Mrs. Balfame: A Novel
Page 13
CHAPTER XIII
Broderick walked slowly toward Elsinore Avenue, sounding his memory forcertain fugitive impressions, his active mind at the same time castingabout for the current which would connect them.
He looked at his watch. He was to dine with the Crumleys at seven and itlacked but ten minutes of the hour; nevertheless he walked more slowlystill, his eyes staring at the ground, his brow channeled.
On Sunday afternoon he had spent two hours with Alys Crumley. At firstshe had been reluctant to talk of any but the salient phases of themurder, but being appealed to as a "good old pal" and reminded that realnewspaper people stood together, she finally had described the scene atthe Country Club on the afternoon preceding Balfame's death, and shownhim the drawing she had had the superior presence of mind to make.Broderick had examined every detail of that rapid but demonstrativesketch: the burly form at the head of the room, his condition indicatedby an angle of the shoulders and a deft exaggeration of feature whichrecalled the facile art of the cartoonist; the strained forms of the mensurrounding him; Mrs. Balfame heading down the room, her face set andterrible; the groups of women and girls in attitudes expressive of alarmor disgust.
But when he made as if to put the sketch in his pocket she had snatchedit from him, and he merely had shrugged his shoulders, confident thathe could induce her to give it up should he really need it.
He had questioned her regarding the scene until its outlines were asfirm in his mind as in her own. But there had been something else--someimpression, not obviously linked with the case: It was for thatimpression that he sounded his admirable memory; and in a moment hefound it and stopped with a smothered exclamation.
He had complimented her on the excellent likeness of Dwight Rush, whomhe knew and liked, and remarked quite naturally that he might have satfor her a number of times. The dusky pink had mounted to her hair, butshe had replied carelessly that Rush was "a common enough type."
Possibly Broderick would have forgotten the blush had it not have beenfor the swift change of expression in her eyes: a certain fear followedby a concentrated renitence; and at the same moment he had rememberedthat he had met Rush once or twice at the Crumleys' during the summerand thought him quite the favoured guest.
Driven only by a mild personal curiosity, he had asked her how she likedRush and if she saw much of him; he recalled that she had answered withan elaboration of indifference that she hadn't seen him for ages andtook no interest in him whatever.
Then Broderick had drawn her on to talk of Mrs. Balfame. Yes, in commonwith all Elsinore that counted, she admired Mrs. Balfame, although shebelieved that no one really knew her, that she unconsciously lived amongthe surfaces of her nature. Her face as she marched down the clubroomthat day, and its curious sudden transformation on that other day atthe Friday Club when her thoughts so plainly had drifted far from theplatitudinous speakers, indicated to Miss Crumley's temperamental mind"depths and possibly tragic possibilities."
It was patent to Mr. Broderick's own mind that her suspicions had notlighted for a moment on the dead man's widow, but it also transpired inthe course of the conversation that the young artist who had so "lovedto sketch" the Star of Elsinore had suffered a long drop in personalenthusiasm. Pressed astutely, she had remarked that she guessed she wasas broad-minded as anybody, especially since her year on the New Yorkpress, but she did not approve of married women claiming a right toshare in the Great Game designed by Nature for the young of both sexes.
Then the story came out: Miss Crumley, afflicted with a headachesomething over a fortnight since, and enjoying the cool night air justbehind her front gate, had seen Mrs. Balfame come out of Dr. Steuer'sgarden next door and meet Dwight Rush face to face. He had begged to beallowed to see her home.
Mrs. Balfame had lovely manners, she couldn't help being sweet unlessshe disliked a person, and no woman will elect to walk up a long darkavenue alone if a man offer to escort her.
Alys would have thought nothing of it--merely assumed that Rush, being acomparative newcomer, had caught at the chance to make a favourableimpression on the leader of Elsinore society--(no, he was no snob, butthat idea just came to her), if they had not crawled, yes, _crawled_ allthe way up the avenue.
Both were vigorous people with long legs; they could have covered thedistance to the Balfame place in three minutes. They had been more thanten, and as they passed under the successive lamp posts she had notedthe man's bent head, the woman's tilted back--as she gazed up into hiseyes, no doubt.
"In this town," Miss Crumley had announced, "a woman is fast or sheisn't. You know just where you are. There's a class that's sly about it,but somehow you get 'on' in time. Mrs. Balfame has stood for the highestand best. Mind you, I'm not saying that she ever saw Rush alone again,or cared a snap of her finger for him--or he for her. No doubt she felt,when the rare chance offered of taking a little flyer, that it was toogood to miss. But she shouldn't have done it; that's the point. I don'tlike my idols to have feet of clay."
Broderick had felt both sympathetic and amused. He knew that AlysCrumley was not only sweet of temper and frank, if not candid, but thatin spite of all her desperate modernism she cherished high ideals ofconduct; and here she was turning loose the cat that skulks somewhere inevery commonplace female's nature.
But the whole conversation had left his mind promptly. He had attachedno significance whatever to a ten minutes' walk between a polite man anda woman returning alone from a friend's house on a dark night.
Now every word of the conversation came back to him. Rush, he gathered,had gone to the Crumley house several times a week for a while, andthen, for reasons known only to himself and Alys, had ceased his visitsabruptly. Had she fallen in love with him? Or was it only her vanitythat was wounded? And if Rush had dropped a girl as pretty and brightand winning as Alys Crumley--who improved upon acquaintance,moreover--what was the reason? Why had he not fallen in love with her?Had he loved some one else?
