"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.