The district attorney snarled and trumpeted throughout this placid recital, but Mrs. Figg took no notice of him whatever. She had been thoroughly drilled, and looked straight into the sparkling blue eyes of Mr. Rush as if hypnotised.
Other minor witnesses consumed the afternoon, and once more Mrs. Balfame returned to the jail with glowing eyes. The women reporters were elated. The men made no comment as they filed out of the courtroom, but their whole bearing expressed a lofty and quiet scorn.
"It's fine! fine!" exclaimed Cummack, sitting down beside Rush at the table below the empty jury-box. "But I do wish Dr. Anna was available. She stands head and shoulders above every one else in the estimation of these jurymen; she doctored the children and confined the wives of pretty near all of them. There's no stone she wouldn't leave unturned."
"She's pretty bad, isn't she?" asked Rush. "Would there be any chance at all of getting a deposition—in case things went wrong?"
"Things ain't goin' wrong; but as for Anna, she's out of it, and everything else, I guess. I was out to the hospital yesterday, for I've had her in mind; but although she was better for a time, she's worse again. But say—what do you think I discovered? Those damned newspaper men have been hangin' round out there. That young devil Broderick—"
Rush was sitting up very straight, his eyes glittering. "But he surely hasn't been able to see her? I don't believe any sort of graft would get by Mrs. Dissosway—"
"You bet he hasn't been able to see Anna, and just now they're not leaving her for a moment alone, like they did at first. But Broderick seems to have the idea wedged in his brain that Mrs. Balfame confessed to Anna and that poor old Doc lost the pistol somewhere out in the marsh—"
Rush made an exclamation of disgust. "I can't understand Broderick. He's got his trial all right, and it isn't like him to hound a woman—"
"I said as much to him, and though he wouldn't talk much, I just gathered from something he let fall that he was afraid if the crime wasn't well fixed onto Enid some innocent person he thought a lot more of might come under suspicion. Can you guess who he had in mind?"
Rush pushed back his chair and sprang to his feet. "Good Lord, no. One case at a time is all my brain is equal to." He was almost out of the empty courtroom when Cummack caught him firmly by the shoulder.