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MRS. BALFAME
A Novel
BY GERTRUDE ATHERTON

NEW YORK
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
PUBLISHERS

Copyright, 1916, by
Gertrude Atherton

All rights reserved, including that of translation into
foreign languages

FOURTH PRINTING

And woman, yea, woman, shall be terrible in story;

The tales too, meseemeth, shall be other than of yore.

For a fear there is that cometh out of woman and a glory,

And the hard hating voices shall encompass her no more.

—The Medea.

MRS. BALFAME

CONTENTS

MRS. BALFAME

CHAPTER I

Mrs. Balfame had made up her mind to commit murder.

As she stared down at the rapt faces of the fifty-odd members of the Friday Club, upturned to the distinguished speaker from New York, whom she, as President, had introduced in those few words she so well knew how to choose, it occurred to her with a faint shock that this momentous resolution had been growing in her essentially refined and amiable mind for months, possibly for years; for she was not an impetuous woman.

While smiling and applauding, patting her large strong hands, freshly gloved in virgin white, at precisely the right moment, as the sound and escharotic speaker laid down the Woman's Law, she permitted herself to wonder if the idea had not burrowed in her subconscious mind—that mental antiquity shop of which she had lately read so much, that she might expound it to the progressive ladies of the Friday Club—for at least half the twenty-two years of her married life.

It was only last night that awakening suddenly she had realised with no further skirmishes and retreats of conscience or principle how she hated the heavy mass of flesh sleeping heavily beside her.

For at least eight years, ever since their fortunes had improved and she had found leisure for the novels and plays of authors well-read in life, she had longed for a room, a separate personal existence, of her own. She was no dreamer, but this exclusive and ladylike apartment often had floated before her mental vision, chastely papered and furnished in a cold pale blue (she had an uneasy instinct that pink and lavender were immoral); and by day it should look like a boudoir. She was too wise to make a verbal assault upon this or any foreign word, for she found the stage, her only guide, strangely casual or contradictory in these minor details; but although her little world found no trouble in discovering what Mrs. Balfame increasingly knew, what she did not know they suspected so little that they never even discussed her limitations. Handicapped by circumstances early and late she might be, but she had managed to insinuate the belief that she was the superior in all things of the women around her, their born and natural leader.

Mrs. Balfame had never given expression to this desire for a delitescent bedroom, being a woman who thought silently, spoke guardedly, and, both patient and philosophical, rarely permitted what she called her imagination to wander, or bitterness to enter her soul.

The Balfames were by no means well enough off, even now, to refurnish the old bedrooms long since denuded by a too economical parent after his children had married and moved away, but a few mornings since she had remarked casually that as the springs of the conjugal bed were sagging she thought she should send it to the auction room and buy two single beds. Last night, lying there in the dark, she had clenched her hands and held her breath as she recalled David Balfame's purple flush, the deliberate manner in which he had set down his thick coffee cup and scrubbed his bristling moustache, then rolled up the stained napkin and pushed it into the ring before replying.

His first vocative expressed all, but he was a politician and used to elaborating his mental processes for the benefit of befuddled intellects. "You'll have them springs mended," he informed his wife, who was smiling brilliantly and sweetly across the debris of ham and eggs, salt mackerel, coffee and hot breads—"that is, if they need it, which I haven't noticed, and I'm some heavier than you. But you'll introduce no more of your damned new-fangled notions into this house. It was good enough for my parents, and it's good enough for us. We lived for fifteen years without art lampshades that hurt my eyes, and rugs that trip me up; and these last eight or nine years, since you've been runnin' a club when you ain't runnin' to New York, I've had too many cold suppers to suit me; I've paid bills for 'teas' to that Club and I've put out money for fine clothes for you that I could spend a long sight better at election time. But I've stood all that, for I guess I'm as good a husband as any in God's own country; I like to see you well dressed, for you're still a looker—and it's good business, anyhow; and I've never grudged you a hired girl. But there's a limit to every man's patience. I draw the line at two beds. That's all there is to it."

He had made a part of his speech standing, that being his accustomed position when laying down the law, and he now left the room with the heavy country slouch his wife had never been able to reform. He had no authority in walk or bearing, being a man more obstinate than strong, more cunning than firm.

She was thankful that he did not bestow upon her the usual marital kiss; the smell of coffee on his moustache had sickened her faintly ever since she had ceased to love him.

Or begun to hate him? She had wondered, as she lay there inhaling deeply to draw the blood from her head, if she ever had loved him. When a man and a maid are young! He had been a tall slim youth, with red cheeks and bright eyes, the "catch" of the village; his habits were commendable and he would inherit his father's store, his only brother having died a year earlier and his sisters married and moved West. She was pretty, empty-headed, as ill-educated as all girls of her class, but she kept her father's house neatly, she was noted even at sixteen for her pies, and at twenty for the dexterity and taste with which she made her own clothes out of practically nothing. She was by no means the ordinary fool of her age class and nation. But although she was incapable of passion, she had a thin sentimental streak, a youthful desire for a romance, and a cold dislike for an impending stepmother.

David Balfame wooed her over the front gate and won her in the orchard; and the year was in its springtime. It was all as natural and inevitable as the measles and whooping-cough through which she nursed him during the first year of their marriage.

She had been happy with the happiness of youth ignorance and busy hands; although there had been the common trials and quarrels, they had been quickly forgotten, for she was a woman of a serene and philosophical temperament; moreover, no children came, for which she felt a sort of cold negative gratitude. She liked children, and even attracted them, but she preferred that other women should bear and rear them.

But all that comparative happiness was before the dawning of ambition and the heavier trials that preceded it.

A railroad expanded the sleepy village into a lively town of some three thousand inhabitants, and although that meant wider interests for Mrs. Balfame, and an occasional trip to New York, the more intimate connection with a great city nearly wrecked her husband's business. His father was dead and he had inherited the store which had supplied the village with general merchandise for a generation. But by the time the railroad came he had grown lazy and liked to sit on the sidewalk on fine days, or before the stove in winter, his chair tilted back, talking politics with other gentlemen of comparative leisure. He was popular, for he had a bluff and hospitable manner; he was an authority on politics, and possessed an eloquent if ungrammatical tongue. For a time, as his business dwindled, he merely blasphemed, but just as he was beginning to feel really uneasy, a brother-in-law who had been the chum of his youth arrived from Montana and saved him from extinction and "the old Balfame place" from mortgage.

Mr. Cummack, the brother-in-law, turned out the loafers, put Dave into politics, and himself called personally upon every housewife in the community, agreeing to keep the best of all she needed, but none of those articles which served as an excuse for a visit to New York or tempted her to delightful hours with the mail-order catalogue.

Mrs. Balfame detested this bustling common efficient brother-in-law, although at the end of two years, the twelfth of her married life, she was keeping a maid-of-all-work and manicuring her nails. She treated him with an unswerving sweetness, a natural quality which later developed into the full flower of graciousness, and even gave him a temperate measure of gratitude. She was a just woman; and it was not long after his advent that she began to realise the ambition latent in her strong character and to enter upon a well defined plan for social leadership.

She found it all astonishingly easy. Of course she never had met, probably never would meet, the really wealthy families that owned large estates in the county and haughtily entertained one another when not entertaining equally exclusive New Yorkers. But Mrs. Balfame did not waste time in envy of these people; there were old families in her own and neighbouring villages, proud of their three or four generations on the same farm, well-to-do but easy-going, democratic and, when not so old as to be "moss-backs," hospitable to new notions. Many, indeed, had built new homes in the expanding village, which bade fair to embrace choice bits of the farms.

Mrs. Balfame always had dominated these life-long neighbours and associates, and the gradual newcomers were quick to recognise her power and her superior mind; to realise that not to know Mrs. Balfame was to be a commuter and no more. Everything helped her. Even the substantial house, inherited from her father-in-law, and still surrounded by four acres of land, stood at the head of the original street of the village, a long wide street so thickly planted with maples as old as the farms that from spring until Christmas the soft leafy boughs interlaced overhead. She had a subtle but iron will, and a quite commonplace personality disguised by the cold, sweet, stately and gracious manner so much admired by women; and she was quite unhampered by the least of that originality or waywardness which antagonises the orthodox. Moreover, she dressed her tall slender figure with unerring taste. Of course she was obliged to wear her smart tailored suits for two years, but they always looked new and were worn with an air that quite doubled their not insignificant price. By women she was thought very beautiful, but men, for the most part, passed her by.

For eight years now, Mrs. Balfame had been the acknowledged leader of Elsinore. It was she who had founded the Friday Club, at first for general cultivation of mind, of late to study the obsessing subject of Woman. She cared not a straw for the privilege of voting; in fact, she thought it would be an extremely unladylike thing to do; but a leader must always be at the head of the procession, while discriminating betwixt fad and fashion.

It was she who had established a connection with a respectable club in New York; it was she who had inveigled the substantial well-dressed and radical personage on the rostrum beside her to come over and homilise upon the subject of "The European War vs. Woman."

The visitor had proved to her own satisfaction and that of the major part of her audience that the bomb which had precipitated the war had been made in Germany. She was proceeding complacently, despite the hisses of several members with German forbears, and the President had just exchanged a glance of amusement with a moderate neutral, who believed that Russia's desire to thaw out her icy feet in warm water was at the bottom of the mischief, when—spurred perhaps by a biting allusion to the atrocities engaging the press at the moment—the idea of murder took definite form in that clear unvisionary brain so justly admired by the ladies of Elsinore.

Mrs. Balfame's pure profile, the purer for the still smooth contours and white skin of the face itself, the stately setting of the head, was turned toward the audience below the platform, and one admiring young member, who attended an art class in New York, was sketching it as a study in St. Cecelia's, when those six letters of fire rose smoking from the battle fields of Europe and took Mrs. Balfame's consciousness by assault: six dark and murky letters, but with no vagueness of outline.

The first faint shock of surprise over, as well as the few moments of retrospect, she asked herself calmly: "Why not?" Over there men were being torn and shot to pieces by wholesale, joking across the trenches in their intervals of rest, to kill again when the signal was given with as little compunction as she herself had often aimed at a target, or wrung the neck of a chicken that had fed from her hand. And these were men, the makers of law, the self-elected rulers of the world.

Mrs. Balfame had respected men mightily in her youth. Even now, although she both despised and hated her husband, she responded femininely to a fine specimen of manhood with good manners and something to talk about save politics and business. But these were few and infrequent in Brabant County. The only man she had met for years who interested her in the least was Dwight Rush, also a scion of one of the old farm families.

Rush had been educated in the law at a northwestern university, but after a few years of practice in Wisconsin had accepted an offer to enter the most respectable law firm in his native township. He had been employed several times by David Balfame, who had brought him home informally to supper perhaps once a fortnight during the last six months. But, although Mrs. Balfame frankly enjoyed his society and his evident admiration for a beauty she knew had little attraction for his sex, she had all a conventional woman's dislike for irregularities, however innocent; and she had snubbed Mr. Rush's desire to "drop in of an afternoon."

He barely flitted through her mind when she asked herself what did man's civilisation amount to, anyway, and why should women respect it? And, compared with the stupendous slaughter in Europe, a slaughter that would seem to be one of the periodicities of the world, since it is the composite expression of the individual male's desire to fight somebody just so often—what, in comparison with such a monstrous crime, would be the offence of making way with one obnoxious husband?

Something over two years ago—when liquor began to put a fiery edge upon Mr. Balfame's temper—Mrs. Balfame had considered the question of divorce; but after several weeks of cool calculation and the exercise of her foresight upon the inevitable social consequences, she had put the idea definitely aside. It was incompatible with her plan of life. Only rich women, or women that were insignificant in great cities, or who possessed conquering gifts, or who were so advanced as to be indifferent, could afford the luxury of divorce. Her world was the eastern division of Brabant County, and while it prided itself upon its progressiveness, and even—among the younger women—had a gay set, and although suppressed scandals slid about like slimy monsters in a marsh, its foundations were inherited from the old Puritan stock, and it fairly reeked with ancient prejudices.

It was a typical middle-class community with traditions, some of its blood too old, and made up of common human ingredients in varying proportions. Mrs. Balfame, enlightened by much reading and many matinées, applied the word bourgeois to Elsinore with secret scorn, but with a sigh: conscious that all its prejudices were hers and that not for an instant could she continue to be its leader were she a divorced woman.

Mrs. Balfame indulged in no dreams of sudden wealth. Elsinore was her world, and on the whole she was content, realising that life had not equipped her to lead the society of New York City. She liked to shop in Fifth Avenue—long since had she politely forgotten the mobs of Sixth,—to occupy an orchestra chair with a friend at a matinée, and take tea or chocolate at the fashionable retreats for such dissipations before returning to provincial Elsinore. There was a tacit agreement between herself and her husband that he should dine with his political friends in a certain restaurant behind a bar in Dobton, the county seat, on the Wednesday or Thursday evenings when she found it impossible to return to Elsinore before seven o'clock; an arrangement which he secretly approved of but invariably entered a protest against by coming home at two in the morning extremely drunk.

He never attended the theatre with her, his preference being for vaudeville or a screaming musical comedy, for both of which abnormalities she had a profound contempt. She saw only the "best plays" herself, her choice being guided not so much by newspaper approval as by length of run. It must be confessed that in the eight or nine years of her comparative emancipation from the grinding duties of the home she had learned a good deal of life from the plays she saw. On the whole, however, she preferred sound American drama, particularly when it dealt with Society; for the advanced (or decadent?) pictures of life as presented in the imported drama, she had only a mild contempt; her first curiosity satisfied, she thanked God that she was a plain American.

Such was Mrs. Balfame when she made up her mind to remove David Balfame, superfluous husband. She was quite content to reign in Elsinore, to live out her life there, but as a dignified and irreproachable and well-to-do widow. Divorce being out of the question, there was but one way to get rid of him: his years were but forty-four, and although he "blew up" with increasing frequency, to use his own choice vernacular, he was as healthy as an ox, and the town drunkard was rising eighty.

Mrs. Balfame's friend, Dr. Anna Steuer, was now replying to the lady from New York. After reminding the Club that the President of the United States had requested his docile subjects to curb their passions and flaunt their neutrality, Dr. Steuer proceeded to demolish the anti-German attitude of the guests by reciting the long list of industrial, economic and scientific contributions to civilisation which had distinguished the German Empire since the federation of its states.

Dr. Steuer was of Dutch descent, and her gifts were not forensic, but the key-note of her character was an intense and passionate loyalty. She had spent some of the most impressionable years of her life in the German clinics, and she cherished a romantic affection for a country whose natural and historic beauties no man will deny. She had steadfastly refused to read the "other side," pinning her faith to all that was best in the country of her youthful dreams. In consequence, her discourse, while informing, was somewhat beside the point; and had it not been for the deep love borne her by almost every one present, there would have been a polite but firm demand to give place.

Mrs. Balfame was smiling encouragement when her musings took a sudden and arbitrary twist. Being a person who never acted on impulse, her decisions, after due processes of thought, were commonly irrevocable. The moment she had made up her mind to pass her husband on, she had committed herself to the act; and, even before Dr. Anna Steuer had claimed her superficial attention, had already erected the question, How?

Mrs. Balfame was a woman who rarely bungled anything, and murder, she well knew, was the last of all acts to bungle, did the perpetrator desire to enjoy the freedom of his act. Being refined to her marrow, she shrank from all forms of brutality, and rarely, if ever, read the details of crime in the newspapers. The sight of blood disgusted her, although it did not turn her faint. She kept a pistol in her bedroom; burglars, particularly of late, had entered a large number of houses in Brabant County; but nothing would have horrified her more than to empty its contents into the worst of criminals.

Mechanically she had run through the list of all the accepted forms of removing human impedimenta and rejected them, when Dr. Anna's scientific mind, playing along the surface of hers, shot in the arrow of suggestion that she belonged naturally to the type of woman that poisoned if forced to commit murder. It was bloodless, decent, and required no vulgar expenditure of energy.

But healthy people, suddenly dead, were excavated and the quarry submitted to chemical tests; it was then—smiling brilliantly at her ardent pro-German friend—that Mrs. Balfame recalled a rainy evening some two years since. She and Dr. Anna had sat over the fire in the old Steuer cottage, and the doctor, who before the war never had been interested in anything but her friends, her science, and suffrage, had discoursed upon certain untraceable poisons, had even risen and taken down a vial from a secret cupboard above the mantel. During the same conversation, which naturally drifted to crime, Dr. Anna had discoursed upon the idiocy of doctors who poisoned with morphia, strychnine, or prussic acid, when not only were these organic poisons known to all scientific members of the profession, but they could easily remove the barrier to their complete happiness with cholera, smallpox, or typhus germs, sealed within the noncommittal capsule.

Mrs. Balfame shuddered at the mere thought of any of these dreadful diseases, having no desire to witness human sufferings, or to run the risk of infection, but as she stared at Dr. Anna to-day, she made up her mind to procure that vial of furtive poison.

So sudden was this resolution and so grim its portent that it was accompanied by unusual physical phenomena: she brought her sound white teeth together and thrust out her strong chin; her eyes became fixed in a hard stare and the muscles of her face seemed to menace her soft white skin.

Alys Crumley, the young woman who had been sketching Mrs. Balfame instead of listening to the discussion, caught her breath and dropped her pencil. For the moment the pretty, ultra-refined, elegant leader of Elsinore society looked not like St. Cecelia but like Medea. Always determined, resolute, smilingly dominant, never before had she betrayed the secret possibilities of her nature.

Miss Crumley cast a glance of startled apprehension about her, but the debate was just finished, every one was commenting upon the splendid self-control of the high participants, and repeating the New Yorker's last phrase: that not civilisation but man was a failure. A moment later Mrs. Balfame advanced to the edge of the platform, and, with her inimitable graciousness, invited the members of the Club to come forward and meet the distinguished guest. Little Miss Alys Crumley, watching her, listening to her pleasant shallow voice, her amused quiet laugh, came to the conclusion that the fearsome expression she had seen on her model's face had been a mere effect of light.

CHAPTER II

The meeting of the Friday Club had been held in the Auditorium, a hall which accommodated moving pictures, an occasional vaudeville performance, political orators, and subscription balls of more than one social stratum. It was particularly adapted to the growing needs of the Friday Club, as it impressed visitors favorably, and there was a small room in the rear where tea could be served.

It was a crisp autumn evening when the President and her committee sped the parting guest of this fateful day and walked briskly homeward, either to cook supper themselves or to prod the languid "hired girl." Starting in groups, they parted at successive corners, and finally Mrs. Balfame and Dr. Anna were alone in the old street. The doctor's offices were in Main Street under the Auditorium, between the Elsinore Bank and the Emporium drug store, but she too had inherited a cottage in what was now known as Elsinore Avenue, and almost at the opposite end from the "Old Balfame Place."

"Come in," she said hospitably, as she opened a gate set superfluously into the low boxwood hedge. "You can 'phone to the Elks' and tell Dave to try the new hotel. It's ages since I've seen you."

"I will!" Mrs. Balfame's prompt reply was accompanied by what was known in Elsinore as her inscrutable smile. "It is kind of you," she added politely, for even with old friends she never forgot her manners. "I long for a cup of your tea—if you will make it yourself. I really could eat nothing after those sandwiches."

"I'll make it myself, all right. First because it wouldn't be fit to drink if I didn't, and second because it's Cassie's night out."

She took the key from beneath the door-mat, and pressed an electric button in the hall and another in a comfortable untidy sitting-room. In her parents' day the sitting-room had been the front parlour, with an atmosphere as rigid as the horsehair furniture, but in this era of more elastic morals it was full of shabby comfortable furniture, a davenport was close to the radiator, the desk and tables were littered with magazines, medical reviews, and text books.

"How warm and delicious," said Mrs. Balfame brightly, removing her hat and wraps and laying them smoothly on a chair. "I'll telephone and then close my eyes and think of nothing until tea is ready—I know you won't have me in the kitchen. What a blessed relief it will be to hear you sing in your funny old voice after that woman's strident tones."

She made short work of telephoning. Mr. Balfame, having "just stepped across the street," she merely left a message for him. Dr. Anna, out in the kitchen, lighted the gas stove, rattled the aluminum ware, and sang in a booming contralto.

Mrs. Balfame went through no stage formalities; she neither tiptoed to the door nor listened intently. From the telephone, which was on the desk, she walked over to the strongest looking chair, carried it to the discarded fireplace, mounted and peered into the little cupboard the canny doctor had had built into the old chimney after the furnace was installed. There Dr. Anna kept her experimental drugs, her mother's seed pearls and diamond brooch, and a roll of what she called emergency bills.

The vial was almost in the middle of a row of bottles. Mrs. Balfame recognised it at once. She secreted it in the little bag that still hung on her arm, replaced it with another small bottle that had stood nearer the end of the row, closed the door and restored the chair to its proper place. Could anything be more simple?

She was too careful of her best tailored suit to lie down, but she arranged herself comfortably in a corner of the davenport and closed her eyes. Soothed by the warmth of the room and the organ tones in the kitchen she drifted into a happy state of somnolence, from which she was aroused by the entrance of her hostess with a tray. She sprang up guiltily.

"I had no intention of falling asleep—I meant to set the table at least—"

"Those cat naps are what has kept you young and beautiful, while the rest of us have traded complexions for hides."

Mrs. Balfame gracefully insisted upon clearing and laying a corner of the table, and the two friends sat down and chatted gaily over their tea and toast and preserves. Dr. Anna's face—a square face with a snub nose and kindly twinkling eyes—beamed as her friend complimented her upon the erudition she had displayed in her reply to the Club guest and added wistfully:

"I feel as if I didn't know a thing about this war. Everybody contradicts everybody else, and sometimes they contradict themselves. I'm going over to-morrow" ("going over" meant New York in the Elsinore tongue) "and get all the books that have been printed on the subject, and read up. I do feel so ignorant."

"That's a large order. When you've dug through them you'll know less than you could get from the headlines of the 'anti' evening papers. I'll hunt up a list that was given me by a patient who claims to be neutral, if you really want it, and leave it at your house in the morning. It's at the office."

"Oh, please do!" Mrs. Balfame leaned eagerly across the table. "You know, it is my turn to read a paper Friday week, and literally I can think of nothing else except this terrible but most interesting war. Of course, I must display some real knowledge and not deal merely in adjectives and generalities. I'll read night and day—I suppose I can get all those books from two or three New York libraries?"

"Enid Balfame, you are a wonder! When you buckle down to a thing! Who but you would take hold of a subject like that with the idea of mastering it in two weeks—Oh, bother!"

The telephone was ringing. Dr. Anna tilted back her chair and lifted the receiver from the desk to her ear. She put it down almost immediately. "Hurry call," she said briefly, an intense professional concentration banishing the pleasant relaxation of a moment before. "Baby. Sorry. Leave the key under the door mat. Don't hurry." She was putting on her wraps in the hall as she called back her last words. The front door banged simultaneously.

Mrs. Balfame piled the dishes on the tray, carried them out into the kitchen, washed and put them away. She was a very methodical woman and exquisitely neat. Although she no longer did her own kitchen work, it would have distressed her to leave her friend's little home at "sixes and sevens"; the soiled dishes would have haunted her all night, or at least until she fell asleep.

After she had also arranged the publications on the sitting-room table in neat rows she put on her coat and hat, turned off all the lights, secreted the key as requested and walked briskly down the path. There was a street lamp directly in front of the gate. Its light fell on the face of a man emerging from the heavy shadow of the maple trees that bordered the avenue. She recognised her husband's lawyer, Dwight Rush.

"What luck!" he exclaimed boyishly. "Now I shall talk to you for at least five minutes—ten, if you will walk slowly! What are you doing out so late alone?"

Mrs. Balfame glanced apprehensively up and down the street. All the windows were alight, but it was too late in the season for loitering on verandas; even if they met any one, recognition would hardly be possible unless the encounter took place under a street lamp. Moreover, she was one of those women who while rarely terrified when alone became intensely feminine when a man appeared with his archaic right to shield and protect. She smiled graciously.

"You may see me to my gate," she said.

"I should think I might! A pistol at my head wouldn't keep me from walking these few blessed minutes with you. Seriously, it's not safe for you to be out alone like this. There were three burglaries last week, and you are just the woman to have her bag snatched."

She drew closer to him, a faint accent of alarm in her voice.

"I never thought of that. But Anna was called off in a hurry. I am so glad you happened along. Although," primly, "it wouldn't do, you know, for a woman of my age and position to be seen walking alone with a young man at night."

"What nonsense! You are like Cæsar's wife, I guess. Anything you did in this town would seem about right. You've got them all hypnotised, including myself. It's the ambition of my life to know you better," he added in a more serious tone. "Why won't you let me call?"

