1160	----	Transcribed from the 1913 William Heinemann edition by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk THE GAME CHAPTER I Many patterns of carpet lay rolled out before them on the floor--two of Brussels showed the beginning of their quest, and its ending in that direction; while a score of ingrains lured their eyes and prolonged the debate between desire pocket-book. The head of the department did them the honor of waiting upon them himself--or did Joe the honor, as she well knew, for she had noted the open-mouthed awe of the elevator boy who brought them up. Nor had she been blind to the marked respect shown Joe by the urchins and groups of young fellows on corners, when she walked with him in their own neighborhood down at the west end of the town. But the head of the department was called away to the telephone, and in her mind the splendid promise of the carpets and the irk of the pocket- book were thrust aside by a greater doubt and anxiety. "But I don't see what you find to like in it, Joe," she said softly, the note of insistence in her words betraying recent and unsatisfactory discussion. For a fleeting moment a shadow darkened his boyish face, to be replaced by the glow of tenderness. He was only a boy, as she was only a girl--two young things on the threshold of life, house-renting and buying carpets together. "What's the good of worrying?" he questioned. "It's the last go, the very last." He smiled at her, but she saw on his lips the unconscious and all but breathed sigh of renunciation, and with the instinctive monopoly of woman for her mate, she feared this thing she did not understand and which gripped his life so strongly. "You know the go with O'Neil cleared the last payment on mother's house," he went on. "And that's off my mind. Now this last with Ponta will give me a hundred dollars in bank--an even hundred, that's the purse--for you and me to start on, a nest-egg." She disregarded the money appeal. "But you like it, this--this 'game' you call it. Why?" He lacked speech-expression. He expressed himself with his hands, at his work, and with his body and the play of his muscles in the squared ring; but to tell with his own lips the charm of the squared ring was beyond him. Yet he essayed, and haltingly at first, to express what he felt and analyzed when playing the Game at the supreme summit of existence. "All I know, Genevieve, is that you feel good in the ring when you've got the man where you want him, when he's had a punch up both sleeves waiting for you and you've never given him an opening to land 'em, when you've landed your own little punch an' he's goin' groggy, an' holdin' on, an' the referee's dragging him off so's you can go in an' finish 'm, an' all the house is shouting an' tearin' itself loose, an' you know you're the best man, an' that you played m' fair an' won out because you're the best man. I tell you--" He ceased brokenly, alarmed by his own volubility and by Genevieve's look of alarm. As he talked she had watched his face while fear dawned in her own. As he described the moment of moments to her, on his inward vision were lined the tottering man, the lights, the shouting house, and he swept out and away from her on this tide of life that was beyond her comprehension, menacing, irresistible, making her love pitiful and weak. The Joe she knew receded, faded, became lost. The fresh boyish face was gone, the tenderness of the eyes, the sweetness of the mouth with its curves and pictured corners. It was a man's face she saw, a face of steel, tense and immobile; a mouth of steel, the lips like the jaws of a trap; eyes of steel, dilated, intent, and the light in them and the glitter were the light and glitter of steel. The face of a man, and she had known only his boy face. This face she did not know at all. And yet, while it frightened her, she was vaguely stirred with pride in him. His masculinity, the masculinity of the fighting male, made its inevitable appeal to her, a female, moulded by all her heredity to seek out the strong man for mate, and to lean against the wall of his strength. She did not understand this force of his being that rose mightier than her love and laid its compulsion upon him; and yet, in her woman's heart she was aware of the sweet pang which told her that for her sake, for Love's own sake, he had surrendered to her, abandoned all that portion of his life, and with this one last fight would never fight again. "Mrs. Silverstein doesn't like prize-fighting," she said. "She's down on it, and she knows something, too." He smiled indulgently, concealing a hurt, not altogether new, at her persistent inappreciation of this side of his nature and life in which he took the greatest pride. It was to him power and achievement, earned by his own effort and hard work; and in the moment when he had offered himself and all that he was to Genevieve, it was this, and this alone, that he was proudly conscious of laying at her feet. It was the merit of work performed, a guerdon of manhood finer and greater than any other man could offer, and it had been to him his justification and right to possess her. And she had not understood it then, as she did not understand it now, and he might well have wondered what else she found in him to make him worthy. "Mrs. Silverstein is a dub, and a softy, and a knocker," he said good- humoredly. "What's she know about such things, anyway? I tell you it _is_ good, and healthy, too,"--this last as an afterthought. "Look at me. I tell you I have to live clean to be in condition like this. I live cleaner than she does, or her old man, or anybody you know--baths, rub-downs, exercise, regular hours, good food and no makin' a pig of myself, no drinking, no smoking, nothing that'll hurt me. Why, I live cleaner than you, Genevieve--" "Honest, I do," he hastened to add at sight of her shocked face. "I don't mean water an' soap, but look there." His hand closed reverently but firmly on her arm. "Soft, you're all soft, all over. Not like mine. Here, feel this." He pressed the ends of her fingers into his hard arm-muscles until she winced from the hurt. "Hard all over just like that," he went on. "Now that's what I call clean. Every bit of flesh an' blood an' muscle is clean right down to the bones--and they're clean, too. No soap and water only on the skin, but clean all the way in. I tell you it feels clean. It knows it's clean itself. When I wake up in the morning an' go to work, every drop of blood and bit of meat is shouting right out that it is clean. Oh, I tell you--" He paused with swift awkwardness, again confounded by his unwonted flow of speech. Never