law allows."
+
+"Never! Never!" She was laughing now, but with all the gay coquetry of
+youth, not merely the eidola of her own.
+
+They had arrived at the gate of the Balfame Place, which faced the
+avenue and a large street lamp. She put the gate between them with a
+quicker movement than she commonly indulged in and held out her hand.
+
+"No more nonsense! If I were young and free--who knows?
+But--but--forty-two!" She choked but brought it out. "Now go home and
+think over all the nice girls you know and select one quickly. I will
+make the wedding cake."
+
+"Did you suppose I didn't know your age? This is Elsinore, and its
+inhabitants are five thousand. When you and I were born--of respectably
+eminent parentage--all Brabant County numbered few more."
+
+He made no attempt to open the gate, but he raised her hand to his lips.
+Even in that rare moment he was conscious of a regret that it was such a
+large hand, and his head jerked abruptly as he flung out the recreant
+thought.
+
+"I never shall change," he said. "And you are to think and think. Now
+go. I'll watch until you are indoors."
+
+"Good night." She ran up the path, wondering if her tall slight figure
+looked as willowy as it felt. The mirror had often surprised her with
+the information that she looked quite different from the image in her
+mind. She also wondered, with some humour, why no one ever had
+discovered her apparently obvious charms before.
+
+When she was in her bedroom and electricity replaced the mellow rays of
+street lamps shining through soft and whispering leaves, Mrs. Balfame
+forgot Dwight Rush and all men save her husband.
+
+She took the vial from her bag and stared at it. In a moment a frown
+drew her serene brows together, her sweet, shallow, large grey eyes, so
+consistently admired by her own sex at least, darkened with displeasure.
+She was a bungler after all. How was the stuff to be administered? She
+racked her memory, but the casual explanation of Dr. Anna, uttered at
+least two years ago, had left not an echo. A drop in his eggs or coffee
+might be too little; more, and he might detect the foreign quantity.
+
+She removed the cork and sniffed. It was odourless, but was it
+tasteless?
+
+Obviously there was no immediate way of ascertaining save by experiment
+on Mr. Balfame. And even if it were tasteless, it might cook his blood,
+congest his face, burst his veins--she recalled snatches of Dr. Anna's
+dissertations upon "interesting cases." On the other hand, one drop
+might make him violently ill; the suspicions of any doctor might be
+aroused.
+
+She must walk warily. Murder was one of the fine arts. Those that
+cultivated it and failed followed the victim or spent the rest of their
+lives within prison walls. Thousands, it was estimated, walked the earth
+unsuspected, unapprehensive, serene and content--contemptuous of
+failures and bunglers, as are the masters in any art. Mrs. Balfame was
+proudly aware that her role in life was success.
+
+There was nothing to do but wait. She must have another cosy evening
+with her scientific friend and draw her on to talk of the poison. Ah!
+that made another precaution imperative.
+
+She went to the cupboard in the bathroom, rinsed a small bottle,
+transferred the precious colorless fluid, refilled the vial with water
+and returned it to her bag. To-morrow or next day she would slip into
+Dr. Anna's house and restore it to its hiding place. The poison she
+secreted on the top shelf of the bathroom cupboard.
+
+Reluctantly, for she was a prompt and methodical woman, she resigned
+herself to the prospect of David Balfame's prolonged sojourn upon the
+planet he had graced so ill. She went to bed, shrinking into the farther
+corner, but falling asleep almost immediately. Then, her hands having
+faltered, Fate borrowed the shuttle.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+A fortnight passed before Mrs. Balfame found the opportunity for a chat
+with Dr. Anna.
+
+On Saturday afternoons it was the pleasant custom of the flower of
+Elsinore to repair to the Country Club, a building of the bungalow type,
+with wide verandas, a large central hall, several smaller rooms for
+those that preferred cards to dancing, a secluded bar, a tennis
+court--flooded in winter for skating--and a golf links. It was
+charmingly situated about four miles from the town, with the woods
+behind and a glimpse of the grey Atlantic from the higher knolls.
+
+The young unmarried set that danced at the Club or in the larger of the
+home parlours every night would have monopolised the central hall of the
+bungalow on Saturdays as well had it not been for the sweet but firm
+resistance of Mrs. Balfame. Lacking in a proper sex vanity she might be,
+but she was far too proud and just to permit her own generation to be
+obliterated by mere youth. Having no children of her own, it shocked her
+fine sense of the fitness of things to watch the subservience of parents
+and the selfishness of offspring. One of the most notable results of her
+quiet determination was that she and her friends enjoyed every privilege
+of the Country Club when the mood was on them, and that a goodly number
+of the men of their own generation did not confine their attentions
+exclusively to the bar, but came out and danced with their neighbours'
+wives. The young people sniffed, but as Mrs. Balfame had founded the
+Country Club, and they were all helpless under her inflexible will and
+skilful manipulation, they never dreamed of rebellion.
+
+During the fortnight Mrs. Balfame had cunningly replaced the vial, the
+indifferent Cassie leaving the sitting-room at her disposal while she
+wrote a note reminding Dr. Anna of the promised list of war books,
+adding playfully that she had no time to waste in a busy doctor's
+waiting-room. In truth Dr. Anna was a difficult person to see at this
+time. There was an epidemic of typhoid in the county, and much illness
+among children.
+
+However, on the third Saturday after the interrupted supper, as Mrs.
+Balfame was motoring out to the Club with her friend, Mrs. Battle, wife
+of the President of the Bank of Elsinore, she saw Dr. Anna driving her
+little runabout down a branching road. With a graceful excuse she
+deserted her hostess, sprang into the humbler machine, and gaily ordered
+her friend to turn and drive to the Club.
+
+"You take a rest this afternoon," she said peremptorily. "Otherwise you
+will be a wreck when your patients need you most. You look just about
+fagged out. And I want a little of your society. I've been thinking of
+taking to a sick bed to get it."
+
+Dr. Anna looked at her brilliant friend with an expression of dumb
+gratitude and adoration. She was worth one hundred per cent. more than
+this companion of her forty years, but she never would know it. She
+regarded Enid Balfame as one of the superwomen of Earth, astray in the
+little world of Elsinore. Even when Mrs. Balfame had done her own work
+she had managed to look rare and lovely. Her hair was neatly arranged
+for the day before descent to the lower regions, and her pretty print
+frock was half covered by a white apron as immaculate as her round
+uncovered arms.
+
+And since the leader of Elsinore had "learned things" she was of an
+elegance whose differences from those of women born to grace a loftier
+sphere were merely subtle. Her fine brown hair, waved in New York, and
+coiled on the nape of her long neck, displayed her profile to the best
+possible advantage; like all women's women she set great store by her
+profile. Whenever possible it was framed in a large hat with a rolling
+brim and drooping feathers. Her severely tailored frocks made her look
+aloof and stately on the streets (and in the trains between Elsinore and
+New York); and her trim white shirt waists and duck skirts, or "one
+piece suits" for colder weather, gave her a sweet feminine appeal in the
+house. At evening entertainments she invariably wore black, cut chastely
+about the neck and draped with a floating scarf.
+
+Poor Dr. Anna, uncompromisingly plain from youth, worshipped beauty;
+moreover, a certain mental pressure of which she was quite unaware
+caused her to find in Enid Balfame her highest ideal of womanhood. She
+herself was never trim; she was always in a hurry; and the repose and
+serenity the calm and sweet dignity of this gifted being both fascinated
+and rested her. That Mrs. Balfame took all her female adorers had to
+offer and gave nothing but enhanced her worth. She knew the priceless
+value of the pedestal, and although her wonderful smile descended at
+discreet intervals her substantial feet did not.
+
+Dr. Anna, who had never been sought by men and had seen too many of
+them sick in bed to have a romantic illusion left, gave to this friend
+of her lifetime, whom the years touched only to improve--and who never
+was ill--the dog-like fidelity and love that a certain type of man
+offers at the shrine of the unattainable woman. Mrs. Balfame was
+sometimes amused, always complacent; but it must be conceded that she
+took no advantage of the blind devotion of either Dr. Anna or her
+numerous other admirers. She was far too proud to "use" people.
+
+Mrs. Balfame seldom discussed her domestic trials even with Dr. Anna,
+but this most intimate of her friends guessed that her life with her
+husband was rapidly growing unendurable. She was, naturally, the family
+doctor; she had nursed David Balfame through several gastric attacks,
+whose cause was not far to seek.
+
+But despite much that was highly artificial in her personality, Enid
+Balfame was elementally what would be called, in the vernacular of the
+day, a regular female; for a fortnight she had longed to talk about
+Dwight Rush. This was the time to gratify an innocent desire while
+watching sharply for an opportunity to play for higher stakes.
+
+"Anna!" she said abruptly, as they sped along the fine road, "women like
+and admire me so much, and I am passably good looking--young looking,
+too--what do you suppose is the reason men don't fall in love with me?
+Dave says that half the men in town are mixed up with those telephone
+and telegraph girls, and they are pretty in the commonest kind of way--"
+
+"Enid Balfame!" Dr. Anna struggled to recover her scandalised breath.
+"You! Do you put yourself in the class with those trollops? What's got
+into you? Men are men. Naturally they let your sort alone."
+
+"But I have heard more than whispers about two or three of our good
+friends--women of our age, not giddy young fools--and in our own set.
+Why do Mary Frew and Lottie Gifning go over to New York so often? Dave
+says it isn't only that women from these dull little towns go over to
+New York to meet their lovers, but that some of them are the up-town
+wives of millionaires, or the day-time wives of all sorts of men with
+money enough to run two establishments. It is a hideous world and I
+never ask for particulars, but the fact remains that Lottie and Mary and
+a few others have as many partners among the young men at the dances as
+the girls do; and I can recall hints they have thrown out that they
+could go farther if they chose."
+
+"This is a busy country," remarked Dr. Anna drily. "Men don't waste time
+chasing the prettiest of women when convinced there is nothing in it--to
+borrow the classic form. Young chaps, urged on by natural law to find
+their mate, will pursue the indifferent girl, but men looking for a
+little play after business hours will not. Why, you--you look as cold
+and chaste as Caesar's wife. They couldn't waste five minutes on you."
+
+"That's what he said--that I was like Caesar's wife--"
+
+"Enid!" Dr. Anna stopped the little machine and turned upon her friend,
+her weary face compact and stern. "Enid Balfame! Have you been letting a
+man make love to you?"
+
+"Well, I guess not." Mrs. Balfame tossed her head and bridled. "But the
+other night, when I left your house, Mr. Rush was passing and saw me
+home. He nearly took my breath away by asking me to get a divorce and
+marry him, but he respected me too much to make love to me."
+
+"I should hope so. The young fool!" But Dr. Anna was unspeakably
+relieved. She had turned faint at the thought that her idol might be as
+many other women whose secrets she alone knew. "What did you say to
+him?" she asked curiously, driving very slowly.
+
+"Why, that I would not be a divorced woman for anything in the world."
+
+"You're not the least bit in love with him?" asked Dr. Anna jealously.
+
+Mrs. Balfame gave her silvery shallow care-free laugh. It might have
+come from any of the machines passing, laden with young girls. "Well, I
+guess not! That sort of foolishness never did interest me. I guess my
+vanity was tickled, but vanity isn't love--by a long sight."
+
+Dr. Anna looked at the pure cold profile, the wide cool grey eyes, and
+laughed. "He did have courage, poor devil! It must have been--no, there
+was no moonlight. Must have been the suggestion of that old Lovers'
+Lane, Elsinore Avenue. But if you wanted men to make love to you, my
+dear, you could have them by the dozen. Nothing easier--for pretty women
+of any age who want to be made love to. As for Rush--" She hesitated,
+then added generously, "he has a future, I think, and could take you
+somewhere else."
+
+"I should be like a fish out of water anywhere but in Elsinore. I have
+no delusions. Forty-two is not young--that is to say, it is long past
+the adaptable age, unless a woman has spent her life on the move and
+filling it with variety. I love Elsinore as a cat loves its hearth-rug.
+And I can get to New York in an hour. I think this would be the ideal
+life with about two thousand dollars more a year, and--and--"
+
+"Dave Balfame somewhere else! Pity Sam Cummack didn't turn him into a
+travelling salesman instead of planting him here."
+
+"He's never been interested in anything in his life but politics. But I
+don't really bother about him," she added lightly. "I have him well
+trained. After all, he never comes home to lunch, he interferes with me
+very little, he goes to the Elks every night soon after dinner, and he
+falls asleep the minute he gets into bed. Why, he doesn't even snore.
+And he carries his liquor pretty well. I guess you can't expect much
+more than that after twenty-two years of matrimony. I notice that if it
+isn't one thing it's another."
+
+"Good Lord! Well, I wish he'd break his neck."
+
+"Oh, Anna!"
+
+"Well, of course I didn't mean it. But I see so many good people die--so
+many lovely children--I'm sort of callous, I guess. I make no bones of
+wishing that he'd died of typhoid fever last week, instead of poor Joe
+Morton, who had a wife and two children to support, and was the salt of
+the earth--"
+
+"You might give Dave a few germs in a capsule!" Mrs. Balfame interrupted
+in her lightest tones, although she turned her face away. "Or that
+untraceable poison you once showed me. A bottle of that would finish
+him!"
+
+"A drop and none the wiser." Dr. Anna's contralto tones were gloomy and
+morose. "Unfortunately, I am not scientific enough for cold-blooded
+murder. I'm a silly old Utopian who wishes that a plague would come and
+sweep all the undesirables from the earth and let us start fair with our
+modern wisdom. Then I suppose we'd bore one another to death until
+original sin cropped out again. Better speed up, I guess. I've a full
+evening ahead of me."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+The "smart set" of Elsinore was composed of the twelve women that could
+afford to lose most at bridge. Mrs. Balfame, who could ill afford to
+lose anything, but who was both a scientific and a lucky player,
+insisted upon moderate stakes. The other members of this inner exclusive
+circle were the wives of two bankers, three contractors, two prosperous
+merchants, one judge, one doctor, and two commuters who made their
+incomes in New York and slept in Elsinore. These ladies made it a point
+of honor to dine at seven, dress smartly and appropriately for all
+occasions, attend everything worth while to which they could obtain
+entrance in New York, pay an occasional visit to Europe, read the new
+novels and attend the symphony concerts. It is superfluous to add that
+the very foundation of the superior social status of each was a large
+house of the affluent type peculiar to the prosperous annexes of old
+communities, half brick and half wood, shallow, characterless,
+impersonal; and a fine car with a limousine top. The house stood in the
+midst of a lawn sloping to the street, unconfined by even the box hedge
+and undivided from the neighbouring grounds. The garage, little less
+pretentious than the mansion, also faced the street, for all to see.
+There was hardly a horse left in Elsinore; taxi cabs awaited the
+traveller at the station, and people that could not afford handsome cars
+purchased and enjoyed the inexpensive runabout.
+
+Mrs. Balfame had segregated her smart set for strategic reasons, but
+that did not mean that both she and they were not kindness itself to the
+less favoured. Obviously, an imposing party cannot be given by twelve
+families alone, especially when almost half their number are childless.
+On all state occasions the list of invited numbered several hundred, in
+that town of some five thousand inhabitants.
+
+It said much for the innate nobility of these wealthier dames of
+Elsinore, who read the New York society papers quite as attentively as
+they did the war news, that they submitted without a struggle to the
+dominance of a woman who never had possessed a car and whose husband's
+income was so often diverted from its natural course; but Mrs. Balfame
+not only outclassed them in inflexibility of purpose, but her family was
+as old as Brabant County; the Dawbarns had never been in what might be
+called the cavalry regiment, consisting of those few chosen ones living
+in old colonial houses set in large estates and with both roots and
+branches in the city of New York; but no one disputed their right to be
+called Captains of the infantry. And Mrs. Balfame, sole survivor in the
+direct line, had two wealthy cousins in Brooklyn.
+
+Once in a while Dr. Anna, a privileged character, and born at least in
+Brabant County, took a hand at bridge, but she was a poor player, and,
+upon the rare occasions when she found time to spend a Saturday
+afternoon at the Country Club, preferred to rest in a deep chair and
+watch the young folks flirt and dance until the informal supper was
+ready. Never had she tripped a step, but she loved youth, and it gave
+her an acute old maid's delight to observe the children grow up;
+snub-nosed, freckled-faced awkward school girls develop at a flying leap
+into slim American prettiness, enhanced with every late exaggeration of
+style. She also approved heartily, on hygienic grounds, of the friends
+of her own generation dancing, even in public, if their partners were
+not too young and their forms too cumbersome.
+
+Mrs. Balfame and Dr. Anna arrived at the Club shortly after four
+o'clock. Young people swarmed everywhere, within and without; perhaps
+twenty older matrons were sitting on the veranda knitting those
+indeterminate toilette accessories for the Belgians which always seemed
+to be about to halt at precisely the same stage of progress.
+
+Mrs. Balfame, who had set the fashion, had not brought her needles
+to-day. She went directly to the card room; but her partner for the
+tournament not having arrived, she entertained her impatient friends
+with a recent domestic episode.
+
+"I have a German servant, you know," she said, removing her wraps and
+taking her seat at the table. "A good creature and a hard worker, but
+leaden-footed and dull beyond belief. Still, I suppose even the dullest
+peasant has spite in her make-up. I have been reading tomes of books on
+the war, as you learned from painful experience yesterday; most of them,
+as it happened--a good joke on Anna that, as she gave me the list--quite
+antagonistic to Germany. One day when Frieda should have been dusting I
+caught her scowling over the chapter heads of one of them. Of course she
+reads English--she has been here several years. Day before yesterday,
+when I was knitting, she asked me whom I was knitting for, and I told
+her--for the Belgians, of course. She asked me in a sort of growl why I
+didn't knit for the homeless in East Prussia--it seems that is where she
+comes from and she has been having letters full of horrors. I seldom
+bandy words with a servant, for you can't permit the slightest
+familiarity in this country if you want to get any work out of them. But
+as she scowled as if she would like to explode a shrapnel under me, and
+as she is the third I have had in the last five months, I said
+soothingly that the newspaper correspondents had neglected the eastern
+theatre of war, but had harrowed our feelings so about the Belgians that
+we felt compelled to do what we could for them. Then I asked her--I was
+really curious--if she had no sympathy for those thousands of afflicted
+women and children, merely because they were the victims of the Germans.
+She has a big soft face with thick lips, little eyes, and a rudimentary
+nose; generally as expressionless as such a face is bound to be. But
+when I asked her this question it suddenly seemed to turn to wood--not
+actively cruel; it merely expressed the negation of all human sympathy.
+She turned without a word and slumped--pardon the expression--out of the
+room. But the breakfast was burned this morning--I had to cook another
+for poor David--and I know she did it on purpose. I am afraid I shall
+have to let her go."
+
+"I would," said Mrs. Battle, wisely. "She is probably a spy and quite
+clever."
+
+"Yes, but such a worker!" Mrs. Balfame sighed reminiscently. "And when
+you have but one servant--"
+
+The tardy partner bustled in and the game began.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+It was about six o'clock when Mrs. Balfame, steadily losing, contrary to
+all precedent, her mind concentrated, her features, like those of the
+rest of the players, as hard as the stone faces dug out of Egypt, her
+breath escaping in hissing jets, became vaguely conscious of a
+disturbance in the outer room. The young people were dancing, as was
+usual in the hour before supper, but the piano and fiddles appeared to
+be playing against the ribald interruptions of a man's voice. It was
+some time before the narrow flow of thought in Mrs. Balfame's brain was
+deflected by the powerful outer current, but suddenly she became aware
+that her partners were holding their cards suspended, and that their
+ears were cocked toward the door. Then she recognised her husband's
+voice.
+
+For a moment she lost her breath and her blood ran chill. She had been
+apprehensive for some time of a scene in public, but she had assumed
+that it would occur in a friend's house of an evening; he attended her
+nowhere else. The Club he had deserted long since; it was much too slow
+for a man of his increasing proclivities, especially in a county
+liberally provided with saloons and road houses.
+
+During the last month she had become sensible of a new hostility in his
+attitude toward her; it was as if he had suddenly penetrated her hidden
+aversion and all his masculine vanity had risen in revolt. Being a
+woman of an almost excessive tact, she had sprayed this vanity for
+twenty-two years with the delicately scented waters of flattery, but the
+springs had gone suddenly dry on that morning when she had uttered her
+simple and natural desire to bring the conjugal sleeping accommodations
+up to date.
+
+And now he had come out here to disgrace her, she immediately concluded,
+to make her a figure of fun, to destroy her social leadership. This
+might also involve him in a loss, but when a man is both drunk and angry
+his foresight grows dim and revenge is sweet.
+
+Only last night there had been an intensely disagreeable scene in
+private; that is to say, she had been dignified and slightly
+contemptuous, while he had shouted that her knitting got on his nerves,
+and the sight of all those books on the war made him sick. When the
+whole business of the country was held up by this accursed war, a man
+would like to forget it when at home. And every man had the same story,
+by God; his wife was knitting when she ought to be darning stockings;
+trying to be intellectual by concerning herself with a subject that
+concerned men alone. Mr. Balfame had always resented the Woman's Club,
+and all talk of votes for a sex that would put him and his kind out of
+business. Their intelligent interest in the war was a grievous personal
+indignity.
+
+Being a woman of clear thought and firm purpose, and of a really high
+order of moral courage, Mrs. Balfame was daunted for a moment only. She
+laid down her cards, opened the door and entered the main room of the
+club-house. There she saw, at the head of the room, a group of men
+surrounding her husband; with one exception, almost as excited as he.
+The exception was Dwight Rush who had a hand on one of Balfame's
+shoulders and appeared to be addressing him in a low tone. Little Maude
+Battle ran forward and grasped her arm.
+
+"Oh, dear Mrs. Balfame," she gasped, "do take him home. He is
+so--so--queer. He snatched three girls away from their partners, and the
+boys are so mad. And his language--oh, it was something awful."
+
+The women and girls were huddled in groups, all but Alys Crumley, who,
+Mrs. Balfame vaguely realised, was sketching. Their eyes were fixed on
+the group at the head of the room, where Rush was now trying to edge the
+burly swaying figure toward the door.
+
+Mrs. Balfame walked directly up to her flushed and infuriated spouse.
+
+"You are not well, David," she said peremptorily. "In all the years of
+our married life never have you acted like this. I am sure that you are
+getting typhoid fever--"
+
+"To hell with typhoid fever!" shouted Mr. Balfame. "I'm drunk, that's
+what. And I'll be drunker when they let me into the bar. You get out of
+this."
+
+Mrs. Balfame turned to Dr. Anna, who had marched up the room beside her.
+"I am sure it is fever," she said with decision, and the loyal Anna
+nodded sagely. "You know that liquor never affects him. We must get him
+home."
+
+"Huh!" jeered Balfame, "you two get me home! I'm not so drunk I can't
+see the joke of that. The matter with you is you think I'm disgracin'
+you, and you want to go on bein' the high cock-alorum of this bunch.
+Well, I'm sick of it, and I'm sick of bein' told to eat out when you're
+at matinees or that damned Woman's Club. Home's the place for women.
+Knittin's all right." He laughed uproariously. "But stay at home by the
+fire and knit your husband's socks. Smoke a pipe too, if you like it.
+That's what my granny did. The whole lot of you women haven't got one
+good man's brain between you, and yet you'd talk the head off the
+President of the United States--"
+
+He was about to launch upon his opinion of Elsinore society when a
+staccato cough interrupted the flow. Mrs. Balfame turned away with a
+gesture of superb disdain, although her face was livid.
+
+"The sex jealousy we have so often discussed!" Her clear tones from the
+first had carried all over the room. "He must be taken home." She looked
+at Dwight Rush and said graciously: "I am sure he will go with you. And
+he will apologise to the Club when he is himself again. I shall go back
+to our game."
+
+She held her head very high as she swept down the long room, but her jaw
+was set, her nostrils distended, a narrow strip of eye was fixed and
+glaring.
+
+An unforeseen situation had blown to flame such fires of anger as
+existed in her depths, and she was unable to extinguish them as quickly
+as she would have wished. To the intense surprise of the bridge women
+who had followed her out of the card-room and in again, she sank into a
+chair and burst into tears. But she managed to cry quietly into her
+handkerchief, and in a few moments had her voice under control.
+
+"He has disgraced me!" she exclaimed bitterly. "I must resign from the
+Club."
+
+"Well, I guess not." The ladies had crowded about her sympathetically.
+"We'll all stand up for you," cried Mrs. Battle. "The men will give him
+a good talking-to, and he'll write an apology to the Club and that will
+end it."
+
+These friends, old and more recent, were embarrassed in their genuine
+sympathy, for no one had ever seen Mrs. Balfame in tears before. Vaguely
+they regretted that, extreme as was the provocation, she should have
+descended to the level of mere womanhood. It was as if they were present
+at the opening of a new chapter in the life of Mrs. Balfame of Elsinore;
+as, in truth, they were.
+
+Mrs. Balfame blew her nose. "Pardon me," she said. "I never believed I
+should break down like this--but--but--" once more she set her teeth and
+her eyes flashed. "I have a violent headache. I must go home. I cannot
+finish the game."
+
+"I'll take you home," Dr. Anna spoke. "Oh, that beast!"
+
+The other women kissed Mrs. Balfame, straightened her hat, and escorted
+her out to the runabout which Dr. Anna brought to the rear entrance of
+the clubhouse. She smiled wearily at the group, touching her brow with a
+finger. As soon as the little car had left the grounds and was beyond
+the reach of peering eyes, she made no further attempt at self-control,
+but poured forth her inmost soul to the one person she had ever fully
+trusted. She told the doctor all the secret horror of her life, her
+hatred and loathing of David Balfame; everything, in short, but her
+determination to kill him, which in the novel excitement that had
+invaded her nervous system, she forgot.
+
+Dr. Anna, who had heard many such confessions, but who obstinately had
+hoped that her friend's case was not as bad as it appeared
+superficially, was glad that she was not driving a horse; humane as she
+was, she should have forgotten herself and lashed him to relieve her own
+feelings.
+
+"You must get a divorce," she said through her teeth. "You really must.
+I saw Rush looking at you. There is no mistaking that expression in a
+man's eyes. You must--you must divorce that brute."
+
+"I'll not!" Mrs. Balfame's composure returned abruptly. "And please
+forget that I gave way like this and--and said things." She wondered
+what she really had said. "I know I need not ask you never to mention
+it. But divorce! Oh, no. If I continue to live with him they'll be sorry
+for me and stand by me, but if I divorced him--well, I'd just be one
+more divorced woman and nothing more. Elsinore isn't Newport. Moreover,
+they'd feel I'd no further need of their sympathy. In time they'd let me
+pretty well alone."
+
+"I don't think much of your arguments," said Dr. Anna. "You could marry
+Rush and go to New York."
+
+"But you know I mean what I say. And don't worry, Anna dear." She bent
+over the astonished doctor and gave her a warm kiss. "And as I'm not
+demonstrative, you know I mean that too. You are not to worry about me.
+I've got the excuse I needed, and I'm going to buy some things at second
+hand and refurnish one of the old bedrooms and live in it. He can't say
+a word after this, and he'll be humble enough, for the men will make him
+apologise to the Club. I'll threaten him with divorce, and that alone
+will make him behave himself, for it would cost him a good deal more to
+pay me alimony than to keep the old house going--"
+
+"That isn't an argument that will have much effect on a man, usually in
+liquor. But women are queer cattle. Divorce is a great and beneficent
+institution, and here you elect to go on living under the same roof with
+a brute--Oh, well, it's your own funeral. Here we are. I've got to speed
+up and practise medicine. Am expecting a call from out at Houston's any
+minute. Baby. Good night."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+Mrs. Balfame let herself into the dark house. Saturday was Frieda's
+night out.
+
+Contrary to her economical habit, she lighted up the lower floor
+recklessly, and opened the windows; she felt an overwhelming desire for
+light and air. But as she wished to think and plan with her accustomed
+clarity she went at once to the pantry in search of food; the blood was
+still in her head.
+
+The morrow would be Sunday, and the Saturday luncheon was always
+composed of the remains of the Friday dinner. On Saturday she dined at
+the Country Club. Therefore Mrs. Balfame found nothing with which to
+accomplish her deliberate scientific purpose but dry bread and a box of
+sardines. She was opening this delectable when the front door bell rang.
+
+Her set face relaxed into a frown, but she went briskly to the door. The
+poison might be transpirable after all, and her alibi must be perfect;
+she had changed her mind about going to bed with a headache, and at ten
+o'clock, when she knew that several of her childless friends would be at
+home, she purposed to call them up and thank them sweetly and
+cheerfully.
+
+When she saw Dwight Rush on the stoop, however, she almost closed the
+door in his scowling face.
+
+"Let me in!" he commanded.
+
+"No!" She spoke with sweet severity. "I shall not. After such a scene? I
+must be more careful than ever. Go right away. I, at least, shall
+continue to be above reproach."
+
+"Oh!" He swallowed the natural expression of masculine irritation. "If
+you won't let me in I'll say what I've got to say right here. Will you
+divorce that brute and marry me? I can get you a divorce on half a dozen
+grounds."
+
+"I'll have no divorce, now or ever." Mrs. Balfame of Elsinore spoke with
+haughty finality. "I abominate the word." Then she added graciously:
+"But don't think I am unappreciative of your kindness. Now you must go
+away. The Gifnings live on the corner, and they always come home early."
+
+"A good many have left, including Balfame. He spoilt the evening." Rush
+stared at her and ground his teeth. "By God! I wish the old duelling
+days were back again. I'd call him out. If you say the word I'll pick a
+quarrel with him anyhow. He carries a gun, and there isn't a jury in
+Brabant County that wouldn't acquit me on the plea of self-defence. My
+conscience would trouble me no more than if I had shot a mad dog."
+
+Mrs. Balfame gave a little gasp, which he mistook for horror. But
+temptation had assailed her. Why not? Her own opportunity might be long
+in coming. It would be like Dave Balfame to go away and stay for a
+month. But the temptation passed swiftly. Human nature is too complex
+for any mere mortal to reduce to the rule of three. While she could
+dispose of her husband without a qualm, her conscience revolted from
+turning an upright citizen like Dwight Rush into a murderer.
+
+She closed the door abruptly, knowing that no mere verbal refusal to
+accept such an offer would be adequate, and he went slowly down the
+steps. But in a moment he ran back and a few feet down the veranda,
+thrusting his head through one of the open windows.
+
+"Just one minute!"
+
+She was passing the parlour door and paused.
+
+"Promise me that if you are in trouble you will send for me. For no one
+else; no other man, that is, but me. You owe me that much."
+
+"Yes, I promise." She spoke more softly and smiled.
+
+"And close these windows. It is not safe to leave veranda windows open
+at this hour."
+
+"I intended to close them before going up stairs. But--perhaps you will
+understand--the house when I came in seemed to reek with tobacco and
+liquor--with him!"
+
+His reply was inarticulate, but he pulled down the windows violently,
+and she locked them, smiling once more before she turned out the light.
+
+She returned to the dining-room, thinking upon food with distaste, but
+determined to eat until her head felt normal. She had no intention of
+speaking to her husband should he return, for she purposed to sleep on a
+sofa in the sewing-room and lock the door, but tones and brain must be
+lightly poised when she telephoned to her friends.
+
+The telephone bell rang. Once more she frowned, but answered the summons
+as promptly as she had opened the front door. To her amazement she heard
+her husband's voice.
+
+"Say," it said thickly, "I'm sorry. Promise not to take another drink
+for a month. Sorry, too, I've got to go to the house for a few minutes.
+Didn't intend to go home to-night--thought I'd give you time to get over
+bein' as mad as I guess you've got a right to be. But I got to go to
+Albany--politics--got to go to-night--must go home and get my grip.
+You--you--wouldn't pack it, would you? Then I needn't stay so long. Only
+got to sort some papers myself."
+
+Mrs. Balfame replied in the old wifely tones that so often had caused
+him to grit his teeth: "I never hold a man in your condition responsible
+for anything. Of course I'll pack your suitcase. What is more, I'll have
+a glass of lemonade ready, with aromatic spirits of ammonia in it. You
+must sober up before you start on a journey."
+
+"That's the ticket. You're a corker! Put in a bromide, too. I'm at
+Sam's, and I guess I'll walk over--need the air. You just go on bein'
+sweet and I'll bring you something pretty from Albany."
+
+"I want one of those new chiffon-velvet bags, and you will please get it
+in New York," she said practically. "I'll write an exact description of
+it and put it in the suitcase."
+
+"All right. Go ahead." His accents breathed profound relief, and
+although her brain was working at lightning speed, and her eyes were but
+a pale bar of light, she curled her lip scornfully at the childishness
+of man, as she hung up the receiver.
+
+She made the glass of lemonade, added the usual allowance of aromatic
+spirits of ammonia and bromide--a bottle of each was kept in the
+sideboard ready for instant use--then ran upstairs and returned with the
+colourless liquid she had purloined from Dr. Anna's cupboard.
+
+Her scientific friend had remarked that one drop would suffice, but
+being a mere female herself she doubled the dose to make sure; and then
+set the glass conspicuously in the middle of the table. The half opened
+can of sardines and the plate of bread were quite forgotten, and once
+more she ran upstairs, this time to pack his useless clothes.
+
+She performed this wifely office with efficiency, forgetting nothing,
+not even the hair tonic he was administering to a spreading bald spot, a
+bottle of digestive tablets, a pair of the brown kid gloves he affected
+when dressed up, and a volume of detective fiction. Then she wrote a
+minute description of the newest fashion in hand bags and pinned it to
+his dinner jacket. The suitcase was an alibi in itself.
+
+When she had packed it and strapped it and carried it down to the
+dining-room, returned to her room and locked the door, she realised that
+she had prolonged these commonplace duties in behalf of her nerves.
+Those well-disciplined rebels of the human system were by no means
+driven to cover, and this annoyed her excessively.
+
+She had no fear of not rising to precisely the proper pitch when she
+heard her husband fall dead in the dining-room, for she always had risen
+automatically to every occasion for which she was in any measure
+prepared, and to many that had caught her unaware. It was the ordeal of
+waiting for the climax that made her nerves jeer at her will, and she
+found that a series of pictures was marching monotonously through her
+mind, again, and again, and yet again: with that interior vision she saw
+her husband walk unsteadily up the street, swing open the gate, slam it
+defiantly, insert his latch-key; she saw his eye drawn to the light in
+the dining-room at the end of the dark hall, saw him drink the lemonade,
+drop to the floor with a fall that shook the house; she saw herself
+running down, calling out his name, shattering the glass on the floor,
+then running distractedly across the street to the Gifnings'--and again
+and still again.
+
+She had been pacing the room. It occurred to her that she could vary the
+monotony by watching for him, and she put out her light and drew aside
+the sash curtain. In a moment she caught her breath.
+
+Her room was on a corner of the house and commanded not only the front
+walk leading down to Elsinore Avenue, but the grounds on the left. In
+these grounds was a large grove of ancient maples, where, dressed in
+white, she passed many pleasant hours in summer with a book or her
+friends. The trees, with their low thick branches still laden with
+leaves, cast a heavy shade, but her gaze, moving unconsciously from the
+empty street, suddenly saw a black and moving shadow in that black and
+almost solid mass of shadows.
+
+She watched intently. A figure undoubtedly was moving from tree to tree,
+as if selecting a point of vantage, or restless from one of several
+conceivable causes.
+
+Could it be her husband, summoning his courage to enter and face her?
+She had known him in that mood. But she dismissed the suggestion. He had
+inferred from her voice that she was both weary and placated, and he was
+far more likely to come swaggering down the avenue singing one of his
+favourite tunes; he fancied his voice.
+
+Frieda never returned before midnight, and then, although she entered
+by the rear hall door and stole quietly up the back stairs, she would be
+quite without shame if confronted.
+
+Therefore, it must be a burglar.
+
+There could not have been a more welcome distraction. Mrs. Balfame was
+cool and alert at once. As an antidote to rebellious nerves awaiting the
+consummation of an unlawful act, a burglar may be recommended to the
+most amateurish assassin.
+
+Mrs. Balfame put on her heavy automobile coat, wrapped her head and face
+in a dark veil, transferred her pistol from the table drawer to a
+pocket, and went softly down the stairs. She left the house by the
+kitchen door, and, after edging round the corner stood still until her
+eyes grew accustomed to the dark. Then, once, more, she saw that moving
+shadow.
+
+She dared not risk crossing the lawn directly from the house to the
+grove, but made a long detour at the back, keeping on the grass,
+however, that her footsteps should make no noise.
+
+A moment or two and she was within the grove. She saw the shadow detach
+itself again, but it was impossible to determine its size or sex,
+although she inferred from its hard laboured breathing that the
+potential thief was a man.
+
+He appeared to be making craftily for the house, no doubt with the
+intention of opening one of the lower windows; and she stalked him with
+a newly awakened instinct, her nostrils expanding. The original resolve
+to kill her husband had induced no excitement at all; even Dwight Rush's
+love-making had thrilled her but faintly; but this adventure in the
+night, stalking a house-breaker, presently to confront him with the
+command to raise his hands, cast a momentary light upon the emotional
+moments experienced by the highly organised.
