Page:O'Higgins--The Adventures of Detective Barney.djvu/236

 scowl. “What the devil are you trying to insinuate?”

“That you ’ve been very wise in making a study of the typhoid bacillus. No doubt you ’re experimenting to produce the anti-toxin. Eh?”

Harper sat down again, quickly. He leaned forward, with his jaw set. “You can’t say a thing like that to me, and get away with it. Now — — you, what do you mean?”

Babbing smiled at him, in ironical silence, contemptuously. “I ’ve been in this game for forty years. Did you think that you could sit into it, for the first time in your life, and make a fool of me? Barney, show this crook the quickest way to the hall.” He jerked a nod in the direction of the door. He added, as he dipped his pen: “I ’ll send you my bill as soon as my men report their expenses.”

“Blackmail, eh?” Harper said, hoarsely.

Babbing replied, in the voice of abstraction: “Worse than that. Ruin, if you don’t