him, for fifteen miles stretched hills and tiny valleys. Six miles away
to his right rose the stone steeple, and the red roofs of Greenwich.
Directly before him were no signs of habitation, only green forests,
green fields, gray stone walls, and, where a road ran up-hill, a splash
of white, that quivered in the heat. The storm of the night before had
washed the air. Each leaf stood by itself. Nothing stirred; and in the
glare of the August sun every detail of the landscape was as distinct as
those in a colored photograph; and as still.
In his excitement the scout was trembling.
"If he moves," he sighed happily, "I've got him!"
Opposite, across a little valley was the hill at the base of which he
had found the car. The slope toward him was bare, but the top was
crowned with a thick wood; and along its crest, as though establishing
an ancient boundary, ran a stone wall, moss-covered and wrapped in
poison-ivy. In places, the branches of the trees, reaching out to the
sun, overhung the wall and hid it in black shadows. Jimmie divided the
hill into sectors. He began at the right, and slowly followed the wall.
With his eyes he took it apart, stone by stone. Had a chipmunk raised
his head, Jimmie would have seen him. So, when from the stone wall, like
the reflection of the sun upon a window-pane, something flashed, Jimmie
knew he had found his spy. A pair of binoculars had betrayed him. Jimmie
now saw him clearly. He sat on the ground at the top of the hill
opposite, in the deep shadow of an oak, his back against the stone wall.
With the binoculars to his eyes he had leaned too far forward, and upon
the glass the sun had flashed a warning.
Jimmie appreciated that his attack must be made from the rear. Backward,
like a crab he wriggled free of the goldenrod, and hidden by the contour
of the hill, raced down it and into the woods on the hill opposite. When
he came to within twenty feet of the oak beneath which he had seen the
stranger, he stood erect, and as though avoiding a live wire, stepped on
tiptoe to the wall. The stranger still sat against it. The binoculars
hung from a cord around his neck. Across his knees was spread a map. He
was marking it with a pencil, and as he worked he hummed a tune.
Jimmie knelt, and resting the gun on the top of the wall, covered him.
"Throw up your hands!" he commanded.
The stranger did not start. Except that he raised his eyes he gave no
sign that he had heard. His eyes stared across the little sun-filled
valley. They were half closed as though in study, as though perplexed by
some deep and intricate problem. They appeared to see beyond the
sun-filled valley some place of greater moment, some place far distant.
Then the eyes smiled, and slowly, as though his neck were stiff, but
still smiling, the stranger turned his head. When he saw the boy, his
smile was swept away in waves of surprise, amazement, and disbelief.
These were followed instantly by an expression of the most acute alarm.
"Don't point that thing at me!" shouted the stranger. "Is it loaded?"
With his cheek pressed to the stock and his eye squinted down the length
of the brown barrel, Jimmie nodded. The stranger flung up his open
palms. They accented his expression of amazed incredulity. He seemed to
be exclaiming, "Can such things be?"
"Get up!" commanded Jimmie.
With alacrity the stranger rose.
"Walk over there," ordered the scout. "Walk backward. Stop! Take off
those field-glasses and throw them to me." Without removing his eyes
from the gun the stranger lifted the binoculars from his neck and tossed
them to the stone wall.
"See here!" he pleaded, "if you'll only point that damned blunderbuss
the other way, you can have the glasses, and my watch, and clothes, and
all my money; only don't----"
Jimmie flushed crimson. "You can't bribe me," he growled. At least, he
tried to growl, but because his voice was changing, or because he was
excited the growl ended in a high squeak. With mortification, Jimmie
flushed a deeper crimson. But the stranger was not amused. At Jimmie's
words he seemed rather the more amazed.
"I'm not trying to bribe you," he protested. "If you don't want
anything, why are you holding me up?"
"I'm not," returned Jimmie, "I'm arresting you!"
The stranger laughed with relief. Again his eyes smiled. "Oh," he cried,
"I see! Have I been trespassing?"
With a glance Jimmie measured the distance between himself and the
stranger. Reassured, he lifted one leg after the other over the wall.
"If you try to rush me," he warned, "I'll shoot you full of buckshot."
The stranger took a hasty step _backward_.
"Don't worry about that," he exclaimed. "I'll not rush you. Why am I
arrested?"
Hugging the shotgun with his left arm, Jimmie stopped and lifted the
binoculars. He gave them a swift glance, slung them over his shoulder,
and again clutched his weapon. His expression was now stern and
menacing.
"The name on them," he accused, "is 'Weiss, Berlin.' Is that your name?"