+
+Suddenly she heard her husband's voice. He was approaching Elsinore
+Avenue from one of the nearby streets, and he was singing, with
+physiological interruptions, "Tipperary," a song he had cultivated of
+late to annoy his political rival, an American of German birth and
+terrific German sympathies. He was walking quickly, as top-heavy men
+sometimes will.
+
+She drew back and crouched. To make her presence known would be to turn
+over the burglar to her husband and detain the essential victim from the
+dining-room table.
+
+She saw the shadow dodge behind a tree. Balfame appeared almost abruptly
+in the light shed by the street lamp in front of his gate; and then it
+seemed to her that she had held her breath for a lifetime before her
+ears were stunned by a sharp report, her eyes blinked at a spurt of
+fire, before she heard David Balfame give a curious sound, half moan,
+half hiccough, saw him clutch at the gate, then sink to the ground.
+
+She was hardly conscious of running, far more conscious that some one
+else was running--through the orchard and toward the back fence.
+
+Hours later, it seemed to her, she was in the kitchen closing the door
+behind her. Something curious had happened in her brain, so trained to
+orderly routine that it seldom prompted an erratic course.
+
+She should have run at once to her husband, and here she was inside the
+house, and once more listening intently. It was the fancied sound that
+swung her consciousness back to its balance. She went to the front of
+the back stairs and called sharply:
+
+"Frieda!"
+
+There was no answer.
+
+"Frieda," she called again. "Did you hear anything? I thought I heard
+some one trying to open the back door."
+
+Again there was no answer.
+
+Then, her lip curling at the idea of Frieda's return on Saturday night
+at eight o'clock, she went rapidly into the dining-room, carried the
+glass containing the lemonade into the kitchen, rinsed it thoroughly,
+and put it away.
+
+It was not until she reached her room that it occurred to her that she
+should have ascertained whether or not the key was on the inside of the
+rear hall door.
+
+But this was merely a flitting thought; there were loud and excited
+voices down by the gate. In an instant she had hung up her automobile
+cloak and veil, changed her dress for a wrapper, let down her hair and
+thrown open the window.
+
+"What is the matter?" Her tone was peremptory but apprehensive.
+
+"Matter enough!" John Gifning's voice was rough and broken. "Don't come
+out here. Mean to say you didn't hear a shot?"
+
+Two or three men were running about nearer the house. One paused under
+her window, and looked up, waving his hand vaguely.
+
+"Shot? Shot? I heard--so many tires explode--What do you mean? What is
+it?--Who--"
+
+"Here's the coroner!" cried one of the group at the gate.
+
+"Coroner?"
+
+She ran down stairs, threw open the front door and went as swiftly
+toward the gate, her hair streaming behind her.
+
+"Who is it?" she demanded.
+
+"Now--now." Mr. Gifning intercepted her and clasped her shoulder firmly.
+"You don't want to go down there--and don't take on--"
+
+She drew herself up haughtily. "I am not an hysterical woman. Who has
+been shot down at my gate?"
+
+"Well," blurted out Gifning. "I guess you'll have to know. It's poor old
+Dave."
+
+Mrs. Balfame drew herself still higher and stood quite rigid for a
+moment; then the coroner, one of her husband's friends, came up the path
+and said in a low tone to Gifning, "Take her upstairs. We're goin' to
+bring him in. He's gone, for a fact."
+
+Mr. Gifning pushed her gently along the path, as the others lifted the
+limp body and tramped slowly behind. "You go up and have a good cry," he
+said. "I'll 'phone for the Cummacks. I guess it was bound to come.
+There's been hot times in Dobton lately--"
+
+"Do you mean that he was deliberately murdered?"
+
+"Looks like it, seeing that he didn't do it himself. The damned hound
+was skulking in the grove. Of course he's made off, but we'll get him
+all right."
+
+Mrs. Balfame walked slowly up the stair, her head bowed, while the heavy
+inert mass so lately abhorrent to his wife and several politicians was
+laid on the sofa in the parlour whose evolutions had annoyed him.
+
+Mr. Gifning telephoned to the dead man's brother-in-law, then for the
+police and the undertaker.
+
+Mrs. Balfame sat down and awaited the inevitable bombardment of her
+privacy by her more intimate friends. Already shriller voices were
+mingling with the heavier tones down on the lawn and out in the avenue.
+The news seemed to have been flashed from one end of Elsinore to the
+other.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+Mrs. Balfame sat with Mrs. Battle, Mrs. Gifning, Mrs. Frew, her
+sister-in-law, Mrs. Cummack, and several of her other friends in her
+quiet bed-chamber. It was an hour after the death of David Balfame and
+she had, for the seventh time, told the story of packing her husband's
+suit case, carrying it down stairs, returning to her room to undress,
+hearing the commotion down by the gate. Yes, she had heard a report, but
+Elsinore Avenue--automobiles--exploding tires--naturally, it had meant
+nothing to her at the moment. No, he did not cry out--or if he did--her
+window was closed; it was the side window she left open at night.
+
+She had accepted a bottle of smelling salts from Mrs. Battle, but sat
+quite erect, looking stunned and frozen. Her voice was expressionless,
+wearily reiterating a few facts to gratify the curiosity of these
+well-meaning friends, as wearily listening to Lottie Gifning's
+reiteration of her own story: As the night was warmer than usual she and
+her husband and the two friends that had motored in with them had sat on
+the porch for awhile; they had heard "Dave" come singing down Dawbarn
+Street; two or three minutes later the shot. Of course the men ran over
+at once, but for at least ten minutes she was too frightened to move.
+One of the men ran for the coroner; if "poor Dave" wasn't dead they
+wanted to take him at once where he would be comfortable.
+
+Mrs. Balfame's demeanour was all these solicitous friends could have
+wished; although they enjoyed tears and emotional scenes as much as any
+women, they were gratified to be reassured that their Mrs. Balfame was
+not as other women; they still regretted her breakdown at the Club,
+although resentfully conscious of loving her the more. And if they
+wanted tears, here was Polly Cummack shedding them in abundance for the
+brother she now reproached herself for having utterly despised.
+
+Below there was a subdued hum of voices, within and without. The police
+had come tearing up in an automobile and ordered the amateur detectives
+out of the grounds; their angry voices had been heard demanding how the
+qualified fools expected the original footsteps to be detected after
+such a piece of idiocy.
+
+Mrs. Balfame had shaken her head sadly. "They'll find nothing," she
+said. "If only I had known, I could have called down to them to keep out
+of the yard."
+
+"Now, who do you suppose that is?" Mrs. Battle, who was short and stout
+and corseted to her knees, toddled over to the window and leaned out as
+two automobiles raced each other down the avenue. They stopped at the
+gate, and in a moment Mrs. Battle announced: "The New York newspaper
+men!"
+
+"Already?" Mrs. Balfame glanced at the clock and stifled a yawn. "Why,
+it's hardly an hour--"
+
+"Oh, a year or so from now they'll be coming over in bi-planes. Well, if
+our poor old boobs of police don't unearth the murderer, they will. They
+are the prize sleuths. They'll find a scent, or spin one out of their
+brains as a spider spins his web out of his little tummy--"
+
+Mrs. Cummack interrupted: "Sam is sure it is Old Dutch. He's gone with
+the constable to Dobton."
+
+Dobton, the county seat, and the centre of the political activities of
+East Brabant, intimately connected with the various "towns" by trolley
+and telephone, embraced the domicile of Mr. Konrad Kraus, amiably known
+as "Old Dutch." His home was in the rear of his flourishing saloon,
+which was the headquarters of the county Republicans. David Balfame had
+patronised--rumour said financed--the saloon of an American sired by
+Erin.
+
+Another automobile dashed up. "Sam, I think; yes, it is," cried Mrs.
+Battle.
+
+A few moments later Mr. Cummack appeared upon the threshold.
+
+"Nothin' doin'," he said gruffly. "Old Dutch's got a perfect alibi. Been
+behind the bar since six o'clock. It's up to us now to find out if he
+hired a gunman; and we're on the trail of others too. Poor Dave had his
+enemies all right."
+
+He paused and looked tentatively at his weary but heroic sister-in-law.
+His own face was haggard, and the walrus moustache he had brought out of
+the North-west was covered not only with dust but with little moist
+islands made by furtive tears. With that exquisite sympathy and
+comprehension that men have for the failings of other men, which far
+surpasseth that of woman, he had loved his imperfect friend, but he had
+a profound admiration for his sister-in-law, whom he neither loved nor
+pretended to understand. He knew her surfaces, however, as well as any
+one, and would have been deeply disappointed if she had carried herself
+in this trying hour contrary to her usual high standard of conduct. Enid
+Balfame, indeed, was almost a legend in Elsinore, and into this legend
+she could retire as into a fortress, practically impregnable.
+
+"Say, Enid," he said hesitatingly. "These reporters--the New York
+chaps--the local men wouldn't dare ask--want an interview. What do you
+say?"
+
+Mrs. Balfame merely turned her haughty head and regarded him with icy
+disdain. "Are they crazy? Or you?"
+
+"Well, not the way they look at it. You see, it's up to them to fill a
+column or two every morning, and there's nothing touches a new crime
+with a mystery. So far, they haven't got much out of this but the bare
+fact that poor Dave was shot down at his own gate, presumably by some
+one hid in the grove. An interview with the bereaved widow would make
+what they call a corking story."
+
+"Tell them to go away at once." She leaned back against her chair and
+closed her eyes. Mrs. Gifning flew to hold the salts to her nose.
+
+"Better see them," persisted Mr. Cummack. "They'll haunt the house till
+you do. They're crazy about this case--hasn't been a decent murder for
+months, nothin' much doin' in any line, and everybody sick of the war.
+The Germans take a trench in the morning papers and lose it in the
+evening--"
+
+"Sam Cummack! How dare you joke at a time like this?" His wife ran
+forward and attempted to push him out of the room, and the other ladies
+had risen and faced him with manifest indignation.
+
+Suddenly Mrs. Cummack put her arms about him and patted the top of his
+head. He had burst into tears and was rubbing his eyes on his sleeve.
+"Poor old Dave!" he sobbed. "I'm all in. But I'll find that low-down cur
+who killed him, cut him off in his prime, if it takes the last cent I've
+got."
+
+Mrs. Balfame rose and crossed to his side. She put her hand on his
+shoulder. "I never should have suspected that you had such depth of
+feeling, Sam," she said softly, "I am sure that the cowardly murderer
+will be caught and that yours will be the glory. Send those
+inconsiderate reporters away."
+
+Mr. Cummack shook his head. "As well talk of calling off the police.
+They'll be round here day and night till the man is in Dobton
+jail--longer, for they know the public will want an interview with the
+widow. Better see them, Enid."
+
+"I shall not." Mrs. Balfame put her hand to her head and reeled. "Oh, I
+am so tired! So tired! What a day. Oh, how I wish Anna were here."
+
+Three of the women caught her and led her to her chair. "Anna!" she
+reiterated. "I must have something to make me sleep--"
+
+"I'll call her up!" volunteered Mrs. Gifning. "I do hope she is at
+home--"
+
+"She was to go out to the Houston farm," interrupted Mrs. Cummack. "She
+stopped at our house on the way out--Sammy has bronchitis--"; and Mrs.
+Gifning, who was as nervous as the widow should have been, ran down to
+the telephone, elated at being the one chosen to horrify poor Dr. Anna
+while engaged in the everlasting battle for life.
+
+"I'll stay with Enid till Anna comes," volunteered Mrs. Cummack. "I
+guess she'd better be quiet. One of you might make coffee for those that
+are going to sit up--"
+
+"Frieda's doin' that," said Mr. Cummack. "They're all in the
+dining-room--"
+
+Mrs. Balfame had left the shelter of Mrs. Cummack's arm and was sitting
+very straight. "Frieda? This is her night out--"
+
+"She was in bed with a toothache, but I routed her out. Well, I'll put
+the men off till to-morrow, but better make up your mind to see them
+then."
+
+He left the room and when Mrs. Balfame was alone with her sister-in-law,
+whom she had never admitted to the sacred inner circle, but who was a
+kind forgiving soul, she smiled affectionately. "Don't be afraid that I
+shall break down," she said. "But those women had got on my nerves. It
+is too kind of you to have dismissed them, and to stay with me yourself
+till Anna comes. It has all been so terrible--and coming so soon after
+what happened at the Club. Thank heaven I did not permit myself to speak
+severely to him, and even when he telephoned for his suit case I was not
+cross--I never would hold a man who had been drinking to strict
+account--"
+
+"Don't you worry your head. He was my brother, but I guess I know what a
+trial he must have been. And if he hadn't been my brother I guess I'd
+say we wouldn't have blamed you much if you had given him a dose of lead
+yourself--"
+
+Mrs. Balfame raised her amazed eyes. But in a moment the weary ghost of
+a smile flitted over her firm mouth, and she asked almost lightly: "Do
+you then believe in removing offensive husbands?"
+
+"Well--of course I'd never have that much courage myself if Sam wasn't
+any better than he should be--he's pretty decent as men go--but I know a
+few husbands right here in Elsinore--well, if their wives gave them
+prussic acid or hot lead they wouldn't lose _my_ friendship, and I guess
+any jury would let them off."
+
+"I guess you're right." Mrs. Balfame was beginning to undress. "I think
+I'll get into bed--But it requires a lot of nerve. And the risk is
+pretty great, you know. Anna once told me of an untraceable and
+tasteless poison she had--"
+
+"Oh, Lord!" Mrs. Cummack may have been too hopelessly without style and
+ambition to be one of the arc lights of the Elsinore smart set, but she
+possessed a sense of humour, and for the moment forgot the abrupt taking
+off of her brother. "Don't let that get round. The poison wouldn't be
+safe for an hour--nor a few husbands. I think I'll warn Anna anyhow--I'm
+not sure I can keep it."
+
+The door opened softly and Mrs. Gifning's fluffy blonde head appeared.
+"I couldn't get Anna herself," she whispered. "The baby hasn't come. But
+Mr. Houston said he'd tell her as soon as it was over, and let her go.
+He was terribly shocked, and sent you his love."
+
+"Thanks, dear," murmured Mrs. Balfame. "I'll try and sleep awhile, and
+Polly has promised to sit with me till Anna comes. Good-night."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+There was a thin cry of life in the nursery of the Houston farm house.
+The mother slept and the new born was in competent hands. Mr. Houston, a
+farmer more prosperous and enterprising than his somewhat weedy
+appearance prefigured, beckoned Dr. Anna into the dining-room, where a
+sleepy but interested "hired girl" had brought hot coffee and
+sandwiches.
+
+The battle had lasted little over three hours, but every moment had been
+fraught with anxiety for the doctor and the husband. Mrs. Houston's
+heart had revealed an unsuspected weakness and the baby had not only
+neglected to head itself towards the gates of life as all proper little
+marathons should, but had exhibited a state of suspended animation for
+at least twenty minutes after its arrival at the goal.
+
+Dr. Anna dropped into a chair beside the table and covered her face with
+her hand.
+
+"I'm all in, I guess," she murmured, and the farmer put down the coffee
+pot and ran for the demijohn.
+
+"You drink this," he said peremptorily. His own hand was shaking, but he
+made no verbal attempt to release his strangled emotions until both he
+and the doctor had drunk of coffee as well as whiskey. Then, when half
+way through a thick sandwich made of slabs of bread and beef, he began
+to thank the doctor incoherently.
+
+"You are just it," he sputtered. "Just about it. And your poor back
+must be broke. You doctors do beat me, particularly you women doctors.
+I'll never say nothin' against women doctors again, though I'll tell you
+now that although poor little Aggie was dead set on you, I opposed it
+for awhile--"
+
+Dr. Anna was sitting up and smiling. She waved his apologies and
+protestations aside. "I can't think what came over me to collapse like
+that. Once or twice lately I have thought I might be getting something.
+I'll have my blood taken to-morrow. Now, I'll go home and get to bed
+quick, although that coffee has made me feel as fine as a fiddle."
+
+"Well, I needed it too, and for more reasons than you. Say--" Mr.
+Houston had risen and was pulling nervously at his short and bosky
+beard. "I got a 'phone from Mrs. Gifning a while ago. You're wanted at
+the Balfames--bad."
+
+Dr. Anna sprang to her feet, her full cheeks pale again. "Enid! What has
+happened to her?"
+
+"Oh, she's all right, I guess. It's Dave--"
+
+"Oh, another gastric attack?"
+
+"Worse and more of it. He was shot--two or three hours ago, I guess. I
+didn't ask the time--was in too big a hurry to get back to Aggie--at his
+own gate, though, I think she said."
+
+"Who did it?"
+
+"Nobody knows."
+
+"Dead?"
+
+"No one'll ever be deader."
+
+"H'm!" The color had come back to Dr. Anna's tired face and she shrugged
+her shoulders. "I'm no hypocrite, and I guess you're not either."
+
+"I'm no more a hypocrite than I am a Democrat. His yellow streak was
+gettin' wider every year. It's good riddance. Still I wish he'd died in
+his bed. I don't like the idea of a fellow citizen, good or bad, bein'
+shot down like that. It's against law and order, and if the murderer's
+caught and I'm drawn on the jury, and it's proved he done it, I'll vote
+for conviction."
+
+"Quite right," said Dr. Anna briskly, as she went out into the hall and
+put on her hat. "I suppose it's Mrs. Balfame who wants me?"
+
+"Yes, that's it. I remember. But you ought to go home and get sleep.
+There's enough women to sit up with her. The hull town likely."
+
+"But I know she wants me." Dr. Anna's face glowed softly. "I'll sleep
+there all right--on a sofa beside her bed--if she wants me to stay on."
+
+"Well, look out for yourself," he growled. "If you don't think about
+yourself a little more you'll soon have no show to think so much about
+other people. I'm goin' for the car."
+
+A few moments later he had brought the little runabout to the door,
+lighted the lamps, and given the doctor a hard grip of the hand.
+
+She returned the pressure in kind. "Now don't worry, Mr. Houston. She's
+all right, and that nurse is first rate. Don't talk to her. Aggie, I
+mean. See you to-morrow about ten."
+
+She drove rapidly out of the gate and into the road. There was a full
+moon shining and the drive was but ten miles between the farm and
+Elsinore. Her face was tired and grim. She had been in daily contact
+with typhoid fever in the poor and dirty quarter of the town. In her
+arduous life she had often experienced healthy fatigue, but nothing
+like this. Could she be coming down?
+
+She swung her thoughts to Enid Balfame, and forgot herself. Free at
+last, and while still young and lovely! Would she marry Dwight Rush? He
+had leaped into her mind simultaneously with the announcement of
+Balfame's death. But was he good enough for Enid? Was any man? Why, now
+that she was a real widow and in no need of a protector, should she
+marry at all? At any rate she could afford to wait. There were greater
+prizes to be captured by a beautiful and still girlish woman.
+
+She was glad for the first time that Enid had never had a child, for
+there was a virgin and mystic appeal in the woman that had escaped the
+common lot. Spinsters lost it, curiously enough, but a chaste and lovely
+matron, who had ignored the book of experience so liberally offered her,
+and with eyes as unalloyed as a girl's (save when flashing with
+intellectual fires)--what more distracting anomaly could the world
+offer? Only Mrs. Balfame's indifference had kept the men away--Dr. Anna
+was convinced of that. Her future was in her own hands.
+
+Dr. Anna's mind wandered to the scene of the murder. It was not
+difficult to construct, even from the meager details, and she shuddered.
+Murder! What a hideous word it was! Horrid that it should even brush the
+name of an exquisite creature like Enid Balfame. Would that Dave Balfame
+could have fallen of apoplexy while disgracing himself at the Club! But
+Anna frowned and shook the picture out of her mind. Doctors are too long
+trained in death to be haunted by its phantoms in any form.
+
+A sharp turn and the road ran beside a salt marsh, a solemn grey
+expanse that lost itself far away in the grey of the sea. Suddenly Dr.
+Anna became aware of a man walking rapidly down the road toward her. He
+carried his hat in his hand as if his head were hot on this cool autumn
+night. There was no fear of man in Dr. Anna, even on lonely country
+roads; nevertheless she had no mind to be detained, and was about to
+increase her speed, when her curiosity was excited by something
+pleasantly familiar in the tall loose figure, the almost stiffly upright
+head. A moment later and the bright moonlight revealed the white face of
+Dwight Rush.
+
+She brought the car to an abrupt halt as he too paused and nodded
+recognition.
+
+"What's the matter?" she asked sharply. "You looked as if you were
+walking to beat time itself--as if you saw a ghost to boot--"
+
+"Plenty of ghosts in my head. It aches like the dickens--"
+
+"Were you there when it happened?"
+
+"When what happened?"
+
+"What? You pretend you don't know--when all Elsinore must have known it
+within five minutes--"
+
+"I don't know what you are talking about. I followed you in from the
+Club and then took the train for Brooklyn, where I had to see a man.
+When I got back to Elsinore--off the train--my head ached so I knew I
+couldn't sleep--so I started out to walk it off--been walking for about
+two hours."
+
+"Dave Balfame was shot down at his own gate three or four hours ago."
+
+"Good God! Who did it? Is he dead?"
+
+"He's dead, and that's about all I can tell you. Houston went to the
+'phone but he was in such a state of mind about his wife that he didn't
+stay for particulars. Enid wanted me--it was Lottie Gifning that
+'phoned. I gathered, however, that they haven't caught the murderer
+yet."
+
+"Jove!" Rush was shaking. "I feel as if I'd been hit in the pit of the
+stomach. And I'm not one to go to pieces, either. But I've a good enough
+reason."
+
+Dr. Anna continued to stare at him. He met her gaze and wonder grew in
+his. Then the blood rushed into his face and he threw back his head.
+"What do you mean? That I did it?"
+
+"No--I don't see you committing murder--"
+
+"Not in that damned skulking way--"
+
+"Exactly. But you kind of suggest that you might know something about
+it. You might have been in the grove, or some other part of the
+grounds--with some idea of protecting Enid--"
+
+"Why should you think that?"
+
+"She told me--I didn't think it a bad idea myself--that you asked her to
+divorce Dave and marry you. But she said she wouldn't and I guess she
+meant it. Now, get in," she added briskly. "I'll drive you home and
+never say I met you. Met anybody else?"
+
+"No one."
+
+"Unless they get the right man at once, everybody who was known to have
+any reason to wish Dave Balfame out of the way will come under
+suspicion. For all you know, somebody may have guessed your secret; I
+saw it in your eyes at the clubhouse when you were trying to get Dave
+out of the room for her sake; but of course I was 'on.' Those New York
+newspaper men, however--watch out for them. They'll fine-tooth-comb the
+county for the man in the case."
+
+Rush had disposed his long legs in the little machine and it was once
+more running swiftly on the smooth road. "My brain is still too hot to
+theorise," he said. "May I smoke? What is your opinion?"
+
+"He had many political enemies; besides, these last two years he's been
+growing more and more unbearable, so I guess he had more than one in his
+own party. But it isn't unlikely that some girl did it. For some reason
+the trollops liked him, and I've met him several times of late driving
+with a red-headed minx that looks as if she could shoot on sight."
+
+"I don't mind telling you that I saw Mrs. Balfame a few minutes after
+you left her. I was boiling. Instead of piloting Balfame out to Sam's
+car I wished that I had run him behind the clubhouse and horsewhipped
+him. We are too civilised these days. I merely went to his house and
+asked his wife if she would divorce the brute and marry me. Two
+centuries ago--maybe one--I'd have picked her up and flung her on my
+horse and galloped off to the woods. We haven't improved; we've merely
+substituted the long-winded and indirect method and called it
+civilisation."
+
+"Just so. Did she let you in?"
+
+"Not she. You might know that without asking. Nor was she any nearer
+divorce than before. When I offered to pick a quarrel with him, she
+merely slammed the door in my face. But I went to the window and made
+her promise that if she were ever in trouble I should be the first
+person she would send for--"
+
+"But you weren't!" Dr. Anna's voice rang with jealous triumph. "I was
+the first. But never mind me. I've adored her for forty years, and you
+haven't known her as many weeks. Tell me, you didn't conceal yourself
+anywhere in the grounds to watch over her? She must have been all alone.
+Every servant in town takes Saturday night out."
+
+"I inferred that Sam would keep him at his house all night. Besides, I
+knew she had a pistol. Balfame told me the day he bought her one in New
+York; when those burglaries began."
+
+"Well, don't tell any one that you offered to dispose of her husband--a
+few moments before he was killed! It might make unnecessary trouble for
+a rising young lawyer."
+
+"I am quite able to do my own thinking and take care of myself," he said
+haughtily, stung by her tone. "If you choose to think me guilty, do so.
+And let me tell you that if I had done it I shouldn't put my head in the
+ash barrel."
+
+"No, but you might do your best to avoid the chair. Small blame to you.
+Well, as I said, you're safe as far as I am concerned. I wouldn't send a
+dog to the chair. That is--" she looked at him threateningly, "if you
+really do love Enid and want to marry her."
+
+"Love her? I'd marry her if she had done it herself and I'd caught her
+red-handed."
+
+"That's the real thing, I guess." She patted his hand approvingly. "I'll
+do what I can to help you. She's not a bit in love with you yet, but
+that's because she's the purest creature on earth and never would let
+herself even dream of a man she couldn't marry. She's one of the last
+grand representatives of the old Puritan stock--and when you see as much
+mean and secret infidelity, dose as many morbid hysterical women, as I
+do--Oh, Lord! No wonder I see Enid Balfame shining with cold radiance in
+the high heavens. I may idealise her a bit, but I don't care. It would
+be a sad old world if you couldn't exalt at least one human above the
+muck-ruck. Well, she likes you, and you have interested her. Just be on
+hand when she wants you, needs you. When this excitement is over and she
+is tired of female gabble, she'll turn to you naturally, if you manage
+her properly and don't butt in too soon. Quiet persistence and tact;
+that's your game. I'll put in a good word."
+
+"By George, you are a good fellow!" He leaned over and kissed her
+impulsively. As Dr. Anna felt the pressure of those warm firm lips on
+her faded cheek, she astonished herself and him by bursting into tears.
+In an instant, however, she dashed them away and gave an odd gurgling
+laugh.
+
+"Don't mind a silly old maid--who loves Enid Balfame more than life, I
+guess. And I'm a country doctor, Dwight, who's had a hard night bringing
+one more unfortunate female into the world. I feel better since I
+cried--first time since you boys used to tease me at school because I
+had cheeks like red pippins--you don't remember me over at school in
+your village. Renselaerville. I lived there for a spell, and I remember
+you. But this isn't the time for reminiscences. Where do you live? We'll
+be in the outskirts in three minutes."
+
+"I have rooms at The Brabant."
+
+"Any night clerk?"
+
+"No; it's an apartment house."
+
+"Good. We're somewhere in the small hours all right."
+
+She drove swiftly through the sleeping town, slowing down on the corner
+of Main Street and Atlantic Avenue. Rush sprang out with a word of
+thanks and walked up the avenue to The Brabant. The trees here were
+neither old nor close, for this was the quarter of the wealthy newcomers
+and of the older residents that had prospered and rebuilt. But not a
+soul was abroad, and he let himself into the bachelor apartment house
+and mounted the two flights to his rooms unseen.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+As Rush closed his own door behind him, his troubled spirit shifted its
+load. Indubitably, if Dr. Anna had not met him he should have walked
+until exhausted, and then boarded a train somewhere down the line and
+arrived in Elsinore dishevelled, haggard, altogether an object of
+suspicion. None knew better than he that in a small community the
+lightning of suspicion plays incessantly, throwing the faces of innocent
+and guilty alike into distorted relief. And he had half expected to find
+a newspaper man awaiting him in the hall below.
+
+Before turning on his lights he felt his way to the windows and drew the
+curtains close. For all he knew there might be a detective or a reporter
+sitting on the opposite fence. His legal mind, deeply versed in criminal
+law, fully appreciated his danger and warned him to arm at every point.
+
+The district attorney, one of Balfame's men, clever, ambitious, but too
+ill-educated to hope to graduate from Brabant County, or even, political
+influence lacking, to climb into the first rank at home, hated the
+brilliant newcomer who had beaten him twice during his brief term of
+office. That Rush "hailed" originally from the county only added to the
+grievance. If Brabant wasn't good enough for him in the first place, why
+hadn't he stayed where he was wanted?
+
+But Rush dismissed him from his mind as he remembered uneasily that
+Alys Crumley had been sketching out there at the Club while he had been
+wrestling with David Balfame. He knew her ambition to get a position on
+a New York newspaper as a sketch artist; but the possibility that she
+might have guessed the secret of his interest in putting an end to the
+scene, or intended to sell her drawing to one of the reporters, would
+have given him little uneasiness had the artist not been a young woman
+upon whom he had ceased to call some two months since.
+
+He had met Alys Crumley about eighteen months after he had returned to
+Brabant County and some three months after he had moved from Dobton to
+Elsinore, and at once had been attracted by her bright ambitious mind,
+combined with a real personality and an appearance both smart and
+artistic.
+
+Miss Crumley prided herself upon being unique in Elsinore, at least, and
+although her thick well-groomed hair was dressed with classic severity,
+and she wore soft gowns of an indescribable cut in the house, and at the
+evening parties of her friends, she was far too astute to depart from
+the fashion of the moment in the crucial test of street dress and hat.
+In Park Row during her brief sojourn in the newspaper world, she had
+commanded attention among the critical press women as a girl who knew
+how to dress smartly and yet add that personal touch which, when
+attempted by those lacking genius in dress, ruins the effect of the most
+extravagant tailor. Miss Crumley by no means patronised these autocrats
+of Fifth Avenue; she bought her tailored suits at the ready-made
+establishments, but like many another American girl, she knew how to
+buy, and above all, how to wear her clothes.
+
+She had taught for several years after graduating from the High School;
+then, her nerves rebelling, had abandoned this most monotonous of
+careers for newspaper work. To reporting her physique had not proved
+equal, and although she would have made an admirable fashion editor
+these enviable positions were adequately filled. On the advice of the
+star reporter of her paper, Mr. James Broderick, who, with other
+newspaper men had been entertained occasionally at tea of a Sunday
+afternoon in her charming little home in Elsinore, she had developed her
+talent for drawing during the past year; Mr. Broderick promising to
+"find her a job" as staff artist when she had improved her technique.
+
+Then Dwight Rush appeared.
+
+Miss Crumley lived with her mother in the family cottage next door to
+Dr. Anna's in Elsinore Avenue. Mrs. Crumley, who was the relict of a
+G. A. R. had eked out her pension during the schooldays of her daughter
+with fine sewing, finding most of her patrons among the newcomers. She
+also had cooked for the Woman's Exchange of Brooklyn, besides catering
+for public dinners and evening parties. For several years she enjoyed a
+complete rest; therefore, when Alys retired temporarily from the office
+of provider in order to study art, Mrs. Crumley willingly re-entered the
+industrial field. As both the practical mother and the clever daughter
+were amiable women it was a harmonious little household that Dwight Rush
+found himself drifting toward intimacy with soon after he met the young
+lady at a clubhouse dance.
+
+The living-room--Alys long since had abolished the word parlour from her
+vocabulary--was furnished in various shades of green as harmonious as
+the family temper; there was a low bookcase filled with fashionable
+literature, English and American; the magazines and reviews on the table
+were almost blatantly "highbrow," and the cool green walls were further
+embellished with a few delicate water colours conceived in the back-yard
+atelier by an individual mind if executed by a still somewhat halting
+brush.
+
+For four months Rush had been a constant visitor at the cottage. Miss
+Crumley, who was as progressively modern as an automobile factory, was
+full of enthusiasm at the moment for the cult of sexless friendship
+between a man and a maid. She had considered James Broderick at one time
+as a likely partner for a philosophic romance (the adjective Platonic
+was out of date; moreover, it implied that the cult was not as modern as
+its devotees would wish it to appear); but the brilliant (and handsome)
+young reporter not only was very busy but of a mercurial and uncertain
+temperament. Nor did he appear to be a youth of lofty ideals; from
+certain remarks, uttered casually, to make matters worse, Alys was
+forced to conclude that he despised the man who "wasted his time" only
+less than he despised the "chaser." If pretty, interesting, and
+unnotional girls came his way and liked him enough, that was "all to the
+good"; a busy newspaper man at the beck and call of a city editor had no
+time for studying over the map of a girl's soul, the lord knew; but if a
+girl wasn't a "dead game sport," then the sooner a man left the field to
+some one with more time, or a yearning for matrimony, the better. These
+remarks had been deliberately thrown out by the canny Mr. Broderick, who
+liked "the kid" and didn't want her to "get in wrong" (particularly
+with himself as he enjoyed both her society and the artistic
+living-room--and Mrs. Crumley's confections) but who saw straight
+through Alys' shifting modernities to the makings of a fine primitive
+female.
+
+But Rush was no student in sex psychology. He took Miss Crumley on her
+face value; delighted in finding a comfortable friend of the counter
+sex, and was more than amenable to her desire to cultivate in him a
+taste for modern literature; since his graduation he had hardly opened
+anything but law books, legal reviews, and the daily newspaper. She read
+aloud admirably--particularly plays--and he liked to listen; and as she
+convinced him that he was missing a good part of life, it was not long
+before he was buying for leisurely midnight consumption such work of the
+fashionable writers as was stimulating and intellectual, and at the same
+time sincere.
+
+She also took him over to several symphony concerts, and often played
+classic selections to him in the twilight. He had no objection to music,
+as it either spurred his mind into fresh activity upon problems
+besetting it, or soothed him into slumber. He loved the little room with
+the soft green shadows; it reminded him of the woods, of which he still
+was passionately fond; and he found it both homelike and safe. Other
+houses in Elsinore, larger and more luxurious, were homelike enough, but
+too often were graced by marriageable daughters, who "showed their
+hand." Rush was as little vain and conceited as a man may be, but he was
+well aware that eligible men in Elsinore were few, and that everybody
+must know that his intake, already large, must increase with the years.
+
+But--as the wise Mr. Broderick would have predicted had he not been
+interested elsewhere during this period--the tension grew too strong for
+Alys Crumley. Nervous and high-strung, with her reservoir of human
+emotions undepleted by even a hard flirtation since her early youth,
+idealistic, romantic, and imaginative, she began to realise that with
+each long uninterrupted evening--Mrs. Crumley was the most tactful of
+parents--she was growing more femininely sensitive to this man's
+magnetism and charm, to his quick responsive mind, to the mobility under
+the surface of his lean hard face, to the suggestion of indomitable
+strength which was the chief characteristic of the new American race of
+men.
+
+It was not long before she was exaggerating every attractive attribute
+he possessed until he no longer seemed what he was, a fine specimen of
+his type, but a glorified superbeing and the one desirable man on earth.
+Her sense of superiority over this "rather crude Western specimen who
+knew nothing but his job," and to whom she could teach so much, had
+protected her for a time, held her femaleness and imagination in
+abeyance, but insensibly his sheer masculinity swamped her, left her
+without a rock but pride to cling to.
+
+It was then that she showed her hand.
+
+For a time after her discovery she was merely furious with herself; she
+was twenty-six and no weakling, neither sentiment nor passion should
+master her. But this phase was brief. Infatuation is not cast out either
+by reason or pride, and very soon her mind opened to the insidious
+whisper: "Why not?" What was the career of staff artist, full of
+liberty, excitement, and good fellowship as it might be, to marriage
+with an ambitious man capable of inspiring the wildest love? Sooner or
+later had she not intended to make just such a marriage?
+
+From this inception her deductions followed in logical feminine
+sequence. If she loved him with a completeness which was both preadamic
+and neoteric, it was of course because he was consumed with a similar
+passion; in other words he was her mate. He might be too comfortable and
+content to have realised it so far, but only one awakening was possible,
+and hers was the entrancing part to reveal him to himself.
+
+She knew that while by no means a beauty, she was as far from
+commonplace in colouring at least as in style. Her eyes were an odd
+opaque olive, their tint so pronounced that it seemed to invade the pale
+ivory of her skin and the smooth masses of her hair. It was a far more
+subtle face than American women as a rule possess, and the eyes in spite
+of a curious inscrutability that might mean anything were capable of a
+play of lights directed from a battery more archaic than modern; and
+late one evening after she had read him an impassioned drama (ancient)
+and there was a dusky rose in either cheek, she turned them on.
+
+Rush immediately took fright. She had not roused a responsive spark of
+passion in him. Moreover, he was now haunted continually by the image of
+a sweet, remote, and (to him) far more mysterious woman, whom he
+worshipped as the ideal of all womanhood.
+
+There was none of the old time American suavity about Rush. He was
+abrupt, forthright, and impatient. But he was kind and innately
+chivalrous. He "let Miss Crumley down" as gently as he could; but he
+let her down. No doubt of that. In less than a week she faced the
+bewildering fact that a man could strike loose a woman's emotional
+torrents while his own depths awaited the magical touch of another. It
+was incredible, preposterous.
+
+For a time Alys, in the privacy of her atelier, raged like a fury. She
+cursed Rush, particularly when engaged in a violent struggle with the
+pride which alone held her from grovelling at his feet.
