Page:That Royle Girl (Balmer).pdf/163

 prisoners' friends put steel saws in bindings sometimes, I hear, and dope in the back or between pages. So when I saw you in the automat I thought you're just the one to do it for me."

"Oh," said Calvin. "I see; but, you want me to do exactly what?"

"Why buy the books yourself and send them in for me; then there can't be any question, can there? He'll get them and get started to be like Schubert and Wagner and Mozart."

"Like Mozart," murmured Calvin, looking down at her piteously. Her hand had left his sleeve and touched his side. She turned and walked off toward her home while he stood and was twinged again by compassion.

Putting his hand into the side pocket of his coat, his fingers encountered an unexpected object which proved to be three one-dollar bills and a white slip of paper folded about a half dollar.

"Barsoni's Musical Composition, $3.50," Calvin read at the top of the slip as he smoothed her money. On the list were several other books with notations of prices which the Royle girl evidently meant to provide later. "She thinks $3.50 can make him like Mozart," Calvin repeated to himself, with tingling twinges running from his fingers which held her money.

Some one approached, and Calvin closed his hand on her money. "Bunkum!" he warned himself. "Elmen coached her, of course; Elmen thought up that and taught it all to her, and she worked it on me as soon as she saw me. He'd like to see me buying a music book to make a composer of a man I'm trying to hang."

He started after her when he noticed that the man, who had approached, was standing at the dark edge of the sidewalk a few paces away and apparently was awaiting him.