Page:Arthur Stringer - The Door of Dread.djvu/222

 turned and stared in terror first one way and then the other along the midnight street.

"I ain't no rest cure rubber," he announced, "and I guess the best—"

But he did not finish that sentence. For Sadie had backed slowly away until she stood beside a galvanized garbage pail awaiting its collector at the curb. From the top of this pail she lifted an empty beer bottle. Then she sent it flying straight and true through the plate-glass window of the milliner's shop beside them.

"Now yuh gotta gather me in!" she triumphantly announced.

And the officer, impressed with the fact that such madness might direct the next missile at his own person, promptly gathered her in.

Her smiling docility as he hurried her along to his signal box rather perplexed him. And she seemed clear-headed enough, now that his night-stick was out and his arm was securely linked through hers.

"Excuse me, lady," he finally inquired, "but why're you so bent on going to the station house?"

Sadie laughed quietly and triumphantly as she