Detective Bob Bridger — page 150: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

DETECTIVE BOB BRIDGER. 143 night you can rest assured that there are scores of detec- tives in New York eager to catch Billy, and suppose they should come here after us?” “Hi!” shrieked Meg. ‘Annette Bolard, mark ye this! I’ve niver laid finger'on yez yet. And, though it’s a hard thing for a mother to say to her own, if iver ye name de- tectives to me in this way again, I’ll raise a chair, and lave ye a corpse at me feet !” While Meg thus vented her wrath in a violent tone the Scotch detective softly turned the door-knob, and found that the door was unlocked. The angry woman had evidently raised a chairin a threatening manner, as if to impress her threat on Annette, for, in a calm voice, the threatened girl answered : “Mam Meg, I am not in fear that you will harm me. You, a woman so good, who lifted me when a tiny; witless babe, from the arms of my mother, when she fell dead on the threshold, starved on her husband’s father’s estates, and have since reared me while those who murdered my grandfather have ofttimes importuned you to permit my murder—you will not harm me now.” The chair fell with a crash from Meg Bolard’s grasp upon the floor, and she stammered forth, in evident terror : - “My God! Annette, who told you this?” “T did,” said the Scotch detective, throwing wide the door, and walking into the room, followed by Bridger. CHAPTER XXXITT. THE RESCUE. Annette, in a calico robe, the picture of a pretty, ani- mated maid of all work, stood near the stove in the front part of the room, looking after some food in preparation thereon. Upon a table in the center of the apartment burned a ‘lamp. Near it was an easy-chair, upon which Meg had been sit- ting and sewing. Before it stood the excited woman, glaring at Annette. The chair which she had raised as if to strike Annette lay near by, broken npon the floor. Both recognized the man from Scotland Yard on the in- stant, and both gave vent to a startled scream. Then Annette, with a cry of joy, as if the hope of an age. Eomicboo <S €o