Page:O'Higgins--The Adventures of Detective Barney.djvu/275

 escaped the surveillance of the Babbing Bureau, in Brooklyn; and he had been waiting so, for several days, at the Bridge entrance, for the purpose of picking up the man’s trail again if he should happen by. But the continuous stream of traffic had put him into the day-dream of an idler who lolls on a bridge to watch running water; and whenever he became sensible of his surroundings it was merely to envy the crowd in front of the World's score-board, who could follow the baseball game—as he could not.

A passer-by aroused him by offering him a nickel for a newspaper, and glanced at the front page with a hand still held out for change. Barney yawned as he counted the four cents into the open palm. The fingers closed on the money, but the hand did not move. Barney, surprised, looked up from the hand to the owner of it. The man was reading headlines so intently that he was unconscious of all else, and he was blinking at what he read, with his lips pressed together in some sort of