Page:O'Higgins--The Adventures of Detective Barney.djvu/193

 a fortifying long breath. When he got in, and the auto started, his physical excitement was such that the first jerk of the forward movement set him gulping. He was off.

He was off on all imaginable wild adventures.

He foresaw a thrilling pursuit of the taxi-cab, across the state, by Babbing and his operatives in an automobile that showed at the foot of every hill just as they topped it and shot down the other side. He foresaw himself, tied hand and foot, lying on a pallet of straw in a cellar, guarded by an old hag with a face like a pick, who muttered to herself about the murders she had committed, and gnawed at her crooked fingers. He tried to escape through a grated coal hole, and they caught him and bound him to a post and fixed up a shot-gun with a string tied to the trigger from the knob of the door, so that if any one attempted to get in to rescue him while they were away, the gun would explode and shoot him through the heart. And Babbing—