Page:O'Higgins--The Adventures of Detective Barney.djvu/73

 said, “is those millionaire cigars. Palmer smoked two boxes of them. The old man squeals about it worse than anything.”

“What are they? A perfecto?” Babbing asked, with the air of a teetotaler showing curiosity about wines.

“No,” Snider explained, “they’re like a panatela, only longer. They ’re a little longer than a lead pencil and about as thick. They ’re some smoke.”

Babbing gave Archibald a telegram that he had been reading. “Wire them I can’t take it up personally, but if they ’ll turn it over to our branch office there, I ’ll be on later, to direct the investigation. . . . What was it, Chal? The same old game?”

“Sure,” Snider smiled. “At noon on the fifteenth, the day the option expired, he bought the hotel with a New York draft for fifty-five thousand, and opened an account at the old man’s bank with a check for the extra five thousand which the old man wrote. He was carrying a little black handbag full of