"It wouldn't do. If I have a nice position it's because I've always been so particular. If I let young men call on me, people would say that I was no better than that fast bunch that tangoes every night and goes to road houses and things." Her voice trailed off vaguely; she really knew very little of the doings of "gay sets," although much in the abstract of a too temperamental world.

She made up her mind to dispose of this misguided young man once for all. She knew that she looked quite ten years younger than her age, and she was well aware that although man's passion might be business his pastime was the hunt.

"I am thankful that I have no grown daughter to keep from running with that bunch," she said playfully. "Of course I might have. I am quite old enough."

He laughed outright. Then he said the old thing which is ever new to the woman, and with a perceptible softening in his hard energetic voice: "I wonder if you really are as conventional—conventionised—as you perhaps think you are? You always give me the impression of being two women, one fast asleep deep down somewhere, the other not even suspecting her existence."

"How pretty!" She smiled with pleasure, and she felt a faint stirring of coquetry, as if the ghost of her youth were rising—that far-off period when she put on her best ribbons and made her best pies to allure the marriageable swains of Elsinore. But she recalled herself quickly and frowned. "You must not say such things to me," she said coldly.

"But I shall, and I will add that I wish you were a widow, or had never been married. I should propose to you this minute."

"That is equivalent to saying that you wish my husband were dead. And he is your friend, too!"

"Your husband is not my friend; he is my employer—upon occasion. At the moment I did not remember who was your husband. Let it go at that."

"Very well."

It was evident that he belonged to the type that found its amusement in making love to married women; but—they were within the rays of a lamp, and sauntering—she looked up at this pleasant exponent indulgently. She was quite safe, and it was by no means detestable at the age of forty-two to be coveted by the cleverest young man in Brabant County.

The smile left her lips and she experienced a faint vibration of the nerves as she met the unsmiling eyes bent close above her own.

Rush was almost drab in colour, but the bones of his face were large and his eyes were deeply set and well apart, intensely blue and brilliant. It was one of those narrow rigid faces the exigencies of his century and country have bred, the jaw long and almost as salient as that of a consumptive, the brow bold, the mouth hard set, the cheeks lean and cut with deep lines, the whole effect not only keen and clever but stronger than any man has consistently been since the world began. The curious contradiction about this type of American face is that it almost invariably looks younger than the years that have contributed to the modelling of it; such men, particularly if smoothly shaven as they usually are, look thirty at forty; even at fifty, if they retain their hair, appear but little older. When Rush's mouth was relaxed it could smile charmingly, and the eyes fill with playfulness and vivacity, just as his strident American voice could move a jury to tears by the tears that were in it.

At this moment all the intensity of which his striking features were capable was concentrated in his eyes.

"I'm not going to make love to you as matters stand," he said, his voice dry with emotion. "But I want you to divorce Dave Balfame and marry me. Sooner or later you will be driven to it—"

"Never! I'll never be a divorced woman. Never! Never!"

His steady gaze wavered and he sighed. "You said that as if you meant it. You think you are intellectual, and you haven't outgrown one of the prejudices of your Puritan grandmothers—who behaved themselves because women were scarce and even better treated than they are now, and because they would have been too mean to spend money on a divorce suit if divorces had come into fashion elsewhere."

"You are far from complimentary!" Mrs. Balfame raised her head stiffly, not a little indignant at this natural display of sheer masculinity. She would have withdrawn her arm and hastened her steps but he held her back.

"I don't mean to be uncomplimentary. Only, you ought to be so much more advanced than you are. I repeat, I shall not make downright love to you, for I intend to marry you one of these days. But I shall say what I choose. How much longer do you think you can go on living like this?—with a man you must despise and from whom you must suffer indignities—and in this hole—"

"You live here—"

"I came back here because I had a good offer and I like the East better than the West, but I have no intention of staying here. I have reason to believe that I shall get into a New York firm next spring; and once started on that race-course I purpose to come in a winner."

"And you would saddle yourself with a wife many years your senior?" she asked wonderingly.

But she thrilled again, and unconsciously moderated her gait still further; they were but a few steps from her home.

"I am thirty-four. I am sorry that I have impressed you as looking too young to be taken seriously, but you will admit that if a man doesn't know his own mind when he is verging toward middle age, he never will. But if I were only twenty-five, it would make no difference. I would marry you like a shot. I never have given a thought to marrying before. Girls don't interest me. They show their hand too plainly. I've always had a sort of ideal and you fill it."

It was characteristic of Mrs. Balfame's well-ordered mind that her intention to murder her husband did not intrude itself into this unique and provocative hour. She had never indulged in a passing desire to marry again, and hers was not the order of mind that somersaults. But she was willing to "let herself go," for the sake of the experience; for the first time in her twenty odd years of married life to loiter in a leafy shadowy street with a man who loved her and made no secret of it.

"I wonder?" She stared up at him, curiosity in her eyes.

"Wonder what?"

"If it is love?"

He laughed unmusically. "I am not surprised that you ask that question—you, who know no more of love than if you had been a castaway on a desert island since the age of ten. Never mind. I've planted a seed. It will sprout. Think and think again. You owe me that much—and yourself. I know that six months hence you will have divorced Dave Balfame, and that you will marry me as soon as the law allows."

"Never! Never!" She was laughing now, but with all the gay coquetry of youth, not merely the eidola of her own.

They had arrived at the gate of the Balfame Place, which faced the avenue and a large street lamp. She put the gate between them with a quicker movement than she commonly indulged in and held out her hand.

"No more nonsense! If I were young and free—who knows? But—but—forty-two!" She choked but brought it out. "Now go home and think over all the nice girls you know and select one quickly. I will make the wedding cake."

"Did you suppose I didn't know your age? This is Elsinore, and its inhabitants are five thousand. When you and I were born—of respectably eminent parentage—all Brabant County numbered few more."

He made no attempt to open the gate, but he raised her hand to his lips. Even in that rare moment he was conscious of a regret that it was such a large hand, and his head jerked abruptly as he flung out the recreant thought.

"I never shall change," he said. "And you are to think and think. Now go. I'll watch until you are indoors."

"Good night." She ran up the path, wondering if her tall slight figure looked as willowy as it felt. The mirror had often surprised her with the information that she looked quite different from the image in her mind. She also wondered, with some humour, why no one ever had discovered her apparently obvious charms before.

When she was in her bedroom and electricity replaced the mellow rays of street lamps shining through soft and whispering leaves, Mrs. Balfame forgot Dwight Rush and all men save her husband.

She took the vial from her bag and stared at it. In a moment a frown drew her serene brows together, her sweet, shallow, large grey eyes, so consistently admired by her own sex at least, darkened with displeasure. She was a bungler after all. How was the stuff to be administered? She racked her memory, but the casual explanation of Dr. Anna, uttered at least two years ago, had left not an echo. A drop in his eggs or coffee might be too little; more, and he might detect the foreign quantity.

She removed the cork and sniffed. It was odourless, but was it tasteless?

Obviously there was no immediate way of ascertaining save by experiment on Mr. Balfame. And even if it were tasteless, it might cook his blood, congest his face, burst his veins—she recalled snatches of Dr. Anna's dissertations upon "interesting cases." On the other hand, one drop might make him violently ill; the suspicions of any doctor might be aroused.

She must walk warily. Murder was one of the fine arts. Those that cultivated it and failed followed the victim or spent the rest of their lives within prison walls. Thousands, it was estimated, walked the earth unsuspected, unapprehensive, serene and content—contemptuous of failures and bunglers, as are the masters in any art. Mrs. Balfame was proudly aware that her rôle in life was success.

There was nothing to do but wait. She must have another cosy evening with her scientific friend and draw her on to talk of the poison. Ah! that made another precaution imperative.

She went to the cupboard in the bathroom, rinsed a small bottle, transferred the precious colorless fluid, refilled the vial with water and returned it to her bag. To-morrow or next day she would slip into Dr. Anna's house and restore it to its hiding place. The poison she secreted on the top shelf of the bathroom cupboard.

Reluctantly, for she was a prompt and methodical woman, she resigned herself to the prospect of David Balfame's prolonged sojourn upon the planet he had graced so ill. She went to bed, shrinking into the farther corner, but falling asleep almost immediately. Then, her hands having faltered, Fate borrowed the shuttle.

CHAPTER III

A fortnight passed before Mrs. Balfame found the opportunity for a chat with Dr. Anna.

On Saturday afternoons it was the pleasant custom of the flower of Elsinore to repair to the Country Club, a building of the bungalow type, with wide verandas, a large central hall, several smaller rooms for those that preferred cards to dancing, a secluded bar, a tennis court—flooded in winter for skating—and a golf links. It was charmingly situated about four miles from the town, with the woods behind and a glimpse of the grey Atlantic from the higher knolls.

The young unmarried set that danced at the Club or in the larger of the home parlours every night would have monopolised the central hall of the bungalow on Saturdays as well had it not been for the sweet but firm resistance of Mrs. Balfame. Lacking in a proper sex vanity she might be, but she was far too proud and just to permit her own generation to be obliterated by mere youth. Having no children of her own, it shocked her fine sense of the fitness of things to watch the subservience of parents and the selfishness of offspring. One of the most notable results of her quiet determination was that she and her friends enjoyed every privilege of the Country Club when the mood was on them, and that a goodly number of the men of their own generation did not confine their attentions exclusively to the bar, but came out and danced with their neighbours' wives. The young people sniffed, but as Mrs. Balfame had founded the Country Club, and they were all helpless under her inflexible will and skilful manipulation, they never dreamed of rebellion.

During the fortnight Mrs. Balfame had cunningly replaced the vial, the indifferent Cassie leaving the sitting-room at her disposal while she wrote a note reminding Dr. Anna of the promised list of war books, adding playfully that she had no time to waste in a busy doctor's waiting-room. In truth Dr. Anna was a difficult person to see at this time. There was an epidemic of typhoid in the county, and much illness among children.

However, on the third Saturday after the interrupted supper, as Mrs. Balfame was motoring out to the Club with her friend, Mrs. Battle, wife of the President of the Bank of Elsinore, she saw Dr. Anna driving her little runabout down a branching road. With a graceful excuse she deserted her hostess, sprang into the humbler machine, and gaily ordered her friend to turn and drive to the Club.

"You take a rest this afternoon," she said peremptorily. "Otherwise you will be a wreck when your patients need you most. You look just about fagged out. And I want a little of your society. I've been thinking of taking to a sick bed to get it."

Dr. Anna looked at her brilliant friend with an expression of dumb gratitude and adoration. She was worth one hundred per cent. more than this companion of her forty years, but she never would know it. She regarded Enid Balfame as one of the superwomen of Earth, astray in the little world of Elsinore. Even when Mrs. Balfame had done her own work she had managed to look rare and lovely. Her hair was neatly arranged for the day before descent to the lower regions, and her pretty print frock was half covered by a white apron as immaculate as her round uncovered arms.

And since the leader of Elsinore had "learned things" she was of an elegance whose differences from those of women born to grace a loftier sphere were merely subtle. Her fine brown hair, waved in New York, and coiled on the nape of her long neck, displayed her profile to the best possible advantage; like all women's women she set great store by her profile. Whenever possible it was framed in a large hat with a rolling brim and drooping feathers. Her severely tailored frocks made her look aloof and stately on the streets (and in the trains between Elsinore and New York); and her trim white shirt waists and duck skirts, or "one piece suits" for colder weather, gave her a sweet feminine appeal in the house. At evening entertainments she invariably wore black, cut chastely about the neck and draped with a floating scarf.

Poor Dr. Anna, uncompromisingly plain from youth, worshipped beauty; moreover, a certain mental pressure of which she was quite unaware caused her to find in Enid Balfame her highest ideal of womanhood. She herself was never trim; she was always in a hurry; and the repose and serenity the calm and sweet dignity of this gifted being both fascinated and rested her. That Mrs. Balfame took all her female adorers had to offer and gave nothing but enhanced her worth. She knew the priceless value of the pedestal, and although her wonderful smile descended at discreet intervals her substantial feet did not.

Dr. Anna, who had never been sought by men and had seen too many of them sick in bed to have a romantic illusion left, gave to this friend of her lifetime, whom the years touched only to improve—and who never was ill—the dog-like fidelity and love that a certain type of man offers at the shrine of the unattainable woman. Mrs. Balfame was sometimes amused, always complacent; but it must be conceded that she took no advantage of the blind devotion of either Dr. Anna or her numerous other admirers. She was far too proud to "use" people.

Mrs. Balfame seldom discussed her domestic trials even with Dr. Anna, but this most intimate of her friends guessed that her life with her husband was rapidly growing unendurable. She was, naturally, the family doctor; she had nursed David Balfame through several gastric attacks, whose cause was not far to seek.

But despite much that was highly artificial in her personality, Enid Balfame was elementally what would be called, in the vernacular of the day, a regular female; for a fortnight she had longed to talk about Dwight Rush. This was the time to gratify an innocent desire while watching sharply for an opportunity to play for higher stakes.

"Anna!" she said abruptly, as they sped along the fine road, "women like and admire me so much, and I am passably good looking—young looking, too—what do you suppose is the reason men don't fall in love with me? Dave says that half the men in town are mixed up with those telephone and telegraph girls, and they are pretty in the commonest kind of way—"

"Enid Balfame!" Dr. Anna struggled to recover her scandalised breath. "You! Do you put yourself in the class with those trollops? What's got into you? Men are men. Naturally they let your sort alone."

"But I have heard more than whispers about two or three of our good friends—women of our age, not giddy young fools—and in our own set. Why do Mary Frew and Lottie Gifning go over to New York so often? Dave says it isn't only that women from these dull little towns go over to New York to meet their lovers, but that some of them are the up-town wives of millionaires, or the day-time wives of all sorts of men with money enough to run two establishments. It is a hideous world and I never ask for particulars, but the fact remains that Lottie and Mary and a few others have as many partners among the young men at the dances as the girls do; and I can recall hints they have thrown out that they could go farther if they chose."

"This is a busy country," remarked Dr. Anna drily. "Men don't waste time chasing the prettiest of women when convinced there is nothing in it—to borrow the classic form. Young chaps, urged on by natural law to find their mate, will pursue the indifferent girl, but men looking for a little play after business hours will not. Why, you—you look as cold and chaste as Cæsar's wife. They couldn't waste five minutes on you."

"That's what he said—that I was like Cæsar's wife—"

"Enid!" Dr. Anna stopped the little machine and turned upon her friend, her weary face compact and stern. "Enid Balfame! Have you been letting a man make love to you?"

"Well, I guess not." Mrs. Balfame tossed her head and bridled. "But the other night, when I left your house, Mr. Rush was passing and saw me home. He nearly took my breath away by asking me to get a divorce and marry him, but he respected me too much to make love to me."

"I should hope so. The young fool!" But Dr. Anna was unspeakably relieved. She had turned faint at the thought that her idol might be as many other women whose secrets she alone knew. "What did you say to him?" she asked curiously, driving very slowly.

"Why, that I would not be a divorced woman for anything in the world."

"You're not the least bit in love with him?" asked Dr. Anna jealously.

Mrs. Balfame gave her silvery shallow care-free laugh. It might have come from any of the machines passing, laden with young girls. "Well, I guess not! That sort of foolishness never did interest me. I guess my vanity was tickled, but vanity isn't love—by a long sight."

Dr. Anna looked at the pure cold profile, the wide cool grey eyes, and laughed. "He did have courage, poor devil! It must have been—no, there was no moonlight. Must have been the suggestion of that old Lovers' Lane, Elsinore Avenue. But if you wanted men to make love to you, my dear, you could have them by the dozen. Nothing easier—for pretty women of any age who want to be made love to. As for Rush—" She hesitated, then added generously, "he has a future, I think, and could take you somewhere else."

"I should be like a fish out of water anywhere but in Elsinore. I have no delusions. Forty-two is not young—that is to say, it is long past the adaptable age, unless a woman has spent her life on the move and filling it with variety. I love Elsinore as a cat loves its hearth-rug. And I can get to New York in an hour. I think this would be the ideal life with about two thousand dollars more a year, and—and—"

"Dave Balfame somewhere else! Pity Sam Cummack didn't turn him into a travelling salesman instead of planting him here."

"He's never been interested in anything in his life but politics. But I don't really bother about him," she added lightly. "I have him well trained. After all, he never comes home to lunch, he interferes with me very little, he goes to the Elks every night soon after dinner, and he falls asleep the minute he gets into bed. Why, he doesn't even snore. And he carries his liquor pretty well. I guess you can't expect much more than that after twenty-two years of matrimony. I notice that if it isn't one thing it's another."

"Good Lord! Well, I wish he'd break his neck."

"Oh, Anna!"

"Well, of course I didn't mean it. But I see so many good people die—so many lovely children—I'm sort of callous, I guess. I make no bones of wishing that he'd died of typhoid fever last week, instead of poor Joe Morton, who had a wife and two children to support, and was the salt of the earth—"

"You might give Dave a few germs in a capsule!" Mrs. Balfame interrupted in her lightest tones, although she turned her face away. "Or that untraceable poison you once showed me. A bottle of that would finish him!"

"A drop and none the wiser." Dr. Anna's contralto tones were gloomy and morose. "Unfortunately, I am not scientific enough for cold-blooded murder. I'm a silly old Utopian who wishes that a plague would come and sweep all the undesirables from the earth and let us start fair with our modern wisdom. Then I suppose we'd bore one another to death until original sin cropped out again. Better speed up, I guess. I've a full evening ahead of me."

CHAPTER IV

The "smart set" of Elsinore was composed of the twelve women that could afford to lose most at bridge. Mrs. Balfame, who could ill afford to lose anything, but who was both a scientific and a lucky player, insisted upon moderate stakes. The other members of this inner exclusive circle were the wives of two bankers, three contractors, two prosperous merchants, one judge, one doctor, and two commuters who made their incomes in New York and slept in Elsinore. These ladies made it a point of honor to dine at seven, dress smartly and appropriately for all occasions, attend everything worth while to which they could obtain entrance in New York, pay an occasional visit to Europe, read the new novels and attend the symphony concerts. It is superfluous to add that the very foundation of the superior social status of each was a large house of the affluent type peculiar to the prosperous annexes of old communities, half brick and half wood, shallow, characterless, impersonal; and a fine car with a limousine top. The house stood in the midst of a lawn sloping to the street, unconfined by even the box hedge and undivided from the neighbouring grounds. The garage, little less pretentious than the mansion, also faced the street, for all to see. There was hardly a horse left in Elsinore; taxi cabs awaited the traveller at the station, and people that could not afford handsome cars purchased and enjoyed the inexpensive runabout.

Mrs. Balfame had segregated her smart set for strategic reasons, but that did not mean that both she and they were not kindness itself to the less favoured. Obviously, an imposing party cannot be given by twelve families alone, especially when almost half their number are childless. On all state occasions the list of invited numbered several hundred, in that town of some five thousand inhabitants.

It said much for the innate nobility of these wealthier dames of Elsinore, who read the New York society papers quite as attentively as they did the war news, that they submitted without a struggle to the dominance of a woman who never had possessed a car and whose husband's income was so often diverted from its natural course; but Mrs. Balfame not only outclassed them in inflexibility of purpose, but her family was as old as Brabant County; the Dawbarns had never been in what might be called the cavalry regiment, consisting of those few chosen ones living in old colonial houses set in large estates and with both roots and branches in the city of New York; but no one disputed their right to be called Captains of the infantry. And Mrs. Balfame, sole survivor in the direct line, had two wealthy cousins in Brooklyn.

Once in a while Dr. Anna, a privileged character, and born at least in Brabant County, took a hand at bridge, but she was a poor player, and, upon the rare occasions when she found time to spend a Saturday afternoon at the Country Club, preferred to rest in a deep chair and watch the young folks flirt and dance until the informal supper was ready. Never had she tripped a step, but she loved youth, and it gave her an acute old maid's delight to observe the children grow up; snub-nosed, freckled-faced awkward school girls develop at a flying leap into slim American prettiness, enhanced with every late exaggeration of style. She also approved heartily, on hygienic grounds, of the friends of her own generation dancing, even in public, if their partners were not too young and their forms too cumbersome.

Mrs. Balfame and Dr. Anna arrived at the Club shortly after four o'clock. Young people swarmed everywhere, within and without; perhaps twenty older matrons were sitting on the veranda knitting those indeterminate toilette accessories for the Belgians which always seemed to be about to halt at precisely the same stage of progress.

Mrs. Balfame, who had set the fashion, had not brought her needles to-day. She went directly to the card room; but her partner for the tournament not having arrived, she entertained her impatient friends with a recent domestic episode.

"I have a German servant, you know," she said, removing her wraps and taking her seat at the table. "A good creature and a hard worker, but leaden-footed and dull beyond belief. Still, I suppose even the dullest peasant has spite in her make-up. I have been reading tomes of books on the war, as you learned from painful experience yesterday; most of them, as it happened—a good joke on Anna that, as she gave me the list—quite antagonistic to Germany. One day when Frieda should have been dusting I caught her scowling over the chapter heads of one of them. Of course she reads English—she has been here several years. Day before yesterday, when I was knitting, she asked me whom I was knitting for, and I told her—for the Belgians, of course. She asked me in a sort of growl why I didn't knit for the homeless in East Prussia—it seems that is where she comes from and she has been having letters full of horrors. I seldom bandy words with a servant, for you can't permit the slightest familiarity in this country if you want to get any work out of them. But as she scowled as if she would like to explode a shrapnel under me, and as she is the third I have had in the last five months, I said soothingly that the newspaper correspondents had neglected the eastern theatre of war, but had harrowed our feelings so about the Belgians that we felt compelled to do what we could for them. Then I asked her—I was really curious—if she had no sympathy for those thousands of afflicted women and children, merely because they were the victims of the Germans. She has a big soft face with thick lips, little eyes, and a rudimentary nose; generally as expressionless as such a face is bound to be. But when I asked her this question it suddenly seemed to turn to wood—not actively cruel; it merely expressed the negation of all human sympathy. She turned without a word and slumped—pardon the expression—out of the room. But the breakfast was burned this morning—I had to cook another for poor David—and I know she did it on purpose. I am afraid I shall have to let her go."

"I would," said Mrs. Battle, wisely. "She is probably a spy and quite clever."

"Yes, but such a worker!" Mrs. Balfame sighed reminiscently. "And when you have but one servant—"

The tardy partner bustled in and the game began.

CHAPTER V

It was about six o'clock when Mrs. Balfame, steadily losing, contrary to all precedent, her mind concentrated, her features, like those of the rest of the players, as hard as the stone faces dug out of Egypt, her breath escaping in hissing jets, became vaguely conscious of a disturbance in the outer room. The young people were dancing, as was usual in the hour before supper, but the piano and fiddles appeared to be playing against the ribald interruptions of a man's voice. It was some time before the narrow flow of thought in Mrs. Balfame's brain was deflected by the powerful outer current, but suddenly she became aware that her partners were holding their cards suspended, and that their ears were cocked toward the door. Then she recognised her husband's voice.

For a moment she lost her breath and her blood ran chill. She had been apprehensive for some time of a scene in public, but she had assumed that it would occur in a friend's house of an evening; he attended her nowhere else. The Club he had deserted long since; it was much too slow for a man of his increasing proclivities, especially in a county liberally provided with saloons and road houses.

During the last month she had become sensible of a new hostility in his attitude toward her; it was as if he had suddenly penetrated her hidden aversion and all his masculine vanity had risen in revolt. Being a woman of an almost excessive tact, she had sprayed this vanity for twenty-two years with the delicately scented waters of flattery, but the springs had gone suddenly dry on that morning when she had uttered her simple and natural desire to bring the conjugal sleeping accommodations up to date.

And now he had come out here to disgrace her, she immediately concluded, to make her a figure of fun, to destroy her social leadership. This might also involve him in a loss, but when a man is both drunk and angry his foresight grows dim and revenge is sweet.

Only last night there had been an intensely disagreeable scene in private; that is to say, she had been dignified and slightly contemptuous, while he had shouted that her knitting got on his nerves, and the sight of all those books on the war made him sick. When the whole business of the country was held up by this accursed war, a man would like to forget it when at home. And every man had the same story, by God; his wife was knitting when she ought to be darning stockings; trying to be intellectual by concerning herself with a subject that concerned men alone. Mr. Balfame had always resented the Woman's Club, and all talk of votes for a sex that would put him and his kind out of business. Their intelligent interest in the war was a grievous personal indignity.

Being a woman of clear thought and firm purpose, and of a really high order of moral courage, Mrs. Balfame was daunted for a moment only. She laid down her cards, opened the door and entered the main room of the club-house. There she saw, at the head of the room, a group of men surrounding her husband; with one exception, almost as excited as he. The exception was Dwight Rush who had a hand on one of Balfame's shoulders and appeared to be addressing him in a low tone. Little Maude Battle ran forward and grasped her arm.

"Oh, dear Mrs. Balfame," she gasped, "do take him home. He is so—so—queer. He snatched three girls away from their partners, and the boys are so mad. And his language—oh, it was something awful."

