Page:O'Higgins--The Adventures of Detective Barney.djvu/142

 “Nothin’. I— It was my brother done it, ’n’—’n’ they got him but I got away—t’ Oswego. ’N I wrote home to my mother. ’N I guess that ’s how they foun’ out where I was.”

“And you had n’t done anything wrong, at all, had you, Barney?” she asked.

Barney gave her the gaze of utter innocence. “No ’m.”

Whately eyed him. This was not the troubled, silent face that he had watched upstairs. “How did you get the other handcuff off?”

Barney had filled his mouth with orange. He shook his head and gulped everything. “They don’t put ’em onto both yer hands. He puts one onto your wrist an’ one onto his. He took his off, when he lef’ me in the car fer a minute—’n’ I broke it off the chain with a couple o’ stones—after I got away.”

“Don’t bother him now, dear,” she said, faintly. “He ’s hungry.”

Whately saw her pale look of distress. “What ’s the matter?”