That Royle Girl/Chapter 20

by Edwin Balmer

CHAPTER XX

Joan Daisy spread her sheets and blankets over the couch which Mr. Clarke had pulled out for her. She dropped off her dress and lay down without slipping under the bed-covers, while she looked about, wide-eyed with realization of how nearly it had happened that she was never to have seen this room again!

She arose and opened softly her mother's door, seeing as she expected, that Dads was absent and mamma soundly slept. She closed the door, and with her hand on the knob her mind followed Mr. Clarke to a hospital.

How nearly it had happened that he was never to return to that old home of his in Massachusetts where the hollyhocks grew so straight against the white fence, and his mother stood so calm and dignified in the garden! How nearly it had happened that mamma, in this next room, and the calm, straight-standing mother of Calvin Clarke were to have received the same news from a ditch outside Chicago!

Joan Daisy undressed and went to bed, but lay wide awake with her thoughts leaping through the events of the night, of the trial, of her meetings with Calvin Clarke in the empty court-room, in the automat and here, in her room, on the night of her arrest. Now he knew himself to be wrong, all wrong about her; and wrong, too, about Ket. So he will free Ket to-morrow.

Her mind went to Ket, who lay to-night in his cell in jail, not knowing that, whatever the jury voted, he was sure to be freed; she thought of him on his cot, wide-eyed in the dark and clutching his blanket as he imagined, as surely at moments he must, that the State, Mr. Clarke's State, would sentence him to death.

She wished that she could get word to Ket at once.

Then she thought of him, freed to-morrow and demanding her, seizing her, as at the door here he had embraced her on the night of his arrest.

Joan Daisy turned upon her side and gazed out at the sky, too spent to feel or think; too spent to sleep. And so, waiting, waiting, she watched the dawn.

Calvin, at dawn, had returned to his rooms after a visit to a hospital, where he had had his collar-bone set and his right arm strapped across his chest to hold it in place. Desiring to avoid fuss, he had mentioned his injury as due merely to "an automobile accident," and he had not again communicated with the police. Consequently, they and the State's attorney's staff had lost track of him, so Ellison went to Clarke's apartment and was there when Calvin arrived.

"Well, you have been at it," Ellison welcomed him and helped him out of his coat with a personal concern which surprised Calvin and pleased him, although he denied recognition of it.

"Hm. Heard from that car?" he asked.

"She got Baretta," announced Ellison.

"Got him?"

"Completely."

"When did you hear?"

"Half hour ago. They drove the car into the city; evidently he didn't last long, so they left him in the street about a block from his house. The idea, of course, was to have him found as if shot in a hold-up, going home last night. That's what the patrolman who found him actually reported to the man we sent to Baretta's house."

"Who else was there?" asked Calvin.

"Nobody at the house but Baretta's Filipino butler and his wife."

"Baretta's?" asked Calvin.

"The butler's. Mrs. Baretta does nothing so declassé," commented Ellison, "as to spend the winter in Chicago. She's at Palm Beach."

"Yes," said Calvin absentmindedly. "Has Zenn been picked up?"

Ellison nodded. "He has such a beautiful alibi that there's no doubt whatever he was in that car."

"Who else have you?"

Ellison repeated several names, adding, "Probably the first three were along with Zenn; they have the same alibi. The Royle girl's all right, is she?"

"Quite," said Calvin, looking away. "I had mistaken her character completely—completely."

"Looks as if she told the truth about the man in the window."

"She told what was essentially true, throughout," corrected Calvin, emphatically. "She was trying, throughout, for what she knew was right. She's an unusual person, Ellison. When you consider what she came from and what she had to see around her and to look past to see Schubert's and Mozart's names—and to feel it out and work it out for herself," he continued, none too coherently. "I've never met her equal," he summed up, impulsively. "Never."

"Oh!" said Ellison, uncomfortably, though he suspected not half the inward tumult and supposed that Clarke had a severe attack of conscience over his responsibility for wrong done to others. "Well, she's no worse off; and she'll have Ketlar free to-morrow. He won't be damaged: after to-day's papers are circulated he'll just have been advertised. This has raised his value. Why, he'll drag down twice as much at the Echo, and he'll look twice as good to her."

"Hm," muttered Calvin, turning his back.

"Arm bad?" asked Ellison, sympathetically. "Let me help you, old man."

"Baretta," said Calvin, concentrating upon the affair of the night, "Baretta never knew who shot him. He couldn't have seen, so he couldn't have told it to Zenn or any one else; but the lot of them knew she was along. Somebody might give her trouble, Ellison. Send a man up to her building for me, won't you? Don't let anybody bother her—not even newspaper men. I want her to sleep, Ellison."