The women and girls were huddled in groups, all but Alys Crumley, who, Mrs. Balfame vaguely realised, was sketching. Their eyes were fixed on the group at the head of the room, where Rush was now trying to edge the burly swaying figure toward the door.

Mrs. Balfame walked directly up to her flushed and infuriated spouse.

"You are not well, David," she said peremptorily. "In all the years of our married life never have you acted like this. I am sure that you are getting typhoid fever—"

"To hell with typhoid fever!" shouted Mr. Balfame. "I'm drunk, that's what. And I'll be drunker when they let me into the bar. You get out of this."

Mrs. Balfame turned to Dr. Anna, who had marched up the room beside her. "I am sure it is fever," she said with decision, and the loyal Anna nodded sagely. "You know that liquor never affects him. We must get him home."

"Huh!" jeered Balfame, "you two get me home! I'm not so drunk I can't see the joke of that. The matter with you is you think I'm disgracin' you, and you want to go on bein' the high cock-alorum of this bunch. Well, I'm sick of it, and I'm sick of bein' told to eat out when you're at matinées or that damned Woman's Club. Home's the place for women. Knittin's all right." He laughed uproariously. "But stay at home by the fire and knit your husband's socks. Smoke a pipe too, if you like it. That's what my granny did. The whole lot of you women haven't got one good man's brain between you, and yet you'd talk the head off the President of the United States—"

He was about to launch upon his opinion of Elsinore society when a staccato cough interrupted the flow. Mrs. Balfame turned away with a gesture of superb disdain, although her face was livid.

"The sex jealousy we have so often discussed!" Her clear tones from the first had carried all over the room. "He must be taken home." She looked at Dwight Rush and said graciously: "I am sure he will go with you. And he will apologise to the Club when he is himself again. I shall go back to our game."

She held her head very high as she swept down the long room, but her jaw was set, her nostrils distended, a narrow strip of eye was fixed and glaring.

An unforeseen situation had blown to flame such fires of anger as existed in her depths, and she was unable to extinguish them as quickly as she would have wished. To the intense surprise of the bridge women who had followed her out of the card-room and in again, she sank into a chair and burst into tears. But she managed to cry quietly into her handkerchief, and in a few moments had her voice under control.

"He has disgraced me!" she exclaimed bitterly. "I must resign from the Club."

"Well, I guess not." The ladies had crowded about her sympathetically. "We'll all stand up for you," cried Mrs. Battle. "The men will give him a good talking-to, and he'll write an apology to the Club and that will end it."

These friends, old and more recent, were embarrassed in their genuine sympathy, for no one had ever seen Mrs. Balfame in tears before. Vaguely they regretted that, extreme as was the provocation, she should have descended to the level of mere womanhood. It was as if they were present at the opening of a new chapter in the life of Mrs. Balfame of Elsinore; as, in truth, they were.

Mrs. Balfame blew her nose. "Pardon me," she said. "I never believed I should break down like this—but—but—" once more she set her teeth and her eyes flashed. "I have a violent headache. I must go home. I cannot finish the game."

"I'll take you home," Dr. Anna spoke. "Oh, that beast!"

The other women kissed Mrs. Balfame, straightened her hat, and escorted her out to the runabout which Dr. Anna brought to the rear entrance of the clubhouse. She smiled wearily at the group, touching her brow with a finger. As soon as the little car had left the grounds and was beyond the reach of peering eyes, she made no further attempt at self-control, but poured forth her inmost soul to the one person she had ever fully trusted. She told the doctor all the secret horror of her life, her hatred and loathing of David Balfame; everything, in short, but her determination to kill him, which in the novel excitement that had invaded her nervous system, she forgot.

Dr. Anna, who had heard many such confessions, but who obstinately had hoped that her friend's case was not as bad as it appeared superficially, was glad that she was not driving a horse; humane as she was, she should have forgotten herself and lashed him to relieve her own feelings.

"You must get a divorce," she said through her teeth. "You really must. I saw Rush looking at you. There is no mistaking that expression in a man's eyes. You must—you must divorce that brute."

"I'll not!" Mrs. Balfame's composure returned abruptly. "And please forget that I gave way like this and—and said things." She wondered what she really had said. "I know I need not ask you never to mention it. But divorce! Oh, no. If I continue to live with him they'll be sorry for me and stand by me, but if I divorced him—well, I'd just be one more divorced woman and nothing more. Elsinore isn't Newport. Moreover, they'd feel I'd no further need of their sympathy. In time they'd let me pretty well alone."

"I don't think much of your arguments," said Dr. Anna. "You could marry Rush and go to New York."

"But you know I mean what I say. And don't worry, Anna dear." She bent over the astonished doctor and gave her a warm kiss. "And as I'm not demonstrative, you know I mean that too. You are not to worry about me. I've got the excuse I needed, and I'm going to buy some things at second hand and refurnish one of the old bedrooms and live in it. He can't say a word after this, and he'll be humble enough, for the men will make him apologise to the Club. I'll threaten him with divorce, and that alone will make him behave himself, for it would cost him a good deal more to pay me alimony than to keep the old house going—"

"That isn't an argument that will have much effect on a man, usually in liquor. But women are queer cattle. Divorce is a great and beneficent institution, and here you elect to go on living under the same roof with a brute—Oh, well, it's your own funeral. Here we are. I've got to speed up and practise medicine. Am expecting a call from out at Houston's any minute. Baby. Good night."

CHAPTER VI

Mrs. Balfame let herself into the dark house. Saturday was Frieda's night out.

Contrary to her economical habit, she lighted up the lower floor recklessly, and opened the windows; she felt an overwhelming desire for light and air. But as she wished to think and plan with her accustomed clarity she went at once to the pantry in search of food; the blood was still in her head.

The morrow would be Sunday, and the Saturday luncheon was always composed of the remains of the Friday dinner. On Saturday she dined at the Country Club. Therefore Mrs. Balfame found nothing with which to accomplish her deliberate scientific purpose but dry bread and a box of sardines. She was opening this delectable when the front door bell rang.

Her set face relaxed into a frown, but she went briskly to the door. The poison might be transpirable after all, and her alibi must be perfect; she had changed her mind about going to bed with a headache, and at ten o'clock, when she knew that several of her childless friends would be at home, she purposed to call them up and thank them sweetly and cheerfully.

When she saw Dwight Rush on the stoop, however, she almost closed the door in his scowling face.

"Let me in!" he commanded.

"No!" She spoke with sweet severity. "I shall not. After such a scene? I must be more careful than ever. Go right away. I, at least, shall continue to be above reproach."

"Oh!" He swallowed the natural expression of masculine irritation. "If you won't let me in I'll say what I've got to say right here. Will you divorce that brute and marry me? I can get you a divorce on half a dozen grounds."

"I'll have no divorce, now or ever." Mrs. Balfame of Elsinore spoke with haughty finality. "I abominate the word." Then she added graciously: "But don't think I am unappreciative of your kindness. Now you must go away. The Gifnings live on the corner, and they always come home early."

"A good many have left, including Balfame. He spoilt the evening." Rush stared at her and ground his teeth. "By God! I wish the old duelling days were back again. I'd call him out. If you say the word I'll pick a quarrel with him anyhow. He carries a gun, and there isn't a jury in Brabant County that wouldn't acquit me on the plea of self-defence. My conscience would trouble me no more than if I had shot a mad dog."

Mrs. Balfame gave a little gasp, which he mistook for horror. But temptation had assailed her. Why not? Her own opportunity might be long in coming. It would be like Dave Balfame to go away and stay for a month. But the temptation passed swiftly. Human nature is too complex for any mere mortal to reduce to the rule of three. While she could dispose of her husband without a qualm, her conscience revolted from turning an upright citizen like Dwight Rush into a murderer.

She closed the door abruptly, knowing that no mere verbal refusal to accept such an offer would be adequate, and he went slowly down the steps. But in a moment he ran back and a few feet down the veranda, thrusting his head through one of the open windows.

"Just one minute!"

She was passing the parlour door and paused.

"Promise me that if you are in trouble you will send for me. For no one else; no other man, that is, but me. You owe me that much."

"Yes, I promise." She spoke more softly and smiled.

"And close these windows. It is not safe to leave veranda windows open at this hour."

"I intended to close them before going up stairs. But—perhaps you will understand—the house when I came in seemed to reek with tobacco and liquor—with him!"

His reply was inarticulate, but he pulled down the windows violently, and she locked them, smiling once more before she turned out the light.

She returned to the dining-room, thinking upon food with distaste, but determined to eat until her head felt normal. She had no intention of speaking to her husband should he return, for she purposed to sleep on a sofa in the sewing-room and lock the door, but tones and brain must be lightly poised when she telephoned to her friends.

The telephone bell rang. Once more she frowned, but answered the summons as promptly as she had opened the front door. To her amazement she heard her husband's voice.

"Say," it said thickly, "I'm sorry. Promise not to take another drink for a month. Sorry, too, I've got to go to the house for a few minutes. Didn't intend to go home to-night—thought I'd give you time to get over bein' as mad as I guess you've got a right to be. But I got to go to Albany—politics—got to go to-night—must go home and get my grip. You—you—wouldn't pack it, would you? Then I needn't stay so long. Only got to sort some papers myself."

Mrs. Balfame replied in the old wifely tones that so often had caused him to grit his teeth: "I never hold a man in your condition responsible for anything. Of course I'll pack your suitcase. What is more, I'll have a glass of lemonade ready, with aromatic spirits of ammonia in it. You must sober up before you start on a journey."

"That's the ticket. You're a corker! Put in a bromide, too. I'm at Sam's, and I guess I'll walk over—need the air. You just go on bein' sweet and I'll bring you something pretty from Albany."

"I want one of those new chiffon-velvet bags, and you will please get it in New York," she said practically. "I'll write an exact description of it and put it in the suitcase."

"All right. Go ahead." His accents breathed profound relief, and although her brain was working at lightning speed, and her eyes were but a pale bar of light, she curled her lip scornfully at the childishness of man, as she hung up the receiver.

She made the glass of lemonade, added the usual allowance of aromatic spirits of ammonia and bromide—a bottle of each was kept in the sideboard ready for instant use—then ran upstairs and returned with the colourless liquid she had purloined from Dr. Anna's cupboard.

Her scientific friend had remarked that one drop would suffice, but being a mere female herself she doubled the dose to make sure; and then set the glass conspicuously in the middle of the table. The half opened can of sardines and the plate of bread were quite forgotten, and once more she ran upstairs, this time to pack his useless clothes.

She performed this wifely office with efficiency, forgetting nothing, not even the hair tonic he was administering to a spreading bald spot, a bottle of digestive tablets, a pair of the brown kid gloves he affected when dressed up, and a volume of detective fiction. Then she wrote a minute description of the newest fashion in hand bags and pinned it to his dinner jacket. The suitcase was an alibi in itself.

When she had packed it and strapped it and carried it down to the dining-room, returned to her room and locked the door, she realised that she had prolonged these commonplace duties in behalf of her nerves. Those well-disciplined rebels of the human system were by no means driven to cover, and this annoyed her excessively.

She had no fear of not rising to precisely the proper pitch when she heard her husband fall dead in the dining-room, for she always had risen automatically to every occasion for which she was in any measure prepared, and to many that had caught her unaware. It was the ordeal of waiting for the climax that made her nerves jeer at her will, and she found that a series of pictures was marching monotonously through her mind, again, and again, and yet again: with that interior vision she saw her husband walk unsteadily up the street, swing open the gate, slam it defiantly, insert his latch-key; she saw his eye drawn to the light in the dining-room at the end of the dark hall, saw him drink the lemonade, drop to the floor with a fall that shook the house; she saw herself running down, calling out his name, shattering the glass on the floor, then running distractedly across the street to the Gifnings'—and again and still again.

She had been pacing the room. It occurred to her that she could vary the monotony by watching for him, and she put out her light and drew aside the sash curtain. In a moment she caught her breath.

Her room was on a corner of the house and commanded not only the front walk leading down to Elsinore Avenue, but the grounds on the left. In these grounds was a large grove of ancient maples, where, dressed in white, she passed many pleasant hours in summer with a book or her friends. The trees, with their low thick branches still laden with leaves, cast a heavy shade, but her gaze, moving unconsciously from the empty street, suddenly saw a black and moving shadow in that black and almost solid mass of shadows.

She watched intently. A figure undoubtedly was moving from tree to tree, as if selecting a point of vantage, or restless from one of several conceivable causes.

Could it be her husband, summoning his courage to enter and face her? She had known him in that mood. But she dismissed the suggestion. He had inferred from her voice that she was both weary and placated, and he was far more likely to come swaggering down the avenue singing one of his favourite tunes; he fancied his voice.

Frieda never returned before midnight, and then, although she entered by the rear hall door and stole quietly up the back stairs, she would be quite without shame if confronted.

Therefore, it must be a burglar.

There could not have been a more welcome distraction. Mrs. Balfame was cool and alert at once. As an antidote to rebellious nerves awaiting the consummation of an unlawful act, a burglar may be recommended to the most amateurish assassin.

Mrs. Balfame put on her heavy automobile coat, wrapped her head and face in a dark veil, transferred her pistol from the table drawer to a pocket, and went softly down the stairs. She left the house by the kitchen door, and, after edging round the corner stood still until her eyes grew accustomed to the dark. Then, once, more, she saw that moving shadow.

She dared not risk crossing the lawn directly from the house to the grove, but made a long détour at the back, keeping on the grass, however, that her footsteps should make no noise.

A moment or two and she was within the grove. She saw the shadow detach itself again, but it was impossible to determine its size or sex, although she inferred from its hard laboured breathing that the potential thief was a man.

He appeared to be making craftily for the house, no doubt with the intention of opening one of the lower windows; and she stalked him with a newly awakened instinct, her nostrils expanding. The original resolve to kill her husband had induced no excitement at all; even Dwight Rush's love-making had thrilled her but faintly; but this adventure in the night, stalking a house-breaker, presently to confront him with the command to raise his hands, cast a momentary light upon the emotional moments experienced by the highly organised.

Suddenly she heard her husband's voice. He was approaching Elsinore Avenue from one of the nearby streets, and he was singing, with physiological interruptions, "Tipperary," a song he had cultivated of late to annoy his political rival, an American of German birth and terrific German sympathies. He was walking quickly, as top-heavy men sometimes will.

She drew back and crouched. To make her presence known would be to turn over the burglar to her husband and detain the essential victim from the dining-room table.

She saw the shadow dodge behind a tree. Balfame appeared almost abruptly in the light shed by the street lamp in front of his gate; and then it seemed to her that she had held her breath for a lifetime before her ears were stunned by a sharp report, her eyes blinked at a spurt of fire, before she heard David Balfame give a curious sound, half moan, half hiccough, saw him clutch at the gate, then sink to the ground.

She was hardly conscious of running, far more conscious that some one else was running—through the orchard and toward the back fence.

Hours later, it seemed to her, she was in the kitchen closing the door behind her. Something curious had happened in her brain, so trained to orderly routine that it seldom prompted an erratic course.

She should have run at once to her husband, and here she was inside the house, and once more listening intently. It was the fancied sound that swung her consciousness back to its balance. She went to the front of the back stairs and called sharply:

"Frieda!"

There was no answer.

"Frieda," she called again. "Did you hear anything? I thought I heard some one trying to open the back door."

Again there was no answer.

Then, her lip curling at the idea of Frieda's return on Saturday night at eight o'clock, she went rapidly into the dining-room, carried the glass containing the lemonade into the kitchen, rinsed it thoroughly, and put it away.

It was not until she reached her room that it occurred to her that she should have ascertained whether or not the key was on the inside of the rear hall door.

But this was merely a flitting thought; there were loud and excited voices down by the gate. In an instant she had hung up her automobile cloak and veil, changed her dress for a wrapper, let down her hair and thrown open the window.

"What is the matter?" Her tone was peremptory but apprehensive.

"Matter enough!" John Gifning's voice was rough and broken. "Don't come out here. Mean to say you didn't hear a shot?"

Two or three men were running about nearer the house. One paused under her window, and looked up, waving his hand vaguely.

"Shot? Shot? I heard—so many tires explode—What do you mean? What is it?—Who—"

"Here's the coroner!" cried one of the group at the gate.

"Coroner?"

She ran down stairs, threw open the front door and went as swiftly toward the gate, her hair streaming behind her.

"Who is it?" she demanded.

"Now—now." Mr. Gifning intercepted her and clasped her shoulder firmly. "You don't want to go down there—and don't take on—"

She drew herself up haughtily. "I am not an hysterical woman. Who has been shot down at my gate?"

"Well," blurted out Gifning. "I guess you'll have to know. It's poor old Dave."

Mrs. Balfame drew herself still higher and stood quite rigid for a moment; then the coroner, one of her husband's friends, came up the path and said in a low tone to Gifning, "Take her upstairs. We're goin' to bring him in. He's gone, for a fact."

Mr. Gifning pushed her gently along the path, as the others lifted the limp body and tramped slowly behind. "You go up and have a good cry," he said. "I'll 'phone for the Cummacks. I guess it was bound to come. There's been hot times in Dobton lately—"

"Do you mean that he was deliberately murdered?"

"Looks like it, seeing that he didn't do it himself. The damned hound was skulking in the grove. Of course he's made off, but we'll get him all right."

Mrs. Balfame walked slowly up the stair, her head bowed, while the heavy inert mass so lately abhorrent to his wife and several politicians was laid on the sofa in the parlour whose evolutions had annoyed him.

Mr. Gifning telephoned to the dead man's brother-in-law, then for the police and the undertaker.

Mrs. Balfame sat down and awaited the inevitable bombardment of her privacy by her more intimate friends. Already shriller voices were mingling with the heavier tones down on the lawn and out in the avenue. The news seemed to have been flashed from one end of Elsinore to the other.

CHAPTER VII

Mrs. Balfame sat with Mrs. Battle, Mrs. Gifning, Mrs. Frew, her sister-in-law, Mrs. Cummack, and several of her other friends in her quiet bed-chamber. It was an hour after the death of David Balfame and she had, for the seventh time, told the story of packing her husband's suit case, carrying it down stairs, returning to her room to undress, hearing the commotion down by the gate. Yes, she had heard a report, but Elsinore Avenue—automobiles—exploding tires—naturally, it had meant nothing to her at the moment. No, he did not cry out—or if he did—her window was closed; it was the side window she left open at night.

She had accepted a bottle of smelling salts from Mrs. Battle, but sat quite erect, looking stunned and frozen. Her voice was expressionless, wearily reiterating a few facts to gratify the curiosity of these well-meaning friends, as wearily listening to Lottie Gifning's reiteration of her own story: As the night was warmer than usual she and her husband and the two friends that had motored in with them had sat on the porch for awhile; they had heard "Dave" come singing down Dawbarn Street; two or three minutes later the shot. Of course the men ran over at once, but for at least ten minutes she was too frightened to move. One of the men ran for the coroner; if "poor Dave" wasn't dead they wanted to take him at once where he would be comfortable.

Mrs. Balfame's demeanour was all these solicitous friends could have wished; although they enjoyed tears and emotional scenes as much as any women, they were gratified to be reassured that their Mrs. Balfame was not as other women; they still regretted her breakdown at the Club, although resentfully conscious of loving her the more. And if they wanted tears, here was Polly Cummack shedding them in abundance for the brother she now reproached herself for having utterly despised.

Below there was a subdued hum of voices, within and without. The police had come tearing up in an automobile and ordered the amateur detectives out of the grounds; their angry voices had been heard demanding how the qualified fools expected the original footsteps to be detected after such a piece of idiocy.

Mrs. Balfame had shaken her head sadly. "They'll find nothing," she said. "If only I had known, I could have called down to them to keep out of the yard."

"Now, who do you suppose that is?" Mrs. Battle, who was short and stout and corseted to her knees, toddled over to the window and leaned out as two automobiles raced each other down the avenue. They stopped at the gate, and in a moment Mrs. Battle announced: "The New York newspaper men!"

"Already?" Mrs. Balfame glanced at the clock and stifled a yawn. "Why, it's hardly an hour—"

"Oh, a year or so from now they'll be coming over in bi-planes. Well, if our poor old boobs of police don't unearth the murderer, they will. They are the prize sleuths. They'll find a scent, or spin one out of their brains as a spider spins his web out of his little tummy—"

Mrs. Cummack interrupted: "Sam is sure it is Old Dutch. He's gone with the constable to Dobton."

Dobton, the county seat, and the centre of the political activities of East Brabant, intimately connected with the various "towns" by trolley and telephone, embraced the domicile of Mr. Konrad Kraus, amiably known as "Old Dutch." His home was in the rear of his flourishing saloon, which was the headquarters of the county Republicans. David Balfame had patronised—rumour said financed—the saloon of an American sired by Erin.

Another automobile dashed up. "Sam, I think; yes, it is," cried Mrs. Battle.

A few moments later Mr. Cummack appeared upon the threshold.

"Nothin' doin'," he said gruffly. "Old Dutch's got a perfect alibi. Been behind the bar since six o'clock. It's up to us now to find out if he hired a gunman; and we're on the trail of others too. Poor Dave had his enemies all right."

He paused and looked tentatively at his weary but heroic sister-in-law. His own face was haggard, and the walrus moustache he had brought out of the North-west was covered not only with dust but with little moist islands made by furtive tears. With that exquisite sympathy and comprehension that men have for the failings of other men, which far surpasseth that of woman, he had loved his imperfect friend, but he had a profound admiration for his sister-in-law, whom he neither loved nor pretended to understand. He knew her surfaces, however, as well as any one, and would have been deeply disappointed if she had carried herself in this trying hour contrary to her usual high standard of conduct. Enid Balfame, indeed, was almost a legend in Elsinore, and into this legend she could retire as into a fortress, practically impregnable.

"Say, Enid," he said hesitatingly. "These reporters—the New York chaps—the local men wouldn't dare ask—want an interview. What do you say?"

Mrs. Balfame merely turned her haughty head and regarded him with icy disdain. "Are they crazy? Or you?"

"Well, not the way they look at it. You see, it's up to them to fill a column or two every morning, and there's nothing touches a new crime with a mystery. So far, they haven't got much out of this but the bare fact that poor Dave was shot down at his own gate, presumably by some one hid in the grove. An interview with the bereaved widow would make what they call a corking story."

"Tell them to go away at once." She leaned back against her chair and closed her eyes. Mrs. Gifning flew to hold the salts to her nose.

"Better see them," persisted Mr. Cummack. "They'll haunt the house till you do. They're crazy about this case—hasn't been a decent murder for months, nothin' much doin' in any line, and everybody sick of the war. The Germans take a trench in the morning papers and lose it in the evening—"

"Sam Cummack! How dare you joke at a time like this?" His wife ran forward and attempted to push him out of the room, and the other ladies had risen and faced him with manifest indignation.

Suddenly Mrs. Cummack put her arms about him and patted the top of his head. He had burst into tears and was rubbing his eyes on his sleeve. "Poor old Dave!" he sobbed. "I'm all in. But I'll find that low-down cur who killed him, cut him off in his prime, if it takes the last cent I've got."

Mrs. Balfame rose and crossed to his side. She put her hand on his shoulder. "I never should have suspected that you had such depth of feeling, Sam," she said softly, "I am sure that the cowardly murderer will be caught and that yours will be the glory. Send those inconsiderate reporters away."

Mr. Cummack shook his head. "As well talk of calling off the police. They'll be round here day and night till the man is in Dobton jail—longer, for they know the public will want an interview with the widow. Better see them, Enid."

"I shall not." Mrs. Balfame put her hand to her head and reeled. "Oh, I am so tired! So tired! What a day. Oh, how I wish Anna were here."

Three of the women caught her and led her to her chair. "Anna!" she reiterated. "I must have something to make me sleep—"

"I'll call her up!" volunteered Mrs. Gifning. "I do hope she is at home—"

"She was to go out to the Houston farm," interrupted Mrs. Cummack. "She stopped at our house on the way out—Sammy has bronchitis—"; and Mrs. Gifning, who was as nervous as the widow should have been, ran down to the telephone, elated at being the one chosen to horrify poor Dr. Anna while engaged in the everlasting battle for life.

"I'll stay with Enid till Anna comes," volunteered Mrs. Cummack. "I guess she'd better be quiet. One of you might make coffee for those that are going to sit up—"

"Frieda's doin' that," said Mr. Cummack. "They're all in the dining-room—"

Mrs. Balfame had left the shelter of Mrs. Cummack's arm and was sitting very straight. "Frieda? This is her night out—"

"She was in bed with a toothache, but I routed her out. Well, I'll put the men off till to-morrow, but better make up your mind to see them then."

