# That Royle Girl/Chapter 2

CHAPTER II
After vainly waiting a few minutes for him to reappear, Joan Daisy reassured herself and returned to her home, where she immediately opened the door of her mother's room and stood listening for the sound of her mother's breathing.
It was deep and slow and regular, but, following a habit of apprehension which had held her since she was a little girl when she learned that veronal was dangerous, Joan Daisy moved to the side of the bed and gazed at her mother in the dim light from the front room.
Her mother's fair, flaccid face was composed in its usual relaxed petulance; but Joan Daisy thought of that only as "mamma's expression." She saw that her mother was "all right." The veronal bottle was in its usual place on the stand beside the bed; there was the usual emptied glass. Joan Daisy retreated softly, closed the door, and in the bathroom she washed out the towels which Ket had used.
They were linen towels, new and expensive and—as she considered while she handled them—unpaid for. Practically everything in the apartment, except her own clothing and the garments which she herself bought for her mother, was new and expensive and unpaid-for. The rent of the apartment was paid; for Joan Daisy was able to manage most of it; but she had no hope of paying for its equipment.
Its procurement had been no act of hers, but had been arranged without her knowledge, as such transactions habitually were, by her father.
He was her stepfather, actually—he who had been her especial playfellow and protector as long as she could ​remember. For her no time existed when there had been another than mamma and herself and "Dads"; and through the many and extraordinary vicissitudes of her childhood, always the three of them together had been on the move from hotel rooms into apartment and out and into hotel again.
Dads, indeed, more constantly had been her companion than had mamma; for mamma not infrequently vanished for a week or two, leaving Joan Daisy in the care of Dads; but he never disappeared for more than a day and night, leaving her to her mother. Naturally, when she was little, she had supposed him to be her father.
She was exactly twelve when she learned of Dads' real relationship to her. She could clearly recall, not only the day, because it was her twelfth birthday, but also the place, which was a room in a hotel.
She did not remember whether it happened that the hotel was in Chicago or in Cleveland or Detroit, or, possibly, in St. Louis; for Dads and mamma and she temporarily had inhabited so many hotels in so many cities that the rooms, and the cities themselves, became confused in a crazy, kaleidoscopic retrospect. But she remembered the rooms, two in number, as usual; and, as customarily, they were very nice ones to the south and sunny; and there was a little porch with boxes of bright nasturtiums on the balustrade.
Dads had told her, on the day previous, that he would rise early and breakfast with her, because it was going to be her birthday; but by night, he had forgotten and come home drunk; so he slept soundly late in the morning and mamma stayed abed, too.
Joan Daisy was used to breakfasting alone in hotel dining rooms, but she waited for Dads until eleven o'clock, since it was her birthday. Then she went down alone.
​When she returned to her room mamma was there in négligé and Joan Daisy heard voices in Dads' room and she knew that the hotel manager was present. He was excited and cross and shouting; Dads' voice was calm and courtly in its elaborate politeness and very dignified, as it always was when a manager shouted. The manager banged out and mamma scurried back to Dads' and her room, and in a few minutes Dads appeared, dressed with most scrupulous carefulness in immaculate white flannels. His cheeks and chin were clean-shaven and pink, and his black mustache was severely brushed and stiffened; and altogether he held himself in the over-impressive manner which told her that he was feeling especially ashamed of himself.
"Birthday greetings, Joan," he said, taking her face between his hands and kissing her forehead. He seldom used both her names, as others did, and he never called her Daisy, as her mother liked to do. "I regret that this morning a financial emergency has arisen which immediately necessitates my presence elsewhere. We are leaving this hotel in ten minutes."
"Yes," she said; and in this preliminary there was nothing unusual to make it memorable; but to-day, he asked: "Joan, do you love me?"
"Of course, I love you, Dads," she said.
"Why?" he asked and she replied, "Because you're my father"; whereat his hands held her cheeks closely but very gently and he said, "I am going to tell you something of that, Joan. I want you to know it now. I am not your father. I merely had the honor to marry your mother, who was left a widow after you were two years old. I want you to know this so you will never suffer from believing that blood of mine is in you. Joan, I greet and congratulate you upon your twelfth birthday."