"I'll see to it," assured Ellison, regarding Clarke more thoughtfully. "I believe I'll detail a man to look after you, too," he threatened, as he departed.

Calvin reclined upon his pillows, imagining Joan Royle under his protection; and this feeling that he guarded her, supplied him a small, ephemeral satisfaction. To-morrow, in the morning, Frederic Ketlar will be freed; to-morrow, in court, Calvin Clarke, himself, will ask his release. "Your honor," the formal phrase, with its old Latin words, repeated itself in Calvin's head, "the State asks leave to nolle prosequi." Whereupon, Ketlar will turn from the judge a free man and no guard of Calvin Clarke's can keep Ketlar from her.

Ellison returned in the forenoon.

"Slept?" he inquired.

"Not much," admitted Calvin, who as a matter of fact had not closed his eyes. "What's happened?"

"About what you'd expect," reported Ellison. "Zenn and the rest of the living are sticking to their alibis; and there's also an alibi for the late lamented. I am given to understand that George Baretta was a model man last night. He had merely been at Tut's Temple, where also were many other estimable citizens; about the time you left for your ride into the country, George started home and was about a block from his quiet residence when two bold, bad persons unknown—absolutely unknown—shot him."

"That's to be the story!"

"That is the story. Of course, if the Royle girl could swear that she recognized Baretta at the ditch—"

"Miss Royle," interrupted Calvin, "did not recognize him, so she will swear only to what already has been stated."

"Then," said Ellison, regarding Calvin with increased wonder, "their story probably will stick. The waiting world will likely always lack legal assertion as to the identity of the person Miss Royle shot. The Temple gang have to deny that Baretta was at the ditch in order to protect themselves. None of them knew anything about the district of the ditch. Is there such a place west? It is a complete surprise to them. However, the late lamented's personal difficulty over Adele Ketlar has become considerably less confidential—George being reliably deceased."

"How about the jury?" asked Calvin.

"Dutifully deliberating. You surely lashed that Greek to the mast of the ship of state," Ellison recollected, admiringly. "We were wrong, but on the evidence in court—for you know, Calvin, that the Royle girl, I mean Miss Royle, was gorgeously lying—we ought to have a conviction. Anyway, you inspired that Greek, at least, with the good old American sentiment. He'll die but never surrender. Of course, we've nothing to send to the jury; but Ketlar has heard the cheery word of new developments."

"His mother," reminded Calvin. "Somebody ought to see her."

"She's been seen," assured Ellison. "There's nothing to the case any more. A little hard work, now, will put us in perfect shape to move a nolle pros, if your Greek patriot is still holding the ship to-morrow."

Calvin welcomed the work, imposing it upon himself for the distracting torment of it, in preference to his thoughts in idleness through the day. By night he was prepared, and he went to bed certain of Ketlar's release in the morning.

The prospect, indeed, was apparent to every one who read the early editions of the Monday morning papers which were sold at downtown street corners on Sunday evening; Dads purchased one and immediately telephoned to reassure himself that Joan was safe.

Having regained sobriety, Dads was delayed only by his imperative need of a shave and a facial massage, together with the simultaneous ministrations of a manicurist and bootblack, before he hurried home to disperse the party which was gathered in Joan's room.

Hoberg was acting as host, Dads observed upon his arrival; for Hoberg had called in the afternoon with candy and flowers and, staying on, had ordered up ice cream and cakes to make of supper a festive occasion, shared not only by Hoberg but by several youths and girls from other apartments in the building. Joan had been serving tea for them, and the ice cream upon her own plate was untouched, Dads saw; her mother saw it also and appropriated the plate, after Daisy definitely had deserted it. The girl could not feast and celebrate, Dads knew; and tactfully, but only the more promptly for it, he cleared the room.

Confronted by many dishes to be washed, mamma wilted as soon as the guests were gone and retired to her refuge in bed.

"Simply pile up the dishes to-night," Dads bid Joan Daisy, grandly, with his pleasant air of persuasion that a task postponed was as good as one performed.

"I'd rather be doing something," she replied, as he followed her into the kitchenette. "But you stay here, Dads."

"Certainly, m'dear," he said, putting forth a hand, not to aid in dishwashing, but for her clasp. She clung to his hand for a few moments and he felt her quivering.

"Dads, it wasn't Ket!"

"No doubt whatever about that, m' dear."

"Mr. Clarke will free him at ten o'clock to-morrow."

"That's the hour, Joan."

"I'll be there."

"You'll not be alone, m' dear; far from it."

"No," she said, withdrawing her hand, quietly.

