Mrs. Balfame Part 15

"Suppose he couldn't. It was Sat.u.r.day 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 pa.s.sion--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, d.a.m.nable!"

"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 pa.s.sion. 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 a.s.surance 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 appet.i.te for a victim.

The European war was a dazzling example on the grand scale of the complete breakdown of intellect before the primitive pa.s.sions 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 s.h.i.+ver 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 bra.s.sy 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 unb.u.t.ton 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 role was to know nothing. Indubitably the shot had been fired from the trees; n.o.body 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: