Short Stories for English Courses

V >> Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.) >> Short Stories for English Courses

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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 truck. 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 in to 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.

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 haymows, 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 clubmen 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."

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