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GALLEGHER AND OTHER STORIES
By Richard Harding Davis
_Illustrations By Charles Dana Gibson_
Copyright, 1891, By Charles Scribner's Sons
TO MY MOTHER
Contents
GALLEGHER: A NEWSPAPER STORY
A WALK UP THE AVENUE
MY DISREPUTABLE FRIEND, MR. RAEGEN
THE OTHER WOMAN
THE TRAILER FOR ROOM NO. 8
“THERE WERE NINETY AND NINE”
THE CYNICAL MISS CATHERWAIGHT
VAN BIBBER AND THE SWAN-BOATS
VAN BIBBER'S BURGLAR
VAN BIBBER AS BEST MAN
GALLEGHER
A Newspaper Story
{Illustration: “Why, it's Gallegher!” said the night editor.}
We had had so many office-boys before Gallegher came among us that they
had begun to lose the characteristics of individuals, and became merged
in a composite photograph of small boys, to whom we applied the generic
title of “Here, you”; or “You, boy.”
We had had sleepy boys, and lazy boys, and bright, “smart” boys, who
became so familiar on so short an acquaintance that we were forced to
part with them to save our own self-respect.
They generally graduated into district-messenger boys, and occasionally
returned to us in blue coats with nickel-plated buttons, and patronized
us.
But Gallegher was something different from anything we had experienced
before. Gallegher was short and broad in build, with a solid, muscular
broadness, and not a fat and dumpy shortness. He wore perpetually on his
face a happy and knowing smile, as if you and the world in general were
not impressing him as seriously as you thought you were, and his eyes,
which were very black and very bright, snapped intelligently at you like
those of a little black-and-tan terrier.
All Gallegher knew had been learnt on the streets; not a very good
school in itself, but one that turns out very knowing scholars. And
Gallegher had attended both morning and evening sessions. He could not
tell you who the Pilgrim Fathers were, nor could he name the thirteen
original States, but he knew all the officers of the twenty-second
police district by name, and he could distinguish the clang of a
fire-engine's gong from that of a patrol-wagon or an ambulance fully two
blocks distant. It was Gallegher who rang the alarm when the Woolwich
Mills caught fire, while the officer on the beat was asleep, and it was
Gallegher who led the “Black Diamonds” against the “Wharf Rats,”
when they used to stone each other to their hearts' content on the
coal-wharves of Richmond.
I am afraid, now that I see these facts written down, that Gallegher was
not a reputable character; but he was so very young and so very old for
his years that we all liked him very much nevertheless. He lived in
the extreme northern part of Philadelphia, where the cotton-and
woollen-mills run down to the river, and how he ever got home after
leaving the _Press_ building at two in the morning, was one of the
mysteries of the office. Sometimes he caught a night car, and sometimes
he walked all the way, arriving at the little house, where his mother
and himself lived alone, at four in the morning. Occasionally he was
given a ride on an early milk-cart, or on one of the newspaper delivery
wagons, with its high piles of papers still damp and sticky from the
press. He knew several drivers of “night hawks”--those cabs that prowl
the streets at night looking for belated passengers--and when it was a
very cold morning he would not go home at all, but would crawl into one
of these cabs and sleep, curled up on the cushions, until daylight.
Besides being quick and cheerful, Gallegher possessed a power of amusing
the _Press's_ young men to a degree seldom attained by the ordinary
mortal. His clog-dancing on the city editor's desk, when that gentleman
was up-stairs fighting for two more columns of space, was always a
source of innocent joy to us, and his imitations of the comedians of
the variety halls delighted even the dramatic critic, from whom the
comedians themselves failed to force a smile.
But Gallegher's chief characteristic was his love for that element
of news generically classed as “crime.” Not that he ever did anything
criminal himself. On the contrary, his was rather the work of the
criminal specialist, and his morbid interest in the doings of all queer
characters, his knowledge of their methods, their present whereabouts,
and their past deeds of transgression often rendered him a valuable ally
to our police reporter, whose daily feuilletons were the only portion of
the paper Gallegher deigned to read.
In Gallegher the detective element was abnormally developed. He had
shown this on several occasions, and to excellent purpose.
Once the paper had sent him into a Home for Destitute Orphans which was
believed to be grievously mismanaged, and Gallegher, while playing the
part of a destitute orphan, kept his eyes open to what was going on
around him so faithfully that the story he told of the treatment meted
out to the real orphans was sufficient to rescue the unhappy little
wretches from the individual who had them in charge, and to have the
individual himself sent to jail.
Gallegher's knowledge of the aliases, terms of imprisonment, and
various misdoings of the leading criminals in Philadelphia was almost as
thorough as that of the chief of police himself, and he could tell to an
hour when “Dutchy Mack” was to be let out of prison, and could identify
at a glance “Dick Oxford, confidence man,” as “Gentleman Dan, petty
thief.”
There were, at this time, only two pieces of news in any of the papers.
The least important of the two was the big fight between the Champion of
the United States and the Would-be Champion, arranged to take place
near Philadelphia; the second was the Burrbank murder, which was filling
space in newspapers all over the world, from New York to Bombay.
