Detective Bob Bridger — page 161: what you’re looking at

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

- 154 DETECTIVE BOB BRIDGER. Then came a score of weighty thuds upon the banisiers, walls, and stair-way that shook the very house. Then followed a hasty scramble on the landing. And then all was as still as the grave. | It was all the work of an instant, but in that instant Bridger managed to ight the dark-lantern which he car- ried. As its rays fell upon the stair-way and landing the sight that greeted the eyes of the two sleuth-hounds was one never to be forgotten. The crazy giant stood clasping the throats of Moses and Sammy Muggins in his brawny hands, and held the Jews pinned against the wall so that the feet of neither touched the flooring. Their eyes glared forth vacantly, their tongues pro- truded hideously, and their limbs twitched nervously, as if they were in the throes of death. The huge mastiff lay motionless and dead near by on the landing. The crazy giant’s left foot rested upon the dog’s body, and, turning his silly, smiling face toward the astonished sleuth-hounds on the stairs, he said, in tones as gentle as those of a schoolgirl : ‘““See-ree-go! Master Fandon, see-ree go!” “Let them down on the floor, Billy, for Heaven’s cles ti cried the Scotch detective. “Take your hands off their throats. We don’t want to kill them !” Not until the two sleuth-hounds had reached his side did the powerful footpad alter his position or relax his hold. He, however, readily yielded his victims to their care, and stood by, simpering, as the detectives laid the forms of the two men on the landing. Moses and Sammy still breathed, but it was evident that had they remained a short while longer in the clutch of the © silly garroter their bodies had shown that peculiar burst of skin which betokens death by strangulation. - “Don’t touch them more,” said the Scotch detective, pointing to the insensible forms at his feet, and address- ing Billy. * But this dog ’ere?” quoth Billy, grasping the skin of the dead dog’s neck in his left hand, and lifting its body forth atarm’s length. “I is been wantin’ to kill’ im, because ’e worried Misses Meg.” Drawing back his brawny right fist as he spoke he dealt the body of the animal a biow which sent it flying through the air to the landing beneath. e¢om cboo (S>.cOomMm