Short Stories for English Courses

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

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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 tonight."

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 tomorrow'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 overweighted 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.

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 farmhouses 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 workmen'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 clockface 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 an 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 disc 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.

Gallegher 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
upstairs. 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."

No one in the composing-room said anything; but those compositors
who had started to go home began slipping off their overcoats, and
every one stood with his eyes fixed on the door.

It was kicked open from the outside, and in the doorway stood a
cab-driver and the city editor, supporting between them a pitiful
little figure of a boy, wet and miserable, and with the snow
melting on his clothes and running in little pools to the floor.
"Why, it's Gallegher," said the night editor, in a tone of the
keenest disappointment.

Gallegher shook himself free from his supporters, and took an
unsteady step forward, his fingers fumbling stiffly with the
buttons of his waistcoat.

"Mr. Dwyer, sir," he began faintly, with his eyes fixed fearfully
on the managing editor, "he got arrested--and I couldn't get here
no sooner, 'cause they kept a-stopping me, and they took me cab
from under me--but--" he pulled the note-book from his breast and
held it out with its covers damp and limp from the rain, "but we
got Hade, and here's Mr. Dwyer's copy."

And then he asked, with a queer note in his voice, partly of dread
and partly of hope, "Am I in time, sir?"

The managing editor took the book, and tossed it to the foreman,
who ripped out its leaves and dealt them out to his men as rapidly
as a gambler deals out cards.

Then the managing editor stooped and picked Gallegher up in his
arms, and, sitting down, began to unlace his wet and muddy shoes.

Gallegher made a faint effort to resist this degradation of the
managerial dignity; but his protest was a very feeble one, and his
head fell back heavily on the managing editor's shoulder.

To Gallegher the incandescent lights began to whirl about in
circles, and to burn in different colors; the faces of the
reporters kneeling before him and chafing his hands and feet grew
dim and unfamiliar, and the roar and rumble of the great presses
in the basement sounded far away, like the murmur of the sea.

And then the place and the circumstances of it came back to him
again sharply and with sudden vividness.

Gallegher looked up, with a faint smile, into the managing
editor's face. "You won't turn me off for running away, will you?"
he whispered.

The managing editor did not answer immediately. His head was bent,
and he was thinking, for some reason or other, of a little boy of
his own, at home in bed. Then he said, quietly, "Not this time,
Gallegher."

Gallegher's head sank back comfortably on the older man's
shoulder, and he smiled comprehensively at the faces of the young
men crowded around him. "You hadn't ought to," he said, with a
touch of his old impudence, "'cause--I beat the town."

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