Richard F. Burrbank was one of the most prominent of New York's railroad
lawyers; he was also, as a matter of course, an owner of much railroad
stock, and a very wealthy man. He had been spoken of as a political
possibility for many high offices, and, as the counsel for a great
railroad, was known even further than the great railroad itself had
stretched its system.
At six o'clock one morning he was found by his butler lying at the foot
of the hall stairs with two pistol wounds above his heart. He was quite
dead. His safe, to which only he and his secretary had the keys, was
found open, and $200,000 in bonds, stocks, and money, which had been
placed there only the night before, was found missing. The secretary
was missing also. His name was Stephen S. Hade, and his name and his
description had been telegraphed and cabled to all parts of the world.
There was enough circumstantial evidence to show, beyond any question or
possibility of mistake, that he was the murderer.
It made an enormous amount of talk, and unhappy individuals were
being arrested all over the country, and sent on to New York for
identification. Three had been arrested at Liverpool, and one man just
as he landed at Sydney, Australia. But so far the murderer had escaped.
We were all talking about it one night, as everybody else was all over
the country, in the local room, and the city editor said it was worth
a fortune to any one who chanced to run across Hade and succeeded
in handing him over to the police. Some of us thought Hade had taken
passage from some one of the smaller seaports, and others were of the
opinion that he had buried himself in some cheap lodging-house in New
York, or in one of the smaller towns in New Jersey.
“I shouldn't be surprised to meet him out walking, right here in
Philadelphia,” said one of the staff. “He'll be disguised, of course,
but you could always tell him by the absence of the trigger finger on
his right hand. It's missing, you know; shot off when he was a boy.”
“You want to look for a man dressed like a tough,” said the city editor;
“for as this fellow is to all appearances a gentleman, he will try to
look as little like a gentleman as possible.”
“No, he won't,” said Gallegher, with that calm impertinence that made
him dear to us. “He'll dress just like a gentleman. Toughs don't wear
gloves, and you see he's got to wear 'em. The first thing he thought of
after doing for Burrbank was of that gone finger, and how he was to hide
it. He stuffed the finger of that glove with cotton so's to make it look
like a whole finger, and the first time he takes off that glove they've
got him--see, and he knows it. So what youse want to do is to look for
a man with gloves on. I've been a-doing it for two weeks now, and I
can tell you it's hard work, for everybody wears gloves this kind of
weather. But if you look long enough you'll find him. And when you think
it's him, go up to him and hold out your hand in a friendly way, like a
bunco-steerer, and shake his hand; and if you feel that his forefinger
ain't real flesh, but just wadded cotton, then grip to it with your
right and grab his throat with your left, and holler for help.”
There was an appreciative pause.
“I see, gentlemen,” said the city editor, dryly, “that Gallegher's
reasoning has impressed you; and I also see that before the week is
out all of my young men will be under bonds for assaulting innocent
pedestrians whose only offence is that they wear gloves in midwinter.”
It was about a week after this that Detective Hefflefinger, of Inspector
Byrnes's staff, came over to Philadelphia after a burglar, of whose
whereabouts he had been misinformed by telegraph. He brought the
warrant, requisition, and other necessary papers with him, but the
burglar had flown. One of our reporters had worked on a New York paper,
and knew Hefflefinger, and the detective came to the office to see if he
could help him in his so far unsuccessful search.
He gave Gallegher his card, and after Gallegher had read it, and had
discovered who the visitor was, he became so demoralized that he was
absolutely useless.
“One of Byrnes's men” was a much more awe-inspiring individual to
Gallegher than a member of the Cabinet. He accordingly seized his hat
and overcoat, and leaving his duties to be looked after by others,
hastened out after the object of his admiration, who found his
suggestions and knowledge of the city so valuable, and his company so
entertaining, that they became very intimate, and spent the rest of the
day together.
In the meanwhile the managing editor had instructed his subordinates to
inform Gallegher, when he condescended to return, that his services
were no longer needed. Gallegher had played truant once too often.
Unconscious of this, he remained with his new friend until late the same
evening, and started the next afternoon toward the _Press_ office.
As I have said, Gallegher lived in the most distant part of the city,
not many minutes' walk from the Kensington railroad station, where
trains ran into the suburbs and on to New York.
It was in front of this station that a smoothly shaven, well-dressed man
brushed past Gallegher and hurried up the steps to the ticket office.
He held a walking-stick in his right hand, and Gallegher, who now
patiently scrutinized the hands of every one who wore gloves, saw that
while three fingers of the man's hand were closed around the cane, the
fourth stood out in almost a straight line with his palm.
Gallegher stopped with a gasp and with a trembling all over his little
body, and his brain asked with a throb if it could be possible. But
possibilities and probabilities were to be discovered later. Now was the
time for action.
He was after the man in a moment, hanging at his heels and his eyes
moist with excitement. He heard the man ask for a ticket to Torresdale,
a little station just outside of Philadelphia, and when he was out of
hearing, but not out of sight, purchased one for the same place.
The stranger went into the smoking-car, and seated himself at one end
toward the door. Gallegher took his place at the opposite end.
He was trembling all over, and suffered from a slight feeling of nausea.
He guessed it came from fright, not of any bodily harm that might come
to him, but at the probability of failure in his adventure and of its
most momentous possibilities.
The stranger pulled his coat collar up around his ears, hiding the lower
portion of his face, but not concealing the resemblance in his troubled
eyes and close-shut lips to the likenesses of the murderer Hade.