+
+She was further incensed that he had revealed her to herself as a mere
+morbid unsatisfied girl, whose quarter of a century should be crowned by
+a little family of three; and at last she doubted if she had ever loved
+him at all. That she had been a mere female principle unable to escape
+its impersonal destiny disgusted her with life, but it served to restore
+her balance and philosophy.
+
+Being a girl of brains and character she emerged from the encounter with
+pride still crested in the eyes of the man; and if his image was too
+deeply stamped into her imagination to prevent a recurrence of wild
+desire whenever she was so imprudent as to let her mind wander, she
+remembered that all great physical upheavals are followed by many minor
+shocks, and waited with what patience she could command for full
+delivery.
+
+Of the sanguinary condition of the battle ground in his young friend's
+soul Rush had a mere glimpse before she took heed and dissembled. He
+assumed that she either had fallen in love with him after the fashion of
+girls when they saw too much of a man, or that she was eager to marry
+and improve her condition. He reproached himself for thoughtlessness,
+renounced the long evenings in the pretty room with a sigh, and in his
+bachelor quarters read the books of her choice. He had a very kindly
+feeling for her, for he knew that he owed her a debt; if he had not met
+the other woman--who could tell? Moreover, as he conceived it to be his
+duty to shield her from spiteful comment, he danced with her in public
+and joined her on the street whenever they met.
+
+But if he knew nothing of the intricate and interminable ramifications
+of sex psychology, the infinite variety of moods peculiar to a woman in
+love, he was well enough aware that love is easily turned to hate,
+particularly when vanity has been deeply wounded; and although he had
+conceived a high esteem for Alys Crumley's character during the weeks of
+their intimacy, he knew that men had been mistaken in their estimate of
+women before this, and that if she discovered that he loved another
+woman she might be capable of taking the basest revenge.
+
+It was possible that she was the noblest of her sex, and he hoped she
+was, but as he considered her that night, he realised that it behooved
+him to walk warily nevertheless. By the time he could marry Enid
+Balfame, or even betray his desire to marry her, this crime would have
+passed into county history. Of the real danger he never thought.
+
+The vision evoked of Alys Crumley was accompanied by that of her home,
+and he looked round his stark bachelor quarters with a sigh.
+
+The untidy sitting-room was crowded with law books and legal reviews;
+the maid had given it up in despair long since, and only swept out the
+ashes daily and dusted once a week.
+
+In the small bedroom was an iron bed like a soldier's; neckties hung
+from the chandelier; on the bureau and table beside the bed were more
+books, several by the young British authors of the moment for whom Miss
+Crumley had communicated some of her rather perfunctory enthusiasm.
+
+He flung his clothes all over the room as he undressed. He hated
+bachelor quarters. Six months hence he would be the master of a home as
+exquisite as the woman he loved. Balfame! The man was dead, but as Rush
+thought of him his face turned almost black and his hands tingled and
+clenched. It would be long before he could hear that name mentioned
+without a hot uprush of hatred and loathing. But it subsided and he took
+a bath and "turned in."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+As Rush walked to the Elks' Club for breakfast a few hours later he felt
+that suspicion was in the very air of Elsinore, the very leaves of the
+quiet Sunday streets rustled with it. Even on Atlantic Avenue there were
+knots of men discussing the murder, and in Main Street every man that
+passed received a hard stare.
+
+Rush was thankful to observe that all looked as if they had gone to bed
+late and slept little, and when he met Sam Cummack on the steps of the
+clubhouse he realised the advantages of the habit of careful grooming to
+which the deceased's brother-in-law was quite indifferent.
+
+"Oh, Dwight!" groaned Cummack, seizing his hand. "Where were you last
+night? I'd have liked to have you round."
+
+"I was in Brooklyn and got back late. What's your opinion?"
+
+"I've had a dozen but they don't seem to hold water. I guess it was a
+gunman, imported direct--though perhaps I'm just hoping it wasn't one of
+them trollops did it--for the sake of the family as well as poor Dave's
+name. I don't want a scandal like that. Murder's bad enough, the Lord
+knows."
+
+"What sort of footsteps in the grounds?"
+
+"Every kind we've got in Elsinore, I guess. About forty people were
+runnin' round the yard before the police came. Funny that Gifning didn't
+think of that. But he says the breath was knocked out of him. Jimminy! I
+never knew anything to upset the town like this before--the county, you
+might say. The telephone's been buzzin' till the girls have threatened
+to strike. An operator fainted this morning--wonder if Dave knew her?"
+
+"Well, I am rather surprised to learn that Balfame was so popular--"
+
+"'Tain't that only--though Dave still had lots of friends in spite of
+that ugly temper he was growin'; but we've all got enemies--every last
+one of us--and to be shot down at his own gate like that--Gee, it has
+given every man in town the creeps. We must get the man quick and make
+an example of him. I hope I'm drawn."
+
+"I hope he doesn't ask me to defend him. How is Mrs. Balfame bearing
+up?"
+
+"Fine. She's as cool as they make 'em. I'd hate to be married to one of
+them cucumbers myself, but they're damned convenient in times of
+trouble. Maybe she cared a lot for Dave; who knows? At any rate we must
+make people think she did. I don't want suspicion pointing to her."
+
+"What! It is incredible that you should think of such a thing." Rush,
+always pale, had turned as white as chalk. "You can't mean that people
+are saying--"
+
+"Not yet. But we've got to be prepared for anything, especially with
+these New York newspapermen on the trail. Unless we catch the murderer
+damned quick, every last one of us that was close to Dave that can't
+prove an alibi will be suspected. Why, I walked with him for two blocks
+after he left my house--thought he might not be able to make it alone,
+and he wouldn't go in the car; then, I didn't go straight home, either.
+I went to my office to straighten out something--Oh, Lord! don't let's
+talk of it; I must have been there alone, not a soul to see me, when he
+was shot. It gives me the horrors to think of it--"
+
+"Nonsense! It was well known that you were his best friend. No one would
+think of you."
+
+"They might! They might!"
+
+"Well--about Mrs. Balfame?"
+
+"Oh, she's got the best alibi ever. She'd packed his suitcase and
+carried it downstairs, and even written a note describing some bag or
+other she wanted and pinned it to his coat. I was there when the police
+examined it. They're not saying who they're suspectin', but they're
+doin' a heap of thinkin'. Fact remains that she was alone in the front
+of the house--that mutt of a hired girl she's got was way up in the back
+part groanin' with a toothache when I routed her out. If she wasn't such
+a fright that Dave wouldn't have looked at her--Well, the police know
+that Dave wasn't what you might call a model husband; but Enid, so far
+as we all know, never rowed him. That's the most tryin' sort, though,
+and generally conceals the most hate. But she had her clubs and all the
+rest of it. Maybe she didn't care. I'm only wonderin' what Phipps
+thinks. That's the reason I want her to see the newspapermen. She might
+throw them off the scent at least. Of course, they'd rather she'd done
+it than any one--"
+
+"You won't even hint to her that she may be suspected?" interrupted
+Rush, sharply.
+
+"Oh, Lord, no. I'd never dare. Just persuade her somehow. Guess Anna or
+Polly can manage it."
+
+Rush turned and walked down the steps. "I'll go to the Elsinore to
+breakfast. The reporters are likely to show up there. I know Jim
+Broderick. We must be on the job all the time."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+To Dr. Anna alone Mrs. Balfame told the story of the night, although,
+implicit as was her trust, with certain reservations. She omitted the
+detail of the poisoned lemonade, but otherwise unburdened herself with
+freedom and relief.
+
+"Before I knew where I was," she concluded, "there was the kitchen door
+closed behind me. I can't understand why I lost my presence of mind. I
+could easily have run through the back door and out the front, and
+reached him about the time Gifning did."
+
+Dr. Anna was drinking strong coffee. It was eight o'clock, and she had
+gone downstairs and made breakfast for her friend and herself, Frieda
+having retired to her room and bolted the door. The doctor had heard the
+whole story as soon as she arrived, but after an interval of sleep had
+asked for it again.
+
+"I think it's better as it is," she said thoughtfully. "No one could
+have seen you. The moon rose late; the night at that time must have been
+pitch dark. The trees alone would have shielded you, even had any one
+been watching. Suspicion never would fall on you anyhow; you are too far
+above it, and Dave had been insulting people right and left the last
+year. But you want to avoid blackmail. The only thing that disturbs me
+is that that girl may have been on the back stairs when you came in.
+I'll come in for lunch and talk to her then. You keep to your room.
+Rest, and sleep if you can. I don't fancy you'll have early visitors.
+Everybody'll sleep late. I wish I could!"
+
+"Will you stop in and see Dr. Lequeur about yourself--"
+
+"If I can find a minute. Don't worry about me. I'm tough, and the Lord
+knows I ought to be immune."
+
+But she found no time to see a doctor in her own behalf and returned to
+the Balfame house between twelve and one. Reporters were sitting on the
+box hedge and on the doorstep. She evaded them good-naturedly, but it
+was some time before she was admitted by the rebellious Frieda, who had
+been summoned to the front door some sixteen times during the forenoon.
+
+When Dr. Anna finally found herself in the dark hall she saw that
+Frieda's face was swollen and tied up in a towel. The spectacle gave the
+doctor an instant opportunity.
+
+"The worst infliction on earth, bar none!" she announced, following the
+maid into the kitchen. "Let me take a look at it? How long have you had
+it?"
+
+"Two days," replied Frieda sullenly, unamenable to sympathy which
+offered no immediate surcease of pain.
+
+"Abscess?"
+
+"Don't know."
+
+Frieda's mental processes were slow. Before she could follow the
+doctor's the bandage was ripped off and a sharp eye was examining the
+inflamed interior of her cavernous mouth. A moment later Dr. Anna had
+opened her doctor's bag and was anointing the surroundings of the
+tortured tooth with a brown liquid.
+
+"That won't cure it," she said, "but no dentist could do more until the
+swelling is reduced. And it will save you a preliminary bill. Keep this.
+As soon as you feel you can stand it, go to Dr. Meyers, Main Street.
+Tell him I sent you. But why didn't you tell Mrs. Balfame last night?
+Why endure pain? Kind mistresses always keep such alleviatives in the
+house, and Mrs. Balfame is not the sort to mind being roused in the
+middle of the night if some one were suffering."
+
+The pain had subsided under treatment, and Frieda was restored to such
+civility as she knew. "It only got bad when I am dancing to the hall,
+and I ran home. I had some drops in my room."
+
+"Oh, I see. Did they stop the pain?"
+
+"Nix. Ache like before, but I lie down and perhaps can sleep if those
+men have not make me come downstairs to make the coffee. All night I am
+up." And she glowered with self-pity.
+
+"But when you found that your drops were no good, why didn't you run at
+once to Mrs. Balfame? You were braver than I should have been. It was
+about eight o'clock, was it not, when Mr. Balfame was shot? Mrs. Balfame
+was probably awake when you came in, even if she had gone to bed. Or
+perhaps you didn't know that she came home early?"
+
+"On Saturday nights she come home after I do. How I am to know she is
+here?"
+
+"But you might have gone to her medicine closet--in her bathroom."
+
+"When you have the pain like hot iron you think of all the good things
+for it the next day." Frieda relapsed into sullen silence; Dr. Anna
+hastily disposed of the lunch prepared for her and went upstairs.
+
+Mrs. Balfame was lying on the sofa. She had not dressed, but looked as
+trim as usual in a blue and white bathrobe; never having been a woman to
+"let herself go," she did not possess a wrapper. Her long hair hung in
+two loose braids, and she looked very pale and lovely.
+
+"Put Frieda out of your head," said Dr. Anna hurriedly; familiar voices
+ascended from the path below. "She heard nothing. You don't when you
+have a jumping toothache."
+
+"Thank heaven!"
+
+A soft knock announced several of her friends. They were dressed for
+motoring; this being Sunday, not even death must interfere with the
+cross-country refreshment of the Elsinore husband. They kissed Mrs.
+Balfame and congratulated her upon her appearance and her nerves.
+
+"But one thing must be settled right here," announced Mrs. Gifning, "and
+that is the question of your mourning. I'll go over on the eight-ten in
+the morning and see to it. But you never wear ready-made things and it
+would be a pity to waste money that way. Are you going to wear a veil at
+the inquest?"
+
+"Of course I am. Do you suppose I shall submit to being stared at by a
+curious mob and snapshotted by reporters?"
+
+"That's just what I thought. I'll bring back a smart hat and a long
+crepe veil with me, and order your widow's outfit from one of the big
+shops; they'll have it over in time for the funeral. And you can wear
+your tailor suit to the inquest; it will be half covered by the veil."
+
+"What a good idea!" said Mrs. Balfame gratefully. "You are too kind."
+
+"Kind? Nothing! I just love to shop for other people. How lucky that
+you hadn't bought your new winter suit. It might have been blue."
+
+"It was to have been blue." There was a note of regret in Mrs. Balfame's
+voice. "Don't forget to buy me two black chiffon blouses. One very
+simple for every day; the other, really good. And something white for
+the neck. Of course I wouldn't wear it on the street; but in the
+house--black is too trying!"
+
+"Rather. Trust me. Have you black gloves--undressed kid, I mean? You
+don't want to look like an undertaker." Mrs. Balfame nodded. "That's
+all, I think. Send me a line if you think of something else. I must run
+and take Giffy for his ride. He's all broken up, poor darling. Wasn't he
+just splendid last night?" She blew a kiss along the widow's forehead
+and ran out with a light step that caused her more substantial friends
+to sigh with envy. She, too, was in the manoeuvring forties, but she had
+gone into training at thirty.
+
+"I guess we'd all better go." Mrs. Battle, with a sudden dexterous heave
+of her armoured bulk, was out of the chair and on her feet. "Now, try to
+sleep, dearie. You are just the bravest thing! But to-morrow will be
+trying. Sam Cummack says the coroner won't hold the inquest before
+afternoon, but if they do and your veil isn't here, I've got one of Ma's
+packed away in camphor that I'll get out for you. I'll get it out
+to-night and have it airing--we won't take any chances; and you sha'n't
+be annoyed by the vulgar curious."
+
+"Oh, thank you! But that is not the only ordeal. It's even more trying
+to stay in the house all these days--in this room! If I could walk in
+the grounds. But I suppose those reporters are everywhere."
+
+"They are swarming, simply swarming. And the avenue is so packed with
+automobiles you can't navigate. People have come from all over the
+country--some from New York and Brooklyn."
+
+Mrs. Balfame curled her lip with disgust. Morbid curiosity, like other
+vulgarities, was incomprehensible to her. Death, no matter how desired
+or how accomplished, should inspire hush and respect, not provide
+excitement for a Sunday afternoon.
+
+"Let us hope they will find the wretch to-day," she said impatiently.
+"That will end it, for, of course, it is the element of mystery that has
+made the case so notorious. Is there no clue?"
+
+"Not the ghost of one." Mrs. Cummack, too, was adjusting her automobile
+veil. "Sam's on the job,--I'm only taking him out for an hour or two;
+and so, of course, are the police--hot. But he's covered his tracks so
+far."
+
+"If it is a he," whispered Mrs. Battle to Mrs. Frew, as they stole
+softly down the stairs. "What about that red-head, or that telephone
+girl who fainted? They say she had to go home--"
+
+"Can you imagine caring enough for Dave Balfame--Let's get out of this,
+for heaven's sake, or I'll faint right here."
+
+The atmosphere was as depressing as the dark interior of the house, for
+it was heavy laden with the scent of flowers and death. The parlour
+doors, behind which lay David Balfame, embalmed and serene in his
+casket, were closed, but hushed whisperings came forth like the rustling
+of funeral wreaths disturbed by the vapours of decay. The devoted
+friends of the widow burst out into the sunshine almost with a cry of
+relief.
+
+Here all was as animated as a county fair. The grounds were void, save
+by patrolling police, but the avenue and adjoining streets were packed
+with every type of car from limousine to farmer's runabout, and many
+more people were afoot, staring at the house, venturing as near the
+hedge as they dared, to inspect the grove. They asked questions,
+answered them, offered theories, all in a breath, and without the
+slightest respect for any opinion save their own. A few children,
+sucking peppermint sticks, sat on the hedge.
+
+"Did you ever?" murmured Mrs. Frew to Mrs. Battle. "_Did_ you ever?" She
+shuddered with refined disgust, but felt thrilled to her marrow. "Just
+Enid's luck!" was her auxiliary but silent reflection.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+At the inquest on the following day, Mrs. Balfame, circumvested in
+crepe, sat between Mr. and Mrs. Cummack, gracefully erect, and without
+even a nervous flutter of the hands.
+
+When called upon to testify, she told in a clear low voice the meagre
+story already known to her friends and by this time the common property
+of Elsinore and all that read the newspapers of the State.
+
+The coroner released her as quickly as possible, and called her servant
+to the stand. Although the swelling in Frieda's face had subsided
+somewhat under Dr. Anna's repeated ministrations, the tooth still
+throbbed; and she also was released after announcing resentfully that
+she'd seen "notings," heard "notings," and "didn't know notings" about
+the murder except having to get up and make coffee when she was like to
+die with the ache in her tooth.
+
+There was no one else to testify, except Cummack, who gave the hour,
+about a quarter or ten minutes to eight, when the deceased had left his
+house, and Mr. Gifning and his two guests, who testified to hearing the
+sound of Balfame's voice raised in song, followed a moment later by the
+report of a pistol. They also described minutely the position of the
+body when found. Indubitably the shot had been fired from the grove.
+
+The staff artists were forced to be content with a black sketch of a
+very long widow, who held her head high and emanated an air of chill
+repose. One reporter, camera set, forced his way to her side as she was
+about to enter Mrs. Battle's limousine and begged her plaintively to
+raise her veil; but he might as well as have addressed a somnambulist;
+Mrs. Balfame did not even snub him.
+
+"Why should they want a picture of me?" she asked Mrs. Battle,
+wonderingly. "It's poor Dave that is dead. Whoever heard of me outside
+of Elsinore?"
+
+"I guess you haven't amused yourself reading the papers. You've been
+written up as a beauty and the intellectual and social leader of
+Elsinore. Some distinction, that! The public is mighty interested in you
+all over the State and will be for several days yet, no doubt. Then
+we'll find the man and they'll forget all about the whole affair until
+the trial comes up."
+
+Mrs. Balfame, clad in full weeds, more dignified, stately and
+unapproachable than ever, ran the gauntlet of staring eyes at the church
+funeral, apparently unconscious of the immense crowd of women that had
+driven over from every township in Brabant County. That the women did
+not approve of her haughty head and tearless eyes, brilliant even behind
+the heavy crepe, would have concerned her little if she had known it.
+Her mind was concentrated upon the future moment when this series of
+hideous ordeals would be over and she could re-enter the decent
+seclusion of private life.
+
+Mrs. Balfame may have had her faults, but a vulgar complaisance to
+publicity was not among them.
+
+She had also made up her mind sternly not to feel happy, not to rejoice
+in her freedom, not to make a plan for the future until her husband was
+in his grave. But all during that long service, while the new parson
+discoursed unctuously upon the virtues and eminence of the slain, she
+had the sensation of holding her breath.
+
+It was four days from the night of the murder before she consented to
+see the reporters. Meanwhile every suspected person had proved an alibi,
+including the red-haired Miss Foxie Bell, and the indignant and highly
+respectable Miss Mamie Russ, who officiated at the telephone. She had
+known the deceased, yes, and once or twice she had driven out to one of
+the roadhouses with him, where a number of her friends were indulging in
+a quiet Sunday afternoon tango, but she had merely looked upon him as a
+kind fatherly sort of person; and at the hour of his death she was
+asleep, as her landlady could testify.
+
+Old Dutch had indignantly repudiated the charge of employing gunmen, and
+had even attended the funeral and shed tears. Whatever the faults of the
+deceased, they were not of a nature to antagonise permanently the erring
+members of his own sex. Moreover, he had been an able politician,
+respected of his enemies, and was now glorified by his cowardly and
+untimely taking off.
+
+The local police had an uneasy suspicion that the assassin was one of
+their "pals"--in that small and democratic community, where every man
+was an Elk from the banker to the undertaker. They were quite ready to
+drop the case, loudly ascribing the deed to an ordinary housebreaker, or
+to some unknown enemy from out the impenetrable rabbit warrens of New
+York City.
+
+The newspaper men were chagrined and desperate. The Balfame Case had
+proved uncommonly magnetic to the New York public. They had done their
+best to create this interest, and now were on their mettle to "make
+good." But they were beginning to wish they had waited for at least a
+lantern's ray at the end of the dark perspective before exciting the
+public with descriptions of the winding picturesque old street of the
+ancient village of Elsinore; the stately old-time residence at its head
+which had housed (in more or less discomfort) three generations of
+Balfames, the sinister grove of trees that had sheltered the dastardly
+assassin, the prominence and political importance of David Balfame who
+had inherited this ancestral estate, and played among those trees in
+childhood; his unsuspecting and vocal return at an early hour to be shot
+down at his own gate.
+
+All this appealed acutely to a public which makes the fortune of the
+sentimental play, the "crook" play, and the "play with a punch and a
+mystery." Here was the real thing, as rural as the childhood of many of
+the Greater New York public--weary of black-hand murders and anarchist
+bombs--with a mystery as deep as any ever invented by their favourite
+authors, and in no remote district but at their very gates.
+
+If anything more were necessary to rivet their interest, there was the
+handsome and elegant (if provincial) Mrs. Balfame, as austere as a Roman
+matron, as chaste as Diana, as decently invisible in public during this
+harrowing ordeal as imported crepe could make her. The men reporters had
+dismissed the widow with a paragraph of personal description, but the
+newspaper women had filled half a page in each of the evening journals.
+
+The press had given the public at least two columns a day of the Balfame
+murder; there had been a biography of every suspect in turn, and there
+had been the thrilling episode of the bloodhounds turned loose upon that
+trampled enclosure. But no road led anywhere, and the public, baffled
+for the moment, but still hopeful, demanded an interview with the
+interesting widow.
+
+Of course, her alibi was perfect, but all felt sure that she "knew
+something about it." Her unhappy married life was now common property,
+and if it only could be proved that she had had a lover--but the
+newspapers as has been said were discouraging upon this point. Mrs.
+Balfame (quoting the young men this time), while amiable and kind to
+all, was cold and indifferent. Men were afraid of her. The New York
+detectives had "fine-tooth-combed" Brabant County and reported
+disgustedly to their chief that she was "just one of those club women;
+no use for men at all."
+
+The reporters, however, had made up their minds to fix the crime, if
+possible, upon her. They would have compromised upon the young servant,
+but Frieda, especially with her face framed in a towel stained brown,
+and her eyes swollen above the wrenching agonies of an ulcerated tooth,
+was hopeless material. Moreover, they were convinced, after thorough
+investigation, that the deceased's gallantries, while sufficiently
+catholic, had not run to serving maids, and that of late particularly he
+had loudly hated all things German.
+
+Regarding Mrs. Balfame they held their judgment in reserve until they
+met and talked with her; but Broderick had extracted the miserable
+details of her life from his friend, Alys Crumley, as well as a lively
+description of the scene at the Country Club; they believed they could
+bring to light enough to base a sensational trial upon, whatever the
+verdict of the jury.
+
+It must not be inferred for a moment that these brilliant and
+industrious young men were bloodthirsty. They knew that if Mrs. Balfame
+had committed the crime and could be induced to make a defiant
+confession, it was more than probable that she would go scot free; that
+in no case was there more than a bare possibility of a woman of her age,
+position and appearance being sent to the chair. But it is these alert,
+resourceful, ruthless young men who make the newspapers we read with
+such interest twice a day; it is they who write the columns of "news"
+that we skip if dull (with a mental reservation to change our
+newspaper), or devour without a thought of the tireless individual
+activities that re-supply us daily with our strongest impersonal
+interests. Sometimes a trifle more sparkle or vitality, or a deeper
+note, will wring from us that facile comment, "How well written!"
+without a pause to reflect that mere good writing never made a
+newspaper, or to hazard a guess that behind the column that thrilled us
+were hours, perhaps weeks, of incessant unravelling of clues, of
+following a scent in the dark, with death at every turn. It is the
+business of reporters to furnish news of vital interest to a pampered
+public, and as so large a part of it is furnished to them by the
+weaknesses and misdeeds of mankind, what wonder that the reporters grow
+cynical and make no bones about providing clues that will lead, at the
+least, to many columns charged with suspense and sensational human
+interest!
+
+These young men knew the moment the Balfame case "broke" that it was big
+with possibilities; they scented a mystery that would be cleared by the
+arrest of no local politician; and they knew the interlocking social
+relationships of these loyal old communities. It was "up to them" to
+solve the mystery, and by a process of elimination, spurred by their own
+desire to give the public the best the market afforded, they arrived at
+Mrs. Balfame.
+
+Within forty-eight hours they were hot on her trail. Among other things,
+they discovered that she was an expert shot at a target; but did she
+keep a pistol in the house? She had used one, kept for target purpose,
+out at the Country Club, and it was impossible to verify the rumor that
+in common with many another, she had one in the house as a protection
+against burglars and tramps.
+
+At their instigation, Phipps, the local chief of police, had reluctantly
+consented to interrogate her on this point (a mere matter of form, he
+assured her), and she had replied blandly that she never had possessed a
+pistol. The chief apologised and withdrew. He was of a respectable
+Brabant family himself, and was horrified that a member of the good old
+order should even be brushed by the wing of suspicion. Being a quiet
+family man and a Republican to boot, he had never approved of Dave
+Balfame, and had only refrained from arresting him upon more than one
+occasion--notably a week or two since when he had publicly blacked the
+eye of Miss Billy Gump--out of deference to the good name of Elsinore;
+and after all, they were both Elks and had spun many a yarn in the
+comfortable clubrooms. Inheritance, circumstances, and a fine common
+contempt for the inferior brands of whiskey, had made them "stand in
+together, whatever happened." The chief had no love for Mrs. Balfame,
+for she had frozen him too often, but she was the pride of Elsinore and
+he was alert to defend her.
+
+It had never occurred to Mrs. Balfame that she would incur even a
+passing suspicion, and she had left the pistol in the pocket of her
+automobile coat. Immediately after the visit of the chief of police she
+took the pistol into the sewing-room, locked the door, covered the
+keyhole, and buried the weapon in the depths of an old sofa. As her
+large strong fingers had mended furniture many times, no one would
+suspect that this ancient piece (dating back to the first Balfame) had
+been tampered with. She performed the operation with haughty reluctance,
+but the instinct of self-preservation abides in the proudest souls, and
+Mrs. Balfame had the wit to realise that it was by far the better part
+of valour.
+
+The shooting occurred on Saturday night. By Wednesday all the horrors of
+the criminal episode were over and she felt as young as she looked, and
+at liberty to begin life again, a free and happy woman. Her mourning was
+perfect.
+
+She made up her mind to see the newspaper men and have done with it.
+They had haunted the grounds--no patrols could keep them out--sat on the
+doorstep, forced their way into the kitchen, and rung the front
+door-bell so frequently that hourly she expected the scowling Frieda to
+give notice. Mr. Cummack told her repeatedly that she might as well give
+in first as last and she finally agreed with him.
+
+It was five o'clock in the afternoon when they were admitted to the
+spacious old-fashioned parlour with its incongruous modern notes.
+
+Like many women, Mrs. Balfame had an admirable taste in dress, so long
+as she marched with the conventions, but neither the imagination nor the
+training to create the notable room. Long since she had banished the old
+"body brussels" carpet and substituted rugs subdued in colour if
+commonplace in design. The plush "set" had not gone to the auction room,
+however, but had been reupholstered with a serviceable "tapestry
+covering." A what-not still stood in one corner, and both centre-table
+and mantel were covered with marble, although the wax works that once
+embellished them were now in the garret. The wall paper, which had been
+put on the year before, was a neutral pale brown. Nevertheless, it was a
+homelike room, for there were two rocking-chairs and three easy chairs;
+and on a small side-table was Mrs. Balfame's workbasket. On the marble
+centre-table was a most artistic lamp. The curtains matched the
+furniture.
+
+There were ten reporters from New York, two from Brooklyn, three from
+Brabant County, and four correspondents. Word had been passed during the
+morning that Mrs. Balfame would see the newspaper men, and they were
+there in force; those that were not "on the job all the time" having
+loyally been notified by those that were. But they had stolen a march on
+the women. Not a "sob-sister" was in that intent file, led by James
+Broderick of _The New York Morning News_, that entered the Balfame house
+and parlour on Wednesday at five o'clock.
+
+Frieda had announced that her mistress would be "down soon," and Mr.
+Broderick immediately drew the curtains back from the four long windows,
+and placed a comfortable chair for Mrs. Balfame in a position where she
+would face both the light and her visitors. It was not the first stage
+that the astute Mr. Broderick had set; and whenever he was on a case he
+fell naturally into the position of leader; not only had he the most
+alert and driving, the most resourceful and penetrative mind, but his
+good looks and suave manner inspired confidence in the victim, and led
+him insensibly into damaging admissions. He was a tall slim young man, a
+graduate of Princeton, not yet thirty, with a regular face and warm
+colouring, and an expression so pleasant that the keenness of his eyes
+passed unnoted. In general equipment and dress he was typical of his
+kind, unless they took to drink and grew slovenly; but his more emphatic
+endowment enabled him to take the lead among a class of men whom he
+respected too thoroughly to antagonise with arrogance.
+
+"Late--to make an impression!" he growled, but young Ryder Bruce of the
+evening edition of his paper nudged him. Mrs. Balfame was on the
+staircase opposite the parlour doors.
+
+The young men stood up and watched her as she slowly descended, her
+black dress clinging to her tall rather rigid figure, her head high, her
+profile as calm as marble, her eye as devoid of expression as if
+awaiting the click of the camera.
+
+The reporters were prejudiced on the spot, so impatient are newspaper
+men of any sort of pose or attempt to impress them. As she entered the
+room she greeted them pleasantly, looking straight at them with her
+large cold eyes, and allowed herself to be conducted to a chair by the
+polite Mr. Broderick.
+
+She knew that in her high unrelieved black she looked older than common,
+but this was a deliberately calculated effect. She was not as adroit as
+she would have been after recurrent experiences with the press, but
+instinct warned her to look the dignified middle-aged widow, quite above
+the coquetry of the bare throat of fashion, or of tempering her weeds
+with soft white lawn.
+
+As Mr. Broderick made a little speech of gratitude for her gracious
+reception of the press, she appraised her guests. The greater number
+were well-groomed, well-dressed, well-bred in effect, very sure of
+themselves; altogether a striking contrast to the local reporters that
+had come in on their heels.
+
+She answered Mr. Broderick diffidently: "I have never been interviewed.
+I am afraid you will hardly find--what do you call it?--a story?--in
+me."
+
+"We don't wish to be too personal," he said gently, "but the public is
+tremendously interested in this case, and more particularly in you. It
+isn't always that it takes an interest in the wife of a murdered
+man--but--well, you see, you are such a personality in this community.
+We really must have an interesting interview." He smiled at her with a
+charming expression of masculine indulgence that made her own eyes
+soften. "You see--don't you--we hate to intrude--but--we understand that
+you had a serious quarrel with your husband on the last day of his life.
+Would you mind telling us what you did after leaving the Country Club?"
+
+She gave him a frozen stare, but recalled Mr. Cummack's warning not to
+take offence--"for remember that these men have their living to get, and
+if they fall down on their job they don't get it. Blame their paper, not
+them."
+
+"That is a surprising question," she said sweetly. "Do you expect me to
+answer it?"
+
+"Why not? Of course you read the newspapers. You know we have told the
+public of the scene at the clubhouse already--and with no detriment to
+you! It was a very dramatic scene, and every moment that you passed from
+that time until Mr. Balfame fell at his gate will be of the most
+absorbing interest to the public. In fact, they will eat it up."
+
+Mrs. Balfame shrugged her shoulders. "As a matter of fact I have not
+read a newspaper since the--" She set her lips and her eyes grew
+hard--"the crime. I know you have written a great deal about it, but it
+hasn't interested me. Well--Dr. Anna Steuer drove me home, and shortly
+after I went up to my room--"
+
+"Pardon me; let us take things in their turn. You took a box of sardines
+and some bread from the pantry, did you not?"
+
+"I did." Mrs. Balfame's tones were both puzzled and bored.
+
+"And then you were interrupted." As she raised her eyebrows, he
+continued. "The appearance of the sardine can indicated that."
+
+She gave him a brilliant smile, her substitute for the average woman's
+merry laugh. "You are teaching me how they write those intricate
+detective tales my husband was so fond of. It is true that I was
+interrupted, but it is equally true that I should probably have left the
+can as you found it in any case, for I soon realised that I was not
+hungry. I had had sandwiches at the club, and although I always think it
+best to eat something before retiring, I was hardly hungry enough for
+sardines--"
+
+"You ate sandwiches at the club? I have been out there once or twice
+and never saw--I was under the impression that during the afternoon the
+young people danced and the matrons played bridge before an early
+dinner."
+
+"Did you?" Mrs. Balfame's eyes and tones abashed even Mr. Broderick, and
+he tacked hastily: "Oh, well, that is immaterial, as the lawyers say.
+And of course you ladies may have sandwiches served in the bridge rooms.
+May I ask what interrupted you?"
+
+"My husband telephoned from Mr. Cummack's house that he was obliged to
+go to Albany at once and asked me to pack his suitcase."
+
+"Yes, we have seen the suitcase. You suggested, did you not--over the
+telephone--making him a glass of lemonade with aromatic and bromide in
+it?"
+
+Mrs. Balfame experienced an obscure thrill of alarm, but her haughty
+stare betrayed nothing. One of the reporters whose "job" it was to watch
+her hands, noted that they curved rigidly. "And may I ask how you found
+_that_ out? Really, I think I feel even more curiosity than you do."
+
+"He told it to Cummack and the other men present as a good joke, adding
+that you knew your business."
+
+"I did. The matter had passed entirely out of my mind. More momentous
+things have happened since! Well--I made the glass of lemonade and left
+it on the dining-room table; then I went upstairs and packed his
+suitcase--"
+
+"One moment. What became of that glass of lemonade? No one remembers
+having seen it, although I have made very particular inquiries."
+
+Mrs. Balfame by this time was quite cold, but her brain was working
+almost as quickly as Mr. Broderick's. She uncurved her fingers and
+smiled. But her keen brain-sword had one edge only; the other was dull
+with inexperience. She knew nothing of the vast practice of newspaper
+men in detecting the lie.
+
+"Oh--I drank it myself." She had drawn her brows for a moment as if in
+an effort of memory. "When I heard the noise outside--when I heard them
+say 'coroner'--and realised that something dreadful had happened, I ran
+downstairs. Then I suddenly felt faint and remembered the lemonade with
+the aromatic spirits of ammonia and bromide in it. I ran into the
+dining-room and drank it--fortunately!"
+
+"And what became of the glass?"
+
+"Oh!" Mrs. Balfame was now righteously indignant. "How do I know? Or any
+one else? Frieda, soon after, began to make coffee by the quart--and I
+don't doubt whisky was brought round from the Elks. Who could have
+noticed a glass more or less?"
+
+"Frieda swears she never saw it."
+
+"She has the worst memory of any servant I ever had, and that is saying
+a good deal."
+
+Mr. Broderick regarded her with admiration. He distrusted her more every
+moment, but he had realised at once that he had no ordinary woman to
+deal with, and he rejoiced in the clash of wits.
+
+The other young men were sitting forward, almost breathless, and Mrs.
+Balfame was now fully alive to the danger of her position. But all
+sensation of fear had left her. All the iron in her nature fused in the
+crucible of those terrible moments and came forth finely tempered steel.
+
+"Anything more?"
+
+"Oh--ah--yes. Would you mind telling us what you did after you had
+packed the suitcase and brought it downstairs?"
+
+"I went up to my room and began to undress for bed."
+
+"But that must have been quite fifteen minutes before Mr. Balfame's
+return. He walked from Cummack's house, which is about a mile from here.
+It was noticed that you merely had taken your dress off. Would you not
+have had time to get into bed?"
+
+"If I were a man. But I had my hair to brush--with fifty strokes; and--a
+little nightly massage, if you will have it. Besides, I had intended to
+go down and lock the front door after my husband had left."
+
+"Ah!" The admiration of the young men mounted higher. They disliked her
+coldly, if only for that lack of sex-magnetism, which men, particularly
+young men, naive in their extensive surface psychology, take as a
+personal affront. They did not believe a word she said, and they did not
+give her and her possible fate a throb of sympathy, but they generously
+pronounced her "a wonder."
+
+Mr. Broderick took a chance shot. "And did you not during that time look
+out of the window--toward the grove?"
+
+Mrs. Balfame hesitated the fraction of a minute, then wisely returned to
+her know-nothing policy. "Why should I? Certainly not. I heard no sound
+out there. I am not in the habit of examining the grounds from my window
+at night. It is enough to go through the lower rooms before I lock up."
+
+"But your window was dark when the men ran over from Gifning's after
+hearing the shot. They remember that. Do you brush your hair--and--and
+massage in the dark?"
