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Mrs. Balfame: A Novel

by Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton · English · Gutenberg #39443 · 516,753 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Mrs. Balfame: A Novel

Author: Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton


        
Release date: April 13, 2012 [eBook #39443]

Language: English

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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 tha

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