Babbing looked over his spectacles at him. “You can talk—on your fingers—pretty fluently?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, what ’s the matter?” Babbing asked. “Who is this Dummy Jordan?”
“No one. He ’s just the fullah that lives next door t’ us.”
Babbing said, into an office telephone: “Bring me the file on the Dart gang.” He pressed a call button to summon his office manager. He remarked, aside to Barney: “I don’t know what you ’re trying to conceal— Is it anything important?”
“No, sir,” the ingenuous Barney answered.
“All right. Save yourself the trouble of looking so innocent, then. Sit down.”
He greeted the reverend gray hairs of his office manager with “Arch, I ’ve got an idea for that Merriman disappearance. The woman who kept the lodging house at number 125 was a Mrs. Andrews, was n’t she?”