She remembered that she threw herself into his arms ​and cried; she remembered that she begged him to be her father; and when he denied that he really could be, she asked him who was her father, and he replied, "I never had the privilege of meeting the gentleman." Then their ten minutes were up and Joan never was successful at re-opening the subject with Dads; and she never was able to mention the matter to her mother. If Dads had told her mother what he had imparted, mamma completely ignored the disclosure.
The chief effect of it was upon Dads; for Joan Daisy loved him just the same. Indeed, she felt even a more filial devotion when she thought how devotedly he had cared for her, since she had been an infant, though he was not her father.
Apparently he felt that he had freed her from any share of shame for what he did and from any responsibility for his extraordinary manner of gaining their living; and, having thus freed her, he embarked upon bolder ventures in false and elaborate pretense.
Joan Daisy set to work that summer, starting as an errand girl in a milliner's shop and thereafter she earned what money she personally spent; and later, when she had advanced herself to better positions, she sometimes paid a claim against Dads.
Nothing made him so angry as to discover such a transaction. He would not speak to her for days afterwards.
Of the several names which he employed, he went most frequently by that of James Morton Royle. Perhaps it was his own, Joan Daisy thought; or perhaps he found it the luckiest or most impressive. She never heard him mention his own people and he was most contradictory in regard to the section of the country in which he had been reared. Sometimes it had been New England and he spoke with a Massachusetts mannerism; some​times he had been a New Yorker; at other times, he had the tradition and accent of a Virginian or a Louisianan. Somewhere he had picked up an education in strange languages; for when he was drunk, he recited resounding verses which he said were of the poets Virgil and Homer.
He would tell her nothing of them when he was sober, but she looked them up in an encyclopedia at a hotel. She believed that though he was not her father, he had named her Joan and that her mother alone was responsible for "Daisy." She never felt sure that he had told her the truth on her twelfth birthday; and when she doubted it, she did not know whether or not she wanted to believe him her father.
She had pulled out the couch in the large room and was transforming it into a bed when she heard his key scrape at the lock. He entered, removing his gray hat with a flourish.
"Glor'yus evening, m'dear."
"Glorious, Dads," she replied, and each looked the other over to see the effect of the day.
He was erect and distinguished-appearing as usual in his new, excellently tailored and never-to-be-paid-for clothes. He wore a gray top-coat, unbuttoned, over a gray English walking suit. His hair and mustache were precisely trimmed, as usual. He dyed his hair, but did it so cleverly that it was seldom suspected; he always left a few gray hairs to increase his air of distinction. He had new, gray gloves and an impressive malacca stick which he swung slightly.
"Long day, m'dear?" he inquired, none too steady in voice but with his perceptions keen.
"Yes," she admitted.
"Office?"
"Yes."
​"I've had a long day," he reported with satisfaction. "Mos' propitious day, too. Mos'."
Upon whom had he successfully imposed to-day? She wondered. What unusual article had he obtained on credit? Or, by chance, had he been engaged in one of his rare transactions of a legitimate sort?
"Been sitting here alone, Joan?" he inquired.
"No. Ket's been up here. I just sent him downstairs."
"Proper plaish for 'im. Precishly proper plaish, Joan," he commended her. "You're good girl, m'dear."
He laid his stick and hat in the closet with his topcoat, and he stepped out, yawning, yet not feeling ready to retire.
"You sleepy?" he asked her.
"No."
"Nor I. When y'are, inform me," he bid courteously, going to the radio and twirling the dials.
He was rewarded immediately by the raucous strains of jazz and next by scrapings of a speech, at which he swore in whispers. Joan knew that he was searching for something sentimental, such as "The Swanee River," or "Annie Laurie," and she watched him while he tuned, searching the three thousand miles of the continent for what he wanted until at last he located in Los Angeles, where it was not yet eleven o'clock, a woman singing—"Home, Sweet Home."
It pleased him greatly and he stood before the cabinet, swaying with satisfaction in time to the song.
"Beauchival song," he whispered to Joan and put out his hand to draw her closer. "Beauchival, isn't it? Sound sentiment, m'dear; and absholutely fundamental. Lisshen, Joan."
She gave him her hand, and he clung to her while he swayed to the second verse; she watched him and wondered, as often at such interludes, what memories as​sailed him? What association brought tears to him who lived by imposing upon others, by pompous cheat and false pretenses?
