Page:That Royle Girl (Balmer).pdf/283

 "Nothing new on that?" Oliver questioned, suspiciously. "Jury didn't ask to report or for instructions or anything?"

"No," replied Calvin, considering himself to be answering the latter query and he discouraged Oliver from following him.

Alone, he walked on, casting over phrases of his summary spoken before the jury not twelve hours ago, to uphold and strengthen himself in his fixed opinion. Suddenly he halted and stood, buttoning his overcoat collar about his throat in nervous physical response to an abrupt shock to his thought.

In the lighted office, where he had argued the folly of attempting to connect Baretta with a crime certainly committed by Ketlar, he had failed to examine his visual memory of the men; but here, in the darkness, he recollected the appearance of both and was startled by the idea which entered his head.

Comparing their facial features, they did not resemble each other; but in figure they were alike. Ketlar's hair was flaxen and Three-G. George's was black, flecked with white. If one thought of the two men as they were when seen nearby, the difference in hair easily distinguished them; but seen from across a street and through a window and under an electric light, would not Baretta's hair gleam like flaxen gray?

Calvin permitted nothing so definite as doubt of the rightness of what he had done, yet he could not deny a sensation of a shift of burden upon those scales in his mind. He remembered that the Royle girl had sworn, upon the witness stand, that she had seen a short, dark-haired man with Adele Ketlar; and if this was true, the fellow could not have been Baretta; but Calvin considered also, that he had believed that she had lied, indeed he had shown, upon cross-examination, how she had de-