The reporters, having long since consumed all the chocolate and peanuts on sale below, strolled back and forth between the Court-house and the bar of the Dobton Inn. They were bored and indignant and sought the only consolation available. They returned periodically to the court-room, growing, as the hours passed, more formal, polite, silent. One lost his way in the jury-box and was steered by a court official to the sympathetic haven of his brothers.
The room itself, its floor littered with tinfoil, peanut-shells, and newspapers, its tables and chairs out of place, looked like a Coney Island excursion boat. Finally two reporters laid their heads down on a table and went to sleep, but the rest continued to address one another at long intervals, in distant tones, obeying the laws of etiquette, but with a secret and scornful reluctance.
Broderick, who was reasonably sober, had wandered in and out many times. Occasionally he walked the road with Rush, and more than once he had endeavoured to get Miss Crumley on the telephone. He had even telephoned to the hospital to ascertain if she were there. A week ago only he had accidentally discovered that Dr. Anna had been summoned by Mrs. Balfame shortly after the murder and had passed many hours alone with her; "it being the deuce and all to extract any information from that closed corporation of Mrs. Balfame's friends." Broderick had surprised it out of a group at the Elks' Club in the course of conversation and then had set his phenomenal memory to work, with the result that he was convinced Alys Crumley held the key to the whole situation. He had gone to her house and pleaded with her to take him out to the hospital and obtain a statement from the sick woman before it was too late, representing in powerful and picturesque language the awful peril of Rush.
"I've reason to know," he had concluded, "that Cummack and two or three others have their suspicions, and there isn't a question that if the jury brings in a verdict of guilty in any degree—and they're a pigheaded lot—Rush will be arrested at once. These devoted friends of Mrs. Balfame have accumulated enough evidence to begin on. He may have gone to Brooklyn that night, but he was seen to get off the train at Elsinore about a quarter of an hour before the shooting. They've been doing a lot of quiet sleuthing, but if Mrs. Balfame is acquitted they'll let him off. They don't want any more scandal, and they like him, anyhow. But I have a hunch she won't be acquitted; and then, innocent or guilty, there'd be no saving him. So for heaven's sake, stir yourself."
But Alys had replied: "I have besought my aunt, and she will not permit Dr. Anna to be disturbed. She says her only chance for life is a tranquil mind, and that the shock of hearing that Enid Balfame was on trial for murder would kill her—let alone asking her to do her best to send her to the chair. I've done my best, but it seems hopeless."
This conversation had taken place on Thursday. To-day was Tuesday. They were very reticent at the hospital, but he had reason to believe that Dr. Anna had taken a turn for the worse. Could Alys Crumley be out there, and could she have taken that minx Sarah Austin with her? It would be just like a girl to go back on a good pal like himself and hand a signal triumph over to another girl, who would get out of the game the minute some fellow with money enough offered to marry her. He ground his teeth.
He was standing near the doors of the court-room and staring at the clock whose hands pointed to a quarter to one. Suddenly he heard his name called from below. He sauntered out and leaned over the balustrade. A weary page was ascending when he caught sight of the star reporter.
"Brabant Hospital wants you on the 'phone," he announced, with supreme indifference.
Broderick leaped down the winding stair and into the booth. It seemed to him that his very ears were quivering as he listened to Alys Crumley's faint agitated voice. "Come out quickly and bring a stenographer," it said. "And suppose you ask Mr. Rush to come too. Just tell the sheriff—to—to postpone things a bit if the jury should be ready to come in before you return. Hurry, Jim, hurry."