Page:O'Higgins--The Adventures of Detective Barney.djvu/76

 houses to the ferries of the North River and the docks and chimneys of the Jersey shore. It was an invitingly clean and bright Spring day. “I ’d like to try a long shot at that fellow,” he said. And little Barney’s heart leaped with the blind instinct of a setter pup who sees preparations for the hunt.

Snider took his hat from his ankle and his ankle from his knee. “At Palmer?”

Babbing drifted back to his desk and sat down.

“Got a hunch, Chief?”

Snider asked it in the wistful manner of envy interrogating the inscrutable. Babbing stared at him, thoughtfully. Snider blinked and waited. Babbing said, at last: “It was raining hard last night at eight-thirty. . . . He would n’t shave on the train.”

Snider put his hat on the floor and leaned forward intently. “We could n’t run out all the barber shops in town, could we?”

“He ’d go to a hotel, and get it off in his room.”