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Mrs. Balfame

[Pg 137] <h2>CHAPTER XV</h2> Mrs. Balfame, after she dismissed the newspaper men, went up to her bedroom and sat very still for a long while. She was apprehensive rather than frightened, but she felt very sober. She had accepted the assurance of the chief of the local police that his inquiry regarding the pistol was a mere matter of routine, and had merely obeyed a normal instinct in concealing it. But she knew the intense interest of her community in the untimely and mysterious exit of one of its most notorious members, an interest raised to the superlative degree by the attentions of the metropolitan press; and she knew also that when a community is excited suspicions are rapidly translated into proofs, and every clue feeds the appetite for a victim. The European war was a dazzling example on the grand scale of the complete breakdown of intellect before the primitive passions of hatred, greed, envy, and the recurrent desire of man to kill, combined with that monstrous dilation of the ego which consoles him with a childish belief in his own impeccability. The newspapers of course pandered to the taste of their patrons for morbid vicarious excitement; she had glanced contemptuously at the headlines of her own "Case," and had accepted her temporary notoriety as a matter of course, schooled herself to patience; the ordeal was scarifying but of necessity brief. [Pg 138] But these young men. They had insinuated—what had they not insinuated? Either they had extraordinary powers of divination, or they were a highly specialised branch of the detective force. They had asked questions and forced answers from her that made her start and shiver in the retrospect. Was it possible they believed she had murdered David Balfame, or were they merely seeking material for a few more columns before the case died a natural death? She had never been interviewed before, save once superficially as President of the Friday Club, but she knew one or two of the county editors, and Alys Crumley had sometimes amused her with stories of her experiences as a New York reporter. These young men, so well-groomed, so urbane, so charming even, all of them no doubt generously equipped to love and marry and protect with their lives the girl of their choice, were they too but the soldiers of an everlasting battlefield, often at bay and desperate in the trenches? No matter how good their work, how great their "killing," the struggle must be renewed daily to maintain their own footing, to advance, or at least to uphold, the power of their little autocracy. To them journalism was the most important thing in the world, and mere persons like herself, suddenly lifted from obscurity to the brassy peaks of notoriety were so much material for first page columns of the newspapers they served with all the loyalty of those deluded soldiers on the European battlefields. She understood them with an abrupt and complete clarity, but she hated them. They might like and even admire her, but they would show her no mercy if they[Pg 139] discovered that she had been in the yard that night. She felt as if a pack of wolves were at her heels. But finally her brow relaxed. She shrugged her shoulders and began to unbutton the dense black gown that had expressed the mood the world demands of a four-days' widow. Let them suspect, divine what they chose. Not a soul on earth but Anna Steuer knew that she had been out that night after her return home. Even had those lynx-eyed young men sat on the box hedge they could not have seen her, for the avenue was well lighted, and the grove, the entire yard in fact, had been as black as a mine. Even the person skulking among those trees could not have guessed who she was. For a moment she had been tempted to tell them a little; that she had looked out and seen a moving shadow in the grove. But she had remembered in time that they would ask why she had reserved this testimony at the coroner's inquest. Her rôle was to know nothing. Indubitably the shot had been fired from the trees; nobody questioned that; why involve herself? They would discharge still another set of questions at her, among others why she had not telephoned for the police. As she hung up her gown she recognised the heavy footfalls of her maid of all work, and when Frieda knocked, bade her enter, employing those cool impersonal tones so resented by the European servant after a brief sojourn on the dedicated American soil. As the girl closed the door behind her without speaking, Mrs. Balfame turned sharply. She felt at a disadvantage. As her figure was reasonably slim, she wore a cheap corset which she washed once a month[Pg 140] in the bath tub with her nailbrush; and her linen, although fresh, as ever, was of stout longcloth, and unrelieved by the coquetry of ribbons. She wore a serviceable tight petticoat of black jersey, beyond which her well-shod feet seemed to loom larger than her head. She was vaguely grateful that she had not been caught by Alys Crumley, so fond of sketching her, and was about to order Frieda to untie her tongue and be gone, when she noticed that the girl's face was no longer bound, and asked kindly: "Has the toothache gone? I hope you do not suffer any longer." Frieda lifted her small and crafty eyes and shot a suspicious glance at the mistress who had been so indifferent to what she believed to be the worst of all pains. "It's out." "Too bad you didn't have it out at once." Mrs. Balfame hastily encased herself in her bath robe and sat down. "I'll take my dinner upstairs—why—what is it?" "I want to go home." "Home?" "To Germany." "But, of course you can't. There are