They reached Torresdale in half an hour, and the stranger, alighting
quickly, struck off at a rapid pace down the country road leading to the
station.
Gallegher gave him a hundred yards' start, and then followed slowly
after. The road ran between fields and past a few frame-houses set far
from the road in kitchen gardens.
Once or twice the man looked back over his shoulder, but he saw only a
dreary length of road with a small boy splashing through the slush in
the midst of it and stopping every now and again to throw snowballs at
belated sparrows.
After a ten minutes' walk the stranger turned into a side road which led
to only one place, the Eagle Inn, an old roadside hostelry known now as
the headquarters for pothunters from the Philadelphia game market and
the battle-ground of many a cock-fight.
Gallegher knew the place well. He and his young companions had often
stopped there when out chestnutting on holidays in the autumn.
The son of the man who kept it had often accompanied them on their
excursions, and though the boys of the city streets considered him a
dumb lout, they respected him somewhat owing to his inside knowledge of
dog and cock-fights.
The stranger entered the inn at a side door, and Gallegher, reaching
it a few minutes later, let him go for the time being, and set about
finding his occasional playmate, young Keppler.
Keppler's offspring was found in the wood-shed.
“'Tain't hard to guess what brings you out here,” said the
tavern-keeper's son, with a grin; “it's the fight.”
“What fight?” asked Gallegher, unguardedly.
“What fight? Why, _the_ fight,” returned his companion, with the slow
contempt of superior knowledge. “It's to come off here to-night. You
knew that as well as me; anyway your sportin' editor knows it. He got
the tip last night, but that won't help you any. You needn't think
there's any chance of your getting a peep at it. Why, tickets is two
hundred and fifty apiece!”
“Whew!” whistled Gallegher, “where's it to be?”
“In the barn,” whispered Keppler. “I helped 'em fix the ropes this
morning, I did.”
“Gosh, but you're in luck,” exclaimed Gallegher, with flattering envy.
“Couldn't I jest get a peep at it?”
“Maybe,” said the gratified Keppler. “There's a winder with a wooden
shutter at the back of the barn. You can get in by it, if you have some
one to boost you up to the sill.”
“Sa-a-y,” drawled Gallegher, as if something had but just that moment
reminded him. “Who's that gent who come down the road just a bit ahead
of me--him with the cape-coat! Has he got anything to do with the
fight?”
“Him?” repeated Keppler in tones of sincere disgust. “No-oh, he ain't no
sport. He's queer, Dad thinks. He come here one day last week about ten
in the morning, said his doctor told him to go out 'en the country for
his health. He's stuck up and citified, and wears gloves, and takes his
meals private in his room, and all that sort of ruck. They was saying
in the saloon last night that they thought he was hiding from something,
and Dad, just to try him, asks him last night if he was coming to see
the fight. He looked sort of scared, and said he didn't want to see no
fight. And then Dad says, 'I guess you mean you don't want no fighters
to see you.' Dad didn't mean no harm by it, just passed it as a joke;
but Mr. Carleton, as he calls himself, got white as a ghost an' says,
'I'll go to the fight willing enough,' and begins to laugh and joke. And
this morning he went right into the bar-room, where all the sports were
setting, and said he was going into town to see some friends; and as he
starts off he laughs an' says, 'This don't look as if I was afraid of
seeing people, does it?' but Dad says it was just bluff that made him do
it, and Dad thinks that if he hadn't said what he did, this Mr. Carleton
wouldn't have left his room at all.”
Gallegher had got all he wanted, and much more than he had hoped for--so
much more that his walk back to the station was in the nature of a
triumphal march.
He had twenty minutes to wait for the next train, and it seemed an hour.
While waiting he sent a telegram to Hefflefinger at his hotel. It read:
“Your man is near the Torresdale station, on Pennsylvania Railroad; take
cab, and meet me at station. Wait until I come. GALLEGHER.”
With the exception of one at midnight, no other train stopped at
Torresdale that evening, hence the direction to take a cab.
The train to the city seemed to Gallegher to drag itself by inches. It
stopped and backed at purposeless intervals, waited for an express to
precede it, and dallied at stations, and when, at last, it reached the
terminus, Gallegher was out before it had stopped and was in the cab and
off on his way to the home of the sporting editor.
The sporting editor was at dinner and came out in the hall to see him,
with his napkin in his hand. Gallegher explained breathlessly that he
had located the murderer for whom the police of two continents were
looking, and that he believed, in order to quiet the suspicions of the
people with whom he was hiding, that he would be present at the fight
that night.
The sporting editor led Gallegher into his library and shut the door.
“Now,” he said, “go over all that again.”
Gallegher went over it again in detail, and added how he had sent for
Hefflefinger to make the arrest in order that it might be kept from the
knowledge of the local police and from the Philadelphia reporters.
“What I want Hefflefinger to do is to arrest Hade with the warrant he
has for the burglar,” explained Gallegher; “and to take him on to New
York on the owl train that passes Torresdale at one. It don't get to
Jersey City until four o'clock, one hour after the morning papers go to
press. Of course, we must fix Hefflefinger so's he'll keep quiet and not
tell who his prisoner really is.”
