CHAPTER XI
He carried her memorandum, together with her money, when he went to the Criminal, Courts in the morning to prosecute for the State a case of arson against an American named Gos Augarian who had been proprietor of a dry-goods and novelty store which, after having been most thoroughly insured against fire, had burned to the ground during the night.
The firemen, who broke in to fight the flames, reported that they had found pillars and stair-railings wrapped with cloths which flamed so fiercely that it was evident they must have been soaked with gasoline; and when the firemen entered the basement, an explosion killed two men and injured several others.
Naturally, the affair had aroused the public, and Augarian would have been mobbed had not the police protected him on the way to jail after his arrest; but now that he had been locked up for a few months and the dead firemen were buried and the others recovered from their burns, the public had become so indifferent that Calvin could not readily obtain twelve men of character to sit on the jury to try Augarian.
Calvin worked hard all morning, and when he went downstairs to his office, at noon recess, he was in the quiet, dogged mood which always tempted Ellison to tease him.
"Tell it to me, Clarke," bid the Chicagoan cheerily. "I'm young and strong. I can bear it too."
"One would think," said Calvin, with deep indignation, "that if any public duty could appeal to a man as being more important than his own business, it would be to help the prosecution of a prisoner who not only burned his store for insurance, but killed the firemen who tried to save his property. But every man I want makes an excuse so he can hurry back to the bank or his wholesale house."
"Do you blame them, Boston?" asked Ellison genially. "You've got to admit you're not going to put on a very peppy show for them, are you? Just a couple of middle-aged firemen's widows and evidence that the firemen found banisters wrapped with gasolined cotton. You can't say yourself that's much of a show."
"Show!" ejaculated Calvin.
"When we stage a good show," continued Ellison, imperturbably, "such as the Ketlar case, then you'll see real civic spirit. You'll be turning talesmen away; nobody called in that jury will bother about the bank that day. They'll be paying premiums for preferred places in the panel to be in the box beside the Royle girl at the big moment when she's on the stand, dolled to her best, and Elmen has had her tell her prepared story and he says to you, "Take the witness," and you start the cross-examination to make her tell what she really was to Ketlar and what she really did with him on the night he shot his wife."
Calvin started and he thought Ellison noticed it. He fingered in his pocket the Royle girl's list of books and her money while he wondered whether Ellison somehow had heard of the beef-pie episode with the Royle girl in the automat.
"I happened across the Royle girl last night," he commented tentatively.
"Oh, did you? Where?"
"Up by Wilson Avenue," replied Calvin, deciding that he might dispense with mention of the automat. "I timed a walk over the route which she'll claim she followed that night."
"How'd the time work out?" asked Ellison.
"All right. I met her; we spoke," admitted Calvin, to clear his conscience by at least partial confession. "She asked me an extraordinary thing, Ellison."
"She would," said Ellison, watching him sharply. "If you want me to know, tell me; I'm not going to try to guess."
"She gave me this money," admitted Calvin, flushing hotly as he produced from his pocket three one-dollar bills folded about a silver half dollar.
Ellison watched him seriously and succeeded in keeping his lips straight as he whispered, "How much is it, Clarke?"
"Three dollars and a half."
"She certainly," said Ellison, very seriously, "she certainly bought you cheap."
"Bought me?" said Calvin. "It's for a book for Ketlar—a book on musical composition. She wants him to study it in jail to make him a—a musician."
He had touched, but he had not produced from his pocket, the list which she had written; and though he had to mention something of her dream, he did not relate to Ellison that she believed that she could make Ketlar a Mozart.
"That girl's good!" exclaimed Ellison, dropping his teasing antic in his outright admiration of ability. "I'll attest to all inquirers that that girl is good! She met you up there, did she? got you to take money, did she? to buy a book to make Ketlar a musician?"
Calvin sat, convicted.
"Well," demanded Ellison, "what are you going to do?"
"I'm going to buy the book."
Ellison slapped his knee. "You have to—or else return her money and refuse to buy the book. Elmen, I fondly imagine, will make even more of that. Why in the world did you take it?"
"I met a man up there," said Calvin, changing the subject. "He followed me to speak about Baretta."
"Three-G. George," said Ellison, quickly. "What about him?"
