Conrad went on exactly as if the reporter had not interrupted. "I had seen Frieda through the back door. She was crying with the toothache, and I heard her run upstairs. I thought I would wait a few moments. The drops she said she had might not cure her, and she might want me to go to a dentist's house with her. She had gone in the back-hall door. Suddenly I saw the kitchen door open, and as I was starting forward, I saw that it was not Frieda who came out. It was Mrs. Balfame. She closed the door behind her, and then crept past me to the back of the kitchen yard. I watched her and saw her turn suddenly and walk toward the grove. She did not make a particle of noise—"
"How do you know it was not Frieda?"
"Frieda is five-feet-three, and this was a tall woman, taller than I, and I am five-eight. I have seen Mrs. Balfame many times, and though I couldn't see her face,—she had a dark veil or scarf round it,—I knew her height and walk. Of course I watched to see what she was up to. A few moments later I heard Balfame turn in from Dawbarn Street, singing, like the fool he was, 'Tipperary,' and then I heard a shot. I guessed that Balfame had got what was coming to him, and I didn't wait to see. I tiptoed for a minute or two and then ran through the next four places at the back, and then out toward Balfame Street, for the trolley. But Frieda heard Mrs. Balfame when she came in. She was all out of breath, and, when she heard a sound on the stairs, called out before she thought, I guess, and asked Frieda if she had heard anything. But Frieda is very cautious. She had heard the shot, but she froze stiff against the wall when she heard Mrs. Balfame's voice, and said nothing. We told her afterwards that she had better keep quiet for the present."
"And you think Mrs. Balfame did it?"
"Who else? I shall not be so sorry if she goes to the chair, for a woman should always be punished the limit for killing a man, even such a man as Balfame."
"No fear of that, but we'll have a dandy case. You tell that story to the Grand Jury to-morrow, and you get your five hundred before night. Now you must come and get me a word with Frieda. She won't look at me, and of course she is in bed anyhow. But I must tell her there are a couple of hundred in this for her if she comes through—"
"But she'll be arrested for perjury. She testified at the coroner's inquest that she knew nothing."
"An abscessed tooth will explain her reticence on any other subject."
"Perhaps I should tell you that she came to see us to-night—last night it is now, not?—and told my papa that Lawyer Rush had frightened her, told her that she might be accused of the killing, that she had better get out. But Papa advised her to go home and fear nothing, where there was nothing to fear. He knew that if she ran away, he would be suspected again, the girl being intimate in the family; and of course the police would be hot on her trail at once. So, like the good sensible girl she is, she took the advice and went home."
"All right. Come along. I'm not on the morning paper, but I promised the story to the boys if I could get it in time."