Detective Bob Bridger — page 219: what you’re looking at

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

212 DETECTIVE BOB BRIDGER. | Goucher had, meanwhile, approached the bed on which Moses Muggins lay moaning in torture. The piteous groans that issued from the sufferer’s nostrils excited no sympathy in Goucher’s breast. Every moan but added to his fury. Muggins had recognized him by his size. If the Jew lived he was in his power. Rather than wear a convict’s stripes again he would hang. So thought Goucher as the moans of the tortured man roused him to desperation. Like the reformed drunkard who risks taking one drink and finds himself again rolling in the gutter, Goucher found that the light ‘‘job” he had anticipated had ingulfed him again in the most desperates straits of the burglar’s craft. The burglar’s rule, that ‘‘boodle without safety is rot,” again became the law of his brain. He had no choice—he must be safe. Grasping a surplus end of the supple rope which sie from a knob at the wrists of the moaning victim, he passed it swiftly about Muggins’ neck, and, forming a noose, drew it tight with all his strength, and the sufferer ceased to moan. When Goucher had so secured the noose on Muggins’ neck that it could not slip, he glanced hastily toward the men at work on the safe- to see if they had noticed his action. ‘‘Tom, the Frog,” directed the dark lantern’s hght upon the safe’s door, while Ted, the bartender, strained might and main to make the cut through its chilled iron wall. The eyes of the three burglars flashed through the black masks in the lantern’s rays, as they eagerly watched the progress of the bore, presenting a weird sight. They had evidently not noticed the sudden cessation of Moses Muggins’ moans, nor the means Goucher had used to end them. Casting a look upon the quivering frame of the strangling man, in the shadow, upon the bed, Goucher softly ap- proached the workers, and stood at the rear of ‘“‘Tom, the Frog.” He glanced from time to time from his watch of the work toward the bed on which Sammy Muggins still © soundly slept. Suddenly the steel bit ‘‘spurted "without opposition a *comicbooks.com — Ld * - - « ow > a ete CY +e at ea a La 4 * ae Ne ee eA