"We're warned to watch him," said Calvin and related the incident fully.
"Evidently that is to be taken in connection with this," suggested Ellison, pawing over some papers until he produced a sheet, without heading or signature, upon which was printed by pen an accusation of George Baretta for the killing of Adele Ketlar.
"An Elmen enterprise, I take it," commented Ellison. "I thought so when I found it in the morning mail, though of course it's the most venerable defense dodge in the world. My efforts here have brought me to the conclusion that writing originally was invented so that somebody up for murder could hack on a rock an anonymous accusation of somebody else. Elmen's methods are far, far beyond it; however, he may feel that he does not do his full duty to his client unless he mails in at least one routine, anonymous missive. Of course I'll have George looked at again; but the fact that your man stepped up, just after you left the Royle girl, suggests Elmen."
Calvin agreed and embraced the opportunity to escape from the office.
He purchased the music book after the second court session and sent it to Ketlar in jail with the information that it was the gift of Joan Royle; and so, when Max Elmen made his next call upon his client in jail and learned how Ket had obtained the music book, Max enjoyed a genuine and agreeable surprise.
All during the evening, which he spent with his family at the Follies, papa Max's big, bald head busily speculated upon the incident which obviously was pregnant with the greatest possibilities, but which also required most careful gestation. It was half past ten, during a sentimental song scene on a dark stage, when Elmen, père, suddenly chuckled and rubbed his hands together.
"What you laughing at, papa?" whispered Elmen, mère, hastily scanning the stage to see if she had missed anything.
"Herman," whispered papa, peering about his wife's ample bosom, "when you call up that number to-morrow morning, say to that girl, 'Come to my office right away.' You understand me? Telephone her sure to come to-morrow morning, Herman."
"Yes, papa," promised Herman.
The reference, as Herman correctly comprehended, was to the Royle girl; for it was become Herman's duty, in preparation of the defense of Ketlar, to oversee the conduct of his witnesses.
Already he had ascertained that his chief witness was agreeably dependable, but his second witness presented distinct problems. In order to use Dads, Elmen must put him on the witness stand, and, before embarking upon such a venture, it was plain that Dads must be provided with a less vulnerable respectability than he possessed.
As a first step, his most troublesome debts and the judgments against him must be paid; and Elmen had had them paid. Next, Dads must be provided with irreproachable employment and this task was not so easy; but at last Elmen succeeded in establishing Mr. James Morton Royle with a real estate firm of fair reputation who provided Dads with a desk as the outward and visible sign of occupation.
Ket's money paid Dads' salary as Ket's money also had paid the most conspicuous of Dads' debts. Of course the money did not pass directly from Ket to Dads; the funds flowed from Ket to Elmen, as installments of Elmen, EImen, Kleppman and Wein's perfectly legal retainer and then separated into several devious streams, like the water of a river divided at its delta, yet all contributing to a common end, which was Ket's defense.
If Dads harbored the knowledge that he was not actually earning his weekly check, by nothing did he avow it; by nothing did he betray cognizance that his debts had been paid. He preserved, in respect to all money matters, the same discreet aloofness as before; and when she learned of Elmen's arrangement, Joan Daisy did not make the mistake of mentioning it to Dads.
Collectors ceased to come and installment men no longer demanded admittance; the furniture in the flat, even the extravagant radio set, as well as the fine linen sheets which Joan Daisy pulled over herself when she went to sleep, all were paid for—by Ket's money. In return, Dads probably made some sort of a gesture at working; and certainly he was drunk less often. Frequently Joan Daisy was able to arouse him by half past seven; and it was to help her that Herman made an occasional early morning call on the telephone.
"We're both up and all right," responded Joan Daisy, cheerfully, as soon as she recognized Herman Elmen's voice on this next morning; and after she had received her instruction to come to the office, she returned to the kitchenette where she was making coffee and toast and scrambling eggs for Dads and herself.
She served breakfast upon a pretty, lacquered table (selected by Dads' unerring taste and now paid for by Ket's money) in the room where her bed again was a couch and where the bright November sun shone in.
Mamma slumbered heavily, in the adjoining bedroom, as she would sleep until late in the morning; for since she was not to be a witness at the trial, Elmen had not undertaken to break her of the veronal habit.
