Gallegher and Other Stories | Page 9

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."

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