Page:O'Higgins--The Adventures of Detective Barney.djvu/289

 thought he had traced the Baxter mystery to its lair in Findellen, but because Findellen was so small a village to his superior metropolitan eye. It had one “front” street of shops about as imposing as a row of booths on Coney Island, and its old frame station house was little better than a Harlem shack to Barney. He entered the waiting-room and found it empty—except for a row of benches around the walls, some country cuspidors, and an old base-burner, cold and rusty, that was still standing where the winter had left it. He screened himself behind the stove to spy through the open doorway, and he saw his man cranking a little touring car in which a woman sat at the steering wheel. An automobile!

An automobile presented such an unexpected difficulty to tailing that he stood gazing at the car as if it were an impassable obstacle that had suddenly blocked his way. It moved from the square of the door frame. He hurried to the door. The machine was already disappearing up the street that led straight