Page:Arthur Stringer - The Door of Dread.djvu/221

 light she made out the brass buttons of a patrolman on his beat. Then she promptly dove down the house-steps and made for him, like a winded swimmer making for a life raft.

He drew up, as he saw her, and awaited her coming. He did so with not a little wonderment. He even suspended judgment as she caught his arm and clung to it.

"I want yuh t' pinch me!" she gasped.

Instead of doing so, however, he calmly swung her about and inspected her from her slippered toes to the undulatory upper hem of her dinner gown.

"What's the trouble, lady?" he quietly inquired. "Pinch me!" commanded Sadie.

"Now, little one, you calm down!"

But Sadie refused to be calmed.

"Officer, are yuh goin' to gather me in?"

He turned her half-patiently and half-wearily about. Finding her breath unimpeachable, he had secretly decided that it was cocaine.

"You run along home and sleep it off," he mildly advised her. "Take a nice long sleep and the Willies'll all be gone in the morning!"

"Yuh won't run me in?" she challenged, as she