"Beauchival," he repeated, wiping his eyes, in the silence after the second stanza. "And, as I shay, absholutely fundamental from firsht to lash. Haven't got home, got nothing no more'n beast o' the air or bird o' the field. Kish me, m'dear." He bent and kissed her forehead. "Never leave your home, Joan. You got good home. Not any woodbine maybe. But it's good home and you're good girl. Shtick to your home, m'dear. Shweet home; but I can't shtand any more. G'night, Joan."
The woman in Los Angeles was beginning the third verse, and he hurried away, wiping his eyes, and took refuge in his room.
Joan was about to turn off the radio when she heard a quick footstep in the court, and, slipping to the window, she saw Ket below. So nothing had happened! He had not gone to Adele's or, if he had, he had surprised no secret.
She waited at the casement, conscious of a relief as Ket entered the building. So quickly afterwards that he must have run upstairs, he was at her door.
When she opened it, he looked in and past her, asking, breathlessly, "Who's here?"
"Just the radio going," she replied. 'Dads is in his room."
Ket seized her hotly, pressing his lips violently upon hers. "Kiss me!" he commanded, when he drew back for breath. "You kiss me yourself!"
She did not and she struggled against his fury. "What's the matter with you, Ket?" she cried.
"Just crazy about you. And I'm goin' to get you, kid!"
​"Are you?"
"You bet!" And he swept her lips with his; then he dropped her and he ran downstairs.
She closed her door, carefully bolting it. She turned off the radio, which was squawking that the station, which had just entertained with song, was Los Angeles.
She was roused and flushed from the hot ravage of her lips and his embrace of her body. She was aquiver with offense at his physical overpowering of her. She wanted no more of it; if he came to her door again, she would keep it closed between him and her; if he forced a way in, she would drive him away. But she did not drive away the idea of him.
On the contrary, she cherished it, while she undressed, atremble from the violence of his arms. She hummed his new tune and fancied him at his piano playing to her.
She switched off her light, flung wide her window, gazing up at the moon, and she slipped into bed. It was soft and very comfortable, this bed of hers which Dads provided; the sheets which touched her were of fine linen.
She pushed the cover away from her with a shiver of shame which often seized her at the end of a day. This day, Dads had said, had proved propitious; and she dreaded nothing so much as the results of a day reported by him to be propitious.
At her memories of consequences following other propitious days, she winced and clenched her little hands, resolving to check his cheats and impositions by following him and watching him, and by warning his victims against him. But she knew, by experience, how Dads would elude her. Her only effective recourse would be to inform the police and have him locked up.
So her resolution failed, as had all her rebellions ex​cept her one resistance to him when she was twelve and which had resulted in her ceasing to take money from him for her personal expenditure.
She lay, trying not to think of him, and of itself Ket's marching tune thrummed in her head again. It was lively and stirring and good; but not great. Joan Daisy had occupied a gallery seat in Orchestra Hall frequently enough to know what great music was; she knew how great music made her feel, what Mozart excited within her breast, and Wagner, Tschaikowsky, Rimski-Korsakoy and even Elgar.
Ket's tiny tune ran out, and there beat within her the mighty measures of "Pomp and Circumstance," parading a pageant of her dreams of accomplishment and honor for Ket and for Joan Daisy Royle, who now lay in the soft, fine bed obtained by Dads' pretense.
Ket was not great but she could make him great, as a woman had inspired each of the great musicians.
Joan pulled up her unpaid-for coverlet, regardless of it, as she imagined a name, his name—Ketlar—cut in the stone of fame's cornice in Orchestra Hall beside Mozart's and Beethoven's and Wagner's. She rehearsed the sentences which previously she had improvised for the page which would be printed in the concert programs of years and generations hence when Ket's great concertos and symphonies, which she would have inspired, would be played by the best orchestras in the world.
"Ketlar, Frederic. Born in Chicago. Little is known of his parentage."
She made paraphrase of a biography in an Orchestra program.
"His mother was a manicurist at a hotel where the boy picked up the simpler elementals of music from members of the restaurant orchestra.