The sporting editor reached his hand out to pat Gallegher on the head,
but changed his mind and shook hands with him instead.
“My boy,” he said, “you are an infant phenomenon. If I can pull the
rest of this thing off to-night it will mean the $5,000 reward and fame
galore for you and the paper. Now, I'm going to write a note to the
managing editor, and you can take it around to him and tell him what
you've done and what I am going to do, and he'll take you back on
the paper and raise your salary. Perhaps you didn't know you've been
discharged?”
“Do you think you ain't a-going to take me with you?” demanded
Gallegher.
“Why, certainly not. Why should I? It all lies with the detective and
myself now. You've done your share, and done it well. If the man's
caught, the reward's yours. But you'd only be in the way now. You'd
better go to the office and make your peace with the chief.”
“If the paper can get along without me, I can get along without the old
paper,” said Gallegher, hotly. “And if I ain't a-going with you, you
ain't neither, for I know where Hefflefinger is to be, and you don't,
and I won't tell you.”
“Oh, very well, very well,” replied the sporting editor, weakly
capitulating. “I'll send the note by a messenger; only mind, if you lose
your place, don't blame me.”
Gallegher wondered how this man could value a week's salary against the
excitement of seeing a noted criminal run down, and of getting the news
to the paper, and to that one paper alone.
From that moment the sporting editor sank in Gallegher's estimation.
Mr. Dwyer sat down at his desk and scribbled off the following note:
“I have received reliable information that Hade, the Burrbank murderer,
will be present at the fight to-night. We have arranged it so that he
will be arrested quietly and in such a manner that the fact may be kept
from all other papers. I need not point out to you that this will be the
most important piece of news in the country to-morrow.
“Yours, etc., MICHAEL E. DWYER.”
The sporting editor stepped into the waiting cab, while Gallegher
whispered the directions to the driver. He was told to go first to a
district-messenger office, and from there up to the Ridge Avenue Road,
out Broad Street, and on to the old Eagle Inn, near Torresdale. It was
a miserable night. The rain and snow were falling together, and freezing
as they fell. The sporting editor got out to send his message to the
_Press_ office, and then lighting a cigar, and turning up the collar of
his great-coat, curled up in the corner of the cab.
“Wake me when we get there, Gallegher,” he said. He knew he had a long
ride, and much rapid work before him, and he was preparing for the
strain.
To Gallegher the idea of going to sleep seemed almost criminal. From
the dark corner of the cab his eyes shone with excitement, and with the
awful joy of anticipation. He glanced every now and then to where the
sporting editor's cigar shone in the darkness, and watched it as it
gradually burnt more dimly and went out. The lights in the shop windows
threw a broad glare across the ice on the pavements, and the lights from
the lamp-posts tossed the distorted shadow of the cab, and the horse,
and the motionless driver, sometimes before and sometimes behind them.
After half an hour Gallegher slipped down to the bottom of the cab and
dragged out a lap-robe, in which he wrapped himself. It was growing
colder, and the damp, keen wind swept in through the cracks until the
window-frames and woodwork were cold to the touch.
An hour passed, and the cab was still moving more slowly over the
rough surface of partly paved streets, and by single rows of new houses
standing at different angles to each other in fields covered with
ash-heaps and brick-kilns. Here and there the gaudy lights of a
drug-store, and the forerunner of suburban civilization, shone from
the end of a new block of houses, and the rubber cape of an occasional
policeman showed in the light of the lamp-post that he hugged for
comfort.
Then even the houses disappeared, and the cab dragged its way between
truck farms, with desolate-looking glass-covered beds, and pools of
water, half-caked with ice, and bare trees, and interminable fences.
Once or twice the cab stopped altogether, and Gallegher could hear the
driver swearing to himself, or at the horse, or the roads. At last they
drew up before the station at Torresdale. It was quite deserted, and
only a single light cut a swath in the darkness and showed a portion
of the platform, the ties, and the rails glistening in the rain. They
walked twice past the light before a figure stepped out of the shadow
and greeted them cautiously.
“I am Mr. Dwyer, of the _Press,_” said the sporting editor, briskly.
“You've heard of me, perhaps. Well, there shouldn't be any difficulty
in our making a deal, should there? This boy here has found Hade, and
we have reason to believe he will be among the spectators at the
fight to-night. We want you to arrest him quietly, and as secretly as
possible. You can do it with your papers and your badge easily enough.
We want you to pretend that you believe he is this burglar you came over
after. If you will do this, and take him away without any one so much as
suspecting who he really is, and on the train that passes here at
1.20 for New York, we will give you $500 out of the $5,000 reward.
If, however, one other paper, either in New York or Philadelphia, or
anywhere else, knows of the arrest, you won't get a cent. Now, what do
you say?”
The detective had a great deal to say. He wasn't at all sure the man
Gallegher suspected was Hade; he feared he might get himself into
trouble by making a false arrest, and if it should be the man, he was
afraid the local police would interfere.
“We've no time to argue or debate this matter,” said Dwyer, warmly. “We
agree to point Hade out to you in the crowd. After the fight is over you
arrest him as we have directed, and you get the money and the credit of
the arrest. If you don't like this, I will arrest the man myself, and
have him driven to town, with a pistol for a warrant.”
