"I cannot, and would not if I could. Do you think I would be the means of fastening the crime of murder on any woman?" "You would if you were a hardened—and good—newspaper woman." "Well, I'm not. And I won't. Do your own sleuthing." "More than I are on the job, but I want your help. I don't say you can pick up fragments of her dress in the grove, or that you can—or would—worm yourself into her confidence and extract a confession. But you can set your wits to work and think up ways to put me on the track of more evidence than I've got now. Can you think of anything off-hand?" "No." "Ah? What does that intonation mean?" "Your ears are off the key." "Not mine. Tell me at once—No,"—He rose and took up his hat—"never mind now. Think it over. You will tell me in a day or two. Just remember while watching all my little seeds sprout that you can help me save a fine fellow and put my heel on a snake—a murderess! Paugh! There's nothing so obscene. Good night." She did not rise as he let himself out, but sat beside her cold stove thinking and crying until her mother called her to come in and go to bed. [Pg 137] [Pg 137] CHAPTER XV CHAPTER XV 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
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