“Come!” said a small, strong man, seizing Richling’s arm and turning him in the common direction. If the word was lost on Richling’s defective hearing, not so the touch; for the speaker was Ristofalo. The two friends ran with all their speed through the passage and out into the alley. A few rods away the chased wretch had been overtaken, and was made to face his pursuers. When Richling and Ristofalo reached him there was already a rope about his neck.
The Italian’s leap, as he closed in upon the group around the victim, was like a tiger’s. The men he touched did not fall; they were rather hurled, driving backward those whom they were hurled against. A man levelled a revolver at him; Richling struck it a blow that sent it over twenty men’s heads. A long knife flashed in Ristofalo’s right hand. He stood holding the rope in his left, stooping slightly forward, and darting his eyes about as if selecting a victim for his weapon. A stranger touched Richling from behind, spoke a hurried word in Italian, and handed him a huge dirk. But in that same moment the affair was over. There stood Ristofalo, gentle, self-contained, with just a perceptible smile turned upon the crowd, no knife in his hand, and beside him the slender, sinewy, form, and keen gray eye of Smith Izard.
The detective was addressing the crowd. While he was speaking, half a score of police came from as many directions. When he had finished, he waved his slender hand at the mass of heads.
“Stand back. Go about your business.” And they began to go. He laid a hand upon the rescued stranger and addressed the police.
“Take this rope off. Take this man to the station and keep him until it’s safe to let him go.”
The explanation by which he had so quickly pacified the mob was a simple one. The rescued man was a seller of campaign medals. That morning, in opening a fresh supply of his little stock, he had failed to perceive that, among a lot of “Breckenridge and Lane” medals, there had crept in one of Lincoln. That was the sum of his offence. The mistake had occurred in the Northern factory. Of course, if he did not intend to sell Lincoln medals, there was no crime.
“Don’t I tell you?” said the Italian to Richling, as they were walking away together. “Bound to have war; is already begin-n.”
“It began with me the day I got married,” said Richling.
Ristofalo waited some time, and then asked:—
“How?”