in his life had he been stirred to such utterance, and never in his life had there been cause to be so stirred. For it was the Game that had been questioned, its verity and worth, the Game itself, the biggest thing in the world--or what had been the biggest thing in the world until that chance afternoon and that chance purchase in Silverstein's candy store, when Genevieve loomed suddenly colossal in his life, overshadowing all other things. He was beginning to see, though vaguely, the sharp conflict between woman and career, between a man's work in the world and woman's need of the man. But he was not capable of generalization. He saw only the antagonism between the concrete, flesh- and-blood Genevieve and the great, abstract, living Game. Each resented the other, each claimed him; he was torn with the strife, and yet drifted helpless on the currents of their contention. His words had drawn Genevieve's gaze to his face, and she had pleasured in the clear skin, the clear eyes, the cheek soft and smooth as a girl's. She saw the force of his argument and disliked it accordingly. She revolted instinctively against this Game which drew him away from her, robbed her of part of him. It was a rival she did not understand. Nor could she understand its seductions. Had it been a woman rival, another girl, knowledge and light and sight would have been hers. As it was, she grappled in the dark with an intangible adversary about which she knew nothing. What truth she felt in his speech made the Game but the more formidable. A sudden conception of her weakness came to her. She felt pity for herself, and sorrow. She wanted him, all of him, her woman's need would not be satisfied with less; and he eluded her, slipped away here and there from the embrace with which she tried to clasp him. Tears swam into her eyes, and her lips trembled, turning defeat into victory, routing the all-potent Game with the strength of her weakness. "Don't, Genevieve, don't," the boy pleaded, all contrition, though he was confused and dazed. To his masculine mind there was nothing relevant about her break-down; yet all else was forgotten at sight of her tears. She smiled forgiveness through her wet eyes, and though he knew of nothing for which to be forgiven, he melted utterly. His hand went out impulsively to hers, but she avoided the clasp by a sort of bodily stiffening and chill, the while the eyes smiled still more gloriously. "Here comes Mr. Clausen," she said, at the same time, by some transforming alchemy of woman, presenting to the newcomer eyes that showed no hint of moistness. "Think I was never coming back, Joe?" queried the head of the department, a pink-and-white-faced man, whose austere side-whiskers were belied by genial little eyes. "Now let me see--hum, yes, we was discussing ingrains," he continued briskly. "That tasty little pattern there catches your eye, don't it now, eh? Yes, yes, I know all about it. I set up housekeeping when I was getting fourteen a week. But nothing's too good for the little nest, eh? Of course I know, and it's only seven cents more, and the dearest is the cheapest, I say. Tell you what I'll do, Joe,"--this with a burst of philanthropic impulsiveness and a confidential lowering of voice,--"seein's it's you, and I wouldn't do it for anybody else, I'll reduce it to five cents. Only,"--here his voice became impressively solemn,--"only you mustn't ever tell how much you really did pay." "Sewed, lined, and laid--of course that's included," he said, after Joe and Genevieve had conferred together and announced their decision. "And the little nest, eh?" he queried. "When do you spread your wings and fly away? To-morrow! So soon? Beautiful! Beautiful!" He rolled his eyes ecstatically for a moment, then beamed upon them with a fatherly air. Joe had replied sturdily enough, and Genevieve had blushed prettily; but both felt that it was not exactly proper. Not alone because of the privacy and holiness of the subject, but because of what might have been prudery in the middle class, but which in them was the modesty and reticence found in individuals of the working class when they strive after clean living and morality. Mr. Clausen accompanied them to the elevator, all smiles, patronage, and beneficence, while the clerks turned their heads to follow Joe's retreating figure. "And to-night, Joe?" Mr. Clausen asked anxiously, as they waited at the shaft. "How do you feel? Think you'll do him?" "Sure," Joe answered. "Never felt better in my life." "You feel all right, eh? Good! Good! You see, I was just a-wonderin'--you know, ha! ha!--goin' to get married and the rest--thought you might be unstrung, eh, a trifle?--nerves just a bit off, you know. Know how gettin' married is myself. But you're all right, eh? Of course you are. No use asking _you_ that. Ha! ha! Well, good luck, my boy! I know you'll win. Never had the least doubt, of course, of course." "And good-by, Miss Pritchard," he said to Genevieve, gallantly handing her into the elevator. "Hope you call often. Will be charmed--charmed--I assure you." "Everybody calls you 'Joe'," she said reproachfully, as the car dropped downward. "Why don't they call you 'Mr. Fleming'? That's no more than proper." But he was staring moodily at the elevator boy and did not seem to hear. "What's the matter, Joe?" she asked, with a tenderness the power of which to thrill him she knew full well. "Oh, nothing," he said. "I was only thinking--and wishing." "Wishing?--what?" Her voice was seduction itself, and her eyes would have melted stronger than he, though they failed in calling his up to them. Then, deliberately, his eyes lifted to hers. "I was wishing you could see me fight just once." She made a gesture of disgust, and his face fell. It came to her sharply that the rival had thrust between and was bearing him away. "I--I'd like to," she said hastily with an effort, striving after that sympathy which weakens the strongest men and draws their heads to women's breasts. "Will you?" Again his eyes lifted and looked into hers. He meant it--she knew that. It seemed a challenge to the greatness of her love. "It would be the proudest moment of my life," he said simply. It may have been the apprehensiveness of love, the wish to meet his need for her sympathy, and the desire to see the Game face to face for wisdom's sake,--and it may have been the clarion call of adventure ringing through the narrow confines of uneventful existence; for a great daring thrilled through her, and she said, just as simply, "I will." "I didn't think you would, or I wouldn't have asked," he confessed, as they walked out to the sidewalk. "But can't it