Page:O'Higgins--The Adventures of Detective Barney.djvu/239

 yourself. I have n’t enough evidence to convince a jury, perhaps, but I ’ve enough to satisfy Eugene Van Amberg and his sister.” He was signing his letters. “You ’ll tread gently for the rest of your days, you sneaking parasite. And if you so much as put a toe outside the straight path, I ’ll have you flung into the Broad Street gutters like a drunken bum. You can go.”

“This way,” Barney said, and threw the door open.

Harper hesitated, tugging his hat down on his forehead in a manner at once beaten and defiant. He opened his mouth to speak, thought better of it, and bit his teeth together again. As he shouldered past Barney, his jaw muscles were swollen in his cheek as if he had taken a bull-dog grip on his rage and his disappointment.

Barney watched him down the hall. When he closed the door and returned to Babbing, he found the Chief still busily writing.

“Go back to your work,” he said, without