Alys Crumley entertained four of the newspaper women at a picnic lunch
in her studio. She was grateful for the distraction from her own
thoughts and diverted by their theories. None had seen Mrs. Balfame save
through the medium of the staff artist, and they were inclined to accept
the prima facie evidence of her guilt. When Alys fetched a photograph
from the house, however, they immediately reversed their opinion, for
the pictured face was that of a lovely cold and well-bred woman without
a trace of hardness or predisposition to crime. They fell in love with
it and vowed to defend her to the best of their ability, Miss Crumley
promising to exert her influence with the accused to obtain an interview
for the new devotees.
Before wrapping the photograph for its inevitable journey to New York,
Alys gave it a moment of study herself, wondering if she may not have
misinterpreted what she saw that morning. No one had worshipped at that
shrine more devoutly than she, even during these later years of
metropolitan concordance.
"What is your theory?" asked Miss Austin of _The Evening News_. "They
say that a lot of those men at the Elks know, but never will come
through. Do you think it was any of those girls? It might have been some
woman he knew in New York who followed him here for the first time--who
would not have been recognised if seen, and got away in a waiting
automobile."
"As likely as not," said Miss Crumley indifferently. "I have heard so
many theories advanced and rejected that I am almost as confused as the
police. Jim Broderick says that the simplest explanation is generally
the correct one, but while he believes Mrs. Balfame to be the natural
solution, I happen to know her better than he does, and a good deal more
of this community. Three or four men and one or two women would be still
simpler explanations. Possibly--" She turned cold and almost lost her
breath, but the impulse to put a maddening possibility into verbal form
was irresistible. "Perhaps some man that is in love with Mrs. Balfame
did it." And then she hated herself, for she felt as if she had thrown
Dwight Rush to the lions.
"But who? Who?" the girls were demanding, more excited over this
picturesque solution than they had been since "the story broke." Even
Miss Austin, who disdained to write "sob stuff" and was a graduate of
the Columbia School of Journalism, was almost on her feet, while Miss
Lauretta Lea, who wept vicariously for fifty thousand women three times
a week, shrieked without shame.
"Oh, fine!" "How truly enchanting!" "Dear Miss Crumley--Alys--who, who
is the man?"
"Oh, as to that, I've not an idea. Mrs. Balfame always has rather
disdained men, and even if she were susceptible is far too
straight-laced to permit any man to pay her compromising attentions, or
to meet him secretly. But of course she is very pretty, still young to
look at, so there is the possibility--"
"But just run over all the marriageable men in the community--"
"Oh, he might be married, you know." Alys struggled to keep the alarm
out of her voice.
"But in that case there would still be the wife to dispose of, and now,
at least, he'd never dare kill her, or even divorce her. No, I don't
hold to that theory. It's more like the reckless act of the unchastened
bachelor still young enough for illusions. You must have a theory, Alys.
Stand and deliver." Miss Austin spoke with quick insistence. She had
detected her hostess' suppressed excitement and was convinced that the
hint had not been thrown out at random. She also had been conscious of
an indefinable change in her old associate, and now she noticed it in
detail. She might be too self-respecting to dip her pen in bathos, but
she was nevertheless young, and her imagination began playing about
possibilities like lightning over a wire fence.
The heat which confused Alys Crumley's brain was expressed by a dull
glow in her strange olive-colored eyes, but she made a desperate effort
to look impersonal and rather bored.
"No, I have no theory: certainly it could not be any of the men
hereabouts. Mrs. Balfame has known all of them from infancy up. Perhaps
she met some one in New York; I don't know that she ever went to any of
the tea-tango places--she doesn't dance; but she might have gone with
Mrs. Gifning or Mrs. Frew, and just met some one that fell in love with
her--Oh, you mustn't take a mere idea of mine too seriously."
"Hm!" said Miss Austin. "It doesn't sound plausible. A man she met now
and then at a tea-room! She's not the sort to drive men to distraction
in the casual meeting--not the type. And I can't see the men that
frequent afternoon tea-rooms working themselves up to the point of
murder. No, if there is a man in the case, he is here; if not in
Elsinore, then in the county; and it is some man who has known her long
enough and seen her often enough to descend from mere admiration for her
rather chilling type of beauty into the most desperate desire for
possession--"
Alys burst into a ringing peal of laughter. "Really, Sarah, I wonder you
are not already famous as a fiction-story writer. How much longer do you
propose to stick to prosaic journalism?"
"I've had two stories accepted by leading magazines this month, I'd have
you know; but your memory is short if you think journalism prosaic. It
germinates pretty nearly all the fiction microbes that later ravage the
popular magazines. That was what was the matter with the old
magazines--no modern symptoms, let alone fevers--only antidotes that
somehow didn't work. But if you won't tell, Alys, I'll find out for
myself. If I don't find out, Jim Broderick will, and I'd give my eyes to
get ahead of him. But we've got to catch our train, girls."
