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 detour 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.