be done?" she asked anxiously, before her resolution could cool. "Oh, I can fix that; but I didn't think you would." "I didn't think you would," he repeated, still amazed, as he helped her upon the electric car and felt in his pocket for the fare. CHAPTER II Genevieve and Joe were working-class aristocrats. In an environment made up largely of sordidness and wretchedness they had kept themselves unsullied and wholesome. Theirs was a self-respect, a regard for the niceties and clean things of life, which had held them aloof from their kind. Friends did not come to them easily; nor had either ever possessed a really intimate friend, a heart-companion with whom to chum and have things in common. The social instinct was strong in them, yet they had remained lonely because they could not satisfy that instinct and at that same time satisfy their desire for cleanness and decency. If ever a girl of the working class had led the sheltered life, it was Genevieve. In the midst of roughness and brutality, she had shunned all that was rough and brutal. She saw but what she chose to see, and she chose always to see the best, avoiding coarseness and uncouthness without effort, as a matter of instinct. To begin with, she had been peculiarly unexposed. An only child, with an invalid mother upon whom she attended, she had not joined in the street games and frolics of the children of the neighbourhood. Her father, a mild-tempered, narrow-chested, anaemic little clerk, domestic because of his inherent disability to mix with men, had done his full share toward giving the home an atmosphere of sweetness and tenderness. An orphan at twelve, Genevieve had gone straight from her father's funeral to live with the Silversteins in their rooms above the candy store; and here, sheltered by kindly aliens, she earned her keep and clothes by waiting on the shop. Being Gentile, she was especially necessary to the Silversteins, who would not run the business themselves when the day of their Sabbath came round. And here, in the uneventful little shop, six maturing years had slipped by. Her acquaintances were few. She had elected to have no girl chum for the reason that no satisfactory girl had appeared. Nor did she choose to walk with the young fellows of the neighbourhood, as was the custom of girls from their fifteenth year. "That stuck-up doll-face," was the way the girls of the neighbourhood described her; and though she earned their enmity by her beauty and aloofness, she none the less commanded their respect. "Peaches and cream," she was called by the young men--though softly and amongst themselves, for they were afraid of arousing the ire of the other girls, while they stood in awe of Genevieve, in a dimly religious way, as a something mysteriously beautiful and unapproachable. For she was indeed beautiful. Springing from a long line of American descent, she was one of those wonderful working-class blooms which occasionally appear, defying all precedent of forebears and environment, apparently without cause or explanation. She was a beauty in color, the blood spraying her white skin so deliciously as to earn for her the apt description, "peaches and cream." She was a beauty in the regularity of her features; and, if for no other reason, she was a beauty in the mere delicacy of the lines on which she was moulded. Quiet, low-voiced, stately, and dignified, she somehow had the knack of dress, and but befitted her beauty and dignity with anything she put on. Withal, she was sheerly feminine, tender and soft and clinging, with the smouldering passion of the mate and the motherliness of the woman. But this side of her nature had lain dormant through the years, waiting for the mate to appear. Then Joe came into Silverstein's shop one hot Saturday afternoon to cool himself with ice-cream soda. She had not noticed his entrance, being busy with one other customer, an urchin of six or seven who gravely analyzed his desires before the show-case wherein truly generous and marvellous candy creations reposed under a cardboard announcement, "Five for Five Cents." She had heard, "Ice-cream soda, please," and had herself asked, "What flavor?" without seeing his face. For that matter, it was not a custom of hers to notice young men. There was something about them she did not understand. The way they looked at her made her uncomfortable, she knew not why; while there was an uncouthness and roughness about them that did not please her. As yet, her imagination had been untouched by man. The young fellows she had seen had held no lure for her, had been without meaning to her. In short, had she been asked to give one reason for the existence of men on the earth, she would have been nonplussed for a reply. As she emptied the measure of ice-cream into the glass, her casual glance rested on Joe's face, and she experienced on the instant a pleasant feeling of satisfaction. The next instant his eyes were upon her face, her eyes had dropped, and she was turning away toward the soda fountain. But at the fountain, filling the glass, she was impelled to look at him again--but for no more than an instant, for this time she found his eyes already upon her, waiting to meet hers, while on his face was a frankness of interest that caused her quickly to look away. That such pleasingness would reside for her in any man astonished her. "What a pretty boy," she thought to herself, innocently and instinctively trying to ward off the power to hold and draw her that lay behind the mere prettiness. "Besides, he isn't pretty," she thought, as she placed the glass before him, received the silver dime in payment, and for the third time looked into his eyes. Her vocabulary was limited, and she knew little of the worth of words; but the strong masculinity of his boy's face told her that the term was inappropriate. "He must be handsome, then," was her next thought, as she again dropped her eyes before his. But all good-looking men were called handsome, and that term, too, displeased her. But whatever it was, he was good to see, and she was irritably aware of a desire to look at him again and again. As for Joe, he had never seen anything like this girl across the counter. While he was wiser in natural philosophy than she, and could have given immediately the reason for woman's existence on the earth, nevertheless woman had no part in his cosmos. His imagination was as untouched by woman as the girl's was by man. But his imagination was touched now, and the woman was Genevieve. He had never dreamed a girl could be so beautiful, and he could not keep his eyes from her face. Yet every time he looked at her, and her eyes