"Oh! He likes older women, then? Looks as if he might. Never would take the trouble, that type, to adapt himself to girls, try to understand them. Could it be--Alys, you must know if he knows Mrs. Balfame!" Alys was cold again but laid violent hands on her nerves. "No better than he knew any one else, if as well, for Mrs. Balfame never talked to the younger men. She doesn't attract them, anyhow. Do you realise, dear, that you are asking if Mr. Rush committed murder?" "With that jaw and those nostrils, he could--oh, rather! And it is one of those cast-iron, passionate faces; when those men do let go--" "Oh, really!" Alys dropped her arm, and her subtle face expressed disdain. "Mr. Rush is quite too steel clad to be carried away even if he were capable of committing a low and cowardly murder. He happens to be a gentleman and about as astute and poised as they are made. Do please send your romantic imagination off on another flight." "Not I. I'm going to account for every moment he spent that night." "Would you like to see Mr. Rush go to the chair?" asked Miss Crumley sternly. "Oh, good Lord no." Miss Austin turned pale. "I don't believe in capital punishment, anyhow. No, I'll not tell a thing if I find him out. But how interesting to know! I'd write a corking story--fiction--about it. Those deep glimpses into life--into those terrible abysses of the human heart--no writer can become great without them." "Well, don't waste your time trying to find the criminal in this excellent citizen. You might set some of the newspaper men on his trail and blacken his name while you discovered nothing. Better get on the track of the potential woman in New York." "Not half so interesting. Just one of those apartment-house misalliances. No, I'm out for Mr. Rush, and when I have the proof, I'll extract a confession; but I'll dig a little grave in my brain and bury his secret--then when it has ripened, exhume and toss it into that crucible through which facts pass and come out--fiction. Get me, dear?" "You talk like a literary ghoul. But I know you don't mean a word of it. Good-bye, girls. Do drop in whenever you are over on the case." She kissed them all, and Miss Lauretta Lea exclaimed innocently: "You've lost that lovely dusky colour you had awhile ago, dear. You look more like old ivory than ever--old ivory and olive. I wonder all the artists don't paint you. I suppose every young man in Elsinore is in love with you. Marry, my dear, marry. I've been in this game twelve years. Show me a willing would-be husband and I'd take him so quick he'd never know what struck him. Give my hopes of being a man in the next incarnation for ten babies to weep over when they had croup or got lost in the woods of New York City. Hate sob stuff. Cut it out, kid, before you begin it." She talked all the way to the gate and for several yards down the avenue, waving a final farewell with a somewhat tragic smile.