Broderick swung his mind to the morning following the murder, when hehad met Rush in the hall of the Elsinore Hotel. The lawyer professedhimself as delighted to "run up against him" and invited him tobreakfast. All this had been natural enough, and it was equally naturalthat the conversation should have but one theme.
Once more Broderick sought a fugitive impression and found it. Rush, whowas a master of words when verbal exactness was imperative, had createdan impression in his companion's mind of the impeccability of themurdered man's widow.
Broderick had wondered once or twice since whence came that mentalpicture of Mrs. Balfame that rose clear-cut in his memory, in spite ofhis deliberate conviction of her guilt. Other people had raved about herand made no impression upon the young reporter's selective and somewhatcynical mind; but Rush had almost accomplished his purpose!
Why had he sought to accomplish it?
Broderick had known Rush in and out of court for nearly two years.Whenever he had been on an assignment in that part of Brabant County hehad made a point of seeking him out, and even of spending an eveningwith him if he could afford the time. He liked the unique blend of Eastand West in the man; to Broderick's keen appraising mind Rush reflectedthe very best of the two great rival bisections of the nation. He likedthe mixture of frankness and subtlety, of simple unquestioningpatriotism--of assumption that no country but the United States ofAmerica mattered in the very least--and the intense concentratedindividualism. Of hard-headed American determination to "get there" atany honourable cost, of jealously hidden romanticism.
Broderick was almost at the Crumley gate. He halted for a moment underthe dark maples and glanced up the long shadowy avenue, his own narrowerand still more jealously guarded "romantic streak" appreciating thepossibilities on a dusky evening with a girl whose face floated for amoment before him. But he banished her promptly, searching his memoryfor some salient trait in Rush that he instinctively knew wouldestablish the current he desired.
He found it after a moment of intense concentration. Rush was the sort
of man that loves not woman but a woman. His very friendship for AlysCrumley was evidence that he cared nothing for girls as girls. Only theexceptional drew him, and mere youth left him unmoved.
Knowing Rush as he did, he felt his way rapidly toward the facts. Alys,woman-like, had succumbed to propinquity, and betrayed herself; Rush,finding his mere masculine loneliness misinterpreted, and beinghonourable to boot, had promptly withdrawn.
But why? Alys would have made him a delightful and useful wife. She wasone of those too clever girls whom celibacy made neurotic and uncertain,but out of whom matrimony and maternity knocked all the nonsense at onceand finally. She would make a splendid woman.
He should have thought her just the girl to allure Rush, whom he alsoknew to be fastidious and to set a high value on the good old Brabantblood. Moreover, it was time that Rush would be wanting the permanentcompanionship of a woman, a bright, progressive, but feminine woman. Hehad observed certain signs.
Alys, apparently, had not measured up to Rush's secret ideal of thewholly desirable woman, nor appealed to that throbbing vein ofromanticism which he had striven to bury beneath the dusty tomes of thelaw. What sort of woman, then, could satisfy all he desired? And had hefound her?
Broderick recalled a certain knightly exaltation in Rush's blue eyeswhich had come and gone as they discussed Mrs. Balfame, although not aword of the adroit concept he had built remained in the reporter'smemory. But those eyes came back to Broderick there in the dark--theeyes of a man young and ardent like himself--he almost fancied he hadseen the woman's image in them.
He revived his impression of Mrs. Balfame, seen for the first timeto-day, and contemplated it impersonally: A beautiful, a fascinatingwoman--to a man of Rush's limited experience and idealism; fastidious,proud, gracious, supremely poised.
Nor did she look a day over thirty, although she must be a good bitmore--he recalled the obituaries of the dead man: they had alluded tohis marital accomplishment as covering a term of some twenty years.Perhaps she was his second wife--but no--nor did it matter. Rush wasjust the sort of chap to fall in love with a woman older than himself,if she were still young in appearance and as chastely lovely, asunapproachable, as Mrs. Balfame. He would idealise her very years,contrast them with that vague suggestion of virginity that Broderickrecalled, of deep untroubled tides.
All romantic men believe in women's unfathomed depths when in love,reflected the star reporter cynically, and Mrs. Balfame was just thesort to go until forty before having the smashing love affair of herlife; and to inspire a similar passion in a hard-working idealist likeDwight Rush.
Mrs. Balfame and Dwight Rush! Broderick, who now stood quite still, afew paces from the Crumley gate, whistled.
Could Rush have fired that shot? Broderick recalled that the lawyer hadmentioned having spent Saturday evening in Brooklyn--on business.
Broderick shook his head vigorously. So far as he was concerned, Rushnever should be asked to produce his alibi. He did not believe that Rushhad done it, did not propose to harbour the suggestion for a moment.Rush was not the man to commit a cowardly murder, not even for a woman.If he had wanted to kill the man he would have involved himself in anelection row, forced the bully to draw his gun, and then got in his ownfire double quick. Standards were standards.
Broderick was more convinced than ever that Mrs. Balfame had committedthe deed, and he had established the current. His work was "cut out" forthe evening; and without further delay he presented himself at the WidowCrumley's door.