Page:O'Higgins--The Adventures of Detective Barney.djvu/276

 effort to conceal any betrayal of the excitement that showed in his eyes.

It did not take him more than two or three “bats” of the eyelid—as Barney would have said—to gather the meaning of the headlines. Then he hastily folded up the paper, thrust his change into his pocket and hurried away with the air of having picked up something that he wished to examine in secret. And Barney, after one blank moment of staring hesitation, followed him hypnotically.

Those headlines announced, as Barney knew, that the father of Elizabeth Baxter had offered a reward of $5,000 to any one who could discover what had become of her. And Barney had suddenly found himself with what detectives call “a hunch.” He could not have explained it. He could not have defended it. But into his empty brain, on the instant that he had seen the man’s expression, there had come a conviction that this respectable-looking stranger had a guilty knowledge of the Baxter case. Of the dozen innocent