"You'll have plenty of company," pursued Dads, leaning against the wall beside the sink and watching as she looked down concentrated upon the sight of the water running upon the dishes. "You'd like it alone?" he required of her, gently.

"Everybody'll be in court," she mused. "Mr. Clarke and that Mr. Ellison and Mr. Elmen—"

"And plenty of ladies. . . . Miss Lola Nesson," Dads particularized, observing Joan with exceeding closeness.

"Yes. . . . He told me he was wrong, all wrong, Dads."

"Ketlar?"

"No; it was about Ket he was wrong; Mr. Clarke, I mean. He was under the car," related Joan Daisy, suddenly seized with need to talk, although with every one else she had begged off mention of the matter. So she told how Mr. Clarke had called her back, after she had started from the car, to tell her that he had been wrong. "That was funny, wasn't it? Especially in him; for if any one can keep things inside himself, that man can. You'd have thought he'd have figured this would keep till I got back with help; and if I didn't ever get back, what would be the difference?"

"You'd have known it for a minute, at any rate, if you were killed the next," explained Dads.

"Known what?"

"That he was wrong about you."

"But I did know it anyway. Heavens, I'd been telling him that for three months."

"He wanted you to know that he knew it, at last."

"Yes," said Joan Daisy, nodding, for of course she had realized this and was only talking it over. "He wanted the world to know, too, when he was wrong as much as when he thought he was right. I stood by him when he telephoned the police, and he certainly came out and said he'd been wrong," she related; and Dads, watching, saw deep color spread from her forehead to her throat. "He surely came through against himself—and for Ket and me. . . . It would have been a queer wind-up for the Clarke family, wouldn't it, Dads?"

"What would?" he inquired, aware that she had been thinking so intently that she had not noticed that she had ceased speaking to him.

"Oh, if that car had turned over a little harder or the bullets had got us. I was thinking of a rotogravure section printing a picture of a flivver upside down in a frozen corn field for the finish of the Clarke family—after Queen Anne's war and General Knox's staff and Antietam."

"Seen him to-day?" ventured Dads.

"No. He telephoned about the man I shot—Baretta," answered Joan Daisy, carefully wiping a cup. "I asked him to; I wanted to know."

"That," said Dads, firmly grasping her arm, "that's nothing to think of."

"I'll think of it, Dads!" she said, raising her head. "I did it; so I'll think of it. I'd have to, anyway." She put down the cup and with a forefinger tapped the edge of the sink and then tapped at a point a foot away and twelve inches off, again. "They put bullets into us like that, Dads," she explained. "Into the bottom of the car, I mean; but they meant 'em for us—Neski and Mr. Clarke and me. Baretta did it, we know; but even after he's dead we can't get any one to say so. They'll only talk about Adele now. . . . It gives you an idea of what the State is up against. . . . I don't mind so much the way Mr. Clarke went after me on the stand."

Again, in her intentness, she had omitted to speak the connective idea; and this time Dads did not ask what it was. He arranged to accompany her to court in the morning and, with more than the usual tenderness, he kissed her good night and retired to the bedroom where his wife offered discussion of the comparative marital and financial merits of Mr. Hoberg, who certainly was a substantial man, and Fred, who was to be freed to-morrow under conditions which any one would call creditable to him, so that no one could say his reputation had been hurt.

Dads attended to this so perfunctorily that, for the first time, mamma complained to him of lack of interest in Daisy's welfare.

Joan took to bed the newspaper which Dads had brought home; and after switching off her reading lamp, she reached up for the light again, several times. Upon the front page was heralded a forecast of Ket's release; but it was not this which drew her again and again to the page. It was the account of her own and Mr. Clarke's expeditions to Tut's Temple, of their pursuit after leaving the Temple and of the fight in the ditch of the corn field and of the discovery, in the city, of Baretta dead.

She skipped to a paragraph narrating the arrest of Zenn and a dozen others openly designated as "gunmen" and "lieutenants of Baretta" whom Mr. Clarke had been questioning that day, without result. The lawyers who usually represented these men, said the newspaper, undoubtedly would appear at the opening of court to-morrow to free their clients in the usual manner on habeas corpus writs, which would be opposed by Mr. Clarke in person.

Thereupon, Joan's eyes sought the paragraph which related that Mr. Clarke had worked all day and expected to appear in court to-morrow, not only to oppose the writs for Zenn, but also in connection with the developments of the Ketlar case.