Hefflefinger considered in silence and then agreed unconditionally. “As
you say, Mr. Dwyer,” he returned. “I've heard of you for a thoroughbred
sport. I know you'll do what you say you'll do; and as for me I'll do
what you say and just as you say, and it's a very pretty piece of work
as it stands.”
They all stepped back into the cab, and then it was that they were met
by a fresh difficulty, how to get the detective into the barn where the
fight was to take place, for neither of the two men had $250 to pay for
his admittance.
But this was overcome when Gallegher remembered the window of which
young Keppler had told him.
In the event of Hade's losing courage and not daring to show himself in
the crowd around the ring, it was agreed that Dwyer should come to the
barn and warn Hefflefinger; but if he should come, Dwyer was merely to
keep near him and to signify by a prearranged gesture which one of the
crowd he was.
They drew up before a great black shadow of a house, dark, forbidding,
and apparently deserted. But at the sound of the wheels on the gravel
the door opened, letting out a stream of warm, cheerful light, and a
man's voice said, “Put out those lights. Don't youse know no better
than that?” This was Keppler, and he welcomed Mr. Dwyer with effusive
courtesy.
The two men showed in the stream of light, and the door closed on them,
leaving the house as it was at first, black and silent, save for the
dripping of the rain and snow from the eaves.
The detective and Gallegher put out the cab's lamps and led the horse
toward a long, low shed in the rear of the yard, which they now noticed
was almost filled with teams of many different makes, from the Hobson's
choice of a livery stable to the brougham of the man about town.
“No,” said Gallegher, as the cabman stopped to hitch the horse beside
the others, “we want it nearest that lower gate. When we newspaper men
leave this place we'll leave it in a hurry, and the man who is nearest
town is likely to get there first. You won't be a-following of no hearse
when you make your return trip.”
Gallegher tied the horse to the very gate-post itself, leaving the gate
open and allowing a clear road and a flying start for the prospective
race to Newspaper Row.
The driver disappeared under the shelter of the porch, and Gallegher and
the detective moved off cautiously to the rear of the barn. “This must
be the window,” said Hefflefinger, pointing to a broad wooden shutter
some feet from the ground.
“Just you give me a boost once, and I'll get that open in a jiffy,” said
Gallegher.
The detective placed his hands on his knees, and Gallegher stood upon
his shoulders, and with the blade of his knife lifted the wooden button
that fastened the window on the inside, and pulled the shutter open.
Then he put one leg inside over the sill, and leaning down helped to
draw his fellow-conspirator up to a level with the window. “I feel just
like I was burglarizing a house,” chuckled Gallegher, as he dropped
noiselessly to the floor below and refastened the shutter. The barn was
a large one, with a row of stalls on either side in which horses and
cows were dozing. There was a haymow over each row of stalls, and at one
end of the barn a number of fence-rails had been thrown across from one
mow to the other. These rails were covered with hay.
{Illustration with caption: Gallegher stood upon his shoulders.}
In the middle of the floor was the ring. It was not really a ring, but a
square, with wooden posts at its four corners through which ran a heavy
rope. The space inclosed by the rope was covered with sawdust.
Gallegher could not resist stepping into the ring, and after stamping
the sawdust once or twice, as if to assure himself that he was really
there, began dancing around it, and indulging in such a remarkable
series of fistic manoeuvres with an imaginary adversary that the
unimaginative detective precipitately backed into a corner of the barn.
“Now, then,” said Gallegher, having apparently vanquished his foe, “you
come with me.” His companion followed quickly as Gallegher climbed
to one of the hay-mows, and crawling carefully out on the fence-rail,
stretched himself at full length, face downward. In this position, by
moving the straw a little, he could look down, without being himself
seen, upon the heads of whomsoever stood below. “This is better'n a
private box, ain't it?” said Gallegher.
The boy from the newspaper office and the detective lay there in
silence, biting at straws and tossing anxiously on their comfortable
bed.
It seemed fully two hours before they came. Gallegher had listened
without breathing, and with every muscle on a strain, at least a dozen
times, when some movement in the yard had led him to believe that they
were at the door. And he had numerous doubts and fears. Sometimes it was
that the police had learnt of the fight, and had raided Keppler's in his
absence, and again it was that the fight had been postponed, or, worst
of all, that it would be put off until so late that Mr. Dwyer could not
get back in time for the last edition of the paper. Their coming, when
at last they came, was heralded by an advance-guard of two sporting men,
who stationed themselves at either side of the big door.
“Hurry up, now, gents,” one of the men said with a shiver, “don't keep
this door open no longer'n is needful.”
It was not a very large crowd, but it was wonderfully well selected. It
ran, in the majority of its component parts, to heavy white coats with
pearl buttons. The white coats were shouldered by long blue coats with
astrakhan fur trimmings, the wearers of which preserved a cliqueness not
remarkable when one considers that they believed every one else present
to be either a crook or a prize-fighter.
There were well-fed, well-groomed club-men and brokers in the crowd, a
politician or two, a popular comedian with his manager, amateur boxers
from the athletic clubs, and quiet, close-mouthed sporting men from
every city in the country. Their names if printed in the papers would
have been as familiar as the types of the papers themselves.