met his, he felt painful embarrassment, and would have looked away had not her eyes dropped so quickly. But when, at last, she slowly lifted her eyes and held their gaze steadily, it was his own eyes that dropped, his own cheek that mantled red. She was much less embarrassed than he, while she betrayed her embarrassment not at all. She was aware of a flutter within, such as she had never known before, but in no way did it disturb her outward serenity. Joe, on the contrary, was obviously awkward and delightfully miserable. Neither knew love, and all that either was aware was an overwhelming desire to look at the other. Both had been troubled and roused, and they were drawing together with the sharpness and imperativeness of uniting elements. He toyed with his spoon, and flushed his embarrassment over his soda, but lingered on; and she spoke softly, dropped her eyes, and wove her witchery about him. But he could not linger forever over a glass of ice-cream soda, while he did not dare ask for a second glass. So he left her to remain in the shop in a waking trance, and went away himself down the street like a somnambulist. Genevieve dreamed through the afternoon and knew that she was in love. Not so with Joe. He knew only that he wanted to look at her again, to see her face. His thoughts did not get beyond this, and besides, it was scarcely a thought, being more a dim and inarticulate desire. The urge of this desire he could not escape. Day after day it worried him, and the candy shop and the girl behind the counter continually obtruded themselves. He fought off the desire. He was afraid and ashamed to go back to the candy shop. He solaced his fear with, "I ain't a ladies' man." Not once, nor twice, but scores of times, he muttered the thought to himself, but it did no good. And by the middle of the week, in the evening, after work, he came into the shop. He tried to come in carelessly and casually, but his whole carriage advertised the strong effort of will that compelled his legs to carry his reluctant body thither. Also, he was shy, and awkwarder than ever. Genevieve, on the contrary, was serener than ever, though fluttering most alarmingly within. He was incapable of speech, mumbled his order, looked anxiously at the clock, despatched his ice-cream soda in tremendous haste, and was gone. She was ready to weep with vexation. Such meagre reward for four days' waiting, and assuming all the time that she loved! He was a nice boy and all that, she knew, but he needn't have been in so disgraceful a hurry. But Joe had not reached the corner before he wanted to be back with her again. He just wanted to look at her. He had no thought that it was love. Love? That was when young fellows and girls walked out together. As for him--And then his desire took sharper shape, and he discovered that that was the very thing he wanted her to do. He wanted to see her, to look at her, and well could he do all this if she but walked out with him. Then that was why the young fellows and girls walked out together, he mused, as the week-end drew near. He had remotely considered this walking out to be a mere form or observance preliminary to matrimony. Now he saw the deeper wisdom in it, wanted it himself, and concluded therefrom that he was in love. Both were now of the same mind, and there could be but the one ending; and it was the mild nine days' wonder of Genevieve's neighborhood when she and Joe walked out together. Both were blessed with an avarice of speech, and because of it their courtship was a long one. As he expressed himself in action, she expressed herself in repose and control, and by the love-light in her eyes--though this latter she would have suppressed in all maiden modesty had she been conscious of the speech her heart printed so plainly there. "Dear" and "darling" were too terribly intimate for them to achieve quickly; and, unlike most mating couples, they did not overwork the love- words. For a long time they were content to walk together in the evenings, or to sit side by side on a bench in the park, neither uttering a word for an hour at a time, merely gazing into each other's eyes, too faintly luminous in the starshine to be a cause for self-consciousness and embarrassment. He was as chivalrous and delicate in his attention as any knight to his lady. When they walked along the street, he was careful to be on the outside,--somewhere he had heard that this was the proper thing to do,--and when a crossing to the opposite side of the street put him on the inside, he swiftly side-stepped behind her to gain the outside again. He carried her parcels for her, and once, when rain threatened, her umbrella. He had never heard of the custom of sending flowers to one's lady-love, so he sent Genevieve fruit instead. There was utility in fruit. It was good to eat. Flowers never entered his mind, until, one day, he noticed a pale rose in her hair. It drew his gaze again and again. It was _her_ hair, therefore the presence of the flower interested him. Again, it interested him because _she_ had chosen to put it there. For these reasons he was led to observe the rose more closely. He discovered that the effect in itself was beautiful, and it fascinated him. His ingenuous delight in it was a delight to her, and a new and mutual love-thrill was theirs--because of a flower. Straightway he became a lover of flowers. Also, he became an inventor in gallantry. He sent her a bunch of violets. The idea was his own. He had never heard of a man sending flowers to a woman. Flowers were used for decorative purposes, also for funerals. He sent Genevieve flowers nearly every day, and so far as he was concerned the idea was original, as positive an invention as ever arose in the mind of man. He was tremulous in his devotion to her--as tremulous as was she in her reception of him. She was all that was pure and good, a holy of holies not lightly to be profaned even by what might possibly be the too ardent reverence of a devotee. She was a being wholly different from any he had ever known. She was not as other girls. It never entered his head that she was of the same clay as his own sisters, or anybody's sister. She was more than mere girl, than mere woman. She was--well, she was Genevieve, a being of a class by herself, nothing less than a miracle of creation. And for her, in turn, there was in him but little less of illusion. Her judgment of him in minor things might be critical (while his judgment of her was sheer worship, and had in it nothing critical at all); but in her judgment of him as a whole she forgot the sum of the parts, and knew him only as a creature of wonder, who