Detective Bob Bridger — page 223: what you’re looking at

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

216 DETECTIVE BOB BRIDGER. His plan was to leave the blame of Muggins’ death rest evenly upon all. As it was, Ted, the bartender, and ‘‘Jack, the Fork,” seemed dir ectly instrumental in its cause. “You bound him too tightly, boys,” said Goucher, shaking his head. ‘‘Tt’s bad—bad !” muttered Ted, the bartender. “Awful!” ejaculated “Jack, the Fork,” trembling in terror. | “Well, it can’t be helped,” said Goucher. ‘‘And as we need the rope that’s about him, set to and take it off. And then if we can find a bit of rope in the house, we’ll trice him up by the neck, so’s nobody can swear but that he committed suicide on finding he had been robbed,” ‘‘Here it is,” quoth “Tom, the Frog,” tossing a clothes- line, which he had found near the bed on which Sammy Muggins still soundly slept, upon the corpse. Goucher seized the rope and forming a noose slipped it about the dead man’s neck ere the three men had per- ceived the impress of the cord which he had placed there. Ted, the bartender, speedily removed the supple hempen ~ cord from the dead man’s limbs, and cutting it into suita- ble lengths the three men had soon tied upon their breasts the “pads” containing the heavy portion of the “ boodle.” When they had buttoned their overcoats about them no one would have noticed that they carried such a bulk of matter upon their persons. Goucher now glanced about the room, and-his eyes rested upon the transom over the door leading to the stair-way. Placing a chair in the door-way and standing thereon, he pushed open the transom glass, and bade Ted, the bar- tender, and “Jack, the Fork,” carry the corpse thither. This done, an end of the clothes-line was tied about the transom beam in such a way that the body hung by the neck in the door-way, its hideous and distorted features looking directly within the room. Stepping from the chair, Goucher turned it over on its side, so that it might appear that the suicide had kicked it from beneath him in consummating his act of self- destruction. Then flashing the lantern’s rays in a general survey upon the floor, strewn with old clothes and the tools which | he had determined to leave behind, and upon Sammy Mug- gins’ sleeping form, he elbowed his way beween the dang- ling body and the door-frame, and ascended the stair: “way, followed by his underlings, comic — (Ss.com