"He early showed talent which, however, he turned to ​the composition of mere catchy dance pieces until he met Joan Royle, who then had but little more education than himself, yet who willed and inspired him to the work and studies which enabled him to compose the great Symphony in C Major—"
The wonder of the vision lifted her from the shame of Dads' propitious days; it made her of account in the world of her embarrassments, indignities and disgrace. So afloat upon her fancy, she drifted to sleep.
Steps in the court awakened her—quick, peremptory footsteps of two men walking side by side with clicking, important tread. Joan Daisy recognized its meaning and she started up, with a familiar sinking at heart, as she heard the policemen enter the building by the door directly below.
She was sure that they had come for Dads; and as the moon told her that she scarcely had slept and the hour was deep in the night, she knew that the cause, which brought the police, must be more serious than usual. For a mere dispossession, they would wait until day.
She arose and slipped into her kimono while she listened for their approach to her door. Now she heard a knocking, but not upon the panels here; it was below.
She thought they had made a mistake in the floor and that they would be upstairs in a moment; for they seemed to be at Ket's door.
They had awakened Ket and were talking to him. Some one slammed a door. Ket, probably, irritated at being disturbed by mistake. But the police did not proceed upstairs; they seemed to have entered Ket's room. A cry reached her, not by the stairs, but by way of her open window.
It was Ket's voice, and he frightened her. She sprang to her bay to listen when some one closed Ket's window; yet the drum of accusing voices beat through. They ​were accusing Ket; the police had come, at this hour of the night, for Ket.
Joan Daisy thrust trembling toes into slippers and she closed her kimono over her pajamas. Remembrance of the young man, whom she had seen with Adele, alarmed her; and to this she attached Ket's excitement when he had returned to her door, after his expedition to the lake, and so violently had kissed her.
So Ket had gone to Adele's flat and something had happened!
She ran down to the second floor where a police sergeant in uniform, was opening Ket's door. Seeing her, he challenged, "Who are you?"
"My name's Royle," she replied. "What's the matter here?"
"What's it to you?"
"I'm a friend of Mr. Ketlar's. I live upstairs."
"Straight up?" the officer asked. He was an alert, vigorous man of about thirty with a booming voice, which rang in the ears.
"Yes," said Joan.
"I guess we'll talk to you," he boomed, threateningly. "Come in."
She entered and came upon Ket and knew that something very serious indeed had occurred. He was in pajamas and with his hair touseled, as they had got him out of bed; he was pale and his eyes were wide and staring. A large, solid-looking man in plain clothes, but who surely was a policeman, confronted him.
"Oh, Ket!" she cried and, as he stared at her with his lips parted and unable to speak, she knew that the horror, which she saw in him, had just come to him. She was sure that he could not have known it when he had seized and kissed her at her door.
"What is it?" she begged of him.
​"Adele!" he managed to reply.
"What about her?"
"Somebody's—somebody's killed her, Jo, they say. They say somebody's killed her."
"Ket!"
"By God, Jo!" he cried and put out his hand and grasped hers and held to it like a child. He looked more like a boy than ever she had seen him with the hurt on his head swollen and discolored.
"When was it?" she begged.
Ket did not reply to this, but the man in plain clothes said, "Just now." And when she asked, "How—how was it?" he replied as briefly, "Shot."
"Jo," cried Ket, wringing her hand. "They say I did it!"
"Ket!"
"Oh, my God," he voiced. "I tried to tie the can to Adele. I know I did that. I tried to tie the can to the kid; but I wouldn't hurt Adele. They must know I wouldn't hurt the poor kid."
"That's enough now," the man in plain clothes suddenly commanded. "Take him in there," he pointed the uniformed officer to the bedroom. "I'll talk to her here." And he jerked Ket's hand from hers.
"She's been with me since I got home just after twelve!" Ket cried before the plain-clothes man ordered, "Shut up!" and the uniformed policeman pushed him into the bedroom and closed the two doors between.
"Sit down now, if you want," the plain-clothes man bid soothingly, when Joan and he were alone. "My name's Cummins. What did you say yours is?"
She repeated it, grateful for the chance of the few seconds in which to collect her wits.
Adele shot and Ket accused of killing her! Not for a moment did Joan Daisy imagine that he might be ​guilty of this. He might have got in a fight with the man whom she had seen with Adele; and Ket might have seriously hurt him. Indeed, Joan had run downstairs fearing that Ket perhaps had done something of the sort; but she rejected utterly the idea that he could have shot Adele.