gave meaning to life, and for whom she could die as willingly as she could live. She often beguiled her waking dreams of him with fancied situations, wherein, dying for him, she at last adequately expressed the love she felt for him, and which, living, she knew she could never fully express. Their love was all fire and dew. The physical scarcely entered into it, for such seemed profanation. The ultimate physical facts of their relation were something which they never considered. Yet the immediate physical facts they knew, the immediate yearnings and raptures of the flesh--the touch of finger tips on hand or arm, the momentary pressure of a hand-clasp, the rare lip-caress of a kiss, the tingling thrill of her hair upon his cheek, of her hand lightly thrusting back the locks from above his eyes. All this they knew, but also, and they knew not why, there seemed a hint of sin about these caresses and sweet bodily contacts. There were times when she felt impelled to throw her arms around him in a very abandonment of love, but always some sanctity restrained her. At such moments she was distinctly and unpleasantly aware of some unguessed sin that lurked within her. It was wrong, undoubtedly wrong, that she should wish to caress her lover in so unbecoming a fashion. No self-respecting girl could dream of doing such a thing. It was unwomanly. Besides, if she had done it, what would he have thought of it? And while she contemplated so horrible a catastrophe, she seemed to shrivel and wilt in a furnace of secret shame. Nor did Joe escape the prick of curious desires, chiefest among which, perhaps, was the desire to hurt Genevieve. When, after long and tortuous degrees, he had achieved the bliss of putting his arm round her waist, he felt spasmodic impulses to make the embrace crushing, till she should cry out with the hurt. It was not his nature to wish to hurt any living thing. Even in the ring, to hurt was never the intention of any blow he struck. In such case he played the Game, and the goal of the Game was to down an antagonist and keep that antagonist down for a space of ten seconds. So he never struck merely to hurt; the hurt was incidental to the end, and the end was quite another matter. And yet here, with this girl he loved, came the desire to hurt. Why, when with thumb and forefinger he had ringed her wrist, he should desire to contract that ring till it crushed, was beyond him. He could not understand, and felt that he was discovering depths of brutality in his nature of which he had never dreamed. Once, on parting, he threw his arms around her and swiftly drew her against him. Her gasping cry of surprise and pain brought him to his senses and left him there very much embarrassed and still trembling with a vague and nameless delight. And she, too, was trembling. In the hurt itself, which was the essence of the vigorous embrace, she had found delight; and again she knew sin, though she knew not its nature nor why it should be sin. Came the day, very early in their walking out, when Silverstein chanced upon Joe in his store and stared at him with saucer-eyes. Came likewise the scene, after Joe had departed, when the maternal feelings of Mrs. Silverstein found vent in a diatribe against all prize-fighters and against Joe Fleming in particular. Vainly had Silverstein striven to stay the spouse's wrath. There was need for her wrath. All the maternal feelings were hers but none of the maternal rights. Genevieve was aware only of the diatribe; she knew a flood of abuse was pouring from the lips of the Jewess, but she was too stunned to hear the details of the abuse. Joe, her Joe, was Joe Fleming the prize-fighter. It was abhorrent, impossible, too grotesque to be believable. Her clear- eyed, girl-cheeked Joe might be anything but a prize-fighter. She had never seen one, but he in no way resembled her conception of what a prize- fighter must be--the human brute with tiger eyes and a streak for a forehead. Of course she had heard of Joe Fleming--who in West Oakland had not?--but that there should be anything more than a coincidence of names had never crossed her mind. She came out of her daze to hear Mrs. Silverstein's hysterical sneer, "keepin' company vit a bruiser." Next, Silverstein and his wife fell to differing on "noted" and "notorious" as applicable to her lover. "But he iss a good boy," Silverstein was contending. "He make der money, an' he safe der money." "You tell me dat!" Mrs. Silverstein screamed. "Vat you know? You know too much. You spend good money on der prize-fighters. How you know? Tell me dat! How you know?" "I know vat I know," Silverstein held on sturdily--a thing Genevieve had never before seen him do when his wife was in her tantrums. "His fader die, he go to work in Hansen's sail-loft. He haf six brudders an' sisters younger as he iss. He iss der liddle fader. He vork hard, all der time. He buy der pread an' der meat, an' pay der rent. On Saturday night he bring home ten dollar. Den Hansen gif him twelve dollar--vat he do? He iss der liddle fader, he bring it home to der mudder. He vork all der time, he get twenty dollar--vat he do? He bring it home. Der liddle brudders an' sisters go to school, vear good clothes, haf better pread an' meat; der mudder lif fat, dere iss joy in der eye, an' she iss proud of her good boy Joe. "But he haf der beautiful body--ach, Gott, der beautiful body!--stronger as der ox, k-vicker as der tiger-cat, der head cooler as der ice-box, der eyes vat see eferytings, k-vick, just like dat. He put on der gloves vit der boys at Hansen's loft, he put on der gloves vit de boys at der varehouse. He go before der club; he knock out der Spider, k-vick, one punch, just like dat, der first time. Der purse iss five dollar--vat he do? He bring it home to der mudder. "He go many times before der clubs; he get many purses--ten dollar, fifty dollar, one hundred dollar. Vat he do? Tell me dat! Quit der job at Hansen's? Haf der good time vit der boys? No, no; he iss der good boy. He vork efery day. He fight at night before der clubs. He say, 'Vat for I pay der rent, Silverstein?'