"What is your theory?" asked Miss Austin of The Evening News. "They say that a lot of those men at the Elks know, but never will come through. Do you think it was any of those girls? It might have been some woman he knew in New York who followed him here for the first time—who would not have been recognised if seen, and got away in a waiting automobile."
"As likely as not," said Miss Crumley indifferently. "I have heard so many theories advanced and rejected that I am almost as confused as the police. Jim Broderick says that the simplest explanation is generally the correct one, but while he believes Mrs. Balfame to be the natural solution, I happen to know her better than he does, and a good deal more of this community. Three or four men and one or two women would be still simpler explanations. Possibly—" She turned cold and almost lost her breath, but the impulse to put a maddening possibility into verbal form was irresistible. "Perhaps some man that is in love with Mrs. Balfame did it." And then she hated herself, for she felt as if she had thrown Dwight Rush to the lions.
"But who? Who?" the girls were demanding, more excited over this picturesque solution than they had been since "the story broke." Even Miss Austin, who disdained to write "sob stuff" and was a graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism, was almost on her feet, while Miss Lauretta Lea, who wept vicariously for fifty thousand women three times a week, shrieked without shame.
"Oh, fine!" "How truly enchanting!" "Dear Miss Crumley—Alys—who, who is the man?"
"Oh, as to that, I've not an idea. Mrs. Balfame always has rather disdained men, and even if she were susceptible is far too straight-laced to permit any man to pay her compromising attentions, or to meet him secretly. But of course she is very pretty, still young to look at, so there is the possibility—"
"But just run over all the marriageable men in the community—"
"Oh, he might be married, you know." Alys struggled to keep the alarm out of her voice.
"But in that case there would still be the wife to dispose of, and now, at least, he'd never dare kill her, or even divorce her. No, I don't hold to that theory. It's more like the reckless act of the unchastened bachelor still young enough for illusions. You must have a theory, Alys. Stand and deliver." Miss Austin spoke with quick insistence. She had detected her hostess' suppressed excitement and was convinced that the hint had not been thrown out at random. She also had been conscious of an indefinable change in her old associate, and now she noticed it in detail. She might be too self-respecting to dip her pen in bathos, but she was nevertheless young, and her imagination began playing about possibilities like lightning over a wire fence.
The heat which confused Alys Crumley's brain was expressed by a dull glow in her strange olive-colored eyes, but she made a desperate effort to look impersonal and rather bored.