Will you be moving
on yourself soon, Mr. Barnes?"
"I shall hang around here a few days longer," said Barnes,
considerably puzzled but equal to the occasion. "Still interested in
our murder mystery, you know."
"Any new developments?"
"Not to my knowledge." He ventured a crafty "feeler." "I hear,
however, that the state authorities have asked assistance of the
secret service people in Washington. That would seem to indicate that
there is more behind the affair than--"
"Have I not maintained from the first, Mr. O'Dowd, that it is a case
for the government to handle?" interrupted Loeb. He spoke rapidly and
with unmistakable nervousness. Barnes remarked the extraordinary
pallor in the man's face and the shifty, uneasy look in his dark eyes.
"It has been my contention, Mr. Barnes, that those men were trying to
carry out their part of a plan to inflict--"
"Lord love ye, Loeb, you are not alone in that theory," broke in
O'Dowd hastily. "I think we're all agreed on that. Good morning, Mr.
Boneface," he called out to Putnam Jones who approached at that
juncture. "We are sadly in want of gasoline."
Peter had backed the car up to the gasoline hydrant at the corner of
the building and was waiting for some one to replenish his tank.
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