Joan believed that he could not have done it even accidentally; nor could he have been so much as a witness to it. She was sure that he could not have known that his wife had been killed when he had come to her own door and kissed her.
"Now you give me your story of what went on tonight," Cummins bid her quickly, as though regretting that he had granted her the few seconds to think.
"You mean, here?" she asked.
"Or anywhere else you went," he replied, blandly.
"We didn't go anywhere else," she answered, instantly; and since she meant "we" together, it was literally true. But she realized that she must be ready to lie for Ket.
Through the doors between her and Ket and the uniformed man in Ket's bedroom, the booming voice resounded dully as it plied its questions.
"Then tell me what you did do here," Cummins commanded; and she comprehended that, in the other room, the booming voice was making its separate inquisition. She knew that, if she was to help Ket, her story and his must agree; and the one sure way to make them agree was for both to tell the truth. But what had Ket cried to her in the last moment before they separated him and her for this questioning? "She's been with me since I got home just after twelve!" This was not true; but this must be what he had told the police, before she ran downstairs; this, he must be maintaining in his answers which barely reached her as sounds between the rasps of the booming voice.
​He must know some reason, which she did not, which made it essential for him to deny that he had gone to the lake to-night. If he admitted it, they might be able to take his life in punishment for the shooting of Adele cf which he was not guilty. So, in his last appeal, he had asked her to stick to that lie for him. And, as she tried to arrange the events of the evening in her mind so as to leave no gap between the time he had left her and had returned, she went sick at heart.
Not from moral opposition to lies, but because she knew too well how weak and worse than useless lies might prove. How many times had she listened to Dads' clever, quick, persuasive lies, only to witness them turned against him at the end to his complete confusion!
"How did it happen?" Joan cried to Cummins, instead of answering him.
"How much do you already know?" Cummins countered, warily.
"I don't know anything but what you've told me. Adele's killed. Lucy, the little girl, was she hurt in it? Won't you tell me that?"
"The baby's all right," Cummins muttered. "Slept right through it. Now you sit down and go ahead. Tell about yourself. Your name is Joan Daisy Royle, you say. You live upstairs. Who with? Your husband?"
"No; I'm not married. I live with my father."
"Who's he?"
"James M. Royle."
"What does he do?"
"I'm a stenographer."
"I didn't ask about you, yet; I said, what does your father do?"
"He's—not employed," Joan replied.
"Hmm. Bootlegger, you mean?"
"No."
​"Card sharp?"
"No, no."
"Then why don't you say what he does?"
"No; no; no!"
"We'll leave him a minute. Go on about yourself. Where are you employed?"
"I work in the office of G. A. Hoberg."
"What does he do?"
"He's a contractor. I was working there this evening. Down in the loop. I came home late."
"With him?"
"No. I came home alone."
"Where'd you meet him, then?"
"Here. Rather, it was in front of the building."
"You two alone?"
"Yes."
"What time was it?"
"Tt must have been just about quarter past twelve."
"How do you fix that?"
"The extra lights on Sheridan Road went out just as I left Wilson Avenue. They always go out at midnight."
"Hmm. You were alone then or with him?"
"I was alone. I told you I met him in front of this building."
"You did; at quarter past twelve, you said. What happened to you alone? Sprain your ankle so it took you fifteen minutes to limp here from the corner?"
He gazed down at her slim, bare ankles below her pajamas and kimono, as though he seriously meant his question.
"No, I didn't come straight here. I mean, I went by when I got to the building. I went down to the lake."
Cummins looked up from her ankles but not suddenly. His eyes examined her figure carefully before he gazed again at her face. "So you went down to the lake," he ​said, accenting his word meaningly. "He wasn't near there to-night; but you went down there by yourself just after midnight."
"Yes, I did," said Joan and assured herself that it could not hurt Ket to tell this. On the contrary, it was absolutely necessary in order to explain how she had seen the man, whom she herself had confused with Ket, but who was not Ket, and who must be the man who had shot Adele.
The booming voice rasped from the bedroom; but, as she heard it, Joan reckoned that she was in no danger of contradicting Ket by relating her visit to the lake, because it had occurred before she met him, and she had told him nothing of it.
