Short stories, American; United States -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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