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 "I have her started now," Mrs. Hoswick made report a few minutes later to the men below who were to keep Joan Daisy under surveillance.

Calvin was in the lobby and he delayed near the door of the hotel and saw her step from the elevator.

She saw him, nodded and approached him, carrying her little handbag which she had taken from the bell-boy who had accompanied her from the elevator.

"Where's Mr. Ketlar, Mr. Clarke?" she asked.

"At central station. You can't see him, if you go there. He's locked up," said Calvin decisively. "You're to go home."

"Yes," said Joan Daisy. "Mrs. Hoswick told me. My bill here is paid?"

"Yes. How are you going home?" Calvin suddenly inquired.

"Elevated."

"You can take a cab," he told her and he struck spirit in her.

"Of course I can; but I don't care to."

"I mean," said Calvin, "I'll send you home."

"You?" she challenged him, gazing evenly into his eyes in her disconcerting way. "You mean, you you, or you the State—the People of Illinois?"

"Take a cab," Calvin answered, evading, and he signaled one, but was left at the curb, holding the door open, when Joan Daisy walked away.

Watching her, he saw her give herself a shake which was slight yet so expressive that it put him in mind of a thrush which he had captured when he was a boy and kept for a day in a box and then released. He always remembered the quiver of the bird, when it had hopped a few feet from the box and suddenly felt it was free.

Joan Daisy was hungry. She had not expected to be, and she had not planned to stop down town, for supper