Page:That Royle Girl (Balmer).pdf/97

 "She certainly kids herself," Miss Nesson charged, with disgust. "So you're boarding her as his big friend! That's what she told you!"

"Who is his big friend?" Calvin asked.

"She sure kids herself that Fred went to that trouble for her."

"What trouble?" asked Calvin, unable to comprehend that this child-faced girl thus referred to the killing of Ketlar's wife.

"My Gawd!" exclaimed Miss Nesson. "Ain't you heard about it?"

Still it did not occur to Calvin that this girl had intruded to assert her claim to Joan Royle's peculiar distinction. Imagining that she possessed some useful evidence, he questioned her with no result but to penetrate, at last, her point of view.

To this pouting young person, it appeared that Joan Royle had pushed herself into an enviable position by having herself arrested as the one for whom Ketlar had shot his wife; and the only discoverable object of Miss Nesson's call was to seek for herself a share of notoriety. She would like to be known as the woman for whom a man had killed; she would like, actually, the thrill of arrest in such a role. Very plainly, she entertained no idea of danger to herself from it.

Calvin dismissed her, and, evading the newspaper men who sentineled the building, he made his way to the hotel, as yet undiscovered by the reporters, where Ketlar and the Royle girl were held. Ketlar, he knew, he could continue to hold; to-morrow morning, in court, he could make and sustain an accusation of murder against the man.

But Calvin recognized that he had obtained no competent evidence against the girl which he could cite in court as cause to deny Hoberg's grand demand that she