"Magnificent morning, m'dear," Dads congratulated Joan, drawing back her chair with courtly bow, after she had laid the breakfast tray upon the little table. "Eggs, Joan?" he asked, poising the serving spoon. He had the habit, upon such an occasion, of pretending that he had ordered their meal, that she knew nothing about it, as if some delightful genie of his spoon had spread the table at his nod.
"Please, Dads," she said, playing the pretense with him.
"Delicious coffee, m'dear; and eggs perfectly seasoned. Toast browned to a turn," he praised her, dropping their game for the instant, to reassume immediately afterwards his previous posture of detachment, chatting abstractly and brightly of large and impersonal affairs.
Joan Daisy did not listen as attentively as usual, for she wondered what Elmen wanted to-day, and she worried over the possibility that he had encountered some development unfavorable to Ket.
Her thoughts wandered, naturally, to Assistant State's Attorney Clarke and Dads, perceiving her preoccupation, opened his newspaper.
Upon the picture page, which confronted her, stood the likeness of Assistant State's Attorney Clarke and she leaned forward with a gasp, feeling sure that Mr. Clarke had made another accusation of Ket; but she saw, with relief, that the picture was printed in connection with an entirely different case which Mr. Clarke was prosecuting.
Dads glanced over the paper at her, and a few moments later he reversed the page and laid it casually aside after he had discovered the picture of Calvin Clarke.
"A gentleman of genealogy," observed Dads with expert aloofness. "I profoundly approve of genealogy," he pronounced as though Calvin Clarke had caught his interest for the first time. Arising, he left the newspaper upon the little table where Joan Daisy examined it while clearing away the dishes.
Below Calvin's picture appeared a few lines relating bits of the Clarke family history which had escaped publication in connection with the Ketlar case; and Joan Daisy was bent over the paper when Dads reëntered, ready for the street in his new, smart top-coat, his new pearl-gray hat and in his hand, his new, impressive stick (all paid for).
"Are we going to town together?" Dads reminded her.
"What?" she asked, for thinking of a question, which Calvin Clarke had put to her in this room, and which always had puzzled her.
The question, taken together with her answer, revolved in her mind while she made ready to go out, and occupied her especially when she passed the automat, which was become a place of encounter with Mr. Clarke.
At the elevated station she purchased a paper for herself in order to reread the lines below his picture; and then she turned to the column reporting his conduct of the arson case.
"Why!" she exclaimed to herself. "He's right in this!" and as she read the questions and answers and the combat of the attorneys, she felt aroused against Augarian's lawyer and the tricky witnesses who helped him.
She was still so aroused, when she arrived at Elmen's office, that papa Max critically scanned her cheeks, believing that she had put on too much color to-day; but he saw, with satisfaction, that the surplusage of red was her own, and he complimented her.
"So you must have better music in the jail," he exclaimed, rubbing his hands with satisfaction. "And you make Mr. Clarke buy the book. That is good; very good. But tell us about it, please, me and my son Herman."
"Yes; please tell papa and me," urged Herman.
"Why, is that what you want me for?" asked Joan Daisy and dutifully related exactly what she had done, not omitting the meeting in the automat.
The incident of the partnership purchase of the beef pie came completely out of the blue to the Elmens, father and son, and naturally delighted them, especially papa Max.
"Hah!" he ejaculated to son Herman in a tone of triumph which plainly clinched some argument adjourned between them. "Hah! What do you say now, Herman? Did I see it? What did I tell you?"
"You saw it, papa." Herman acknowledged defeat with satisfaction.
"Always tell me sooner, please," requested Max of Joan Daisy, in no spirit of reproach, but merely of appreciative caution, "whenever you see more of Mr. Clarke. Tell me at once whatever you do, whether or not it may seem to you to have bearing on the case. Believe me, everything has bearing. I beat Assistant State's Attorney Clarke or he beats me. That is all there is to guilt or innocence, to jail or freedom, to life or death."
"Not all!" objected Joan Daisy.