Upon awakening, Ket filled her mind; for there were sounds in Ket's apartment. His mother had come to dust and sweep in preparation for him; and Joan and Dads and Mrs. Folwell went together to the court, where women blocked the doors, where Max Elmen and his son, Herman, and Weigal, of the Echo, with musicians from the orchestra and several men whom Joan did not know, crowded the rail in the court-room. Ket had not been brought in; nor did she see Mr. Clarke. The judge's bench was empty, as also was the jury box.

Oliver was there, with the other reporters who had written of the case; photographers banged their blinding flashlights as at the start of the trial. Hoberg put himself, proprietarily, beside Joan Daisy, but Max Elmen cleared only two seats, one for her and one for Mrs. Folwell.

"Have the chair," urged Max, reassuring Joan with a soft clasp of his long fingers. "It is all but over. There is nothing for you to do but look."

She felt Dads' hand upon her shoulder, as she sat down; for Dads displaced Hoberg and remained behind her, patting her when she most noticeably trembled. The witness chair stood empty before her, reminding her of her cross-examination by Mr. Clarke. The jury filed silently to their places; the judge suddenly appeared; Ket was within the doors and Joan Daisy arose hot with triumph at the sight of him. For they had won, he and she! They had proved and justified themselves. This court, before which she had fought for him, must in a moment dismiss him!

"Order," commanded a voice, sternly. "There will be order in the court."

She was making none of the disturbance; she was just standing and staring at Ket, who saw her and smiled at her, drawing his shoulders straight; he passed a hand over his smooth flaxen hair and touched his tie, adjusting it slightly. His clear skin glowed pink with his pleasure at the applause and the excitement, and he nodded, as he used to do at the Echo when dancers clapped and called out to him.

She saw Mr. Ellison and then Mr. Clarke. How pale he was! She raised herself to tiptoes to see his shoulder; and since he made no display of bandages, she thought for a moment that she must have borne a distorted memory of night before last and that he had not been hurt. She succeeded in discerning, however, that his right sleeve was pinned and his coat buttoned over his right arm. Mr. Ellison stayed at his right, carefully avoiding jostle against him.

The judge recognized them and spoke to the jury. Immediately Andreapolos, the foreman, replied, reporting disagreement. The judge's voice again; other voices. Joan Daisy stood down from tiptoes, losing sight of Mr. Clarke except as she caught glimpses of his pale face as others between him and her moved aside. She heard the judge's voice distinctly and knew that the jury was dismissed.

Every one turned, then, to Mr. Clarke.

"Your honor, the State asks leave," he said in his clear voice, "to nolle prosequi."

Joan Daisy, on tiptoes to see him better, caught at Herman Elmen's sleeve. "What does he mean?" she whispered.

"That's Latin," whispered Herman. "Latin for—"

Latin, she thought to herself; in her excitement, and not knowing it for the usual form, she imagined it an affectation of Mr. Clarke, and she was thrown for the instant into her old hostility to him. Now she heard him speaking to the judge in English.

"The motion is allowed," announced the judge and Mr. Clarke turned away.

"That is all," said Max Elmen's triumphant tones. "You are free!"

"Order!" commanded the loud, stern voice. "There will be order in the court!"

Some one kissed Ket. She was not his mother; for his mother waited beside Joan Daisy. It was Lola Nesson who kissed him and who clung to him when he turned to them. Two other girls clasped him, and a man—it was Weigal—grabbed Ket's hands. Joan Daisy dropped from tiptoes and waited with hot waves of blood warming her face and limbs; Ket's mother waited, also, for these others to release him. But they did not and he could not, or did not care to, put them off; so they all pressed together to the doors. A bailiff followed, carrying Ket's overcoat and hat, and when they reached the hall, Weigal ostentatiously, and calling attention to his action, thrust banknotes into the overcoat pockets, whereupon Ket laughed and shook himself free of the girls and reached with one hand for the coat and with the other to his mother.

"Come along, mamsie!" he invited grandly and gazed down at Joan Daisy and demanded, teasingly, "Well, what's the matter with you, Jo?"

"Matter, Ket?" she replied, transported to old times with him, when she, by not throwing herself upon him, provoked him as none of the others.

"Yeh! Ain't you glad you got me out, now that I'm out?" he jibed her. "I suppose you figure you're through; you've got a lunch date elsewhere to-day."

"No; I haven't," she replied, very seriously, and he chuckled, looking her over with exuberant anticipation.

"Then you're coming with me. And it'll be some lunch in your life, Jo. I'm going to buy a meal!" he boasted, only more flattered by the obvious consternation he bestrewed over the girls whom he otherwise ignored.

He flipped on his hat, tilting it with becoming jauntiness; he put on his overcoat, appreciatively cramming down the banknotes to the bottom of the pockets. "I guess we can buy a lunch; come along," he bid, linking one arm with his mother's and the other with Jo's, half lifting her from her feet.