+
+Mrs. Balfame sat back in her chair with the resigned air of the victim
+who expects an interview with inquisitive newspaper men to last all
+night. "No. But I sometimes sit in the dark. I told you that I intended
+to sit up--partly dressed--until my husband had gone. I did not feel
+like reading, and my eyes were tired. As you know so much, you may have
+guessed that I cried a little after that trying afternoon. I do not
+often cry, and my eyes stung."
+
+"But you had forgiven your husband?"
+
+"I had forgiven him many times before. I infer that you know that also."
+
+"Mrs. Balfame, is it not true that about two years ago you contemplated
+obtaining a divorce?"
+
+This time her eyes flashed with anger. "I see that my kind friends have
+been gossiping. You would seem to have interviewed everybody in town."
+
+"Pretty nearly. But you don't seem to realise that Elsinore--Brabant
+County, for that matter--has talked of nothing else but this case for
+the last four days."
+
+"I did think of a divorce for a short time, but I never mentioned it to
+him, and as soon as I thought it all out I dismissed the idea. In the
+first place, divorce is against the principles of the school in which I
+was brought up, and in the second Mr. Balfame was a good husband in his
+way. Every woman has some sort of a heavy cross to bear, and I guess
+mine was lighter than most. The trouble is, we American women expect
+too much. I dismissed the subject so completely from my mind that I had
+practically forgotten it."
+
+"Ah--yes--we thought you might have seen some one lurking in the grove
+and gone down to investigate." This was another chance shot. He was
+hoping for a "lead."
+
+Mrs. Balfame thought him inspired.
+
+For the moment the cold brilliant eyes of the woman and the keen
+contracted eyes of the reporter met and clashed. Then Mrs. Balfame
+displayed her teeth in her sweet and charming smile. "What a truly
+masculine inference. You don't know me. If I had seen anything I should
+have flown to the telephone and called the police."
+
+"You look indomitable," murmured Mr. Broderick. "But will you tell us
+how it happened that you did not hear the shot? The men down at
+Gifning's did."
+
+"They were standing on the porch, and I think now that I did hear the
+shot. But my windows were closed. I hear tires burst constantly. And
+that was Saturday night. The machines turn off just below our gate into
+Dawbarn Street, especially if they are bound for Beryl Myrtle's road
+house."
+
+"True." Broderick leaned forward, staring at the carpet. He permitted
+the silence to last quite a minute. Even Mrs. Balfame, who had
+congratulated herself that the inquisition must be nearly over, stirred
+uneasily, so sinister was that silence.
+
+The other men knew the Broderick method too well to spoil one of his
+designs; they sat in expectant stillness and turned upon Mrs. Balfame a
+battery of eyes.
+
+Suddenly Broderick raised his head and his sharp boring gaze darted into
+hers. "I had not fully intended to tell you of a discovery made by one
+of us yesterday. We have told no one as yet--waiting for just the right
+moment to publish it. But I think I'll tell you. There is evidence that
+two revolvers were fired that night. One killed David Balfame, and a
+bullet from the other penetrated the tree before the house and slightly
+to the right of where he must have stood for a moment. Bruce here
+dug it out. Now, not only did the men at Gifning's not hear two
+shots--indicating that they were fired simultaneously--but one bullet
+came from a .38 and the other from a .41."
+
+Mrs. Balfame stood up. "Really, gentlemen, I did not consent to see you
+in order to help you solve riddles. But possibly you know better than I
+that gunmen generally travel in pairs. I am convinced that my husband--"
+(they applauded her for not saying "my poor husband") "was killed by one
+of those creatures, hired by his political enemies. Unless I can tell
+you something more of interest--if, indeed, you have found anything to
+interest the great New York public in this interview--I will ask you to
+excuse me."
+
+The young men were politely on their feet. "And you have no pistol--nor
+ever had?"
+
+She laughed outright. "Are you trying to fasten the crime on me?"
+
+"Oh, no, indeed. Only, in a case like this, one leaves no stone
+unturned--I hope you do not think we are rude."
+
+"I only just realise that quite the most polite young men I have ever
+met have been hoping to make me incriminate myself. If I had not been so
+dense I should have dismissed you long since. Good night."
+
+And, once more looking human in her just indignation, she lifted her
+proud head and swept out of the room.
+
+The young men left the house and adjourned to a private room in the rear
+of their favourite saloon. For twenty minutes they rehearsed the
+interview carefully, those that had taken notes correcting any lapses of
+memory on the part of those that had elected to watch as well as listen.
+
+Broderick and many of the men were firmly of the opinion that Mrs.
+Balfame had committed the crime; others believed that she was shielding
+some one else; the less experienced were equally positive that no guilty
+woman taken off her guard repeatedly, as she had been, could "put it
+over" like that. She had "talked and acted like an innocent woman."
+
+"She acted, all right," said Broderick. "I for one am convinced that she
+did it. But whether she did or didn't, she's got to be indicted and
+tried. This case, boys, is too big to throw away--too damned big; and
+she's already a personality to the public. She's the only one we have
+the ghost of a chance with; the only one whose arrest and trial would
+keep the interest going--"
+
+"But say!" It was the youngest reporter that interrupted. "I call it
+lowdown to fasten a crime on a possibly innocent woman--a lady--keep her
+in jail for months; try her for murder! Why, even if she were acquitted,
+she would carry the stigma through life."
+
+"Don't get sentimental, sonny," said Broderick patiently. "Sentiment is
+to the vanquished in this game. When you've been it as long as the rest
+of us you'll know that in nine cases out of ten the real solution of
+any mystery is the simplest. Balfame drank. He had a violent temper when
+drunk. He was a dog at best. She must have hated him. Look at her. We
+have reason to believe that she did hate him and that her friends knew
+it. She thought of divorce two years ago. Gave it up because she was
+afraid of losing her leadership in this provincial hole. Look at her.
+She is as proud as Lucifer. And as hard as nails. There had been an ugly
+scene at the club that afternoon. He mortified her publicly. She was so
+overcome she had to leave. I've a hunch she poisoned that lemonade and
+got it out of the way in time. She's the sort that would think of nearly
+everything. Not quite, of course. Otherwise she would never have
+invented on the spur of the moment that story about drinking it herself;
+she'd have had the assumption on tap that one of the neighbours had
+drunk it. That complication, however, is yet to prove. It merely points
+a finger at her--straight; what we've got to prove and prove quick is
+that she was out of doors when that shot was fired--"
+
+"Would you like to see her in the chair?" gasped young Loring.
+
+"Good Lord, no. Not the least danger. Women of that sort don't go to the
+chair. If she even got a term, I'd head a petition to let her out, for
+she's a dead game sport, and I'm only after good front page stuff." He
+turned to Ryder Bruce of the evening edition of his newspaper. "You make
+love to that German hired girl. She hates us all, for we represent the
+real American press--that hasn't a hyphen in it. I sensed that. And I
+don't believe she's all the fool she looks. I believe she can tell
+something--few servants that can't--and that she only pretended at the
+inquest that she knew nothing because she was nearly dead with pain and
+wanted it over. Well, she had the tooth out this morning, and at least
+she isn't quite as hideous as she was; so go to it, old boy. Get 'round
+her and do it quick. Use money if necessary. There's not a day to lose.
+Find out what she wants most--probably it's to send her sweetheart at
+the front something more substantial than mitts and bands. Got me?"
+
+"I get you," said young Bruce gloomily. "You've picked me out because
+I'm blond and round faced and can pass myself off as a German. I wish
+I'd been born an Italian. Nice job, making love to _that_. But I'll do
+it."
+
+"Good boy. Well, s'long. I'm off on a trail of my own. I'll report
+later. May be nothing in it."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+Broderick walked slowly toward Elsinore Avenue, sounding his memory for
+certain fugitive impressions, his active mind at the same time casting
+about for the current which would connect them.
+
+He looked at his watch. He was to dine with the Crumleys at seven and it
+lacked but ten minutes of the hour; nevertheless he walked more slowly
+still, his eyes staring at the ground, his brow channeled.
+
+On Sunday afternoon he had spent two hours with Alys Crumley. At first
+she had been reluctant to talk of any but the salient phases of the
+murder, but being appealed to as a "good old pal" and reminded that real
+newspaper people stood together, she finally had described the scene at
+the Country Club on the afternoon preceding Balfame's death, and shown
+him the drawing she had had the superior presence of mind to make.
+Broderick had examined every detail of that rapid but demonstrative
+sketch: the burly form at the head of the room, his condition indicated
+by an angle of the shoulders and a deft exaggeration of feature which
+recalled the facile art of the cartoonist; the strained forms of the men
+surrounding him; Mrs. Balfame heading down the room, her face set and
+terrible; the groups of women and girls in attitudes expressive of alarm
+or disgust.
+
+But when he made as if to put the sketch in his pocket she had snatched
+it from him, and he merely had shrugged his shoulders, confident that
+he could induce her to give it up should he really need it.
+
+He had questioned her regarding the scene until its outlines were as
+firm in his mind as in her own. But there had been something else--some
+impression, not obviously linked with the case: It was for that
+impression that he sounded his admirable memory; and in a moment he
+found it and stopped with a smothered exclamation.
+
+He had complimented her on the excellent likeness of Dwight Rush, whom
+he knew and liked, and remarked quite naturally that he might have sat
+for her a number of times. The dusky pink had mounted to her hair, but
+she had replied carelessly that Rush was "a common enough type."
+
+Possibly Broderick would have forgotten the blush had it not have been
+for the swift change of expression in her eyes: a certain fear followed
+by a concentrated renitence; and at the same moment he had remembered
+that he had met Rush once or twice at the Crumleys' during the summer
+and thought him quite the favoured guest.
+
+Driven only by a mild personal curiosity, he had asked her how she liked
+Rush and if she saw much of him; he recalled that she had answered with
+an elaboration of indifference that she hadn't seen him for ages and
+took no interest in him whatever.
+
+Then Broderick had drawn her on to talk of Mrs. Balfame. Yes, in common
+with all Elsinore that counted, she admired Mrs. Balfame, although she
+believed that no one really knew her, that she unconsciously lived among
+the surfaces of her nature. Her face as she marched down the clubroom
+that day, and its curious sudden transformation on that other day at
+the Friday Club when her thoughts so plainly had drifted far from the
+platitudinous speakers, indicated to Miss Crumley's temperamental mind
+"depths and possibly tragic possibilities."
+
+It was patent to Mr. Broderick's own mind that her suspicions had not
+lighted for a moment on the dead man's widow, but it also transpired in
+the course of the conversation that the young artist who had so "loved
+to sketch" the Star of Elsinore had suffered a long drop in personal
+enthusiasm. Pressed astutely, she had remarked that she guessed she was
+as broad-minded as anybody, especially since her year on the New York
+press, but she did not approve of married women claiming a right to
+share in the Great Game designed by Nature for the young of both sexes.
+
+Then the story came out: Miss Crumley, afflicted with a headache
+something over a fortnight since, and enjoying the cool night air just
+behind her front gate, had seen Mrs. Balfame come out of Dr. Steuer's
+garden next door and meet Dwight Rush face to face. He had begged to be
+allowed to see her home.
+
+Mrs. Balfame had lovely manners, she couldn't help being sweet unless
+she disliked a person, and no woman will elect to walk up a long dark
+avenue alone if a man offer to escort her.
+
+Alys would have thought nothing of it--merely assumed that Rush, being a
+comparative newcomer, had caught at the chance to make a favourable
+impression on the leader of Elsinore society--(no, he was no snob, but
+that idea just came to her), if they had not crawled, yes, _crawled_ all
+the way up the avenue.
+
+Both were vigorous people with long legs; they could have covered the
+distance to the Balfame place in three minutes. They had been more than
+ten, and as they passed under the successive lamp posts she had noted
+the man's bent head, the woman's tilted back--as she gazed up into his
+eyes, no doubt.
+
+"In this town," Miss Crumley had announced, "a woman is fast or she
+isn't. You know just where you are. There's a class that's sly about it,
+but somehow you get 'on' in time. Mrs. Balfame has stood for the highest
+and best. Mind you, I'm not saying that she ever saw Rush alone again,
+or cared a snap of her finger for him--or he for her. No doubt she felt,
+when the rare chance offered of taking a little flyer, that it was too
+good to miss. But she shouldn't have done it; that's the point. I don't
+like my idols to have feet of clay."
+
+Broderick had felt both sympathetic and amused. He knew that Alys
+Crumley was not only sweet of temper and frank, if not candid, but that
+in spite of all her desperate modernism she cherished high ideals of
+conduct; and here she was turning loose the cat that skulks somewhere in
+every commonplace female's nature.
+
+But the whole conversation had left his mind promptly. He had attached
+no significance whatever to a ten minutes' walk between a polite man and
+a woman returning alone from a friend's house on a dark night.
+
+Now every word of the conversation came back to him. Rush, he gathered,
+had gone to the Crumley house several times a week for a while, and
+then, for reasons known only to himself and Alys, had ceased his visits
+abruptly. Had she fallen in love with him? Or was it only her vanity
+that was wounded? And if Rush had dropped a girl as pretty and bright
+and winning as Alys Crumley--who improved upon acquaintance,
+moreover--what was the reason? Why had he not fallen in love with her?
+Had he loved some one else?
+
+Broderick swung his mind to the morning following the murder, when he
+had met Rush in the hall of the Elsinore Hotel. The lawyer professed
+himself as delighted to "run up against him" and invited him to
+breakfast. All this had been natural enough, and it was equally natural
+that the conversation should have but one theme.
+
+Once more Broderick sought a fugitive impression and found it. Rush, who
+was a master of words when verbal exactness was imperative, had created
+an impression in his companion's mind of the impeccability of the
+murdered man's widow.
+
+Broderick had wondered once or twice since whence came that mental
+picture of Mrs. Balfame that rose clear-cut in his memory, in spite of
+his deliberate conviction of her guilt. Other people had raved about her
+and made no impression upon the young reporter's selective and somewhat
+cynical mind; but Rush had almost accomplished his purpose!
+
+Why had he sought to accomplish it?
+
+Broderick had known Rush in and out of court for nearly two years.
+Whenever he had been on an assignment in that part of Brabant County he
+had made a point of seeking him out, and even of spending an evening
+with him if he could afford the time. He liked the unique blend of East
+and West in the man; to Broderick's keen appraising mind Rush reflected
+the very best of the two great rival bisections of the nation. He liked
+the mixture of frankness and subtlety, of simple unquestioning
+patriotism--of assumption that no country but the United States of
+America mattered in the very least--and the intense concentrated
+individualism. Of hard-headed American determination to "get there" at
+any honourable cost, of jealously hidden romanticism.
+
+Broderick was almost at the Crumley gate. He halted for a moment under
+the dark maples and glanced up the long shadowy avenue, his own narrower
+and still more jealously guarded "romantic streak" appreciating the
+possibilities on a dusky evening with a girl whose face floated for a
+moment before him. But he banished her promptly, searching his memory
+for some salient trait in Rush that he instinctively knew would
+establish the current he desired.
+
+He found it after a moment of intense concentration. Rush was the sort
+of man that loves not woman but a woman. His very friendship for Alys
+Crumley was evidence that he cared nothing for girls as girls. Only the
+exceptional drew him, and mere youth left him unmoved.
+
+Knowing Rush as he did, he felt his way rapidly toward the facts. Alys,
+woman-like, had succumbed to propinquity, and betrayed herself; Rush,
+finding his mere masculine loneliness misinterpreted, and being
+honourable to boot, had promptly withdrawn.
+
+But why? Alys would have made him a delightful and useful wife. She was
+one of those too clever girls whom celibacy made neurotic and uncertain,
+but out of whom matrimony and maternity knocked all the nonsense at once
+and finally. She would make a splendid woman.
+
+He should have thought her just the girl to allure Rush, whom he also
+knew to be fastidious and to set a high value on the good old Brabant
+blood. Moreover, it was time that Rush would be wanting the permanent
+companionship of a woman, a bright, progressive, but feminine woman. He
+had observed certain signs.
+
+Alys, apparently, had not measured up to Rush's secret ideal of the
+wholly desirable woman, nor appealed to that throbbing vein of
+romanticism which he had striven to bury beneath the dusty tomes of the
+law. What sort of woman, then, could satisfy all he desired? And had he
+found her?
+
+Broderick recalled a certain knightly exaltation in Rush's blue eyes
+which had come and gone as they discussed Mrs. Balfame, although not a
+word of the adroit concept he had built remained in the reporter's
+memory. But those eyes came back to Broderick there in the dark--the
+eyes of a man young and ardent like himself--he almost fancied he had
+seen the woman's image in them.
+
+He revived his impression of Mrs. Balfame, seen for the first time
+to-day, and contemplated it impersonally: A beautiful, a fascinating
+woman--to a man of Rush's limited experience and idealism; fastidious,
+proud, gracious, supremely poised.
+
+Nor did she look a day over thirty, although she must be a good bit
+more--he recalled the obituaries of the dead man: they had alluded to
+his marital accomplishment as covering a term of some twenty years.
+Perhaps she was his second wife--but no--nor did it matter. Rush was
+just the sort of chap to fall in love with a woman older than himself,
+if she were still young in appearance and as chastely lovely, as
+unapproachable, as Mrs. Balfame. He would idealise her very years,
+contrast them with that vague suggestion of virginity that Broderick
+recalled, of deep untroubled tides.
+
+All romantic men believe in women's unfathomed depths when in love,
+reflected the star reporter cynically, and Mrs. Balfame was just the
+sort to go until forty before having the smashing love affair of her
+life; and to inspire a similar passion in a hard-working idealist like
+Dwight Rush.
+
+Mrs. Balfame and Dwight Rush! Broderick, who now stood quite still, a
+few paces from the Crumley gate, whistled.
+
+Could Rush have fired that shot? Broderick recalled that the lawyer had
+mentioned having spent Saturday evening in Brooklyn--on business.
+
+Broderick shook his head vigorously. So far as he was concerned, Rush
+never should be asked to produce his alibi. He did not believe that Rush
+had done it, did not propose to harbour the suggestion for a moment.
+Rush was not the man to commit a cowardly murder, not even for a woman.
+If he had wanted to kill the man he would have involved himself in an
+election row, forced the bully to draw his gun, and then got in his own
+fire double quick. Standards were standards.
+
+Broderick was more convinced than ever that Mrs. Balfame had committed
+the deed, and he had established the current. His work was "cut out" for
+the evening; and without further delay he presented himself at the Widow
+Crumley's door.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+Supper was over and Broderick and Miss Crumley sat in the back yard
+studio; Mrs. Crumley had company of her own, and as Alys decried the
+vulgarity of the legendary American daughter's attitude to the
+poor-spirited American mother, she invariably retired to the background
+whenever it would enhance Mrs. Crumley's self-respect to occupy not only
+the foreground but (if her daughter had an interesting visitor) the
+entire stage. Alys, since her humiliating failure with Dwight Rush,
+clung the more passionately to her rules of conduct. They were not red
+with the blood of life, but at least they served as an anchored buoy.
+
+The atelier was hung with olive green burlap and covered with an
+artistic litter of sketches. Broderick, before settling himself into a
+comfortable chair by the stove, examined the more recent and encouraged
+her with a few words of discriminating praise.
+
+"Keep it up, Alicia. The _News_ for you next month if you are ready for
+a job. You've improved marvellously in figures, which was where you were
+weak. Miss Loys, our fashion artist, is marrying next month. You might
+as well begin with that. You'll be on the paper and can jump into
+something better when it offers."
+
+Alys nodded emphatically. "Give me work, and as soon as possible. I
+don't care much what it is. But I want work and plenty of it. It isn't
+only that I want to use my energies, but I've spent all I can afford on
+lessons and the rest of it."
+
+"I'll see to it. Your sort doesn't go begging."
+
+Broderick clipped his cigar and watched her thin profile for a moment
+without speaking.
+
+He noticed for the first time that she had lost the little flesh that
+formerly had covered her small bones, and that the pink stained the pale
+ivory of her cheeks only when conversation excited her. But if anything
+she was prettier--no, more attractive--than ever, for there was more
+depth in her face, which in spite of its subtle suggestions, had seemed
+to his critical masculine taste to be too eager, too prone to pour out
+her personality without reserve when the brain lighted up. Now there was
+a slight droop of the eyelids which might mean fatigue, but gave length
+and mystery to the strange olive eyes. Her pink mouth, with its short
+upper lip, was too small for his taste, but the modelling of her
+features in general seemed to him more cleanly defined, and the sweep of
+jaw, almost as keen as a blade, must have delighted her own artist soul.
+She was rather diminutive (to her sorrow), but the long lines she
+cultivated in her house gowns made her figure very alluring, and the
+limp and awkward grace of fashion singularly became her. She wore
+to-night a "butterfly" gown of georgette (finding, as ever, admirable
+effects in cotton since she could not afford the costly fabrics), the
+colour of the American beauty rose, and a narrow band of olive velvet
+around her thin ivory-white neck. For the moment of her absorption, as
+she stared into the coals, her attitude would have been one of complete
+repose had it not been for her restless hands. Broderick noticed, too,
+that there were darkened hollows under her eyes. "Poor kid," he thought.
+"She's been through it, all right, and put up a stiff fight. But what a
+pity."
+
+As he struck a match she rose, and, opening a drawer in the table, took
+out a box of Russian cigarettes. "I keep these here," she announced,
+"because I don't want to shock mother; and I seldom indulge these days
+in expensive habits. But I shall celebrate and smoke all evening. It is
+jolly to have you like this again, Jimmy. I heard you were engaged. Is
+it true? You would seem to have deserted every one else."
+
+Mr. Broderick coloured and looked as sheepish as a highly sophisticated
+star reporter may. "Well, not quite," he admitted. "It's been heavy
+running, and I don't have all the time there is on my hands. But--I
+hope--well, I think now it'll be pretty plain sailing--"
+
+"Good, Jimmy, good!"
+
+For a moment he, too, gazed into the coals, his eyes softening; then
+once more he banished the dainty image evoked; no nonsense for him in
+Elsinore, with the Balfame tangle to unravel to the glory of the New
+York _News_.
+
+"Alys," he said, stretching out his long legs and looking innocent and
+comfortable, "I want to have a confidential talk with you about Mrs.
+Balfame." He paused and then looked her straight in the eyes as he
+launched his bolt. "I have come to the conclusion that she shot him--"
+
+"Jim Broderick!" Alys sprang to her feet, her eyes wide and full of
+angry light. "Oh, you newspaper men!--How utterly abominable!"
+
+"Why? Sit down, my dear. Somebody did it--not? as our friends the
+Germans say. And undoubtedly that some one is the person most interested
+in getting him out of the way."
+
+"But not Mrs. Balfame! Why--I've been brought up on Mrs. Balfame. I'd as
+soon suspect my own mother."
+
+"No, my friend, you would not. Mrs. Crumley is adorable in her own way,
+but she is frankly and comfortably in her fifties. She is not a
+beautiful woman who looks fully ten years younger than she has any right
+to look. See?"
+
+"Oh--but--"
+
+"Think it over. You said the other day that you believed Mrs. Balfame to
+have unplumbed depths, or something equally popular with your sex. And
+you were horrified at her singular facial transformations no less than
+twice within a fortnight. Certainly the picture you drew of her stalking
+down the Country Club room was that of a woman in a mood for anything--"
+
+"Of a lovely well-bred woman outraged by the conduct of a drunken brute
+of a husband. But do you imagine that any woman goes through life
+without being turned into a fury now and then by her husband?"
+
+"No doubt. But, you see, the death of the brute occurred so soon after
+the transformation scene enacted behind the expressive face of the lady
+you have immortalised on paper--and no new-made devil is so complete as
+that which rises out of the debris of an angel. When your placid
+sternly-controlled women do explode, they may patch themselves together
+as swiftly as a cyclone passes, but one of the sinister faces of their
+hidden collection has been flashed momentarily before the public eye--"
+
+"Oh! Oh!"
+
+"I have tracked down every suspect, several upon whom no suspicion has
+alighted--as yet. To my mind there are only two people to whom the crime
+could be brought home."
+
+"Who is the other?"
+
+"Dwight Rush."
+
+This time Alys did not sit up with flaming eyes. To the astute gaze of
+the reporter she took herself visibly in hand. But she bit through the
+long tube between her lips. "What makes you think that?" she asked, as
+she tossed the bits into the fire and lighted another cigarette. "You
+roam too far afield for me."
+
+"He is in love with her."
+
+"With whom?"
+
+"The lady who was so opportunely, if somewhat sensationally, made a
+widow last Saturday night."
+
+"He is not! Why--how absurd you are to-night, Jim. She is a thousand
+years older than he."
+
+"How old is she--"
+
+"Forty-two. Mother sent her a birthday cake last month."
+
+"Rush is thirty-four. Who cares for eight years on the wrong side these
+days? She looks younger than he does, to say nothing of her own
+inconsiderable age; and when a woman is as lovely as Mrs. Balfame, as
+interesting as she must be with that astute mind, that subtle suggestion
+of mystery--"
+
+"You are mad, simply mad. In the first place, he has had no chance to
+find out whether she is interesting or not--if he had, all Elsinore
+would have rung with it. And--ah--"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"Come out with it. It's up to you to prove him innocent if you can."
+
+"He was in Brooklyn that evening. I met him at the Cummacks' the next
+day, and heard him say so."
+
+"Yes, that is what he is at pains to tell every one. Perhaps he can
+prove it, perhaps not. But that's not what was in your mind."
+
+"I was afraid of being misunderstood. But it is all right, for of course
+he can prove that he was in Brooklyn. I happen to know that he went to
+the Balfame house on his way back from the club Saturday evening, and
+only stayed a few minutes. I left the club just after Mrs. Balfame did,
+as I had been out there all afternoon and had promised mother to help
+her during the evening. I came in on the trolley and got off at the
+corner of Balfame and Dawbarn Streets, to finish an argument I was
+having with Harriet Bell over the possibility of Mrs. Balfame losing her
+social power through the scene out at the club--few of the members would
+care to go through such a scene a second time. Moreover, some of these
+newer rich women resent her supremacy and would like to force her to
+take a back seat.
+
+"I only talked for a few minutes after I got off the car and then walked
+quickly over to the avenue. Just as I turned the corner I saw Dwight
+Rush slam the Balfame gate and almost run up the walk. He seemed in a
+tearing hurry about something. I was standing on our porch only a few
+minutes later when he strode past--no doubt hoping to catch the
+seven-ten for Brooklyn. Now!"
+
+"Nobody would be happier than I to prove a first-class alibi for Rush--"
+
+"Who else suspects him?"
+
+"No one; and so far as I am concerned no one shall. If you want the
+whole truth, what I'm as intent on just now as big news itself is
+complete exoneration for my friend. But if he didn't do it, she did. And
+if he butted in upon her at a time like that it was because he was
+beside himself--no doubt he asked her to elope with him--get a
+divorce--"
+
+"What utter nonsense!"
+
+"Perhaps. But if she saw her chance, I'm thinking she wouldn't have
+hesitated a minute to put a bullet in Balfame. People don't turn as sick
+at the mere thought of committing murder, when there's a good chance of
+putting it over, as you may imagine. Most of us experience the impulse
+some time or other. Cowardice or circumstances safeguard us. She did it,
+take my word for it. She deliberately poisoned a glass of lemonade
+first, for Balfame to drink when he came home on his way to take the
+train for Albany. Then, something or other interfering--what, I can only
+guess at as yet--she found her chance to shoot, and shot."
+
+"Why, if all that were true, she would be a fiend."
+
+"Not necessarily. Merely a highly exasperated woman. One, moreover, who
+had locked herself up too long. Marital squabbles are safety valves, and
+I understand she let him do the rowing. But I don't care about her
+impulses. The act is enough for me. Psychology later, when I write a
+page of Sunday stuff. But you can see for yourself that if she isn't
+indicted, and pretty quick, Dwight Rush will be?"
+
+"But no one else suspects him."
+
+"Not yet. But the whole town thinks of nothing else. And as they've
+about given up all hope of the political crowd, as well as gunmen and
+tango girls, they'll veer presently toward the truth. But before they
+settle down on their idol's lofty head, they'll root about for some man
+who might easily be in love with her--although hopelessly, as a matter
+of course. Then they'll recall a thousand trifles that no doubt you too
+recall without effort."
+
+"It's true she turned to him out there, ignoring men she had known for
+years--she saw him at the house that night, if only for a few
+moments--Oh, it's too horrible! Mrs. Balfame. An Elsinore lady! And she
+has been so good to us all these hard years, helped us over and over
+again. Oh, I don't mind telling you, Jim, that I was a little bit
+jealous of her--I rather liked Rush--he was interesting and a nice male
+creature, and I was so lonely--and he stopped coming so suddenly--and
+then seeing him so delighted to meet her that night--and both of them
+dragging up the avenue as if each moment were a jewel--I've always
+thought it hateful for married women to try to cut girls out--it's so
+unnatural--but I can't hear her accused of murder--to go--Oh, it's too
+awful to talk about!"
+
+"She'd get off. Don't let that worry you. Innocent or guilty. There's no
+other way of saving Rush. Be more jealous, if that will help matters.
+He'll marry her the moment he decently can."
+
+"I don't believe he cares a bit for her. And I don't believe she will
+marry him or any one."
+
+"Oh, yes, she will. He's the sort to get what he wants--and, take it
+from me, he is mad about her. And she's at the age to be carried off her
+feet by an ardent determined lover. Make no mistake about that. Besides,
+her's is a name that she'll want to drop as soon as possible."
+
+"Jim Broderick, you know that you are deliberately playing on my female
+nature, on all the baseness you feel sure is in it. I'd always thought
+you rather subtle, diplomatic. I don't thank you for the compliment of
+frankness."
+
+"My dear girl, it is a compliment--my utter lack of diplomacy with you.
+I want to pull this big thing off for my paper, for your paper. And I
+want to save the friend of both of us. I have merely tried to prove to
+you that Mrs. Balfame is a mere human being, not a goddess, and deserves
+to pay some of the penalty of her crime, at least. Certainly, she isn't
+worth the sacrifice of Dwight Rush--"
+
+"But if he can prove his alibi--"
+
+"Suppose he couldn't. It was Saturday night. What more likely than that
+he failed to find the man he wanted? I have a dark suspicion that he
+never went near Brooklyn that night, was in no mood to think of
+business; although I don't for a moment believe he was near the Balfame
+place, or knows who did it--unless Mrs. Balfame has confessed to him.
+She is a very clever woman, not likely to linger on smugly in any fool's
+paradise. She must know that suspicion will work round to her, and
+knowing his infatuation, no doubt has consulted him."
+
+Broderick really thought nothing of the sort, but calculated his words;
+and they produced their effect. The blood rose to the girl's hair, then
+ebbed, leaving her ghastly. "He would hate her then," she whispered.
+
+"Not Rush. Another man, perhaps; but not only do things go too deep with
+a man like that for anything but time to cure, but he's chock full of
+romantic chivalry. And he's madly in love, remember; by that I mean in
+the first flush. He'd look upon her as a martyr, and immediately set to
+work to ward suspicion from her; if an alibi could not be proved for him
+he'd take the crime on his own shoulders, if the worst came to worst."
+
+"Oh! Are men really so Quixotic in these days?"
+
+"Haven't changed fundamentally since they evolved from protoplasm."
+
+"But why should all that chivalry--that magnificent passion--the first
+love of a man like that--be called out by a woman of Mrs. Balfame's age?
+Why, it's some girl's right! I don't say mine. Don't think I'm a dog in
+the manger. I'm trying not to be. But the world is full of girls--not
+foolish young things only good enough for boys, but girls in their
+twenties, bright, companionable, helpful, real mates for men--Why, it is
+unnatural, damnable!"
+
+"Yes, it is," said Broderick sympathetically. "But if human nature
+weren't a tangled wire fence electrified full of contradictions, life
+wouldn't be interesting at all. Perhaps it's a mere case of affinity,
+destiny--don't ever betray me. But there it is. As well try to explain
+the abrupt taking off of useful men in their prime, of lovely children,
+of needed mothers, of aged women who have lived exemplary lives, mainly
+for others, spending their last years with the horrors of cancer. Don't
+try to explain human passion. And she _is_ beautiful, and fresher to
+look at than girls of eighteen that tango day and night. But he must be
+saved from her as well as from arrest. Will you help me?"
+
+"What do you want me to do?"
+
+"Get further evidence about Mrs. Balfame."
+
+"I cannot, and would not if I could. Do you think I would be the means
+of fastening the crime of murder on any woman?"
+
+"You would if you were a hardened--and good--newspaper woman."
+
+"Well, I'm not. And I won't. Do your own sleuthing."
+
+"More than I are on the job, but I want your help. I don't say you can
+pick up fragments of her dress in the grove, or that you can--or
+would--worm yourself into her confidence and extract a confession. But
+you can set your wits to work and think up ways to put me on the track
+of more evidence than I've got now. Can you think of anything off-hand?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Ah? What does that intonation mean?"
+
+"Your ears are off the key."
+
+"Not mine. Tell me at once--No,"--He rose and took up his hat--"never
+mind now. Think it over. You will tell me in a day or two. Just remember
+while watching all my little seeds sprout that you can help me save a
+fine fellow and put my heel on a snake--a murderess! Paugh! There's
+nothing so obscene. Good night."
+
+She did not rise as he let himself out, but sat beside her cold stove
+thinking and crying until her mother called her to come in and go to
+bed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+Mrs. Balfame, after she dismissed the newspaper men, went up to her
+bedroom and sat very still for a long while. She was apprehensive rather
+than frightened, but she felt very sober.
+
+She had accepted the assurance of the chief of the local police that his
+inquiry regarding the pistol was a mere matter of routine, and had
+merely obeyed a normal instinct in concealing it. But she knew the
+intense interest of her community in the untimely and mysterious exit of
+one of its most notorious members, an interest raised to the superlative
+degree by the attentions of the metropolitan press; and she knew also
+that when a community is excited suspicions are rapidly translated into
+proofs, and every clue feeds the appetite for a victim.
+
+The European war was a dazzling example on the grand scale of the
+complete breakdown of intellect before the primitive passions of hatred,
+greed, envy, and the recurrent desire of man to kill, combined with that
+monstrous dilation of the ego which consoles him with a childish belief
+in his own impeccability.
+
+The newspapers of course pandered to the taste of their patrons for
+morbid vicarious excitement; she had glanced contemptuously at the
+headlines of her own "Case," and had accepted her temporary notoriety as
+a matter of course, schooled herself to patience; the ordeal was
+scarifying but of necessity brief.
+
+But these young men. They had insinuated--what had they not insinuated?
+Either they had extraordinary powers of divination, or they were a
+highly specialised branch of the detective force. They had asked
+questions and forced answers from her that made her start and shiver in
+the retrospect.
+
+Was it possible they believed she had murdered David Balfame, or were
+they merely seeking material for a few more columns before the case died
+a natural death? She had never been interviewed before, save once
+superficially as President of the Friday Club, but she knew one or two
+of the county editors, and Alys Crumley had sometimes amused her with
+stories of her experiences as a New York reporter.
+
+These young men, so well-groomed, so urbane, so charming even, all of
+them no doubt generously equipped to love and marry and protect with
+their lives the girl of their choice, were they too but the soldiers of
+an everlasting battlefield, often at bay and desperate in the trenches?
+No matter how good their work, how great their "killing," the struggle
+must be renewed daily to maintain their own footing, to advance, or at
+least to uphold, the power of their little autocracy. To them journalism
+was the most important thing in the world, and mere persons like
+herself, suddenly lifted from obscurity to the brassy peaks of notoriety
+were so much material for first page columns of the newspapers they
+served with all the loyalty of those deluded soldiers on the European
+battlefields. She understood them with an abrupt and complete clarity,
+but she hated them. They might like and even admire her, but they would
+show her no mercy if they discovered that she had been in the yard that
+night. She felt as if a pack of wolves were at her heels.
+
+But finally her brow relaxed. She shrugged her shoulders and began to
+unbutton the dense black gown that had expressed the mood the world
+demands of a four-days' widow. Let them suspect, divine what they chose.
+Not a soul on earth but Anna Steuer knew that she had been out that
+night after her return home. Even had those lynx-eyed young men sat on
+the box hedge they could not have seen her, for the avenue was well
+lighted, and the grove, the entire yard in fact, had been as black as a
+mine. Even the person skulking among those trees could not have guessed
+who she was.
+
+For a moment she had been tempted to tell them a little; that she had
+looked out and seen a moving shadow in the grove. But she had remembered
+in time that they would ask why she had reserved this testimony at the
+coroner's inquest. Her role was to know nothing. Indubitably the shot
+had been fired from the trees; nobody questioned that; why involve
+herself? They would discharge still another set of questions at her,
+among others why she had not telephoned for the police.
+
+As she hung up her gown she recognised the heavy footfalls of her maid
+of all work, and when Frieda knocked, bade her enter, employing those
+cool impersonal tones so resented by the European servant after a brief
+sojourn on the dedicated American soil.
