Page:Arthur Stringer - The Door of Dread.djvu/165

 "What're they tryin' to do to you this time?" he demanded as he held her up.

"Try in' to pinch me roll!" she pantingly responded.

"Who did?"

"Them taxi-bandits!"

The officer warded the accumulating crowd back with the flailing end of his night-stick. "Did they get it?" he demanded as he stared up and down the rain-swept side-street already empty of any sign of a taxicab. Then he stooped and pounded on the curbstone with his night-stick. "Did they get it?" he repeated.

"Not on your life!" returned Sadie. "I poked it into this mail box!"

"Then what d' you want me for?" asked the officer, remembering that he was conferring with a federal agent.

"Yuh gotta call up Hendry and tell 'im to have Morgan hurry a couple o' men up here to this box! And that box's gotta be watched!"

The officer hesitated.

"What's the matter with lettin' the collector be takin' it up on his next round?"