oy from the newspaper office and the detective lay there in
silence, biting at straws and tossing anxiously on their comfortable
bed.

It seemed fully two hours before they came. Gallegher had listened
without breathing, and with every muscle on a strain, at least a dozen
times, when some movement in the yard had led him to believe that they
were at the door.

And he had numerous doubts and fears. Sometimes it was that the police
had learnt of the fight, and had raided Keppler's in his absence, and
again it was that the fight had been postponed, or, worst of all, that
it would be put off until so late that Mr. Dwyer could not get back in
time for the last edition of the paper. Their coming, when at last they
came, was heralded by an advance-guard of two sporting men, who
stationed themselves at either side of the big door.

"Hurry up, now, gents," one of the men said with a shiver, "don't keep
this door open no longer'n is needful."

It was not a very large crowd, but it was wonderfully well selected. It
ran, in the majority of its component parts, to heavy white coats with
pearl buttons. The white coats were shouldered by long blue coats with
astrakhan fur trimmings, the wearers of which preserved a cliqueness not
remarkable when one considers that they believed every one else present
to be either a crook or a prize-fighter.

There were well-fed, well-groomed club-men and brokers in the crowd, a
politician or two, a popular comedian with his manager, amateur boxers
from the athletic clubs, and quiet, close-mouthed sporting men from
every city in the country. Their names if printed in the papers would
have been as familiar as the types of the papers themselves.

And among these men, whose only thought was of the brutal sport to come,
was Hade, with Dwyer standing at ease at his shoulder--Hade, white, and
visibly in deep anxiety, hiding his pale face beneath a cloth
travelling-cap, and with his chin muffled in a woollen scarf. He had
dared to come because he feared his danger from the already suspicious
Keppler was less than if he stayed away. And so he was there, hovering
restlessly on the border of the crowd, feeling his danger and sick with
fear.

When Hefflefinger first saw him he started up on his hands and elbows
and made a movement forward as if he would leap down then and there and
carry off his prisoner single-handed.

"Lie down," growled Gallegher; "an officer of any sort wouldn't live
three minutes i