Page:That Royle Girl (Balmer).pdf/287

 Calvin Clarke regarded the enormous, endless material productions of this city of many bloods, extended square after square, mile after mile to north, to south, to west, and his mind contrasted its people with the company who, with no motors or machinery or any of these accouterments of power and wealth, entered the Massachusetts wilderness and established civilization by force of individual character and courage. Imagine a Clarke or a Webster or one of the old Barlows (whose home was passed into the hands of a Greek) failing for fear of his own skin to speak out against a known murderer!

What was the reporter, Oliver, doing with the Royle girl? Calvin wondered. If the fellow had started away with her, directly after he had telephoned, he might be at Tut's Temple and leading her to Baretta.

Calvin stirred, uneasily. Tut's Temple was no place for a girl and a reporter to identify George Baretta for any fault whatever; and both of them, or the reporter at least, must know it; neither could be foolish enough to start trouble at the Temple. However, Calvin tapped on the window-glass and called to his driver, "Can you hurry a little?"

Being an active and adventurous young man, in possession of sufficiently ready wit and tact to have survived for nearly six years on police assignments in and about Chicago, the reporter Oliver, who had Joan Daisy in charge, approached the road-house, at present operated under the alias of Tut's Temple, with no illusions whatsoever as to the general nature of ensuing events, were it discerned that the purpose of the visit of himself and his companion was to fasten upon George Baretta the murder of Adele Ketlar.

The establishment, which gleamed in brilliant, Pharaonic colors beside the midnight road, was the actual property of Three-G. George himself, as Oliver very well