stared into the fire, avoiding his mother's eyes. Suppose his mother could read what was in his mind! No danger; she could not conceive it.
"You are engaged in a case which greatly interests you," his mother said, refraining from pressing her advantage and avoiding the mistake of urging Melicent upon him.
"I've tried the arson case," Calvin replied. "But I'll have it again. The jury disagreed."
"Is there a new development in the case against that extraordinary musician?"
"Ketlar?" asked Calvin, glancing at her to see if he had betrayed himself to her. "His is my most important case," he admitted. "I consider it the most important case soon to be tried. Ketlar shot his wife because of a girl, of whom I have written you somewhat."
"Yes," said his mother.
"She is the daughter of a man calling himself some times James Morton Royle," Calvin continued. "He is a drunkard and a dead-beat, living by various frauds for which he has been arrested twenty times. The mother is chiefly remarkable as a veronal-drinker. These two and the daughter—Ketlar's recent companion—have been moving about from Chicago to Milwaukee, Cleveland, Detroit and St. Louis, being ejected from hotels and apartment houses.
"Ketlar is the son of a hotel barber-shop manicurist and some unidentified traveling man, with corresponding morals. Ketlar married at nineteen, and since then has taken up with twenty or forty women and girls and had reached the Royle girl, who undoubtedly was like the rest, or worse, but she seems to have demanded that Ketlar marry her; so he quarreled with his wife, shot her and went back to the Royle girl, who had an alibi for him ready before the police arrived.