The stranger smiled, but corrected himself, and replied gravely, "That's
the name of the firm that makes them."
Jimmie exclaimed in triumph. "Hah!" he cried, "made in Germany!"
The stranger shook his head.
"I don't understand," he said. "Where _would_ a Weiss glass be
made?" With polite insistence he repeated, "Would you mind telling me
why I am arrested, and who _you_ might happen to be?"
Jimmie did not answer. Again he stooped and picked up the map, and as he
did so, for the first time the face of the stranger showed that he was
annoyed. Jimmie was not at home with maps. They told him nothing. But
the penciled notes on this one made easy reading. At his first glance he
saw, "Correct range, 1,800 yards"; "this stream not fordable"; "slope of
hill 15 degrees inaccessible for artillery." "Wire entanglements here";
"forage for five squadrons."
Jimmie's eyes flashed. He shoved the map inside his shirt, and with the
gun motioned toward the base of the hill. "Keep forty feet ahead of me,"
he commanded, "and walk to your car." The stranger did not seem to hear
him. He spoke with irritation.
"I suppose," he said, "I'll have to explain to you about that map."
"Not to me, you won't," declared his captor. "You're going to drive
straight to Judge Van Vorst's, and explain to _him_!"
The stranger tossed his arms even higher. "Thank God!" he exclaimed
gratefully.
With his prisoner Jimmie encountered no further trouble. He made a
willing captive. And if in covering the five miles to Judge Van Vorst's
he exceeded the speed limit, the fact that from the rear seat Jimmie
held the shotgun against the base of his skull was an extenuating
circumstance.
They arrived in the nick of time. In his own car young Van Vorst and a
bag of golf clubs were just drawing away from the house. Seeing the car
climbing the steep driveway that for a half-mile led from his lodge to
his front door, and seeing Jimmie standing in the tonneau brandishing a
gun, the Judge hastily descended. The sight of the spy hunter filled him
with misgiving, but the sight of him gave Jimmie sweet relief. Arresting
German spies for a small boy is no easy task. For Jimmie the strain was
great. And now that he knew he had successfully delivered him into the
hands of the law, Jimmie's heart rose with happiness. The added presence
of a butler of magnificent bearing and of an athletic looking chauffeur
increased his sense of security. Their presence seemed to afford a
feeling of security to the prisoner also. As he brought the car to a
halt, he breathed a sigh. It was a sigh of deep relief.
Jimmie fell from the tonneau. In concealing his sense of triumph, he was
not entirely successful.
"I got him!" he cried. "I didn't make no mistake about _this_ one!"
"What one?" demanded Van Vorst.
Jimmie pointed dramatically at his prisoner. With an anxious expression
the stranger was tenderly fingering the back of his head. He seemed to
wish to assure himself that it was still there.
"_That_ one!" cried Jimmie. "He's a German spy!"
The patience of Judge Van Vorst fell from him. In his exclamation was
indignation, anger, reproach.
"Jimmie!" he cried.
Jimmie thrust into his hand the map. It was his "Exhibit A." "Look what
he's wrote," commanded the scout. "It's all military words. And these
are his glasses. I took 'em off him. They're made in _Germany_! I
been stalking him for a week. He's a spy!"
When Jimmie thrust the map before his face, Van Vorst had glanced at it.
Then he regarded it more closely. As he raised his eyes they showed that
he was puzzled.
But he greeted the prisoner politely.
"I'm extremely sorry you've been annoyed," he said. "I'm only glad it's
no worse. He might have shot you. He's mad over the idea that every
stranger he sees----"
The prisoner quickly interrupted.
"Please!" he begged, "don't blame the boy. He behaved extremely well.
Might I speak with you--_alone_?" he asked.
Judge Van Vorst led the way across the terrace, and to the smoking-room,
that served also as his office, and closed the door. The stranger walked
directly to the mantelpiece and put his finger on a gold cup.
"I saw your mare win that at Belmont Park," he said. "She must have been
a great loss to you?"
"She was," said Van Vorst. "The week before she broke her back, I
refused three thousand for her. Will you have a cigarette?"
The stranger waved aside the cigarettes.
"I brought you inside," he said, "because I didn't want your servants to
hear; and because I don't want to hurt that boy's feelings. He's a fine
boy; and he's a damned clever scout. I knew he was following me and I
threw him off twice, but to-day he caught me fair. If I really had been
a German spy, I couldn't have got away from him. And I want him to think
he _has_ captured a German spy. Because he deserves just as much
credit as though he had, and because it's best he shouldn't know whom he
_did_ capture."
