Mrs. Balfame Part 34

"Ah!" she whispered. "This is the fusing, not when that old illusion died."

The deep flush ebbed out of his face, leaving it grey, but he did not relax the hard pressure of his arms. "Of what use," he asked bitterly, "when we have only to-day?"

"It is something to realise all of oneself if only for an hour. And you have given me my supreme hour. That was my right, for I went down into such depths as you have no knowledge of; and if I struggled out of them alone, and always in terror of surrender and demoralisation at the last moment, I have my claim on your help now, for the future is something I have never dared to face. I guessed before Polly told me--oh, I guessed!

I knew you so well. In dreams, perhaps,--who knows?--our minds may have become one. When I came up out of--got past the worst, it seemed to me that I came into an extraordinary understanding of you. I can bear anything now. In a way, you will always be mine. The life of the imagination must have its satisfactions. There are worse things than living alone."

She drew down his head, but this time she put her lips to his ear.

"Now I am going to tell you a terrible secret," she said.

CHAPTER x.x.xV

There had been a crowd on the day of Frieda's and young Kraus'

testimony, but on Monday morning there was a mob. The road as well as the open s.p.a.ce before the Courthouse was as solid a ma.s.s of automobiles as the police would permit, and within, even the wide staircase was packed with people, many from New York City, waving cards and demanding entrance to the Court-room, or at least the freedom to breathe.

The sheriff and his a.s.sistants, soon after the doors were opened, succeeded in forming a lane, and dragged the women reporters to the upper landing. They found the young men at their tables, cool, imperturbable, having entered through the library at the back of the Court-room. All doors were closed before ten o'clock, and the crowd without, save only the few that were fortunate enough to have come early and obtain a vantage point against the gla.s.s, gradually dwindled away, to renew the a.s.sault after luncheon. It was not only the brilliant winter day that had enticed the curious over from New York, but the rumour that Mrs. Balfame would take the stand.

The morning droned along peacefully. c.u.mmack and several others, including Mr. Mott, were recalled and questioned further. Rush made no interruptions whatever. The Judge yawned behind his hand. The women reporters whispered to one another that Mrs. Balfame looked lovelier than ever--only different, somehow. Even Mr. Broderick looked at her uneasily once or twice and confided to Mr. Wagstaff that he believed she and Rush had something up their sleeves; she no longer looked like a marble effigy of herself, but like a woman who was sure of getting what she wanted--much too sure. Her cheeks were almost pink. That was as close as he could get to the upheavals and revolutions that had taken place in Mrs. Balfame of Elsinore; and their causes.

Immediately after luncheon, Rush showed the jury Defendant's Exhibit A: the suitcase that Mrs. Balfame had packed for her husband after his telephone message from the house of Mr. c.u.mmack. He demonstrated that it must have been packed by a firm hand guided by a clear head, a head as far as possible from that cyclonic condition technically known as "brainstorm." When he read them the explicit directions Mrs. Balfame had written for the velvet handbag her generous husband had offered to bring from Albany, the jury craned its neck and puckered its brows. This suitcase had been examined on the night of the crime by police and reporters, the cynical men of the press characterising it later as a grand piece of bluff. But it looked very convincing in a court-room, and its innocent appeal was thrown into high relief by the indisputable fact that the murder had been committed at least half an hour later.

On the other hand, there was reason to believe that Mrs. Balfame had deliberately planned the shooting and in that case it was quite natural for her to prepare something in the nature of an alibi--that is, if a woman, and an amateur in crime, could exercise so much foresight. The jury looked at the defendant out of the corner of its eye. Well, she, at least, looked cool enough for anything.

Then came the great moment for which the spectators had braved discomfort, indignities, and even hunger. The counsel for the defence asked Mrs. Balfame to take the stand.

Everybody in the court-room save the Judge, the jury, and the cool young reporters half rose as she walked rapidly behind the jury-box, mounted the stand, took the oath, bowed to the Court and arranged herself, with her usual dignified aloofness, in the witness-chair. She felt but a slight quiver of the nerves, no apprehension whatever. She knew her story too well to be disconcerted even by the sudden wasp-like a.s.saults of the district attorney, and she was sensible of the moral support of practically all the women in the room.

Rush asked her to tell her story in her own way to the jury, and for a time the district attorney permitted her to talk without interruption.

