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.,

“MichaelE. 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.