+
+As the girl closed the door behind her without speaking, Mrs. Balfame
+turned sharply. She felt at a disadvantage. As her figure was reasonably
+slim, she wore a cheap corset which she washed once a month in the bath
+tub with her nailbrush; and her linen, although fresh, as ever, was of
+stout longcloth, and unrelieved by the coquetry of ribbons. She wore a
+serviceable tight petticoat of black jersey, beyond which her well-shod
+feet seemed to loom larger than her head. She was vaguely grateful that
+she had not been caught by Alys Crumley, so fond of sketching her, and
+was about to order Frieda to untie her tongue and be gone, when she
+noticed that the girl's face was no longer bound, and asked kindly:
+
+"Has the toothache gone? I hope you do not suffer any longer."
+
+Frieda lifted her small and crafty eyes and shot a suspicious glance at
+the mistress who had been so indifferent to what she believed to be the
+worst of all pains.
+
+"It's out."
+
+"Too bad you didn't have it out at once." Mrs. Balfame hastily encased
+herself in her bath robe and sat down. "I'll take my dinner
+upstairs--why--what is it?"
+
+"I want to go home."
+
+"Home?"
+
+"To Germany."
+
+"But, of course you can't. There are a lot of German reservists in the
+country who would like to go home and fight, but they can't get past the
+British."
+
+"Some have. I could."
+
+"How? That is quite interesting."
+
+"I not tell. But I want to go."
+
+"Then go, by all means. But please wait a day or two until I get another
+girl."
+
+"Plenty girls out of job. I want to go to-morrow."
+
+"Oh, very well. But you can't expect a full month's wages, as it is you
+that is serving notice, not I."
+
+"I do not want a full month wage. I want five hundert dollar."
+
+Mrs. Balfame turned her amazed eyes upon the girl. Her first thought was
+that the creature had been driven insane by her letters from home, and
+wondered if she could overcome her if attacked. Then as she met those
+small, sharp, crafty eyes, set high in the big stolid face like little
+deadly guns in a fort, her heart missed a beat. But her own gaze, large
+and cold, did not waver, and she said satirically:
+
+"Well, I am sure I hope you will get it."
+
+"I get it--from you."
+
+Mrs. Balfame lifted her shoulders. "What next? I have contributed what
+little I can afford to the war funds. I am sorry, but I cannot
+accommodate you."
+
+"You give me five hundert dollar," reiterated the thick even voice, "or
+I tell the police you come in the back door two minutes after Mr.
+Balfame he was kilt at the front gate."
+
+Obvious danger once more turned Mrs. Balfame into pure steel. "Oh, no;
+you will tell them nothing of the sort, for it is not true. I thought I
+heard some one on the back stairs when I went down to the kitchen. As
+you know I always drink a glass of filtered water before going to bed. I
+had forgotten the episode utterly, but I remember now, I heard a noise
+outside, even imagined that some one turned the knob of the door, and
+called up to ask you if you also had heard. I did not know that anything
+had happened out in front until I returned to my room."
+
+"I see you come in the kitchen door." But the voice was not quite so
+even, the shifty glance wavered. Frieda felt suddenly the European
+peasant in the presence of the superior by divine right. Mrs. Balfame
+followed up her advantage.
+
+"You are lying--for purposes of blackmail. You did not see me come in
+the door, because I had not been outside of it. I do not even remember
+opening it to listen, although I may have done so. You saw nothing and
+cannot blackmail me. Nor would any one believe your word against mine."
+
+"I hear you come in just after me--"
+
+"Heard? Just now you said you saw."
+
+"Ach--"
+
+Mrs. Balfame had an inspiration. "My God!" she exclaimed, springing to
+her feet, "the murderer took refuge in the house, was hidden in the
+cellar or attic all night, all the next day! He may be here yet! You may
+be feeding him!"
+
+She advanced upon the staring girl whose mouth stood open. "Of course.
+Of course. You are a friend of Old Dutch. It was one of his gunmen who
+did it, and you are his accomplice. Or perhaps you killed him yourself.
+Perhaps he treated you as he treated so many girls, and you killed him
+and are trying to blackmail me for money to get out of the country."
+
+"It is a lie!" Frieda's voice was strangled with outraged virtue. "My
+man, he fight for the fatherland. Old Dutch, he will not hurt a fly. I
+would not have touch your pig of a husband. You know that, for you hate
+him yourself. I have see in the eye, in the hand. I know notings of who
+kill him, but--no, I have not see you come in the kitchen door, but I
+hear some one come in, the door shut, you call out in so strange
+voice--I believe before that you have kill him--now--now I do not
+know--"
+
+"It would be wise to know nothing,"--Mrs. Balfame's voice was charged
+with meaning--"unless you wish to be arrested as the criminal, or as an
+accomplice--after confessing that you entered the house within a moment
+or two of the shooting. Who is to say exactly when you did come in?
+Well, better keep your mouth shut. It is wise for innocent people to
+know as little about a crime as possible. Why did you testify before the
+coroner's jury that your tooth ached so you heard nothing? Why didn't
+you tell your story then?"
+
+"I was frightened, and my tooth--I can tink of notings else."
+
+"And now you think it quite safe to blackmail me?"
+
+"I want to go back to Germany--to my man--and I hate this country what
+hates Germany."
+
+"This country is neutral," said Mrs. Balfame severely. "It regards all
+the belligerents as barbarians tarred with the same brush. You Germans
+are so excitable that you imagine we hate when we merely don't care."
+This was intended to be soothing, but Frieda's brow darkened and she
+thrust out her pugnacious lips.
+
+"Germany, she is the greatest country in the whole world," she
+announced. "All the world--it muss know that."
+
+"How familiar that sounds! Just a slight variation on the old American
+brag that is quite a relief." Mrs. Balfame spoke as lightly as if she
+merely had let down the bars of her dignity out of sympathy with a
+lacerated Teuton. "Well, go back to your Germany, Frieda, if you can
+get there, but don't try to blackmail me again. I have no five hundred
+dollars to give you if I would. If you choose, you may stay your month
+out, and spend your evenings taking up a collection among your German
+friends. You are excused."
+
+She had achieved her purpose. The girl's practical mind was puzzled by
+the simple explanation of her mistress' presence in the kitchen, deeply
+impressed by the contemptuous refusal to be blackmailed. Her shoulders
+drooped and she slunk out of the room.
+
+For a moment Mrs. Balfame clung, reeling, to the back of a chair. Then
+she went downstairs and telephoned to Dwight Rush.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+The young lawyer was to call at eight o'clock. Mrs. Balfame put on her
+best black blouse in his honour; it was cut low about the throat and
+softened with a rolling collar of hemstitched white lawn. This was as
+far in the art of sex allurement as she was prepared to go; the bare
+idea of a negligee of white lace and silk, warmed by rose-colored
+shades, would have filled her with cold disgust. She was not a religious
+woman, but she had her standards.
+
+At a quarter of eight she made a careful inspection of the lower rooms;
+sleuths, professional and amateur, would not hesitate to sneak into her
+house and listen at keyholes. She inferred that the house was under
+surveillance, for she had looked from her window several times and seen
+the same man sauntering up and down that end of the avenue. No doubt
+some one watched the back doors also.
+
+Convinced that her home was still sacrosanct, she placed two chairs at a
+point in the parlour farthest from the doors leading into the hall, and
+into a room beyond which Mr. Balfame had used as an office. The doors,
+of course, would be open throughout the interview. No one should be able
+to say that she had shut herself up with a young man; on the other hand,
+it was the duty of the deceased husband's lawyer to call on the widow.
+Even if those young devils discovered that she had telephoned for him,
+what more regular than that she should wish to consult her lawyer after
+such insinuations?
+
+Rush arrived as the town clock struck eight. Frieda, who answered the
+door in her own good time, surveyed him suspiciously through a narrow
+aperture to which she applied one eye.
+
+"What you want?" she growled. "Mrs. Balfame she have seen all the
+reporters already yet."
+
+"Let the gentleman in," called Mrs. Balfame from the parlour. "This is a
+friend of my late husband."
+
+Rush was permitted to enter. He was a full minute disposing of his hat
+and overcoat in the hall, while Frieda dragged her heelless slippers
+back to the kitchen and slammed the door. His own step was not brisk as
+he left the hall for the parlour, and his face, always colourless,
+looked thin and haggard. Mrs. Balfame, as she rose and gave him her
+hand, asked solicitously:
+
+"Are you under the weather? How seedy you look. I wondered why you had
+not called--"
+
+"A touch of the grippe. Felt all in for a day or two, but am all right
+now. And although I have been very anxious to see you, I had made up my
+mind not to call unless you sent for me."
+
+"Well, I sent for you professionally," she retorted coolly. "You don't
+suppose I took your love making seriously."
+
+He flushed dully, after the manner of men with thick fair skins, and his
+hard blue eyes lost their fire as he stared at her. It was
+incomprehensible that she could misunderstand him.
+
+"It was serious enough to me. I merely stayed away, because, having
+spoken as I did, I--well, I cannot very well explain. You will remember
+that I made you promise to send for me if you were in trouble--"
+
+"I remembered!" She felt his rebuke obscurely. "It never occurred to me
+to send for any one else."
+
+"Thank you for that."
+
+"Did you mean anything but politeness when you said that you had been
+anxious to see me?"
+
+He hesitated, but he had already made up his mind that the time had come
+to put her on her guard. Besides, he inferred that she had begun herself
+to appreciate her danger.
+
+"You have read the newspapers. You saw the reporters this afternoon. Of
+course you must have guessed that they hope for a sensational trial with
+you as the heroine."
+
+"How can men--_men_--be such heartless brutes?"
+
+"Ask the public. Even that element that believes itself to be select and
+would not touch a yellow paper devours a really interesting crime in
+high life. Never mind that now. Let us get down to brass tacks. They
+want to fix the crime on you. How are they going to manage it? That is
+the question for us. Tell me exactly what they said, what they made you
+say."
+
+Mrs. Balfame gave him so circumstantial an account of the interview that
+he looked at her in admiration, although his rigid American face, that
+looked so strong, turned paler still.
+
+"What a splendid witness you would make!" He stared at the carpet for a
+moment, then flashed his eyes upward much as Broderick had done. "Tell
+me," he said softly, "is there anything you withheld from them? You know
+how safe you are with me. But I must be in a position to advise you what
+to say and to leave unsaid--if the worst comes."
+
+"You mean if I am arrested?" She had a moment of complete naturalness,
+and stared at him wildly. He leaned forward and patted her hand.
+
+"Anything is possible in a case like this. But you have nothing to fear.
+Now, will you tell me--"
+
+"Do you think I did it?"
+
+"I know that you did not. But I think you know something about it."
+
+"It would cast no light on the mystery. He was shot from that grove on a
+pitch dark night, and that is all there is to it."
+
+"Let me be the judge of that."
+
+"Very well. I had put out my light--upstairs--and, as I was nervous, I
+looked out of the window to see if Dave was coming. I so longed to have
+him come--and go! Then I happened to glance in the direction of the
+grove, and I saw some one sneaking about there--"
+
+"Yes!" He half rose, his eyes expanding, his nostrils dilating. "Go on.
+Go on."
+
+"I told you I was nervous--wrought up from that dreadful scene at the
+club. I just felt like an adventure! I slipped down stairs and out of
+the house by the kitchen door--Frieda takes the key of the back hall
+door on Saturday nights--thinking I would watch the burglar; of course
+that was what I thought he must be; and I knew that Dave would be along
+in a minute--"
+
+"How long was this after he telephoned? It would take him some time to
+walk from Cummack's; and he didn't leave at once--"
+
+"Oh, quite a while after. I was sure then that he would be along in a
+minute or two. Well--it may seem incredible to you, but I really felt
+as if excitement of that dangerous sort would be a relief."
+
+"I understand perfectly." Rush spoke with the fatuousness of man who
+believes that love and complete comprehension of the object beloved are
+natural corollaries. "But--but that is not the sort of story that goes
+down with a jury of small farmers and trades-people. They don't know
+much about your sort of nerves. But go on."
+
+"Well, I managed to get into the grove without being either seen or
+heard by that man. I am sure of that. He moved round a good deal, and I
+thought he was feeling about for some point from which he could make a
+dart for the house. Then I heard Dave in Dawbarn Street, singing. Then I
+saw him under the lamp-post. After that it all happened so quickly I can
+hardly recall it clearly enough to describe. The man near me crouched. I
+can't tell you what I thought then--if I knew he was going to shoot--or
+why I didn't cry out. Almost before I had time to think at all, he
+fired, and Dave went down."
+
+"But what about that other bullet? Are you sure there was no one else in
+the grove?"
+
+"There may have been a dozen. I heard some one running afterwards; there
+may have been more than one."
+
+"Did you have a pistol?" He spoke very softly. "Don't be afraid to tell
+me. It might easily have gone off accidentally--or something deeper than
+your consciousness may have telegraphed an imperious message to your
+hand."
+
+But Mrs. Balfame, like all artificial people, was intensely secretive,
+and only delivered herself of the unvarnished truth when it served her
+purpose best. She gave a little feminine shudder. "I never kept a pistol
+in the house. If I had, it would have been empty--just something to
+flourish at a burglar."
+
+"Ah--yes. I was going to say that I was glad of that, but I don't know
+that it matters. If you had taken a revolver out that night, loaded or
+otherwise, and confessed to it, you hardly could have escaped arrest by
+this time, even if it were a .38. And if you confessed to going out into
+the dark to stalk a man without one--that would make your adventure look
+foolhardy and purposeless--"
+
+It was evident that he was thinking aloud. She interrupted him sharply:
+
+"But you believe me?"
+
+"I believe every word you say. The more differently you act from other
+women, the more natural you seem to me. But I think you were dead right
+in suppressing the episode. It leads nowhere and would incriminate you."
+
+"It may come out yet. That is why I sent for you, not because I was
+afraid of those reporters. Frieda was on the backstairs that night when
+I came in. I thought I heard a sound and called out. I told Anna that
+night and she questioned Frieda indirectly and was satisfied that she
+had heard nothing, for although she had come home early with a
+toothache, she was suffering so intensely that she wouldn't have heard
+if the shot had been fired under her window. So I dismissed such
+misgivings as I had from my mind. But just after those reporters left
+she came up to my room and told me that she saw me come in, and tried to
+blackmail me for five hundred dollars. I soon made her admit that she
+had not seen me; but she heard me, no doubt of that. I explained
+logically why I was there--after a drink of water, and that I called out
+to her because I thought I heard some one try the door--but if those
+reporters get hold of her--"
+
+His face looked very grim. "That is bad, bad. By the way, why didn't you
+run to Balfame? That would seem the natural thing--"
+
+"I was suddenly horribly afraid. I think I knew he was dead and I didn't
+want to go near _that_. I ran like a dog back to its kennel."
+
+"It was a feminine enough thing to do." For the first time he smiled,
+and his voice, which had insensibly grown inquisitorial, softened once
+more. "It was a dreadful position to find oneself in and no mistake.
+Your instinct was right. If you had been found bending over him--still,
+as you had no weapon--"
+
+"I think on the whole it would have been better to have gone to him. Of
+course that is what I should have done if I had loved him. As it was, I
+ran as far from him as I could get--"
+
+"Well, don't let us waste time discussing the ought to have beens.
+Unless some one can prove that you were out that night, the whole
+incident must be suppressed. If you are arrested on any trumped up
+charge--and the district attorney is keener than the reporters--you must
+stick to your story. By the way, why didn't you tell the reporters that
+Frieda was in the house about the time the shot was fired?"
+
+"I had forgotten. The house has been full of people; the neighbourhood
+has lived here; I have noticed her no more than if she were as wooden as
+she looks."
+
+"Do you think she did it?"
+
+"I wish I could. But she would not have had time to get into the house
+before I did. And the footsteps were running toward the lane at the back
+of the grounds."
+
+"She is one of the swiftest dancers down in that hall where she goes
+with her crowd every Saturday night. I have been doing a little
+sleuthing on my own account, but I can't connect her up with Balfame."
+
+"He wouldn't have looked at her."
+
+"You never can tell. A man will often look quite hard at whatever
+happens to be handy. But she doesn't appear to have any sweetheart,
+although she's been in the country for four years. She is intimate in
+the home of Old Dutch and goes about with young Conrad, but he is
+engaged to some one else. All the boys like to dance with her. She left
+the hall suddenly and ran home--ostensibly wild with a toothache. If she
+hid in the grove to kill Balfame she could have got into the house
+before you did. What was she doing on the stair, anyway?"
+
+"I didn't ask her."
+
+"She may have been too out of breath to answer you. Or too wary. Those
+other footsteps--they may have been those of an accomplice; the man who
+fired the other pistol."
+
+"But I would have seen her running ahead of me."
+
+"Not necessarily. It was very dark. Your mind was stunned. You may have
+hesitated longer than you know before making for the house. One is
+liable to powerful inhibitions in great crises. Where is the girl? I
+think I'll have her in."
+
+He walked the floor nervously while Mrs. Balfame went out to the
+kitchen. Frieda was sitting by the stove knitting. Commanded to come to
+the parlour, her little eyes almost closed, but she followed Mrs.
+Balfame and confronted Rush, who stood in the middle of the room looking
+tall and formidable.
+
+"I am Mrs. Balfame's lawyer," he said without preamble. "She sent for me
+because you tried to blackmail her. What were you doing on the stairs
+when you heard Mrs. Balfame in the kitchen? You left the dance hall
+sometime before eight, and that could not have been more than five
+minutes past."
+
+Frieda pressed her big lips together in a hard line.
+
+"Oh, you won't speak. Well, if you don't explain to me, you will to the
+Grand Jury to-morrow. Or I shall get out a warrant to-night for your
+arrest as the murderer of David Balfame."
+
+"Gott!" The girl's face was almost purple. She raised her knitting
+needles with a threatening gesture that was almost dramatic. "I did not
+do it. She has done it."
+
+"What were you doing on the stairs?"
+
+"I would heat water for my tooth."
+
+"Cold water is the thing for an ulcerated tooth."
+
+"I never have the toothache like that already. I am in my room many
+minutes before I think I go down. Then, when I am on the stairs I hear
+Mrs. Balfame come in."
+
+"She has explained what you heard."
+
+"No, she have not. I think so when we have talked this evening, but not
+now. She is--was, I mean, all out of her breath."
+
+"I was terrified." Mrs. Balfame retorted so promptly that Rush flashed
+her a glance of admiration. Here was a woman who could take care of
+herself on the witness stand. "First I thought I heard some one trying
+to get into the door, and then some one sneaking up the stairs."
+
+"Oh--yes." Frieda's tones expressed no conviction. "The educated lady
+can think very quick. But I say that she have come in by the door, the
+kitchen door. Always I take the key to the hall door. She know that, and
+as she not know that I am in, she go out by the kitchen door. Always in
+the daytime when she goes to the yard she go by the hall door."
+
+"What a pity you did not slam the door when you came in. It would have
+been quite natural as you were in such agony." Rush spoke sarcastically,
+but he was deeply perturbed. It was impossible to tell whether the girl
+was telling the truth or a carefully rehearsed story.
+
+"Of course you know that if you tell that story to the police you will
+get yourself into serious trouble."
+
+"I get her into trouble."
+
+"Mrs. Balfame is above suspicion. It is not my business to warn you, or
+to defeat the ends of the law, of which apparently you know nothing--"
+
+"I know someting. Last night I have tell Herr Kraus; and he say that
+since I have told the coroner I know notings, much better I touch the
+lady for five hundert and go home."
+
+"O-h-h! That is the advice Old Dutch gave you! Splendid! I think the
+best thing I can do is to have you arrested bright and early to-morrow
+morning. Mrs. Balfame is cleared already. You may go."
+
+She stared at him for a moment out of eyes that spat fire like two
+little guns in the top of a fort; then she swung herself about and
+retreated to the kitchen.
+
+"That ought to make her disappear to-night. Her friends will hide her.
+The mere fact of her disappearance will convince the police, as well as
+the reporters, that she is guilty. You are all right." He spoke
+boyishly, and his face, no longer rigid, was full of light.
+
+"But if she is innocent?"
+
+"No harm done. She'll be smuggled out of the country and suspicion
+permanently diverted from you. That is all I care about." He caught her
+hands impulsively in his. "I am glad, so glad! Oh!--It is too soon now,
+but wait--" He was out of the house before she grasped the fact that he
+had arrested himself on the brim of another declaration.
+
+Mrs. Balfame went up to bed, serene once more in the belief that her
+future was her own, unclouded, full of attractive possibilities for a
+woman of her position and intellectual attainments.
+
+She made up her mind to take a really deep course of reading, so that
+the most spiteful should not call her superficial; moreover, she had
+been conscious more than once of certain mental dissatisfactions, of
+uneasy vacancies in a mind sufficiently awake to begin to realise the
+cheapness of its furnishings. Perhaps she would take a course in history
+at Columbia, another in psychology.
+
+As she put herself into a sturdy cotton night-gown and then brushed back
+her hair from a rather large forehead before braiding it severely for
+the night, she realised dimly that that way happiness might lie, that
+the pleasures of the intellectual life might be very great indeed. She
+wished regretfully that she could have been brilliantly educated in her
+youth. In that case she would not have married a man who would incite
+any spirited woman to seek the summary release, but would be to-day the
+wife of a judge, perhaps--some fine fellow who had showed the early
+promise that Dwight Rush must have done. If she could attract one man
+like that, at the age of forty-two, she could have had a dozen in her
+train when young if she had had the sense to appreciate them.
+
+But she was philosophical, and it was not her way to quarrel very deeply
+with herself or with life. Her long braids were as evenly plaited as
+ever.
+
+She sank into sleep, thinking of the disagreeable necessity of making
+the kitchen fire in the morning and cooking her own breakfast. Frieda of
+course would be gone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+The next morning, when Mrs. Balfame, running lightly down the back
+stairs, entered the kitchen half an hour earlier than her usual
+appearance in the dining-room, the front of her housefrock covered with
+a large apron and her sleeves pinned to the elbow, she beheld Frieda
+slicing potatoes.
+
+"Why!" The exclamation was impetuous, but her quick mind adapted itself.
+"I woke up early and thought I would come down and help," she continued
+evenly. "You have had so much to do of late."
+
+Frieda was regarding her with intense suspicion. "Never you have done
+that before," she growled. "You will see if I have the dishes by the
+dinner washed."
+
+"Nonsense. And everything is so different these days. I am hungry, too.
+I thought it would be nice to hurry breakfast."
+
+"Breakfast always is by eight. You have told me that when I come. I get
+up by half past six. First I air the house, and sweep the hall. Then I
+make the fire and put the water to boil. Then I peel the potatoes. Then
+I make the biscuit. Then I boil the eggs. Then I make the coffee--"
+
+"I know. You are marvellously systematic. But I thought you might make
+the coffee at once."
+
+"Always the coffee come last." Frieda resumed her task.
+
+"But I don't eat potatoes for breakfast."
+
+"I eat the potatoes. When they fry in the pan, then I put the biscuit in
+the oven. Then I boil the eggs and then I make the coffee. Breakfast is
+by eight o'clock."
+
+Mrs. Balfame, with a good-humoured laugh, turned to leave the kitchen.
+But her mind, alert with apprehension, cast up a memory, vague but far
+from soothing. "By the way, I seem to remember that I woke up suddenly
+in the night and heard voices down here. Did you have visitors?"
+
+Frieda flushed the deep and angry red of her infrequent moments of
+embarrassment. "I have not visitors in the night." She turned on the
+water tap, which made noise enough to discourage further attempts at
+conversation; and Mrs. Balfame, to distract her mind, dusted the
+parlour. She dared not go out into the yard and walk off her
+restlessness, for there were now two sentinels preserving what they
+believed to be a casual attitude before her gate. She would have given
+much to know whether those men were watching her movements or those of
+her servant.
+
+Immediately after breakfast, the systematic Frieda was persuaded to go
+to the railway station and buy the New York papers when the train came
+in. Frieda might be a finished product of the greatest machine shop the
+world has ever known, but she was young and she liked the bustle of life
+at the station, and the long walk down Main Street, so different from
+the aristocratic repose of Elsinore Avenue. Mrs. Balfame, watching
+behind the curtain, saw that one of the sentinels followed her. The
+other continued to lean against the lamp-post whittling a stick. Both
+she and Frieda were watched!
+
+But the disquiet induced by the not unnatural surveillance of premises
+identified with a recent crime was soon forgotten in the superior powers
+of the New York press to excite both disquiet and indignation.
+
+She had missed a photograph of herself while dusting the parlour and had
+forgiven the loyal thief as it was a remarkably pretty picture and
+portrayed a woman sweet, fashionable, and lofty. To her horror the
+picture which graced the first page of the great dailies was that of a
+hard defiant female, quite certain, without a line of letter press, to
+prejudice a public anxious to believe the worst.
+
+Tears of outraged vanity blurred her vision for a few moments before the
+full menace of that silent witness took possession of her. She knew that
+most people deteriorated under the mysterious but always fatal encounter
+of their photographs with the "staff artist," but she felt all the
+sensations of the outraged novice.
+
+A moment after she had dashed her tears away she turned pale; and when
+she finished reading the interviews the beautiful whiteness of her skin
+was disfigured by a greenish pallor.
+
+The interviews were written with a devilish cunning that protected the
+newspapers from danger of libel suit but subtly gave the public to
+understand that its appetite for a towering figure in the Balfame case
+was about to be gratified.
+
+There was no doubt that two shots had been fired from the grove
+simultaneously, and from revolvers of different calibre (picture of tree
+and gate).
+
+Was one of them--the smaller--fired by a woman? And if so, by what
+woman?
+
+Not one of the females whose names had been linked at one time or
+another with the versatile Mr. Balfame but had proved her alibi, and so
+far as was known--although of course some one as yet unsuspected may
+have climbed the back fence and hid in the grove--the only two women on
+the premises were the widow and her extraordinarily plain servant.
+
+Balfame was shot with a .41 revolver. In one of the newspapers it was
+casually and not too politely remarked that Mrs. Balfame had larger
+hands and feet than one would expect from her general elegance of figure
+and aristocratic features, and in the same rambling sentence (this was
+written by the deeply calculating Mr. Broderick) the public was informed
+that certain footprints might have been those of a large woman or of a
+medium sized man. In the next paragraph but one Mrs. Balfame's stately
+height was again commented upon, but as the public had already been
+informed that she was an expert at target practice, reiteration of this
+fact was astutely avoided.
+
+A great deal was said here and there of her composure, her large
+studiously expressionless grey eyes, her nimble mind that so often
+routed her inquisitors, but was allied to a temperament of ice and a
+manifest power of cool and deliberate calculation.
+
+The dullest reader was quickened into the belief that he was the real
+detective and that his unerring sense had carried him straight to the
+woman who had hated the murdered man and had quarrelled with him in
+public a few hours before his death.
+
+The episode of Mrs. Balfame's offer to make her husband a glass of
+doctored lemonade and the disappearance of both beverage and glass was
+not mentioned; presumably these bright young men did not believe in
+digressions or in rousing a curiosity they might not be able to appease.
+The interview concluded with a maddening hint at immediate developments.
+
+Mrs. Balfame let the papers drop to the floor one by one; when she had
+finished the last she drew her breath painfully for several moments. The
+room turned black, and it was cut by rows of bared and menacing teeth,
+infinitely multiplied.
+
+But she was not the woman to give way to fear for long, or even to
+bewilderment. There could be no real danger, and all that should concern
+her was the outrageous, the intolerably vulgar publicity. A woman whose
+good taste was both natural and cultivated, she felt this ruthless
+tossing of her sacred person into the public maw much as the more
+refined octoroons may have felt when they stood on the auction block in
+the good old days down South. She shuddered and gritted her teeth; she
+wished that she were a hysterical woman that she might find relief in
+shrieking at the top of her voice and smashing the furniture.
+
+Why, oh why, could not David Balfame have been permitted by the fate
+which had decreed his end on that particular night to enter the house
+and drink the lemonade; to die decently, painlessly, bloodlessly (she
+shrank aside when compelled to pass those blood stains on the brick
+path), as any man might die when his overtaxed heart simply stopped? She
+would have run down the moment she heard the fall, she would have
+managed to get the glass out of the way if Frieda had condescended to
+visit the scene, which was quite unlikely. She would have run over to
+Doctor Lequer, who lived next door to the Gifnings, and he would have
+sent for the coroner. Both inevitably would have pronounced the death
+due to heart failure. It was fate that had bungled, not she.
+
+She mused, however, that she should have had a duplicate glass of
+lemonade to leave half consumed on the table, as it would be recalled
+that he had expected to imbibe a soothing draught immediately upon his
+return; and adjacent liquids invariably induce suspicion in cases of
+sudden death. But that did not matter now.
+
+She set her wits to work upon the identity of her companion in the
+grove. Was it Frieda? Or an accomplice of the girl, who was already in
+the house or on the alert to direct him out by the rear pathway? But why
+Frieda? She knew the raging hate that had filled her husband since the
+declaration of war, and she knew that his rivals in politics hated him
+with increasing virulency; as they were beginning to hate everybody that
+presumed to question the right and might of Germany.
+
+But she was a woman just and sensible. Nor for a moment could she
+visualise Old Dutch or any of his tribe shooting David Balfame because
+he cursed the Kaiser and sang Tipperary. The supposition was too shallow
+to be entertained.
+
+The person in the grove had been either a bitter political rival too
+intimate with the local police to be in danger of arrest, or some woman
+who for a time may have believed herself to be his wife in the larger
+village of New York.
+
+She could have sworn that that stealthy figure so close to her was a
+man, but women's skirts were very narrow and silent these days, and
+after all she herself was as tall as the average man.
+
+Before noon the house was filled with sympathising and indignant
+friends. Cummack came up town to assure her that it was a shame; and he
+would ask Rush if those New York papers couldn't be had up for libel.
+He'd take the eleven-thirty for Dobton and consult with him.
+
+The ladies were knitting, no one more impersonally than Mrs. Balfame,
+although she was wondering if these kind friends expected to stay to
+lunch, when an automobile drove honking up to the door, and Mrs. Battle
+teetered over to the window.
+
+"For the land's sake," she exclaimed. "If it isn't the deputy sheriff
+from Dobton. Now, what do you suppose?"
+
+Mrs. Balfame stood up suddenly, and the other women sat with their
+needles suspended as if suddenly overcome by a noxious gas, with the
+exception of Mrs. Cummack, who ran over to her sister-in-law and put her
+plump arm about that easily compassed waist. Mrs. Balfame drew away
+haughtily.
+
+"I am not frightened," she said in her sweet cool voice. "I am prepared
+for anything after those newspapers--that is all."
+
+The bell pealed, and Mrs. Gifning, too curious to wait upon the
+hand-maiden, ran out and opened the front door. She returned a moment
+later with her little blue eyes snapping with excitement.
+
+"What do you think?" she gasped. "It is Frieda they want. She is being
+subpoenaed to Dobton to testify before the Grand Jury. The deputy
+sheriff is going to take her with him."
+
+Mrs. Balfame returned to her chair with such composure that no one
+suspected the sudden weakening of her knees. Instantly she realised the
+meaning of the voices she had heard in the night. Frieda had been
+"interviewed," either by the press or the police, and induced, probably
+bribed, to talk. No wonder she had not run away.
+
+But she too resumed her knitting.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+Young Bruce had had no appetite for his part in the Balfame drama. He
+had presented himself at the back door, however, at eight o'clock on the
+night of the interview with the heroine, assuming that Frieda would be
+moving at her usual snail's pace from the day of work toward the evening
+of leisure. She slammed the door in his face.
+
+When he persisted, thrusting his cherubic countenance through the
+window, she threatened him with the hose. Neither failure daunted him,
+and he was convinced that she knew more of the case than she was willing
+to admit; but it was obvious that he was not the man to appeal to the
+fragment of heart she had brought from East Prussia. The mere fact that
+he looked rather German and yet was straight American--employed,
+moreover, by a newspaper that made no secret of its hostility to her
+country--satisfied him that he would not be permitted to approach her
+closely enough to attempt any form of persuasion. He drew the long
+breath of deliverance as he reached this conclusion; the bare idea that
+he might have to bestow a kiss upon Frieda in the heroic pursuit of duty
+had induced a sensation of nausea. He was an extremely fastidious young
+man. But even as he accepted defeat with mingled relief and chagrin, the
+brilliant alternative occurred to him.
+
+He had ascertained that Frieda was intimate in the home of Conrad
+Kraus, otherwise "Old Dutch," of Dobton, the County seat. Conrad, Jr.,
+treated her as a brother should, and it was his habit to escort her home
+from the popular dance-hall of Elsinore on Saturday nights. Bruce had no
+difficulty in learning that the young German-American had been dancing
+with his favourite partner when her dead nerve seemed to threaten
+explosion and had fraternally run home with her. The energetic reporter
+did not wait upon the next trolley for Dobton, but hired an automobile
+and descended in front of Old Dutch's saloon fifteen minutes later.
+
+Young Kraus was busy; and Bruce, after ordering beer and cheese and
+taking it to an occupied table, drew the information from a neighbour
+that Conrad, Jr., would be on duty behind the bar until midnight. It was
+the habit of Papa Kraus to retire promptly on the stroke of nine and
+take his entire family, save Conrad, with him. The eldest of the united
+family continued to assuage the thirst of the neighbourhood until twelve
+o'clock, when he shut up the front of the house and went to bed in the
+rear as quickly as possible; he must rise betimes and clerk in the
+leading grocery-store of the town. He was only twenty-two, but thrifty
+and hard-working and anxious to marry.
+
+Bruce caught the next train for New York, had a brief talk with his city
+editor, and returned to Dobton a few moments before the closing hour of
+the saloon. He hung about the bar until the opportunity came to speak to
+Conrad unheard.
+
+"I want a word with you as soon as you have shut up," he said without
+preamble.
+
+The young German scowled at the reporter. Although a native son of
+Dobton, he resented the attitude of the American press as deeply as his
+irascible old father, and he still more deeply resented the suspicion
+that had hovered for a moment over the house of Kraus.
+
+"Don't get mad till you hear what I've got to say," whispered Bruce.
+"There may be a cool five hundred in it for you."
+
+Conrad glanced at the clock. It was five minutes to twelve. He stood as
+immobile as his duties would permit until the stroke of midnight, when
+he turned out the last reluctant patron, locked the door and followed
+the reporter down the still-illuminated street to a dark avenue in the
+residence quarter. Then the two fell into step.
+
+"Now, what is it?" growled Conrad, who did not like to have his habits
+disturbed. "I get up--"
+
+"That's all right. I won't keep you fifteen minutes. I want you to tell
+me all you know about the night of the Balfame murder."
+
+He had taken the young German's arm and felt it stiffen. "I know
+nothing," was the reply.
+
+"Oh, yes, you do. You took Frieda home and got there some little time
+before the shooting. You went in the side entrance to the back yard, but
+you could see the grove all right."
+
+"It was a black-dark night. I could see nothing in the grove."
+
+"Ah! You saw something else! You have been afraid to speak out, as there
+had been talk of your father having employed gun-men--"
+
+"Such lies!" shrieked young Kraus.
+
+"Of course! I know that. So does the press. That was a wild dream of
+the police. But all the same you thought it wouldn't be a bad idea to
+keep clear of the whole business. That is true. Don't attempt to deny
+it. You saw something that would put the law on the right track. Now,
+what was it? There are five hundred dollars waiting for you if you will
+tell the truth. I don't want anything but the truth, mind you. I don't
+represent a paper that pays for lies, so your honour is quite safe. So
+also are you."
+
+Conrad ruminated for a few moments. He was literal and honest and wanted
+to be quite positive that he was not asked to do something which would
+make him feel uncomfortable while investing those desirable five hundred
+dollars in West Elsinore town lots, and could reassure himself that the
+truth was always right whether commercially valuable or not. He balanced
+the pro's and con's so long that Bruce was about to break out
+impatiently just as he made up his mind.
+
+"Yes, I saw something. But I wished to say nothing. They might say that
+I was in it, or that I lied to protect Frieda--"
+
+"That's all right. There was no possible connection between her and
+Balfame--"
+
+Conrad went on exactly as if the reporter had not interrupted. "I had
+seen Frieda through the back door. She was crying with the toothache,
+and I heard her run upstairs. I thought I would wait a few moments. The
+drops she said she had might not cure her, and she might want me to go
+to a dentist's house with her. She had gone in the back-hall door.
+Suddenly I saw the kitchen door open, and as I was starting forward, I
+saw that it was not Frieda who came out. It was Mrs. Balfame. She closed
+the door behind her, and then crept past me to the back of the kitchen
+yard. I watched her and saw her turn suddenly and walk toward the grove.
+She did not make a particle of noise--"
+
+"How do you know it was not Frieda?"
