this Dart gang. You ’ll have to be prepared with a trunk and a hand-bag full of good clothes. Corcoran ’ll go with you to see that you get them right. I ’ll give him instructions. He ’ll take you—and your baggage—to rooms that I ’ll engage for us at the Hotel Haarlem. I ’ll pick you up there, as soon as you ’re fixed, and explain matters to you as we go along.” He took his office ’phone: “Get Corcoran in here right away.” As he returned to his study of the Dart file, he said to Barney: “You can practise being deaf and dumb till he comes.”
Barney grinned at this pleasantry as cheerfully as a dog wags its tail when the voice of authority turns from reproof to forgiveness. He had not altogether understood Babbing’s lecture upon the morals of his profession; the young savage in him had not yet been sufficiently civilized to make him sensible of any social compact with his fellows. But he had the instinct of personal loyalty that keeps his people clannish; and he accepted Babbing’s
