Page:That Royle Girl (Balmer).pdf/118

 Belasco or Flo Ziegfeld have all the legal training necessary for a defense lawyer before a jury in these days when a girl is involved. The game is simply to play the girl so as to get the Jury crazy about her; then they'll do any little favor, like freeing a murderer, just to see her smile."

"They won't free this one," declared Calvin.

"Then," said Ellison, yawning, "history will have to cease to repeat itself in criminal trials in this United States of America of yours and, I may say, mine."

Louder shuffling and commotion in the halls denoted that an unusually important prisoner was being escorted to the courts. Detonations of flashlight powder thudded, and the swinging doors of the state's attorney's suite wafted in the fumes.

"Ketlar's here, Mr. Clarke!" a bailiff announced and Calvin gathered up his papers. With Ellison following, he climbed the iron stairs back of the elevator, and when he was half way to the floor above, perfumes and heavy scents of cosmetics reached him; he came to a wall of women, backs to him, elbowing toward the doors of a court.

Calvin halted until a guard saw him and cleared a path for him between the perfumed, perspiring girls who turned rouged faces and appealed to him with their painted lips.

He passed them silently and meant not even to look them over, but he did so. The Royle girl was not in the hall; and when he entered the courtroom, he failed to see her.

The judge was in his place and thirty or forty people were pressed close to the bar before him. Ketlar was there; for Calvin saw his light hair with the dark heads of guards beside him. G. A. Hoberg's red head was there with a broad, bald, black-fringed head next. Gold spec-