--to me, Silverstein, he say dat. Nefer mind vat I say, but he buy der good house for der mudder. All der time he vork at Hansen's and fight before der clubs to pay for der house. He buy der piano for der sisters, der carpets, der pictures on der vall. An' he iss all der time straight. He bet on himself--dat iss der good sign. Ven der man bets on himself dat is der time you bet too--" Here Mrs. Silverstein groaned her horror of gambling, and her husband, aware that his eloquence had betrayed him, collapsed into voluble assurances that he was ahead of the game. "An' all because of Joe Fleming," he concluded. "I back him efery time to vin." But Genevieve and Joe were preeminently mated, and nothing, not even this terrible discovery, could keep them apart. In vain Genevieve tried to steel herself against him; but she fought herself, not him. To her surprise she discovered a thousand excuses for him, found him lovable as ever; and she entered into his life to be his destiny, and to control him after the way of women. She saw his future and hers through glowing vistas of reform, and her first great deed was when she wrung from him his promise to cease fighting. And he, after the way of men, pursuing the dream of love and striving for possession of the precious and deathless object of desire, had yielded. And yet, in the very moment of promising her, he knew vaguely, deep down, that he could never abandon the Game; that somewhere, sometime, in the future, he must go back to it. And he had had a swift vision of his mother and brothers and sisters, their multitudinous wants, the house with its painting and repairing, its street assessments and taxes, and of the coming of children to him and Genevieve, and of his own daily wage in the sail-making loft. But the next moment the vision was dismissed, as such warnings are always dismissed, and he saw before him only Genevieve, and he knew only his hunger for her and the call of his being to her; and he accepted calmly her calm assumption of his life and actions. He was twenty, she was eighteen, boy and girl, the pair of them, and made for progeny, healthy and normal, with steady blood pounding through their bodies; and wherever they went together, even on Sunday outings across the bay amongst people who did not know him, eyes were continually drawn to them. He matched her girl's beauty with his boy's beauty, her grace with his strength, her delicacy of line and fibre with the harsher vigor and muscle of the male. Frank-faced, fresh-colored, almost ingenuous in expression, eyes blue and wide apart, he drew and held the gaze of more than one woman far above him in the social scale. Of such glances and dim maternal promptings he was quite unconscious, though Genevieve was quick to see and understand; and she knew each time the pang of a fierce joy in that he was hers and that she held him in the hollow of her hand. He did see, however, and rather resented, the men's glances drawn by her. These, too, she saw and understood as he did not dream of understanding. CHAPTER III Genevieve slipped on a pair of Joe's shoes, light-soled and dapper, and laughed with Lottie, who stooped to turn up the trousers for her. Lottie was his sister, and in the secret. To her was due the inveigling of his mother into making a neighborhood call so that they could have the house to themselves. They went down into the kitchen where Joe was waiting. His face brightened as he came to meet her, love shining frankly forth. "Now get up those skirts, Lottie," he commanded. "Haven't any time to waste. There, that'll do. You see, you only want the bottoms of the pants to show. The coat will cover the rest. Now let's see how it'll fit. "Borrowed it from Chris; he's a dead sporty sport--little, but oh, my!" he went on, helping Genevieve into an overcoat which fell to her heels and which fitted her as a tailor-made overcoat should fit the man for whom it is made. Joe put a cap on her head and turned up the collar, which was generous to exaggeration, meeting the cap and completely hiding her hair. When he buttoned the collar in front, its points served to cover the cheeks, chin and mouth were buried in its depths, and a close scrutiny revealed only shadowy eyes and a little less shadowy nose. She walked across the room, the bottom of the trousers just showing as the bang of the coat was disturbed by movement. "A sport with a cold and afraid of catching more, all right all right," the boy laughed, proudly surveying his handiwork. "How much money you got? I'm layin' ten to six. Will you take the short end?" "Who's short?" she asked. "Ponta, of course," Lottie blurted out her hurt, as though there could be any question of it even for an instant. "Of course," Genevieve said sweetly, "only I don't know much about such things." This time Lottie kept her lips together, but the new hurt showed on her face. Joe looked at his watch and said it was time to go. His sister's arms went about his neck, and she kissed him soundly on the lips. She kissed Genevieve, too, and saw them to the gate, one arm of her brother about her waist. "What does ten to six mean?" Genevieve asked, the while their footfalls rang out on the frosty air. "That I'm the long end, the favorite," he answered. "That a man bets ten dollars at the ring side that I win against six dollars another man is betting that I lose." "But if you're the favorite and everybody thinks you'll win, how does anybody bet against you?" "That's what makes prize-fighting--difference of opinion," he laughed. "Besides, there's always the chance of a lucky punch, an accident. Lots of chance," he said gravely. She shrank against him, clingingly and protectingly, and he laughed with surety. "You wait, and you'll see. An' don't get scared at the start. The first few rounds'll be something fierce. That's Ponta's strong point. He's a wild man, with an kinds of punches,--a whirlwind,--and he gets his man in the first rounds. He's put away a whole lot of cleverer and better men than him. It's up to me to live through it, that's all. Then he'll be all in. Then I go after him, just watch. You'll know when I go after him, an' I'll get'm, too." They came to the hall, on a dark street-corner, ostensibly the quarters of an athletic club, but in reality an institution designed for pulling off fights and keeping within the police ordinance. Joe drew away from her, and they walked apart to the entrance. "Keep your hands in your pockets whatever you do," Joe warned her, "and it'll be all right. Only a couple of minutes of it." "He's with me," Joe said to the door-keeper, who was talking with a policeman. Both men greeted him familiarly, taking no notice of his companion. "They never tumbled; nobody'll tumble," Joe assured her, as they climbed the stairs to the second story. "And even if they did, they wouldn't know who it was and they's keep it mum for me. Here, come in here!" He whisked her into a little office-like room and left her seated on a dusty, broken-bottomed chair. A few minutes later he was back again, clad in a long bath robe, canvas shoes on his feet. She began to tremble against him, and his arm passed gently around her. "It'll be all right, Genevieve," he said encouragingly. "I've got it all fixed. Nobody'll tumble." "It's you, Joe," she said. "I don't care for myself. It's you." "Don't care for yourself! But that's what I thought you were afraid of!" He looked at her in amazement, the wonder of woman bursting upon him in a more transcendent glory than ever, and he had seen much of the wonder of woman in Genevieve. He was speechless for a moment, and then stammered:-- "You mean me? And you don't care what people think? or anything?