Page:That Royle Girl (Balmer).pdf/284

 scribed the man differently at other times and that the fact had been that the fellow was tall and light-haired.

"Like Ket, but not Ket; he wasn't Ket—he wasn't!" she had cried to Calvin himself upon the night she had led him to the beach to show him the stones, which she had called stars, set in the sand.

The scale, weighted deeply down with evidence damning the Royle girl, had lifted a little, and Calvin could not again depress it to where it had been; stubbornly he fixed it where it was, still heavily heaped with proofs against her.

He walked briskly to his rooms and was preparing for bed when the telephone rang. "Jury," he thought, as he grasped the instrument which reproduced for him Oliver's voice, saying: "I got something to interest you, Mr. Clarke."

"What?"

"It hear Considine's gang 're giving out that George Baretta was mixed up with Adele Ketlar and he killed her."

"Are they?" asked Calvin.

"What do you know about it?" Oliver demanded.

"Nothing," replied Calvin, positively; "know" to him was a word of absolute determination.

"This didn't have anything to do with that conference to-night?"

"I have nothing more to say."

"That's how you want to be quoted?"

"Yes," said Calvin and hung up; but within fifteen minutes Oliver was again on the wire.

"I called you back, sir," he explained, unapologetically, "because that tip is coming stronger; we're carrying a story on it to-night, and we want a few words from you to go with it."

"Why?"