Detective Bob Bridger — page 112: what you’re looking at

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

DETECTIVE BOB BRIDGER. 105 sary apartment, whose broken door looked directly upon the street door and the stairway below. The voices they had heard came from a room opposite > the stair-way’s head, where they stood. An oblong peep-hole slide, such as are used to view offer- ing customers by low gambling-dens, was placed in the center of the door of the room. It did not fit snugly, and a broad ray of light that poured without showed that its broken edge afforded a crack through which the doings within might be observed. To this crack the detectives approached. The floor of the room within was carpetless. In the room’s center was a large, round table. It was daubed all over with green ink-stains, as if the liquid had been spilled in the manufacture of bogus green- backs. Upon it burned a lamp, and &. its farther edge, facing the door, sat a large, bald-headed, gray-whiskered man, whom Bridger at once recognized as ** Boss” Goucher, an old burglar whom he, aided by Hoffman and Scott, two of Chicago’s most skillful detectives, had arrested two years before for robbing a store in that city. The evidence, however, had not been sufficient to convict _ him, and having money to employ a shrewd lawyer, he was discharged. He was very busily engaged in counting over, inspecting, and separating a huge pile of new bills. So busy was he that he had not, as it seamed, looked up to notice that ‘‘Jack, the Fork,” and his English friend had been permitted to enter the apartment by Mr. *‘Tom, the Frog,” and that the three occupied seats at the table, observing his movements. _ When he did finally notice their presence it was with a look of surprise that any one but himself was in the room. ‘Blast such work!” he cried, suddenly, for he not only appeared to be full of business butinarage. . As he spoke he tore a five-dollar bill angrily in two pieces, crumpled the discarded paper in his hands, and tossed the worthless wad directly in front of the stranger upon the table. ‘“Halloo!” he added, as if for the first noticing the pres- ence of the tipsy Englishman, and ‘‘Jack, the Fork,” “‘who have we here ?—as they say in the theater,” “ Wide-awakes of the right sort,” returned the ‘‘roper,” “T have come to invest, and so has me friend.” Eomichboo cS (El)