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on! To your homes, now! Every runt and mother’s child of you! Else you’ve me to deal with!”
    The grumbling continued but more subdued now, and no one dared stand against Alastair Ransom. No one wanted to be in his jail, under his glare, or interrogated by him, as mostknew his reputation and the stories circulated about him, and those who did not know the latest tales were shushed and quickly told.
    There lived few within the city limits who had not heard the urban “truths” that swirled about Ransom, how it was his city, how he had killed more than one man who’d challenged the fact. People spoke in whispers about how he had “cleaned” the city of the worst sort of gutter life imaginable. That he had taken “bloody good” care of the Phantom of the Fair, quietly and discreetly and completely when the wheels of justice had turned the murderer loose to kill again. Other tales told of Ransom’s having put an end to the career of the butcher commonly known as Leather Apron. Still others maintained that Inspector Alastair Ransom had occasion to once burn a man alive, and was anxious to repeat it with any man daring to stand in his way or refusing to level with him.
    In fact, such grandiose legend had grown up around this bear of a man that others went silent when he stepped up onto one of their upturned apple crates, and when he shouted for them to disperse, they grumbled and sputtered and made out as if it meant nothing as they thinned out.
    The men of the Columbian Guard watched in awe as the crowd began to slowly disintegrate, first at the edges and soon at the seams.
    Ransom stepped from the crate and rejoined the humanity around him, almost as a dare, certainly as a man unafraid, and drawing the respect of men on both sides of the situation here at the Plaisance on the Midway.
    When it became sufficiently clear that no one in the mob was going to dare knife or otherwise attack Ransom, and that indeed the worst instigators and most wretched rabble had scurried off into the city proper like a horde of rats for their sewer homes, the brown and blue uniformed police surrounded Alastair and began patting him on the back and shouting, “Buy that man a pint!”
    The cheers and camaraderie of the gathered officers madeAlastair feel, if for only a moment, part of something larger than himself. And this felt good; in fact, this notion floated spiritlike through him.
    Several firemen on hand joined in his praise. By now he’d begun shouting for them to stop with this foolishness. “Enough of it! Off with youse!”
    â€œYou averted a sure riot, Inspector,” said one of the firemen.
    â€œWe all know that,” added a Columbian guard.
    â€œThen we celebrate at Muldoon’s in an hour, lads!” railed Ransom. “My second office, where we’ll hold a barroom wake for Carter Harrison.”
    This remark broke the comrades into separate camps, those pro-mayor, those against Harrison.
    â€œCome on, you men!” shouted Alastair. “Whatever your leanings, the mayor died on duty, a captain of this whaleboat we call Chicago.”
    â€œYeah, a regular Ahab he was!” blustered another guardsman.
    â€œTreated this bloody fair like the White Whale, he did,” said another.
    â€œShow a little generosity and respect,” countered Ransom.
    â€œThe man—like all the bigwigs—put this blasted carnival ahead of everything,” commented one of the firemen. “Including the homeless and starving folk!”
    â€œAnd why not?” asked Ransom. “Whatever ills it brought, fellas, it’s brought a boon to the city as well! Hell, it’s given a lot of you jobs!”
    â€œJobs gone now,” lamented one guard.
    Ransom pleaded, “Lads…lads, in the end, it brought fame to our city.” He was surprised at himself for taking so strong a stand on the matter. He’d never voiced it before, and wondered why