Page:That Royle Girl (Balmer).pdf/83

 Joan Daisy's statement were, in all other respects, "laughable," Calvin said; but he did not laugh.

On his table in the hotel room, which to-day he used for an office, he placed the pages of James M. Royle's testimony beside the sheets written up from Joan Daisy Royle's deposition and he felt the danger from them. For in one essential—in the detail which already was shaping itself as the critical point of the case—James Morton Royle's and his daughter Joan Daisy's statement agreed; and Calvin acridly blamed himself for this situation.

The girl had tricked him, he felt sure; he had let her "work" him when, before she was taken from the flat, she had written her note to her father and Calvin foolishly had declined to examine it. Now it was clear to him that she had told her father, in that note, to swear to this alibi.

"I was soft for her!" Calvin accused himself and warmed with chagrin as he recollected his sentiment when he had watched her from her window on her way out with the policewoman, and he had stood beside her desk and left, unopened, her note to her father.

Temporarily, Calvin was alone in the room which was en suite with two others, in the further of which Ketlar was confined, the next room being used by other assistant state's attorneys and by the police. The suite was in the same hotel, and was only a floor lower than the rooms given to Joan Daisy and her female guard.

No one, except certain officials of the police and the state's attorney's office, knew where Ketlar and Joan Daisy Royle were being "held." Not even the newspaper men.

The interrogation of Ket, which had lapsed for a period during the morning, was methodically resumed in the third room of the suite; and as it continued Calvin looked in and listened from time to time, but he left to