Gallegher and Other Stories | Page 2

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