He left the room and when Mrs. Balfame was alone with her sister-in-law, whom she had never admitted to the sacred inner circle, but who was a kind forgiving soul, she smiled affectionately. "Don't be afraid that I shall break down," she said. "But those women had got on my nerves. It is too kind of you to have dismissed them, and to stay with me yourself till Anna comes. It has all been so terrible—and coming so soon after what happened at the Club. Thank heaven I did not permit myself to speak severely to him, and even when he telephoned for his suit case I was not cross—I never would hold a man who had been drinking to strict account—"

"Don't you worry your head. He was my brother, but I guess I know what a trial he must have been. And if he hadn't been my brother I guess I'd say we wouldn't have blamed you much if you had given him a dose of lead yourself—"

Mrs. Balfame raised her amazed eyes. But in a moment the weary ghost of a smile flitted over her firm mouth, and she asked almost lightly: "Do you then believe in removing offensive husbands?"

"Well—of course I'd never have that much courage myself if Sam wasn't any better than he should be—he's pretty decent as men go—but I know a few husbands right here in Elsinore—well, if their wives gave them prussic acid or hot lead they wouldn't lose my friendship, and I guess any jury would let them off."

"I guess you're right." Mrs. Balfame was beginning to undress. "I think I'll get into bed—But it requires a lot of nerve. And the risk is pretty great, you know. Anna once told me of an untraceable and tasteless poison she had—"

"Oh, Lord!" Mrs. Cummack may have been too hopelessly without style and ambition to be one of the arc lights of the Elsinore smart set, but she possessed a sense of humour, and for the moment forgot the abrupt taking off of her brother. "Don't let that get round. The poison wouldn't be safe for an hour—nor a few husbands. I think I'll warn Anna anyhow—I'm not sure I can keep it."

The door opened softly and Mrs. Gifning's fluffy blonde head appeared. "I couldn't get Anna herself," she whispered. "The baby hasn't come. But Mr. Houston said he'd tell her as soon as it was over, and let her go. He was terribly shocked, and sent you his love."

"Thanks, dear," murmured Mrs. Balfame. "I'll try and sleep awhile, and Polly has promised to sit with me till Anna comes. Good-night."

CHAPTER VIII

There was a thin cry of life in the nursery of the Houston farm house. The mother slept and the new born was in competent hands. Mr. Houston, a farmer more prosperous and enterprising than his somewhat weedy appearance prefigured, beckoned Dr. Anna into the dining-room, where a sleepy but interested "hired girl" had brought hot coffee and sandwiches.

The battle had lasted little over three hours, but every moment had been fraught with anxiety for the doctor and the husband. Mrs. Houston's heart had revealed an unsuspected weakness and the baby had not only neglected to head itself towards the gates of life as all proper little marathons should, but had exhibited a state of suspended animation for at least twenty minutes after its arrival at the goal.

Dr. Anna dropped into a chair beside the table and covered her face with her hand.

"I'm all in, I guess," she murmured, and the farmer put down the coffee pot and ran for the demijohn.

"You drink this," he said peremptorily. His own hand was shaking, but he made no verbal attempt to release his strangled emotions until both he and the doctor had drunk of coffee as well as whiskey. Then, when half way through a thick sandwich made of slabs of bread and beef, he began to thank the doctor incoherently.

"You are just it," he sputtered. "Just about it. And your poor back must be broke. You doctors do beat me, particularly you women doctors. I'll never say nothin' against women doctors again, though I'll tell you now that although poor little Aggie was dead set on you, I opposed it for awhile—"

Dr. Anna was sitting up and smiling. She waved his apologies and protestations aside. "I can't think what came over me to collapse like that. Once or twice lately I have thought I might be getting something. I'll have my blood taken to-morrow. Now, I'll go home and get to bed quick, although that coffee has made me feel as fine as a fiddle."

"Well, I needed it too, and for more reasons than you. Say—" Mr. Houston had risen and was pulling nervously at his short and bosky beard. "I got a 'phone from Mrs. Gifning a while ago. You're wanted at the Balfames—bad."

Dr. Anna sprang to her feet, her full cheeks pale again. "Enid! What has happened to her?"

"Oh, she's all right, I guess. It's Dave—"

"Oh, another gastric attack?"

"Worse and more of it. He was shot—two or three hours ago, I guess. I didn't ask the time—was in too big a hurry to get back to Aggie—at his own gate, though, I think she said."

"Who did it?"

"Nobody knows."

"Dead?"

"No one'll ever be deader."

"H'm!" The color had come back to Dr. Anna's tired face and she shrugged her shoulders. "I'm no hypocrite, and I guess you're not either."

"I'm no more a hypocrite than I am a Democrat. His yellow streak was gettin' wider every year. It's good riddance. Still I wish he'd died in his bed. I don't like the idea of a fellow citizen, good or bad, bein' shot down like that. It's against law and order, and if the murderer's caught and I'm drawn on the jury, and it's proved he done it, I'll vote for conviction."

"Quite right," said Dr. Anna briskly, as she went out into the hall and put on her hat. "I suppose it's Mrs. Balfame who wants me?"

"Yes, that's it. I remember. But you ought to go home and get sleep. There's enough women to sit up with her. The hull town likely."

"But I know she wants me." Dr. Anna's face glowed softly. "I'll sleep there all right—on a sofa beside her bed—if she wants me to stay on."

"Well, look out for yourself," he growled. "If you don't think about yourself a little more you'll soon have no show to think so much about other people. I'm goin' for the car."

A few moments later he had brought the little runabout to the door, lighted the lamps, and given the doctor a hard grip of the hand.

She returned the pressure in kind. "Now don't worry, Mr. Houston. She's all right, and that nurse is first rate. Don't talk to her. Aggie, I mean. See you to-morrow about ten."

She drove rapidly out of the gate and into the road. There was a full moon shining and the drive was but ten miles between the farm and Elsinore. Her face was tired and grim. She had been in daily contact with typhoid fever in the poor and dirty quarter of the town. In her arduous life she had often experienced healthy fatigue, but nothing like this. Could she be coming down?

She swung her thoughts to Enid Balfame, and forgot herself. Free at last, and while still young and lovely! Would she marry Dwight Rush? He had leaped into her mind simultaneously with the announcement of Balfame's death. But was he good enough for Enid? Was any man? Why, now that she was a real widow and in no need of a protector, should she marry at all? At any rate she could afford to wait. There were greater prizes to be captured by a beautiful and still girlish woman.

She was glad for the first time that Enid had never had a child, for there was a virgin and mystic appeal in the woman that had escaped the common lot. Spinsters lost it, curiously enough, but a chaste and lovely matron, who had ignored the book of experience so liberally offered her, and with eyes as unalloyed as a girl's (save when flashing with intellectual fires)—what more distracting anomaly could the world offer? Only Mrs. Balfame's indifference had kept the men away—Dr. Anna was convinced of that. Her future was in her own hands.

Dr. Anna's mind wandered to the scene of the murder. It was not difficult to construct, even from the meager details, and she shuddered. Murder! What a hideous word it was! Horrid that it should even brush the name of an exquisite creature like Enid Balfame. Would that Dave Balfame could have fallen of apoplexy while disgracing himself at the Club! But Anna frowned and shook the picture out of her mind. Doctors are too long trained in death to be haunted by its phantoms in any form.

A sharp turn and the road ran beside a salt marsh, a solemn grey expanse that lost itself far away in the grey of the sea. Suddenly Dr. Anna became aware of a man walking rapidly down the road toward her. He carried his hat in his hand as if his head were hot on this cool autumn night. There was no fear of man in Dr. Anna, even on lonely country roads; nevertheless she had no mind to be detained, and was about to increase her speed, when her curiosity was excited by something pleasantly familiar in the tall loose figure, the almost stiffly upright head. A moment later and the bright moonlight revealed the white face of Dwight Rush.

She brought the car to an abrupt halt as he too paused and nodded recognition.

"What's the matter?" she asked sharply. "You looked as if you were walking to beat time itself—as if you saw a ghost to boot—"

"Plenty of ghosts in my head. It aches like the dickens—"

"Were you there when it happened?"

"When what happened?"

"What? You pretend you don't know—when all Elsinore must have known it within five minutes—"

"I don't know what you are talking about. I followed you in from the Club and then took the train for Brooklyn, where I had to see a man. When I got back to Elsinore—off the train—my head ached so I knew I couldn't sleep—so I started out to walk it off—been walking for about two hours."

"Dave Balfame was shot down at his own gate three or four hours ago."

"Good God! Who did it? Is he dead?"

"He's dead, and that's about all I can tell you. Houston went to the 'phone but he was in such a state of mind about his wife that he didn't stay for particulars. Enid wanted me—it was Lottie Gifning that 'phoned. I gathered, however, that they haven't caught the murderer yet."

"Jove!" Rush was shaking. "I feel as if I'd been hit in the pit of the stomach. And I'm not one to go to pieces, either. But I've a good enough reason."

Dr. Anna continued to stare at him. He met her gaze and wonder grew in his. Then the blood rushed into his face and he threw back his head. "What do you mean? That I did it?"

"No—I don't see you committing murder—"

"Not in that damned skulking way—"

"Exactly. But you kind of suggest that you might know something about it. You might have been in the grove, or some other part of the grounds—with some idea of protecting Enid—"

"Why should you think that?"

"She told me—I didn't think it a bad idea myself—that you asked her to divorce Dave and marry you. But she said she wouldn't and I guess she meant it. Now, get in," she added briskly. "I'll drive you home and never say I met you. Met anybody else?"

"No one."

"Unless they get the right man at once, everybody who was known to have any reason to wish Dave Balfame out of the way will come under suspicion. For all you know, somebody may have guessed your secret; I saw it in your eyes at the clubhouse when you were trying to get Dave out of the room for her sake; but of course I was 'on.' Those New York newspaper men, however—watch out for them. They'll fine-tooth-comb the county for the man in the case."

Rush had disposed his long legs in the little machine and it was once more running swiftly on the smooth road. "My brain is still too hot to theorise," he said. "May I smoke? What is your opinion?"

"He had many political enemies; besides, these last two years he's been growing more and more unbearable, so I guess he had more than one in his own party. But it isn't unlikely that some girl did it. For some reason the trollops liked him, and I've met him several times of late driving with a red-headed minx that looks as if she could shoot on sight."

"I don't mind telling you that I saw Mrs. Balfame a few minutes after you left her. I was boiling. Instead of piloting Balfame out to Sam's car I wished that I had run him behind the clubhouse and horsewhipped him. We are too civilised these days. I merely went to his house and asked his wife if she would divorce the brute and marry me. Two centuries ago—maybe one—I'd have picked her up and flung her on my horse and galloped off to the woods. We haven't improved; we've merely substituted the long-winded and indirect method and called it civilisation."

"Just so. Did she let you in?"

"Not she. You might know that without asking. Nor was she any nearer divorce than before. When I offered to pick a quarrel with him, she merely slammed the door in my face. But I went to the window and made her promise that if she were ever in trouble I should be the first person she would send for—"

"But you weren't!" Dr. Anna's voice rang with jealous triumph. "I was the first. But never mind me. I've adored her for forty years, and you haven't known her as many weeks. Tell me, you didn't conceal yourself anywhere in the grounds to watch over her? She must have been all alone. Every servant in town takes Saturday night out."

"I inferred that Sam would keep him at his house all night. Besides, I knew she had a pistol. Balfame told me the day he bought her one in New York; when those burglaries began."

"Well, don't tell any one that you offered to dispose of her husband—a few moments before he was killed! It might make unnecessary trouble for a rising young lawyer."

"I am quite able to do my own thinking and take care of myself," he said haughtily, stung by her tone. "If you choose to think me guilty, do so. And let me tell you that if I had done it I shouldn't put my head in the ash barrel."

"No, but you might do your best to avoid the chair. Small blame to you. Well, as I said, you're safe as far as I am concerned. I wouldn't send a dog to the chair. That is—" she looked at him threateningly, "if you really do love Enid and want to marry her."

"Love her? I'd marry her if she had done it herself and I'd caught her red-handed."

"That's the real thing, I guess." She patted his hand approvingly. "I'll do what I can to help you. She's not a bit in love with you yet, but that's because she's the purest creature on earth and never would let herself even dream of a man she couldn't marry. She's one of the last grand representatives of the old Puritan stock—and when you see as much mean and secret infidelity, dose as many morbid hysterical women, as I do—Oh, Lord! No wonder I see Enid Balfame shining with cold radiance in the high heavens. I may idealise her a bit, but I don't care. It would be a sad old world if you couldn't exalt at least one human above the muck-ruck. Well, she likes you, and you have interested her. Just be on hand when she wants you, needs you. When this excitement is over and she is tired of female gabble, she'll turn to you naturally, if you manage her properly and don't butt in too soon. Quiet persistence and tact; that's your game. I'll put in a good word."

"By George, you are a good fellow!" He leaned over and kissed her impulsively. As Dr. Anna felt the pressure of those warm firm lips on her faded cheek, she astonished herself and him by bursting into tears. In an instant, however, she dashed them away and gave an odd gurgling laugh.

"Don't mind a silly old maid—who loves Enid Balfame more than life, I guess. And I'm a country doctor, Dwight, who's had a hard night bringing one more unfortunate female into the world. I feel better since I cried—first time since you boys used to tease me at school because I had cheeks like red pippins—you don't remember me over at school in your village. Renselaerville. I lived there for a spell, and I remember you. But this isn't the time for reminiscences. Where do you live? We'll be in the outskirts in three minutes."

"I have rooms at The Brabant."

"Any night clerk?"

"No; it's an apartment house."

"Good. We're somewhere in the small hours all right."

She drove swiftly through the sleeping town, slowing down on the corner of Main Street and Atlantic Avenue. Rush sprang out with a word of thanks and walked up the avenue to The Brabant. The trees here were neither old nor close, for this was the quarter of the wealthy newcomers and of the older residents that had prospered and rebuilt. But not a soul was abroad, and he let himself into the bachelor apartment house and mounted the two flights to his rooms unseen.

CHAPTER IX

As Rush closed his own door behind him, his troubled spirit shifted its load. Indubitably, if Dr. Anna had not met him he should have walked until exhausted, and then boarded a train somewhere down the line and arrived in Elsinore dishevelled, haggard, altogether an object of suspicion. None knew better than he that in a small community the lightning of suspicion plays incessantly, throwing the faces of innocent and guilty alike into distorted relief. And he had half expected to find a newspaper man awaiting him in the hall below.

Before turning on his lights he felt his way to the windows and drew the curtains close. For all he knew there might be a detective or a reporter sitting on the opposite fence. His legal mind, deeply versed in criminal law, fully appreciated his danger and warned him to arm at every point.

The district attorney, one of Balfame's men, clever, ambitious, but too ill-educated to hope to graduate from Brabant County, or even, political influence lacking, to climb into the first rank at home, hated the brilliant newcomer who had beaten him twice during his brief term of office. That Rush "hailed" originally from the county only added to the grievance. If Brabant wasn't good enough for him in the first place, why hadn't he stayed where he was wanted?

But Rush dismissed him from his mind as he remembered uneasily that Alys Crumley had been sketching out there at the Club while he had been wrestling with David Balfame. He knew her ambition to get a position on a New York newspaper as a sketch artist; but the possibility that she might have guessed the secret of his interest in putting an end to the scene, or intended to sell her drawing to one of the reporters, would have given him little uneasiness had the artist not been a young woman upon whom he had ceased to call some two months since.

He had met Alys Crumley about eighteen months after he had returned to Brabant County and some three months after he had moved from Dobton to Elsinore, and at once had been attracted by her bright ambitious mind, combined with a real personality and an appearance both smart and artistic.

Miss Crumley prided herself upon being unique in Elsinore, at least, and although her thick well-groomed hair was dressed with classic severity, and she wore soft gowns of an indescribable cut in the house, and at the evening parties of her friends, she was far too astute to depart from the fashion of the moment in the crucial test of street dress and hat. In Park Row during her brief sojourn in the newspaper world, she had commanded attention among the critical press women as a girl who knew how to dress smartly and yet add that personal touch which, when attempted by those lacking genius in dress, ruins the effect of the most extravagant tailor. Miss Crumley by no means patronised these autocrats of Fifth Avenue; she bought her tailored suits at the ready-made establishments, but like many another American girl, she knew how to buy, and above all, how to wear her clothes.

She had taught for several years after graduating from the High School; then, her nerves rebelling, had abandoned this most monotonous of careers for newspaper work. To reporting her physique had not proved equal, and although she would have made an admirable fashion editor these enviable positions were adequately filled. On the advice of the star reporter of her paper, Mr. James Broderick, who, with other newspaper men had been entertained occasionally at tea of a Sunday afternoon in her charming little home in Elsinore, she had developed her talent for drawing during the past year; Mr. Broderick promising to "find her a job" as staff artist when she had improved her technique.

Then Dwight Rush appeared.

Miss Crumley lived with her mother in the family cottage next door to Dr. Anna's in Elsinore Avenue. Mrs. Crumley, who was the relict of a G. A. R. had eked out her pension during the schooldays of her daughter with fine sewing, finding most of her patrons among the newcomers. She also had cooked for the Woman's Exchange of Brooklyn, besides catering for public dinners and evening parties. For several years she enjoyed a complete rest; therefore, when Alys retired temporarily from the office of provider in order to study art, Mrs. Crumley willingly re-entered the industrial field. As both the practical mother and the clever daughter were amiable women it was a harmonious little household that Dwight Rush found himself drifting toward intimacy with soon after he met the young lady at a clubhouse dance.

The living-room—Alys long since had abolished the word parlour from her vocabulary—was furnished in various shades of green as harmonious as the family temper; there was a low bookcase filled with fashionable literature, English and American; the magazines and reviews on the table were almost blatantly "highbrow," and the cool green walls were further embellished with a few delicate water colours conceived in the back-yard atelier by an individual mind if executed by a still somewhat halting brush.

For four months Rush had been a constant visitor at the cottage. Miss Crumley, who was as progressively modern as an automobile factory, was full of enthusiasm at the moment for the cult of sexless friendship between a man and a maid. She had considered James Broderick at one time as a likely partner for a philosophic romance (the adjective Platonic was out of date; moreover, it implied that the cult was not as modern as its devotees would wish it to appear); but the brilliant (and handsome) young reporter not only was very busy but of a mercurial and uncertain temperament. Nor did he appear to be a youth of lofty ideals; from certain remarks, uttered casually, to make matters worse, Alys was forced to conclude that he despised the man who "wasted his time" only less than he despised the "chaser." If pretty, interesting, and unnotional girls came his way and liked him enough, that was "all to the good"; a busy newspaper man at the beck and call of a city editor had no time for studying over the map of a girl's soul, the lord knew; but if a girl wasn't a "dead game sport," then the sooner a man left the field to some one with more time, or a yearning for matrimony, the better. These remarks had been deliberately thrown out by the canny Mr. Broderick, who liked "the kid" and didn't want her to "get in wrong" (particularly with himself as he enjoyed both her society and the artistic living-room—and Mrs. Crumley's confections) but who saw straight through Alys' shifting modernities to the makings of a fine primitive female.

But Rush was no student in sex psychology. He took Miss Crumley on her face value; delighted in finding a comfortable friend of the counter sex, and was more than amenable to her desire to cultivate in him a taste for modern literature; since his graduation he had hardly opened anything but law books, legal reviews, and the daily newspaper. She read aloud admirably—particularly plays—and he liked to listen; and as she convinced him that he was missing a good part of life, it was not long before he was buying for leisurely midnight consumption such work of the fashionable writers as was stimulating and intellectual, and at the same time sincere.

She also took him over to several symphony concerts, and often played classic selections to him in the twilight. He had no objection to music, as it either spurred his mind into fresh activity upon problems besetting it, or soothed him into slumber. He loved the little room with the soft green shadows; it reminded him of the woods, of which he still was passionately fond; and he found it both homelike and safe. Other houses in Elsinore, larger and more luxurious, were homelike enough, but too often were graced by marriageable daughters, who "showed their hand." Rush was as little vain and conceited as a man may be, but he was well aware that eligible men in Elsinore were few, and that everybody must know that his intake, already large, must increase with the years.

But—as the wise Mr. Broderick would have predicted had he not been interested elsewhere during this period—the tension grew too strong for Alys Crumley. Nervous and high-strung, with her reservoir of human emotions undepleted by even a hard flirtation since her early youth, idealistic, romantic, and imaginative, she began to realise that with each long uninterrupted evening—Mrs. Crumley was the most tactful of parents—she was growing more femininely sensitive to this man's magnetism and charm, to his quick responsive mind, to the mobility under the surface of his lean hard face, to the suggestion of indomitable strength which was the chief characteristic of the new American race of men.

It was not long before she was exaggerating every attractive attribute he possessed until he no longer seemed what he was, a fine specimen of his type, but a glorified superbeing and the one desirable man on earth. Her sense of superiority over this "rather crude Western specimen who knew nothing but his job," and to whom she could teach so much, had protected her for a time, held her femaleness and imagination in abeyance, but insensibly his sheer masculinity swamped her, left her without a rock but pride to cling to.

It was then that she showed her hand.

For a time after her discovery she was merely furious with herself; she was twenty-six and no weakling, neither sentiment nor passion should master her. But this phase was brief. Infatuation is not cast out either by reason or pride, and very soon her mind opened to the insidious whisper: "Why not?" What was the career of staff artist, full of liberty, excitement, and good fellowship as it might be, to marriage with an ambitious man capable of inspiring the wildest love? Sooner or later had she not intended to make just such a marriage?

From this inception her deductions followed in logical feminine sequence. If she loved him with a completeness which was both preadamic and neoteric, it was of course because he was consumed with a similar passion; in other words he was her mate. He might be too comfortable and content to have realised it so far, but only one awakening was possible, and hers was the entrancing part to reveal him to himself.

She knew that while by no means a beauty, she was as far from commonplace in colouring at least as in style. Her eyes were an odd opaque olive, their tint so pronounced that it seemed to invade the pale ivory of her skin and the smooth masses of her hair. It was a far more subtle face than American women as a rule possess, and the eyes in spite of a curious inscrutability that might mean anything were capable of a play of lights directed from a battery more archaic than modern; and late one evening after she had read him an impassioned drama (ancient) and there was a dusky rose in either cheek, she turned them on.

Rush immediately took fright. She had not roused a responsive spark of passion in him. Moreover, he was now haunted continually by the image of a sweet, remote, and (to him) far more mysterious woman, whom he worshipped as the ideal of all womanhood.

There was none of the old time American suavity about Rush. He was abrupt, forthright, and impatient. But he was kind and innately chivalrous. He "let Miss Crumley down" as gently as he could; but he let her down. No doubt of that. In less than a week she faced the bewildering fact that a man could strike loose a woman's emotional torrents while his own depths awaited the magical touch of another. It was incredible, preposterous.

For a time Alys, in the privacy of her atelier, raged like a fury. She cursed Rush, particularly when engaged in a violent struggle with the pride which alone held her from grovelling at his feet.

She was further incensed that he had revealed her to herself as a mere morbid unsatisfied girl, whose quarter of a century should be crowned by a little family of three; and at last she doubted if she had ever loved him at all. That she had been a mere female principle unable to escape its impersonal destiny disgusted her with life, but it served to restore her balance and philosophy.

Being a girl of brains and character she emerged from the encounter with pride still crested in the eyes of the man; and if his image was too deeply stamped into her imagination to prevent a recurrence of wild desire whenever she was so imprudent as to let her mind wander, she remembered that all great physical upheavals are followed by many minor shocks, and waited with what patience she could command for full delivery.

Of the sanguinary condition of the battle ground in his young friend's soul Rush had a mere glimpse before she took heed and dissembled. He assumed that she either had fallen in love with him after the fashion of girls when they saw too much of a man, or that she was eager to marry and improve her condition. He reproached himself for thoughtlessness, renounced the long evenings in the pretty room with a sigh, and in his bachelor quarters read the books of her choice. He had a very kindly feeling for her, for he knew that he owed her a debt; if he had not met the other woman—who could tell? Moreover, as he conceived it to be his duty to shield her from spiteful comment, he danced with her in public and joined her on the street whenever they met.

But if he knew nothing of the intricate and interminable ramifications of sex psychology, the infinite variety of moods peculiar to a woman in love, he was well enough aware that love is easily turned to hate, particularly when vanity has been deeply wounded; and although he had conceived a high esteem for Alys Crumley's character during the weeks of their intimacy, he knew that men had been mistaken in their estimate of women before this, and that if she discovered that he loved another woman she might be capable of taking the basest revenge.

It was possible that she was the noblest of her sex, and he hoped she was, but as he considered her that night, he realised that it behooved him to walk warily nevertheless. By the time he could marry Enid Balfame, or even betray his desire to marry her, this crime would have passed into county history. Of the real danger he never thought.

The vision evoked of Alys Crumley was accompanied by that of her home, and he looked round his stark bachelor quarters with a sigh.