Elmen reached them, and Ket offered his hands, with his elbows still linked with his mother's and Jo's. She glanced away and discovered Calvin Clarke near the elevator shaft; she slipped her arm from Ket's and worked her way to him.

"How is it to-day?" she inquired, looking up into his intent eyes. He seemed paler, when she was so close to him, and he kept his lips very straight.

"It is all over," he replied. "That charge can never come up again. On the other matter," he added after a moment.

"What other matter?" she asked, stirring spots of color in his cheeks.

"The matter when we—the matter at the ditch," he amended.

"Oh! I meant, how's your shoulder?"

"It is no trouble. The matter of the ditch—that is, the investigation of it will be arranged without requiring you, at least for to-day."

She felt Ket's hand under her arm, and Ket asked, genially enough but not speaking directly to Mr. Clarke, "What's on his chest now?"

Calvin turned to the elevator, which had just risen empty, and he said to the operator, "Take these people down by themselves."

Peering through the elevator grating, as the car descended, Joan got a glimpse of Mr. Clarke and Mr. Ellison on the stairs, and she heard Mr. Ellison say, "Zenn will try—"

The car descended swiftly, and with Ket and his mother and Herman Elmen and Weigal, she went out to the street.

"God!" exulted Ket, looking up and filling his lungs deep with the fresh air. He jerked Jo and his mother closer to him, pushing his way to the curb, where Weigal was holding a taxi. "Much obliged," Ket accepted it, grandly, and thrust Jo in, pushed his mother after her and, blocking off Weigal, who tried to enter, he jumped in and slammed the door.

"Beat it!" he commanded.

"Where to?" the driver asked.

"Beat it!" yelled Ket, more loudly, when Lola Nesson came to the curb and spoke to the driver. "Beat it! Then I'll tell you where."

Joan Daisy drew into her corner as he plumped himself between her and his mother; he settled back with an arm around each as the cab started. "Just don't you turn by that —— —— jail!" he called, and Joan remembered him in it and gave no resistance to his arm.

Suddenly his mother lost all restraint and cast herself upon him, sobbing.

"Why, I got the world by the tail, mamsie!" he boasted, patting her. "I got the world by the tail," he repeated, but began crying himself, all the while hugging Joan close to him.

"South!" he shouted direction to the driver, at the halt before the boulevard; his mother kissed him and sat up, drying her eyes, and he released her, but kept Joan Daisy embraced. "I'll get out here, Frederic," his mother offered.

"You won't," said Ket in a tone which told that he did not want her; so she caught her breath and insisted.

"I'll take you down town first," he said generously. "Where are you going?"

She named the boulevard corner at Madison Street; and when the cab stopped, he got out and from a pocket abstracted a banknote. "Here's a twenty that Weigal wished onto me," he announced, and made his mother accept it before he let her out. "I want you to spend every cent of it on yourself to-day," he ordered, grandly, and led her a few steps down the sidewalk.

Joan Daisy watched him from the cab, perfectly aware of his intentions in regard to herself. She was on the side of the seat furthest from the curb, and her hand went to the latch of the door with an instinct of escape which she denied even before he turned back toward her, lifting himself on his toes as he stepped as though, having left his mother, he was lightened of his last restraint. He attracted attention of girls on the walk; it was not recognition; merely the flattering gazes which always went to him, and he delayed at the cab door to enjoy them a few moments more, while he casually directed the driver to a south side hotel.

He looked in at Jo and her eyes, after the admiring eyes of the strangers, disappointed him; he saw that she pressed at the further edge of the seat, and he pulled her nearer as he got in. "See here!" he announced, handling her. "You and me are going to have a show-down right now."

"Yes, Ket," she said. That was it; that was why she had waited.

"Hmhm," he murmured, gathering her beside him, with his arm inside her coat. "You can't pull any funny stuff on me now."

"Funny stuff?"

"About me married."

"No," she said.

Through the window beyond him appeared Orchestra Hall, and by her habit, whenever she passed the building, her eyes sought the names carved in stone—Wagner, Beethoven, Mozart.

"What's out there?" demanded Ket.

"Mozart!" she cried, and he shook her.

"You got a swell chance of pulling that stuff to-day! Mozart!" he laughed, letting the idea amuse him. "Say, I got the world by the tail. 'Jail Jazz'—say, that name's a knockout—will print half a million. And, oh, papa, the radio and records! . . . Did you see Weigal this morning? Did you see him? . . . The poor fish! He thought he could stick Henny's name in the lights and the 'lectric current would make Henny me! . . . The Echo! It's flopped to a whisper. I'll make it yell! . . ."

