"Good! You shall have the powder in ten minutes. Oh, by the way, will you give me a written permit to pass the night in your house? I want to go through your husband's papers and see if I can find any clue to unknown enemies. He may have received threatening letters. I can obtain the official permission without any difficulty." She wrote the permit unsuspiciously. At nine o'clock that night he let himself into the Balfame house determined to find the pistol before morning. He knew the police would get round to the inevitable search some time on the following day. CHAPTER XXI Alys Crumley entertained four of the newspaper women at a picnic lunch in her studio. She was grateful for the distraction from her own thoughts and diverted by their theories. None had seen Mrs. Balfame save through the medium of the staff artist, and they were inclined to accept the prima facie evidence of her guilt. When Alys fetched a photograph from the house, however, they immediately reversed their opinion, for the pictured face was that of a lovely cold and well-bred woman without a trace of hardness or predisposition to crime. They fell in love with it and vowed to defend her to the best of their ability, Miss Crumley promising to exert her influence with the accused to obtain an interview for the new devotees. Before wrapping the photograph for its inevitable journey to New York, Alys gave it a moment of study herself, wondering if she may not have misinterpreted what she saw that morning. No one had worshipped at that shrine more devoutly than she, even during these later years of metropolitan concordance. "What is your theory?" asked Miss Austin of _The Evening News_. "They say that a lot of those men at the Elks know, but never will come through. Do you think it was any of those girls? It might have been some woman he knew in New York who followed him here for the first time--who would not have been recognised if seen, and got away in a waiting automobile." "As likely as not," said Miss Crumley indifferently. "I have heard so many theories advanced and rejected that I am almost as confused as the police. Jim Broderick says that the simplest explanation is generally the correct one, but while he believes Mrs. Balfame to be the natural solution, I happen to know her better than he does, and a good deal more of this community. Three or four men and one or two women would be still simpler explanations. Possibly--" She turned cold and almost lost her breath, but the impulse to put a maddening possibility into verbal form was irresistible. "Perhaps some man that is in love with Mrs. Balfame did it." And then she hated herself, for she felt as if she had thrown Dwight Rush to the lions.