Mrs. Balfame Part 7

There was a thin cry of life in the nursery of the Houston farm house.

The mother slept and the new born was in competent hands. Mr. Houston, a farmer more prosperous and enterprising than his somewhat weedy appearance prefigured, beckoned Dr. Anna into the dining-room, where a sleepy but interested "hired girl" had brought hot coffee and sandwiches.

The battle had lasted little over three hours, but every moment had been fraught with anxiety for the doctor and the husband. Mrs. Houston's heart had revealed an unsuspected weakness and the baby had not only neglected to head itself towards the gates of life as all proper little marathons should, but had exhibited a state of suspended animation for at least twenty minutes after its arrival at the goal.

Dr. Anna dropped into a chair beside the table and covered her face with her hand.

"I'm all in, I guess," she murmured, and the farmer put down the coffee pot and ran for the demijohn.

"You drink this," he said peremptorily. His own hand was shaking, but he made no verbal attempt to release his strangled emotions until both he and the doctor had drunk of coffee as well as whiskey. Then, when half way through a thick sandwich made of slabs of bread and beef, he began to thank the doctor incoherently.

"You are just it," he sputtered. "Just about it. And your poor back must be broke. You doctors do beat me, particularly you women doctors.

I'll never say nothin' against women doctors again, though I'll tell you now that although poor little Aggie was dead set on you, I opposed it for awhile--"

Dr. Anna was sitting up and smiling. She waved his apologies and protestations aside. "I can't think what came over me to collapse like that. Once or twice lately I have thought I might be getting something.

I'll have my blood taken to-morrow. Now, I'll go home and get to bed quick, although that coffee has made me feel as fine as a fiddle."

"Well, I needed it too, and for more reasons than you. Say--" Mr.

Houston had risen and was pulling nervously at his short and bosky beard. "I got a 'phone from Mrs. Gifning a while ago. You're wanted at the Balfames--bad."

Dr. Anna sprang to her feet, her full cheeks pale again. "Enid! What has happened to her?"

"Oh, she's all right, I guess. It's Dave--"

"Oh, another gastric attack?"

"Worse and more of it. He was shot--two or three hours ago, I guess. I didn't ask the time--was in too big a hurry to get back to Aggie--at his own gate, though, I think she said."

"Who did it?"

"n.o.body knows."

"Dead?"

"No one'll ever be deader."

"H'm!" The color had come back to Dr. Anna's tired face and she shrugged her shoulders. "I'm no hypocrite, and I guess you're not either."

"I'm no more a hypocrite than I am a Democrat. His yellow streak was gettin' wider every year. It's good riddance. Still I wish he'd died in his bed. I don't like the idea of a fellow citizen, good or bad, bein'

shot down like that. It's against law and order, and if the murderer's caught and I'm drawn on the jury, and it's proved he done it, I'll vote for conviction."

"Quite right," said Dr. Anna briskly, as she went out into the hall and put on her hat. "I suppose it's Mrs. Balfame who wants me?"

"Yes, that's it. I remember. But you ought to go home and get sleep.

There's enough women to sit up with her. The hull town likely."

"But I know she wants me." Dr. Anna's face glowed softly. "I'll sleep there all right--on a sofa beside her bed--if she wants me to stay on."

"Well, look out for yourself," he growled. "If you don't think about yourself a little more you'll soon have no show to think so much about other people. I'm goin' for the car."

A few moments later he had brought the little runabout to the door, lighted the lamps, and given the doctor a hard grip of the hand.

She returned the pressure in kind. "Now don't worry, Mr. Houston. She's all right, and that nurse is first rate. Don't talk to her. Aggie, I mean. See you to-morrow about ten."

She drove rapidly out of the gate and into the road. There was a full moon s.h.i.+ning and the drive was but ten miles between the farm and Elsinore. Her face was tired and grim. She had been in daily contact with typhoid fever in the poor and dirty quarter of the town. In her arduous life she had often experienced healthy fatigue, but nothing like this. Could she be coming down?

She swung her thoughts to Enid Balfame, and forgot herself. Free at last, and while still young and lovely! Would she marry Dwight Rush? He had leaped into her mind simultaneously with the announcement of Balfame's death. But was he good enough for Enid? Was any man? Why, now that she was a real widow and in no need of a protector, should she marry at all? At any rate she could afford to wait. There were greater prizes to be captured by a beautiful and still girlish woman.

She was glad for the first time that Enid had never had a child, for there was a virgin and mystic appeal in the woman that had escaped the common lot. Spinsters lost it, curiously enough, but a chaste and lovely matron, who had ignored the book of experience so liberally offered her, and with eyes as unalloyed as a girl's (save when flas.h.i.+ng with intellectual fires)--what more distracting anomaly could the world offer? Only Mrs. Balfame's indifference had kept the men away--Dr. Anna was convinced of that. Her future was in her own hands.

Dr. Anna's mind wandered to the scene of the murder. It was not difficult to construct, even from the meager details, and she shuddered.

Murder! What a hideous word it was! Horrid that it should even brush the name of an exquisite creature like Enid Balfame. Would that Dave Balfame could have fallen of apoplexy while disgracing himself at the Club! But Anna frowned and shook the picture out of her mind. Doctors are too long trained in death to be haunted by its phantoms in any form.

A sharp turn and the road ran beside a salt marsh, a solemn grey expanse that lost itself far away in the grey of the sea. Suddenly Dr.

Anna became aware of a man walking rapidly down the road toward her. He carried his hat in his hand as if his head were hot on this cool autumn night. There was no fear of man in Dr. Anna, even on lonely country roads; nevertheless she had no mind to be detained, and was about to increase her speed, when her curiosity was excited by something pleasantly familiar in the tall loose figure, the almost stiffly upright head. A moment later and the bright moonlight revealed the white face of Dwight Rush.

She brought the car to an abrupt halt as he too paused and nodded recognition.

"What's the matter?" she asked sharply. "You looked as if you were walking to beat time itself--as if you saw a ghost to boot--"

"Plenty of ghosts in my head. It aches like the d.i.c.kens--"

"Were you there when it happened?"

"When what happened?"

"What? You pretend you don't know--when all Elsinore must have known it within five minutes--"

"I don't know what you are talking about. I followed you in from the Club and then took the train for Brooklyn, where I had to see a man.

When I got back to Elsinore--off the train--my head ached so I knew I couldn't sleep--so I started out to walk it off--been walking for about two hours."

"Dave Balfame was shot down at his own gate three or four hours ago."

"Good G.o.d! Who did it? Is he dead?"

"He's dead, and that's about all I can tell you. Houston went to the 'phone but he was in such a state of mind about his wife that he didn't stay for particulars. Enid wanted me--it was Lottie Gifning that 'phoned. I gathered, however, that they haven't caught the murderer yet."

"Jove!" Rush was shaking. "I feel as if I'd been hit in the pit of the stomach. And I'm not one to go to pieces, either. But I've a good enough reason."

Dr. Anna continued to stare at him. He met her gaze and wonder grew in his. Then the blood rushed into his face and he threw back his head.

"What do you mean? That I did it?"

"No--I don't see you committing murder--"

"Not in that d.a.m.ned skulking way--"

"Exactly. But you kind of suggest that you might know something about it. You might have been in the grove, or some other part of the grounds--with some idea of protecting Enid--"

"Why should you think that?"