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 deaf and dumb alphabet. I ’ll have to work that up. We ’ve got to be thorough on this job, or we ’ll find ourselves in a hole.”

It was this thoroughness, finally, that brought Barney back to a sense of pleasurable excitement in the plant. Not only did Babbing “work up” the deaf and dumb alphabet. He coached Barney on the details of their life in Chicago, the death of his mother there, and the imaginary incidents of his kidnapping, some years before. He took all the New York labels from his own clothes and from Barney’s. He had Corcoran buy some well-thumbed second-hand picture books, and he wrote in them: “To Barney, from his affectionate Papa.” He filled his pockets with fraudulent letters addressed to Adam Cook about his tunneling machine; and he saw that there was nothing suspicious in Barney’s possession.

“Now,” he said, on their way to the house, “don’t ever sit with your back to a door. Don’t go to sleep until you ’re sure that your