The untidy sitting-room was crowded with law books and legal reviews; the maid had given it up in despair long since, and only swept out the ashes daily and dusted once a week.

In the small bedroom was an iron bed like a soldier's; neckties hung from the chandelier; on the bureau and table beside the bed were more books, several by the young British authors of the moment for whom Miss Crumley had communicated some of her rather perfunctory enthusiasm.

He flung his clothes all over the room as he undressed. He hated bachelor quarters. Six months hence he would be the master of a home as exquisite as the woman he loved. Balfame! The man was dead, but as Rush thought of him his face turned almost black and his hands tingled and clenched. It would be long before he could hear that name mentioned without a hot uprush of hatred and loathing. But it subsided and he took a bath and "turned in."

CHAPTER X

As Rush walked to the Elks' Club for breakfast a few hours later he felt that suspicion was in the very air of Elsinore, the very leaves of the quiet Sunday streets rustled with it. Even on Atlantic Avenue there were knots of men discussing the murder, and in Main Street every man that passed received a hard stare.

Rush was thankful to observe that all looked as if they had gone to bed late and slept little, and when he met Sam Cummack on the steps of the clubhouse he realised the advantages of the habit of careful grooming to which the deceased's brother-in-law was quite indifferent.

"Oh, Dwight!" groaned Cummack, seizing his hand. "Where were you last night? I'd have liked to have you round."

"I was in Brooklyn and got back late. What's your opinion?"

"I've had a dozen but they don't seem to hold water. I guess it was a gunman, imported direct—though perhaps I'm just hoping it wasn't one of them trollops did it—for the sake of the family as well as poor Dave's name. I don't want a scandal like that. Murder's bad enough, the Lord knows."

"What sort of footsteps in the grounds?"

"Every kind we've got in Elsinore, I guess. About forty people were runnin' round the yard before the police came. Funny that Gifning didn't think of that. But he says the breath was knocked out of him. Jimminy! I never knew anything to upset the town like this before—the county, you might say. The telephone's been buzzin' till the girls have threatened to strike. An operator fainted this morning—wonder if Dave knew her?"

"Well, I am rather surprised to learn that Balfame was so popular—"

"'Tain't that only—though Dave still had lots of friends in spite of that ugly temper he was growin'; but we've all got enemies—every last one of us—and to be shot down at his own gate like that—Gee, it has given every man in town the creeps. We must get the man quick and make an example of him. I hope I'm drawn."

"I hope he doesn't ask me to defend him. How is Mrs. Balfame bearing up?"

"Fine. She's as cool as they make 'em. I'd hate to be married to one of them cucumbers myself, but they're damned convenient in times of trouble. Maybe she cared a lot for Dave; who knows? At any rate we must make people think she did. I don't want suspicion pointing to her."

"What! It is incredible that you should think of such a thing." Rush, always pale, had turned as white as chalk. "You can't mean that people are saying—"

"Not yet. But we've got to be prepared for anything, especially with these New York newspapermen on the trail. Unless we catch the murderer damned quick, every last one of us that was close to Dave that can't prove an alibi will be suspected. Why, I walked with him for two blocks after he left my house—thought he might not be able to make it alone, and he wouldn't go in the car; then, I didn't go straight home, either. I went to my office to straighten out something—Oh, Lord! don't let's talk of it; I must have been there alone, not a soul to see me, when he was shot. It gives me the horrors to think of it—"

"Nonsense! It was well known that you were his best friend. No one would think of you."

"They might! They might!"

"Well—about Mrs. Balfame?"

"Oh, she's got the best alibi ever. She'd packed his suitcase and carried it downstairs, and even written a note describing some bag or other she wanted and pinned it to his coat. I was there when the police examined it. They're not saying who they're suspectin', but they're doin' a heap of thinkin'. Fact remains that she was alone in the front of the house—that mutt of a hired girl she's got was way up in the back part groanin' with a toothache when I routed her out. If she wasn't such a fright that Dave wouldn't have looked at her—Well, the police know that Dave wasn't what you might call a model husband; but Enid, so far as we all know, never rowed him. That's the most tryin' sort, though, and generally conceals the most hate. But she had her clubs and all the rest of it. Maybe she didn't care. I'm only wonderin' what Phipps thinks. That's the reason I want her to see the newspapermen. She might throw them off the scent at least. Of course, they'd rather she'd done it than any one—"

"You won't even hint to her that she may be suspected?" interrupted Rush, sharply.

"Oh, Lord, no. I'd never dare. Just persuade her somehow. Guess Anna or Polly can manage it."

Rush turned and walked down the steps. "I'll go to the Elsinore to breakfast. The reporters are likely to show up there. I know Jim Broderick. We must be on the job all the time."

CHAPTER XI

To Dr. Anna alone Mrs. Balfame told the story of the night, although, implicit as was her trust, with certain reservations. She omitted the detail of the poisoned lemonade, but otherwise unburdened herself with freedom and relief.

"Before I knew where I was," she concluded, "there was the kitchen door closed behind me. I can't understand why I lost my presence of mind. I could easily have run through the back door and out the front, and reached him about the time Gifning did."

Dr. Anna was drinking strong coffee. It was eight o'clock, and she had gone downstairs and made breakfast for her friend and herself, Frieda having retired to her room and bolted the door. The doctor had heard the whole story as soon as she arrived, but after an interval of sleep had asked for it again.

"I think it's better as it is," she said thoughtfully. "No one could have seen you. The moon rose late; the night at that time must have been pitch dark. The trees alone would have shielded you, even had any one been watching. Suspicion never would fall on you anyhow; you are too far above it, and Dave had been insulting people right and left the last year. But you want to avoid blackmail. The only thing that disturbs me is that that girl may have been on the back stairs when you came in. I'll come in for lunch and talk to her then. You keep to your room. Rest, and sleep if you can. I don't fancy you'll have early visitors. Everybody'll sleep late. I wish I could!"

"Will you stop in and see Dr. Lequeur about yourself—"

"If I can find a minute. Don't worry about me. I'm tough, and the Lord knows I ought to be immune."

But she found no time to see a doctor in her own behalf and returned to the Balfame house between twelve and one. Reporters were sitting on the box hedge and on the doorstep. She evaded them good-naturedly, but it was some time before she was admitted by the rebellious Frieda, who had been summoned to the front door some sixteen times during the forenoon.

When Dr. Anna finally found herself in the dark hall she saw that Frieda's face was swollen and tied up in a towel. The spectacle gave the doctor an instant opportunity.

"The worst infliction on earth, bar none!" she announced, following the maid into the kitchen. "Let me take a look at it? How long have you had it?"

"Two days," replied Frieda sullenly, unamenable to sympathy which offered no immediate surcease of pain.

"Abscess?"

"Don't know."

Frieda's mental processes were slow. Before she could follow the doctor's the bandage was ripped off and a sharp eye was examining the inflamed interior of her cavernous mouth. A moment later Dr. Anna had opened her doctor's bag and was anointing the surroundings of the tortured tooth with a brown liquid.

"That won't cure it," she said, "but no dentist could do more until the swelling is reduced. And it will save you a preliminary bill. Keep this. As soon as you feel you can stand it, go to Dr. Meyers, Main Street. Tell him I sent you. But why didn't you tell Mrs. Balfame last night? Why endure pain? Kind mistresses always keep such alleviatives in the house, and Mrs. Balfame is not the sort to mind being roused in the middle of the night if some one were suffering."

The pain had subsided under treatment, and Frieda was restored to such civility as she knew. "It only got bad when I am dancing to the hall, and I ran home. I had some drops in my room."

"Oh, I see. Did they stop the pain?"

"Nix. Ache like before, but I lie down and perhaps can sleep if those men have not make me come downstairs to make the coffee. All night I am up." And she glowered with self-pity.

"But when you found that your drops were no good, why didn't you run at once to Mrs. Balfame? You were braver than I should have been. It was about eight o'clock, was it not, when Mr. Balfame was shot? Mrs. Balfame was probably awake when you came in, even if she had gone to bed. Or perhaps you didn't know that she came home early?"

"On Saturday nights she come home after I do. How I am to know she is here?"

"But you might have gone to her medicine closet—in her bathroom."

"When you have the pain like hot iron you think of all the good things for it the next day." Frieda relapsed into sullen silence; Dr. Anna hastily disposed of the lunch prepared for her and went upstairs.

Mrs. Balfame was lying on the sofa. She had not dressed, but looked as trim as usual in a blue and white bathrobe; never having been a woman to "let herself go," she did not possess a wrapper. Her long hair hung in two loose braids, and she looked very pale and lovely.

"Put Frieda out of your head," said Dr. Anna hurriedly; familiar voices ascended from the path below. "She heard nothing. You don't when you have a jumping toothache."

"Thank heaven!"

A soft knock announced several of her friends. They were dressed for motoring; this being Sunday, not even death must interfere with the cross-country refreshment of the Elsinore husband. They kissed Mrs. Balfame and congratulated her upon her appearance and her nerves.

"But one thing must be settled right here," announced Mrs. Gifning, "and that is the question of your mourning. I'll go over on the eight-ten in the morning and see to it. But you never wear ready-made things and it would be a pity to waste money that way. Are you going to wear a veil at the inquest?"

"Of course I am. Do you suppose I shall submit to being stared at by a curious mob and snapshotted by reporters?"

"That's just what I thought. I'll bring back a smart hat and a long crêpe veil with me, and order your widow's outfit from one of the big shops; they'll have it over in time for the funeral. And you can wear your tailor suit to the inquest; it will be half covered by the veil."

"What a good idea!" said Mrs. Balfame gratefully. "You are too kind."

"Kind? Nothing! I just love to shop for other people. How lucky that you hadn't bought your new winter suit. It might have been blue."

"It was to have been blue." There was a note of regret in Mrs. Balfame's voice. "Don't forget to buy me two black chiffon blouses. One very simple for every day; the other, really good. And something white for the neck. Of course I wouldn't wear it on the street; but in the house—black is too trying!"

"Rather. Trust me. Have you black gloves—undressed kid, I mean? You don't want to look like an undertaker." Mrs. Balfame nodded. "That's all, I think. Send me a line if you think of something else. I must run and take Giffy for his ride. He's all broken up, poor darling. Wasn't he just splendid last night?" She blew a kiss along the widow's forehead and ran out with a light step that caused her more substantial friends to sigh with envy. She, too, was in the manœuvring forties, but she had gone into training at thirty.

"I guess we'd all better go." Mrs. Battle, with a sudden dexterous heave of her armoured bulk, was out of the chair and on her feet. "Now, try to sleep, dearie. You are just the bravest thing! But to-morrow will be trying. Sam Cummack says the coroner won't hold the inquest before afternoon, but if they do and your veil isn't here, I've got one of Ma's packed away in camphor that I'll get out for you. I'll get it out to-night and have it airing—we won't take any chances; and you sha'n't be annoyed by the vulgar curious."

"Oh, thank you! But that is not the only ordeal. It's even more trying to stay in the house all these days—in this room! If I could walk in the grounds. But I suppose those reporters are everywhere."

"They are swarming, simply swarming. And the avenue is so packed with automobiles you can't navigate. People have come from all over the country—some from New York and Brooklyn."

Mrs. Balfame curled her lip with disgust. Morbid curiosity, like other vulgarities, was incomprehensible to her. Death, no matter how desired or how accomplished, should inspire hush and respect, not provide excitement for a Sunday afternoon.

"Let us hope they will find the wretch to-day," she said impatiently. "That will end it, for, of course, it is the element of mystery that has made the case so notorious. Is there no clue?"

"Not the ghost of one." Mrs. Cummack, too, was adjusting her automobile veil. "Sam's on the job,—I'm only taking him out for an hour or two; and so, of course, are the police—hot. But he's covered his tracks so far."

"If it is a he," whispered Mrs. Battle to Mrs. Frew, as they stole softly down the stairs. "What about that red-head, or that telephone girl who fainted? They say she had to go home—"

"Can you imagine caring enough for Dave Balfame—Let's get out of this, for heaven's sake, or I'll faint right here."

The atmosphere was as depressing as the dark interior of the house, for it was heavy laden with the scent of flowers and death. The parlour doors, behind which lay David Balfame, embalmed and serene in his casket, were closed, but hushed whisperings came forth like the rustling of funeral wreaths disturbed by the vapours of decay. The devoted friends of the widow burst out into the sunshine almost with a cry of relief.

Here all was as animated as a county fair. The grounds were void, save by patrolling police, but the avenue and adjoining streets were packed with every type of car from limousine to farmer's runabout, and many more people were afoot, staring at the house, venturing as near the hedge as they dared, to inspect the grove. They asked questions, answered them, offered theories, all in a breath, and without the slightest respect for any opinion save their own. A few children, sucking peppermint sticks, sat on the hedge.

"Did you ever?" murmured Mrs. Frew to Mrs. Battle. "Did you ever?" She shuddered with refined disgust, but felt thrilled to her marrow. "Just Enid's luck!" was her auxiliary but silent reflection.

CHAPTER XII

At the inquest on the following day, Mrs. Balfame, circumvested in crêpe, sat between Mr. and Mrs. Cummack, gracefully erect, and without even a nervous flutter of the hands.

When called upon to testify, she told in a clear low voice the meagre story already known to her friends and by this time the common property of Elsinore and all that read the newspapers of the State.

The coroner released her as quickly as possible, and called her servant to the stand. Although the swelling in Frieda's face had subsided somewhat under Dr. Anna's repeated ministrations, the tooth still throbbed; and she also was released after announcing resentfully that she'd seen "notings," heard "notings," and "didn't know notings" about the murder except having to get up and make coffee when she was like to die with the ache in her tooth.

There was no one else to testify, except Cummack, who gave the hour, about a quarter or ten minutes to eight, when the deceased had left his house, and Mr. Gifning and his two guests, who testified to hearing the sound of Balfame's voice raised in song, followed a moment later by the report of a pistol. They also described minutely the position of the body when found. Indubitably the shot had been fired from the grove.

The staff artists were forced to be content with a black sketch of a very long widow, who held her head high and emanated an air of chill repose. One reporter, camera set, forced his way to her side as she was about to enter Mrs. Battle's limousine and begged her plaintively to raise her veil; but he might as well as have addressed a somnambulist; Mrs. Balfame did not even snub him.

"Why should they want a picture of me?" she asked Mrs. Battle, wonderingly. "It's poor Dave that is dead. Whoever heard of me outside of Elsinore?"

"I guess you haven't amused yourself reading the papers. You've been written up as a beauty and the intellectual and social leader of Elsinore. Some distinction, that! The public is mighty interested in you all over the State and will be for several days yet, no doubt. Then we'll find the man and they'll forget all about the whole affair until the trial comes up."

Mrs. Balfame, clad in full weeds, more dignified, stately and unapproachable than ever, ran the gauntlet of staring eyes at the church funeral, apparently unconscious of the immense crowd of women that had driven over from every township in Brabant County. That the women did not approve of her haughty head and tearless eyes, brilliant even behind the heavy crêpe, would have concerned her little if she had known it. Her mind was concentrated upon the future moment when this series of hideous ordeals would be over and she could re-enter the decent seclusion of private life.

Mrs. Balfame may have had her faults, but a vulgar complaisance to publicity was not among them.

She had also made up her mind sternly not to feel happy, not to rejoice in her freedom, not to make a plan for the future until her husband was in his grave. But all during that long service, while the new parson discoursed unctuously upon the virtues and eminence of the slain, she had the sensation of holding her breath.

It was four days from the night of the murder before she consented to see the reporters. Meanwhile every suspected person had proved an alibi, including the red-haired Miss Foxie Bell, and the indignant and highly respectable Miss Mamie Russ, who officiated at the telephone. She had known the deceased, yes, and once or twice she had driven out to one of the roadhouses with him, where a number of her friends were indulging in a quiet Sunday afternoon tango, but she had merely looked upon him as a kind fatherly sort of person; and at the hour of his death she was asleep, as her landlady could testify.

Old Dutch had indignantly repudiated the charge of employing gunmen, and had even attended the funeral and shed tears. Whatever the faults of the deceased, they were not of a nature to antagonise permanently the erring members of his own sex. Moreover, he had been an able politician, respected of his enemies, and was now glorified by his cowardly and untimely taking off.

The local police had an uneasy suspicion that the assassin was one of their "pals"—in that small and democratic community, where every man was an Elk from the banker to the undertaker. They were quite ready to drop the case, loudly ascribing the deed to an ordinary housebreaker, or to some unknown enemy from out the impenetrable rabbit warrens of New York City.

The newspaper men were chagrined and desperate. The Balfame Case had proved uncommonly magnetic to the New York public. They had done their best to create this interest, and now were on their mettle to "make good." But they were beginning to wish they had waited for at least a lantern's ray at the end of the dark perspective before exciting the public with descriptions of the winding picturesque old street of the ancient village of Elsinore; the stately old-time residence at its head which had housed (in more or less discomfort) three generations of Balfames, the sinister grove of trees that had sheltered the dastardly assassin, the prominence and political importance of David Balfame who had inherited this ancestral estate, and played among those trees in childhood; his unsuspecting and vocal return at an early hour to be shot down at his own gate.

All this appealed acutely to a public which makes the fortune of the sentimental play, the "crook" play, and the "play with a punch and a mystery." Here was the real thing, as rural as the childhood of many of the Greater New York public—weary of black-hand murders and anarchist bombs—with a mystery as deep as any ever invented by their favourite authors, and in no remote district but at their very gates.

If anything more were necessary to rivet their interest, there was the handsome and elegant (if provincial) Mrs. Balfame, as austere as a Roman matron, as chaste as Diana, as decently invisible in public during this harrowing ordeal as imported crêpe could make her. The men reporters had dismissed the widow with a paragraph of personal description, but the newspaper women had filled half a page in each of the evening journals.

The press had given the public at least two columns a day of the Balfame murder; there had been a biography of every suspect in turn, and there had been the thrilling episode of the bloodhounds turned loose upon that trampled enclosure. But no road led anywhere, and the public, baffled for the moment, but still hopeful, demanded an interview with the interesting widow.

Of course, her alibi was perfect, but all felt sure that she "knew something about it." Her unhappy married life was now common property, and if it only could be proved that she had had a lover—but the newspapers as has been said were discouraging upon this point. Mrs. Balfame (quoting the young men this time), while amiable and kind to all, was cold and indifferent. Men were afraid of her. The New York detectives had "fine-tooth-combed" Brabant County and reported disgustedly to their chief that she was "just one of those club women; no use for men at all."

The reporters, however, had made up their minds to fix the crime, if possible, upon her. They would have compromised upon the young servant, but Frieda, especially with her face framed in a towel stained brown, and her eyes swollen above the wrenching agonies of an ulcerated tooth, was hopeless material. Moreover, they were convinced, after thorough investigation, that the deceased's gallantries, while sufficiently catholic, had not run to serving maids, and that of late particularly he had loudly hated all things German.

Regarding Mrs. Balfame they held their judgment in reserve until they met and talked with her; but Broderick had extracted the miserable details of her life from his friend, Alys Crumley, as well as a lively description of the scene at the Country Club; they believed they could bring to light enough to base a sensational trial upon, whatever the verdict of the jury.

It must not be inferred for a moment that these brilliant and industrious young men were bloodthirsty. They knew that if Mrs. Balfame had committed the crime and could be induced to make a defiant confession, it was more than probable that she would go scot free; that in no case was there more than a bare possibility of a woman of her age, position and appearance being sent to the chair. But it is these alert, resourceful, ruthless young men who make the newspapers we read with such interest twice a day; it is they who write the columns of "news" that we skip if dull (with a mental reservation to change our newspaper), or devour without a thought of the tireless individual activities that re-supply us daily with our strongest impersonal interests. Sometimes a trifle more sparkle or vitality, or a deeper note, will wring from us that facile comment, "How well written!" without a pause to reflect that mere good writing never made a newspaper, or to hazard a guess that behind the column that thrilled us were hours, perhaps weeks, of incessant unravelling of clues, of following a scent in the dark, with death at every turn. It is the business of reporters to furnish news of vital interest to a pampered public, and as so large a part of it is furnished to them by the weaknesses and misdeeds of mankind, what wonder that the reporters grow cynical and make no bones about providing clues that will lead, at the least, to many columns charged with suspense and sensational human interest!

These young men knew the moment the Balfame case "broke" that it was big with possibilities; they scented a mystery that would be cleared by the arrest of no local politician; and they knew the interlocking social relationships of these loyal old communities. It was "up to them" to solve the mystery, and by a process of elimination, spurred by their own desire to give the public the best the market afforded, they arrived at Mrs. Balfame.

Within forty-eight hours they were hot on her trail. Among other things, they discovered that she was an expert shot at a target; but did she keep a pistol in the house? She had used one, kept for target purpose, out at the Country Club, and it was impossible to verify the rumor that in common with many another, she had one in the house as a protection against burglars and tramps.

At their instigation, Phipps, the local chief of police, had reluctantly consented to interrogate her on this point (a mere matter of form, he assured her), and she had replied blandly that she never had possessed a pistol. The chief apologised and withdrew. He was of a respectable Brabant family himself, and was horrified that a member of the good old order should even be brushed by the wing of suspicion. Being a quiet family man and a Republican to boot, he had never approved of Dave Balfame, and had only refrained from arresting him upon more than one occasion—notably a week or two since when he had publicly blacked the eye of Miss Billy Gump—out of deference to the good name of Elsinore; and after all, they were both Elks and had spun many a yarn in the comfortable clubrooms. Inheritance, circumstances, and a fine common contempt for the inferior brands of whiskey, had made them "stand in together, whatever happened." The chief had no love for Mrs. Balfame, for she had frozen him too often, but she was the pride of Elsinore and he was alert to defend her.

It had never occurred to Mrs. Balfame that she would incur even a passing suspicion, and she had left the pistol in the pocket of her automobile coat. Immediately after the visit of the chief of police she took the pistol into the sewing-room, locked the door, covered the keyhole, and buried the weapon in the depths of an old sofa. As her large strong fingers had mended furniture many times, no one would suspect that this ancient piece (dating back to the first Balfame) had been tampered with. She performed the operation with haughty reluctance, but the instinct of self-preservation abides in the proudest souls, and Mrs. Balfame had the wit to realise that it was by far the better part of valour.

The shooting occurred on Saturday night. By Wednesday all the horrors of the criminal episode were over and she felt as young as she looked, and at liberty to begin life again, a free and happy woman. Her mourning was perfect.

She made up her mind to see the newspaper men and have done with it. They had haunted the grounds—no patrols could keep them out—sat on the doorstep, forced their way into the kitchen, and rung the front door-bell so frequently that hourly she expected the scowling Frieda to give notice. Mr. Cummack told her repeatedly that she might as well give in first as last and she finally agreed with him.

It was five o'clock in the afternoon when they were admitted to the spacious old-fashioned parlour with its incongruous modern notes.

Like many women, Mrs. Balfame had an admirable taste in dress, so long as she marched with the conventions, but neither the imagination nor the training to create the notable room. Long since she had banished the old "body brussels" carpet and substituted rugs subdued in colour if commonplace in design. The plush "set" had not gone to the auction room, however, but had been reupholstered with a serviceable "tapestry covering." A what-not still stood in one corner, and both centre-table and mantel were covered with marble, although the wax works that once embellished them were now in the garret. The wall paper, which had been put on the year before, was a neutral pale brown. Nevertheless, it was a homelike room, for there were two rocking-chairs and three easy chairs; and on a small side-table was Mrs. Balfame's workbasket. On the marble centre-table was a most artistic lamp. The curtains matched the furniture.

There were ten reporters from New York, two from Brooklyn, three from Brabant County, and four correspondents. Word had been passed during the morning that Mrs. Balfame would see the newspaper men, and they were there in force; those that were not "on the job all the time" having loyally been notified by those that were. But they had stolen a march on the women. Not a "sob-sister" was in that intent file, led by James Broderick of The New York Morning News, that entered the Balfame house and parlour on Wednesday at five o'clock.

Frieda had announced that her mistress would be "down soon," and Mr. Broderick immediately drew the curtains back from the four long windows, and placed a comfortable chair for Mrs. Balfame in a position where she would face both the light and her visitors. It was not the first stage that the astute Mr. Broderick had set; and whenever he was on a case he fell naturally into the position of leader; not only had he the most alert and driving, the most resourceful and penetrative mind, but his good looks and suave manner inspired confidence in the victim, and led him insensibly into damaging admissions. He was a tall slim young man, a graduate of Princeton, not yet thirty, with a regular face and warm colouring, and an expression so pleasant that the keenness of his eyes passed unnoted. In general equipment and dress he was typical of his kind, unless they took to drink and grew slovenly; but his more emphatic endowment enabled him to take the lead among a class of men whom he respected too thoroughly to antagonise with arrogance.