+
+"Frieda is five-feet-three, and this was a tall woman, taller than I,
+and I am five-eight. I have seen Mrs. Balfame many times, and though I
+couldn't see her face,--she had a dark veil or scarf round it,--I knew
+her height and walk. Of course I watched to see what she was up to. A
+few moments later I heard Balfame turn in from Dawbarn Street, singing,
+like the fool he was, 'Tipperary,' and then I heard a shot. I guessed
+that Balfame had got what was coming to him, and I didn't wait to see. I
+tiptoed for a minute or two and then ran through the next four places at
+the back, and then out toward Balfame Street, for the trolley. But
+Frieda heard Mrs. Balfame when she came in. She was all out of breath,
+and, when she heard a sound on the stairs, called out before she
+thought, I guess, and asked Frieda if she had heard anything. But Frieda
+is very cautious. She had heard the shot, but she froze stiff against
+the wall when she heard Mrs. Balfame's voice, and said nothing. We told
+her afterwards that she had better keep quiet for the present."
+
+"And you think Mrs. Balfame did it?"
+
+"Who else? I shall not be so sorry if she goes to the chair, for a woman
+should always be punished the limit for killing a man, even such a man
+as Balfame."
+
+"No fear of that, but we'll have a dandy case. You tell that story to
+the Grand Jury to-morrow, and you get your five hundred before night.
+Now you must come and get me a word with Frieda. She won't look at me,
+and of course she is in bed anyhow. But I must tell her there are a
+couple of hundred in this for her if she comes through--"
+
+"But she'll be arrested for perjury. She testified at the coroner's
+inquest that she knew nothing."
+
+"An abscessed tooth will explain her reticence on any other subject."
+
+"Perhaps I should tell you that she came to see us to-night--last night
+it is now, not?--and told my papa that Lawyer Rush had frightened her,
+told her that she might be accused of the killing, that she had better
+get out. But Papa advised her to go home and fear nothing, where there
+was nothing to fear. He knew that if she ran away, he would be suspected
+again, the girl being intimate in the family; and of course the police
+would be hot on her trail at once. So, like the good sensible girl she
+is, she took the advice and went home."
+
+"All right. Come along. I'm not on the morning paper, but I promised the
+story to the boys if I could get it in time."
+
+He hired another automobile, and they left it at the corner of Dawbarn
+and Orchard Streets, entering the Balfame place by the tradesmen's gate
+on the left, and creeping to the rear of the house. The lane behind the
+four acres of the little estate was full of ruts and too far away from
+the house for adventuring on a dark night. They had been halted by the
+detective on watch, but when their errand was hastily explained, he
+joined forces with them and even climbed a lean-to in the endeavour to
+rouse Miss Appel from her young and virtuous slumbers. Their combined
+efforts covered three hours; and that explains why the tremendous
+news-story appeared in the early edition of the afternoon papers instead
+of whetting several million morning appetites.
+
+The interview with Frieda, who became very wide awake when the unseemly
+intrusion was elucidated by the trustworthy Conrad, and bargained for
+five hundred dollars, explains why Mrs. Balfame spent Thursday night in
+the County Jail behind Dobton Courthouse.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+When the Dobton sheriff and his deputies came to arrest Mrs. Balfame,
+the wife of their old comrade in arms, all they were able to tell her
+was that the District Attorney had applied for the warrant immediately
+after the testimony before the Grand Jury of Frieda Appel and of the
+Krauses, father and son. What that testimony had been they could not
+have told her if they would, but that it had been strong and
+corroborative enough to insure her indictment by the Grand Jury was as
+manifest as it was ominous.
+
+They arrived just as Mrs. Balfame was about to leave the house to lunch
+with Mrs. Cummack; Frieda had left long before it was time to prepare
+the midday meal. Mr. Cramb, the sheriff, shut the door behind him and in
+the faces of the indignant women reporters, who, less ruthless but
+equally loyal to their journals, wanted a "human interest" story for the
+stimulated public. Mrs. Balfame and her friends retreated before the
+posse into the parlour. Mrs. Battle wept loudly; Alys Crumley, who had
+come in with her mother a few moments since, fell suddenly on a chair in
+the corner and pressed her hands against her mouth, her horrified eyes
+staring at Mrs. Balfame. The other women shed tears as the equally
+doleful sheriff explained his errand and read the warrant. Mrs. Balfame
+alone was calm. She exerted herself supremely and sent so peremptory a
+message along her quaking nerves that it benumbed them for the moment.
+She had only a faint sense of drama, but a very keen one of her own
+peculiar position in her little world, and she knew that in this grisly
+crisis of her destiny she was expected to behave as a brave and
+dignified woman should--a woman of whom her friends could continue to
+exult as head and shoulders above the common mass. She rose to the
+occasion.
+
+"Don't you worry--just!" said Mr. Cramb, patting her shoulder, although
+he never had had the temerity to offer her his hand before, and had
+often "pitied Dave." "They lied, them Duytchers, for some reason or
+other, but they can't really have nothin' on you, and we'll find out
+what they're up to, double quick."
+
+"I do not worry," said Mrs. Balfame coldly, "--although quite naturally
+I object to the humiliation of arrest, and of spending even a night in
+jail. Exactly what is the charge against me?"
+
+The sheriff crumpled his features and cleared his throat. "Well, it's
+murder, I guess. It's an ugly word, but words don't mean nothin' when
+there's nothin' in them."
+
+"In the first degree?" shrieked Mrs. Gifning.
+
+Cramb nodded.
+
+"And it don't admit of bail?" Mrs. Frew's eyes rolled wildly.
+
+"Nothin' doin'."
+
+Mrs. Balfame rose hurriedly. There was a horrid possibility of contagion
+in this room surcharged with emotion. She kissed each of her friends in
+turn. "It will be all right, of course," she reminded them gently. "Only
+men could be taken in by such a plot, and of course there are a lot of
+Germans on the Grand Jury--there are so many in this county. I shall
+have an excellent lawyer, Dave's friend, Mr. Rush. And I am sure that I
+shall be quite comfortable in the County Jail--it is so nice and new."
+But she shuddered at the vision, in spite of her fine self-control.
+
+"You'll be treated like a queen," interposed the sheriff hastily. He was
+proud of her, and immensely relieved that he was not to escort an
+hysterical prisoner five miles to the County Seat. "You'll have the
+Warden's own suite, and I guess you'll be able to see your friends right
+along. Guess we'd better be gettin' on."
+
+As Mrs. Balfame was leaving the room, her eyes met the horrified and
+puzzled gaze of Alys Crumley, and one of those obscure instincts that
+dart out of the subconscious mind like memories of old experiences
+released under high mental pressure, made her put out her hand
+impulsively and draw the girl to her.
+
+"I can always be sure of your trust," she whispered. "Won't you come up
+and help me pack?"
+
+Alys followed unresisting: the blow had been so sudden; she had believed
+so little in the power of the law to touch a woman like Mrs. Balfame,
+and even less that she committed the crime; for the moment she forgot
+her jealous hostility, remembered only that the best friend of her
+mother and of her own childhood was in dire straits.
+
+Mrs. Cummack had run up ahead and was carrying two suitcases from the
+large closet to the bed as they entered. Her face was burning and
+tear-stained, but she was one of those highly efficient women of the
+home that rise automatically to every emergency and act while others
+consider. "Glad you've come too," she said to Alys. "Open those drawers
+in the bureau, and I'll pick out what's needed. Of course the ridiculous
+charge will be dismissed in a day or two--but still! Well, if they're
+all idiots down there at Dobton, we can come over here and pack a trunk
+later. To take it now would be nonsense, and Sam'll move heaven and
+earth to get them to accept bail. You just put on your best black, Enid,
+and wear your veil so they can't snapshot you."
+
+While she was gasping on, Mrs. Balfame, whose brain had never worked
+more clearly, went into the bathroom and emptied the contents of an
+innocent looking medicine bottle into the drain of the wash-stand. She
+feared young Broderick more than she feared the district attorney, who,
+after all, had been her husband's friend--had, in fact, eaten all of his
+political crumbs out of that lavish but discriminating hand. She
+recalled that she had always been gracious to him (at her husband's
+request, for she regarded him as a mere worm) when he had dined at her
+table, and felt sure that he would favour her secretly, whatever his
+obvious duty. Moreover, he was of those that spat at the very mention of
+the powerful Kraus, and would gladly, especially since the outbreak of
+the war, have run him out of the community.
+
+Mrs. Balfame, being a brilliant exponent of that type which enjoys the
+unwavering admiration and loyalty of its own sex, had a corresponding
+belief in her friends, and rarely if ever had used the word _cat_
+denotatively. She called out the best in women as they of a certainty
+called out the best in her. Therefore, it did not occur to her either to
+close the bathroom door or to glance behind her. Alys Crumley, standing
+before the bureau and happening to look into the mirror, saw her empty
+and rinse the bottle. The suspicions of Broderick regarding the glass of
+lemonade flashed into the young artist's mind; and from that moment she
+believed in the guilt of Mrs. Balfame.
+
+Although her hands were shaking Alys lifted from the lavender-scented
+drawers the severely chaste underwear of the leader of Elsinore society,
+and as soon as the suitcases were packed, she made haste to adjust Mrs.
+Balfame's veil and pin it so firmly that no more kisses could be
+exchanged. Of her ultimate purpose Alys had not the ghost of an idea,
+but kiss a woman whom she believed to be guilty of murder and whom she
+might possibly be driven to betray, she would not. Suddenly grown as
+secretive as if she had a crime of her own to conceal, she even walked
+out to the car with Mrs. Balfame and helped to drive away the crowding
+newspaper women, several of whom she recognised. They in turn bore her
+off, determined to get some sort of a story for the issues of the
+morrow.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+Mrs. Balfame was whirled to Dobton in ten minutes--herself, she fancied,
+the very centre of a whirlwind. The automobile was pursued by three cars
+containing members of the press, which shot past just before they
+reached Dobton Courthouse, that the occupants might leap out and fix
+their cameras. Other men and women of the press stood before the locked
+gate of the jail yard, several holding cameras. But once more the
+reading public was forced to be content with an appetising news-story
+illustrated by a tall black mummy.
+
+Mrs. Balfame walked past them holding her clenched hands under her veil,
+but to all appearance composed and indifferent. The sob-sisters were
+enthusiastic, and the men admired and disliked her more than ever. Your
+true woman always weeps when in trouble, just as she blushes and
+trembles when a man selects her to be his comforter through life.
+
+The Warden and his wife, who but a few weeks since had moved into their
+new quarters, had moved out again without a murmur and with an
+unaccustomed thrill. What a blessed prospect after screaming drunks,
+drug-fiends and tame commercial sinners!
+
+The doors clanged shut; Mrs. Balfame mounted the stairs hastily, and was
+still composed enough to exclaim with pleasure and to thank the Warden's
+wife, Mrs. Larks, when she saw that flowers were on the table and even
+on the window-sills.
+
+"I guess you'll stand it all right," said Mrs. Larks proudly. "Just make
+yourself at home and I'll have your lunch up in a jiffy."
+
+Mrs. Cummack and Mrs. Gifning had come in the car with Mrs. Balfame, and
+Cummack and several other men of standing arrived almost immediately to
+assure her, with pale disturbed faces, that they were doing their best
+to get her out on bail. While she was trying to eat her lunch, the
+telephone bell rang, and her set face became more animated as she
+recognised Rush's strong confident voice. He had read the news in the
+early edition of the afternoon papers, in New York, telephoned to Dobton
+and found that his immediate fear was realised and that she was in the
+County Jail. He commanded her to keep up her spirits and promised to be
+with her at four o'clock.
+
+Then she begged her friends to go and let her rest and sleep if
+possible; they knew just how serious that consultation with her lawyer
+must be. When she was alone, however, she picked up the telephone, which
+stood on a side table, and called up the office of Dr. Anna Steuer. Ever
+since her arrest she had been dully conscious of her need of this oldest
+and truest of her friends. It came to her with something of a shock as
+she sat waiting for Central to connect, that she had leaned upon this
+strong and unpretentious woman far more than her calm self-satisfied
+mind had ever admitted.
+
+Dr. Anna's assistant answered the call, and when she heard Mrs.
+Balfame's voice broke down and wept loudly.
+
+"Oh, do be quiet," said Mrs. Balfame impatiently. "I am in no danger
+whatever. Connect me with the Doctor."
+
+"Oh, it ain't only that. Poor--poor Doctor! She's been all in for days,
+and this morning she just collapsed, and I sent for Dr. Lequeur, and he
+pronounced it typhoid and sent for the ambulance and had her taken out
+to Brabant Hospital. The last thing she said--whispered--was to be sure
+not to bother you, that you would hear it soon enough--"
+
+Mrs. Balfame hung up the receiver, which had almost fallen from her
+shaking hand. She turned cold with terror. Anna ill! And when she most
+wanted her! A little window in her brain opened reluctantly, and
+superstition crept in. Beyond that open window she seemed to hear the
+surge of a furious and irresistible tide. Had it been waiting all these
+years to overleap the barriers about her well ordered life and sweep her
+into chaos? She frowned and put her thoughts more colloquially. Had her
+luck changed? Was Fate against her? When she thought of Dwight Rush, it
+was only to shrink again. If anything happened to him--and why not? Men
+were killed every day by automobiles, and he had an absentminded way of
+walking--
+
+She sprang to her feet and paced up and down the two rooms of the suite,
+determined upon composure, and angry with herself. She recovered her
+mental balance (so rarely disturbed by imaginative flights), but her
+spirits were at zero; and she was sitting with her elbows on her knees,
+her hands pressed to her face when Rush entered promptly at four
+o'clock. He was startled at the face she lifted. It looked older but
+indefinably more attractive. Her inviolable serenity had irritated even
+him at times, although she was his innocent ideal of a great lady.
+
+The Warden, who had unlocked the door, left them alone, and Rush sat
+down and took both her hands in his warm reassuring grasp.
+
+"You are not to be the least bit frightened," he said. "The great thing
+for you to remember is that your husband's political crowd rules, and
+simply laughs at your arrest. They are more positive than ever that some
+political enemy did it. Balfame's temper was growing shorter and
+shorter, and he had many enemies, even in his own party. But the crowd
+will pull every wire to get you off, and they can pull wires, all
+right--"
+
+"But on what evidence am I arrested? What did those abominable people
+say to the Grand Jury? Am I never to know?"
+
+"Well, rather. It's all in the afternoon papers, for one of the
+reporters got the evidence before the Grand Jury did."
+
+He had taken off his overcoat, and he crossed the room and took from a
+pocket a copy of _The Evening News_. She glanced over it with her lips
+drawn back from her teeth. It contained not only the story the
+enterprising Mr. Bruce had managed to obtain from Frieda and Conrad Jr.,
+but a corroboration of the maid's assertion that, warned by the family
+friend and lawyer, Mr. Dwight Rush, to disappear, she had gone to Papa
+Kraus for advice. Not a word, however, of blackmail.
+
+"So the public believes already that I am a murderess! No doubt I should
+be convinced as readily myself. It is all so adroit!" Mrs. Balfame
+spoke quietly but with intense bitterness. "I suppose I must be
+tried--more and still more publicity. No one will ever forget it. Do you
+suppose it is true young Kraus saw me that night?"
+
+"God knows!"
+
+He got up again and moved nervously about the room. "I wish I could be
+sure. That is the point to which I must give the deepest
+consideration--whether you are to admit or not that you went out. The
+Grand Jury and Gore believe it. Young Kraus has a very good name. Frieda
+has always been well behaved. There are six Germans on the Grand Jury,
+moreover. We must see that none get on the trial jury. Gore wants to
+believe--"
+
+"But he was a friend of Dave's."
+
+"Exactly. He is making much of that point. Affects to be filled with
+righteous wrath because you killed his dear old friend. Trust a district
+attorney. All they care for is to win out, and he has his spurs to win,
+in the bargain. I met him a few moments ago; he was about equally full
+of gin fizzes and the 'indisputable fact' that you are the only person
+in sight with a motive. Oh, don't! Don't!"
+
+Mrs. Balfame had broken down. She flung her arms over the table and her
+head upon them. More than once in her life she had shed tears both
+diplomatic and spontaneous, but for the first time since she was a child
+she sobbed heavily. She felt forlorn, deserted, in awful straits.
+
+"Anna is ill," she articulated. "Anna! My one real friend--the only one
+that has meant anything to me. Life has gone pretty well with me. Now
+everything is changed. I know that terrible things are about to happen
+to me."
+
+"Not while I am alive. I heard of Dr. Anna's illness on my way to New
+York. Lequeur was on the train. You--you must let me take her place. I
+am devoted to you heart and soul. You surely know that."
+
+"But you are not a woman. It's a woman friend I want now, a strong one
+like Anna. Those other women--oh, yes, they're devoted to me--have been,
+but they've suddenly ceased to count, somehow. Besides, they'll soon
+believe me guilty. I hate them all. Only Anna would have understood--and
+believed."
+
+Rush had been administering awkward little pats to the soft masses of
+her hair. Suddenly he realised that his faith in her complete innocence
+was by no means as stable as it had been; she had confessed to him that
+she had been in the grove that night stalking the intruder. How absurd
+to believe that she had gone out unarmed. He had read the circumstantial
+details of the reporter's interviews with Frieda and young Kraus. While
+the writers were careful not to make the downright assertion that Mrs.
+Balfame had fired the fatal shot, the public saw her in the act of
+levelling one of the pistols--so mighty is the power of the trained and
+ruthless pen.
+
+As he stood looking down upon his unexpected surrender to emotional
+excitement, he asked himself deliberately: What more natural, if she had
+a pistol in her hand and that low-lived creature presented himself
+abruptly and alone, than that it should go off of its own accord, so to
+speak, whether hers had been the bullet to penetrate that loathsome
+target or not? If so, what had she done with the pistol?
+
+He sat down and laid his hand firmly on her arm.
+
+"There is something I must tell you. It is something Frieda forgot to
+tell the reporter, but she gave it to the Grand Jury. With the help of a
+couple of extra gin fizzes, I extracted it from Gore. It is this: she
+told the Grand Jury that several times when she did her weekly cleaning
+upstairs she saw a pistol in the drawer of a table beside your bed.
+Will--won't you tell me?"
+
+He felt the arm in his clasp grow rigid, but Mrs. Balfame answered
+without a trace of her recent agitation: "I told you before that I never
+had a pistol. It would be like her to be spying about among my things,
+but I wonder she would admit it."
+
+"She is delighted with her new importance, and, I fancy, has been bribed
+to tell all she knows."
+
+"In that case she wouldn't mind telling more. And no doubt she will
+think of other sensational items before the trial. She will have
+awakened in the night after the crime and heard me drop the pistol
+between the walls, or she will have seen me loading it on the afternoon
+of the shooting."
+
+"Yes, there is no knowing when those low-grade imaginations, once
+started, will stop. Memory ceases to function in brains of that sort,
+and its place is taken by a confused jumble of induced or auto
+suggestions, which are carefully straightened out by the practised
+lawyer in rehearsals. But I almost wish that you had taken a pistol out
+that night and would tell me where to find it. I'd lose it somewhere out
+in the marsh."
+
+"I had no pistol." Not yet could she take him into her confidence to
+that extent, although she knew that he was about to stake his
+professional reputation on her acquittal.
+
+He dismissed the subject abruptly. "By the way, I gave the story of
+Frieda's attempt to blackmail you to Broderick and two other men just
+before I left town--laying emphasis on the fact that you always drank a
+glass of filtered water before going to bed. They made a wry face over
+that, but it is news and they must publish it. There are many things in
+your favour--particularly Frieda's assertion before the coroner that she
+knew nothing of the case. She is a confessed perjurer. Also, why didn't
+she answer when you called up to her, if she was on the back stairs?
+There are things that satisfy a grand jury that will not go down with a
+trial jury. Now you must, you must trust me."
+
+She looked up at him dully. But in a moment her eyes warmed and she
+smiled faintly. All the female in her responded to the traditional
+strength and power of the male. She also knew the sensitiveness of man's
+vanity and the danger either of starving it or dealing it a sudden blow.
+She sometimes felt sorry for men. It was their self-appointed task to
+run the planet, and they must be reminded just so often how wonderful
+they were, lest they lose courage; one of the several obliging
+weaknesses of which women rarely scrupled to take advantage.
+
+As she put out her hand and took his, she looked very feminine and
+sweet. Her face was flushed and tears had softened her large blue-grey
+eyes that could look so virginal and cold.
+
+"I know you will get me off. Don't imagine for a moment I doubt that; it
+is a sustaining faith that will carry me through the trial itself. But
+it is this terrible ordeal in prison that I dread--and the publicity--my
+good name dragged in the dust."
+
+"You can change that name for mine the day you are acquitted."
+
+It suddenly occurred to her that this might be a very sensible thing to
+do, and simultaneously she appreciated the fact that he possessed what
+was called charm and magnetism. Moreover, the complete devotion of even
+a passably attractive member of the over-sex in alarming predicaments
+was a very precious thing. Possibly for the first time in her life she
+experienced a sensation of gratitude, and she smiled at him so radiantly
+that he caught his breath.
+
+"No one but you could have consoled me for the loss of Anna, but you are
+not to say one word of that sort to me until I am out of this dreadful
+place. I couldn't stand the contrast! Will you promise?"
+
+"Very well."
+
+"Now will you really do something for me--get me a sleeping powder from
+the druggist? To-morrow I shall be myself again, but I _must_ sleep
+to-night."
+
+"I'll get it." His voice was matter of fact, for love made certain of
+his instincts keen if it blunted others. "That is, if you will promise
+to go to bed early and see none of these reporters, men or women. They
+are camped all over the Courthouse yard."
+
+She gave an exclamation of disgust. "I'll never see another newspaper
+person as long as I live. They are responsible for this, and I hate
+them."
+
+"Good! You shall have the powder in ten minutes. Oh, by the way, will
+you give me a written permit to pass the night in your house? I want to
+go through your husband's papers and see if I can find any clue to
+unknown enemies. He may have received threatening letters. I can obtain
+the official permission without any difficulty."
+
+She wrote the permit unsuspiciously. At nine o'clock that night he let
+himself into the Balfame house determined to find the pistol before
+morning. He knew the police would get round to the inevitable search
+some time on the following day.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+Alys Crumley entertained four of the newspaper women at a picnic lunch
+in her studio. She was grateful for the distraction from her own
+thoughts and diverted by their theories. None had seen Mrs. Balfame save
+through the medium of the staff artist, and they were inclined to accept
+the prima facie evidence of her guilt. When Alys fetched a photograph
+from the house, however, they immediately reversed their opinion, for
+the pictured face was that of a lovely cold and well-bred woman without
+a trace of hardness or predisposition to crime. They fell in love with
+it and vowed to defend her to the best of their ability, Miss Crumley
+promising to exert her influence with the accused to obtain an interview
+for the new devotees.
+
+Before wrapping the photograph for its inevitable journey to New York,
+Alys gave it a moment of study herself, wondering if she may not have
+misinterpreted what she saw that morning. No one had worshipped at that
+shrine more devoutly than she, even during these later years of
+metropolitan concordance.
+
+"What is your theory?" asked Miss Austin of _The Evening News_. "They
+say that a lot of those men at the Elks know, but never will come
+through. Do you think it was any of those girls? It might have been some
+woman he knew in New York who followed him here for the first time--who
+would not have been recognised if seen, and got away in a waiting
+automobile."
+
+"As likely as not," said Miss Crumley indifferently. "I have heard so
+many theories advanced and rejected that I am almost as confused as the
+police. Jim Broderick says that the simplest explanation is generally
+the correct one, but while he believes Mrs. Balfame to be the natural
+solution, I happen to know her better than he does, and a good deal more
+of this community. Three or four men and one or two women would be still
+simpler explanations. Possibly--" She turned cold and almost lost her
+breath, but the impulse to put a maddening possibility into verbal form
+was irresistible. "Perhaps some man that is in love with Mrs. Balfame
+did it." And then she hated herself, for she felt as if she had thrown
+Dwight Rush to the lions.
+
+"But who? Who?" the girls were demanding, more excited over this
+picturesque solution than they had been since "the story broke." Even
+Miss Austin, who disdained to write "sob stuff" and was a graduate of
+the Columbia School of Journalism, was almost on her feet, while Miss
+Lauretta Lea, who wept vicariously for fifty thousand women three times
+a week, shrieked without shame.
+
+"Oh, fine!" "How truly enchanting!" "Dear Miss Crumley--Alys--who, who
+is the man?"
+
+"Oh, as to that, I've not an idea. Mrs. Balfame always has rather
+disdained men, and even if she were susceptible is far too
+straight-laced to permit any man to pay her compromising attentions, or
+to meet him secretly. But of course she is very pretty, still young to
+look at, so there is the possibility--"
+
+"But just run over all the marriageable men in the community--"
+
+"Oh, he might be married, you know." Alys struggled to keep the alarm
+out of her voice.
+
+"But in that case there would still be the wife to dispose of, and now,
+at least, he'd never dare kill her, or even divorce her. No, I don't
+hold to that theory. It's more like the reckless act of the unchastened
+bachelor still young enough for illusions. You must have a theory, Alys.
+Stand and deliver." Miss Austin spoke with quick insistence. She had
+detected her hostess' suppressed excitement and was convinced that the
+hint had not been thrown out at random. She also had been conscious of
+an indefinable change in her old associate, and now she noticed it in
+detail. She might be too self-respecting to dip her pen in bathos, but
+she was nevertheless young, and her imagination began playing about
+possibilities like lightning over a wire fence.
+
+The heat which confused Alys Crumley's brain was expressed by a dull
+glow in her strange olive-colored eyes, but she made a desperate effort
+to look impersonal and rather bored.
+
+"No, I have no theory: certainly it could not be any of the men
+hereabouts. Mrs. Balfame has known all of them from infancy up. Perhaps
+she met some one in New York; I don't know that she ever went to any of
+the tea-tango places--she doesn't dance; but she might have gone with
+Mrs. Gifning or Mrs. Frew, and just met some one that fell in love with
+her--Oh, you mustn't take a mere idea of mine too seriously."
+
+"Hm!" said Miss Austin. "It doesn't sound plausible. A man she met now
+and then at a tea-room! She's not the sort to drive men to distraction
+in the casual meeting--not the type. And I can't see the men that
+frequent afternoon tea-rooms working themselves up to the point of
+murder. No, if there is a man in the case, he is here; if not in
+Elsinore, then in the county; and it is some man who has known her long
+enough and seen her often enough to descend from mere admiration for her
+rather chilling type of beauty into the most desperate desire for
+possession--"
+
+Alys burst into a ringing peal of laughter. "Really, Sarah, I wonder you
+are not already famous as a fiction-story writer. How much longer do you
+propose to stick to prosaic journalism?"
+
+"I've had two stories accepted by leading magazines this month, I'd have
+you know; but your memory is short if you think journalism prosaic. It
+germinates pretty nearly all the fiction microbes that later ravage the
+popular magazines. That was what was the matter with the old
+magazines--no modern symptoms, let alone fevers--only antidotes that
+somehow didn't work. But if you won't tell, Alys, I'll find out for
+myself. If I don't find out, Jim Broderick will, and I'd give my eyes to
+get ahead of him. But we've got to catch our train, girls."
+
+They took the short cut through the hall of the dwelling, and as they
+passed the open door of the living-room, Miss Lauretta Lea exclaimed
+with pleasure at its conceit of a cool green wood. Alys could do no less
+than invite them in. While the three other reporters were walking about
+observing the charming room in detail and envying its owner, Miss Sarah
+Austin walked directly over to a framed photograph of Dwight Rush that
+stood on a side-table. He had given it to Mrs. Crumley; and Alys, who
+spared her mother all unnecessary anxiety, had not yet conceived a
+logical excuse for its removal.
+
+"Whom have we here?" demanded the searching young realist. "Don't tell
+me, Alys, that here is the secret of your desertion of the New York
+press. I'd forgive you, though, for he is precisely the type I most
+admire. The modern Samson before Delilah cuts off what little hair his
+barber leaves. But the same old Samson looking round for the same old
+Delilah--"
+
+"Really, Sarah, are you insinuating that I am a Delilah? That is too
+much!" Alys put her arm round Miss Austin's waist and smiled teasingly.
+"No wonder your newspaper stories are so bitingly realistic; the
+restraints you force upon your imagination must put it quite out of
+commission for the time being. That is Mr. Dwight Rush, quite a well
+known lawyer in Brabant already, although he has only been here about
+two years."
+
+"I thought you said all your young men had grown up in the community."
+
+"I had quite forgotten him."
+
+"Ha! Is he married?"
+
+"Oh, no. And he was born and brought up over in Rennselaerville, by the
+way, but went West to some college or university and practised out there
+for several years."
+
+"How old is he?"
+
+"Oh, about thirty-three or thirty-four."
+
+"Must have been away a good many years. Would return quite fresh--must
+have had a lot made over him here--looks clever and built for
+success--that concentrated driving type that always gets there--"
+
+"He goes very little into society and no one possibly could lionise
+him."
+
+"Is he interesting to talk to or just another specialist?"
+
+"That's about it. But he was more a friend of mother's than mine. That
+is her picture."
+
+"Oh! He likes older women, then? Looks as if he might. Never would take
+the trouble, that type, to adapt himself to girls, try to understand
+them. Could it be--Alys, you must know if he knows Mrs. Balfame!"
+
+Alys was cold again but laid violent hands on her nerves. "No better
+than he knew any one else, if as well, for Mrs. Balfame never talked to
+the younger men. She doesn't attract them, anyhow. Do you realise, dear,
+that you are asking if Mr. Rush committed murder?"
+
+"With that jaw and those nostrils, he could--oh, rather! And it is one
+of those cast-iron, passionate faces; when those men do let go--"
+
+"Oh, really!" Alys dropped her arm, and her subtle face expressed
+disdain. "Mr. Rush is quite too steel clad to be carried away even if he
+were capable of committing a low and cowardly murder. He happens to be a
+gentleman and about as astute and poised as they are made. Do please
+send your romantic imagination off on another flight."
+
+"Not I. I'm going to account for every moment he spent that night."
+
+"Would you like to see Mr. Rush go to the chair?" asked Miss Crumley
+sternly.
+
+"Oh, good Lord no." Miss Austin turned pale. "I don't believe in capital
+punishment, anyhow. No, I'll not tell a thing if I find him out. But
+how interesting to know! I'd write a corking story--fiction--about it.
+Those deep glimpses into life--into those terrible abysses of the human
+heart--no writer can become great without them."
+
+"Well, don't waste your time trying to find the criminal in this
+excellent citizen. You might set some of the newspaper men on his trail
+and blacken his name while you discovered nothing. Better get on the
+track of the potential woman in New York."
+
+"Not half so interesting. Just one of those apartment-house
+misalliances. No, I'm out for Mr. Rush, and when I have the proof, I'll
+extract a confession; but I'll dig a little grave in my brain and bury
+his secret--then when it has ripened, exhume and toss it into that
+crucible through which facts pass and come out--fiction. Get me, dear?"
+
+"You talk like a literary ghoul. But I know you don't mean a word of it.
+Good-bye, girls. Do drop in whenever you are over on the case." She
+kissed them all, and Miss Lauretta Lea exclaimed innocently:
+
+"You've lost that lovely dusky colour you had awhile ago, dear. You look
+more like old ivory than ever--old ivory and olive. I wonder all the
+artists don't paint you. I suppose every young man in Elsinore is in
+love with you. Marry, my dear, marry. I've been in this game twelve
+years. Show me a willing would-be husband and I'd take him so quick he'd
+never know what struck him. Give my hopes of being a man in the next
+incarnation for ten babies to weep over when they had croup or got lost
+in the woods of New York City. Hate sob stuff. Cut it out, kid, before
+you begin it."
+
+She talked all the way to the gate and for several yards down the
+avenue, waving a final farewell with a somewhat tragic smile.
+
+"Why doesn't that girl marry?" she asked as they walked rapidly to the
+station. "Still fresh, if she is twenty-six. I'm only thirty-four and I
+look like a hag beside her."
+
+"Maybe she can't get the man she wants," replied the potential novelist,
+who was thinking deeply.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+Alys borrowed a horse and cart from her cousin Mr. Phipps, Chief of
+Police in Elsinore, who kept a livery stable, and took the shortest cut
+into the country. She wanted to think out many things and think them out
+alone. She drove rapidly until she came within sight and sound of the
+sea. Then she let the lines lie loosely on the back of her old friend
+Colonel Roosevelt, who had been named in his fiery colt-hood, but in
+these days, save under compulsion, was as slow as American law. He
+ambled along, and Alys, in the booming stillness and the fresh salt air,
+felt the humid waves roll out of her brain. She saw clearly, but she was
+aghast and depressed.
+
+Presented by nature with an odd and arresting exterior, in color and
+feature as well as in subtlety of expression, sketched and flattered by
+such artists as she met, she had, ever since old enough for
+introspection, striven for uncommon personal developments that should
+justify her obverse and set her still farther apart from mere woman. If
+not born with an intense aversion from the commonplace (and it is safe
+to say that no one is), she had conceived it early enough to train a
+rarely plastic mind to striking viewpoints, while a natural tact saved
+her from isolation. If she had been as original as she thought herself,
+she would have antagonised many people.
+
+Assuredly a certain nobility of nature and a revulsion from all that
+was base were innate; although, soon learning of the many pitfalls
+yawning for humanity, she had assiduously cultivated these her higher
+inclinations, an enterprise measurably assisted by the equable temper,
+the feminine charm, the bright intelligence and the quick sympathies
+that made her many friends. Moreover, her freedom from the usual
+yearnings of her sex in the matter of riches and subservience to the
+race, which wreck the lives of so many women, and her love of the arts
+and delight in her own little talent, all served to deponderate the
+burden of life.
+
+She had liked many men as friends, and was proud of the fact that only
+the more intelligent were attracted to her, but she had arrived at the
+age of twenty-six without even imagining herself seriously in love, so
+intense was her idealism. This was another of her deliberate
+cultivations, for here also was she resolute that as nature had done so
+much for her, marking her as a girl apart, so should she insist upon
+having an uncommon mate. It was to this end even more than for the
+barren satisfaction of pleasing Mother Nature that she had tilled the
+garden of her mind with both science and imagination. When she loved, it
+should be like a woman, of course; she had no delusions about making
+over human nature to suit passing fashions in woman; but while she never
+ignored the vital passions that formed the basis of her unique
+personality and strong will, she was determined that they should be
+quickened only by a man who would make equal demands upon all that was
+fine in her character and aspiring in her mind.
+
+The awful collapse of this cherished structure, her spiritual house,
+under her hopeless and violent passion for Dwight Rush had almost
+demoralised her. After she had won herself to reason once more, she
+still had sat, stunned, among the ruins. It was true that Rush was all
+that she had demanded of man and that he emanated a promise of happiness
+along strictly modern lines--which was all she asked, being no romantic
+fool; but not only had she loved him unasked, sacrificing the first and
+perhaps the dearest of her dreams, to be wooed and awakened and
+surprised, but, accepting the inevitable (the man being overburdened,
+like most busy young Americans, and unselfconscious), she deliberately
+had set herself to awaken _him_--and for nought. For worse than nought:
+he had instantly taken fright and withdrawn.
+
+Of the terrific upheaval of that time, like some graveyard of the sea
+flung putrid and phosphorescent to the surface by submarine vulcanism,
+she had ceased to think as soon as her will was reinstated in command.
+Immediately she had striven to rebuild her house lest she be swamped in
+mere femaleness, so permanently demoralised that life would be quite
+unendurable. She had cultivated the heights too long. She might tumble
+off occasionally, but in no other atmosphere could she breathe deeply
+and realise herself, find any measure of content. It had occurred to her
+that if she had been born in the gutter and grown to adolescence with no
+ennobling influence, she would have developed into a notable force for
+evil. At all events, she liked to think so; many women of stainless
+lives do.
+
+She guessed this, having a saving sense of humour, but did not expand
+upon it, not being inclined to humour at the moment. Accompanying her
+resolution to be finer and better than ever, to fortify herself against
+life with some degree of satisfaction in herself, was the hope of
+complete deliverance from what she called the Dwight Rush Idea. In due
+course she had conquered the obsession, for pride and self-disgust
+served her like first-aid surgeons on the battlefield; and although she
+felt amputated and scarred, she had lost her sense of humiliation. But
+her heart still accelerated its beats when she met Rush, and no will is
+strong enough to prevent the recurrence of the mental image; only time
+can dim it. But it was not until Broderick had left her alone in her
+studio with the poisons of fear and jealousy implanted that she had
+admitted she still loved him, probably must continue to love him for
+years to come.
+
+In that hour she had hated Mrs. Balfame, although she neither believed
+her guilty nor was tempted to the dastardly course of helping to force
+the appearance of guilt upon her. And for a time that night she had
+hoped she hated Dwight Rush also, so utterly disgusted and indignant was
+she that he could prefer a faded woman of forty-odd to a unique and
+beautiful girl like herself.
+
+But once more Miss Crumley's sense of proportion enforced itself, and
+she reflected sternly that men had fallen in love with women older than
+themselves since the world began, and that some of those
+transcendent--and lasting--passions had made history. She was no green
+village girl to be astounded at the least common phase of the sexual
+adventure. It was then she had given way to tears, for although she
+might be intelligent enough to admit this most unpardonable of nature's
+informalities, she could regret it with bitterness and despair.
