"Why? Sit down, my dear. Somebody did it—not? as our friends the Germans say. And undoubtedly that some one is the person most interested in getting him out of the way."

"But not Mrs. Balfame! Why—I've been brought up on Mrs. Balfame. I'd as soon suspect my own mother."

"No, my friend, you would not. Mrs. Crumley is adorable in her own way, but she is frankly and comfortably in her fifties. She is not a beautiful woman who looks fully ten years younger than she has any right to look. See?"

"Oh—but—"

"Think it over. You said the other day that you believed Mrs. Balfame to have unplumbed depths, or something equally popular with your sex. And you were horrified at her singular facial transformations no less than twice within a fortnight. Certainly the picture you drew of her stalking down the Country Club room was that of a woman in a mood for anything—"

"Of a lovely well-bred woman outraged by the conduct of a drunken brute of a husband. But do you imagine that any woman goes through life without being turned into a fury now and then by her husband?"

"No doubt. But, you see, the death of the brute occurred so soon after the transformation scene enacted behind the expressive face of the lady you have immortalised on paper—and no new-made devil is so complete as that which rises out of the debris of an angel. When your placid sternly-controlled women do explode, they may patch themselves together as swiftly as a cyclone passes, but one of the sinister faces of their[Pg 130] hidden collection has been flashed momentarily before the public eye—"

[Pg 130]

"Oh! Oh!"

"I have tracked down every suspect, several upon whom no suspicion has alighted—as yet. To my mind there are only two people to whom the crime could be brought home."

"Who is the other?"

"Dwight Rush."

This time Alys did not sit up with flaming eyes. To the astute gaze of the reporter she took herself visibly in hand. But she bit through the long tube between her lips. "What makes you think that?" she asked, as she tossed the bits into the fire and lighted another cigarette. "You roam too far afield for me."

"He is in love with her."

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