"Late—to make an impression!" he growled, but young Ryder Bruce of the evening edition of his paper nudged him. Mrs. Balfame was on the staircase opposite the parlour doors.

The young men stood up and watched her as she slowly descended, her black dress clinging to her tall rather rigid figure, her head high, her profile as calm as marble, her eye as devoid of expression as if awaiting the click of the camera.

The reporters were prejudiced on the spot, so impatient are newspaper men of any sort of pose or attempt to impress them. As she entered the room she greeted them pleasantly, looking straight at them with her large cold eyes, and allowed herself to be conducted to a chair by the polite Mr. Broderick.

She knew that in her high unrelieved black she looked older than common, but this was a deliberately calculated effect. She was not as adroit as she would have been after recurrent experiences with the press, but instinct warned her to look the dignified middle-aged widow, quite above the coquetry of the bare throat of fashion, or of tempering her weeds with soft white lawn.

As Mr. Broderick made a little speech of gratitude for her gracious reception of the press, she appraised her guests. The greater number were well-groomed, well-dressed, well-bred in effect, very sure of themselves; altogether a striking contrast to the local reporters that had come in on their heels.

She answered Mr. Broderick diffidently: "I have never been interviewed. I am afraid you will hardly find—what do you call it?—a story?—in me."

"We don't wish to be too personal," he said gently, "but the public is tremendously interested in this case, and more particularly in you. It isn't always that it takes an interest in the wife of a murdered man—but—well, you see, you are such a personality in this community. We really must have an interesting interview." He smiled at her with a charming expression of masculine indulgence that made her own eyes soften. "You see—don't you—we hate to intrude—but—we understand that you had a serious quarrel with your husband on the last day of his life. Would you mind telling us what you did after leaving the Country Club?"

She gave him a frozen stare, but recalled Mr. Cummack's warning not to take offence—"for remember that these men have their living to get, and if they fall down on their job they don't get it. Blame their paper, not them."

"That is a surprising question," she said sweetly. "Do you expect me to answer it?"

"Why not? Of course you read the newspapers. You know we have told the public of the scene at the clubhouse already—and with no detriment to you! It was a very dramatic scene, and every moment that you passed from that time until Mr. Balfame fell at his gate will be of the most absorbing interest to the public. In fact, they will eat it up."

Mrs. Balfame shrugged her shoulders. "As a matter of fact I have not read a newspaper since the—" She set her lips and her eyes grew hard—"the crime. I know you have written a great deal about it, but it hasn't interested me. Well—Dr. Anna Steuer drove me home, and shortly after I went up to my room—"

"Pardon me; let us take things in their turn. You took a box of sardines and some bread from the pantry, did you not?"

"I did." Mrs. Balfame's tones were both puzzled and bored.

"And then you were interrupted." As she raised her eyebrows, he continued. "The appearance of the sardine can indicated that."

She gave him a brilliant smile, her substitute for the average woman's merry laugh. "You are teaching me how they write those intricate detective tales my husband was so fond of. It is true that I was interrupted, but it is equally true that I should probably have left the can as you found it in any case, for I soon realised that I was not hungry. I had had sandwiches at the club, and although I always think it best to eat something before retiring, I was hardly hungry enough for sardines—"

"You ate sandwiches at the club? I have been out there once or twice and never saw—I was under the impression that during the afternoon the young people danced and the matrons played bridge before an early dinner."

"Did you?" Mrs. Balfame's eyes and tones abashed even Mr. Broderick, and he tacked hastily: "Oh, well, that is immaterial, as the lawyers say. And of course you ladies may have sandwiches served in the bridge rooms. May I ask what interrupted you?"

"My husband telephoned from Mr. Cummack's house that he was obliged to go to Albany at once and asked me to pack his suitcase."

"Yes, we have seen the suitcase. You suggested, did you not—over the telephone—making him a glass of lemonade with aromatic and bromide in it?"

Mrs. Balfame experienced an obscure thrill of alarm, but her haughty stare betrayed nothing. One of the reporters whose "job" it was to watch her hands, noted that they curved rigidly. "And may I ask how you found that out? Really, I think I feel even more curiosity than you do."

"He told it to Cummack and the other men present as a good joke, adding that you knew your business."

"I did. The matter had passed entirely out of my mind. More momentous things have happened since! Well—I made the glass of lemonade and left it on the dining-room table; then I went upstairs and packed his suitcase—"

"One moment. What became of that glass of lemonade? No one remembers having seen it, although I have made very particular inquiries."

Mrs. Balfame by this time was quite cold, but her brain was working almost as quickly as Mr. Broderick's. She uncurved her fingers and smiled. But her keen brain-sword had one edge only; the other was dull with inexperience. She knew nothing of the vast practice of newspaper men in detecting the lie.

"Oh—I drank it myself." She had drawn her brows for a moment as if in an effort of memory. "When I heard the noise outside—when I heard them say 'coroner'—and realised that something dreadful had happened, I ran downstairs. Then I suddenly felt faint and remembered the lemonade with the aromatic spirits of ammonia and bromide in it. I ran into the dining-room and drank it—fortunately!"

"And what became of the glass?"

"Oh!" Mrs. Balfame was now righteously indignant. "How do I know? Or any one else? Frieda, soon after, began to make coffee by the quart—and I don't doubt whisky was brought round from the Elks. Who could have noticed a glass more or less?"

"Frieda swears she never saw it."

"She has the worst memory of any servant I ever had, and that is saying a good deal."

Mr. Broderick regarded her with admiration. He distrusted her more every moment, but he had realised at once that he had no ordinary woman to deal with, and he rejoiced in the clash of wits.

The other young men were sitting forward, almost breathless, and Mrs. Balfame was now fully alive to the danger of her position. But all sensation of fear had left her. All the iron in her nature fused in the crucible of those terrible moments and came forth finely tempered steel.

"Anything more?"

"Oh—ah—yes. Would you mind telling us what you did after you had packed the suitcase and brought it downstairs?"

"I went up to my room and began to undress for bed."

"But that must have been quite fifteen minutes before Mr. Balfame's return. He walked from Cummack's house, which is about a mile from here. It was noticed that you merely had taken your dress off. Would you not have had time to get into bed?"

"If I were a man. But I had my hair to brush—with fifty strokes; and—a little nightly massage, if you will have it. Besides, I had intended to go down and lock the front door after my husband had left."

"Ah!" The admiration of the young men mounted higher. They disliked her coldly, if only for that lack of sex-magnetism, which men, particularly young men, naïve in their extensive surface psychology, take as a personal affront. They did not believe a word she said, and they did not give her and her possible fate a throb of sympathy, but they generously pronounced her "a wonder."

Mr. Broderick took a chance shot. "And did you not during that time look out of the window—toward the grove?"

Mrs. Balfame hesitated the fraction of a minute, then wisely returned to her know-nothing policy. "Why should I? Certainly not. I heard no sound out there. I am not in the habit of examining the grounds from my window at night. It is enough to go through the lower rooms before I lock up."

"But your window was dark when the men ran over from Gifning's after hearing the shot. They remember that. Do you brush your hair—and—and massage in the dark?"

Mrs. Balfame sat back in her chair with the resigned air of the victim who expects an interview with inquisitive newspaper men to last all night. "No. But I sometimes sit in the dark. I told you that I intended to sit up—partly dressed—until my husband had gone. I did not feel like reading, and my eyes were tired. As you know so much, you may have guessed that I cried a little after that trying afternoon. I do not often cry, and my eyes stung."

"But you had forgiven your husband?"

"I had forgiven him many times before. I infer that you know that also."

"Mrs. Balfame, is it not true that about two years ago you contemplated obtaining a divorce?"

This time her eyes flashed with anger. "I see that my kind friends have been gossiping. You would seem to have interviewed everybody in town."

"Pretty nearly. But you don't seem to realise that Elsinore—Brabant County, for that matter—has talked of nothing else but this case for the last four days."

"I did think of a divorce for a short time, but I never mentioned it to him, and as soon as I thought it all out I dismissed the idea. In the first place, divorce is against the principles of the school in which I was brought up, and in the second Mr. Balfame was a good husband in his way. Every woman has some sort of a heavy cross to bear, and I guess mine was lighter than most. The trouble is, we American women expect too much. I dismissed the subject so completely from my mind that I had practically forgotten it."

"Ah—yes—we thought you might have seen some one lurking in the grove and gone down to investigate." This was another chance shot. He was hoping for a "lead."

Mrs. Balfame thought him inspired.

For the moment the cold brilliant eyes of the woman and the keen contracted eyes of the reporter met and clashed. Then Mrs. Balfame displayed her teeth in her sweet and charming smile. "What a truly masculine inference. You don't know me. If I had seen anything I should have flown to the telephone and called the police."

"You look indomitable," murmured Mr. Broderick. "But will you tell us how it happened that you did not hear the shot? The men down at Gifning's did."

"They were standing on the porch, and I think now that I did hear the shot. But my windows were closed. I hear tires burst constantly. And that was Saturday night. The machines turn off just below our gate into Dawbarn Street, especially if they are bound for Beryl Myrtle's road house."

"True." Broderick leaned forward, staring at the carpet. He permitted the silence to last quite a minute. Even Mrs. Balfame, who had congratulated herself that the inquisition must be nearly over, stirred uneasily, so sinister was that silence.

The other men knew the Broderick method too well to spoil one of his designs; they sat in expectant stillness and turned upon Mrs. Balfame a battery of eyes.

Suddenly Broderick raised his head and his sharp boring gaze darted into hers. "I had not fully intended to tell you of a discovery made by one of us yesterday. We have told no one as yet—waiting for just the right moment to publish it. But I think I'll tell you. There is evidence that two revolvers were fired that night. One killed David Balfame, and a bullet from the other penetrated the tree before the house and slightly to the right of where he must have stood for a moment. Bruce here dug it out. Now, not only did the men at Gifning's not hear two shots—indicating that they were fired simultaneously—but one bullet came from a .38 and the other from a .41."

Mrs. Balfame stood up. "Really, gentlemen, I did not consent to see you in order to help you solve riddles. But possibly you know better than I that gunmen generally travel in pairs. I am convinced that my husband—" (they applauded her for not saying "my poor husband") "was killed by one of those creatures, hired by his political enemies. Unless I can tell you something more of interest—if, indeed, you have found anything to interest the great New York public in this interview—I will ask you to excuse me."

The young men were politely on their feet. "And you have no pistol—nor ever had?"

She laughed outright. "Are you trying to fasten the crime on me?"

"Oh, no, indeed. Only, in a case like this, one leaves no stone unturned—I hope you do not think we are rude."

"I only just realise that quite the most polite young men I have ever met have been hoping to make me incriminate myself. If I had not been so dense I should have dismissed you long since. Good night."

And, once more looking human in her just indignation, she lifted her proud head and swept out of the room.

The young men left the house and adjourned to a private room in the rear of their favourite saloon. For twenty minutes they rehearsed the interview carefully, those that had taken notes correcting any lapses of memory on the part of those that had elected to watch as well as listen.

Broderick and many of the men were firmly of the opinion that Mrs. Balfame had committed the crime; others believed that she was shielding some one else; the less experienced were equally positive that no guilty woman taken off her guard repeatedly, as she had been, could "put it over" like that. She had "talked and acted like an innocent woman."

"She acted, all right," said Broderick. "I for one am convinced that she did it. But whether she did or didn't, she's got to be indicted and tried. This case, boys, is too big to throw away—too damned big; and she's already a personality to the public. She's the only one we have the ghost of a chance with; the only one whose arrest and trial would keep the interest going—"

"But say!" It was the youngest reporter that interrupted. "I call it lowdown to fasten a crime on a possibly innocent woman—a lady—keep her in jail for months; try her for murder! Why, even if she were acquitted, she would carry the stigma through life."

"Don't get sentimental, sonny," said Broderick patiently. "Sentiment is to the vanquished in this game. When you've been it as long as the rest of us you'll know that in nine cases out of ten the real solution of any mystery is the simplest. Balfame drank. He had a violent temper when drunk. He was a dog at best. She must have hated him. Look at her. We have reason to believe that she did hate him and that her friends knew it. She thought of divorce two years ago. Gave it up because she was afraid of losing her leadership in this provincial hole. Look at her. She is as proud as Lucifer. And as hard as nails. There had been an ugly scene at the club that afternoon. He mortified her publicly. She was so overcome she had to leave. I've a hunch she poisoned that lemonade and got it out of the way in time. She's the sort that would think of nearly everything. Not quite, of course. Otherwise she would never have invented on the spur of the moment that story about drinking it herself; she'd have had the assumption on tap that one of the neighbours had drunk it. That complication, however, is yet to prove. It merely points a finger at her—straight; what we've got to prove and prove quick is that she was out of doors when that shot was fired—"

"Would you like to see her in the chair?" gasped young Loring.

"Good Lord, no. Not the least danger. Women of that sort don't go to the chair. If she even got a term, I'd head a petition to let her out, for she's a dead game sport, and I'm only after good front page stuff." He turned to Ryder Bruce of the evening edition of his newspaper. "You make love to that German hired girl. She hates us all, for we represent the real American press—that hasn't a hyphen in it. I sensed that. And I don't believe she's all the fool she looks. I believe she can tell something—few servants that can't—and that she only pretended at the inquest that she knew nothing because she was nearly dead with pain and wanted it over. Well, she had the tooth out this morning, and at least she isn't quite as hideous as she was; so go to it, old boy. Get 'round her and do it quick. Use money if necessary. There's not a day to lose. Find out what she wants most—probably it's to send her sweetheart at the front something more substantial than mitts and bands. Got me?"

"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.

He had complimented her on the excellent likeness of Dwight Rush, whom he knew and liked, and remarked quite naturally that he might have sat for her a number of times. The dusky pink had mounted to her hair, but she had replied carelessly that Rush was "a common enough type."

Possibly Broderick would have forgotten the blush had it not have been for the swift change of expression in her eyes: a certain fear followed by a concentrated renitence; and at the same moment he had remembered that he had met Rush once or twice at the Crumleys' during the summer and thought him quite the favoured guest.

Driven only by a mild personal curiosity, he had asked her how she liked Rush and if she saw much of him; he recalled that she had answered with an elaboration of indifference that she hadn't seen him for ages and took no interest in him whatever.

Then Broderick had drawn her on to talk of Mrs. Balfame. Yes, in common with all Elsinore that counted, she admired Mrs. Balfame, although she believed that no one really knew her, that she unconsciously lived among the surfaces of her nature. Her face as she marched down the clubroom that day, and its curious sudden transformation on that other day at the Friday Club when her thoughts so plainly had drifted far from the platitudinous speakers, indicated to Miss Crumley's temperamental mind "depths and possibly tragic possibilities."

It was patent to Mr. Broderick's own mind that her suspicions had not lighted for a moment on the dead man's widow, but it also transpired in the course of the conversation that the young artist who had so "loved to sketch" the Star of Elsinore had suffered a long drop in personal enthusiasm. Pressed astutely, she had remarked that she guessed she was as broad-minded as anybody, especially since her year on the New York press, but she did not approve of married women claiming a right to share in the Great Game designed by Nature for the young of both sexes.

Then the story came out: Miss Crumley, afflicted with a headache something over a fortnight since, and enjoying the cool night air just behind her front gate, had seen Mrs. Balfame come out of Dr. Steuer's garden next door and meet Dwight Rush face to face. He had begged to be allowed to see her home.

Mrs. Balfame had lovely manners, she couldn't help being sweet unless she disliked a person, and no woman will elect to walk up a long dark avenue alone if a man offer to escort her.

Alys would have thought nothing of it—merely assumed that Rush, being a comparative newcomer, had caught at the chance to make a favourable impression on the leader of Elsinore society—(no, he was no snob, but that idea just came to her), if they had not crawled, yes, crawled all the way up the avenue.

Both were vigorous people with long legs; they could have covered the distance to the Balfame place in three minutes. They had been more than ten, and as they passed under the successive lamp posts she had noted the man's bent head, the woman's tilted back—as she gazed up into his eyes, no doubt.

"In this town," Miss Crumley had announced, "a woman is fast or she isn't. You know just where you are. There's a class that's sly about it, but somehow you get 'on' in time. Mrs. Balfame has stood for the highest and best. Mind you, I'm not saying that she ever saw Rush alone again, or cared a snap of her finger for him—or he for her. No doubt she felt, when the rare chance offered of taking a little flyer, that it was too good to miss. But she shouldn't have done it; that's the point. I don't like my idols to have feet of clay."

Broderick had felt both sympathetic and amused. He knew that Alys Crumley was not only sweet of temper and frank, if not candid, but that in spite of all her desperate modernism she cherished high ideals of conduct; and here she was turning loose the cat that skulks somewhere in every commonplace female's nature.

But the whole conversation had left his mind promptly. He had attached no significance whatever to a ten minutes' walk between a polite man and a woman returning alone from a friend's house on a dark night.

Now every word of the conversation came back to him. Rush, he gathered, had gone to the Crumley house several times a week for a while, and then, for reasons known only to himself and Alys, had ceased his visits abruptly. Had she fallen in love with him? Or was it only her vanity that was wounded? And if Rush had dropped a girl as pretty and bright and winning as Alys Crumley—who improved upon acquaintance, moreover—what was the reason? Why had he not fallen in love with her? Had he loved some one else?

Broderick swung his mind to the morning following the murder, when he had met Rush in the hall of the Elsinore Hotel. The lawyer professed himself as delighted to "run up against him" and invited him to breakfast. All this had been natural enough, and it was equally natural that the conversation should have but one theme.

Once more Broderick sought a fugitive impression and found it. Rush, who was a master of words when verbal exactness was imperative, had created an impression in his companion's mind of the impeccability of the murdered man's widow.

Broderick had wondered once or twice since whence came that mental picture of Mrs. Balfame that rose clear-cut in his memory, in spite of his deliberate conviction of her guilt. Other people had raved about her and made no impression upon the young reporter's selective and somewhat cynical mind; but Rush had almost accomplished his purpose!

Why had he sought to accomplish it?

Broderick had known Rush in and out of court for nearly two years. Whenever he had been on an assignment in that part of Brabant County he had made a point of seeking him out, and even of spending an evening with him if he could afford the time. He liked the unique blend of East and West in the man; to Broderick's keen appraising mind Rush reflected the very best of the two great rival bisections of the nation. He liked the mixture of frankness and subtlety, of simple unquestioning patriotism—of assumption that no country but the United States of America mattered in the very least—and the intense concentrated individualism. Of hard-headed American determination to "get there" at any honourable cost, of jealously hidden romanticism.

Broderick was almost at the Crumley gate. He halted for a moment under the dark maples and glanced up the long shadowy avenue, his own narrower and still more jealously guarded "romantic streak" appreciating the possibilities on a dusky evening with a girl whose face floated for a moment before him. But he banished her promptly, searching his memory for some salient trait in Rush that he instinctively knew would establish the current he desired.

He found it after a moment of intense concentration. Rush was the sort of man that loves not woman but a woman. His very friendship for Alys Crumley was evidence that he cared nothing for girls as girls. Only the exceptional drew him, and mere youth left him unmoved.

Knowing Rush as he did, he felt his way rapidly toward the facts. Alys, woman-like, had succumbed to propinquity, and betrayed herself; Rush, finding his mere masculine loneliness misinterpreted, and being honourable to boot, had promptly withdrawn.

But why? Alys would have made him a delightful and useful wife. She was one of those too clever girls whom celibacy made neurotic and uncertain, but out of whom matrimony and maternity knocked all the nonsense at once and finally. She would make a splendid woman.

He should have thought her just the girl to allure Rush, whom he also knew to be fastidious and to set a high value on the good old Brabant blood. Moreover, it was time that Rush would be wanting the permanent companionship of a woman, a bright, progressive, but feminine woman. He had observed certain signs.

Alys, apparently, had not measured up to Rush's secret ideal of the wholly desirable woman, nor appealed to that throbbing vein of romanticism which he had striven to bury beneath the dusty tomes of the law. What sort of woman, then, could satisfy all he desired? And had he found her?

Broderick recalled a certain knightly exaltation in Rush's blue eyes which had come and gone as they discussed Mrs. Balfame, although not a word of the adroit concept he had built remained in the reporter's memory. But those eyes came back to Broderick there in the dark—the eyes of a man young and ardent like himself—he almost fancied he had seen the woman's image in them.

He revived his impression of Mrs. Balfame, seen for the first time to-day, and contemplated it impersonally: A beautiful, a fascinating woman—to a man of Rush's limited experience and idealism; fastidious, proud, gracious, supremely poised.

Nor did she look a day over thirty, although she must be a good bit more—he recalled the obituaries of the dead man: they had alluded to his marital accomplishment as covering a term of some twenty years. Perhaps she was his second wife—but no—nor did it matter. Rush was just the sort of chap to fall in love with a woman older than himself, if she were still young in appearance and as chastely lovely, as unapproachable, as Mrs. Balfame. He would idealise her very years, contrast them with that vague suggestion of virginity that Broderick recalled, of deep untroubled tides.

All romantic men believe in women's unfathomed depths when in love, reflected the star reporter cynically, and Mrs. Balfame was just the sort to go until forty before having the smashing love affair of her life; and to inspire a similar passion in a hard-working idealist like Dwight Rush.

Mrs. Balfame and Dwight Rush! Broderick, who now stood quite still, a few paces from the Crumley gate, whistled.

Could Rush have fired that shot? Broderick recalled that the lawyer had mentioned having spent Saturday evening in Brooklyn—on business.

Broderick shook his head vigorously. So far as he was concerned, Rush never should be asked to produce his alibi. He did not believe that Rush had done it, did not propose to harbour the suggestion for a moment. Rush was not the man to commit a cowardly murder, not even for a woman. If he had wanted to kill the man he would have involved himself in an election row, forced the bully to draw his gun, and then got in his own fire double quick. Standards were standards.

Broderick was more convinced than ever that Mrs. Balfame had committed the deed, and he had established the current. His work was "cut out" for the evening; and without further delay he presented himself at the Widow Crumley's door.

CHAPTER XIV

Supper was over and Broderick and Miss Crumley sat in the back yard studio; Mrs. Crumley had company of her own, and as Alys decried the vulgarity of the legendary American daughter's attitude to the poor-spirited American mother, she invariably retired to the background whenever it would enhance Mrs. Crumley's self-respect to occupy not only the foreground but (if her daughter had an interesting visitor) the entire stage. Alys, since her humiliating failure with Dwight Rush, clung the more passionately to her rules of conduct. They were not red with the blood of life, but at least they served as an anchored buoy.

The atelier was hung with olive green burlap and covered with an artistic litter of sketches. Broderick, before settling himself into a comfortable chair by the stove, examined the more recent and encouraged her with a few words of discriminating praise.

"Keep it up, Alicia. The News for you next month if you are ready for a job. You've improved marvellously in figures, which was where you were weak. Miss Loys, our fashion artist, is marrying next month. You might as well begin with that. You'll be on the paper and can jump into something better when it offers."

Alys nodded emphatically. "Give me work, and as soon as possible. I don't care much what it is. But I want work and plenty of it. It isn't only that I want to use my energies, but I've spent all I can afford on lessons and the rest of it."

"I'll see to it. Your sort doesn't go begging."

Broderick clipped his cigar and watched her thin profile for a moment without speaking.

He noticed for the first time that she had lost the little flesh that formerly had covered her small bones, and that the pink stained the pale ivory of her cheeks only when conversation excited her. But if anything she was prettier—no, more attractive—than ever, for there was more depth in her face, which in spite of its subtle suggestions, had seemed to his critical masculine taste to be too eager, too prone to pour out her personality without reserve when the brain lighted up. Now there was a slight droop of the eyelids which might mean fatigue, but gave length and mystery to the strange olive eyes. Her pink mouth, with its short upper lip, was too small for his taste, but the modelling of her features in general seemed to him more cleanly defined, and the sweep of jaw, almost as keen as a blade, must have delighted her own artist soul. She was rather diminutive (to her sorrow), but the long lines she cultivated in her house gowns made her figure very alluring, and the limp and awkward grace of fashion singularly became her. She wore to-night a "butterfly" gown of georgette (finding, as ever, admirable effects in cotton since she could not afford the costly fabrics), the colour of the American beauty rose, and a narrow band of olive velvet around her thin ivory-white neck. For the moment of her absorption, as she stared into the coals, her attitude would have been one of complete repose had it not been for her restless hands. Broderick noticed, too, that there were darkened hollows under her eyes. "Poor kid," he thought. "She's been through it, all right, and put up a stiff fight. But what a pity."

As he struck a match she rose, and, opening a drawer in the table, took out a box of Russian cigarettes. "I keep these here," she announced, "because I don't want to shock mother; and I seldom indulge these days in expensive habits. But I shall celebrate and smoke all evening. It is jolly to have you like this again, Jimmy. I heard you were engaged. Is it true? You would seem to have deserted every one else."