+
+Later had come her fear for Rush's safety. Not for a moment did she
+suspect him of the crime, but if accused of it during the process of
+elimination, there was the appalling doubt that he could prove an alibi.
+As likely as not he had missed his man in Brooklyn--she knew that he had
+expected to dine and spend the evening at the Country Club--or had not
+gone there; knowing Balfame's ugly temper when drunk, what more natural
+than that he should hide in the grounds to be near at hand in case the
+man were disposed to wreak vengeance on his wife for his own
+humiliation. It was Alys's theory that the murder was political.
+
+Until to-day! From the moment that she saw Mrs. Balfame empty and rinse
+the vial, she was convinced that Broderick was right in his deductions
+and that for some reason the terrible woman had changed her mind and
+used the revolver. It was a stupider act than she would have expected of
+Mrs. Balfame, for Dave was a man whose sudden death would excite little
+suspicion, nor would Mrs. Balfame be the woman to use a common poison.
+Her intimacy with Dr. Anna would put her on the track of one of those
+organic potions that were too subtle for chemical analysis. She had
+heard doctors talk of them herself.
+
+Then abruptly she recalled the sinister change in Mrs. Balfame's smiling
+countenance on that day she sketched her at the Friday Club; her mind
+opened and closed on the conviction that in that moment Mrs. Balfame had
+conceived the purpose of murder.
+
+But why the change of method? She dismissed the riddle. It was not for
+her to unravel. Nor did she care. The fact was enough. This good friend
+of her family was an abominable creature from whom in even mental
+contact she shuddered away with a spasm of spiritual nausea.
+
+But that was not her own problem. No doubt Mrs. Balfame would be
+acquitted; Alys hoped so, at all events, for she wanted no such a stain
+on Elsinore, where, she thanked God, she lived, although she sought
+knowledge and income in the City of New York. For the same reason, she
+had no desire that the guilty woman should pay her debt by even a brief
+term in Auburn; but all that was beside the point. What Alys felt she
+would give her soul to ravish from this thrice accursed woman, so
+formidable in her peril, were the services of Dwight Rush. If he were
+Mrs. Balfame's chief counsel he would see her constantly, and alone--for
+hours on end, perhaps, for he must consult with her, rehearse her,
+instruct her, keep up her spirits, console her. This might not be the
+whole duty of counsel, but in the circumstances no doubt she had
+underestimated, if anything. And even if he believed her guilty, he
+might in that intimacy love her the more; not only would he pity her
+profoundly and see himself her natural protector, but he would be heart
+and soul in the great case, and it would not be long before the case and
+the woman were one.
+
+If, however, Rush could be made to believe now that the woman was a
+murderess, would he not decline to take the case? He was hardly the man
+to defend man or woman whom from the outset he knew to be guilty,
+although when immersed in the case he would keep on, whatever the
+revelations. Alys believed that it was possible for her to convince him.
+She could inform him of the needle-witted Mr. Broderick's suspicions and
+of her own confirmations; and she could tell him of her certain
+knowledge that Mrs. Balfame had a revolver; she had seen it eight months
+ago, when Balfame brought it home from New York and told his wife to
+discharge it in the air if, when alone, she heard a man breaking in.
+
+It had signified little to her at the moment that Mrs. Balfame had
+denied to police and reporters that she possessed a revolver, for it
+might by chance be a .41, and it was not to be expected that even an
+innocent woman would challenge public doubt and possible arrest. But her
+denial and probable concealment of the weapon were significant to Alys
+now. She remembered that Dr. Anna had spent the early hours of Sunday
+alone with Mrs. Balfame. No doubt the wicked woman had found both relief
+and counsel in confessing to a friend like Anna Steuer, a creature so
+strong and staunch that the secret would be as safe as in her own guilty
+soul. Anna, of course, had taken the pistol and dropped it in the marsh
+when she visited Farmer Houston's wife later in the day. If she could
+but get Dr. Anna to speak.
+
+Alys raised her eyes under their bent and frowning brows and looked up
+to where the Brabant Hospital stood on rising ground beside the sea. She
+gave a gasp as she found herself turning the horse's head in that
+direction. What did she intend to do? Denounce Mrs. Balfame to Dwight
+Rush? She fancied she heard an inner crash. Could she do this and escape
+final demoralisation? Heretofore she had at least committed no act
+involving moral degradation; her upheavals had affected herself alone
+and were her inviolate secret; but if she made a last desperate throw to
+win Dwight Rush by first filling him with loathing of her rival, she
+would be committed to a course of conduct from which there would be no
+escape for months, perhaps years to come. For if she won him,--toward
+which end she must plan with every female art she knew,--she never could
+ease her soul with confession. Her only chance of keeping a man like
+that, after the first effulgence had merged into the healthy
+temperateness of practical married life, was to avoid the major
+disillusions.
+
+And if she by her own deliberate act went to pieces morally, could she
+play up? Should she even want to play up? Could one deliberately knock
+the foundations from under one's cherished spiritual structure, reared
+with infinite pains upon natural inclinations, and continue to be even a
+pale reflection of one's higher self? She might, after the first
+excitement of striving to achieve her immediate object was over, hate
+herself too deeply to love or even to live.
+
+She drew her brows more closely and expelled her breath through her
+teeth. For the moment, at least, she felt all female, ready to defy the
+future and her own soul to obtain possession of her mate. That he was
+her mate she obstinately believed, temporarily deflected from his
+natural progress toward herself by one of those powerful delusions that
+afflict every man in the course of his life. And if she did not open his
+eyes at once, the temporary deflection would merge into the straight
+course toward marriage with a she-demon....
+
+She drove into the hospital yard, threw the reins over Colonel
+Roosevelt's back and asked for the superintendent, Mrs. Dissosway, who
+happened to be her aunt.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+
+An hour later, Alys was driving through Elsinore, her mind a trifle less
+personal, as it dwelt upon her brief interview with the superintendent
+of the hospital. Mrs. Dissosway, who was devoted to her niece and
+believed her to be as exceptional as Miss Crumley in her most aspiring
+moments could have wished, had confided that she was sure poor dear Anna
+knew something about that awful crime, for in her delirious moments she
+kept uttering Enid Balfame's name in very odd tones indeed. She had
+assured and reassured the patient that there was no clue to the
+murderer; and if she kept on and asked to see Mrs. Balfame,--which,
+significantly, she had not done,--they of course would tell her that the
+friend who should have hastened to her bedside had suffered a nervous
+breakdown or sprained her ankle. It was a blessing that she was in no
+condition to testify against her idol, for it would kill her, just as it
+might be fatal now if she knew that Enid was in the County Jail.
+
+After some delicate insistence, Mrs. Dissosway had admitted that Dr.
+Anna must convince any one who listened attentively to her mutterings
+that her belief in her friend's guilt was positive, whether she had
+exact knowledge or not.
+
+"'Oh, Enid! Oh, _Enid_!' she kept repeating in such a tone of anguish
+and reproach, and then muttered: 'Poor child! What a life!' She also
+once said something about a pistol in a tone of dismay, but the other
+words I couldn't make out.
+
+"The nurses on her case," Mrs. Dissosway had concluded, "will pay no
+attention. They are too accustomed to fever patients to listen to
+ravings, and the two she will have are from other parts of the State,
+anyhow. They never heard of Mrs. Balfame before. But I have been in and
+out all day, and I know she is worrying in her poor hot mind both over
+her friend's crime and her danger--"
+
+"Then you believe Mrs. Balfame did it?" Miss Crumley had interrupted.
+
+"Yes, I do--now, anyhow; and I never was daffy about her. She barely
+remembers I am alive, living out here for the last fifteen years as I
+have done, and I am your mother's sister. I don't call her a snob; it's
+just that she don't seem to take any interest in people that ain't in
+her own set. But the Lord knows I'd never tell on her if I had the proof
+in my hand, for I don't want any of our grand old families disgraced,
+and she's been good to your mother. No, she can go free, and welcome,
+but I wish poor Anna could have been spared the knowledge of her crime,
+for it's going to be all the harder to nurse her well, and she has a bad
+case. If she has to go, she shall go in peace. I'll see to that. But
+when Enid Balfame is out, I'll take good care to let her know that she
+has another crime to carry on her conscience--if she's got one."
+
+Alys had not asked to see the patient, knowing that it would be useless,
+but Mrs. Dissosway had walked out to the cart with her, and pointing to
+a window on the first floor of the wing devoted to paying patients,
+remarked: "That's where she is, poor dear." Alys had wondered if she
+should fall low enough before this accursed case were finished to
+describe the position of that room to Broderick and insinuate what he
+might find there if he chose to hide in the little balcony and enter the
+room when the night nurse had gone out for the midnight supper. He was
+quite capable of it.
+
+But not if she could win Rush from the case, nor unless, Mrs. Balfame
+discharged, he were arrested and committed for the crime. She wished now
+that he had been arrested instead of Mrs. Balfame, for then she could
+have saved him from both punishment and the other woman without this
+awful sense of sliding slowly down-hill to choke in a poisonous slime.
+She might have been obliged to exercise a certain amount of sophistry
+even then, but she could have stood it.
+
+She was driving slowly down Atlantic Avenue when she heard her name
+called in accents of mystery and excitement. Her modest rig was passing
+the imposing mansion of Elisha Battle, bank president, and like all the
+newer homes of Elsinore the grounds were unconfined and the shallow lawn
+ended at the pavement. From one of the drawing-room windows Lottie
+Gifning slanted, and as she met Miss Crumley's eye, she beckoned
+peremptorily. The desire for solitude was still strong upon Alys, but as
+she had no excuse to advance, she wound the lines round the whip and
+went slowly up the brick walk.
+
+Mrs. Gifning opened the front door and swept her into the drawing-room,
+where six or seven other women with tense excited faces sat on the
+expensive furniture. Mrs. Battle, herself upholstered in shining
+black-and-white satin, and further clad in invisible armour, occupied a
+stately and upright chair. This throne had been made to order;
+consequently her small feet in their high-heeled pumps touched the
+floor. The large room, upon which much money had been spent, was not
+tasteless; it merely had no individuality whatever. Like many another in
+Elsinore, it set Miss Crumley's teeth on edge, but compensated her
+to-day as ever by inspiring her with a sense of remote superiority.
+
+"Dear Alys--so glad to see you!" Mrs. Battle did not rise. She was fond
+of Alys, but thought her of no consequence whatever. "Lottie saw you and
+called you in as you have always been such a friend of poor dear Enid's,
+and you know those horrid reporters, and we want to impress upon you the
+necessity of putting them off the track. We are talking the whole
+dreadful business over and trying to decide what to do."
+
+"Do?" Alys, more interested, disposed her limber uncorseted young figure
+into a low chair and for a moment diverted envious attention from the
+momentous subject in hand. "What can we do? Has bail been accepted?"
+
+"No, nor likely to be. Isn't it too awful?"
+
+"Yes, it's awful." Alys stared at the floor, but although her words
+might have been uttered by any of the ladies present, her tone was
+almost conventional. No one noticed this defection, however, and Mrs.
+Battle--after Mrs. Gifning had tiptoed to all the doors, opened them
+suddenly and closed them again,--proceeded in so low a tone that there
+was an immediate hitching of chairs over the Persian rug:
+
+"What we were debating when you came in, Alys, was whether--oh, it's too
+awful!--she did it or not. Did she or didn't she? She has a perfectly
+beautiful character--but the provocation! Few women have been tried
+more severely. And we all know what human nature is under the influence
+of sudden tremendous passion." Mrs. Battle, who never had been ruffled
+by any sort of passion, leaned against the high back of her chair, and
+elevated her eyebrows and one corner of her mouth.
+
+"Could such a crime have been unpremeditated?" asked Alys. "You forget
+that whoever did it was waiting in the grove for Balfame to come home
+from Sam's, and evidently timed to shoot as he reached the gate."
+
+"Passion, my dear child," said Mrs. Bascom, wife of the Justice for
+Brabant, speaking softly and with some diffidence, for she disliked the
+word, "can endure for quite a while once the blood is up and pounding in
+the head. It would take a good deal to work up dear Enid, but when a
+woman like that does rise to the pitch under many and abominable
+provocations, well, I guess she could stay at that pitch a good bit
+longer than all of us put together. I've thought of nothing else for
+three days and nights,--the Judge won't discuss it with me,--and I feel
+convinced that she did it."
+
+"So have and so am I," contributed Mrs. Battle, sepulchrally.
+
+"I'm afraid she did!" Mrs. Gifning heaved an abysmal sigh. "I suspected
+it when I consulted her about her mourning. She was much too cool. A
+woman who could think of two kinds of blouses she wanted the very
+morning after the tragedy, and he not out of the house, must have been
+exercising a suspicious restraint or else have reverted to the
+cold-bloodedness with which she planned the deed."
+
+"Dear Lottie, you are so psychological," murmured Mrs. Frew admiringly;
+but Mrs. Battle interrupted sharply:
+
+"I maintain that she did it in a moment of overwhelming passion. She
+would be inexcusable if she had done it in cold blood."
+
+"Well, of course I didn't mean that!" said Mrs. Gifning with asperity.
+"I guess I'm as fond of Enid Balfame as anybody in this room, and I
+guess I know what she must have gone through. What I really meant was
+that she has more courage than most folks."
+
+"Oh, that indeed!" exclaimed Mrs. Lequer, who was quite happy with her
+husband, the fashionable doctor of Brabant. "Matrimony is a terrible
+trial at best, and it's a wonder more women don't--well, it's too
+horrible to say. But I'm afraid--well, you know."
+
+There was no dissenting voice. Alys raised her eyes and glanced about
+the room. Mrs. Cummack was not present. No doubt she had been carefully
+omitted from the conference. So had four members of the inner twelve who
+were comparative newcomers in Elsinore. All of these women had known
+Enid Balfame from childhood, consistently admired her; when she was in a
+position to make her social ambitions felt, had quite naturally fallen
+into line.
+
+"Isn't it rather a hasty conclusion?" Alys asked. "There are a good many
+others who might have done it, you know."
+
+"Everybody suspected has one grand alibi." Mrs. Gifning's sigh was
+rather hypocritical this time. "We'd be only too glad to think there was
+any one else likely to be arrested. No hope! No hope!"
+
+"I suppose"--Miss Crumley's tones were tentative, although the
+irresistible words almost cost her her breath--"that there was no man in
+love with Mrs. Balfame?"
+
+"Alys Crumley!" All the women had shrieked the name, and Mrs. Battle
+swung herself to her pointed toes. "I'm most mad enough to put you right
+out. The idea of insinuating--"
+
+"Dear me, Mrs. Battle, it never occurred to me that it was worse for a
+married woman to have a man in love with her than to commit murder. I
+did not insinuate or even imagine she cared for any man, or even
+encouraged one. But such things have happened."
+
+"Not to her. And while I could forgive her for shooting a perfectly
+loathsome husband under the influence of sudden passion, I'd never
+forgive her--Enid Balfame!--if she had stooped to anything so paltry and
+common and _sinful_ as philandering; for believe me, a man doesn't
+commit murder for a woman's sake unless he is reasonably certain that he
+will have his due rewards. That is life. And how _can_ he be certain, if
+there has been no philandering. No!" Mrs. Battle was once more
+magisterial in her chair, and in command of her best Friday Club
+vocabulary. "But there is this much to be said: Enid did not necessarily
+shoot to kill,--merely to wound perhaps,--for nothing would have
+punished Dave Balfame more than a month or two in bed on gruel and
+custard. Or maybe she just didn't know what she was doing--just fired to
+relieve her feelings. I am sure it would have relieved mine after that
+scene at the Club."
+
+"Oh--I apologise. Let us assume then that Mrs. Balfame did it. How do
+you propose to act in the matter? Of course you will not accuse her,
+but shall you cut her?"
+
+"Neither the one nor the other!" Mrs. Battle brought her plump little
+hands down on the arms of the chair with a muffled but emphatic smack.
+"Never outside of this room shall we breathe our convictions, or our
+certain knowledge that she kept a revolver in her room--may I not speak
+for all?" There was a hissing murmur caused by the letter _s_. "And it
+will be no negative defence, either. We'll stand by her publicly, visit
+her constantly, keep up her spirits, never give her a hint of our
+suspicions, and attend the trial in a body. Our attitude cannot fail to
+impress the world. We are the representative women of Elsinore; we have
+known her all our lives; it is our duty to flaunt our faith in the eyes
+of the public. The moral effect will be enormous--also on the jury."
+
+"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 to
+say, 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!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+
+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 crime
+upon 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 fatal night. 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 there was 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 the _New 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 not interviewing 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 friends and 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 only person 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
+celebre. He made love to her no more, but not for an instant did she
+doubt his 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, who told 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 be strange 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
+condemned David 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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+
+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 the _New 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 the _News_ now, 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 naive 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 attributed the
+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; and
+she 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--and distractingly 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 his heels. 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 in Brooklyn 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."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+
+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 the least 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 honest admission 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 other
+room 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
+he awaited 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 second time 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 to consciousness 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 pushed on. 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 and desired 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 polite without 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 discovered
+the 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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+
+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 crepe 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 the bald 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 to convict 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--"
+
+"I don't agree with you!" And arguing and scolding, they wended their
+disapproving way over to the Dobton Inn and sat them down at tables to
+make the most of their bare material.
+
+"No censorship needed here," growled Miss Austin. "She froze my very
+imagination."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+
+Rush walked up and down the room for a few moments in silence. Mrs.
+Balfame sat back and folded her hands. She was haunted by a vague sense
+of inefficiency, of having not quite risen to the occasion, but she felt
+there could be no doubt that she not only had impressed the reporters as
+an innocent woman but as a perfect lady. The rest didn't matter.
+
+"Are you really not a bit nervous?" demanded Rush, swinging on his heel
+and confronting her.
+
+"I will not permit myself to be. And except that I hate publicity, I
+really do not dread the trial. It means the beginning of the end of this
+detestable prison life. I want to be out and free. A week in a courtroom
+is not too heavy a price to pay."
+
+"Have you ever been to a murder trial?"
+
+"Of course not. Such a thing would never have occurred to me."
+
+Rush sighed. She had no imagination. But as her counsel he reminded
+himself that he should be grateful for the lack; he wanted no scenes,
+either in the courtroom or here in the imminent hours. But he would have
+welcomed a little more feminine shrinking, appeal to his superior
+strength. Even when he had worshipped her from afar, she had never moved
+him so powerfully as on the day of her arrest when she had flung herself
+over the table in an abandonment to despair as complete as the most
+exacting male could wish. That incident had long since taken on the
+shifting outlines of a dream. If she had felt any tremors since then
+she had concealed them from him.
+
+"Tell me," he asked almost wistfully, "are you not terribly frightened
+at times? You are alone here so much. And it has been an experience to
+try even a strong man's nerves."
+
+"Women nowadays really have better nerves than men. We not only lead a
+far fuller and more varied life than our predecessors, but you men work
+at such a terrific strain that it is a wonder you retain any control of
+your nerves at all. I will admit that I did have attacks of fear at
+first. It was all so strange and odd. But I got over them. You can get
+used to anything, I guess. And I have a strong will. I just made myself
+think about something else. This war has been a godsend. Have you
+noticed my new maps? I've really read about twenty war books, besides
+all the editorials, and they have given me a distaste for lighter
+reading, and really developed my--my--intellect. That seems such a big
+word. And then I've knitted dozens of things for the children and
+soldiers, and felt as if I were of some use for the first time in my
+life."
+
+She glanced at him shyly, as he stared through the bars of one of the
+windows. The suppressions of a lifetime made it impossible to betray any
+depth of feeling save under terrible stress. She was ashamed of her
+breakdown before him on the day of her arrest, but she was conscious of
+the wish that she were able to infuse her cool even tones with warmth,
+to make them tremulous at the right moment; but if she attempted to
+betray something of her newer self even in her eyes, self-consciousness
+overcame her and she dropped the lids almost in a panic.
+
+She wondered if love broke down those cliffs of ice that seemed to
+encompass a new-born soul. Or was it merely that the other members of
+her personal company, mature, jealous, self-sufficient, resented the
+intrusion of this shrinking alien? They had got on quite well without
+it; they felt no yearning for possible complications, readjustments.
+With all their quiet force they discouraged the stranger. Before any of
+the supreme experiences, including love, they might be routed, the new
+force might spring up in an instant like a flower from the magic soils
+of India--but not while the conventions bulwarked them. Their sum was
+Mrs. Balfame of Elsinore, and not for a moment did they permit
+themselves to forget it.
+
+Moreover, it was quite true that she had conquered her first
+apprehensions and welcomed the trial as the initial step toward freedom.
+Her poise had always been remarkable, the result in part of a
+self-centred life and a will driven relentlessly in a narrow groove.
+More than ever was she determined to sit through those long days in the
+courtroom with the cold aloofness of the unfortunate women of history.
+The very ascents she had made of secret and solitary heights alone would
+have restored her poise, for she felt on far more friendly terms with
+herself than when living with a wretch she loathed, and dreaming of no
+higher altitudes then complete success in Elsinore. But she wished for
+the first time that she were a younger woman, or had made those ascents
+many years ago; she would have liked to reveal herself spontaneously to
+this interesting young man who was so deeply in love with her.
+
+Suddenly she wondered if he were as ardently in love with her as in
+that brief period when they had talked of themselves. Not loving him in
+return, she had been content with lip-service, the sure knowledge that
+all his fine abilities were at work upon the obstacles to her freedom;
+and she would have been deeply annoyed if he had broken the pact made on
+the day of her arrest and reiterated his devotion and his hopes.
+
+But significant happenings--omissions--a certain flatness.... She turned
+her head sharply and looked at him. He was still staring moodily through
+the bars.
+
+If far too diffident to show the best that was in her, she found it
+comparatively simple to practice the feminine art of angling, albeit
+with a somewhat heavy hand.
+
+She asked softly: "Don't you think I did the wise thing to tell them I
+intended to travel as soon as I was acquitted? It surely would be in
+better taste than to settle down here--in that house!"
+
+"Did you mean it? The intention would make a good impression on the
+public, certainly."
+
+"Why, of course I meant it. I am not a good hand at saying things merely
+for effect."
+
+"Where shall you go? Europe is rather impossible."
+
+"Oh, not altogether. There is always Italy. And there is no danger from
+Zeppelins in the interior of Great Britain. And there is Spain--"
+
+"I think Europe a very good place for women to keep away from until the
+war is over. Any of the nations may become involved at any
+minute--ourselves, for that matter. Better follow the advice of
+advertisers and see America first."
+
+"Yes, I could visit the Expositions in California, and camp for a while
+in Glacier Park, and there are the Yellowstone and Grand Canyon--but all
+that would only consume a few months--and then there is this winter to
+think of. What I feel I should do is to stay away for a year, at
+least--"
+
+"You could live very pleasantly in Southern California."
+
+"I should be very conspicuous in those small fashionable settlements.
+The case has been telegraphed all over the country, and I have seen
+dreadful pictures of myself in several Western papers."
+
+"Well, you might live quietly in New York until the war is over. There
+is no better place to hide--if you avoid the restaurants and theatres.
+And after all, even a _cause celebre_ is quickly forgotten if there is
+no aftermath. But I certainly advise against even sailing for Europe
+until peace is declared. There is always the danger of mines and too
+enthusiastic submarines."
+
+She turned quite cold and stared at her hands. They were well-shaped but
+large, and they looked like blocks of white marble on her black gown. He
+was still at the window, and his tone was listless. She had a curious
+sense of panic in the region of her heart. But instantly she curled her
+lip with defiant scorn. Was she the woman to fancy herself in love with
+a man the moment she seemed to be in danger of losing him? Besides, no
+doubt, the poor man was tired, and too absorbed in the case to have any
+room in him for the moods of the lover. Only a foolish impulsive woman
+would in conditions like the present try to rouse a dormant passion.
+When she was free, and he as well, his heart would automatically take
+precedence once more and he would plead ardently for the privilege of
+marrying her. That was quite in order.
+
+She rose briskly. "Let me show you this map," she said. "It is the very
+latest--Letitia Battle brought it to me two days ago. And do smoke."
+
+"Thanks, but I must go over and watch those girls. Yes, it is a fine
+map. This war certainly is a godsend! Good luck. Keep up those splendid
+spirits. You're all right."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+
+"Oyez, oyez, oyez! The Supreme Court of the State of New York County of
+Brabant trial term is now in session all people having business with
+this court may draw near and give their attention _and they shall be
+heard_."
+
+The court crier delivered his morning oration in one breathless
+sentence, the last five words of which only have ever been captured by
+mortal ears. The roll of the jury was called. The first witness stood on
+the step of the witness-stand and swore by the everlasting God that the
+testimony he would give in the trial of the People of the State of New
+York against the defendant would be the truth, the whole truth and
+nothing but the truth, and then he seated himself in the chair. The
+trial of Mrs. Balfame began.
+
+It had taken three days to select a jury. If Rush was determined to keep
+out Germans, Mr. Gore, the district attorney, was equally reluctant to
+admit to the box any man whom he suspected of being under commands from
+his wife to get on that jury and acquit Mrs. Balfame, if he had to
+imperil his immortal soul. He also harboured suspicions of felonious
+activities on the part of Mr. Sam Cummack and certain other patriotic
+citizens less devoted to the cause of justice than to Elsinore. In
+consequence the questions were not only uncommonly searching, but both
+the district attorney and the defendant's counsel exhausted their
+peremptory challenges.
+
+The talesmen that had crowded the courtroom beyond the railing were for
+the most part farmers and tradesmen, but there were not a few "prominent
+residents," including rooted Brabantites and busy commuters. The last
+answered without hesitation that they had followed the case closely from
+the first and formed an unalterable opinion; then, dismissed, rushed off
+and caught a late train for New York. Those of Mrs. Balfame's own class
+would have been passed cheerfully by Mr. Rush, but in spite of their
+careless avowals that they had been too busy to follow the case, or had
+found it impossible to reach any conclusion, they were peremptorily
+challenged by the district attorney. They, too, went to New York, not on
+business, and returned to their hearthstones as late as possible.
+
+Finally a jury of almost excessively "plain men" were chosen after long
+and weary hours of wrangling. They were all married; their ages ranged
+from forty-five to fifty; not one looked as if he had an illusion left
+in regard to the sex that had shared his burdens for a quarter of a
+century, or, German or no German, he had any leniency in him for a woman
+who had presumed to abbreviate the career of a man. But at least they
+were real Americans, with reputations for straight dealing, and good
+old-fashioned ideals of justice, irrespective of sex. Rush doubted if
+any of them could be "fixed" by Mr. Cummack or the able politicians
+whose services he had bespoken, although the sternest visages often hid
+unsuspected weak spots; but after all his best chance was with honest
+men whose soft spots were of another sort.
+
+So naive had been the eagerness of the German-American talesmen to get
+on the jury that Rush had had little difficulty in demonstrating their
+unfitness for duty. These were too thrifty to go to New York and stood
+in no fear of their wives, but they avoided the _gemuetlich_ resort of
+Old Dutch until the trial was over.
+
+Throughout this ordeal Mrs. Balfame sat immovable, impassive, her face a
+white bas-relief against the heavy black crepe of her veil, which hung
+like a black panel between her profile and the western light. Her chair
+was at the foot of the long table which stood beneath the two tiers of
+the jury-box and was reserved for counsel, the district attorney, the
+assistants and clerks. Her calm grey eyes looked straight ahead,
+interested apparently in nothing but the empty witness-stand, on the
+right of the jury and the left of the judge. She knew that the
+reporters, and the few outsiders that had managed to crowd in with the
+talesmen, scarcely took their eyes from her face, and that the staff
+artists were sketching her. All her complacency had fled before certain
+phases of this preliminary ordeal for which no one had thought to
+prepare her. The constant reiteration of that question of horrid
+significance: "Have you any objection to capital punishment as practised
+in this State?" struck at the roots of her courage, enhanced her prison
+pallor; and that immovable battery of eyes, hostile, or coldly
+observant, critical, appraising, made her long to grind her teeth, to
+rise in her chair and tell those men and women, insolent in their
+freedom, what she thought of their vulgar insensibility. But not for
+nothing had she schooled herself, and not for a moment did her nerves
+really threaten revolt. She had taken her second sleeping powder on the
+night preceding the opening of the trial, but on the third morning she
+awakened with the momentary wish that she had preserved Dr. Anna's
+poison, or could summon death in any form rather than go over to that
+courthouse and be tried for her life. For the first time she understood
+the full significance of her condition.
+
+But Mrs. Battle, Mrs. Cummack and Mrs. Gifning, when they bustled in to
+"buck her up," congratulated her upon "not having a nerve in her body";
+and although she had felt she must surely faint at the end of the
+underground tunnel between the jail and the rear of the courthouse, she
+had walked into that room of dread import upstairs with her head erect,
+her eyes level, and her hands steady. She may have built a fool's
+paradise for herself, assisted by her well-meaning friends, during the
+past ten weeks, and dwelt in it smugly; but as it fell about her ears
+she stood erect with a real courage that strengthened her soul for any
+further shocks and surprises this terrible immediate future of hers
+might hold.
+
+On the first day, although she never glanced at a talesman, she had
+listened eagerly to every question, every answer, every challenge. As
+the third day wore on, she felt only weariness of mind, and gratitude
+that she had a strong back. She was determined to sit erect and immobile
+if the trial lasted a month. And not only was her personal pride
+involved. Circumstances had delivered her to the public eye, therefore
+should it receive an indelible impression of a worthy representative of
+the middle-class American of the smaller town, so little unlike the
+women of the wealthier class, and capable of gracing any position to
+which fate might call her--a type the United States of America alone has
+bred; also of a woman whose courage and dignity had never been surpassed
+by any man brought to the bar of justice on the awful charge of murder.
+
+She knew that this attitude, as well as her statuesque appearance, would
+antagonise the men reporters but enchant her loyal friends, the women.
+Her estimate was very shrewd. The poor sob sisters, squeezed in wherever
+they could find a vacant chair, or even a half of one (all the tables
+being reserved for the men), surrendered in a body to her cold beauty,
+her superb indifference, soul and pen. A unanimous verdict of guilty
+brought in by that gum-chewing small-headed jury merely would petrify
+these women's belief in her innocence. She was vicarious romance; for
+women that write too much have little time to live and no impulse to
+murder any one in the world but the city editor.
+
+On the morning of the fourth day, the space between the enclosure and
+the walls of the courtroom was filled with spectators from all over the
+county, many of them personal friends of Mrs. Balfame; but New York City
+would not become vitally interested until the business of examining the
+minor witnesses was concluded. Behind and at the left of Mrs. Balfame
+were the members of her intimate circle. Occasionally they whispered to
+her, and she smiled so sweetly and with such serene composure that even
+the men reporters admitted she looked younger and more feminine--and
+more handsome--than on that day of the interview which had proved her
+undoing.
+
+"But she did it all right," they assured one another. They must believe
+in her guilt or suffer twinges in that highly civilised and possibly
+artificial section of the brain tabulated as conscience. Their fixed
+theory was that she had mixed the poison for Balfame and then, being in
+a highly nervous state, and apprehensive that he would capriciously
+refuse to drink it, had snatched her pistol as she heard his voice in
+the distance, dashed downstairs and out into the grove, and fired with
+her established accuracy.
+
+She had had plenty of time between the crime and her arrest to pass the
+pistol to one of her friends, or even to slip out at night and drop it
+in the marsh.
+
+As to the shot that had missed Balfame and entered the tree: it was
+either by one of those coincidences more frequent in fact than in
+fiction that another enemy of Balfame's had been lurking in the grove,
+intent upon murder; or the bullet hole was older than they had inferred.
+The idea of a lover they scoffed at openly. And it was one of the
+established facts, as they reminded their sisters of the press, that the
+worst women in history had looked like angels, statues or babies; they
+had also possessed powerful sex magnetism, and this the handsome
+defendant wholly lacked.
+
+The theory of the women reporters was far simpler. She hadn't done it
+and that was the end of it.
+
+The judge, a tall imposing man with inherited features and accumulated
+flesh, very stately and remote in his flowing silk gown, looked
+unspeakably bored for three days, but was visibly hopeful as he swept up
+to his seat on the rostrum on Thursday morning. As the justice for
+Brabant, Mr. Bascom, had not been on speaking terms with the deceased,
+and as his wife was one of the defendant's closest friends, an eminent
+Supreme Court justice from one of the large neighbouring cities had been
+assigned to the case.
+
+The reporters of the evening newspapers, were packed closely about a
+long table parallel with the one just below the jury-box, and behind
+were four or five smaller tables dedicated to the morning stars. A large
+number of favoured spectators had found seats within the railings, but a
+passage was kept open for the boys who came up at regular intervals to
+get copy from the "evening table" for the telegraph operator below
+stairs.
+
+Broderick's seat beneath the rostrum commanded both the witness-box and
+Mrs. Balfame. He had used his influence to have Alys Crumley assigned to
+the position of artist for the Woman's Page of the _News_, and she and
+Sarah Austin shared a chair.
+
+The trial began. Dr. Lequer established the fact of the death, described
+the course of the bullet, demonstrating that it had been fired by some
+one concealed in the grove. A surveyor followed and exhibited to the
+jury a map of the house and grounds. Three of the younger members of the
+Country Club, Mr. John Bradshaw Battle, cashier of the Elsinore Bank;
+Mr. Lemuel Cummack, son of Elsinore's esteemed citizen, Mr. Sam Cummack;
+and Mr. Leonard Corfine, a commuter, had been subpoenaed after a
+matching of wits. Overawed by the solemnity of the oath, they gave a
+circumstantial account of the quarrel which had preceded the murder but
+a few hours--all, in spite of constant interruptions from the
+defendant's counsel, conveying the impression, however unwillingly, that
+Mrs. Balfame had been livid with wrath and the man who had been her
+husband insufferable. It was a master-stroke of the district attorney
+to open his case with the damaging testimony of two members of the loyal
+Elsinore families. As for Mr. Corfine, although born and brought up
+without the pale, he had been graciously received upon electing to build
+his nest in Elsinore and his young wife was one of Mrs. Balfame's
+meekest admirers.
+
+Mr. Broderick muttered, "H'm! H'm!" and Mr. Bruce squirmed round from
+the "evening table" and jerked his eyebrows at his senior. "Bad! Bad!"
+muttered Mr. Broderick's neighbour. "But watch her nerve. Can you beat
+it? She hasn't batted an eyelash."
+
+Two former servants that had preceded Frieda in the Balfame menage
+testified that the household consisted of three people only, the master
+and mistress and the one in help. A gardener came three times a week in
+the morning. No, none of the old spare rooms was now furnished, and the
+Balfames never had had visitors overnight.
+
+The prosecution rested, and Mr. Rush approached the bar according to
+usage and asked that the case be dismissed. The judge ruled that it
+should proceed; and immediately after the noon recess the first witness
+for the defence was called. This was Mr. Cummack, and he testified
+vigorously to the harmonious relations of the deceased and his amiable
+wife; that Mrs. Balfame--who was always pale--had treated the episode
+out at the Club in the casual manner observed by all seasoned and
+intelligent wives, the conversation over the telephone in his house
+proving that the domestic heavens were swept clean of storm-clouds; and
+that the deceased had departed for his home quite happy and singing at
+the top of his lungs. He had often remarked jocularly (his was a cheery
+and jocular temperament) that he expected to die with his boots on,
+especially since he had taken to bawling Tipperary in the face of
+American Germany.
+
+It is not to be imagined that Mr. Cummack was able to deliver himself of
+this valuable testimony without frequent and indignant interruptions
+from the district attorney, whose "irrelevant, incompetent and
+immaterial" rang through the courtroom like the chorus of a Gilbert and
+Sullivan opera. Mr. Gore, a wasp of a man with snapping black eyes and a
+rasping voice emitted through his higher nasal passages, succeeded in
+having much of this testimony stricken out, but not before the wily Mr.
+Rush, who stood on tiptoe, as alert and nervous as a race horse at the
+grandstand, had by his adroit swift questions fairly flung it into the
+jury-box. It was of the utmost importance with an obstinate provincial
+jury to establish at once a favourable general impression of the
+prisoner.
+
+When, in the theatre, a trial scene is depicted, it is necessary to
+interpose dramatic episodes, but no one misses these adventitious
+incidents in a real trial for murder, so dramatic is the bare fact that
+a human being is battling for his life. When the prisoner at the bar is
+a woman reasonably young and good looking, the interest is so intense
+and complete that the sudden intrusion of one of the incidents which
+have become the staples of the theatre, such as the real culprit rushing
+into the courtroom and confessing himself, a suicide in the witness-box,
+or dramatic conduct on the part of the defendant, would be resented by
+the spectators, as an anti-climax. Real drama is too logical and grimly
+progressive to tolerate the extrinsic.
+
+The three other men who had been at Mr. Cummack's house that night were
+called, and corroborated his story. They all wore an expression of
+gentle amusement as if the bare idea of the stately and elegant Mrs.
+Balfame descending to play even a passive role in a domestic row was as
+unthinkable as that any woman could find aught in David Balfame to rouse
+her to ire.
