Page:O'Higgins--The Adventures of Detective Barney.djvu/271

 They were still discussing the matter when Mrs. Buntz dropped in, coolly, to tell her father that an insurance agent had telephoned about some insurance policy, early that morning. She had been so busy all day that she had not been able to come over before. Besides, she thought there must have been some mistake.

Well, there had not been. Not any. The insurance company was trying to persuade their innocent father to take fifteen hundred dollars for a five-thousand-dollar policy. A paid-up policy in favor of his two daughters, payable after his death!

Mrs. Buntz was soon as indignant as her sister. She read the policy aloud—every word of it—with fine conviction; and she followed it with the agent’s letter, sarcastically, rather through the nose. ‘“That,” she said, “was written by a thief.”

It was she who thought to ask why they had never heard of the policy before. Cooney mumbled, “I ’d fergot about it, gurl.