"For a little stroll, I suppose," suggested Cummins, mockingly.
"Yes. I mean, partly; not quite. It was moonlight; and I didn't want to go to bed."
"Why not?"
"I wanted to wait up for Ket."
"So you went down to the lake to look for him."
"No. I didn't think he would be there. I wanted to spend time before going in."
"To his wife's apartment?"
She felt her face suffuse with blood in her indignation. "I had no idea of going near his wife's apartment."
"Oh, you didn't."
Immediately she had seemingly to deny her statement in order to tell of the man she had seen with Adele. "I had no idea of going in," she corrected. "I went by and looked up as the light went on."
"Where?"
"In the window of Adele Ketlar's apartment. This is what I want to tell you," she said as earnestly as she ​could, yet to herself it sounded false. "I saw her with a young man."
"You did? Who?"
"I don't know who he was."
"He wasn't her husband?"
"No"
"Describe him!"
"He was—" Joan started and her voice became hoarse. She cleared her throat, but did not go on. If she described the man truthfully, she must say he had light hair and pink skin and was so like to Ket that she thought he was Ket until she found later he couldn't have been. If she dared tell this, it would help them to find the man who had killed Adele; but she realized that they would apply the description only to Ket. "I can't describe him," she answered.
"Did you see him? Was he tall or short?"
"Tall, I think."
"Light or dark?"
"I—don't know."
He was pursuing her, trying to force her to describe when some one knocked thrice; and Cummins desisted to admit an older man, more than forty, who also wore plain clothes. "Mr. Denson," Cummins called him.
Denson was of the quiet, confident bearing of one accustomed to having others at his mercy; he was slightly florid, slightly gray, with keen, steady eyes and muscular jaw.
"Ketlar's in there; Goudy with him," Cummins made report. "We got 'im, sir. He was in bed in there. He'd jerked on pajamas and jumped in."
"He's marked?" Denson inquired.
"Plain and fresh," reported Cummins with satisfaction. "Here," he touched his forehead. "You can't miss ​it. His clothes was off; but they're wet. He'd been washin' at them; but there's stains to show, all right."
"I hurt his head," Joan cried.
"You? How?"
"The door upstairs did it. He ran into the door when he was with me!"
"Who's she?" Denson inquired of Cummins calmly.
"A friend of his."
"You found her here?"
"No," Cummins reported. "They'd separated. She'd gone upstairs; but she'd been with him, earlier. You can see they was drinkin' together," he pointed out the wine glasses which Ket and she had used.
"She's goin' alibi for him," Cummins continued. "Their plan's plain enough. She's just been tellin' me that she went down to the lake before he come home and she was just in time to see his wife and another man in the flat together. She was just down for a stroll; then she come home and met him here outside.
"He hasn't been away from the place. He's been with her all the time. That's his story; maybe Goudy's got more now."
Denson disappeared into Ket's bedroom and, after the doors were shut, Joan heard Goudy's voice booming again. She heard outcry from Ket in wild, exasperated denial. Steadily and evenly, Goudy's voice boomed and maddened Ket the more.
Joan tried to gain the door, but Cummins caught her wrists and held her firmly, while within the bedroom Ket screamed in furious desperation: "I didn't. She didn't. . . ."
Evenly, aggravatingly the deep, calm voice boomed and Ket yelled: "She lied! . . ."
"Ket!" Joan cried out to him, "Oh, Ket!" as she twisted helplessly to gain the door.
​She desisted, and pulled back, with her breast heaving. They were "getting goods on" him, she realized; they were "getting goods on" him by means of which, later, they would take his life; and it was plain that already they had found something which she had said very useful and effective against him.
At her elbow were the wineglasses from which Ket and she innocently had drunk; and how the prosecutors might turn those sips of sherry to their purpose!
The man who was holding her gazed, not without an envious admiration, about Ket's walls. "He had plenty of ladies," Cummins said; and the tone of his "had" sent a twinge into Joan, for the confidence with which it conveyed the opinion that Ket's philandering with his ladies was finished.
Denson emerged from Ket's room. "You go in there and talk to him," he commanded Cummins. "Goudy will take her on for a while."
So the inquisitors were exchanged. Cummins, after having her story, was questioning Ket; Goudy began on her.