And among these men, whose only thought was of the brutal sport to come,
was Hade, with Dwyer standing at ease at his shoulder,--Hade, white,
and visibly in deep anxiety, hiding his pale face beneath a cloth
travelling-cap, and with his chin muffled in a woollen scarf. He had
dared to come because he feared his danger from the already suspicious
Keppler was less than if he stayed away. And so he was there, hovering
restlessly on the border of the crowd, feeling his danger and sick with
fear.
When Hefflefinger first saw him he started up on his hands and elbows
and made a movement forward as if he would leap down then and there and
carry off his prisoner single-handed.
“Lie down,” growled Gallegher; “an officer of any sort wouldn't live
three minutes in that crowd.”
The detective drew back slowly and buried himself again in the straw,
but never once through the long fight which followed did his eyes leave
the person of the murderer. The newspaper men took their places in the
foremost row close around the ring, and kept looking at their watches
and begging the master of ceremonies to “shake it up, do.”
There was a great deal of betting, and all of the men handled the great
roll of bills they wagered with a flippant recklessness which could only
be accounted for in Gallegher's mind by temporary mental derangement.
Some one pulled a box out into the ring and the master of ceremonies
mounted it, and pointed out in forcible language that as they were
almost all already under bonds to keep the peace, it behooved all to
curb their excitement and to maintain a severe silence, unless they
wanted to bring the police upon them and have themselves “sent down” for
a year or two.
Then two very disreputable-looking persons tossed their respective
principals' high hats into the ring, and the crowd, recognizing in this
relic of the days when brave knights threw down their gauntlets in
the lists as only a sign that the fight was about to begin, cheered
tumultuously.
This was followed by a sudden surging forward, and a mutter of
admiration much more flattering than the cheers had been, when the
principals followed their hats, and slipping out of their great-coats,
stood forth in all the physical beauty of the perfect brute.
Their pink skin was as soft and healthy looking as a baby's, and glowed
in the lights of the lanterns like tinted ivory, and underneath this
silken covering the great biceps and muscles moved in and out and looked
like the coils of a snake around the branch of a tree.
Gentleman and blackguard shouldered each other for a nearer view; the
coachmen, whose metal buttons were unpleasantly suggestive of police,
put their hands, in the excitement of the moment, on the shoulders
of their masters; the perspiration stood out in great drops on the
foreheads of the backers, and the newspaper men bit somewhat nervously
at the ends of their pencils.
And in the stalls the cows munched contentedly at their cuds and gazed
with gentle curiosity at their two fellow-brutes, who stood waiting the
signal to fall upon, and kill each other if need be, for the delectation
of their brothers.
“Take your places,” commanded the master of ceremonies.
In the moment in which the two men faced each other the crowd became so
still that, save for the beating of the rain upon the shingled roof and
the stamping of a horse in one of the stalls, the place was as silent as
a church.
“Time,” shouted the master of ceremonies.
The two men sprang into a posture of defence, which was lost as quickly
as it was taken, one great arm shot out like a piston-rod; there was
the sound of bare fists beating on naked flesh; there was an exultant
indrawn gasp of savage pleasure and relief from the crowd, and the great
fight had begun.
How the fortunes of war rose and fell, and changed and rechanged that
night, is an old story to those who listen to such stories; and those
who do not will be glad to be spared the telling of it. It was, they
say, one of the bitterest fights between two men that this country has
ever known.
But all that is of interest here is that after an hour of this desperate
brutal business the champion ceased to be the favorite; the man whom
he had taunted and bullied, and for whom the public had but little
sympathy, was proving himself a likely winner, and under his cruel
blows, as sharp and clean as those from a cutlass, his opponent was
rapidly giving way.
The men about the ropes were past all control now; they drowned
Keppler's petitions for silence with oaths and in inarticulate shouts of
anger, as if the blows had fallen upon them, and in mad rejoicings. They
swept from one end of the ring to the other, with every muscle leaping
in unison with those of the man they favored, and when a New York
correspondent muttered over his shoulder that this would be the biggest
sporting surprise since the Heenan-Sayers fight, Mr. Dwyer nodded his
head sympathetically in assent.
In the excitement and tumult it is doubtful if any heard the three
quickly repeated blows that fell heavily from the outside upon the big
doors of the barn. If they did, it was already too late to mend matters,
for the door fell, torn from its hinges, and as it fell a captain of
police sprang into the light from out of the storm, with his lieutenants
and their men crowding close at his shoulder.
In the panic and stampede that followed, several of the men stood as
helplessly immovable as though they had seen a ghost; others made a
mad rush into the arms of the officers and were beaten back against
the ropes of the ring; others dived headlong into the stalls, among the
horses and cattle, and still others shoved the rolls of money they held
into the hands of the police and begged like children to be allowed to
escape.
The instant the door fell and the raid was declared Hefflefinger slipped
over the cross rails on which he had been lying, hung for an instant by
his hands, and then dropped into the centre of the fighting mob on the
floor. He was out of it in an instant with the agility of a pickpocket,
was across the room and at Hade's throat like a dog. The murderer, for
the moment, was the calmer man of the two.
“Here,” he panted, “hands off, now. There's no need for all this
violence. There's no great harm in looking at a fight, is there? There's
a hundred-dollar bill in my right hand; take it and let me slip out of
this. No one is looking. Here.”
But the detective only held him the closer.
