Page:O'Higgins--The Adventures of Detective Barney.djvu/40

 were too long in the legs, and he had to pull them up until they were uncomfortable.

He heard Babbing answering the telephone, but he did not suspect that the detective was receiving a confirmatory report, from his office, upon Robert Emmet Cook’s record at Police Headquarters and Barney Cook’s service with the Western Union. Barney was not listening to what was going on around him, nor thinking of it. His thoughts were in Marshall Cooper’s room. He was dramatising a scene with that gentleman.

The voices of Babbing and his operative conferred together imperturbably:

“How are we going to send him a cipher telegram. Chief, if we don’t know his code?”

“I ’m going to repeat the one he got last night from Chicago. ‘Thunder command wind kacaderm.’ He has n’t answered it?”

“Unless by letter. And they would n’t get that till to-night.”

Babbing said: “He ’ll not go to the telegraph desk asking questions, because he won’t