He required his hands to display, triumphantly, the tribute which Weigal had crammed into his pockets, and he discovered that, whereas his employer had wrapped the rolls with twenty dollar gold notes, the stuffing was mostly one dollar greenbacks.

"The cheap bum! That's Weigal for you! I'll leave him flat for that! . . . Or I'll make him pay for it. He'll wish he'd stuck in centuries. He'll pay in grands! . . . But at that I guess we got enough for a trip, eh? And more in the bank, you bet! And more coming. . . Huh! I couldn't stop it, 'less I locked the door. Watch 'em walk to me! . . ."

His hands, after smoothing and counting his money, returned to her, and she endured his embrace so dully that again he shook her, complaining: "What's the matter with you? Where's your pep, Jo?"

"I guess I'm tired, Ket," she evaded.

"Then wake up!"

"I guess—I guess, Ket, I've gone stale."

"Stale! You mean, on me!"

"Yes," she replied, in a whisper, toppling his vanity. He pushed her away into her corner where she sat huddled with head dropped.

Gradually a beat of rhythm began to stir and thrill her; it increased and approached, and she realized that she was hearing the "strike—strike" of a tire chain on the fender of a passing car; but by shutting her eyes she made it the measure of Elgar's great march as she had in the car with Calvin Clarke beside her when she had told him that Ket, if not like Mozart, would become like Elgar or Schelling and that he would go to a conservatory, like Sowerby.

She straightened and sat up, incited again to her dream.

"That's showing some of the old pep," Ket approved. "Come over here."

"No, Ket."

So he seized her, demanding, "Say, what's come over you?"

"Nothing," she replied, still evading; for did she know, yet, of herself? "I've not slept a lot the last nights."

"Haven't you, Kid? Of course you haven't," he said, with a sudden turn of considerateness of her which made her look up quickly and surprise the speculation in his eyes. Should he waste more of his great, triumphant hours with her? his eyes said. Had he not better let her go and find for himself another girl?

She could not speak to him; her mind refused to be forced to his affairs. It flew to the field wherein Neski's car, pursued, had overturned; it dwelt in the ditch under the wreck through which the gunmen's bullets so mercilessly and methodically had searched for Calvin Clarke and her. Had not Ket heard of what had happened at the ditch? she wondered, staring at him. Yes; he had been told; he knew how she had gone to Tut's Temple to identify Baretta in his cause and how, from the expedition with Oliver and from the fight in the ditch, she had gained his freedom.

"Kid, you certainly came through for me." He touched her, gratefully. "I didn't think you was so done up, yet."

"I am, Ket."

For a few moments, while he considered her, he was silent. "Then why'd you come along?" he asked.

At this she refused further evasion. "I'm not done up," she contradicted herself, opposing his hands with all the strength of her own.

The struggle of her against him pleased and roused him; he laughed and played with her before holding her helpless, hot and breathless. "You're all right, Kid! D'you think I'd put over a low-down on you? Not on your life. I'm marrying you, Jo."

"Marrying me!"

"That's what I said. You'll be my wife after lunch."

"No, Ket."

"Sure you will! You bet you will, Kid! So kiss me good."

She gasped, and, himself breathing hard, he ordered, "You kiss me good."

Instead, she burst into tears and pushed herself from him. Baffled, he released her and let her huddle by herself in her corner of the seat, crying.

"Why, I mean it, Kid!" he puzzled over her. "I mean it."

Soon he warned her. "Here's the hotel."

She sat up, dabbing her eyes, and patted powder on her cheeks.

"All dandy now?" asked Ket, relieved.

She nodded and got out after him and while he was paying the driver, she fled into the hotel and took refuge in the women's room, where she dropped into a soft rest chair and closed her eyes. Her temples, her finger tips, her whole body throbbed.

He meant his offer of marriage, she knew; he meant, before taking her away with him for the night, to buy a marriage license and stand with her, for five minutes or so, before a magistrate or a minister and make her his wife—after lunch. He would do it; she had merely to go out and meet him in the lobby and tell him, "Yes," and between lunch and dinner she could become his wife.

A maid in attendance asked her, "Are you Miss Royle?" and told her that her gentleman was waiting; so she arose and went to the mirror and out to Ket.

"You're a knock-out," he approved her appearance and praised also the hotel. "I take to this shed. We'll come back here. I got our rooms already—swell ones, upstairs. Want to look 'em over?"

"No, Ket."

"Hungry? You bet I am." He led her into the dining-room and to a table where ice clinked in glasses of brown liquor.

