Page:O'Higgins--The Adventures of Detective Barney.djvu/165

 had been outfitted second-hand from all the discarded reps and plushes of all the defunct boarding houses of the last generation.

Barney looked around him and was disappointed. Corcoran’s prediction that the Dart gang would cut his throat if they got “half a chance,” had given him a promise of excitement; and Babbing had endorsed the promise with a further warning in the taxi-cab. “These people,” he had said, “are professional criminals. You can’t get past them with any mistakes, mind you. They ’re dangerous. If they suspect you ’re after them, they ’re deadly. They ’ll kill to get free. You ’ll have to watch out.” Consequently, Barney had entered the room with the feeling that he was about to penetrate a bandit’s lair.

And there was an old upright piano, very yellow in the teeth—against a wall-paper of faded violets on faded pink—under a steel engraving of Lincoln’s cabinet, in a black frame. Between the lace curtains of the front