Detective Bob Bridger — page 176: what you’re looking at

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

DETECTIVE BOB BRIDGER. 169 ' CHAPTER XLII. A STRUGGLE FOR LIFE. The chair upon which Bridger had been sitting slipped from the opening trap, and fell into its black depths. Had it not been for Bridger’s athletic training nothing would have saved him from following the chair. = Springing forward in the black darkness, at the mhstant the trap was sprung, he succeeded in throwing himself forward across the table. As he did so his hands came in contact with those of “Tom, the Frog,” as he was in the act of removing them from the snuffed candle. Seizing the burglar’s wrists with an iron grip, and brac- ing himself strongly upon the table, Bridger swung him from his chair to the left and around toward the trap. The sleuth-hound’s intention was to hurl him into it, but in this he failed. It was all the work of an instant, and both ‘Tom, the Frog,” and Bridger realized that it was a struggle for life. A second effort, with all his strength, brought the bur- glar’s body directly over the trap, when he suddenly wrenched loose his right hand, and clutching at Bridger’s throat, succeeded in grasping the collar of his shirt, and the upper part of his snug-fitting vest. By this hold he hung dangling over the trap, his left hand being held firmly in Bridger’s. He now began to struggle in the effort to scramble over the sleuth-hound and reach the table. Bridger was lying face downward directly across the table, his head and shoulders above the trap, and his legs extending toward the chair on which his antagonist had been sitting. “Tom, the Frog’s” struggles were gradually and surely forcing both men toward the opening beneath. With his right hand, Bridger braced himself back upon the smooth table-top as best he could, himself sliding inch by inch toward what seemed certain death. One thing was in his favor—in the plunge the burglar would be beneath, and receive the brunt of the fall. . comicbooks €o