the bell-boy, who had been born out of wedlock to a barber-shop manicurist, as all the court had heard, and who had made himself Fred Ketlar.
"He told me about his wife and child, then," testified Joan Daisy. 'Would you pick me for the father of a four-year-old girl?' he said to me. 'Well, I am. I got the greatest little girl in the world; sings all my songs, too!'"
"Do you remember what you said?" prompted Max Elmen.
"'I'd like to meet your wife,' I said. 'Make it a little later,' he said. 'We're keeping up separate flats for a while. By the way, the agent must have stuck silencers over the neighbors while he was renting me the dump I'm living in; now that I'm in I can't pound my own piano loud enough to hear it for the noise. Swell place to compose!'"
"You went to your home?" put in Max.
"Yes; we were walking along then . . . there was a 'for rent' sign in front of our building which advertised the special deadening of the floors and walls. He saw it and came in and looked at a flat; the people below were playing a record and he had me play the radio in the flat upstairs, and he listened in the flat between, and he took it."
"That was the flat just below your family's?" asked Max.
"Yes."
"This was all there was to his taking it?"
"Yes."
"He engaged it upon that first evening, before there could possibly be any development of attachment between you two?"
Mr. Clarke was upon his feet. "I object!"