“I want you for burglary,” he whispered under his breath. “You've got to
come with me now, and quick. The less fuss you make, the better for both
of us. If you don't know who I am, you can feel my badge under my coat
there. I've got the authority. It's all regular, and when we're out of
this d--d row I'll show you the papers.”
He took one hand from Hade's throat and pulled a pair of handcuffs from
his pocket.
“It's a mistake. This is an outrage,” gasped the murderer, white and
trembling, but dreadfully alive and desperate for his liberty. “Let me
go, I tell you! Take your hands off of me! Do I look like a burglar, you
fool?”
“I know who you look like,” whispered the detective, with his face close
to the face of his prisoner. “Now, will you go easy as a burglar, or
shall I tell these men who you are and what I _do_ want you for? Shall
I call out your real name or not? Shall I tell them? Quick, speak up;
shall I?”
There was something so exultant--something so unnecessarily savage in
the officer's face that the man he held saw that the detective knew him
for what he really was, and the hands that had held his throat slipped
down around his shoulders, or he would have fallen. The man's eyes
opened and closed again, and he swayed weakly backward and forward, and
choked as if his throat were dry and burning. Even to such a hardened
connoisseur in crime as Gallegher, who stood closely by, drinking it in,
there was something so abject in the man's terror that he regarded him
with what was almost a touch of pity.
“For God's sake,” Hade begged, “let me go. Come with me to my room and
I'll give you half the money. I'll divide with you fairly. We can both
get away. There's a fortune for both of us there. We both can get away.
You'll be rich for life. Do you understand--for life!”
But the detective, to his credit, only shut his lips the tighter.
“That's enough,” he whispered, in return. “That's more than I expected.
You've sentenced yourself already. Come!”
Two officers in uniform barred their exit at the door, but Hefflefinger
smiled easily and showed his badge.
“One of Byrnes's men,” he said, in explanation; “came over expressly
to take this chap. He's a burglar; 'Arlie' Lane, _alias_ Carleton. I've
shown the papers to the captain. It's all regular. I'm just going to get
his traps at the hotel and walk him over to the station. I guess we'll
push right on to New York to-night.”
The officers nodded and smiled their admiration for the representative
of what is, perhaps, the best detective force in the world, and let him
pass.
Then Hefflefinger turned and spoke to Gallegher, who still stood as
watchful as a dog at his side. “I'm going to his room to get the bonds
and stuff,” he whispered; “then I'll march him to the station and take
that train. I've done my share; don't forget yours!”
“Oh, you'll get your money right enough,” said Gallegher. “And, sa-ay,”
he added, with the appreciative nod of an expert, “do you know, you did
it rather well.”
Mr. Dwyer had been writing while the raid was settling down, as he had
been writing while waiting for the fight to begin. Now he walked over to
where the other correspondents stood in angry conclave.
The newspaper men had informed the officers who hemmed them in that they
represented the principal papers of the country, and were expostulating
vigorously with the captain, who had planned the raid, and who declared
they were under arrest.
{Illustration with caption: “For God's sake,” Hade begged, “let me go!”}
“Don't be an ass, Scott,” said Mr. Dwyer, who was too excited to be
polite or politic. “You know our being here isn't a matter of choice. We
came here on business, as you did, and you've no right to hold us.”
“If we don't get our stuff on the wire at once,” protested a New York
man, “we'll be too late for to-morrow's paper, and----”
Captain Scott said he did not care a profanely small amount for
to-morrow's paper, and that all he knew was that to the station-house
the newspaper men would go. There they would have a hearing, and if the
magistrate chose to let them off, that was the magistrate's business,
but that his duty was to take them into custody.
“But then it will be too late, don't you understand?” shouted Mr. Dwyer.
“You've got to let us go _now,_ at once.”
“I can't do it, Mr. Dwyer,” said the captain, “and that's all there is
to it. Why, haven't I just sent the president of the Junior Republican
Club to the patrol-wagon, the man that put this coat on me, and do you
think I can let you fellows go after that? You were all put under bonds
to keep the peace not three days ago, and here you're at it--fighting
like badgers. It's worth my place to let one of you off.”
What Mr. Dwyer said next was so uncomplimentary to the gallant Captain
Scott that that overwrought individual seized the sporting editor by the
shoulder, and shoved him into the hands of two of his men.
This was more than the distinguished Mr. Dwyer could brook, and he
excitedly raised his hand in resistance. But before he had time to do
anything foolish his wrist was gripped by one strong, little hand, and
he was conscious that another was picking the pocket of his great-coat.
He slapped his hands to his sides, and looking down, saw Gallegher
standing close behind him and holding him by the wrist. Mr. Dwyer
had forgotten the boy's existence, and would have spoken sharply if
something in Gallegher's innocent eyes had not stopped him.
Gallegher's hand was still in that pocket, in which Mr. Dwyer had shoved
his note-book filled with what he had written of Gallegher's work and
Hade's final capture, and with a running descriptive account of the
fight. With his eyes fixed on Mr. Dwyer, Gallegher drew it out, and with
a quick movement shoved it inside his waistcoat. Mr. Dwyer gave a nod of
comprehension. Then glancing at his two guardsmen, and finding that they
were still interested in the wordy battle of the correspondents
with their chief, and had seen nothing, he stooped and whispered to
Gallegher: “The forms are locked at twenty minutes to three. If you
don't get there by that time it will be of no use, but if you're on time
you'll beat the town--and the country too.”