Van Vorst pointed to the map. "My bet is," he said, "that you're an
officer of the State militia, taking notes for the fall manoeuvres. Am
I right?"
The stranger smiled in approval, but shook his head.
"You're warm," he said, "but it's more serious than manoeuvres. It's
the Real Thing." From his pocketbook he took a visiting card and laid it
on the table. "I'm 'Sherry' McCoy," he said, "Captain of Artillery in
the United States Army." He nodded to the hand telephone on the table.
"You can call up Governor's Island and get General Wood or his aide,
Captain Dorey, on the phone. They sent me here. Ask _them_. I'm not
picking out gun sites for the Germans; I'm picking out positions of
defense for Americans when the Germans come!"
Van Vorst laughed derisively.
"My word!" he exclaimed. "You're as bad as Jimmie!"
Captain McCoy regarded him with disfavor.
"And you, sir," he retorted, "are as bad as ninety million other
Americans. You _won't_ believe! When the Germans are shelling this
hill, when they're taking your hunters to pull their cook-wagons, maybe,
you'll believe _then_."
"Are you serious?" demanded Van Vorst. "And you an army officer?"
"That's why I am serious," returned McCoy. "_We_ know. But when we
try to prepare for what is coming, we must do it secretly--in underhand
ways, for fear the newspapers will get hold of it and ridicule us, and
accuse us of trying to drag the country into war. That's why we have to
prepare under cover. That's why I've had to skulk around these hills
like a chicken thief. And," he added sharply, "that's why that boy must
not know who I am. If he does, the General Staff will get a calling down
at Washington, and I'll have my ears boxed."
Van Vorst moved to the door.
"He will never learn the truth from me," he said. "For I will tell him
you are to be shot at sunrise."
"Good!" laughed the Captain. "And tell me his name. If ever we fight
over Westchester County, I want that lad for my chief of scouts. And
give him this. Tell him to buy a new scout uniform. Tell him it comes
from you."
But no money could reconcile Jimmie to the sentence imposed upon his
captive. He received the news with a howl of anguish. "You mustn't," he
begged; "I never knowed you'd _shoot_ him! I wouldn't have caught
him if I'd knowed that. I couldn't sleep if I thought he was going to be
shot at sunrise." At the prospect of unending nightmares Jimmie's voice
shook with terror. "Make it for twenty years," he begged. "Make it for
ten," he coaxed, "but, _please_, promise you won't shoot him."
When Van Vorst returned to Captain McCoy, he was smiling, and the butler
who followed, bearing a tray and tinkling glasses, was trying not to
smile.
"I gave Jimmie your ten dollars," said Van Vorst, "and made it twenty,
and he has gone home. You will be glad to hear that he begged me to
spare your life, and that your sentence has been commuted to twenty
years in a fortress. I drink to your good fortune."
"No!" protested Captain McCoy, "we will drink to Jimmie!"
When Captain McCoy had driven away, and his own car and the golf clubs
had again been brought to the steps, Judge Van Vorst once more attempted
to depart; but he was again delayed.
Other visitors were arriving.
Up the driveway a touring-car approached, and though it limped on a flat
tire, it approached at reckless speed. The two men in the front seat
were white with dust; their faces, masked by automobile glasses, were
indistinguishable. As though preparing for an immediate exit, the car
swung in a circle until its nose pointed down the driveway up which it
had just come. Raising his silk mask the one beside the driver shouted
at Judge Van Vorst. His throat was parched, his voice was hoarse and hot
with anger.
"A gray touring-car," he shouted. "It stopped here. We saw it from that
hill. Then the damn tire burst, and we lost our way. Where did he go?"
"Who?" demanded Van Vorst, stiffly, "Captain McCoy?"
The man exploded with an oath. The driver, with a shove of his elbow,
silenced him.
"Yes, Captain McCoy," assented the driver eagerly. "Which way did he
go?"
"To New York," said Van Vorst.
The driver shrieked at his companion.
"Then, he's doubled back," he cried. "He's gone to New Haven." He
stooped and threw in the clutch. The car lurched forward.
A cold terror swept young Van Vorst.
"What do you want with him?" he called. "Who _are_ you?"
Over one shoulder the masked face glared at him. Above the roar of the
car the words of the driver were flung back.
"We're Secret Service from Washington," he shouted. "He's from their
embassy. He's a German spy!"
Leaping and throbbing at sixty miles an hour, the car vanished in a
curtain of white, whirling dust.
GALLEGHER
A NEWSPAPER STORY
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 heart's 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 offense 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.