Rush had warned her after the interview with the women reporters against delivering herself with too tripping a tongue, and his a.s.sistant had spent several hours with her in rehearsal of certain improvements upon a too perfect style. In consequence, she told a clear coherent story, in the simplest manner possible, with little dramatic breaks or hesitations now and again, but with nothing stronger than a quaver in her sweet shallow voice. When she had reached the episode of the filter and had explained to the inquisitive district attorney why she had made no mention at the coroner's inquest of the somewhat complicated episode of which it was the pivot, so to speak, she gave the same credible explanation the newspaper women had already offered to the public; and then, quite unexpectedly, she related the story of Frieda's attempt to blackmail her, and her indignant refusal to give the creature a dollar.

Mr. Gore shouted in vain. The Judge ordered him to keep quiet and permitted the defendant to tell the story in her own way.

Mrs. Balfame apologised to the jury for relating this incident out of order, and then went on with her quiet plausible story. Her reason for not running out at once was simplicity itself. She must have been in the kitchen when the shot was fired; she had not made a point of regulating her movements by the clock as some of the witnesses for the prosecution appeared to have done, so that she was quite unable to give the jury positive information upon the subject of the exact number of minutes she had remained in the kitchen. She had washed and put away the gla.s.s, of course; she was a very methodical woman. Then she had gone upstairs, leisurely, and it was not until she was in her bedroom that she became aware of some sort of excitement out in the Avenue. Even that conveyed nothing to her, for it was Sat.u.r.day night--she curled her fastidious lip. But when she heard voices directly under her window, inside the grounds, she threw it open at once and asked what had happened. Then of course she ran downstairs and out to her husband. That was all.

Even the district attorney was not able to interject a hint of the lemonade story, and so, naturally, she ignored it.

"Gemima!" whispered Mr. Broderick to his neighbour, "but she is a wonder! I never heard it better done, and I've seen some of the boss liars on the stand. She looks like an angel on toast, a poor, sweet, patient, martyr angel. But I'll bet five dollars to a nickel that she was just about three degrees too plausible for that jury. If she didn't do it, who did? That's what they'll ask. And who else wanted him out of the way? Have you given any thought to that proposition?" His voice was almost as steady as his keen grey eyes, and he looked straight into the wise and weary orbs of a brilliant but too inabstinent member of the crack reporter regiment who had been missing for several days. The man raised his sagging shoulders and dropped them listlessly. Then his heavy eyes were invaded by a sudden gleam.

"Say," he whispered, "that Rush is a good-looking chap--and she--I don't like those ice-boxes myself, but some men do. It's crossed my mind more than once to-day that he's got something on his--what's the matter?"

"For G.o.d's sake, hush!" Broderick's low voice was savage, his face white. "They're always likely to say that about a young lawyer when his client is handsome enough and their imaginations are excited by a mysterious murder case. He's a friend of mine, and I don't want him to get into trouble. He might not be able to prove an alibi. But I know he didn't do it because I happen to know that he is in love with another woman. I was in the same trolley with them yesterday when they came back from the woods. There was no mistaking how the land lay."

"Oh! Just so!" The other man's eyes were glittering. He looked like a hunter glancing down his gun-barrel. "I see he _is_ a friend of yours and you've got his defence pat--well, I'm not going to bother my poor head until Mrs. B. is acquitted or convicted. Ta! Ta!" And he slid gently to the floor, laid his head against the infuriated Broderick's knee and went to sleep.

"I say," whispered Wagstaff, "she almost involved young Kraus, all right. He's never been quite so close to the bull's-eye before. The very fact that she didn't trump up a yarn--or Rush wouldn't let her--that she saw him when she opened the door, or that he had turned the handle, is one for her and one on him."

The Judge, who had taken a few moments' rest, re-entered, and conversation ceased. Conrad and Frieda were called in reb.u.t.tal, and encouraged to fix the time of Mrs. Balfame's departure and return as accurately as might be. Frieda a.s.serted that Mrs. Balfame, after closing the outer door, had not remained below-stairs for more than three minutes, and Conrad declared that her exit must have been made three or four before Mr. Mott left Miss Lacke's. Of course--with quiet scorn--he had not looked at his watch. How could he in the dark? As he did not smoke he had no matches in his pocket.