Mr. Broderick coloured and looked as sheepish as a highly sophisticated star reporter may. "Well, not quite," he admitted. "It's been heavy running, and I don't have all the time there is on my hands. But—I hope—well, I think now it'll be pretty plain sailing—"

"Good, Jimmy, good!"

For a moment he, too, gazed into the coals, his eyes softening; then once more he banished the dainty image evoked; no nonsense for him in Elsinore, with the Balfame tangle to unravel to the glory of the New York News.

"Alys," he said, stretching out his long legs and looking innocent and comfortable, "I want to have a confidential talk with you about Mrs. Balfame." He paused and then looked her straight in the eyes as he launched his bolt. "I have come to the conclusion that she shot him—"

"Jim Broderick!" Alys sprang to her feet, her eyes wide and full of angry light. "Oh, you newspaper men!—How utterly abominable!"

"Why? Sit down, my dear. Somebody did it—not? as our friends the Germans say. And undoubtedly that some one is the person most interested in getting him out of the way."

"But not Mrs. Balfame! Why—I've been brought up on Mrs. Balfame. I'd as soon suspect my own mother."

"No, my friend, you would not. Mrs. Crumley is adorable in her own way, but she is frankly and comfortably in her fifties. She is not a beautiful woman who looks fully ten years younger than she has any right to look. See?"

"Oh—but—"

"Think it over. You said the other day that you believed Mrs. Balfame to have unplumbed depths, or something equally popular with your sex. And you were horrified at her singular facial transformations no less than twice within a fortnight. Certainly the picture you drew of her stalking down the Country Club room was that of a woman in a mood for anything—"

"Of a lovely well-bred woman outraged by the conduct of a drunken brute of a husband. But do you imagine that any woman goes through life without being turned into a fury now and then by her husband?"

"No doubt. But, you see, the death of the brute occurred so soon after the transformation scene enacted behind the expressive face of the lady you have immortalised on paper—and no new-made devil is so complete as that which rises out of the debris of an angel. When your placid sternly-controlled women do explode, they may patch themselves together as swiftly as a cyclone passes, but one of the sinister faces of their hidden collection has been flashed momentarily before the public eye—"

"Oh! Oh!"

"I have tracked down every suspect, several upon whom no suspicion has alighted—as yet. To my mind there are only two people to whom the crime could be brought home."

"Who is the other?"

"Dwight Rush."

This time Alys did not sit up with flaming eyes. To the astute gaze of the reporter she took herself visibly in hand. But she bit through the long tube between her lips. "What makes you think that?" she asked, as she tossed the bits into the fire and lighted another cigarette. "You roam too far afield for me."

"He is in love with her."

"With whom?"

"The lady who was so opportunely, if somewhat sensationally, made a widow last Saturday night."

"He is not! Why—how absurd you are to-night, Jim. She is a thousand years older than he."

"How old is she—"

"Forty-two. Mother sent her a birthday cake last month."

"Rush is thirty-four. Who cares for eight years on the wrong side these days? She looks younger than he does, to say nothing of her own inconsiderable age; and when a woman is as lovely as Mrs. Balfame, as interesting as she must be with that astute mind, that subtle suggestion of mystery—"

"You are mad, simply mad. In the first place, he has had no chance to find out whether she is interesting or not—if he had, all Elsinore would have rung with it. And—ah—"

"What?"

"Nothing."

"Come out with it. It's up to you to prove him innocent if you can."

"He was in Brooklyn that evening. I met him at the Cummacks' the next day, and heard him say so."

"Yes, that is what he is at pains to tell every one. Perhaps he can prove it, perhaps not. But that's not what was in your mind."

"I was afraid of being misunderstood. But it is all right, for of course he can prove that he was in Brooklyn. I happen to know that he went to the Balfame house on his way back from the club Saturday evening, and only stayed a few minutes. I left the club just after Mrs. Balfame did, as I had been out there all afternoon and had promised mother to help her during the evening. I came in on the trolley and got off at the corner of Balfame and Dawbarn Streets, to finish an argument I was having with Harriet Bell over the possibility of Mrs. Balfame losing her social power through the scene out at the club—few of the members would care to go through such a scene a second time. Moreover, some of these newer rich women resent her supremacy and would like to force her to take a back seat.

"I only talked for a few minutes after I got off the car and then walked quickly over to the avenue. Just as I turned the corner I saw Dwight Rush slam the Balfame gate and almost run up the walk. He seemed in a tearing hurry about something. I was standing on our porch only a few minutes later when he strode past—no doubt hoping to catch the seven-ten for Brooklyn. Now!"

"Nobody would be happier than I to prove a first-class alibi for Rush—"

"Who else suspects him?"

"No one; and so far as I am concerned no one shall. If you want the whole truth, what I'm as intent on just now as big news itself is complete exoneration for my friend. But if he didn't do it, she did. And if he butted in upon her at a time like that it was because he was beside himself—no doubt he asked her to elope with him—get a divorce—"

"What utter nonsense!"

"Perhaps. But if she saw her chance, I'm thinking she wouldn't have hesitated a minute to put a bullet in Balfame. People don't turn as sick at the mere thought of committing murder, when there's a good chance of putting it over, as you may imagine. Most of us experience the impulse some time or other. Cowardice or circumstances safeguard us. She did it, take my word for it. She deliberately poisoned a glass of lemonade first, for Balfame to drink when he came home on his way to take the train for Albany. Then, something or other interfering—what, I can only guess at as yet—she found her chance to shoot, and shot."

"Why, if all that were true, she would be a fiend."

"Not necessarily. Merely a highly exasperated woman. One, moreover, who had locked herself up too long. Marital squabbles are safety valves, and I understand she let him do the rowing. But I don't care about her impulses. The act is enough for me. Psychology later, when I write a page of Sunday stuff. But you can see for yourself that if she isn't indicted, and pretty quick, Dwight Rush will be?"

"But no one else suspects him."

"Not yet. But the whole town thinks of nothing else. And as they've about given up all hope of the political crowd, as well as gunmen and tango girls, they'll veer presently toward the truth. But before they settle down on their idol's lofty head, they'll root about for some man who might easily be in love with her—although hopelessly, as a matter of course. Then they'll recall a thousand trifles that no doubt you too recall without effort."

"It's true she turned to him out there, ignoring men she had known for years—she saw him at the house that night, if only for a few moments—Oh, it's too horrible! Mrs. Balfame. An Elsinore lady! And she has been so good to us all these hard years, helped us over and over again. Oh, I don't mind telling you, Jim, that I was a little bit jealous of her—I rather liked Rush—he was interesting and a nice male creature, and I was so lonely—and he stopped coming so suddenly—and then seeing him so delighted to meet her that night—and both of them dragging up the avenue as if each moment were a jewel—I've always thought it hateful for married women to try to cut girls out—it's so unnatural—but I can't hear her accused of murder—to go—Oh, it's too awful to talk about!"

"She'd get off. Don't let that worry you. Innocent or guilty. There's no other way of saving Rush. Be more jealous, if that will help matters. He'll marry her the moment he decently can."

"I don't believe he cares a bit for her. And I don't believe she will marry him or any one."

"Oh, yes, she will. He's the sort to get what he wants—and, take it from me, he is mad about her. And she's at the age to be carried off her feet by an ardent determined lover. Make no mistake about that. Besides, her's is a name that she'll want to drop as soon as possible."

"Jim Broderick, you know that you are deliberately playing on my female nature, on all the baseness you feel sure is in it. I'd always thought you rather subtle, diplomatic. I don't thank you for the compliment of frankness."

"My dear girl, it is a compliment—my utter lack of diplomacy with you. I want to pull this big thing off for my paper, for your paper. And I want to save the friend of both of us. I have merely tried to prove to you that Mrs. Balfame is a mere human being, not a goddess, and deserves to pay some of the penalty of her crime, at least. Certainly, she isn't worth the sacrifice of Dwight Rush—"

"But if he can prove his alibi—"

"Suppose he couldn't. It was Saturday night. What more likely than that he failed to find the man he wanted? I have a dark suspicion that he never went near Brooklyn that night, was in no mood to think of business; although I don't for a moment believe he was near the Balfame place, or knows who did it—unless Mrs. Balfame has confessed to him. She is a very clever woman, not likely to linger on smugly in any fool's paradise. She must know that suspicion will work round to her, and knowing his infatuation, no doubt has consulted him."

Broderick really thought nothing of the sort, but calculated his words; and they produced their effect. The blood rose to the girl's hair, then ebbed, leaving her ghastly. "He would hate her then," she whispered.

"Not Rush. Another man, perhaps; but not only do things go too deep with a man like that for anything but time to cure, but he's chock full of romantic chivalry. And he's madly in love, remember; by that I mean in the first flush. He'd look upon her as a martyr, and immediately set to work to ward suspicion from her; if an alibi could not be proved for him he'd take the crime on his own shoulders, if the worst came to worst."

"Oh! Are men really so Quixotic in these days?"

"Haven't changed fundamentally since they evolved from protoplasm."

"But why should all that chivalry—that magnificent passion—the first love of a man like that—be called out by a woman of Mrs. Balfame's age? Why, it's some girl's right! I don't say mine. Don't think I'm a dog in the manger. I'm trying not to be. But the world is full of girls—not foolish young things only good enough for boys, but girls in their twenties, bright, companionable, helpful, real mates for men—Why, it is unnatural, damnable!"

"Yes, it is," said Broderick sympathetically. "But if human nature weren't a tangled wire fence electrified full of contradictions, life wouldn't be interesting at all. Perhaps it's a mere case of affinity, destiny—don't ever betray me. But there it is. As well try to explain the abrupt taking off of useful men in their prime, of lovely children, of needed mothers, of aged women who have lived exemplary lives, mainly for others, spending their last years with the horrors of cancer. Don't try to explain human passion. And she is beautiful, and fresher to look at than girls of eighteen that tango day and night. But he must be saved from her as well as from arrest. Will you help me?"

"What do you want me to do?"

"Get further evidence about Mrs. Balfame."

"I cannot, and would not if I could. Do you think I would be the means of fastening the crime of murder on any woman?"

"You would if you were a hardened—and good—newspaper woman."

"Well, I'm not. And I won't. Do your own sleuthing."

"More than I are on the job, but I want your help. I don't say you can pick up fragments of her dress in the grove, or that you can—or would—worm yourself into her confidence and extract a confession. But you can set your wits to work and think up ways to put me on the track of more evidence than I've got now. Can you think of anything off-hand?"

"No."

"Ah? What does that intonation mean?"

"Your ears are off the key."

"Not mine. Tell me at once—No,"—He rose and took up his hat—"never mind now. Think it over. You will tell me in a day or two. Just remember while watching all my little seeds sprout that you can help me save a fine fellow and put my heel on a snake—a murderess! Paugh! There's nothing so obscene. Good night."

She did not rise as he let himself out, but sat beside her cold stove thinking and crying until her mother called her to come in and go to bed.

CHAPTER XV

Mrs. Balfame, after she dismissed the newspaper men, went up to her bedroom and sat very still for a long while. She was apprehensive rather than frightened, but she felt very sober.

She had accepted the assurance of the chief of the local police that his inquiry regarding the pistol was a mere matter of routine, and had merely obeyed a normal instinct in concealing it. But she knew the intense interest of her community in the untimely and mysterious exit of one of its most notorious members, an interest raised to the superlative degree by the attentions of the metropolitan press; and she knew also that when a community is excited suspicions are rapidly translated into proofs, and every clue feeds the appetite for a victim.

The European war was a dazzling example on the grand scale of the complete breakdown of intellect before the primitive passions of hatred, greed, envy, and the recurrent desire of man to kill, combined with that monstrous dilation of the ego which consoles him with a childish belief in his own impeccability.

The newspapers of course pandered to the taste of their patrons for morbid vicarious excitement; she had glanced contemptuously at the headlines of her own "Case," and had accepted her temporary notoriety as a matter of course, schooled herself to patience; the ordeal was scarifying but of necessity brief.

But these young men. They had insinuated—what had they not insinuated? Either they had extraordinary powers of divination, or they were a highly specialised branch of the detective force. They had asked questions and forced answers from her that made her start and shiver in the retrospect.

Was it possible they believed she had murdered David Balfame, or were they merely seeking material for a few more columns before the case died a natural death? She had never been interviewed before, save once superficially as President of the Friday Club, but she knew one or two of the county editors, and Alys Crumley had sometimes amused her with stories of her experiences as a New York reporter.

These young men, so well-groomed, so urbane, so charming even, all of them no doubt generously equipped to love and marry and protect with their lives the girl of their choice, were they too but the soldiers of an everlasting battlefield, often at bay and desperate in the trenches? No matter how good their work, how great their "killing," the struggle must be renewed daily to maintain their own footing, to advance, or at least to uphold, the power of their little autocracy. To them journalism was the most important thing in the world, and mere persons like herself, suddenly lifted from obscurity to the brassy peaks of notoriety were so much material for first page columns of the newspapers they served with all the loyalty of those deluded soldiers on the European battlefields. She understood them with an abrupt and complete clarity, but she hated them. They might like and even admire her, but they would show her no mercy if they discovered that she had been in the yard that night. She felt as if a pack of wolves were at her heels.

But finally her brow relaxed. She shrugged her shoulders and began to unbutton the dense black gown that had expressed the mood the world demands of a four-days' widow. Let them suspect, divine what they chose. Not a soul on earth but Anna Steuer knew that she had been out that night after her return home. Even had those lynx-eyed young men sat on the box hedge they could not have seen her, for the avenue was well lighted, and the grove, the entire yard in fact, had been as black as a mine. Even the person skulking among those trees could not have guessed who she was.

For a moment she had been tempted to tell them a little; that she had looked out and seen a moving shadow in the grove. But she had remembered in time that they would ask why she had reserved this testimony at the coroner's inquest. Her rôle was to know nothing. Indubitably the shot had been fired from the trees; nobody questioned that; why involve herself? They would discharge still another set of questions at her, among others why she had not telephoned for the police.

As she hung up her gown she recognised the heavy footfalls of her maid of all work, and when Frieda knocked, bade her enter, employing those cool impersonal tones so resented by the European servant after a brief sojourn on the dedicated American soil.

As the girl closed the door behind her without speaking, Mrs. Balfame turned sharply. She felt at a disadvantage. As her figure was reasonably slim, she wore a cheap corset which she washed once a month in the bath tub with her nailbrush; and her linen, although fresh, as ever, was of stout longcloth, and unrelieved by the coquetry of ribbons. She wore a serviceable tight petticoat of black jersey, beyond which her well-shod feet seemed to loom larger than her head. She was vaguely grateful that she had not been caught by Alys Crumley, so fond of sketching her, and was about to order Frieda to untie her tongue and be gone, when she noticed that the girl's face was no longer bound, and asked kindly:

"Has the toothache gone? I hope you do not suffer any longer."

Frieda lifted her small and crafty eyes and shot a suspicious glance at the mistress who had been so indifferent to what she believed to be the worst of all pains.

"It's out."

"Too bad you didn't have it out at once." Mrs. Balfame hastily encased herself in her bath robe and sat down. "I'll take my dinner upstairs—why—what is it?"

"I want to go home."

"Home?"

"To Germany."

"But, of course you can't. There are a lot of German reservists in the country who would like to go home and fight, but they can't get past the British."

"Some have. I could."

"How? That is quite interesting."

"I not tell. But I want to go."

"Then go, by all means. But please wait a day or two until I get another girl."

"Plenty girls out of job. I want to go to-morrow."

"Oh, very well. But you can't expect a full month's wages, as it is you that is serving notice, not I."

"I do not want a full month wage. I want five hundert dollar."

Mrs. Balfame turned her amazed eyes upon the girl. Her first thought was that the creature had been driven insane by her letters from home, and wondered if she could overcome her if attacked. Then as she met those small, sharp, crafty eyes, set high in the big stolid face like little deadly guns in a fort, her heart missed a beat. But her own gaze, large and cold, did not waver, and she said satirically:

"Well, I am sure I hope you will get it."

"I get it—from you."

Mrs. Balfame lifted her shoulders. "What next? I have contributed what little I can afford to the war funds. I am sorry, but I cannot accommodate you."

"You give me five hundert dollar," reiterated the thick even voice, "or I tell the police you come in the back door two minutes after Mr. Balfame he was kilt at the front gate."

Obvious danger once more turned Mrs. Balfame into pure steel. "Oh, no; you will tell them nothing of the sort, for it is not true. I thought I heard some one on the back stairs when I went down to the kitchen. As you know I always drink a glass of filtered water before going to bed. I had forgotten the episode utterly, but I remember now, I heard a noise outside, even imagined that some one turned the knob of the door, and called up to ask you if you also had heard. I did not know that anything had happened out in front until I returned to my room."

"I see you come in the kitchen door." But the voice was not quite so even, the shifty glance wavered. Frieda felt suddenly the European peasant in the presence of the superior by divine right. Mrs. Balfame followed up her advantage.

"You are lying—for purposes of blackmail. You did not see me come in the door, because I had not been outside of it. I do not even remember opening it to listen, although I may have done so. You saw nothing and cannot blackmail me. Nor would any one believe your word against mine."

"I hear you come in just after me—"

"Heard? Just now you said you saw."

"Ach—"

Mrs. Balfame had an inspiration. "My God!" she exclaimed, springing to her feet, "the murderer took refuge in the house, was hidden in the cellar or attic all night, all the next day! He may be here yet! You may be feeding him!"

She advanced upon the staring girl whose mouth stood open. "Of course. Of course. You are a friend of Old Dutch. It was one of his gunmen who did it, and you are his accomplice. Or perhaps you killed him yourself. Perhaps he treated you as he treated so many girls, and you killed him and are trying to blackmail me for money to get out of the country."

"It is a lie!" Frieda's voice was strangled with outraged virtue. "My man, he fight for the fatherland. Old Dutch, he will not hurt a fly. I would not have touch your pig of a husband. You know that, for you hate him yourself. I have see in the eye, in the hand. I know notings of who kill him, but—no, I have not see you come in the kitchen door, but I hear some one come in, the door shut, you call out in so strange voice—I believe before that you have kill him—now—now I do not know—"

"It would be wise to know nothing,"—Mrs. Balfame's voice was charged with meaning—"unless you wish to be arrested as the criminal, or as an accomplice—after confessing that you entered the house within a moment or two of the shooting. Who is to say exactly when you did come in? Well, better keep your mouth shut. It is wise for innocent people to know as little about a crime as possible. Why did you testify before the coroner's jury that your tooth ached so you heard nothing? Why didn't you tell your story then?"

"I was frightened, and my tooth—I can tink of notings else."

"And now you think it quite safe to blackmail me?"

"I want to go back to Germany—to my man—and I hate this country what hates Germany."

"This country is neutral," said Mrs. Balfame severely. "It regards all the belligerents as barbarians tarred with the same brush. You Germans are so excitable that you imagine we hate when we merely don't care." This was intended to be soothing, but Frieda's brow darkened and she thrust out her pugnacious lips.

"Germany, she is the greatest country in the whole world," she announced. "All the world—it muss know that."

"How familiar that sounds! Just a slight variation on the old American brag that is quite a relief." Mrs. Balfame spoke as lightly as if she merely had let down the bars of her dignity out of sympathy with a lacerated Teuton. "Well, go back to your Germany, Frieda, if you can get there, but don't try to blackmail me again. I have no five hundred dollars to give you if I would. If you choose, you may stay your month out, and spend your evenings taking up a collection among your German friends. You are excused."

She had achieved her purpose. The girl's practical mind was puzzled by the simple explanation of her mistress' presence in the kitchen, deeply impressed by the contemptuous refusal to be blackmailed. Her shoulders drooped and she slunk out of the room.

For a moment Mrs. Balfame clung, reeling, to the back of a chair. Then she went downstairs and telephoned to Dwight Rush.

CHAPTER XVI

The young lawyer was to call at eight o'clock. Mrs. Balfame put on her best black blouse in his honour; it was cut low about the throat and softened with a rolling collar of hemstitched white lawn. This was as far in the art of sex allurement as she was prepared to go; the bare idea of a negligée of white lace and silk, warmed by rose-colored shades, would have filled her with cold disgust. She was not a religious woman, but she had her standards.

At a quarter of eight she made a careful inspection of the lower rooms; sleuths, professional and amateur, would not hesitate to sneak into her house and listen at keyholes. She inferred that the house was under surveillance, for she had looked from her window several times and seen the same man sauntering up and down that end of the avenue. No doubt some one watched the back doors also.

Convinced that her home was still sacrosanct, she placed two chairs at a point in the parlour farthest from the doors leading into the hall, and into a room beyond which Mr. Balfame had used as an office. The doors, of course, would be open throughout the interview. No one should be able to say that she had shut herself up with a young man; on the other hand, it was the duty of the deceased husband's lawyer to call on the widow. Even if those young devils discovered that she had telephoned for him, what more regular than that she should wish to consult her lawyer after such insinuations?

Rush arrived as the town clock struck eight. Frieda, who answered the door in her own good time, surveyed him suspiciously through a narrow aperture to which she applied one eye.

"What you want?" she growled. "Mrs. Balfame she have seen all the reporters already yet."

"Let the gentleman in," called Mrs. Balfame from the parlour. "This is a friend of my late husband."

Rush was permitted to enter. He was a full minute disposing of his hat and overcoat in the hall, while Frieda dragged her heelless slippers back to the kitchen and slammed the door. His own step was not brisk as he left the hall for the parlour, and his face, always colourless, looked thin and haggard. Mrs. Balfame, as she rose and gave him her hand, asked solicitously:

"Are you under the weather? How seedy you look. I wondered why you had not called—"

"A touch of the grippe. Felt all in for a day or two, but am all right now. And although I have been very anxious to see you, I had made up my mind not to call unless you sent for me."

"Well, I sent for you professionally," she retorted coolly. "You don't suppose I took your love making seriously."

He flushed dully, after the manner of men with thick fair skins, and his hard blue eyes lost their fire as he stared at her. It was incomprehensible that she could misunderstand him.

"It was serious enough to me. I merely stayed away, because, having spoken as I did, I—well, I cannot very well explain. You will remember that I made you promise to send for me if you were in trouble—"

"I remembered!" She felt his rebuke obscurely. "It never occurred to me to send for any one else."

"Thank you for that."

"Did you mean anything but politeness when you said that you had been anxious to see me?"

He hesitated, but he had already made up his mind that the time had come to put her on her guard. Besides, he inferred that she had begun herself to appreciate her danger.

"You have read the newspapers. You saw the reporters this afternoon. Of course you must have guessed that they hope for a sensational trial with you as the heroine."

"How can men—men—be such heartless brutes?"

"Ask the public. Even that element that believes itself to be select and would not touch a yellow paper devours a really interesting crime in high life. Never mind that now. Let us get down to brass tacks. They want to fix the crime on you. How are they going to manage it? That is the question for us. Tell me exactly what they said, what they made you say."

Mrs. Balfame gave him so circumstantial an account of the interview that he looked at her in admiration, although his rigid American face, that looked so strong, turned paler still.

"What a splendid witness you would make!" He stared at the carpet for a moment, then flashed his eyes upward much as Broderick had done. "Tell me," he said softly, "is there anything you withheld from them? You know how safe you are with me. But I must be in a position to advise you what to say and to leave unsaid—if the worst comes."

"You mean if I am arrested?" She had a moment of complete naturalness, and stared at him wildly. He leaned forward and patted her hand.

"Anything is possible in a case like this. But you have nothing to fear. Now, will you tell me—"

"Do you think I did it?"

"I know that you did not. But I think you know something about it."

"It would cast no light on the mystery. He was shot from that grove on a pitch dark night, and that is all there is to it."

"Let me be the judge of that."

"Very well. I had put out my light—upstairs—and, as I was nervous, I looked out of the window to see if Dave was coming. I so longed to have him come—and go! Then I happened to glance in the direction of the grove, and I saw some one sneaking about there—"

"Yes!" He half rose, his eyes expanding, his nostrils dilating. "Go on. Go on."

"I told you I was nervous—wrought up from that dreadful scene at the club. I just felt like an adventure! I slipped down stairs and out of the house by the kitchen door—Frieda takes the key of the back hall door on Saturday nights—thinking I would watch the burglar; of course that was what I thought he must be; and I knew that Dave would be along in a minute—"

"How long was this after he telephoned? It would take him some time to walk from Cummack's; and he didn't leave at once—"

"Oh, quite a while after. I was sure then that he would be along in a minute or two. Well—it may seem incredible to you, but I really felt as if excitement of that dangerous sort would be a relief."

"I understand perfectly." Rush spoke with the fatuousness of man who believes that love and complete comprehension of the object beloved are natural corollaries. "But—but that is not the sort of story that goes down with a jury of small farmers and trades-people. They don't know much about your sort of nerves. But go on."

