Page:O'Higgins--The Adventures of Detective Barney.djvu/56

 to turn round. Otherwise, ’we ve tipped our hand.’’

Corcoran was already at the door. He went out on the final word.

“Now,” Babbing said, with perfect suavity, “take your time. Show me exactly what he did.”

“Well, look-a-here!” Barney took the book. “He got this out o’ the drawer, an’ then he sat down this way, an’ got a pencil, an’ then he wrote down the telegram—”

“Wrote it down? Where? On what?”

“On a piece o’ paper. An’ then he looks in the book, this way, an’ gets a word. An’ then he looks at the telegram. An’ then he goes back to the book an’ turns over the pages. An’ then he—”

Babbing reached the dictionary from him. “Wait.” He put on his spectacles and wrote on the back of an envelope: “Thunder command wind kacaderm.” Below that he wrote it again, reversed, and then several times with the words transposed and permuted in all