but she gulped a little, too, like a child laying away a book of cherished fairy tales no longer to be believed.
A beat of rhythm ran through her which became the measured, methodical firing of pistol bullets into steel and wood. Thus suddenly, without her conscious will, she returned to the ditch with Calvin Clarke beside her. How is he? Where is he this morning with the sun gleaming upon this city wherein gunmen murder and go free?
She knew, from last night's newspapers, that Frankie Zenn and the others who had been arrested yesterday had been released; but until she purchased a morning paper at the street corner she did not anticipate the pageant which the gunmen arrayed to do honor to their fallen chief.
The phrase was that of the newspaper which proclaimed in enormous headlines the preparations for the parade, of which Joan read with queer, frightened rills of wonder. For the fallen chief was George Baretta, and though there was yet no legal proof of his presence at the ditch, she believed that it was he whom she had shot—he whom thousands of people to-day would honor.
A page pictured a part of the funeral flowers, which might be taken as lavish offerings at the bier of a president. Throughout the evening friends and strangers, men, women and children, filed past with heads bowed, and many a man and woman weeping as they looked upon George Baretta, gun-fighter, gaming-house keeper and overlord of the "gang." In his coffin of ebony and mahogany, metaled with gold and silver, under his bower of orchids and roses, honored he lay—he whom Joan Royle had seen at Tut's Temple, he who, she believed, had led the pursuit after Neski and Mr. Clarke and her, and whom she had shot at the ditch.
She sat in the elevated train, with her paper before
