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II

THE CASE OF PADAGES PALMER


I

Barney, as a telegraph boy, had once been summoned to a dressing room in Daly’s Theatre, by an indignant star who had refused to entrust his message to any but official hands. And he had once been called to a grated office in the Tombs to take a telegram from a prosperous-looking elderly gentleman in handcuffs. It was chiefly from the memories of these two experiences that Barney constructed his expectation of what he was to And when he should enter the private offices and operatives’ rooms of the Babbing Detective Bureau, to report for duty.

As, for example:—Babbing, in his sanctum, at a make-up table, gumming a false mustache

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