+
+"By Jove!" whispered Mr. Broderick to Mr. Wagstaff of the _Morning
+Flag_, "just figure to yourself what the line would be if she had been
+caught red-handed and was putting up a defence of temporary insanity
+caused by the well-known proclivities of that beast. A good subject for
+a cartoon would be Dave Balfame in heaven with a tin halo on,
+whitewashing Mrs. B., weeds and all. The human mind is nothing but a
+sewer."
+
+The afternoon session was also enlivened by the testimony of several of
+the ladies who had been members of the bridge party on the day of Mr.
+Balfame's unseemly conduct at the Club. They testified that although
+Mrs. Balfame naturally dissolved upon her return to the card-room, there
+had been nothing whatever in her demeanour to suggest seething passion.
+Mrs. Battle, who was an imposing figure in the witness chair, her
+greater bulk being above the waist, tossed her head and asseverated with
+refined emphasis that Mrs. Balfame was one of those rare and exquisite
+beings that are temperamentally incapable of passion of any sort. Her
+immediate return to her home was prompted more by delicacy than even by
+pain. Miss Crumley's pencil faltered as she listened. She could not
+give a jeering public even a faithful outline of a woman as devoted to
+the sacred cause of friendship and Elsinore as Mrs. Battle.
+
+The testimony of none of these ladies was more emphatic than that of
+Mrs. Bascom, wife of the supplanted justice, and she added unexpectedly
+that she had been so upset herself that she too had left the clubhouse
+immediately, and, her swift car passing Dr. Anna Steuer's little
+runabout, she had seen Mrs. Balfame chatting pleasantly and without a
+trace of recent emotion.
+
+Mrs. Balfame almost relaxed the set curves of her mouth at this
+surprising statement. She recalled that a car had passed and that she
+had wondered at the time if any one had noticed her extreme agitation.
+She kept her muscles in order, but unconsciously her eyes followed Mrs.
+Bascom, as she left the witness-chair, with an expression of puzzled
+gratitude.
+
+The District Attorney turned to the reporters with a short sardonic
+laugh, and Mr. Broderick shook his head as he murmured to Mr. Wagstaff:
+
+"Can you beat that? And yet they say women don't stand by one another."
+
+"Good for the whole game, I guess," replied the young _Flag_ star, who
+was enamoured of a very pretty suffragette.
+
+The Judge rose, and the afternoon session was over. The great case of
+The People vs. Mrs. Balfame rested until the following morning.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+
+Mrs. Balfame walked back through the now familiar tunnel more hopeful
+and elated than any one in the courtroom would have inferred from her
+chiselled manner.
+
+"I almost feel that I have the courage to look at the sketches of myself
+in the papers," she said lightly to Rush, who escorted her. "I haven't
+dared open a paper since Monday morning."
+
+"Better not." Rush also was in high spirits. "Keep your mental mercury
+as high as possible. It doesn't matter, anyhow. You'll be clear in less
+than a week. The impression all those splendid friends of yours created
+knocked the prosecution silly."
+
+"I have not once glanced at the jury," said Mrs. Balfame proudly, "and I
+never shall. All I was conscious of was that they were chewing gum, and
+that the man above me snorts constantly."
+
+"That's Houston. He's likely to be predisposed in your favour on account
+of your intimacy with Dr. Anna. And he's a just man, of some
+intelligence. I fancy none of them is in the mood to be too hard on any
+one, for they are having a fine vacation in the Paradise City Hotel.
+Each has a big room with a soft bed and rich and delicate food three
+times a day. If they don't get indigestion they will be inclined to
+mercy on general principles. I engineered the housing of them. Gore was
+all for putting them up at the Dobton Inn, where they would have grown
+as vicious as starved dogs. I won my point by reminding him that certain
+men of that sort try to get on a jury for the sake of having a rest and
+a soft time, and if they aren't coddled, they are equal to falling ill
+and forcing the court to begin the trial over again. You're all right."
+
+They were in the jail sitting-room, and she stood with her head thrown
+back and her eyes shining. The moment they had entered she had removed
+her heavy hat and veil and run her hands through her crushed hair. Rush,
+who was very nervous and excited, made a swift motion forward as if to
+seize her hands. But it was only later, when alone, that she realised
+that possibly she had brushed aside an opportunity to rekindle a flame
+which she alternately feared and doubted was burning low; she was not
+thinking of him and exclaimed happily:
+
+"It is quite a wonderful sensation to feel that you have made friends
+like that. My! how they did lie! And so convincingly! For a moment I was
+quite the outsider and deeply impressed with the weakness of the case
+against the accused. Here they come. I feel as if I never really loved
+them before." And she ran to the door to admit the elated trio who that
+day had made their noblest sacrifice to the cause of friendship. Mrs.
+Balfame kissed them and embraced them, and dried their excited tears,
+while Rush, his contemptible part in the day's drama forgotten, slunk
+down the stairs and out of the jail.
+
+He met Alys Crumley as she was about to board the trolley for Elsinore,
+and she stepped back and congratulated him warmly.
+
+"Your brain worked like blades of chain lightning," she said with real
+enthusiasm. "I know you have only begun, but I can well imagine--wasn't
+Mrs. Balfame delighted?"
+
+"With her friends' testimony," he replied gloomily. "I don't seem to
+come in."
+
+There are some impulses, born of sudden opportunity, too strong for
+mortal powers of resistance. "Come home to supper," said Miss Crumley,
+with the same spontaneous warmth. "You look so tired, and Mother
+promised me Maryland chicken and waffles. Besides, I want to show you my
+drawings. I am so proud of being a staff artist."
+
+"I'll come," said Rush promptly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+
+The following day was also taken by the examination of witnesses for the
+defence. Dr. Lequer, who had been called in occasionally by the Balfames
+when Dr. Anna was unavailable, and who was also an old friend of the
+family, asserted that so far as he knew there never had been a quarrel
+between husband and wife. Mrs. Balfame, in fact, was unique in his
+experience, inasmuch as she never looked depressed nor shed tears.
+
+He was followed by a woman who had been general housemaid in the Balfame
+home for three years. She had left it to reward the devotion of a
+plumber, and between her and Frieda there had been a long line of the
+usual incompetents. Mrs. Figg testified with an enthusiasm which
+triumphed over nerves and grammar that although she guessed Mr. Balfame
+was about like other husbands, especially at breakfast, Mrs. Balfame was
+too easy-going to mind. She'd never seen her mad. Yes, she was an
+exacting mistress, all right, terrible particular, and she never sat
+with the hired girl in the kitchen and gossiped, and you couldn't take a
+liberty with her like you could with some; but that was just her way,
+naturally proud and silent-like. She was terrible economical but a kind
+mistress, as she didn't scold and follow up, once she was sure the girl
+would suit, and not a bit mean about evenings and afternoons off. She
+did up her own room and dusted the downstairs rooms, except for the
+weekly cleaning. No, she never'd seen no pistol. It wasn't her way to
+look in bureau drawers. No, she'd never seen or heard any jealousy,
+tempers, and so forth, and had always taken it for granted that Mrs.
+Balfame wasn't on to Mr. Balfame's doings--or if she was, she didn't
+care. There was lots like that.
+
+The district attorney snarled and trumpeted throughout this placid
+recital, but Mrs. Figg took no notice of him whatever. She had been
+thoroughly drilled, and looked straight into the sparkling blue eyes of
+Mr. Rush as if hypnotised.
+
+Other minor witnesses consumed the afternoon, and once more Mrs. Balfame
+returned to the jail with glowing eyes. The women reporters were elated.
+The men made no comment as they filed out of the courtroom, but their
+whole bearing expressed a lofty and quiet scorn.
+
+"It's fine! fine!" exclaimed Cummack, sitting down beside Rush at the
+table below the empty jury-box. "But I do wish Dr. Anna was available.
+She stands head and shoulders above every one else in the estimation of
+these jurymen; she doctored the children and confined the wives of
+pretty near all of them. There's no stone she wouldn't leave unturned."
+
+"She's pretty bad, isn't she?" asked Rush. "Would there be any chance at
+all of getting a deposition--in case things went wrong?"
+
+"Things ain't goin' wrong; but as for Anna, she's out of it, and
+everything else, I guess. I was out to the hospital yesterday, for I've
+had her in mind; but although she was better for a time, she's worse
+again. But say--what do you think I discovered? Those damned newspaper
+men have been hangin' round out there. That young devil Broderick--"
+
+Rush was sitting up very straight, his eyes glittering. "But he surely
+hasn't been able to see her? I don't believe any sort of graft would get
+by Mrs. Dissosway--"
+
+"You bet he hasn't been able to see Anna, and just now they're not
+leaving her for a moment alone, like they did at first. But Broderick
+seems to have the idea wedged in his brain that Mrs. Balfame confessed
+to Anna and that poor old Doc lost the pistol somewhere out in the
+marsh--"
+
+Rush made an exclamation of disgust. "I can't understand Broderick. He's
+got his trial all right, and it isn't like him to hound a woman--"
+
+"I said as much to him, and though he wouldn't talk much, I just
+gathered from something he let fall that he was afraid if the crime
+wasn't well fixed onto Enid some innocent person he thought a lot more
+of might come under suspicion. Can you guess who he had in mind?"
+
+Rush pushed back his chair and sprang to his feet. "Good Lord, no. One
+case at a time is all my brain is equal to." He was almost out of the
+empty courtroom when Cummack caught him firmly by the shoulder.
+
+"Say, Dwight," he said with evident embarrassment, "hold on a minute.
+I've just got to tell you that somehow or other I sensed _you_ when
+Broderick was trying to put me off. There are a good many things;
+they've been comin' back--"
+
+Rush turned the hard glittering blue of his eyes full upon Mr. Cummack,
+whose shrewd but kindly gaze faltered for a moment. "Do you believe I
+did it?" demanded Rush.
+
+"Well, no, not exactly--that is, I'd know that if you had done it, it
+would have been because you'd got the idea into your head that Enid was
+having an awful row to hoe, or because he'd attacked her that night. It
+wouldn't have been for no mean personal reason, and no one knows better
+than I that the blood goes to the head terrible easy at your age and
+when a beautiful woman is in question. If I'd guessed it before, I'm
+free to say I'd have rushed your arrest in order to spare Enid, if for
+no other reason. But as it's gone so far and she's sure to get off,--and
+you wouldn't stand much show,--the matter had best stay where it is;
+particularly--well, I may as well tell you Enid sort of confided to
+Polly that you had offered to cover her name with yours as soon as she
+got out; and if you've been in love with her all this time, as I guess
+you have been--well, Dave can't be brought back. And--well, I've lived
+out West and it isn't so uncommon there for a man to shoot on sight when
+he's mad about a woman and a few other things at the same time. Dave was
+my friend, but I guess I understand."
+
+Rush had withdrawn stiffly from the friendly hand laid on his shoulder.
+"I have asked Mrs. Balfame to marry me," he said. "But she has by no
+means consented."
+
+"But she means to. Don't let it worry you. Women are queer cattle. Nail
+her the next time she's in the melting mood. She gets 'em oftener than
+she ever did before, and I guess you see her alone often enough."
+
+"Oh, yes, I've seen her alone nearly every day for ten weeks."
+
+Cummack narrowed his eyes, and his face, generally relaxed and amiable,
+grew stern and menacing. "You don't love her!" he exclaimed. "You don't!
+Like many another damned fool, you've compromised your very life for a
+woman, only to be disenchanted by seeing too much of her. But by God
+you've got to marry her--"
+
+They were standing at the head of the winding stair in the rotunda, and
+several of the reporters were still in front of the telephone booth
+below.
+
+"Hush!" said the lawyer peremptorily. "I mean to marry Mrs. Balfame if
+she accepts the proposal I made to her the day she was arrested. I have
+said nothing to warrant your jumping to the conclusion that I no longer
+wish to marry her. But by God! if you ever dare to threaten me again--"
+And he raised his fist so menacingly, his set face was so tense and
+white, his eyes bore such a painful resemblance to hot coals, that
+Cummack retreated hastily.
+
+"All right! All right!" he called up from the first turning. "Don't
+fancy I think I could. And what's passed between us is sacred. S'long."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+
+On the morrow the first witness called by the prosecution in rebuttal
+was old Kraus, and now it was Mr. Rush's turn to shout "Immaterial,
+Irrelevant and Incompetent," so that it was well-nigh impossible for the
+jury to do more than guess what the choleric person with a strong German
+accent was talking about. The district attorney fought valiantly to draw
+forth the story of Frieda's nocturnal visit to the Kraus home in search
+of advice after hearing Mrs. Balfame enter the kitchen from the yard,
+but his efforts ended in a shouting contest between the prosecution and
+the defence, both deserting their positions before the jury-box and
+wrangling before the Judge like two angry school-boys. Alys Crumley
+longed to laugh aloud, but not so the Judge. He asked them curtly how he
+was to know what was their point of dispute if they both talked at once.
+He then commanded Mr. Rush to state in as few words as possible what he
+was objecting to; and when the counsel for the defence had stated his
+purely legal reasons for blocking this purely hearsay testimony, the
+Judge abruptly threw Mr. Kraus out of court. Rush, flushed and
+triumphant, returned to his chair below the jury-box, and Mr. Gore
+sulkily called the name of Miss Frieda Appel.
+
+There was no question of poor Frieda's making a good personal impression
+upon spectators or jury, no matter how worthy her motives. She had saved
+almost every penny of her wages since coming to America; it had been
+her lover's intention to emigrate to Brabant County as soon as his term
+of service was over, and her housewifely intention to greet him with a
+furnished cottage. Since the war began, she had sent all her savings to
+East Prussia lest her people starve.
+
+Dress in any circumstances would never tempt her. Economy was her
+religion, and she cherished no illusions about her face and form. To-day
+she wore a skirt of an old voluminous cut and a jacket with high
+puckered sleeves. The colour had once been brown. Her coarse blonde hair
+met her eyebrows in a thick bang, and its high knob was surmounted by a
+sailor hat a size too small. Her thick-set body was uncorseted, and her
+indeterminate features were lost in the width and flatness of her face.
+Only the little eyes beneath the heavy thatch of hair alternately glowed
+dully and spat fire.
+
+The Judge sternly suppressed the titter that ran over the court-room as
+this caricature mounted the witness-stand, and the district attorney, in
+spite of frequent interruptions, elicited a remarkably clear and
+coherent statement. The Judge sustained him, for here was a real
+witness, and Miss Appel not only had been as thoroughly rehearsed as
+Mrs. Figg, but she had a neat precise little mind set with rows of
+pigeonholes that ejected their contents in routine when her coach
+pressed the cognate button.
+
+She had come home abruptly from the dance-hall as she had an
+insupportable toothache--had run all the way, as she had some
+toothache-drops in her room. She was in such agony she hardly had
+noticed that her friend Conrad Kraus was behind her. When she reached
+her room she had applied the drops, and to her horror they made the pain
+worse. After walking the floor for perhaps ten minutes--she didn't know
+or care whether it was ten or fifteen minutes--she was just starting to
+go down-stairs and heat some water for her bag when she heard the
+kitchen door open and shut. She held her breath and did not answer when
+Mrs. Balfame called, as she feared she was wanted and was determined to
+do nothing for anybody while her tooth ached like that.
+
+Mrs. Balfame's voice had sounded quite breathless, as if she had been
+running. In a moment Frieda heard her go into the dining-room then back
+to the kitchen, and turn on the tap,--not the filter, which made no
+noise,--and then she heard one glass clink against another on the pantry
+shelf. After that, Mrs. Balfame went upstairs from the front hall and
+the witness returned to her room and threw herself on the bed, where she
+remained until Mr. Cummack came and asked her to go downstairs and make
+coffee. By this time her tooth ached so she didn't care what she did.
+
+Cross-questioned, she admitted that Mrs. Balfame was in the habit of
+drinking a glass of filtered water the last thing at night. No, she had
+not heard her go out, but only come in. But why, if Mrs. Balfame saw
+nothing outside to frighten her, or if she hadn't been out, was she so
+short of breath? As may be imagined, mere speculation on Miss Appel's
+part was cut short by Mr. Rush, who interrupted her constantly. Yes, she
+had heard what she now knew had been a shot but she had paid no
+attention. Who would, with a red-hot iron forcing one's tooth down
+through one's jaw?
+
+Even the scornful questions of counsel which forced her to admit that
+she had lied to the coroner neither perturbed her nor made any
+impression on jury, press, or spectators. Every one present had suffered
+from toothache, and two farmers in the box showed their tusks in an
+appreciative grin when she replied tartly that she didn't know or care
+anything that day but tooth, tooth, tooth. It was manifest that she was
+far too conservative to have had it out at once, to say nothing of the
+cost.
+
+The only question she was not prepared for was the abrupt challenge of
+Mr. Rush as to how she could prove that young Kraus had followed her if
+she had neither seen nor spoken to him during that short run from Main
+Street. But although she was visibly perturbed at being confronted with
+a set of words to which no neat little pigeon-hole responded, it was so
+evident she was firmly convinced her friend had accompanied her, that
+for Rush to make too much of his solitary point would prejudice his
+case, and he let her go.
+
+Conrad Jr. followed, and his story was equally straightforward. He also
+made a good impression. True, he had a very small closely cropped head,
+with eyes too small and ears too large, but he held himself with
+arrogance, and he was well dressed in a new grey suit and pink shirt.
+Born in the United States, it was manifest that he was proud not only of
+being an American citizen but of the country's choicest vintage. He had
+been sent to the public school until he was sixteen, had studied
+conscientiously, and his grammar was quite as good as that of the
+District Attorney, who in emotional moments confused his negatives. But,
+even Rush, whose advantages had been as superior as his natural
+equipment, became a good nasal American when excited, opened into
+vowels, and freely translated _you_ into _yer_. It is these persistent
+characteristics, so racy of the soil, which cheer us when apprehending
+that our original Americanism may in time be obliterated by the foreign
+influx.
+
+No, said young Kraus, he had no sentimental interest in Frieda. (He
+smiled.) And he was engaged to a young lady to whom he had been
+attentive for three years. But he felt like a brother to Frieda; she had
+come to his father's house direct from Germany, their families having
+been friends for generations. It was not only his duty but his pleasure
+to dance with her, she being "the best of the bunch down at the hall."
+
+As he was dancing with her when her toothache became unendurable, it was
+natural that he should see her home; in fact, he always saw her home
+when it was convenient. Of course if he had to catch the last trolley
+for Dobton in a hurry, that was another matter.
+
+When she had entered the house, he had waited, thinking she might want
+some other drops or possibly a dentist. Once when he had had a
+toothache, he had been obliged to go to a dentist's house at night. His
+papa had sent him, and naturally he thought of it as a possibility in
+Frieda's case.
+
+Then the kitchen door opened and a woman came out.
+
+At this point the interest in the court-room became intense. Even the
+blase young reporters sat forward, their pencils poised. The Judge
+wheeled his chair to the right and stared down fixedly at the back of
+young Kraus' head. The district attorney balanced himself on his heels,
+his thumbs hooked in the sleeves of his vest, and Rush stood with his
+back curved as if to spring down the witness' throat with a wild yell
+of "Immaterial, irrelevant and incompetent." Only Mrs. Balfame sat like
+a statue that had neither eyes to see nor ears to hear.
+
+Yes, Mr. Kraus recognised Mrs. Balfame's figure and walk. She was one in
+a thousand for looks, and taller than many men. She had on a long dark
+ulster and a black scarf round her head. The kitchen light was behind
+her--
+
+Here there was another furious contest between the chief counsel and the
+district attorney, but the Judge ordered the young man (who had consumed
+a toothpick imperturbably) to proceed with his story. Mrs. Balfame had
+slipped round the corner of the house, listened intently, walked for a
+minute toward the back of the grounds,--he could just see the moving
+shadow in the darkness,--turned abruptly and entered the grove.
+Naturally interested, he waited to see what she was up to; and
+then--possibly three or four minutes later--he heard Balfame singing
+"Tipperary," and a moment or two after that the shot,--one shot, not
+two; he took no stock in the theory that there had been two
+shots,--followed by loud voices from the other side of the avenue.
+
+Then he "beat it," that being his natural instinct at the moment. His
+papa had taught him to be cautious and to keep clear of other people's
+fights. He had never been close up against a crime, and he hoped he
+never should be. He walked through the adjoining grounds at the back and
+then into Balfame Street and took the next trolley home. He didn't feel
+like dancing after what he guessed had happened.
+
+No, he had heard no sound of running footsteps, but he stood for a
+moment near the back fence of the Lequer place; there were people in the
+library until some man ran in calling for the doctor to come at
+once--and he did see a car leave the lane behind the Balfame place. He
+had thought nothing of it, however, as automobiles were everywhere all
+the time. No, he hadn't tried to see whether the car was driven by a man
+or woman or how many occupants it had. Not only was the night very dark
+(as far as he remembered, the car had no lamps), but his one idea was to
+get out of the neighbourhood.
+
+Rush put him through a grilling cross-examination, and although he could
+not shake his testimony, he made use of all his practised arts to
+exhibit the youth as a sorry coward who ran away when he heard a
+revolver-shot instead of rushing with the common instinct of American
+manhood to ascertain if it were the woman herself who had been the
+victim. How much had he been paid to give this testimony withheld at the
+coroner's inquest? Young Kraus' ruddy hues had deepened to purple some
+time since, and he shouted back that he had come forward only when that
+woman's lying friends were trying to fasten the crime upon his innocent
+papa. Here he was sternly admonished by the Judge to confine his answers
+to "Yes" and "No" unless he could control his temper. Rush forced him to
+reiterate that he had not had a glimpse of Mrs. Balfame's face that
+night, that he never had spoken to her at any time; and the lawyer
+remarked crushingly that the young man's brain must have been in a
+hopelessly confused state if he saw a car leave the lane so soon after
+the shooting--a car, moreover, without lights--and failed to connect
+this phenomenon with the immediately previous sound of a pistol-shot.
+It was evident that his brain moved so slowly that it had taken him
+almost a week to put a good story together.
+
+Young Kraus left the stand with his inborn sense of superiority over
+mere Americans severely shaken, but although his small angry eyes
+encountered more than one sneer, and many of those hostile spectators
+looked as if they would laugh outright were it not for their awe of the
+Judge, he had injured Mrs. Balfame far more than himself. Few believed
+him to be lying or that he had seen a vision, not a real woman, leave
+the Balfame house by the kitchen door. He was known to have been as
+sober as usual on the night of the dance, and as the evidence against
+his father had been regarded as fantastic from the first, there was no
+conceivable cause for him to lie.
+
+Mr. Gifning, Mr. Battle and Mr. Carden, who were the first to reach
+Balfame, after he fell, were forced by the district attorney to give
+damning evidence against Mrs. Balfame. Her room was in the front of the
+house; if in it, she could have heard the shot as plainly as they on Mr.
+Gifning's veranda. But she did not come downstairs or manifest herself
+in any way until they had had time to summon the coroner (who to be sure
+lived round the corner) and Dr. Lequeur. It must have been quite six
+minutes before she opened her window and demanded the reason for the
+disturbance at her gate. At least, it had seemed that long. No, they
+never confused a revolver-shot with a bursting tire. They had when cars
+first came into use, but they had learned to differentiate long since.
+
+When Mr. Rush asked them sarcastically why one at least of the party had
+not searched the grove and attempted to capture the murderer, they
+replied they had by no means been sure that the shot had come from the
+grove. It might have come from anywhere. It was only after the doctor's
+examination that the direction of the bullet had been agreed upon. Later
+they did search the grove with a dark-lantern brought from Mrs.
+Gifning's house; in fact, they searched every inch of the grounds, and
+their only reward was abuse from the police.
+
+These three witnesses, examined after the noon recess, occupied very
+little time. It was at ten minutes to four that the district attorney
+electrified every one in the courtroom by calling to the stand a man
+whose name up to that moment had not been mentioned in the case. The
+reporters looked deeply annoyed; even Mrs. Balfame raised her head a
+trifle higher as if listening; Rush's pale face was paler, the lines in
+it seemed deeper, as he sprang to his feet, alert at once, his nostrils
+expanding. The district attorney balanced himself on his heels, his
+thumbs in his waistcoat armholes, a grin of triumph on his sharp little
+face.
+
+The name called was James Mott, and it was borne by a highly reputable
+drummer who had made sales for many years to houses carrying general
+merchandise, including that of Balfame & Cummack. Mr. Mott was as well
+known in Brabant County as any of its inhabitants; in fact, he was
+engaged to an estimable young lady of Elsinore, and hence, so it soon
+transpired, had happened to be in town on the fatal night. For once the
+acumen of the district attorney had proved more penetrating than that of
+the brilliant counsel for the defence.
+
+Mr. Mott took the stand. He was a clean-shaven upstanding American with
+the keen eye and grim mouth of the travelling salesman who knows that he
+must do or die. He looked as honest as urbane, and for the first time
+Mrs. Balfame's heart sank; and her hands, so the women reporters noted
+for the benefit of the public, clenched for a full minute.
+
+Although Rush stood with his head stretched forward, he thought it wise
+to let the man tell his story in his own way. Interruptions would have
+been of little avail; the Judge would sustain the district attorney if
+it were patent the witness were telling the truth; and as he was
+completely in the dark himself it were better to wait until he got a
+promising lead. He knew that no man's brain could work more quickly than
+his.
+
+Mr. Mott being solemnly sworn, deposed that on the night of the shooting
+he had been taking supper with his friend Miss Lacke, who lived at
+Number 3 Dawbarn Street, just round the corner from Elsinore Avenue. He
+left her house at a little before eight, as he was obliged to catch the
+eight-ten for New York. As he closed the gate behind him, he saw David
+Balfame walk unsteadily past, shouting "Tipperary"; and being a friend
+of many years' standing, had concluded to follow and see Balfame safely
+inside the house. He would lose but a minute or two, and it seemed to
+him a decent act, for it was possible the man might fall and hurt
+himself before he reached his home. Mott was so close behind him that he
+must have just escaped the shot or shots himself, and although he jumped
+backward he saw distinctly somebody run out of the grove and toward the
+back of the house. Whether it was a man or a woman he had no idea, but
+the figure was tall--yes far taller than either young Kraus or Frieda.
+Then, he said, he doubled on his tracks and got back into Dawbarn Street
+as quickly as he could. He blushed as he admitted this, but added that
+he knew from the shouts on Gifning's veranda that men were hastening to
+Balfame's aid, and he had to catch the eight-ten or lose his night train
+to the West and a big piece of business. Moreover, he didn't like the
+idea of giving testimony against anybody; he abhorred the institution of
+capital punishment. For the same reason he did not come forward until
+the District Attorney ferreted him out, as he was afraid the running
+figure might have been Mrs. Balfame and she was the last person he
+wished to harm, innocent or guilty.
+
+No one could doubt that he told the truth and hated to tell it. Nor
+could any one jump to the conclusion that he was the assassin; he had as
+little motive for killing Balfame as any of the other men of Brabant
+County with whom he had been for years on the same cordial terms.
+
+All that Rush could do was to make him admit that perhaps he was
+naturally confused by the flash, the report almost in his ear, the man
+sinking at his feet, and only fancied he saw a running form; the
+delusion would be natural in the circumstances, particularly as his
+thoughts seemed to have been concentrated upon getting out of the way.
+Mr. Mott admitted almost too eagerly that this might be true, but added
+that when the district attorney, who was a cousin of Miss Lacke, as well
+as an old friend of his own, had squeezed the story out of him bit by
+bit (the form of extraction was supplied by Mr. Rush), that had been his
+impression; he seemed to have that tall running figure imprinted upon
+his retina, as it were. Of course it might be just imagination. He
+wished to God he could swear it was. When asked sharply if even one of
+his parents was German, he recovered his poise and replied haughtily
+that he was straight American and as pro-Allies as the best man in the
+country. He had never entered Old Dutch's beer garden; his choice was a
+hotel bar, anyhow; he avoided saloons.
+
+Rush had a diabolical power of making a witness look ridiculous, but the
+American mind is essentially a just mind, normally unemotional, and a
+very magnet for facts. As the Judge adjourned the court until Monday the
+sob-sisters trailed out dejectedly, after a vain endeavour to get close
+to Mrs. Balfame; the young men sauntered forth with their heads in the
+air, and Rush's lips were so closely pressed together that his face
+looked pure granite. As a matter of fact, his heart felt like water.
+
+Mrs. Balfame, who had not permitted herself to show a flicker of
+interest while Mott was on the stand, rose as the Judge left the room.
+She smiled upon each of her friends separately and kissed the prominent
+ladies of Elsinore who had sat beside her throughout that trying day.
+
+"Please don't come over to the jail," she said. "I know you are worn
+out, and I have a bad headache. I must lie down. But do please come
+to-morrow. You are all too good. Thank you so much."
+
+Then with a faint smile and a light step she followed the sheriff
+through the long tunnel, a horrible vision dancing before her eyes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+
+When Rush arrived at the sitting-room of the jail's private suite he
+found Mrs. Balfame, not in tears as he had nervously anticipated, but
+distraught, pacing the room, her hands in her disordered hair.
+
+"I am done for! done for!" she cried as Rush hastily closed the door.
+"It would have been better if I had told the truth in the
+beginning--that I _had_ gone out that night. It was not such a bad
+excuse,--that I thought I saw a burglar down there,--and it was God's
+truth. Or I could have said I was walking about the grounds because I
+had a headache--"
+
+"It never would have gone down. If I could have discovered who the other
+person in the grove was--found him and his forty-one-calibre revolver,
+well and good. Failing that, our line of defence is the best possible. I
+will admit, though," he too was pacing the room,--"it looks bad to-day,
+pretty bad. There isn't the ghost of a chance to prove Mott was the man.
+Gore has the time to the minute he left Susie Lacke's; you must have
+gone out some time before--"
+
+"Oh, he didn't do it. I've not thought it for a moment. No such luck. It
+was some enemy who went straight to New York--in that car. But
+I--I--Auburn--the electric chair--they all believed--Oh, my God! God!"
+
+She had tossed her arms above her head then flung herself down before
+the table, her face upon them, rocking her body back and forth. Her
+voice was deep with horror and despair, her abandonment far more
+complete than on the day of her arrest; and wrought up himself, Rush was
+stirred with the echo of all he had felt that day. In the semi-intimacy
+of these past ten weeks, when he had talked with her for hours at a
+time, she had disillusioned him in many ways, bored him, forced him to
+admit that her lovely shell concealed an uninteresting mind, and that
+the only depths in her personality that he was permitted to glimpse were
+such as to make him shrink, by no means to excite that fascination even
+in repulsion peculiar to the faults of a more passionate nature. He
+still thought her the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, however,
+and if it was beauty which now left him cold, his admiration of her had
+been renewed these last three days when her manner and appearance in
+court had been beyond all praise. He had excoriated himself for his
+fickleness, his contemptible failure as a lover; and the more he hated
+himself the more grimly determined he was to behave precisely as if he
+still loved and revered her as he had when ready to sacrifice life
+itself for her sake. He was in such an _impasse_ that he cared little
+what became of himself.
+
+He leaned over the table and pressed his hands hard on her arms.
+
+"Listen!" he said peremptorily. "You never will go to Auburn. You will
+leave this jail not later than the middle of next week, a free woman. If
+I cannot get you off by my address to the jury,--and it will be the
+supreme effort of my life,--I'll take the stand and swear that I
+committed the murder myself."
+
+"What?" She lifted her head and stared up at him. His face was set, but
+his eyes glowed like blue coals.
+
+"Yes. I can put it over, all right. You remember I went to your house
+from the Club that day. Nobody saw me go; no one saw me leave. From the
+moment I left you, until the following morning, no one--no one that I
+know of--saw me that night, except Dr. Anna. We met out on the road
+leading to Houston's farm, and she drove me in. She believes I did it.
+So does Cummack, and if necessary he will manage to get an affidavit
+from her--"
+
+Mrs. Balfame had sprung to her feet. "Did you do it? Did you?"
+
+"Aha! I can make even you believe it. No, I did not, but I couldn't
+prove an alibi if my life depended upon it. I can make the Judge and the
+jury believe--"
+
+"And do you think I would permit--"
+
+"They will believe me. And Dr. Anna--who would doubt her testimony that
+my appearance and conduct were highly suspicious that night on the marsh
+road? And what could you disprove? There was a man in that grove, was
+there not?"
+
+"Yes, but not you; I don't know why, but I could swear to that. I
+shall--if you do anything so mad--tell the whole truth about myself."
+
+"What good would that do? Balfame was killed with a forty-one revolver.
+Yours was a thirty-eight."
+
+"How do you know that?"
+
+"I found it the night I spent in your house--the night of your arrest. I
+knew that you never would have gone out to head off a burglar without a
+revolver--any more than the jury would have believed it. I found the
+pistol. Never mind the long and many details of the search. It is in my
+safe. I kept it on the off chance that it might be necessary to produce
+it after all."
+
+"But I fired at him. I hardly knew that I was firing, until I felt the
+revolver in my hand go off. Perhaps it was a suggestion from that tense
+figure so close to me, intent upon murder. Perhaps I merely felt I
+must--must--I have never been able to analyse what I did feel in those
+terrible seconds. It doesn't matter. I did. And you? You know I fired
+with intent to kill. Did you guess at once?"
+
+"Oh, yes. But it doesn't matter. You were not yourself, of course. You
+had what is called an inhibition--as maddened people have when fighting
+their way out of a burning theatre. I only wish you had told me. I--that
+is to say, it is never fair to keep your counsel in the dark."
+
+"You mean you wish I had not lied!" She caught him up with swift
+intuition. "Well, to-day I would not, but then--well, I was full of
+pettiness, it seems to me now. But although I am far even yet from being
+a fine woman,--I know that!--I am not a poor enough creature to let you
+die for me. Oh, you are far too good for me. I never dreamed that a man
+would go as far as that for a woman in these days. I thought it was only
+in books--"
+
+"The veriest trash is inspired by the actual occurrences of life--which
+is pretty much the same in books as out. And I guess men haven't changed
+much since the world began, so far as making fools of themselves about a
+woman is concerned."
+
+As she stood with one hand pressed hard against the table she was far
+more deeply moved than a few moments since by fear, although outwardly
+calm. She had climbed far out of her old self within these prison walls,
+but she saw steeper heights before her, and she welcomed them.
+
+"Then," she said deliberately, "I must cure you. Before I went out, I
+had prepared that glass of lemonade and put poison in it. I had planned
+for several weeks to kill him when a favourable opportunity arrived. I
+had stolen a secret poison from Anna--out of that chimney cupboard
+Cassie described. You see that I am a potential murderer,--and a
+cold-blooded one,--even if by a curious irony of fate some one else
+committed the deed. Now do you think I am worth giving up your life
+for--going to the electric chair--"
+
+"Suppose we postpone further argument until the necessity arises--if it
+ever does. I fully expect you to be triumphantly acquitted. Tell me"--he
+looked at her curiously, for he divined something of her inner
+revolutions and hated himself the more that he was interested only as
+every good lawyer must be in human nature,--"could you do that in cold
+blood again?"
+
+"No--not that way--never. I might let a pistol go off under the same
+provocation--that is bad enough."
+
+"Oh, no. Remove the restraints of a lifetime--or perhaps it is merely a
+matter of vibration and striking the right key."
+
+"And do you mean that--you still want to marry me?"
+
+"Yes," he answered steadily. "Certainly I do."
+
+"Ah!" Once more she wondered if he still loved her. But she had been too
+sure of him and of herself to harbour doubt for more than a passing
+moment. She had come to the conclusion that he had merely taken her at
+her word, and she knew the specialising instinct of the busy American.
+She had, indeed, wondered if it were not the strongest instinct he
+possessed. And in spite of her new humility, she had suffered no loss of
+confidence in herself as a woman. She vaguely felt that she had lost
+something of this man's esteem, but trusted to time and her own charm to
+dim the impression. For she had made up her mind to marry him. Not only
+would it be the wisest possible move after acquittal,--a decent time
+after,--but during sleepless hours she had come to the conclusion that
+she loved this brilliant knightly young man as deeply as it was in her
+power to love any one. And after this terrible experience and the many
+changes it had wrought within her, she wanted to be happy.
+
+He had taken up his hat. She crossed the room swiftly and laid her hand
+on his arm. "I could not stand one word of love-making in jail," she
+said, smiling up at him graciously, although her eyes were serious. "But
+it is only fair to tell you now that if I am acquitted I will marry
+you."
+
+And stabbed with a pang of bitter regret that he felt not the least
+impulse to scout her authority and seize her in his arms, he bent over
+her hand and kissed it with cold lips, but with an air of complete
+gallantry.
+
+"Thank you," he said, and went out.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+
+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 passed that 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
+practical life 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 naively 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 least
+down 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 confidence and 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 and kissed 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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+
+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 so much 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 credible
+explanation 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 better done, 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 he _is_ a friend of yours
+and you've got 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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+
+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 crepe 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, had made 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 at the 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 found it 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 had
+endeavoured 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. She says 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 done _my_ best, 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."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+
+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
+gentle and 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 as the 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 the _New 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 turned abruptly 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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII
+
+
+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--for _me_. 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--_what_ am 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 was Anna'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.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MRS. BALFAME***
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