CHAPTER XXIII

An hour later, Alys was driving through Elsinore, her mind a trifle less personal, as it dwelt upon her brief interview with the superintendent of the hospital. Mrs. Dissosway, who was devoted to her niece and believed her to be as exceptional as Miss Crumley in her most aspiring moments could have wished, had confided that she was sure poor dear Anna knew something about that awful crime, for in her delirious moments she kept uttering Enid Balfame's name in very odd tones indeed. She had a.s.sured and rea.s.sured the patient that there was no clue to the murderer; and if she kept on and asked to see Mrs. Balfame,--which, significantly, she had not done,--they of course would tell her that the friend who should have hastened to her bedside had suffered a nervous breakdown or sprained her ankle. It was a blessing that she was in no condition to testify against her idol, for it would kill her, just as it might be fatal now if she knew that Enid was in the County Jail.

After some delicate insistence, Mrs. Dissosway had admitted that Dr.

Anna must convince any one who listened attentively to her mutterings that her belief in her friend's guilt was positive, whether she had exact knowledge or not.

"'Oh, Enid! Oh, _Enid_!' she kept repeating in such a tone of anguish and reproach, and then muttered: 'Poor child! What a life!' She also once said something about a pistol in a tone of dismay, but the other words I couldn't make out.

"The nurses on her case," Mrs. Dissosway had concluded, "will pay no attention. They are too accustomed to fever patients to listen to ravings, and the two she will have are from other parts of the State, anyhow. They never heard of Mrs. Balfame before. But I have been in and out all day, and I know she is worrying in her poor hot mind both over her friend's crime and her danger--"

"Then you believe Mrs. Balfame did it?" Miss Crumley had interrupted.

"Yes, I do--now, anyhow; and I never was daffy about her. She barely remembers I am alive, living out here for the last fifteen years as I have done, and I am your mother's sister. I don't call her a sn.o.b; it's just that she don't seem to take any interest in people that ain't in her own set. But the Lord knows I'd never tell on her if I had the proof in my hand, for I don't want any of our grand old families disgraced, and she's been good to your mother. No, she can go free, and welcome, but I wish poor Anna could have been spared the knowledge of her crime, for it's going to be all the harder to nurse her well, and she has a bad case. If she has to go, she shall go in peace. I'll see to that. But when Enid Balfame is out, I'll take good care to let her know that she has another crime to carry on her conscience--if she's got one."

Alys had not asked to see the patient, knowing that it would be useless, but Mrs. Dissosway had walked out to the cart with her, and pointing to a window on the first floor of the wing devoted to paying patients, remarked: "That's where she is, poor dear." Alys had wondered if she should fall low enough before this accursed case were finished to describe the position of that room to Broderick and insinuate what he might find there if he chose to hide in the little balcony and enter the room when the night nurse had gone out for the midnight supper. He was quite capable of it.

But not if she could win Rush from the case, nor unless, Mrs. Balfame discharged, he were arrested and committed for the crime. She wished now that he had been arrested instead of Mrs. Balfame, for then she could have saved him from both punishment and the other woman without this awful sense of sliding slowly down-hill to choke in a poisonous slime.

She might have been obliged to exercise a certain amount of sophistry even then, but she could have stood it.

She was driving slowly down Atlantic Avenue when she heard her name called in accents of mystery and excitement. Her modest rig was pa.s.sing the imposing mansion of Elisha Battle, bank president, and like all the newer homes of Elsinore the grounds were unconfined and the shallow lawn ended at the pavement. From one of the drawing-room windows Lottie Gifning slanted, and as she met Miss Crumley's eye, she beckoned peremptorily. The desire for solitude was still strong upon Alys, but as she had no excuse to advance, she wound the lines round the whip and went slowly up the brick walk.

Mrs. Gifning opened the front door and swept her into the drawing-room, where six or seven other women with tense excited faces sat on the expensive furniture. Mrs. Battle, herself upholstered in shining black-and-white satin, and further clad in invisible armour, occupied a stately and upright chair. This throne had been made to order; consequently her small feet in their high-heeled pumps touched the floor. The large room, upon which much money had been spent, was not tasteless; it merely had no individuality whatever. Like many another in Elsinore, it set Miss Crumley's teeth on edge, but compensated her to-day as ever by inspiring her with a sense of remote superiority.