That closed the day's session. The jury filed out, and no man could read aught in their weather-beaten faces save the conviction that the Paradise City Hotel was a haven of delights after a long day in the box, and they were quite equal to the feat of enjoying the dinner served there, with minds barren of the grim purpose behind this luxurious week.

CHAPTER x.x.xVI

It was nearly six o'clock. The court-room with its round white ceiling looked like a crypt in the soft glow of the artificial light, and the Judge, in his black silk gown, with his handsome patrician face, clean-cut but rather soft and flushed with good living, might have been an abbot seated aloft in judgment upon a recalcitrant nun. Mrs. Balfame in her crepe completed the delusion--if the imaginative spectator glanced no further. The district attorney, who was summing up, looked more like a wasp than ever as he darted back and forth in front of the jury-box, shouting and shaking his fists. Occasionally he would hook his fingers in his waistcoat, balance himself on his heels and with a mere moderation of his rasping tones, demonstrate a contemptuous faith in the strength of his case.

It is to be admitted that his arguments and expositions, his denunciations and satirical refutations, were quite as convincing as those of the counsel for the defence had been, such being the elasticity of the law and of the legal mind; but although an able and powerful speaker, he lacked the personal charm and magnetism, the almost tragical enthusiasm and conviction, alternating with cold deliberate logic, that had thrilled all present to the roots of their beings during the long hours of the morning. Rush, whether he lost or won, had made his reputation as one of the greatest pleaders ever heard at the bar of New York State. He had finished at a quarter to one. Immediately after the opening of the afternoon session Gore had darted into the breach, speaking with a dramatic rapidity for four hours. He sat down at six o'clock; and Mrs. Balfame felt as if turning to stone while the Judge, standing, charged the jury and expounded the law covering the three degrees of murder: first, second, manslaughter. It was their privilege to convict the prisoner at the bar of any of these, unless convinced of her innocence.

He dwelt at length upon the degree called manslaughter, as if the idea had occurred to him that Mrs. Balfame, justly indignant, had run out when she heard her husband's voice raised in song, and had fired from the grove by way of administering a rebuke to an erring and inconsiderate man. The second bullet had been made much of by Rush, as indicating that two people, possibly gun-men, had shot at once, but the district attorney held no such theory and had ignored the bullet found in the tree. It was apparent, however, that the Judge had given to this second bullet a certain amount of judicial consideration.

The jury filed out, not to their luxurious quarters in the Paradise City Hotel, a mile away, but to a stark and ugly room in the Court-house where they must remain in acute discomfort until they arrived at a verdict. The Judge had his dinner brought to him in a private room adjoining theirs, and even the reporters and spectators s.n.a.t.c.hed a hasty meal at the Dobton hostelry, so sure were they all that the jury would return within the hour. Mrs. Balfame did not take off her hat with its heavy veil, but sat in her quarters at the jail with several of her friends, outwardly calm, but with her mind on the rack and unable to share the dinner sent over from the Inn by Mr. c.u.mmack for herself and her guests.

The hours pa.s.sed, however, and the jury did not return. Once the head of the foreman emerged, and the sheriff, misunderstanding his surly demand for a pitcher of ice water, rushed over for Mrs. Balfame, the Judge was summoned, and the reporters, men and women, raced one another up the Court-house stairs. Mrs. Balfame, schooled to the awful ordeal of hearing herself p.r.o.nounced a murderess in one form or other, but bidden by her friends to augur an acquittal from a mere three hours'

deliberation, walked in with her usual quiet remoteness and took her seat. She was sent back at once.

Rush paced the road in front of the Court-house. He had little hope. He had studied their faces day by day and believed that several, at least, were persuaded of Mrs. Balfame's guilt. Mrs. Battle, Mrs. Gifning and Mrs. c.u.mmack sat with Mrs. Balfame, who found the effort to maintain the high equilibrium demanded by her admiring friends as rasping an ordeal to her nerves as waiting for that final summons whose menace grew with every hour the jury wrangled. Finally she took off her hat and suggested that they knit, and the needles clicked through the desultory conversation until, after midnight, they all attempted to sleep.

