Mrs. Balfame Part 35

CHAPTER x.x.xVII

It was two o'clock and ten minutes. The eleven remaining spectators, one of them a woman in evening dress, were sound asleep. The sheriff was pacing up and down with his hands behind his back, his perturbed glance ranging between the clock and the door leading into the jury-room.

Occasionally he slipped on a bit of the debris and kicked it aside. The reporters slumbered at their tables or stared moodily ahead. One gnawed his pencil; another tore leaves of copy paper into morsels and laboriously built something that looked like a child's house of blocks.

Outside it was deathly still. The snow was falling softly. It was too early for a c.o.c.k-crow. Occasionally some one snored. The footfalls of the sheriff made no noise.

Suddenly every reporter present sat up with the scent of blood in his nostrils. Their ears twitched. The fumes blew out of their highly organised brains like mist before a bracing wind. An automobile was das.h.i.+ng down the road, its horn shrieking a series of brief peremptory notes, which sounded like "Wait! Wait! Wait!"

It came to an abrupt halt before the Court-house door, and almost simultaneously Wagstaff, who had wandered forth once more, ran up the stairs and into the court-room.

"There's something in the wind, boys," he cried, smoothing his hair and steering carefully for his chair. "Rush, Broderick, three other men, Sarah Austin and Alys Crumley, were in that car. They've all gone straight to the Judge. Something big is going to break, as sure as death."

The sheriff retired hastily to the region behind the court-room.

The young men adjusted their chairs, arranged their copy-paper neatly, and sharpened their pencils. Mrs. Balfame's friends went forward to the door behind the jury-box which led to the tunnel. Even the sleepy spectators sat up nervously.

Ten minutes pa.s.sed. Then the sheriff, his face now stolid and important, bustled in and across to the jury-room, opened the door and summoned the occupants. In every stage of dishabille they filed sullenly in; the sheriff went through the tunnel for Mrs. Balfame.

The Judge, without his gown and his hair ruffled, was in his seat when the prisoner entered. She came hurriedly, her great repose broken, her face grey. Rush, who had entered behind the Judge, met her and whispered:

"You are free. But you will need all your self-control. Don't let them have a story in the morning papers of a breakdown at the last moment."

Mrs. Battle, Mrs. Gifning and Mrs. c.u.mmack, who were far more excited than she, took heart at his words, patted their dishevelled hair and motioned to their husbands, summoned from the Dobton Inn, to draw closer. Whatever the issue, they felt the need of masculine support, albeit they scowled at the obvious form that masculine needs had taken.

Mrs. Balfame had looked dully at Rush as he spoke. Between fatigue and the nervous strain of maintaining the superwoman pitch for the benefit of her friends, her mind was confused. She could only mutter, "I'll try.

Is--is--it really--all right?"

"You'll be free and for ever exonerated in half an hour."

Mrs. Balfame sank back in her chair, thinking that half an hour was a long time, a terribly long time. How long did it usually take a jury to p.r.o.nounce a prisoner not guilty?

Sitting before the table in front of her were two men whom she vaguely recognised. Behind them was the man she hated most now that her husband was dead, the reporter Broderick. And beside him were Alys Crumley and Miss Austin. What did it all mean? She drew a sigh. It didn't matter much. She was so tired, so tired. When it was over she would sleep for a week and see no one--not even Dwight Rush.

The district attorney was on his feet, his face as black as if in the first stages of a poisonous fever. Neither he nor any one in the court-room threw Mrs. Balfame a glance. All eyes were on the Judge, who rose and made a short address to the jury.

"New evidence has just been brought to the notice of the court," he said. "It is of sufficient importance to warrant its immediate consideration, and the case is therefore reopened for this purpose. It is for you, however, to pa.s.s upon its worth. Mr. Rush will take the stand."

"May it please your honour," shrieked Mr. Gore, "I protest that this case has already been submitted to the jury, and that it is altogether out of order to reopen it."

"That is a matter within the discretion of the court," replied the Judge sharply; he had slept but fitfully and was not in his accustomed mood of remote judicial calm. "Mr. Rush will take the stand and proceed without interruption."

