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Mrs. Balfame

[Pg 187] <h2>CHAPTER XXI</h2> 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 primâ 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[Pg 188] 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—" [Pg 189] "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![Pg 190] 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.[Pg 191] 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—" [Pg 192] "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,[Pg 193] 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." [Pg 194] 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. <hr /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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