The Judge extended himself on a sofa in the private room devoted to his use; he dared not leave the Courthouse. He told the district attorney (who told it to the sheriff, who told it to the reporters) that the jury quarrelled so persistently and so violently that he found it impossible to sleep, and that the language they used was appalling.

Midnight came and pa.s.sed. The sob-sisters, worn out, went home. Miss Sarah Austin and Miss Alys Crumley had not returned to the Court-house after dinner. The sheriff appeared at the entrance of the courtroom and announced that the last trolley would leave for Elsinore and neighbouring towns within five minutes. Most of the spectators filed sleepily out. A few of Mrs. Balfame's less intimate but equally devoted friends remained in their seats near her empty chair, and shortly after midnight the warden's wife brought them over hot coffee and sandwiches.

The reporters, having long since consumed all the chocolate and peanuts on sale below, strolled back and forth between the Court-house and the bar of the Dobton Inn. They were bored and indignant and sought the only consolation available. They returned periodically to the court-room, growing, as the hours pa.s.sed, more formal, polite, silent. One lost his way in the jury-box and was steered by a court official to the sympathetic haven of his brothers.

The room itself, its floor littered with tinfoil, peanut-sh.e.l.ls, and newspapers, its tables and chairs out of place, looked like a Coney Island excursion boat. Finally two reporters laid their heads down on a table and went to sleep, but the rest continued to address one another at long intervals, in distant tones, obeying the laws of etiquette, but with a secret and scornful reluctance.

Broderick, who was reasonably sober, had wandered in and out many times.

Occasionally he walked the road with Rush, and more than once he had endeavoured to get Miss Crumley on the telephone. He had even telephoned to the hospital to ascertain if she were there. A week ago only he had accidentally discovered that Dr. Anna had been summoned by Mrs. Balfame shortly after the murder and had pa.s.sed many hours alone with her; "it being the deuce and all to extract any information from that closed corporation of Mrs. Balfame's friends." Broderick had surprised it out of a group at the Elks' Club in the course of conversation and then had set his phenomenal memory to work, with the result that he was convinced Alys Crumley held the key to the whole situation. He had gone to her house and pleaded with her to take him out to the hospital and obtain a statement from the sick woman before it was too late, representing in powerful and picturesque language the awful peril of Rush.

"I've reason to know," he had concluded, "that c.u.mmack and two or three others have their suspicions, and there isn't a question that if the jury brings in a verdict of guilty in any degree--and they're a pigheaded lot--Rush will be arrested at once. These devoted friends of Mrs. Balfame have acc.u.mulated enough evidence to begin on. He may have gone to Brooklyn that night, but he was seen to get off the train at Elsinore about a quarter of an hour before the shooting. They've been doing a lot of quiet sleuthing, but if Mrs. Balfame is acquitted they'll let him off. They don't want any more scandal, and they like him, anyhow. But I have a hunch she won't be acquitted; and then, innocent or guilty, there'd be no saving him. So for heaven's sake, stir yourself."

But Alys had replied: "I have besought my aunt, and she will not permit Dr. Anna to be disturbed. She says her only chance for life is a tranquil mind, and that the shock of hearing that Enid Balfame was on trial for murder would kill her--let alone asking her to do her best to send her to the chair. I've done _my_ best, but it seems hopeless."

This conversation had taken place on Thursday. To-day was Tuesday. They were very reticent at the hospital, but he had reason to believe that Dr. Anna had taken a turn for the worse. Could Alys Crumley be out there, and could she have taken that minx Sarah Austin with her? It would be just like a girl to go back on a good pal like himself and hand a signal triumph over to another girl, who would get out of the game the minute some fellow with money enough offered to marry her. He ground his teeth.

He was standing near the doors of the court-room and staring at the clock whose hands pointed to a quarter to one. Suddenly he heard his name called from below. He sauntered out and leaned over the bal.u.s.trade.

A weary page was ascending when he caught sight of the star reporter.

"Brabant Hospital wants you on the 'phone," he announced, with supreme indifference.

Broderick leaped down the winding stair and into the booth. It seemed to him that his very ears were quivering as he listened to Alys Crumley's faint agitated voice. "Come out quickly and bring a stenographer," it said. "And suppose you ask Mr. Rush to come too. Just tell the sheriff--to--to postpone things a bit if the jury should be ready to come in before you return. Hurry, Jim, hurry."