"Dear Alys--so glad to see you!" Mrs. Battle did not rise. She was fond of Alys, but thought her of no consequence whatever. "Lottie saw you and called you in as you have always been such a friend of poor dear Enid's, and you know those horrid reporters, and we want to impress upon you the necessity of putting them off the track. We are talking the whole dreadful business over and trying to decide what to do."

"Do?" Alys, more interested, disposed her limber uncorseted young figure into a low chair and for a moment diverted envious attention from the momentous subject in hand. "What can we do? Has bail been accepted?"

"No, nor likely to be. Isn't it too awful?"

"Yes, it's awful." Alys stared at the floor, but although her words might have been uttered by any of the ladies present, her tone was almost conventional. No one noticed this defection, however, and Mrs.

Battle--after Mrs. Gifning had tiptoed to all the doors, opened them suddenly and closed them again,--proceeded in so low a tone that there was an immediate hitching of chairs over the Persian rug:

"What we were debating when you came in, Alys, was whether--oh, it's too awful!--she did it or not. Did she or didn't she? She has a perfectly beautiful character--but the provocation! Few women have been tried more severely. And we all know what human nature is under the influence of sudden tremendous pa.s.sion." Mrs. Battle, who never had been ruffled by any sort of pa.s.sion, leaned against the high back of her chair, and elevated her eyebrows and one corner of her mouth.

"Could such a crime have been unpremeditated?" asked Alys. "You forget that whoever did it was waiting in the grove for Balfame to come home from Sam's, and evidently timed to shoot as he reached the gate."

"Pa.s.sion, my dear child," said Mrs. Bascom, wife of the Justice for Brabant, speaking softly and with some diffidence, for she disliked the word, "can endure for quite a while once the blood is up and pounding in the head. It would take a good deal to work up dear Enid, but when a woman like that does rise to the pitch under many and abominable provocations, well, I guess she could stay at that pitch a good bit longer than all of us put together. I've thought of nothing else for three days and nights,--the Judge won't discuss it with me,--and I feel convinced that she did it."

"So have and so am I," contributed Mrs. Battle, sepulchrally.

"I'm afraid she did!" Mrs. Gifning heaved an abysmal sigh. "I suspected it when I consulted her about her mourning. She was much too cool. A woman who could think of two kinds of blouses she wanted the very morning after the tragedy, and he not out of the house, must have been exercising a suspicious restraint or else have reverted to the cold-bloodedness with which she planned the deed."

"Dear Lottie, you are so psychological," murmured Mrs. Frew admiringly; but Mrs. Battle interrupted sharply:

"I maintain that she did it in a moment of overwhelming pa.s.sion. She would be inexcusable if she had done it in cold blood."

"Well, of course I didn't mean that!" said Mrs. Gifning with asperity.

"I guess I'm as fond of Enid Balfame as anybody in this room, and I guess I know what she must have gone through. What I really meant was that she has more courage than most folks."

"Oh, that indeed!" exclaimed Mrs. Lequer, who was quite happy with her husband, the fashionable doctor of Brabant. "Matrimony is a terrible trial at best, and it's a wonder more women don't--well, it's too horrible to say. But I'm afraid--well, you know."

There was no dissenting voice. Alys raised her eyes and glanced about the room. Mrs. c.u.mmack was not present. No doubt she had been carefully omitted from the conference. So had four members of the inner twelve who were comparative newcomers in Elsinore. All of these women had known Enid Balfame from childhood, consistently admired her; when she was in a position to make her social ambitions felt, had quite naturally fallen into line.

"Isn't it rather a hasty conclusion?" Alys asked. "There are a good many others who might have done it, you know."

"Everybody suspected has one grand alibi." Mrs. Gifning's sigh was rather hypocritical this time. "We'd be only too glad to think there was any one else likely to be arrested. No hope! No hope!"

"I suppose"--Miss Crumley's tones were tentative, although the irresistible words almost cost her her breath--"that there was no man in love with Mrs. Balfame?"

"Alys Crumley!" All the women had shrieked the name, and Mrs. Battle swung herself to her pointed toes. "I'm most mad enough to put you right out. The idea of insinuating--"

"Dear me, Mrs. Battle, it never occurred to me that it was worse for a married woman to have a man in love with her than to commit murder. I did not insinuate or even imagine she cared for any man, or even encouraged one. But such things have happened."

