real newspaper people stood together, she finally had described the scene at the Country Club on the afternoon preceding Balfame's death, and shown him the drawing she had had the superior presence of mind to make. Broderick had examined every detail of that rapid but demonstrative sketch: the burly form at the head of the room, his condition indicated by an angle of the shoulders and a deft exaggeration of feature which recalled the facile art of the cartoonist; the strained forms of the men surrounding him; Mrs. Balfame heading down the room, her face set and terrible; the groups of women and girls in attitudes expressive of alarm or disgust.

But when he made as if to put the sketch in his pocket she had snatched it from him, and he merely had[Pg 119] shrugged his shoulders, confident that he could induce her to give it up should he really need it.

[Pg 119]

He had questioned her regarding the scene until its outlines were as firm in his mind as in her own. But there had been something else—some impression, not obviously linked with the case: It was for that impression that he sounded his admirable memory; and in a moment he found it and stopped with a smothered exclamation.

He had complimented her on the excellent likeness of Dwight Rush, whom he knew and liked, and remarked quite naturally that he might have sat for her a number of times. The dusky pink had mounted to her hair, but she had replied carelessly that Rush was "a common enough type."

Possibly Broderick would have forgotten the blush had it not have been for the swift change of expression in her eyes: a certain fear followed by a concentrated renitence; and at the same moment he had remembered that he had met Rush once or twice at the Crumleys' during the summer and thought him quite the favoured guest.

Driven only by a mild personal curiosity, he had asked her how she liked Rush and if she saw much of him; he recalled that she had answered with an elaboration of indifference that she hadn't seen him for ages and took no interest in him whatever.

Then Broderick had drawn her on to talk of Mrs. Balfame. Yes, in common with all Elsinore that counted, she admired Mrs. Balfame, although she believed that no one really knew her, that she unconsciously lived among the surfaces of her nature. Her face as she marched down the clubroom that day, and[Pg 120] its curious sudden transformation on that other day at the Friday Club when her thoughts so plainly had 

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