"Well, I managed to get into the grove without being either seen or heard by that man. I am sure of that. He moved round a good deal, and I thought he was feeling about for some point from which he could make a dart for the house. Then I heard Dave in Dawbarn Street, singing. Then I saw him under the lamp-post. After that it all happened so quickly I can hardly recall it clearly enough to describe. The man near me crouched. I can't tell you what I thought then—if I knew he was going to shoot—or why I didn't cry out. Almost before I had time to think at all, he fired, and Dave went down."

"But what about that other bullet? Are you sure there was no one else in the grove?"

"There may have been a dozen. I heard some one running afterwards; there may have been more than one."

"Did you have a pistol?" He spoke very softly. "Don't be afraid to tell me. It might easily have gone off accidentally—or something deeper than your consciousness may have telegraphed an imperious message to your hand."

But Mrs. Balfame, like all artificial people, was intensely secretive, and only delivered herself of the unvarnished truth when it served her purpose best. She gave a little feminine shudder. "I never kept a pistol in the house. If I had, it would have been empty—just something to flourish at a burglar."

"Ah—yes. I was going to say that I was glad of that, but I don't know that it matters. If you had taken a revolver out that night, loaded or otherwise, and confessed to it, you hardly could have escaped arrest by this time, even if it were a .38. And if you confessed to going out into the dark to stalk a man without one—that would make your adventure look foolhardy and purposeless—"

It was evident that he was thinking aloud. She interrupted him sharply:

"But you believe me?"

"I believe every word you say. The more differently you act from other women, the more natural you seem to me. But I think you were dead right in suppressing the episode. It leads nowhere and would incriminate you."

"It may come out yet. That is why I sent for you, not because I was afraid of those reporters. Frieda was on the backstairs that night when I came in. I thought I heard a sound and called out. I told Anna that night and she questioned Frieda indirectly and was satisfied that she had heard nothing, for although she had come home early with a toothache, she was suffering so intensely that she wouldn't have heard if the shot had been fired under her window. So I dismissed such misgivings as I had from my mind. But just after those reporters left she came up to my room and told me that she saw me come in, and tried to blackmail me for five hundred dollars. I soon made her admit that she had not seen me; but she heard me, no doubt of that. I explained logically why I was there—after a drink of water, and that I called out to her because I thought I heard some one try the door—but if those reporters get hold of her—"

His face looked very grim. "That is bad, bad. By the way, why didn't you run to Balfame? That would seem the natural thing—"

"I was suddenly horribly afraid. I think I knew he was dead and I didn't want to go near that. I ran like a dog back to its kennel."

"It was a feminine enough thing to do." For the first time he smiled, and his voice, which had insensibly grown inquisitorial, softened once more. "It was a dreadful position to find oneself in and no mistake. Your instinct was right. If you had been found bending over him—still, as you had no weapon—"

"I think on the whole it would have been better to have gone to him. Of course that is what I should have done if I had loved him. As it was, I ran as far from him as I could get—"

"Well, don't let us waste time discussing the ought to have beens. Unless some one can prove that you were out that night, the whole incident must be suppressed. If you are arrested on any trumped up charge—and the district attorney is keener than the reporters—you must stick to your story. By the way, why didn't you tell the reporters that Frieda was in the house about the time the shot was fired?"

"I had forgotten. The house has been full of people; the neighbourhood has lived here; I have noticed her no more than if she were as wooden as she looks."

"Do you think she did it?"

"I wish I could. But she would not have had time to get into the house before I did. And the footsteps were running toward the lane at the back of the grounds."

"She is one of the swiftest dancers down in that hall where she goes with her crowd every Saturday night. I have been doing a little sleuthing on my own account, but I can't connect her up with Balfame."

"He wouldn't have looked at her."

"You never can tell. A man will often look quite hard at whatever happens to be handy. But she doesn't appear to have any sweetheart, although she's been in the country for four years. She is intimate in the home of Old Dutch and goes about with young Conrad, but he is engaged to some one else. All the boys like to dance with her. She left the hall suddenly and ran home—ostensibly wild with a toothache. If she hid in the grove to kill Balfame she could have got into the house before you did. What was she doing on the stair, anyway?"

"I didn't ask her."

"She may have been too out of breath to answer you. Or too wary. Those other footsteps—they may have been those of an accomplice; the man who fired the other pistol."

"But I would have seen her running ahead of me."

"Not necessarily. It was very dark. Your mind was stunned. You may have hesitated longer than you know before making for the house. One is liable to powerful inhibitions in great crises. Where is the girl? I think I'll have her in."

He walked the floor nervously while Mrs. Balfame went out to the kitchen. Frieda was sitting by the stove knitting. Commanded to come to the parlour, her little eyes almost closed, but she followed Mrs. Balfame and confronted Rush, who stood in the middle of the room looking tall and formidable.

"I am Mrs. Balfame's lawyer," he said without preamble. "She sent for me because you tried to blackmail her. What were you doing on the stairs when you heard Mrs. Balfame in the kitchen? You left the dance hall sometime before eight, and that could not have been more than five minutes past."

Frieda pressed her big lips together in a hard line.

"Oh, you won't speak. Well, if you don't explain to me, you will to the Grand Jury to-morrow. Or I shall get out a warrant to-night for your arrest as the murderer of David Balfame."

"Gott!" The girl's face was almost purple. She raised her knitting needles with a threatening gesture that was almost dramatic. "I did not do it. She has done it."

"What were you doing on the stairs?"

"I would heat water for my tooth."

"Cold water is the thing for an ulcerated tooth."

"I never have the toothache like that already. I am in my room many minutes before I think I go down. Then, when I am on the stairs I hear Mrs. Balfame come in."

"She has explained what you heard."

"No, she have not. I think so when we have talked this evening, but not now. She is—was, I mean, all out of her breath."

"I was terrified." Mrs. Balfame retorted so promptly that Rush flashed her a glance of admiration. Here was a woman who could take care of herself on the witness stand. "First I thought I heard some one trying to get into the door, and then some one sneaking up the stairs."

"Oh—yes." Frieda's tones expressed no conviction. "The educated lady can think very quick. But I say that she have come in by the door, the kitchen door. Always I take the key to the hall door. She know that, and as she not know that I am in, she go out by the kitchen door. Always in the daytime when she goes to the yard she go by the hall door."

"What a pity you did not slam the door when you came in. It would have been quite natural as you were in such agony." Rush spoke sarcastically, but he was deeply perturbed. It was impossible to tell whether the girl was telling the truth or a carefully rehearsed story.

"Of course you know that if you tell that story to the police you will get yourself into serious trouble."

"I get her into trouble."

"Mrs. Balfame is above suspicion. It is not my business to warn you, or to defeat the ends of the law, of which apparently you know nothing—"

"I know someting. Last night I have tell Herr Kraus; and he say that since I have told the coroner I know notings, much better I touch the lady for five hundert and go home."

"O-h-h! That is the advice Old Dutch gave you! Splendid! I think the best thing I can do is to have you arrested bright and early to-morrow morning. Mrs. Balfame is cleared already. You may go."

She stared at him for a moment out of eyes that spat fire like two little guns in the top of a fort; then she swung herself about and retreated to the kitchen.

"That ought to make her disappear to-night. Her friends will hide her. The mere fact of her disappearance will convince the police, as well as the reporters, that she is guilty. You are all right." He spoke boyishly, and his face, no longer rigid, was full of light.

"But if she is innocent?"

"No harm done. She'll be smuggled out of the country and suspicion permanently diverted from you. That is all I care about." He caught her hands impulsively in his. "I am glad, so glad! Oh!—It is too soon now, but wait—" He was out of the house before she grasped the fact that he had arrested himself on the brim of another declaration.

Mrs. Balfame went up to bed, serene once more in the belief that her future was her own, unclouded, full of attractive possibilities for a woman of her position and intellectual attainments.

She made up her mind to take a really deep course of reading, so that the most spiteful should not call her superficial; moreover, she had been conscious more than once of certain mental dissatisfactions, of uneasy vacancies in a mind sufficiently awake to begin to realise the cheapness of its furnishings. Perhaps she would take a course in history at Columbia, another in psychology.

As she put herself into a sturdy cotton night-gown and then brushed back her hair from a rather large forehead before braiding it severely for the night, she realised dimly that that way happiness might lie, that the pleasures of the intellectual life might be very great indeed. She wished regretfully that she could have been brilliantly educated in her youth. In that case she would not have married a man who would incite any spirited woman to seek the summary release, but would be to-day the wife of a judge, perhaps—some fine fellow who had showed the early promise that Dwight Rush must have done. If she could attract one man like that, at the age of forty-two, she could have had a dozen in her train when young if she had had the sense to appreciate them.

But she was philosophical, and it was not her way to quarrel very deeply with herself or with life. Her long braids were as evenly plaited as ever.

She sank into sleep, thinking of the disagreeable necessity of making the kitchen fire in the morning and cooking her own breakfast. Frieda of course would be gone.

CHAPTER XVII

The next morning, when Mrs. Balfame, running lightly down the back stairs, entered the kitchen half an hour earlier than her usual appearance in the dining-room, the front of her housefrock covered with a large apron and her sleeves pinned to the elbow, she beheld Frieda slicing potatoes.

"Why!" The exclamation was impetuous, but her quick mind adapted itself. "I woke up early and thought I would come down and help," she continued evenly. "You have had so much to do of late."

Frieda was regarding her with intense suspicion. "Never you have done that before," she growled. "You will see if I have the dishes by the dinner washed."

"Nonsense. And everything is so different these days. I am hungry, too. I thought it would be nice to hurry breakfast."

"Breakfast always is by eight. You have told me that when I come. I get up by half past six. First I air the house, and sweep the hall. Then I make the fire and put the water to boil. Then I peel the potatoes. Then I make the biscuit. Then I boil the eggs. Then I make the coffee—"

"I know. You are marvellously systematic. But I thought you might make the coffee at once."

"Always the coffee come last." Frieda resumed her task.

"But I don't eat potatoes for breakfast."

"I eat the potatoes. When they fry in the pan, then I put the biscuit in the oven. Then I boil the eggs and then I make the coffee. Breakfast is by eight o'clock."

Mrs. Balfame, with a good-humoured laugh, turned to leave the kitchen. But her mind, alert with apprehension, cast up a memory, vague but far from soothing. "By the way, I seem to remember that I woke up suddenly in the night and heard voices down here. Did you have visitors?"

Frieda flushed the deep and angry red of her infrequent moments of embarrassment. "I have not visitors in the night." She turned on the water tap, which made noise enough to discourage further attempts at conversation; and Mrs. Balfame, to distract her mind, dusted the parlour. She dared not go out into the yard and walk off her restlessness, for there were now two sentinels preserving what they believed to be a casual attitude before her gate. She would have given much to know whether those men were watching her movements or those of her servant.

Immediately after breakfast, the systematic Frieda was persuaded to go to the railway station and buy the New York papers when the train came in. Frieda might be a finished product of the greatest machine shop the world has ever known, but she was young and she liked the bustle of life at the station, and the long walk down Main Street, so different from the aristocratic repose of Elsinore Avenue. Mrs. Balfame, watching behind the curtain, saw that one of the sentinels followed her. The other continued to lean against the lamp-post whittling a stick. Both she and Frieda were watched!

But the disquiet induced by the not unnatural surveillance of premises identified with a recent crime was soon forgotten in the superior powers of the New York press to excite both disquiet and indignation.

She had missed a photograph of herself while dusting the parlour and had forgiven the loyal thief as it was a remarkably pretty picture and portrayed a woman sweet, fashionable, and lofty. To her horror the picture which graced the first page of the great dailies was that of a hard defiant female, quite certain, without a line of letter press, to prejudice a public anxious to believe the worst.

Tears of outraged vanity blurred her vision for a few moments before the full menace of that silent witness took possession of her. She knew that most people deteriorated under the mysterious but always fatal encounter of their photographs with the "staff artist," but she felt all the sensations of the outraged novice.

A moment after she had dashed her tears away she turned pale; and when she finished reading the interviews the beautiful whiteness of her skin was disfigured by a greenish pallor.

The interviews were written with a devilish cunning that protected the newspapers from danger of libel suit but subtly gave the public to understand that its appetite for a towering figure in the Balfame case was about to be gratified.

There was no doubt that two shots had been fired from the grove simultaneously, and from revolvers of different calibre (picture of tree and gate).

Was one of them—the smaller—fired by a woman? And if so, by what woman?

Not one of the females whose names had been linked at one time or another with the versatile Mr. Balfame but had proved her alibi, and so far as was known—although of course some one as yet unsuspected may have climbed the back fence and hid in the grove—the only two women on the premises were the widow and her extraordinarily plain servant.

Balfame was shot with a .41 revolver. In one of the newspapers it was casually and not too politely remarked that Mrs. Balfame had larger hands and feet than one would expect from her general elegance of figure and aristocratic features, and in the same rambling sentence (this was written by the deeply calculating Mr. Broderick) the public was informed that certain footprints might have been those of a large woman or of a medium sized man. In the next paragraph but one Mrs. Balfame's stately height was again commented upon, but as the public had already been informed that she was an expert at target practice, reiteration of this fact was astutely avoided.

A great deal was said here and there of her composure, her large studiously expressionless grey eyes, her nimble mind that so often routed her inquisitors, but was allied to a temperament of ice and a manifest power of cool and deliberate calculation.

The dullest reader was quickened into the belief that he was the real detective and that his unerring sense had carried him straight to the woman who had hated the murdered man and had quarrelled with him in public a few hours before his death.

The episode of Mrs. Balfame's offer to make her husband a glass of doctored lemonade and the disappearance of both beverage and glass was not mentioned; presumably these bright young men did not believe in digressions or in rousing a curiosity they might not be able to appease. The interview concluded with a maddening hint at immediate developments.

Mrs. Balfame let the papers drop to the floor one by one; when she had finished the last she drew her breath painfully for several moments. The room turned black, and it was cut by rows of bared and menacing teeth, infinitely multiplied.

But she was not the woman to give way to fear for long, or even to bewilderment. There could be no real danger, and all that should concern her was the outrageous, the intolerably vulgar publicity. A woman whose good taste was both natural and cultivated, she felt this ruthless tossing of her sacred person into the public maw much as the more refined octoroons may have felt when they stood on the auction block in the good old days down South. She shuddered and gritted her teeth; she wished that she were a hysterical woman that she might find relief in shrieking at the top of her voice and smashing the furniture.

Why, oh why, could not David Balfame have been permitted by the fate which had decreed his end on that particular night to enter the house and drink the lemonade; to die decently, painlessly, bloodlessly (she shrank aside when compelled to pass those blood stains on the brick path), as any man might die when his overtaxed heart simply stopped? She would have run down the moment she heard the fall, she would have managed to get the glass out of the way if Frieda had condescended to visit the scene, which was quite unlikely. She would have run over to Doctor Lequer, who lived next door to the Gifnings, and he would have sent for the coroner. Both inevitably would have pronounced the death due to heart failure. It was fate that had bungled, not she.

She mused, however, that she should have had a duplicate glass of lemonade to leave half consumed on the table, as it would be recalled that he had expected to imbibe a soothing draught immediately upon his return; and adjacent liquids invariably induce suspicion in cases of sudden death. But that did not matter now.

She set her wits to work upon the identity of her companion in the grove. Was it Frieda? Or an accomplice of the girl, who was already in the house or on the alert to direct him out by the rear pathway? But why Frieda? She knew the raging hate that had filled her husband since the declaration of war, and she knew that his rivals in politics hated him with increasing virulency; as they were beginning to hate everybody that presumed to question the right and might of Germany.

But she was a woman just and sensible. Nor for a moment could she visualise Old Dutch or any of his tribe shooting David Balfame because he cursed the Kaiser and sang Tipperary. The supposition was too shallow to be entertained.

The person in the grove had been either a bitter political rival too intimate with the local police to be in danger of arrest, or some woman who for a time may have believed herself to be his wife in the larger village of New York.

She could have sworn that that stealthy figure so close to her was a man, but women's skirts were very narrow and silent these days, and after all she herself was as tall as the average man.

Before noon the house was filled with sympathising and indignant friends. Cummack came up town to assure her that it was a shame; and he would ask Rush if those New York papers couldn't be had up for libel. He'd take the eleven-thirty for Dobton and consult with him.

The ladies were knitting, no one more impersonally than Mrs. Balfame, although she was wondering if these kind friends expected to stay to lunch, when an automobile drove honking up to the door, and Mrs. Battle teetered over to the window.

"For the land's sake," she exclaimed. "If it isn't the deputy sheriff from Dobton. Now, what do you suppose?"

Mrs. Balfame stood up suddenly, and the other women sat with their needles suspended as if suddenly overcome by a noxious gas, with the exception of Mrs. Cummack, who ran over to her sister-in-law and put her plump arm about that easily compassed waist. Mrs. Balfame drew away haughtily.

"I am not frightened," she said in her sweet cool voice. "I am prepared for anything after those newspapers—that is all."

The bell pealed, and Mrs. Gifning, too curious to wait upon the hand-maiden, ran out and opened the front door. She returned a moment later with her little blue eyes snapping with excitement.

"What do you think?" she gasped. "It is Frieda they want. She is being subpœnaed to Dobton to testify before the Grand Jury. The deputy sheriff is going to take her with him."

Mrs. Balfame returned to her chair with such composure that no one suspected the sudden weakening of her knees. Instantly she realised the meaning of the voices she had heard in the night. Frieda had been "interviewed," either by the press or the police, and induced, probably bribed, to talk. No wonder she had not run away.

But she too resumed her knitting.

CHAPTER XVIII

Young Bruce had had no appetite for his part in the Balfame drama. He had presented himself at the back door, however, at eight o'clock on the night of the interview with the heroine, assuming that Frieda would be moving at her usual snail's pace from the day of work toward the evening of leisure. She slammed the door in his face.

When he persisted, thrusting his cherubic countenance through the window, she threatened him with the hose. Neither failure daunted him, and he was convinced that she knew more of the case than she was willing to admit; but it was obvious that he was not the man to appeal to the fragment of heart she had brought from East Prussia. The mere fact that he looked rather German and yet was straight American—employed, moreover, by a newspaper that made no secret of its hostility to her country—satisfied him that he would not be permitted to approach her closely enough to attempt any form of persuasion. He drew the long breath of deliverance as he reached this conclusion; the bare idea that he might have to bestow a kiss upon Frieda in the heroic pursuit of duty had induced a sensation of nausea. He was an extremely fastidious young man. But even as he accepted defeat with mingled relief and chagrin, the brilliant alternative occurred to him.

He had ascertained that Frieda was intimate in the home of Conrad Kraus, otherwise "Old Dutch," of Dobton, the County seat. Conrad, Jr., treated her as a brother should, and it was his habit to escort her home from the popular dance-hall of Elsinore on Saturday nights. Bruce had no difficulty in learning that the young German-American had been dancing with his favourite partner when her dead nerve seemed to threaten explosion and had fraternally run home with her. The energetic reporter did not wait upon the next trolley for Dobton, but hired an automobile and descended in front of Old Dutch's saloon fifteen minutes later.

Young Kraus was busy; and Bruce, after ordering beer and cheese and taking it to an occupied table, drew the information from a neighbour that Conrad, Jr., would be on duty behind the bar until midnight. It was the habit of Papa Kraus to retire promptly on the stroke of nine and take his entire family, save Conrad, with him. The eldest of the united family continued to assuage the thirst of the neighbourhood until twelve o'clock, when he shut up the front of the house and went to bed in the rear as quickly as possible; he must rise betimes and clerk in the leading grocery-store of the town. He was only twenty-two, but thrifty and hard-working and anxious to marry.

Bruce caught the next train for New York, had a brief talk with his city editor, and returned to Dobton a few moments before the closing hour of the saloon. He hung about the bar until the opportunity came to speak to Conrad unheard.

"I want a word with you as soon as you have shut up," he said without preamble.

The young German scowled at the reporter. Although a native son of Dobton, he resented the attitude of the American press as deeply as his irascible old father, and he still more deeply resented the suspicion that had hovered for a moment over the house of Kraus.

"Don't get mad till you hear what I've got to say," whispered Bruce. "There may be a cool five hundred in it for you."

Conrad glanced at the clock. It was five minutes to twelve. He stood as immobile as his duties would permit until the stroke of midnight, when he turned out the last reluctant patron, locked the door and followed the reporter down the still-illuminated street to a dark avenue in the residence quarter. Then the two fell into step.

"Now, what is it?" growled Conrad, who did not like to have his habits disturbed. "I get up—"

"That's all right. I won't keep you fifteen minutes. I want you to tell me all you know about the night of the Balfame murder."

He had taken the young German's arm and felt it stiffen. "I know nothing," was the reply.

"Oh, yes, you do. You took Frieda home and got there some little time before the shooting. You went in the side entrance to the back yard, but you could see the grove all right."

"It was a black-dark night. I could see nothing in the grove."

"Ah! You saw something else! You have been afraid to speak out, as there had been talk of your father having employed gun-men—"

"Such lies!" shrieked young Kraus.

"Of course! I know that. So does the press. That was a wild dream of the police. But all the same you thought it wouldn't be a bad idea to keep clear of the whole business. That is true. Don't attempt to deny it. You saw something that would put the law on the right track. Now, what was it? There are five hundred dollars waiting for you if you will tell the truth. I don't want anything but the truth, mind you. I don't represent a paper that pays for lies, so your honour is quite safe. So also are you."

Conrad ruminated for a few moments. He was literal and honest and wanted to be quite positive that he was not asked to do something which would make him feel uncomfortable while investing those desirable five hundred dollars in West Elsinore town lots, and could reassure himself that the truth was always right whether commercially valuable or not. He balanced the pro's and con's so long that Bruce was about to break out impatiently just as he made up his mind.

"Yes, I saw something. But I wished to say nothing. They might say that I was in it, or that I lied to protect Frieda—"

"That's all right. There was no possible connection between her and Balfame—"

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."

He hired another automobile, and they left it at the corner of Dawbarn and Orchard Streets, entering the Balfame place by the tradesmen's gate on the left, and creeping to the rear of the house. The lane behind the four acres of the little estate was full of ruts and too far away from the house for adventuring on a dark night. They had been halted by the detective on watch, but when their errand was hastily explained, he joined forces with them and even climbed a lean-to in the endeavour to rouse Miss Appel from her young and virtuous slumbers. Their combined efforts covered three hours; and that explains why the tremendous news-story appeared in the early edition of the afternoon papers instead of whetting several million morning appetites.

The interview with Frieda, who became very wide awake when the unseemly intrusion was elucidated by the trustworthy Conrad, and bargained for five hundred dollars, explains why Mrs. Balfame spent Thursday night in the County Jail behind Dobton Courthouse.

CHAPTER XIX

When the Dobton sheriff and his deputies came to arrest Mrs. Balfame, the wife of their old comrade in arms, all they were able to tell her was that the District Attorney had applied for the warrant immediately after the testimony before the Grand Jury of Frieda Appel and of the Krauses, father and son. What that testimony had been they could not have told her if they would, but that it had been strong and corroborative enough to insure her indictment by the Grand Jury was as manifest as it was ominous.

They arrived just as Mrs. Balfame was about to leave the house to lunch with Mrs. Cummack; Frieda had left long before it was time to prepare the midday meal. Mr. Cramb, the sheriff, shut the door behind him and in the faces of the indignant women reporters, who, less ruthless but equally loyal to their journals, wanted a "human interest" story for the stimulated public. Mrs. Balfame and her friends retreated before the posse into the parlour. Mrs. Battle wept loudly; Alys Crumley, who had come in with her mother a few moments since, fell suddenly on a chair in the corner and pressed her hands against her mouth, her horrified eyes staring at Mrs. Balfame. The other women shed tears as the equally doleful sheriff explained his errand and read the warrant. Mrs. Balfame alone was calm. She exerted herself supremely and sent so peremptory a message along her quaking nerves that it benumbed them for the moment. She had only a faint sense of drama, but a very keen one of her own peculiar position in her little world, and she knew that in this grisly crisis of her destiny she was expected to behave as a brave and dignified woman should—a woman of whom her friends could continue to exult as head and shoulders above the common mass. She rose to the occasion.

"Don't you worry—just!" said Mr. Cramb, patting her shoulder, although he never had had the temerity to offer her his hand before, and had often "pitied Dave." "They lied, them Duytchers, for some reason or other, but they can't really have nothin' on you, and we'll find out what they're up to, double quick."

"I do not worry," said Mrs. Balfame coldly, "—although quite naturally I object to the humiliation of arrest, and of spending even a night in jail. Exactly what is the charge against me?"

The sheriff crumpled his features and cleared his throat. "Well, it's murder, I guess. It's an ugly word, but words don't mean nothin' when there's nothin' in them."