Mrs. Balfame Part 30

CHAPTER x.x.x

Mrs. Balfame walked back through the now familiar tunnel more hopeful and elated than any one in the courtroom would have inferred from her chiselled manner.

"I almost feel that I have the courage to look at the sketches of myself in the papers," she said lightly to Rush, who escorted her. "I haven't dared open a paper since Monday morning."

"Better not." Rush also was in high spirits. "Keep your mental mercury as high as possible. It doesn't matter, anyhow. You'll be clear in less than a week. The impression all those splendid friends of yours created knocked the prosecution silly."

"I have not once glanced at the jury," said Mrs. Balfame proudly, "and I never shall. All I was conscious of was that they were chewing gum, and that the man above me snorts constantly."

"That's Houston. He's likely to be predisposed in your favour on account of your intimacy with Dr. Anna. And he's a just man, of some intelligence. I fancy none of them is in the mood to be too hard on any one, for they are having a fine vacation in the Paradise City Hotel.

Each has a big room with a soft bed and rich and delicate food three times a day. If they don't get indigestion they will be inclined to mercy on general principles. I engineered the housing of them. Gore was all for putting them up at the Dobton Inn, where they would have grown as vicious as starved dogs. I won my point by reminding him that certain men of that sort try to get on a jury for the sake of having a rest and a soft time, and if they aren't coddled, they are equal to falling ill and forcing the court to begin the trial over again. You're all right."

They were in the jail sitting-room, and she stood with her head thrown back and her eyes shining. The moment they had entered she had removed her heavy hat and veil and run her hands through her crushed hair. Rush, who was very nervous and excited, made a swift motion forward as if to seize her hands. But it was only later, when alone, that she realised that possibly she had brushed aside an opportunity to rekindle a flame which she alternately feared and doubted was burning low; she was not thinking of him and exclaimed happily:

"It is quite a wonderful sensation to feel that you have made friends like that. My! how they did lie! And so convincingly! For a moment I was quite the outsider and deeply impressed with the weakness of the case against the accused. Here they come. I feel as if I never really loved them before." And she ran to the door to admit the elated trio who that day had made their n.o.blest sacrifice to the cause of friendship. Mrs.

Balfame kissed them and embraced them, and dried their excited tears, while Rush, his contemptible part in the day's drama forgotten, slunk down the stairs and out of the jail.

He met Alys Crumley as she was about to board the trolley for Elsinore, and she stepped back and congratulated him warmly.

"Your brain worked like blades of chain lightning," she said with real enthusiasm. "I know you have only begun, but I can well imagine--wasn't Mrs. Balfame delighted?"

"With her friends' testimony," he replied gloomily. "I don't seem to come in."

There are some impulses, born of sudden opportunity, too strong for mortal powers of resistance. "Come home to supper," said Miss Crumley, with the same spontaneous warmth. "You look so tired, and Mother promised me Maryland chicken and waffles. Besides, I want to show you my drawings. I am so proud of being a staff artist."

"I'll come," said Rush promptly.

CHAPTER x.x.xI

The following day was also taken by the examination of witnesses for the defence. Dr. Lequer, who had been called in occasionally by the Balfames when Dr. Anna was unavailable, and who was also an old friend of the family, a.s.serted that so far as he knew there never had been a quarrel between husband and wife. Mrs. Balfame, in fact, was unique in his experience, inasmuch as she never looked depressed nor shed tears.

He was followed by a woman who had been general housemaid in the Balfame home for three years. She had left it to reward the devotion of a plumber, and between her and Frieda there had been a long line of the usual incompetents. Mrs. Figg testified with an enthusiasm which triumphed over nerves and grammar that although she guessed Mr. Balfame was about like other husbands, especially at breakfast, Mrs. Balfame was too easy-going to mind. She'd never seen her mad. Yes, she was an exacting mistress, all right, terrible particular, and she never sat with the hired girl in the kitchen and gossiped, and you couldn't take a liberty with her like you could with some; but that was just her way, naturally proud and silent-like. She was terrible economical but a kind mistress, as she didn't scold and follow up, once she was sure the girl would suit, and not a bit mean about evenings and afternoons off. She did up her own room and dusted the downstairs rooms, except for the weekly cleaning. No, she never'd seen no pistol. It wasn't her way to look in bureau drawers. No, she'd never seen or heard any jealousy, tempers, and so forth, and had always taken it for granted that Mrs.

Balfame wasn't on to Mr. Balfame's doings--or if she was, she didn't care. There was lots like that.

The district attorney snarled and trumpeted throughout this placid recital, but Mrs. Figg took no notice of him whatever. She had been thoroughly drilled, and looked straight into the sparkling blue eyes of Mr. Rush as if hypnotised.

Other minor witnesses consumed the afternoon, and once more Mrs. Balfame returned to the jail with glowing eyes. The women reporters were elated.

The men made no comment as they filed out of the courtroom, but their whole bearing expressed a lofty and quiet scorn.

"It's fine! fine!" exclaimed c.u.mmack, sitting down beside Rush at the table below the empty jury-box. "But I do wish Dr. Anna was available.

She stands head and shoulders above every one else in the estimation of these jurymen; she doctored the children and confined the wives of pretty near all of them. There's no stone she wouldn't leave unturned."

"She's pretty bad, isn't she?" asked Rush. "Would there be any chance at all of getting a deposition--in case things went wrong?"