a lot of German reservists in the country who would like to go home and fight, but they can't get past the British." "Some have. I could." "How? That is quite interesting." "I not tell. But I want to go." "Then go, by all means. But please wait a day or two until I get another girl." "Plenty girls out of job. I want to go to-morrow." [Pg 141] "Oh, very well. But you can't expect a full month's wages, as it is you that is serving notice, not I." "I do not want a full month wage. I want five hundert dollar." Mrs. Balfame turned her amazed eyes upon the girl. Her first thought was that the creature had been driven insane by her letters from home, and wondered if she could overcome her if attacked. Then as she met those small, sharp, crafty eyes, set high in the big stolid face like little deadly guns in a fort, her heart missed a beat. But her own gaze, large and cold, did not waver, and she said satirically: "Well, I am sure I hope you will get it." "I get it—from you." Mrs. Balfame lifted her shoulders. "What next? I have contributed what little I can afford to the war funds. I am sorry, but I cannot accommodate you." "You give me five hundert dollar," reiterated the thick even voice, "or I tell the police you come in the back door two minutes after Mr. Balfame he was kilt at the front gate." Obvious danger once more turned Mrs. Balfame into pure steel. "Oh, no; you will tell them nothing of the sort, for it is not true. I thought I heard some one on the back stairs when I went down to the kitchen. As you know I always drink a glass of filtered water before going to bed. I had forgotten the episode utterly, but I remember now, I heard a noise outside, even imagined that some one turned the knob of the door, and called up to ask you if you also had heard. I did not know that anything had happened out in front until I returned to my room." "I see you come in the kitchen door." But the[Pg 142] voice was not quite so even, the shifty glance wavered. Frieda felt suddenly the European peasant in the presence of the superior by divine right. Mrs. Balfame followed up her advantage. "You are lying—for purposes of blackmail. You did not see me come in the door, because I had not been outside of it. I do not even remember opening it to listen, although I may have done so. You saw nothing and cannot blackmail me. Nor would any one believe your word against mine." "I hear you come in just after me—" "Heard? Just now you said you saw." "Ach—" Mrs. Balfame had an inspiration. "My God!" she exclaimed, springing to her feet, "the murderer took refuge in the house, was hidden in the cellar or attic all night, all the next day! He may be here yet! You may be feeding him!" She advanced upon the staring girl whose mouth stood open. "Of course. Of course. You are a friend of Old Dutch. It was one of his gunmen who did it, and you are his accomplice. Or perhaps you killed him yourself. Perhaps he treated you as he treated so many girls, and you killed him and are trying to blackmail me for money to get out of the country." "It is a lie!" Frieda's voice was strangled with outraged virtue. "My man, he fight for the fatherland. Old Dutch, he will not hurt a fly. I would not have touch your pig of a husband. You know that, for you hate him yourself. I have see in the eye, in the hand. I know notings of who kill him, but—no, I have not see you come in the kitchen door, but I hear some one[Pg 143] come in, the door shut, you call out in so strange voice—I believe before that you have kill him—now—now I do not know—" "It would be wise to know nothing,"—Mrs. Balfame's voice was charged with meaning—"unless you wish to be arrested as the criminal, or as an accomplice—after confessing that you entered the house within a moment or two of the shooting. Who is to say exactly when you did come in? Well, better keep your mouth shut. It is wise for innocent people to know as little about a crime as possible. Why did you testify before the coroner's jury that your tooth ached so you heard nothing? Why didn't you tell your story then?" "I was frightened, and my tooth—I can tink of notings else." "And now you think it quite safe to blackmail me?" "I want to go back to Germany—to my man—and I hate this country what hates Germany." "This country is neutral," said Mrs. Balfame severely. "It regards all the belligerents as barbarians tarred with the same brush. You Germans are so excitable that you imagine we hate when we merely don't care." This was intended to be soothing, but Frieda's brow darkened and she thrust out her pugnacious lips. "Germany, she is the greatest country in the whole world," she announced. "All the world—it muss know that." "How familiar that sounds! Just a slight variation on the old American brag that is quite a relief." Mrs. Balfame spoke as lightly as if she merely had let down the bars of her dignity out of sympathy with a lacerated Teuton. "Well, go back to your Germany, Frieda, if[Pg 144] you can get there, but don't try to blackmail me again. I have no five hundred dollars to give you if I would. If you choose, you may stay your month out, and spend your evenings taking up a collection among your German friends. You are excused." She had achieved her purpose. The girl's practical mind was puzzled by the simple explanation of her mistress' presence in the kitchen, deeply impressed by the contemptuous refusal to be blackmailed. Her shoulders drooped and she slunk out of the room. For a moment Mrs. Balfame clung, reeling, to the back of a chair. Then she went downstairs and telephoned to Dwight Rush. <hr /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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