"Big duel ... Broderick and Terry!" shrieked the "newsies." Benito stopped the horse and bought a paper, perusing the headlines feverishly. Alice leaned over his shoulder, her face white. Presently Benito faced her. "Terry's forced a fight on Dave," he said huskily. "They're to meet on Monday at the upper end of Lake Merced."
CHAPTER LIV
THE "FIELD OF HONOR"
Chief of Police Burke lingered late in his office that Saturday afternoon. Twilight had passed into dusk, through which the street lamps were beginning to glimmer, leaping here and there into sudden luminance as the lamp-lighter made his rounds. Deep in the complexities of police reports Burke had scarcely noted the entrance of a police clerk who lighted the swinging lamp overhead. And he was only dimly aware of faint knocking at his door. It came a second, a third time before he roused himself. "Come in," he called, none too graciously.
The door opened with an inrush of wind which caused his lamp to flicker. Before him stood a slight and well-gowned woman, heavily veiled. She was trembling. He looked at her expectantly, but she did not speak.
"Please be seated, madam," said the chief of police.
But she continued to stand. Presently words came to her. "Can you stop a duel? Will you?" Her hands went out in a gesture of supplication, involuntary, unstudiedly dramatic.
"What do you mean?" he asked. "What duel?"
"Senator Broderick ... Justice Terry," a wealth of hate was in her utterance of the second name. "They fight at sunrise Monday morning."