Page:O'Higgins--The Adventures of Detective Barney.djvu/268

 boy. Trust me. I ’m no such fool as ye ’d think.”

On the following evening, when Barney entered the room again, there he was in the dusk, smiling craftily, with triumph in his face. He had the policy with him, and he reported that it had already begun to do its perfect work. His daughter Kathleen had been immediately indignant with him for thinking of accepting fifteen hundred dollars for a five-thousand-dollar policy. “It ’s a robbery,” she had cried. “Don’t you do it, paw.” And when Cooney argued that he needed the money, she replied: “We may need money, but we don’t need it so bad that we ’ll sell five thousand dollars for fifteen hundred. We ’ll stick it out, together. I ain’t been feelin’ well, an’ this big house has got on my nerves, but I ’ll drop dead in my tracks before I ’ll let that old insurance company cheat us that way.”