"The two of them agree on one thing," Denson commented, "They both say they was up in her room for a while. They claim he was hurt there. Let her show us."
So Joan led Denson and Goudy upstairs.
"Here's the door," she said, when they were in the large room. "I was in here putting up my hat. I pulled the door over as he came for me. He struck his head here."
Denson ran his hand down the edge of the door and grinned. "Go ahead," he invited. "Where'd he wash up?"
"Here, in the bathroom."
"Let's see."
"I washed out the towels afterwards!" Joan cried. ​Goudy was investigating the door to the bedroom. "Who's in there?" he asked.
"My mother and father," Joan replied.
"I'll talk to them."
"They're asleep," said Joan. "They know nothing about it."
"Wake them up."
"I can't."
"Why not?"
"Dads is drunk," Joan replied. "You can't wake him now."
"He came in drunk, did he?"
"Just about. He takes more before going to bed."
"What's the matter with your mother?"
"Veronal. She puts herself to sleep with it. I'll show you. Besides, I tell you she was asleep through it all."
"One minute," Denson interrupted casually. "Your father, when did he come in?"
Joan was on guard, but she could not help gasping at the question. For Dads had entered during the critical period following Ket's departure; and what had Ket said about him?
"You two were up here when your father came in?" Denson interrogated her.
"Yes," she replied, trying to guess what Ket had said.
"He saw Ketlar here with you?"
"No," she replied; for if they got Dads awake and asked him, he must say that he had not seen Ket.
"How was that?
Joan despaired. Lies, lies! How they always caught one!
She had to invent quickly, and she did her best. "My father doesn't like him. I had him hid for a few moments."
Denson smiled flatly and shook his head. "Forgot the ​old man, didn't you, kid, when Ketlar and you fixed up your story?"
He turned from her and touched the radio, idly. "By the way, Goudy," he commented. "After you left the other place, we got the time of the affair fixed exactly. The shot was heard by a couple of radio bugs who were sitting up to listen to Los Angeles. 'Home, Sweet Home' was coming in and the shot was just as the song was over. All we got to do is find out when they finished singin' at Los Angeles; and we got the time almost to a second."
"Then I know, I know and I can prove that Ket didn't do it!" Joan cried with her throat nearly choked with joy. "For he was here with me, we had the radio on, and he was beside me when they finished that song in Los Angeles!"
"You're quick, kid; I'll say that much for you," Denson replied and, as he looked her over, he permitted an impulse of pity. "Let her rest a bit," he said to Goudy. "Mr. Clarke's coming."
But she wanted no rest; she burned to act, to help Ket, to prove her truth.
"Who's Mr. Clarke?" she demanded.
"He's in the state's attorney's office," Denson informed her. "He's the prosecutor in line to handle this case. He's on his way now to look you two over for the State."
That phrase, "for the State," suddenly thrilled and appalled Joan Daisy Royle with its vague, gigantic implication of mercilessness and power.
Very familiar was she with the wording of warrants and terms of the law. "For the State," they announced; and when they haled one to court to answer for fraud or false pretenses, they proclaimed "the people of Illinois versus"—(that meant against)—you!
Millions and millions of people against Ket and her!
​She turned from Denson and Goudy and walked to her window, gazing out at the roofs reaching away and away under the moon, below which some of the millions slept, who would be—at the word of these men and of the Mr. Clarke who was coming for the State—against Ket and her for Ket's life!
At the word of these men, and of Mr. Clarke who was coming, they would take away the boy downstairs, who had been the son of a manicurist and had of himself picked up enough about music from the hotel orchestra so that he could play and compose what the millions of people liked.
How they clapped and cheered him when he played! How they thrust money and popularity upon him; how they had praised and flattered him! And how they would turn upon him at the mere word of these three men here, and, in the name of the people of Illinois, take his life!
With these three, Joan Daisy knew she could do nothing. Their minds were made up. But the man who was coming for the State, Mr. Clarke, evidently was a superior officer. At least, the three were awaiting him before carrying Ket and her away.
Probably it was only a formal delay before taking Ket and her to jail. But it was no time to rest, particularly when Denson wanted her to rest.
She gazed at her bed and recollection of her dream of Ket flashed before her; and she turned again to Denson with head up for the fight.