Rush ascended to the witness-box and was sworn. Mrs. Balfame half rose, dropped back into her chair with another sigh. There could be but one explanation of this strange procedure. Rush had discovered that the jury was hostile and was about to incriminate himself. She could do nothing.

She had brought up the subject only yesterday, and he had replied curtly that he had taken the pistol from his safe and hidden it elsewhere. And she was too tired to feel that anything mattered much but the prospect of a week's rest. Later she could exonerate him in one way or another.

The newspaper men were as sober and alert as if the hour were ten in the morning. With their abnormal news-sense they antic.i.p.ated a complete surprise. To do them justice, they were quite indifferent to the possibility of Mrs. Balfame's release. If it were news, Big News, that was all that mattered.

As Rush took the witness-chair, the lines in his pallid face looked as if cut to the bone, but he addressed the jury in strong clear tones. He told them that two days since he had been informed by Miss Alys Crumley that Dr. Anna Steuer had positive knowledge bearing upon the crime for which Mrs. Balfame had been unjustly arrested and thrust into jail, but that they were afraid to tell her of her friend's tragic situation lest it shatter her slender hold on life. She was very ill again after a relapse, although quite conscious, and their only hope was in perfect peace of mind.

If she recovered, Mrs. Dissosway, in whom alone she had confided, had felt sure she would give the testimony which must set Mrs. Balfame at liberty if the jury convicted her. On the other hand, Mrs. Dissosway had promised her niece that if the doctors agreed that Dr. Steuer's death was but a matter of hours and there was a real danger of Mrs. Balfame's conviction, she would tell the dying woman the truth and take the consequences.

Shortly after the case had gone to the jury, Miss Crumley and Miss Sarah Austin had gone out to the hospital, satisfied that Dr. Anna had but a few hours to live. But it was not until Miss Crumley had persuaded her relative that the delayed verdict of the jury meant conviction for Mrs.

Balfame that the superintendent, who was a lifelong friend of Dr. Anna Steuer, had given Miss Crumley permission to send for a stenographer and the witnesses she desired. Miss Crumley had therefore telephoned at once to Mr. Broderick, as she knew he would be sure to be in or near the courtroom, and asked him to bring the witness and a stenographer.

They had reached the hospital in fifteen minutes. Dr. MacDougal had met them at the door of Dr. Steuer's room and informed them that the news of her friend's predicament had been broken to the patient, after administering stimulants, and that she had consented immediately to make a statement.

"It took her some time to make this statement," continued Mr. Rush. "She was very weak, and stimulants had to be given repeatedly. But in due course it was completed, signed, and witnessed by Mr. Broderick and the two physicians present. I shall read it to you with the permission of the court."

He then read them the ante-mortem statement of Dr. Anna Steuer:

"I shot David Balfame.

"I make this statement at once lest I prove to be unable to add the explanation of my motives, and I herewith sign it."

Signed and witnessed.

The statement continued:

"I had known for a long time that my beloved friend's life with this wretch was insupportable, but although I urged her repeatedly to divorce him and she refused, it never entered my head to kill him nor any one else. I had spent my life trying to heal, and to give comfort where my patient's sufferings were of the mind as well as of the body. I had carried Balfame through several gastric attacks, caused by his disreputable life, with as much professional enthusiasm as if he had been the best of husbands. To have removed him during one of these would have been a simple matter.

"But that day out at the Country Club when he insulted the loveliest and most nearly perfect being on this earth, with the deliberate intent to ruin her position--the little all she had in the world that mattered--something snapped in my head. I almost struck him then and there. And when, during the ride home, Enid for the first time told me the hideous details of her life with that man all the blood in my body seemed to surge up and through my brain. He deserved death, and only death could free her. But how could this be accomplished? Too proud and too obdurate in her principles for the divorce-court, she was also too gentle and good and fastidious, in spite of her remarkable will, to strike him down herself.

