Page:That Royle Girl (Balmer).pdf/361

 "The honorary pall-bearers," whispered Ellison.

"Honorary!"

"Certainly he has them, like all great men. They're listed in the papers; look and see—the real names without aliases."

"That's a joke, Ellison."

"Then this crowd's a joke; the music and flowers aren't there. You haven't got it yet, Calvin. They're burying a big, successful man. . . . Ask the man on the street or on a roof, I say. Get him to tell you why he's here. He'll tell you it's because George Baretta made himself somebody, got power and influence for himself and a mint of money. Now that's the fact; didn't he?"

"But—"

"What is the fact?" insisted Ellison. "Didn't he? So you see exactly what you see."

In the street, the cortège took form, integrating itself from the crowd and drawing away, trailing a procession of motor-cars endless to the limits of sight and sucking in supporting streams from other streets.

Ellison grasped Calvin's left arm with a firm and totally serious pressure as they turned away. "It's not only you and I that have a job before us in this country, Clarke; so have our children's children."

Calvin walked silently with his mind, for the moment, following old, habitual channels extending to the dwindled ranks of Clarkes and Websters and Barlows beside the Merrimac to muster trustworthy recruits to the task; and he considered his mother and Cousin Harriet, Melicent and the Barlow, who was in the Connecticut asylum, and himself.

It was Ellison who looked about and so caught sight of Joan Royle.

She was standing near Ellison's car, where the plain-clothes man had brought her after failing to locate Mr.