"Things ain't goin' wrong; but as for Anna, she's out of it, and everything else, I guess. I was out to the hospital yesterday, for I've had her in mind; but although she was better for a time, she's worse again. But say--what do you think I discovered? Those d.a.m.ned newspaper men have been hangin' round out there. That young devil Broderick--"

Rush was sitting up very straight, his eyes glittering. "But he surely hasn't been able to see her? I don't believe any sort of graft would get by Mrs. Dissosway--"

"You bet he hasn't been able to see Anna, and just now they're not leaving her for a moment alone, like they did at first. But Broderick seems to have the idea wedged in his brain that Mrs. Balfame confessed to Anna and that poor old Doc lost the pistol somewhere out in the marsh--"

Rush made an exclamation of disgust. "I can't understand Broderick. He's got his trial all right, and it isn't like him to hound a woman--"

"I said as much to him, and though he wouldn't talk much, I just gathered from something he let fall that he was afraid if the crime wasn't well fixed onto Enid some innocent person he thought a lot more of might come under suspicion. Can you guess who he had in mind?"

Rush pushed back his chair and sprang to his feet. "Good Lord, no. One case at a time is all my brain is equal to." He was almost out of the empty courtroom when c.u.mmack caught him firmly by the shoulder.

"Say, Dwight," he said with evident embarra.s.sment, "hold on a minute.

I've just got to tell you that somehow or other I sensed _you_ when Broderick was trying to put me off. There are a good many things; they've been comin' back--"

Rush turned the hard glittering blue of his eyes full upon Mr. c.u.mmack, whose shrewd but kindly gaze faltered for a moment. "Do you believe I did it?" demanded Rush.

"Well, no, not exactly--that is, I'd know that if you had done it, it would have been because you'd got the idea into your head that Enid was having an awful row to hoe, or because he'd attacked her that night. It wouldn't have been for no mean personal reason, and no one knows better than I that the blood goes to the head terrible easy at your age and when a beautiful woman is in question. If I'd guessed it before, I'm free to say I'd have rushed your arrest in order to spare Enid, if for no other reason. But as it's gone so far and she's sure to get off,--and you wouldn't stand much show,--the matter had best stay where it is; particularly--well, I may as well tell you Enid sort of confided to Polly that you had offered to cover her name with yours as soon as she got out; and if you've been in love with her all this time, as I guess you have been--well, Dave can't be brought back. And--well, I've lived out West and it isn't so uncommon there for a man to shoot on sight when he's mad about a woman and a few other things at the same time. Dave was my friend, but I guess I understand."

Rush had withdrawn stiffly from the friendly hand laid on his shoulder.

"I have asked Mrs. Balfame to marry me," he said. "But she has by no means consented."

"But she means to. Don't let it worry you. Women are queer cattle. Nail her the next time she's in the melting mood. She gets 'em oftener than she ever did before, and I guess you see her alone often enough."

"Oh, yes, I've seen her alone nearly every day for ten weeks."

c.u.mmack narrowed his eyes, and his face, generally relaxed and amiable, grew stern and menacing. "You don't love her!" he exclaimed. "You don't!

Like many another d.a.m.ned fool, you've compromised your very life for a woman, only to be disenchanted by seeing too much of her. But by G.o.d you've got to marry her--"

They were standing at the head of the winding stair in the rotunda, and several of the reporters were still in front of the telephone booth below.

"Hush!" said the lawyer peremptorily. "I mean to marry Mrs. Balfame if she accepts the proposal I made to her the day she was arrested. I have said nothing to warrant your jumping to the conclusion that I no longer wish to marry her. But by G.o.d! if you ever dare to threaten me again--"

And he raised his fist so menacingly, his set face was so tense and white, his eyes bore such a painful resemblance to hot coals, that c.u.mmack retreated hastily.

"All right! All right!" he called up from the first turning. "Don't fancy I think I could. And what's pa.s.sed between us is sacred. S'long."

CHAPTER x.x.xII

On the morrow the first witness called by the prosecution in reb.u.t.tal was old Kraus, and now it was Mr. Rush's turn to shout "Immaterial, Irrelevant and Incompetent," so that it was well-nigh impossible for the jury to do more than guess what the choleric person with a strong German accent was talking about. The district attorney fought valiantly to draw forth the story of Frieda's nocturnal visit to the Kraus home in search of advice after hearing Mrs. Balfame enter the kitchen from the yard, but his efforts ended in a shouting contest between the prosecution and the defence, both deserting their positions before the jury-box and wrangling before the Judge like two angry school-boys. Alys Crumley longed to laugh aloud, but not so the Judge. He asked them curtly how he was to know what was their point of dispute if they both talked at once.

He then commanded Mr. Rush to state in as few words as possible what he was objecting to; and when the counsel for the defence had stated his purely legal reasons for blocking this purely hearsay testimony, the Judge abruptly threw Mr. Kraus out of court. Rush, flushed and triumphant, returned to his chair below the jury-box, and Mr. Gore sulkily called the name of Miss Frieda Appel.

There was no question of poor Frieda's making a good personal impression upon spectators or jury, no matter how worthy her motives. She had saved almost every penny of her wages since coming to America; it had been her lover's intention to emigrate to Brabant County as soon as his term of service was over, and her housewifely intention to greet him with a furnished cottage. Since the war began, she had sent all her savings to East Prussia lest her people starve.

Dress in any circ.u.mstances would never tempt her. Economy was her religion, and she cherished no illusions about her face and form. To-day she wore a skirt of an old voluminous cut and a jacket with high puckered sleeves. The colour had once been brown. Her coa.r.s.e blonde hair met her eyebrows in a thick bang, and its high k.n.o.b was surmounted by a sailor hat a size too small. Her thick-set body was uncorseted, and her indeterminate features were lost in the width and flatness of her face.