Her final vocative was expressed in an angry gurgle. Rush had entered. He was so close to panic at the prospect of facing a roomful of women unsupported by a single male that his face was almost terrifying in its strength, but it had suddenly occurred to him that although these girls had agreed to write their interviews at the Dobton Inn and submit them to his censorship, it was possible one or more would slip over to New York, bent upon sheer sensationalism.
"You must excuse me," he said with a valiant assault upon the lighter mood, "but my client is in the witness box, you see, and must be protected by counsel."
Miss Austin swung about and faced him with a faint satiric smile. "Oh, very well," she said. "You may stay; but I for one shall not adjust my hat."
It is a curious fact that newspaper women are seldom, if ever, of the masculine type; their sheer femininity, indeed, is almost as invariable as their air of physical weariness. Not one of the little company laughed with a more than perfunctory appreciation of their captain's wit, and several stared at Rush, fascinated by his harsh masculinity, the peculiar atmosphere of tense-alertness in which he seemed to have his being, the magnetism which was more an emanation from an almost perpetual concentration of his mental forces than from any of the lighter physical attributes. He folded his arms and leaned against the door, and it is only fair to the cause of woman to state that hardly one of these, whose ages ranged from twenty to thirty-six, was unwomanly enough, despite the fact that she earned her bread in daily competition with man, to give Mrs. Balfame her whole attention thereafter. While keeping their business heads, they uncovered a corner of their hearts to the sun, and quickened, however faintly, in its glow.
"Now," Miss Austin resumed, "we will, counsel permitting, ask you to give us your story of that night. As you have been misquoted and there has been so much speculative stuff published about you, there surely can be no objection to that." And she squared her shoulders upon Mr. Rush.
Mrs. Balfame looked at her counsel with a gracious deference, and he nodded.
"No harm in that," he said curtly. "Tell them practically the story you would tell if you took the stand. There's only one story to tell, and it is as well the public should bear it in mind while reading the reports of the witnesses for the prosecution."
"That means he's rehearsed her," whispered Miss Lauretta Lea, who had reported many trials, to Miss Tracy, who was a novice. "But that's all right."