Page:That Royle Girl (Balmer).pdf/101

 photograph made a year or so ago and procured, probably, from Adele's flat. There was a diagram of the flat, with outlines showing where Adele had been found.

Joan Daisy pushed the paper away and tried to taste her soup. She arose and presented her check at the cashier's desk.

"Get to feeling sort-a sick, dearie?" the woman asked, friendlily.

"Yes," admitted Joan.

"You didn't touch some dishes; we can take those back," the woman offered and made a generous allowance on the check.

A copy of a newspaper, with that big picture of Joan Daisy Royle beside Assistant State's Attorney Calvin Clarke—that staring portrayal of "the girl who was with Ketlar and who tried to save him by an alibi proved false," the girl "who evidently was the immediate cause of the fatal quarrel"—this lay beside the cashier, who looked up from it to make her friendly query; and Joan Daisy wondered that the woman did not know her. But she did not. Nor did the men at the tables, though supplied with the same papers.

On the elevated for Wilson Avenue, Joan sat beside a large man who held her picture before him and he commented, to a diminutive friend:

"Ever slapped the sole to this bird's jazz?"

"Have I! Give a girl a choice and she's got to go where Ketlar is playin'. Some sheik, that baby."

"Sure. He had the pick of a flock of chickens; but he had to have—her!"

Here was Joan Daisy's picture indicated.

"What d'you say about it?" the small man asked, sardonically considering Joan Daisy's picture. "Worth shooting for, is she?"

"He'll tell the world, if he gets off."