--or anything?" A sharp double knock at the door, and a sharper "Get a move on yerself, Joe!" brought him back to immediate things. "Quick, one last kiss, Genevieve," he whispered, almost holily. "It's my last fight, an' I'll fight as never before with you lookin' at me." The next she knew, the pressure of his lips yet warm on hers, she was in a group of jostling young fellows, none of whom seemed to take the slightest notice of her. Several had their coats off and their shirt sleeves rolled up. They entered the hall from the rear, still keeping the casual formation of the group, and moved slowly up a side aisle. It was a crowded, ill-lighted hall, barn-like in its proportions, and the smoke-laden air gave a peculiar distortion to everything. She felt as though she would stifle. There were shrill cries of boys selling programmes and soda water, and there was a great bass rumble of masculine voices. She heard a voice offering ten to six on Joe Fleming. The utterance was monotonous--hopeless, it seemed to her, and she felt a quick thrill. It was her Joe against whom everybody was to bet. And she felt other thrills. Her blood was touched, as by fire, with romance, adventure--the unknown, the mysterious, the terrible--as she penetrated this haunt of men where women came not. And there were other thrills. It was the only time in her life she had dared the rash thing. For the first time she was overstepping the bounds laid down by that harshest of tyrants, the Mrs. Grundy of the working class. She felt fear, and for herself, though the moment before she had been thinking only of Joe. Before she knew it, the front of the hall had been reached, and she had gone up half a dozen steps into a small dressing-room. This was crowded to suffocation--by men who played the Game, she concluded, in one capacity or another. And here she lost Joe. But before the real personal fright could soundly clutch her, one of the young fellows said gruffly, "Come along with me, you," and as she wedged out at his heels she noticed that another one of the escort was following her. They came upon a sort of stage, which accommodated three rows of men; and she caught her first glimpse of the squared ring. She was on a level with it, and so near that she could have reached out and touched its ropes. She noticed that it was covered with padded canvas. Beyond the ring, and on either side, as in a fog, she could see the crowded house. The dressing-room she had left abutted upon one corner of the ring. Squeezing her way after her guide through the seated men, she crossed the end of the hall and entered a similar dressing-room at the other corner of the ring. "Now don't make a noise, and stay here till I come for you," instructed her guide, pointing out a peep-hole arrangement in the wall of the room. CHAPTER IV She hurried to the peep-hole, and found herself against the ring. She could see the whole of it, though part of the audience was shut off. The ring was well lighted by an overhead cluster of patent gas-burners. The front row of the men she had squeezed past, because of their paper and pencils, she decided to be reporters from the local papers up-town. One of them was chewing gum. Behind them, on the other two rows of seats, she could make out firemen from the near-by engine-house and several policemen in uniform. In the middle of the front row, flanked by the reporters, sat the young chief of police. She was startled by catching sight of Mr. Clausen on the opposite side of the ring. There he sat, austere, side-whiskered, pink and white, close up against the front of the ring. Several seats farther on, in the same front row, she discovered Silverstein, his weazen features glowing with anticipation. A few cheers heralded the advent of several young fellows, in shirt-sleeves, carrying buckets, bottles, and towels, who crawled through the ropes and crossed to the diagonal corner from her. One of them sat down on a stool and leaned back against the ropes. She saw that he was bare-legged, with canvas shoes on his feet, and that his body was swathed in a heavy white sweater. In the meantime another group had occupied the corner directly against her. Louder cheers drew her attention to it, and she saw Joe seated on a stool still clad in the bath robe, his short chestnut curls within a yard of her eyes. A young man, in a black suit, with a mop of hair and a preposterously tall starched collar, walked to the centre of the ring and held up his hand. "Gentlemen will please stop smoking," he said. His effort was applauded by groans and cat-calls, and she noticed with indignation that nobody stopped smoking. Mr. Clausen held a burning match in his fingers while the announcement was being made, and then calmly lighted his cigar. She felt that she hated him in that moment. How was her Joe to fight in such an atmosphere? She could scarcely breathe herself, and she was only sitting down. The announcer came over to Joe. He stood up. His bath robe fell away from him, and he stepped forth to the centre of the ring, naked save for the low canvas shoes and a narrow hip-cloth of white. Genevieve's eyes dropped. She sat alone, with none to see, but her face was burning with shame at sight of the beautiful nakedness of her lover. But she looked again, guiltily, for the joy that was hers in beholding what she knew must be sinful to behold. The leap of something within her and the stir of her being toward him must be sinful. But it was delicious sin, and she did not deny her eyes. In vain Mrs. Grundy admonished her. The pagan in her, original sin, and all nature urged her on. The mothers of all the past were whispering through her, and there was a clamour of the children unborn. But of this she knew nothing. She knew only that it was sin, and she lifted her head proudly, recklessly resolved, in one great surge of revolt, to sin to the uttermost. She had never dreamed of the form under the clothes. The form, beyond the hands and the face, had no part in her mental processes. A child of garmented civilization, the garment was to her the form. The race of men was to her a race of garmented bipeds, with hands and