He touched her glass with his own and drank. "Go to it!" he bid her; and, to please him, she sipped and thought of the last time she had drunk with him in his room and he had tried to detain her.

"I'm crazy about you, Jo," he made love to her across the table in the same words as on that night; and the proposal, which he put to her, seemed to her the same as on that night. To be sure, his wife, Adele, now was dead and therefore he might, without breaking any law, buy a license and marry Joan Royle before a magistrate; but otherwise the situation was the same as when he had asked her to stay in his room; he was the same; he wanted her with the identical desire.

"I got the swellest suite in the shed for us!" he told her with a confiding exultation which almost made her cry again. "Thirty a day; but what's thirty a day to me?" he asked, as though his fortune was become incredible to himself. It reminded her of when she had met him, for the first time since they were children, and he had said, "D'you know who that bell-boy was? D'you know who I was? I'm Ketlar of the Echo."

He was offering her his best and himself at his best; yes, at his very best. That was what she had felt when she had sat, all a-throb, in the rest room; that was why she had come out to him to tell him, honestly: "Ket, I can't marry you."

"Why not?" he demanded. "What've you done?"

"I can't, Ket."

"You mean you don't even want to marry me?"

"We shouldn't marry, Ket."

"Huh? What the devil are we goin' to do?"

"We can go on, Ket—"

"Tow?"

"Like we've been—"

"For Hell's sake, the friend stuff! That's what you're tryin' to say? That's your idea? Is it? Is it?"

"Yes, Ket."

"The friend stuff!" he cast at her, and swore in his exasperation. "You're tryin' to pull that on me to-day. You won't! I'm gonna be happy. I wanta be happy and I'm gonna be happy to-day. What do you suppose I got out of that —— —— jail for? To talk to you? To hear you spiel about Mozart? I know your line; I read your book; and it's crazy. D'you know where it is? I left it in jail with a loon that's just arrived for burglary. He's crazy, too. D'you know what Weigal told me? To write my own ticket—my own ticket. And I'm certainly goin' to write a good one. I got the world by the tail, and I'll marry you, you poor Kid. Sure, I will."

"No, you won't, Ket."

"Then what's your big idea for the day?"

She arose, and he sat glaring at her until she was several steps away, when he jumped up and rushed after her and past her to the entrance, where, grandly, he called a cab for her and, pressing a banknote into the driver's palm, commanded: "Ride her home or anywhere she tells you."

She chose home; and since mamma was out and Dads did not return, she was alone, undisturbed, during the rest of the day. For every one supposed her with Ketlar, who had completely disappeared even from the knowledge of the newspaper men until a Waukegan correspondent called the office of Oliver's paper late in the afternoon. Whereupon Oliver discerned that it might, after all, be worth while to ring the Royle number.

"Hello; there's where you are!" he hailed Joan Daisy's voice in reply. "Then you are in town!"

"Yes; I'm here," replied Joan Daisy. "I'm home."

"How long you been there?" inquired Oliver, in a tone combining the privileged concern of an old, established friend and the ingenuousness of an utterly impersonal collector of news. "I mean when'd you leave Ketlar? That is, if you left him. Did you? Say, what happened between him and you?"

"Nothing," said Joan Daisy.

"Oh, come along," persuaded Oliver. "You and his mother went off with him. He canned his mother downtown—we know that. He goes off with you, and the next thing we get a call from Waukegan that a justice of peace is pronouncing Fred Ketlar and somebody else man and wife. What went wrong with him and you? When did she cut in? You were the one doped to marry him."

So Joan Daisy learned that Ket was married, and she heard it with no sense of shock at all. Of course he would be married to-day. Her mind roved the gallery of girls in his room, wondering whom he sought after sending her home; or whom he had happened across or who had found him.

"Who is she?" Joan asked Oliver.

"Then you didn't know!"

"I don't."

"It's Lola Nesson; and they were married 'bout half an hour ago. They drove up to Waukegan and after the ceremony," continued Oliver, unconsciously quoting the phrase of news-writing, "they started back to Chicago. What you got to say?"

For a moment she could say nothing; she was wondering whether Ket had kept the suite, "the swellest in the shed," which he had engaged for him and herself and was taking Lola Nesson to it.

"Please don't say anything for me," begged Joan Daisy, out of her extensive, recent experience with reporters, "except 'I hope they'll be happy' or something like that."

"I'll fix up something good for you," promised Oliver, both the perfect reporter and the eager friend. "But, say, slip me the straight of it, and I'll use it only in a nice way. You threw him down; you must've. Why?"