They took the short cut through the hall of the dwelling, and as they
passed the open door of the living-room, Miss Lauretta Lea exclaimed
with pleasure at its conceit of a cool green wood. Alys could do no less
than invite them in. While the three other reporters were walking about
observing the charming room in detail and envying its owner, Miss Sarah
Austin walked directly over to a framed photograph of Dwight Rush that
stood on a side-table. He had given it to Mrs. Crumley; and Alys, who
spared her mother all unnecessary anxiety, had not yet conceived a
logical excuse for its removal.
"Whom have we here?" demanded the searching young realist. "Don't tell
me, Alys, that here is the secret of your desertion of the New York
press. I'd forgive you, though, for he is precisely the type I most
admire. The modern Samson before Delilah cuts off what little hair his
barber leaves. But the same old Samson looking round for the same old
Delilah--"
"Really, Sarah, are you insinuating that I am a Delilah? That is too
much!" Alys put her arm round Miss Austin's waist and smiled teasingly.
"No wonder your newspaper stories are so bitingly realistic; the
restraints you force upon your imagination must put it quite out of
commission for the time being. That is Mr. Dwight Rush, quite a well
known lawyer in Brabant already, although he has only been here about
two years."
"I thought you said all your young men had grown up in the community."
"I had quite forgotten him."
"Ha! Is he married?"
"Oh, no. And he was born and brought up over in Rennselaerville, by the
way, but went West to some college or university and practised out there
for several years."
"How old is he?"
"Oh, about thirty-three or thirty-four."
"Must have been away a good many years. Would return quite fresh--must
have had a lot made over him here--looks clever and built for
success--that concentrated driving type that always gets there--"
"He goes very little into society and no one possibly could lionise
him."
"Is he interesting to talk to or just another specialist?"
"That's about it. But he was more a friend of mother's than mine. That
is her picture."
"Oh! He likes older women, then? Looks as if he might. Never would take
the trouble, that type, to adapt himself to girls, try to understand
them. Could it be--Alys, you must know if he knows Mrs. Balfame!"
Alys was cold again but laid violent hands on her nerves. "No better
than he knew any one else, if as well, for Mrs. Balfame never talked to
the younger men. She doesn't attract them, anyhow. Do you realise, dear,
that you are asking if Mr. Rush committed murder?"
"With that jaw and those nostrils, he could--oh, rather! And it is one
of those cast-iron, passionate faces; when those men do let go--"
"Oh, really!" Alys dropped her arm, and her subtle face expressed
disdain. "Mr. Rush is quite too steel clad to be carried away even if he
were capable of committing a low and cowardly murder. He happens to be a
gentleman and about as astute and poised as they are made. Do please
send your romantic imagination off on another flight."
"Not I. I'm going to account for every moment he spent that night."
"Would you like to see Mr. Rush go to the chair?" asked Miss Crumley
sternly.
"Oh, good Lord no." Miss Austin turned pale. "I don't believe in capital
punishment, anyhow. No, I'll not tell a thing if I find him out. But
how interesting to know! I'd write a corking story--fiction--about it.
Those deep glimpses into life--into those terrible abysses of the human
heart--no writer can become great without them."
"Well, don't waste your time trying to find the criminal in this
excellent citizen. You might set some of the newspaper men on his trail
and blacken his name while you discovered nothing. Better get on the
track of the potential woman in New York."
"Not half so interesting. Just one of those apartment-house
misalliances. No, I'm out for Mr. Rush, and when I have the proof, I'll
extract a confession; but I'll dig a little grave in my brain and bury
his secret--then when it has ripened, exhume and toss it into that
crucible through which facts pass and come out--fiction. Get me, dear?"
"You talk like a literary ghoul. But I know you don't mean a word of it.
Good-bye, girls. Do drop in whenever you are over on the case." She
kissed them all, and Miss Lauretta Lea exclaimed innocently:
"You've lost that lovely dusky colour you had awhile ago, dear. You look
more like old ivory than ever--old ivory and olive. I wonder all the
artists don't paint you. I suppose every young man in Elsinore is in
love with you. Marry, my dear, marry. I've been in this game twelve
years. Show me a willing would-be husband and I'd take him so quick he'd
never know what struck him. Give my hopes of being a man in the next
incarnation for ten babies to weep over when they had croup or got lost
in the woods of New York City. Hate sob stuff. Cut it out, kid, before
you begin it."
She talked all the way to the gate and for several yards down the
avenue, waving a final farewell with a somewhat tragic smile.
"Why doesn't that girl marry?" she asked as they walked rapidly to the
station. "Still fresh, if she is twenty-six. I'm only thirty-four and I
look like a hag beside her."
"Maybe she can't get the man she wants," replied the potential novelist,
who was thinking deeply.