Gallegher's eyes flashed significantly, and nodding his head to show he
understood, started boldly on a run toward the door. But the officers
who guarded it brought him to an abrupt halt, and, much to Mr. Dwyer's
astonishment, drew from him what was apparently a torrent of tears.
“Let me go to me father. I want me father,” the boy shrieked,
hysterically. “They've 'rested father. Oh, daddy, daddy. They're a-goin'
to take you to prison.”
“Who is your father, sonny?” asked one of the guardians of the gate.
“Keppler's me father,” sobbed Gallegher. “They're a-goin' to lock him
up, and I'll never see him no more.”
“Oh, yes, you will,” said the officer, good-naturedly; “he's there in
that first patrol-wagon. You can run over and say good night to him, and
then you'd better get to bed. This ain't no place for kids of your age.”
“Thank you, sir,” sniffed Gallegher, tearfully, as the two officers
raised their clubs, and let him pass out into the darkness.
The yard outside was in a tumult, horses were stamping, and plunging,
and backing the carriages into one another; lights were flashing from
every window of what had been apparently an uninhabited house, and the
voices of the prisoners were still raised in angry expostulation.
Three police patrol-wagons were moving about the yard, filled with
unwilling passengers, who sat or stood, packed together like sheep, and
with no protection from the sleet and rain.
Gallegher stole off into a dark corner, and watched the scene until his
eyesight became familiar with the position of the land.
Then with his eyes fixed fearfully on the swinging light of a lantern
with which an officer was searching among the carriages, he groped his
way between horses' hoofs and behind the wheels of carriages to the cab
which he had himself placed at the furthermost gate. It was still there,
and the horse, as he had left it, with its head turned toward the city.
Gallegher opened the big gate noiselessly, and worked nervously at the
hitching strap. The knot was covered with a thin coating of ice, and
it was several minutes before he could loosen it. But his teeth finally
pulled it apart, and with the reins in his hands he sprang upon the
wheel. And as he stood so, a shock of fear ran down his back like an
electric current, his breath left him, and he stood immovable, gazing
with wide eyes into the darkness.
The officer with the lantern had suddenly loomed up from behind a
carriage not fifty feet distant, and was standing perfectly still, with
his lantern held over his head, peering so directly toward Gallegher
that the boy felt that he must see him. Gallegher stood with one foot on
the hub of the wheel and with the other on the box waiting to spring. It
seemed a minute before either of them moved, and then the officer took
a step forward, and demanded sternly, “Who is that? What are you doing
there?”
There was no time for parley then. Gallegher felt that he had been taken
in the act, and that his only chance lay in open flight. He leaped up
on the box, pulling out the whip as he did so, and with a quick sweep
lashed the horse across the head and back. The animal sprang forward
with a snort, narrowly clearing the gate-post, and plunged off into the
darkness.
“Stop!” cried the officer.
So many of Gallegher's acquaintances among the 'longshoremen and mill
hands had been challenged in so much the same manner that Gallegher
knew what would probably follow if the challenge was disregarded. So he
slipped from his seat to the footboard below, and ducked his head.
The three reports of a pistol, which rang out briskly from behind him,
proved that his early training had given him a valuable fund of useful
miscellaneous knowledge.
“Don't you be scared,” he said, reassuringly, to the horse; “he's firing
in the air.”
The pistol-shots were answered by the impatient clangor of a
patrol-wagon's gong, and glancing over his shoulder Gallegher saw its
red and green lanterns tossing from side to side and looking in the
darkness like the side-lights of a yacht plunging forward in a storm.
“I hadn't bargained to race you against no patrol-wagons,” said
Gallegher to his animal; “but if they want a race, we'll give them a
tough tussle for it, won't we?”
Philadelphia, lying four miles to the south, sent up a faint yellow glow
to the sky. It seemed very far away, and Gallegher's braggadocio grew
cold within him at the loneliness of his adventure and the thought of
the long ride before him.
It was still bitterly cold.
The rain and sleet beat through his clothes, and struck his skin with a
sharp chilling touch that set him trembling.
Even the thought of the over-weighted patrol-wagon probably sticking
in the mud some safe distance in the rear, failed to cheer him, and the
excitement that had so far made him callous to the cold died out and
left him weaker and nervous. But his horse was chilled with the long
standing, and now leaped eagerly forward, only too willing to warm the
half-frozen blood in its veins.
“You're a good beast,” said Gallegher, plaintively. “You've got more
nerve than me. Don't you go back on me now. Mr. Dwyer says we've got
to beat the town.” Gallegher had no idea what time it was as he rode
through the night, but he knew he would be able to find out from a
big clock over a manufactory at a point nearly three-quarters of the
distance from Keppler's to the goal.
He was still in the open country and driving recklessly, for he knew the
best part of his ride must be made outside the city limits.
He raced between desolate-looking corn-fields with bare stalks and
patches of muddy earth rising above the thin covering of snow, truck
farms and brick-yards fell behind him on either side. It was very lonely
work, and once or twice the dogs ran yelping to the gates and barked
after him.