"I didn't throw him down," denied Joan Daisy. "We went off to lunch to—to talk over the trial. He wanted to thank me for what I did with you."

"Applesauce!" graphically interjected Oliver, but, getting nothing better out of her, he assured her, "That's all right with me if you don't tell the other papers what happened."

She did not, though many other reporters telephoned. Nobody else called; none of the neighbors; nor did Mr. Hoberg call; for the news from Waukegan reached Chicago too late to be included in the evening editions. So Hoberg was counting Joan Royle out of his calculations; and mamma, after shopping, dropped into a tea-room for the refreshment of hot chocolate and frosted cakes, confident that Daisy was Mrs. Frederic Ketlar and sure to be exceedingly prosperous, at least for a while. Dads, alone among Joan's friends, nourished a contrary conception.

No one else, upon that evening, so firmly fixed in his mind the belief that Joan Royle was Ketlar's wife, as did Calvin Clarke; no one dwelt with the idea, comparably. He shut himself in his rooms, and to-night not even his work distracted him nor could he, by driving himself to routine tasks, disguise the turmoil of his mind. How had he not seen, at the very first, the soul of Joan—Ketlar, he had made himself add the name in his thought. Why had he denied and put down impulses to trust her which had seized him, momentarily, throughout his association with her; when she had shown him her stars in the sand; when she had tried to awaken her father and mother . . . when she had asked him to buy the Barsoni book . . . at a dozen other times.

He had imagined that he, if any one, dealt in the simple spirit and that he made the soul, not the trappings, the essential. To-night, miserably, he saw himself as a slave of trappings and accouterments. What else were his ideas of tradition, of family descent and inheritance, of formal, fixed education and of "home"? She had none of these; and because of this he had distrusted her—and condemned himself to miserable loneliness for life. Where was she now?

He recalled his mind from that. The Greek, Andreapolos, who had been foreman of the jury, intruded upon his thought. He had tried to put the Greek off the jury and he would have done so had he had a peremptory challenge left; and the Greek, throughout the trial, almost alone among the jurymen, had never given his mind to Elmen's keeping; the Greek, in distinction to the Americans whom Calvin Clarke had approved, had tried to reason from the evidence and had stood to the end for his conception of right. Calvin Clarke would accept another Andreapolos for a jury to-morrow, though he had twenty peremptory challenges in hand. Calvin Clarke, if he were aroused to-night by some one shaking him and told to go to Wilson Avenue and if he found another Royle girl—no; that could not be. That was over; he had lost his chance. Her like never could he find again; not one like her; for she must be just alike; she must be, in fact, her. For he must come upon her, whom he would love, in a room with policemen, and she must turn to him, with her head up, asking him by what right he came for the State. He must follow her, with her slim, white heels rising from her slippers; she must offer him coffee and taunt him for a ready-made when he refused; she must come up, smiling with pleasant amusement, when she found him foolishly nonplussed before a partly purchased beef-pie and she must finish buying the pie for him and offer to sit with him and, after he had walked away, she must find him later with no anger in her heart but only faith that he would help her change a jazz-band leader into a Mozart by taking three dollars and a half of her money to buy a music book; she must sit in court behind him, when he is trying a case, and feel his purpose and idea as no one else in the room and wait, late, for the verdict; she must confront him in court, upon the witness stand, and be assailed by him and strike back; she must lie beside him, at the bottom of a ditch with gunmen's bullets searching for her, and she must wait, still and silent without a word of what she was to do, and then stir and fight; she must slip back, thrilled with her triumph, although the next minute she might be killed.

Tingling from scalp to toes, Calvin stood and strode back and forth, utterly miserable. When his mind resorted to the developments of the day, he reviewed defeat. For the State had lacked competent evidence with which to imprison Zenn and his companions; the State could charge only the possession of weapons, disorderly conduct and minor offenses. So the gunmen had paid fines or furnished bail and all were free again.

The inquiry into the circumstances of Baretta's death was continued; but the police testimony was concluded so that Baretta, returned to his friends, was lying in state to-night in a coffin of ebony and mahogany with plates and handles of silver and gold.

Garlands drooped over him; sweet peas and roses enshrouded him; sprays, stands, wreaths of hothouse flowers, violets, narcissus, gladiole, carnations, orchids and bay leaves surrounded him and heaped the front rooms of his house.

Ceaselessly, with guards of his own gunmen, his friends filed past in respect to him; a fast train from Palm Beach bore his wife and her maids to his funeral to-morrow. For to-morrow his friends planned a pageant for his interment; they prepared a cortege, of a like never seen in Chicago, to flaunt their puissance and their defiance of the State.