New-York tribune., 1920-08-29

he had to go ahead when the man
stopped to buy more newspapers at
the entrance. But inside the doors
Barney dawdled until he was be-
hind again, and only closed up to
see the suburbanite show a commu.
tation ticket at the gates. Barney
bought a Scent ferry ticket and
followed the man on the boat.
While the fcrryboat was thread
ing it's way across the traffic of the
river Barney was busy devising
stratagems to outwit the railroad
gatekeeper. He would say he was
travelling with his mother, who was
a cook, newly hired to work in some
country place of which he did not
know the name. He was to have
met her on the station platform.
He had missed her.
That ought to be convincing. He
decided to try it. The ferryboat
was nosing and humping it's way into
it's dock at Jersey City when the
Panama hat came out with crowd
of passengers, and Barney maneu-
vered to get a good look at the
wearer of it. The sum of his obser-
walton was that the man appeared
inoffensive. He was an oldish young
man, an Office worker probably, well
featured, of the lean type.
He pushed his way through the
stream of passengers that went
ashore with him, and Barney had
to race to keep up. In the train shed
he went directly to his train. And
to Barney's relief there were no
gates and no gatekeepers. A board
at the track end gave list of the
stations at which the train stopped.
The last of these was Somerville.
Barney said to himself, "Me for Som
erville," and followed down the
platform.
He was led to the smoking car and
took the seat nearest the rear door
and watched some of the suburban
ties getting squares of heavy card
board from the baggageman to use
as card tables on their knees; they
sat down in fours, here and there,
to play. The Panama hat was in
vted to join some acquaintance at
euchre and declined; he was engaged
with his newspapers and a briar
pipe. A man directly in front of
Barney was hailed to make the
fourth in the game and threw aside
his paper to accept. Barney leaned
over the back of the seat and took
the paper. At that moment the
train started.
He frowned diligently at a por-
trait of Elizabeth Baxter smiling on
the front page-a dark girl of
twenty, naively handsome and self
! assured. He gathered from her pic
ture nothing more than feeling that
her smile was incongruous. He did
not understand that the photograph
had been originally published with
the announcement of her engage
ment to marry conspicuously
wealthy old bachelor named Huntley
an occasion for which a smile was
fitting.
This is what he should have been
reading: Miss Elizabeth Baxter was
the only daughter of D. B. Baxter,
who was vaguely described as a
"well known Wall Street man." She
had left her fathers apartment in
the Antonio one morning to go to
her dressmaker; and she had tele-
phoned to her maid, two hours
later, that she would not be home
for luncheon. She had not re-
turned for dinner, either. Nor for
: the night. Next morning private
detectives, secretly employed by
her father and her fiance, had start
ed on her trail, and by the end of
two weeks they had found that she
had been to her dressmaker's at 10
o'clock in the morning, that she
had bought novel in a Fifth Ave
nue. book shop at 1890; that she
had telephoned at HAS from a
CANDY store whore sho had ho,,rh+