Page:O'Higgins--The Adventures of Detective Barney.djvu/265

 now, and let me see you pull it off. I ’ll ’phone Fisher to help you.”

Barney hesitated. “He won’t be able to pay us a cent, Chief—Cooney won’t.”

Babbing dropped his cigar butt in the cuspidor and reached for his desk ’phone. “Tell him I ’m doing this for him as a fellow-member of the International Brotherhood of Male Parents. I ’m a father myself. If he wants to, he can leave directions in his will that we ’re to be paid out of his life insurance after he dies. . . . Hello. Put Fisher on here.” He added to Barney, his lips twitching: “I ’d like to live long enough to interview the daughters, when they come to 1047 to claim that insurance money. Run along, now, and get busy.”

Barney ran. He found that the Buntzes had a telephone—for the convenience of their lodgers—and he helped Fisher prepare his letter as agent of the life insurance company. Fisher improved on the plant. Having an artistic conscience, he was not satisfied until he