"Oh, I must have my helps," admitted Max. "Herman here; maybe Mr. Kleppman, too. Mr. Clarke has his helps—Mr. Ellison, it will be, or maybe another smart young man from the state's attorney's office. Also he will have the police and his witnesses. I," continued Max, leaning back and narrowing his heavy eyelids with contemplative content, "I have you; and you do very well."
"There is a picture of Mr. Clarke in the paper to-day," said Joan Daisy. "With something about him."
"Huh?" murmured Max and opened his eyes. "It interested you? Of course," he commended. "Perhaps I can show you what will interest you more. Herman," bid papa Max, resuming upright posture, "the scrapbook."
With alacrity Herman arose and pulled from a shelf a large, flat book which he opened before his client revealing, to her amazement, a dozen newspaper pictures of Calvin Clarke. His name greeted her from headlines clipped from Chicago papers, from Boston newspapers and from a page entitled "The Harvard Alumni Weekly."
Several of the pictures she recognized, as they had been printed in connection with Ket's arrest; and there was the picture of herself, beside Mr. Clarke, on the stairs of the flat; but most of the photographs were strange to her and she bent over them, wherefore papa Max and son Herman exchanged a glance which she did not see.
"These surprise you," said Max, rubbing his hands. "Why? All there is to the law, I tell you, is I beat the assistant state's attorney or he beats me. Those books," he gestured his long fingers with disdain about his shelves stuffed with brown-leather and buckram-bound law books, "every attorney in town has them. This volume," he touched the wide, flat scrapbook, "I keep. One more lawyer keeps one like it, I know. That is why, when Mr. Ketlar is accused of murder, he thinks only of that other lawyer and of me. He does not know it; but never mind. That is why. We—that other lawyer and me—we are realists, simply; we do not deceive ourselves with pretty theories that anything matters but the man against you. So we prepare ourselves, naturally, to beat that man, in this case, Mr. Clarke.
"More than two years ago, when he comes here and enters the state's attorney's office, I know that some day he will be against me; some day, the innocence or guilt of a man in jail—maybe his life or death—depends on how well Max Elmen knows Assistant State's Attorney Clarke's strong sides and his weak. So I say to my girl, who keeps up this book, 'Clippings on Mr. Calvin Clarke, please.' And here he is. Here even is his old house. Look! And all that reading about it. Here is his mamma in front of the house. . . ."
Unnoticed by Joan Daisy, who was gazing at the pages cut from a newspaper rotogravure, Max Elmen lifted the hook of his telephone receiver and immediately the bell rang upon business which called both Max and his son from the room, leaving Joan Daisy deep in a big leather chair with the old Clarke homestead, on the bank of the Merrimac, before her.
It was a sepia reproduction of a large photograph taken upon a tranquil, sunny, autumn afternoon. No time of day was indicated, and Joan Daisy did not know directions in the picture, but the mood was so surely of afternoon that she never questioned it. Autumn was apparent from fallen leaves upon the path, from the thinned boughs of the big trees. Smoke, which spoke of an open hearth fire, stood in the still air above the old chimney; but frost was not yet come, for flowers bloomed beside the pickets of the fence and the woman in the garden was without cloak over her house dress.
She was a gray-haired woman, strong and straight-standing, with a spare body and calm, thoughtful face, tranquil as the house which was hers. Peace and permanence pervaded the place, and Joan Daisy felt the unchanging age of it before she was conscious of reading:
"The Clarke homestead, Clarke's Ferry, Massachusetts. The present north wing was built by the second Calvin Clarke in 1722 and stands upon the site of the original cabin erected by his grandfather, seventy years earlier, and which was burned during Queen Anne's war.
"Here lived also Colonel Calvin Clarke, of the staff of General Henry Knox; Jeremy Clarke, who in John Adams' administration . . . the abolitionist, Timothy Clarke, who fell at Antietam. . . ."
Joan Daisy Royle, daughter of mamma, who was soundly sleeping off veronal in the third floor flat above the second entrance, and daughter of Dads—maybe, but she did not know—suddenly ceased to read. Her defiant contempt for Calvin Clarke for being a ready-made was fled from her; and she felt choked by a queer yearning which drew her eyes again to the ancient, unchanging home of Calvin Clarke and of his fathers before him in their long, honorable, remembered succession; and she steeped her soul in the peace of the place.
