Page:That Royle Girl (Balmer).pdf/153

 Arthur Todd is absolutely rhapsodic about it—and your mother. Will she come to Chicago?"

"No," replied Calvin, quite positively. "I don't think so."

"Well, of course the stern and simple is strictly the one and only, if you can do it and don't weaken."

"One and only what?" asked Calvin.

"Life; what'd you suppose? You pack it with you, I understand from Arthur."

"With me?" said Calvin.

"Hours and habits and all that. Except when there's a murder on hand, you go to bed, I understand, as though you were rowing Yale to-morrow."

Calvin danced without comment.

"Of course there's absolutely no money in the state's attorney's office, compared to corporation law, but you must get a compensating kick, at times," she suggested. "When that Ketlar case came up, for instance. Arthur says the police called you at his place and you dashed down in time to view the body and find the principals still in pajamas."

Calvin remained silent.

"Come on, tell me," his partner invited, pressing her soft body closer to him. "There must have been a pile that never got into the papers. You found them in his flat, didn't you?"

"No," denied Calvin, shortly. "She was upstairs—with her mother."

"But she'd been in his flat."

"Yes."

"And just after he'd shot his wife!"

"No," objected Calvin again.

"Why, he certainly shot his wife!"

"But the Royle girl didn't go to his flat afterwards."

"What did they do?"