"Not to her. And while I could forgive her for shooting a perfectly loathsome husband under the influence of sudden pa.s.sion, I'd never forgive her--Enid Balfame!--if she had stooped to anything so paltry and common and _sinful_ as philandering; for believe me, a man doesn't commit murder for a woman's sake unless he is reasonably certain that he will have his due rewards. That is life. And how _can_ he be certain, if there has been no philandering. No!" Mrs. Battle was once more magisterial in her chair, and in command of her best Friday Club vocabulary. "But there is this much to be said: Enid did not necessarily shoot to kill,--merely to wound perhaps,--for nothing would have punished Dave Balfame more than a month or two in bed on gruel and custard. Or maybe she just didn't know what she was doing--just fired to relieve her feelings. I am sure it would have relieved mine after that scene at the Club."

"Oh--I apologise. Let us a.s.sume then that Mrs. Balfame did it. How do you propose to act in the matter? Of course you will not accuse her, but shall you cut her?"

"Neither the one nor the other!" Mrs. Battle brought her plump little hands down on the arms of the chair with a m.u.f.fled but emphatic smack.

"Never outside of this room shall we breathe our convictions, or our certain knowledge that she kept a revolver in her room--may I not speak for all?" There was a hissing murmur caused by the letter _s_. "And it will be no negative defence, either. We'll stand by her publicly, visit her constantly, keep up her spirits, never give her a hint of our suspicions, and attend the trial in a body. Our att.i.tude cannot fail to impress the world. We are the representative women of Elsinore; we have known her all our lives; it is our duty to flaunt our faith in the eyes of the public. The moral effect will be enormous--also on the jury."

"It is very splendid of you." Alys sighed. Their motives were mixed, of course, poor dears; brains were not their strong point, and they were all feeling young again with their sense of partic.i.p.ation in the great local drama, but there was no questioning their loyalty, even that of Mrs. Battle, who would inherit the reins of leadership were Mrs. Balfame forced to retire. Alys wished she could be swept along with them, but her indors.e.m.e.nt of their programme was from the head alone.

"What do the men think?" she asked.

"I guess they don't know what to think," said Mrs. Battle complacently.

"They're not as clever as we are, and besides, they never could understand that type of woman. Whatever they think, though,--that is to say, if they do suspect her,--they'll never let on. They weren't any too fond of Dave these last years, and they're no more anxious than we are to have Elsinore disgraced--especially with all those lots on the edge of the West End unsold. They're hoping for a boom every minute. The trial will be bad enough. And those terrible reporters! They've been here a dozen times."

"That reminds me," interrupted Alys. "I promised four of the best of the women reporters I would try to get them an interview with Mrs. Balfame.

Do you think you could manage it? She might not listen to me.

And--and--if she is a murderess, I don't think I can see her just yet."

"Youth is so hard!" Mrs. Battle sighed. "But I suppose it is as well that you, an unmarried young woman, and with your way to make, should keep in the background. But why should she see those women? Answer me that. It would be more dignified for her to ignore the press hereafter."

"Perhaps. But they are predisposed in her favour, being women, and would write her up in such a way as to make friends for her among the public.

It is important, if she is to be tried for her life, that she should not be thought a monster, that she should make all the friends possible. The jury might convict her, and it would then be necessary, appeals also failing, to get up a pet.i.tion."

"You always did have brains, Alys!" It was Mrs. Frew who expressed herself with emphasis. "I'll persuade her myself. Don't you really think it would be wise, Let.i.tia?"

"I guess you're both right." Mrs. Battle stood up. "Now let's go out and have tea. I ordered it for five-thirty. New York's got nothing on us."

But Alys, protesting that her mother was old-fashioned and still prepared supper for half past six, excused herself and left the house.

She found that Colonel Roosevelt had gone home and was not sorry to cover the half-mile to her own, briskly, on foot. What course she eventually should take was still unformulated, but she was glad that she had not parted with any of her deeper knowledge to those kindly women who, perhaps, would have found it the straw too many. Let Enid Balfame keep her friends if she could. Let her have the whole State on her side if she could, so long as she lost Dwight Rush!

CHAPTER XXIV