So this was his home, the home of the Mr. Clarke who had come to her home to arrest her on the night Adele had been killed. He had this home where his family had lived for two hundred and seventy years. Burnt in Queen Anne's War. When was that? Joan Daisy did not know. There had been no motion picture about it, that she remembered. But she would look up Queen Anne's War.
"Where is your home?" echoed in her head the question which Mr. Clarke had put to her on that night in the rented room off Dads' and mamma's, where she had the convertible couch and the rest of the furniture, got on credit and unpaid-for. First Calvin Clarke had asked her, "Where do you live?"
"Live? Why, here," she had answered; and he had only asked again the question which had puzzled her, "I mean, where is your home?"
"You're in it," she had replied and wondered, as she had wondered again this morning, that he had not understood. But now she knew what he had meant by his question. Where, he had asked, had she a home like this?
Max Elmen reëntered. "You read all that about Mr. Clarke?" he asked.
"Not all," admitted Joan Daisy.
"Read all. Take your time," bid Max. "I find out all I can about him; you must, too. Remember that for many hours, for two or three days maybe, you will have to use your wits against Assistant State's Attorney Clarke, and my wits will not much help you. I will do for you what I can; but on the cross-examination, he will have you; you will be his witness. When he asks you a question I have not expected, I can stand up. 'I object. This is outrageous!' I can say to the judge; but maybe the judge says, 'objection overruled. The witness must answer.' What then?"
"What?" asked Joan Daisy.
"Why, you must answer him; and I can not always tell you what to say. I will think of many questions and before you go on the stand I will teach you how to answer; but I know I can not think of all—especially against Assistant State's Attorney Clarke," said Elmen, seating himself and leaning back with his heavy eyelids drooped in contemplation.
"Why especially with Mr. Clarke?"
Elmen opened his eyes and replied directly: "He is not clever; he is not quick; he does not know so much law as many others. The state's attorney's office is full of young men much smarter than Mr. Clarke. But he," said Elmen and halted his eyes shifting to the book, "he has something else. For yourself, perhaps, you can see. That is far the best way. To-day Mr. Clarke is trying a case; he should be cross-examining now. Go over to the Criminal Court Building. With your employer, already I have fixed it. See for yourself what Mr. Clarke does, so when you are on the stand, and I can not help you, you will get ideas of your own how to answer him."
Calvin was completing the cross-examination of a witness when Joan Daisy entered the court-room. He did not see her when she came in, and he failed to notice her until more than an hour afterwards; for the defense rested and Calvin soon began speaking for the State to the jury.
He possessed the faculty, which Max Elmen would have deemed in himself a fault, of extraordinary absorption in a principle, when addressing a jury. Especially when, he was hard-pressed, when he realized that he had made no headway with the jurymen and at the point when another lawyer would resort to a play of personalities, angling for the adherence of individual jurymen, Calvin pursued an opposite path, which took him into an intense appeal for abstract justice in which he completely submerged himself and almost forgot, as persons, the twelve men to whom he spoke. In such an appeal, of course, he became wholly oblivious to the personalities of the spectators and audience in the court-room.
He had noticed, before the day's hearing began, that the ordinary scattering of Augarian's friends and courtroom loafers were present; and the widows of the firemen, who had been killed, and a few of their friends as usual occupied front benches. At the outset, Calvin referred to them, when he turned to the jury; but soon he passed from the personal consideration of the victims of Augarian's crime to his offense against all people, against order and against the State!
The more plainly Calvin saw that this charge of his failed to stir the jury, the more stubbornly he determined to make those men feel it, the more squarely he turned his back upon the merely emotional appeal to punish the prisoner for the sake of the widows in black who sat on the benches behind him.
Calvin turned to the benches after Joan Daisy had slipped in and found a seat near the women in black, but Calvin did not see her, nor did he see them, though he motioned the jury in their direction; for he gazed and he gestured over their heads, directing the jury's thought out the windows through which could be seen the nearer roofs and the heaven of noonday haze hovering over the city of three millions of people, all of whom, every one, the prisoner on trial had offended.
In the silences, when Calvin stopped for breath, the murmur of the endless streets, the hum of busy buildings thrilled him with its tremendous undertone of the millions of the State for whom he spoke, whose law and order, whose prosperity, whose civilized existence itself, depended upon the triumph of the State over the enemies of the State in the battles fought in these courts.
