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!"
[Illustration: "For God's sake," Hade begged, "let me go."]
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.
"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 notebook 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 cornfields 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.
Part of his way lay parallel with the railroad tracks, and he drove for
some time beside long lines of freight and coal cars as they stood
resting for the night. The fantastic Queen Anne suburban stations were
dark and deserted, but in one or two of the block-towers he could see
the operators writing at their desks, and the sight in some way
comforted him.
Once he thought of stopping to get out the blanket in which he had
wrapped himself on the first trip, but he feared to spare the time, and
drove on with his teeth chattering and his shoulders shaking with the
cold.
He welcomed the first solitary row of darkened houses with a faint cheer
of recognition. The scattered lamp-posts lightened his spirits, and even
the badly paved streets rang under the beats of his horse's feet like
music. Great mills and manufactories, with only a night-watchman's light
in the lowest of their many stories, began to take the place of the
gloomy farm-houses and gaunt trees that had startled him with their
grotesque shapes. He had been driving nearly an hour, he calculated, and
in that time the rain had changed to a wet snow, that fell heavily and
clung to whatever it touched. He passed block after block of trim
work-men's houses, as still and silent as the sleepers within them, and
at last he turned the horse's head into Broad Street, the city's great
thoroughfare, that stretches from its one end to the other and cuts it
evenly in two.
He was driving noiselessly over the snow and slush in the street, with
his thoughts bent only on the clock-face he wished so much to see, when
a hoarse voice challenged him from the sidewalk. "Hey, you, stop there,
hold up!" said the voice.
Gallegher turned his head, and though he saw that the voice came from
under a policeman's helmet, his only answer was to hit his horse sharply
over the head with his whip and to urge it into a gallop.
This, on his part, was followed by a sharp, shrill whistle from the
policeman. Another whistle answered it from a street-corner one block
ahead of him. "Whoa," said Gallegher, pulling on the reins. "There's one
too many of them," he added, in apologetic explanation. The horse
stopped, and stood, breathing heavily, with great clouds of steam rising
from its flanks.
"Why in hell didn't you stop when I told you to?" demanded the voice,
now close at the cab's side.
"I didn't hear you," returned Gallegher, sweetly. "But I heard you
whistle, and I heard your partner whistle, and I thought maybe it was me
you wanted to speak to, so I just stopped."
"You heard me well enough. Why aren't your lights lit?" demanded the
voice.
"Should I have 'em lit?" asked Gallegher, bending over and regarding
them with sudden interest.
"You know you should, and if you don't, you've no right to be driving
that cab. I don't believe you're the regular driver, anyway. Where'd you
get it?"
"It ain't my cab, of course," said Gallegher, with an easy laugh. "It's
Luke McGovern's. He left it outside Cronin's while he went in to get a
drink, and he took too much, and me father told me to drive it round to
the stable for him. I'm Cronin's son. McGovern ain't in no condition to
drive. You can see yourself how he's been misusing the horse. He puts it
up at Bachman's livery stable, and I was just going around there now."
Gallegher's knowledge of the local celebrities of the district confused
the zealous officer of the peace. He surveyed the boy with a steady
stare that would have distressed a less skilful liar, but Gallegher only
shrugged his shoulders slightly, as if from the cold, and waited with
apparent indifference to what the officer would say next.
In reality his heart was beating heavily against his side, and he felt
that if he was kept on a strain much longer he would give way and break
down. A second snow-covered form emerged suddenly from the shadow of the
houses.
"What is it, Reeder?" it asked.
"Oh, nothing much," replied the first officer. "This kid hadn't any
lamps lit, so I called to him to stop and he didn't do it, so I whistled
to you. It's all right, though. He's just taking it round to Bachman's.
Go ahead," he added, sulkily.
"Get up!" chirped Gallegher. "Good night," he added, over his shoulder.
Gallegher gave a hysterical little gasp of relief as he trotted away
from the two policemen, and poured bitter maledictions on their heads
for two meddling fools as he went.
"They might as well kill a man as scare him to death," he said, with an
attempt to get back to his customary flippancy. But the effort was
somewhat pitiful, and he felt guiltily conscious that a salt, warm tear
was creeping slowly down his face, and that a lump that would not keep
down was rising in his throat.
"Tain't no fair thing for the whole police force to keep worrying at a
little boy like me," he said, in shame-faced apology. "I'm not doing
nothing wrong, and I'm half froze to death, and yet they keep a-nagging
at me."
It was so cold that when the boy stamped his feet against the footboard
to keep them warm, sharp pains shot up through his body, and when he
beat his arms about his shoulders, as he had seen real cabmen do, the
blood in his finger-tips tingled so acutely that he cried aloud with the
pain.
He had often been up that late before, but he had never felt so sleepy.
