This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
THAT ROYLE GIRL
347

"Know me?" he asked her, when they halted.

"You watched me for Mr. Clarke once—didn't you?"

"That's right. What are you doin' here? You oughtn't to show yourself here."

"Why not?"

"Somebody'll see you."

"Nobody ever knows me," she denied, but remembered how Baretta and Zenn had known her.

"Come along," he bid, refusing to argue and was leading her further away, when he was stopped by a swelling outcry and sudden disorder in the crowd; he spun about, releasing her, and ran a few steps, when the uproar ceased as quickly as it had begun. "They smashed 'nother camera," he conjectured. 'The photographers sure are makin' 'em mad this mornin'."

"Why?"

"Suppose you was wanted say in Cincinnati or St. Paul, would you hand the papers your pictures? . . . You see how they get excited. Now you get away."

"You're police," said Joan. "Are the State's people here, too?"

"Some."

"Is Mr. Clarke?"

"He's one."

"Where is he?"

With this her escort discerned a solution of his problem of remaining at his post and being rid of her; he signaled a passerby, whom she did not suspect to be of the police. "Tell Mr. Clarke of the State's office—he was un by Baretta's house a minute ago—I've got the Royle girl here."

Calvin had breakfasted alone at his rooms without turning to the column, upon the second page of the newspaper beside his plate, which would have informed him that Joan Royle had not become Ketlar's wife. In the