He faced again to the jury and saw how utterly they failed to feel it. As he stood, considering them, a folded paper touched his hand, and he took from Heminway, who was assisting him, a note which read: "For God's sake, get back to the firemen and the widows."
Calvin crumpled Heminway's note and dropped it. At the moment, it seemed to him that, even more important than punishing Augarian, was the need to make these twelve men, sworn in to perform the very fundamental function of the State, begin to see a glimmer of the meaning of the State. So, with shoulders squared, he turned and spoke again.
His appreciation of the presence of that Royle girl came upon him gradually. Some one was seated on the second bench who was bent forward in the intensity of following him; some one—one at least, though a girl and upon the spectators' bench—was beginning to feel that which filled him.
He glanced at her and recognized her.
Half an hour later, when he had finished, he glanced at her again and saw her still leaning forward, her face flushed. There was recess immediately; and Calvin saw her go out, as the court-room was cleared. When court reconvened, she was in her former place on the second bench, where she remained during the address of the defense and throughout the final appeal of the prosecution.
Heminway delivered this for the State, speaking with great emotion for the firemen and their widows. He set the women to sobbing; and several of the jurymen wiped away tears. Heminway, himself, cried.
Calvin did not cry; and, as he sat with his back to the spectators, he wanted to know whether the Royle girl wept. At last, he turned and he saw that tears were in her eyes; but her intensity was gone. She sat, leaning back, relaxed, in contrast to her eagerness when he had been speaking.
After Heminway had finished, the judge briefly charged the jury, who immediately left the court-room. For a few minutes, every one else lingered on the chance that there would be a quick verdict; but soon it became evident that there was disagreement in the jury room, and Calvin accompanied Heminway downstairs to the state's attorney's suite.
Several of the spectators already had departed, but a few delayed, and the Royle girl was among them, Calvin noticed. He had not spoken to her nor approached her; nor did he refer to her, until Heminway commented, when they were downstairs, "Did you see the Royle girl?"
"Yes," admitted Calvin.
"She spent the day in court," Heminway informed Ellison. "Scouting him, I suppose," Heminway suggsted, nodding toward Calvin, who remained noncommittal; but his thoughts resorted to the court-room and he wondered how long she would wait. He wondered, if she waited, why did she?
Finally he forsook his desk and went upstairs, where he came upon a few men loitering in the hall outside the court-room in which Augarian had been tried. The doors were closed but not locked, and when he pushed in, Calvin found the room lighted but deserted, except for one person—a girl, that Royle girl.
She was standing before a window which was partly opened and in which were patterned lights of the city; for the November dusk was fallen with the pellucid blackness of night.
After a glance at her, Calvin stepped to a table, upon which he had left a few unimportant papers, and preoccupied himself with them while he considered the warm pounding of his pulse and opposed the power which would draw him to the corner where the Royle girl stood.
Finally, he looked up and saw her watching him; and he put down his papers and approached her.
"Why are you waiting?" he asked tersely.
"Why, for the verdict," she said, her eyes lifted to his with the frank directness which disconcerted him.
"There may be no verdict to-night."
"Oh, I didn't mean to wait all night," she said quickly, smiling. "I thought I'd stick about maybe till six o'clock. A couple of the jury finally got you, I figured—the gray-haired one and the one on the end with spectacles, who was always taking notes. It looked to me that they got you, partly at least; what do you think?"
"What?" said Calvin, amazed again by her capacity for personal inquiry.
"What do you think?" she repeated. "It looked to me that a couple of 'em got you, at last; but not when you were speaking; when Mr. Heminway was. I think I got you, mostly, then. There was such a difference."
"You got me," repeated Calvin.
"Of course I know you a lot better than the jury; maybe I'm wrong, and they didn't get you at all. I couldn't help thinking, when you were speaking, that if some one 'ud just explain you a little—pass around those pictures of your home, with all that history below it, they'd see what you were driving at."
"What?" asked Calvin again.