It was as if some one was pressing a sponge heavy with chloroform near
his face, and he could not fight off the drowsiness that lay hold of
him.
He saw, dimly hanging above his head, a round disk of light that seemed
like a great moon, and which he finally guessed to be the clock-face for
which he had been on the lookout. He had passed it before he realized
this; but the fact stirred him into wakefulness again, and when his
cab's wheels slipped around the City Hall corner, he remembered to look
up at the other big clock-face that keeps awake over the railroad
station and measures out the night.
He gave a gasp of consternation when he saw that it was half-past two,
and that there was but ten minutes left to him. This, and the many
electric lights and the sight of the familiar pile of buildings,
startled him into a semi-consciousness of where he was and how great was
the necessity for haste.
He rose in his seat and called on the horse, and urged it into a
reckless gallop over the slippery asphalt. He considered nothing else
but speed, and looking neither to the left nor right dashed off down
Broad Street into Chestnut, where his course lay straight away to the
office, now only seven blocks distant.
Gallegher never knew how it began, but he was suddenly assaulted by
shouts on either side, his horse was thrown back on its haunches, and he
found two men in cabmen's livery hanging at its head, and patting its
sides, and calling it by name. And the other cabmen who have their stand
at the corner were swarming about the carriage, all of them talking and
swearing at once, and gesticulating wildly with their whips.
They said they knew the cab was McGovern's, and they wanted to know
where he was, and why he wasn't on it; they wanted to know where
Gallegher had stolen it, and why he had been such a fool as to drive it
into the arms of its owner's friends; they said that it was about time
that a cab-driver could get off his box to take a drink without having
his cab run away with, and some of them called loudly for a policeman to
take the young thief in charge.
Gallagher felt as if he had been suddenly dragged into consciousness out
of a bad dream, and stood for a second like a half-awakened
somnambulist.
They had stopped the cab under an electric light, and its glare shone
coldly down upon the trampled snow and the faces of the men around him.
Gallegher bent forward, and lashed savagely at the horse with his whip.
"Let me go," he shouted, as he tugged impotently at the reins. "Let me
go, I tell you. I haven't stole no cab, and you've got no right to stop
me. I only want to take it to the _Press_ office," he begged.
"They'll send it back to you all right. They'll pay you for the trip.
I'm not running away with it. The driver's got the collar--he's
'rested--and I'm only a-going to the _Press_ office. Do you hear
me?" he cried, his voice rising and breaking in a shriek of passion and
disappointment. "I tell you to let go those reins. Let me go, or I'll
kill you. Do you hear me? I'll kill you." And leaning forward, the boy
struck savagely with his long whip at the faces of the men about the
horse's head.
Some one in the crowd reached up and caught him by the ankles, and with
a quick jerk pulled him off the box, and threw him on to the street. But
he was up on his knees in a moment, and caught at the man's hand.
"Don't let them stop me, mister," he cried, "please let me go. I didn't
steal the cab, sir. S'help me, I didn't. I'm telling you the truth. Take
me to the _Press_ office, and they'll prove it to you. They'll pay
you anything you ask 'em. It's only such a little ways now, and I've
come so far, sir. Please don't let them stop me," he sobbed, clasping
the man about the knees. "For Heaven's sake, mister, let me go!"
* * * * *
The managing editor of the _Press_ took up the india-rubber
speaking-tube at his side, and answered, "Not yet," to an inquiry the
night editor had already put to him five times within the last twenty
minutes.
Then he snapped the metal top of the tube impatiently, and went
up-stairs. As he passed the door of the local room, he noticed that the
reporters had not gone home, but were sitting about on the tables and
chairs, waiting. They looked up inquiringly as he passed, and the city
editor asked, "Any news yet?" and the managing editor shook his head.
The compositors were standing idle in the composing-room, and their
foreman was talking with the night editor.
"Well," said that gentleman, tentatively.
"Well," returned the managing editor, "I don't think we can wait; do
you?"
"It's a half-hour after time now," said the night editor, "and we'll
miss the suburban trains if we hold the paper back any longer. We can't
afford to wait for a purely hypothetical story. The chances are all
against the fight's having taken place or this Hade's having been
arrested."
"But if we're beaten on it--" suggested the chief. "But I don't think
that is possible. If there were any story to print, Dwyer would have had
it here before now."
The managing editor looked steadily down at the floor.
"Very well," he said, slowly, "we won't wait any longer. Go ahead," he
added, turning to the foreman with a sigh of reluctance. The foreman
whirled himself about, and began to give his orders; but the two editors
still looked at each other doubtfully.
As they stood so, there came a sudden shout and the sound of people
running to and fro in the reportorial rooms below. There was the tramp
of many footsteps on the stairs, and above the confusion they heard the
voice of the city editor telling some one to "run to Madden's and get
some brandy, quick."