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 to be in a "trigger temper," and before he had controlled himself he had gone too far.

At the time, he had expected immediate trouble; but two circumstances had saved him—the fact that Ketlar himself had been fooling around that night and that Adele Ketlar's friends were ignorant that she had had an affair with Baretta.

Some of his friends knew; and it had put an unpleasant power into their hands—power which they had been wise enough, however, not to employ until after the Considine incident. Even now silence might have been maintained, had not the end of the trial of Ketlar forced matters. Obviously, if Ketlar were convicted for the killing of his wife, it would be much more difficult to inform against Baretta than when the guilt was not yet legally fixed. So, to-night, the squeal was out; and Baretta and Frankie Zenn had been wondering what, if anything, was to be done about it, when the girl, who was the witness for Ketlar and had sworn to having seen a stranger with Adele, walked into the Temple with a reporter.

Now Calvin Clarke was come; and the fact that it was Clarke, instead of another assistant state's attorney, was proof to Baretta that the law concerned itself to-night with no such innocuous offenses as liquor selling and gambling, nor with the unprovable circumstances of Considine's decease, but with the bungled bump-off of the Ketlar girl.

With all this in mind, Baretta and Frankie Zenn presumed that Clarke, whom they instantly recognized, had come prepared to take them; they did not imagine that he had entered without supporting squads posted about the place until word was brought to them that apparently such was the case.

Calvin seriously misconceived the situation created by his arrival because he still believed in Ketlar's guilt. He