Joan Daisy burned red, recollecting the circumstances under which she had seen the pictures and which she knew she must not report. "The pictures in the paper when you first came out here—your old house with your mother in the front yard and 1722—and Queen Anne's war and Timothy Clarke and John Adams' administration—and Antietam."
Calvin glowed as she mentioned thus associations enshrined to him. In contrast he recalled the slighting levity with which his partner, at a dance club, had referred to "the ancester shot up by the noble aborigine on the same spot where the matutinal beans are still baked, and all that."
He said nothing, and the Royle girl gazed out at the city. "The State," she said, with a thrill in her voice, "is certainly a lot of people. Even the city is an awful lot."
"The State," said Calvin, "is not merely the State of Illinois."
"I know," she nodded. "I was here all day. I heard you. . . . Did I ever tell you how I first heard about you?"
She faced around, with her question, putting it so directly to him that he had to answer.
"No."
"Want me to tell you?"
"Yes."
"It was that night—you know."
"Yes."
"Those policemen had been going for me—Ket and me. They'd separated us and caught us saying different things—lying," she added, frankly. "One of 'em wanted to go for me again; but the other said to wait. 'Give her a rest,' he said. 'Mr. Clarke's coming.'
"'Who's Mr. Clarke?' I asked. You were nothing in my life then.
"'He's a state's attorney,' one of them told me. 'He's on his way to look you over for the State!'
"I remember those words, said that way, 'for the State,' sat me up all of a sudden with a feeling of millions and millions of people against Ket and me. I remember I looked out of the window and thought about the millions of people just in the city, and I thought a man must have a mighty nerve to come for all of them. But, God, I see now you weren't coming just for the city or even for the State of Illinois; you were coming to look me over for the world!"
"For the law," said Calvin, meaning to mitigate the offense to her, "the common law of orderly society," he continued, in his intensity upon the idea, not thinking of her.
"I heard you to-day," the Royle girl repeated, with her lips tightening and her eyes bright. "I got you, I told you. The law is civilization—break the law, and fail to punish, and how long will the city stand—how long will there be civilization? I heard you. Well, who's breaking your law? Not Ket and me! We're two of the people of your State, as I told you that night, just as much as you are—if Ket can't name his father, much less his grandfather or John Adams' administration or Antietam, and if I've never lived under one roof six months in all my life.
"'Where do you live?' you asked me, that night, after I'd come through to you clean and told you not a thing in the place was paid for but my clothes, and that Dads was dizzy and mamma was doped.
"'Live? Why, here,' I told you.
"'Yes,' you said. 'But where's your home?' you said, when you were in it and knew you were in it!"
"I didn't!" cried Calvin.
"Then where'd you suppose you were?" she demanded and caught her lips between her teeth and bit to stop their trembling. She swung to the window, clasping the sill and clinging to it; and Calvin shrank with self-reproach, at his hurt of her which he had never suspected.
Suddenly it occurred to him that she had pride in that home of a rented room filled with furniture got by fraud. Pride in that place! But it was a pride and loyalty which had not prevented her from appreciating his home. How had she found the pictures printed two years ago? he wondered.
However it had happened after finding them she had felt for them as had no one else here; and as no one else to-day in court, she had "got" him.
"Miss Royle," he started.
"What?"
What, indeed? What had he, Calvin Clarke, assistant state's attorney, to say to the girl taken with Ketlar and Ketlar's chief witness in the trial?
He accepted a sound in the hall as excuse to be silent. Indeed, some one pushed open the door, for Calvin and Joan Daisy both had raised their voices, the moment before. Calvin turned and the curious person withdrew.
"What's that?" asked the Royle girl. "Somebody about the verdict?"
"No."
"You ought to win it, Mr. Clarke," she said calmly. "And thank you for buying the book for Ket; he has it."
"Where are you going?" asked Calvin.
"To an automat; then home—home," she flung at him, her head up again.
Half-way across the court room she halted and stared at the empty witness stand; and Calvin, watching her, was aware that the same thought flashed into her mind as filled his. The thought was of her in the witness chair, after a day of direct examination by Elmen, when Elmen would say, "Take the witness" and Calvin Clarke would step forward to start the attack for the State.
She turned, quickly. "Go to it!" she cast her defiance at him. "Go to it!" And she pushed through the doors and disappeared.