"While waiting for a summons to the Houston farm, I paid several calls, and the last was at the c.u.mmacks', one of the children being ill. As I came downstairs from the nursery I heard the conversation at the telephone--Balfame's drunken compliment to his wife. He said he would walk home. It was then that the definite impulse came to me, and I acted without an instant's hesitation. I always carried a revolver, for I was forced to take many long and lonely rides in my country practice. I drove straight to the lane behind the Balfame place, left the car, put out the lights, and climbed the back fence. It was very dark, but I had been familiar with the grounds all my life and I had no difficulty in finding the grove. I waited, moving about restlessly, for I wanted to have it over and go out to the Houston farm.

"He came after what had seemed to be hours of waiting, singing at the top of his voice. Mr. Rush tells me there is talk of two pistols having been fired that night, and that a bullet from a thirty-eight-calibre pistol entered a tree just to the left of the gate. I heard no one else in the grove. My revolver was a forty-one and can be found in the drawer of my desk at home. I fired at Balfame the moment he reached the gate. I vaguely remember seeing another figure almost beside him, but as Balfame fell I ran for the lane and my car. I had no intention of giving myself up. I knew that the crime would be laid to political enemies, who, no doubt, could produce alibis. This proved to be the case, and when I broke down and was carried to the hospital it was with the a.s.surance of public belief in gun-men as the perpetrators of the crime. That Enid Balfame, that serene and splendid woman, whose life has been a miracle of good taste and high sense of duty, would be accused never crossed my mind.

"No, it is impossible for me to say with truth that I repent. I might have, once. But these last six months! Millions of men in the greatest civilisations of earth are killing one another daily for no reason whatever save that man, who seeks to direct the destinies of the world, is a complete and pitiful failure. Why, pray, should a woman repent having broken one of his laws and removed one of the most worthless and abominable of his s.e.x, who had made the life of a beloved friend past enduring? Moreover, I have saved hundreds of lives at the risk of my own. I die in peace.

"This statement is made with full knowledge of impending death and without hope of recovery."

"This ante-mortem statement," concluded Mr. Rush, "was taken down in longhand by the stenographer who sits below, and signed by Anna Steuer, M.D., of Elsinore, Brabant County, State of New York. It was witnessed by Drs. MacDougal and Meyers, who accompanied me from the hospital to the Court-house. Mr. Broderick of the _New York News_, as I mentioned before, also heard the confession and affixed his signature."

He handed the sheets to the jury and stepped down. For a moment there was no sound but the scratching of pencils on the opposite side of the room and the faint rustle of paper in the jury-box. Mrs. Balfame had drawn her veil across her face and sat huddled in her chair.

The two doctors and Broderick took the stand briefly, the former testifying that Dr. Steuer had been of clear and sound mind when she made and signed her statement. Then the district attorney stood up, and in lifeless tones--Dr. Anna had been his family's most cherished friend--asked if there was any prospect of the self-confessed criminal being examined further. Rush went over to Mrs. Balfame and pressed his hand hard upon her shoulder.

"May it please your honour," he said, "Dr. Anna Steuer expired before we left the hospital."

Again there was a furious scratching of pens. Not a reporter glanced at Mrs. Balfame. They had forgotten her existence. The Judge asked the jury if they wished to retire once more for deliberation. The foreman faced about. The other eleven shook their heads with decision.

The Judge dismissed them and congratulated the defendant, who had risen and stood clutching the back of her chair. The reporters raced one another down the stairs to the telegraph-offices and telephone-booths.

It was physically impossible for Mrs. Balfame to faint, or to lose self-control for more than a moment at a time. She drew away from the friends that crowded about her, one or two of the women hysterical.

"I shall ask Mr. Rush to take me over to the jail for a few moments,"

she said in her clear cold voice. "I must put a few things together, and I wish to have a few words alone with Mr. Rush." She turned to the dazed Mr. c.u.mmack. "Take Polly home," she said peremptorily. "Mr. Rush will drive me over later."

"All right, Enid." He tucked Mrs. c.u.mmack under his arm. "Your room's been ready for a week."

As Rush was about to follow his client he turned abruptly and exchanged a long look with Alys Crumley. Both faces were pallid and drawn with fatigue but their eyes for that swift moment blazed with resentment and despair.