faces and hair-covered heads. When she thought of Joe, the Joe instantly visualized on her mind was a clothed Joe--girl-cheeked, blue-eyed, curly- headed, but clothed. And there he stood, all but naked, godlike, in a white blaze of light. She had never conceived of the form of God except as nebulously naked, and the thought-association was startling. It seemed to her that her sin partook of sacrilege or blasphemy. Her chromo-trained aesthetic sense exceeded its education and told her that here were beauty and wonder. She had always liked the physical presentment of Joe, but it was a presentment of clothes, and she had thought the pleasingness of it due to the neatness and taste with which he dressed. She had never dreamed that this lurked beneath. It dazzled her. His skin was fair as a woman's, far more satiny, and no rudimentary hair-growth marred its white lustre. This she perceived, but all the rest, the perfection of line and strength and development, gave pleasure without her knowing why. There was a cleanness and grace about it. His face was like a cameo, and his lips, parted in a smile, made it very boyish. He smiled as he faced the audience, when the announcer, placing a hand on his shoulder, said: "Joe Fleming, the Pride of West Oakland." Cheers and hand-clappings stormed up, and she heard affectionate cries of "Oh, you, Joe!" Men shouted it at him again and again. He walked back to his corner. Never to her did he seem less a fighter than then. His eyes were too mild; there was not a spark of the beast in them, nor in his face, while his body seemed too fragile, what of its fairness and smoothness, and his face too boyish and sweet-tempered and intelligent. She did not have the expert's eye for the depth of chest, the wide nostrils, the recuperative lungs, and the muscles under their satin sheaths--crypts of energy wherein lurked the chemistry of destruction. To her he looked like a something of Dresden china, to be handled gently and with care, liable to be shattered to fragments by the first rough touch. John Ponta, stripped of his white sweater by the pulling and hauling of two of his seconds, came to the centre of the ring. She knew terror as she looked at him. Here was the fighter--the beast with a streak for a forehead, with beady eyes under lowering and bushy brows, flat-nosed, thick-lipped, sullen-mouthed. He was heavy-jawed, bull-necked, and the short, straight hair of the head seemed to her frightened eyes the stiff bristles on a hog's back. Here were coarseness and brutishness--a thing savage, primordial, ferocious. He was swarthy to blackness, and his body was covered with a hairy growth that matted like a dog's on his chest and shoulders. He was deep-chested, thick-legged, large-muscled, but unshapely. His muscles were knots, and he was gnarled and knobby, twisted out of beauty by excess of strength. "John Ponta, West Bay Athletic Club," said the announcer. A much smaller volume of cheers greeted him. It was evident that the crowd favored Joe with its sympathy. "Go in an' eat 'm, Ponta! Eat 'm up!" a voice shouted in the lull. This was received by scornful cries and groans. He did not like it, for his sullen mouth twisted into a half-snarl as he went back to his corner. He was too decided an atavism to draw the crowd's admiration. Instinctively the crowd disliked him. He was an animal, lacking in intelligence and spirit, a menace and a thing of fear, as the tiger and the snake are menaces and things of fear, better behind the bars of a cage than running free in the open. And he felt that the crowd had no relish for him. He was like an animal in the circle of its enemies, and he turned and glared at them with malignant eyes. Little Silverstein, shouting out Joe's name with high glee, shrank away from Ponta's gaze, shrivelled as in fierce heat, the sound gurgling and dying in his throat. Genevieve saw the little by-play, and as Ponta's eyes slowly swept round the circle of their hate and met hers, she, too, shrivelled and shrank back. The next moment they were past, pausing to centre long on Joe. It seemed to her that Ponta was working himself into a rage. Joe returned the gaze with mild boy's eyes, but his face grew serious. The announcer escorted a third man to the centre of the ring, a genial- faced young fellow in shirt-sleeves. "Eddy Jones, who will referee this contest," said the announcer. "Oh, you, Eddy!" men shouted in the midst of the applause, and it was apparent to Genevieve that he, too, was well beloved. Both men were being helped into the gloves by their seconds, and one of Ponta's seconds came over and examined the gloves before they went on Joe's hands. The referee called them to the centre of the ring. The seconds followed, and they made quite a group, Joe and Ponta facing each other, the referee in the middle, the seconds leaning with hands on one another's shoulders, their heads craned forward. The referee was talking, and all listened attentively. The group broke up. Again the announcer came to the front. "Joe Fleming fights at one hundred and twenty-eight," he said; "John Ponta at one hundred and forty. They will fight as long as one hand is free, and take care of themselves in the breakaway. The audience must remember that a decision must be given. There are no draws fought before this club." He crawled through the ropes and dropped from the ring to the floor. There was a scuttling in the corners as the seconds cleared out through the ropes, taking with them the stools and buckets. Only remained in the ring the two fighters and the referee. A gong sounded. The two men advanced rapidly to the centre. Their right hands extended and for a fraction of an instant met in a perfunctory shake. Then Ponta lashed out, savagely, right and left, and Joe escaped by springing back. Like a projectile, Ponta hurled himself after him and upon him. The fight was on. Genevieve clutched one hand to her breast and watched. She was bewildered by the swiftness and savagery of Ponta's assault, and by the multitude of blows he struck. She felt that Joe was surely being destroyed. At times she could not see his face, so obscured was it by the flying gloves. But she could hear the resounding blows, and with the sound of each blow she felt a sickening sensation in the pit of her stomach. She did not know that what she heard was the impact of glove on glove, or glove on shoulder, and that no damage was being done. She was suddenly aware that a change had come over the fight. Both men were clutching each other in a tense embrace; no blows were being struck at all. She recognized it to be what Joe had described to her as the "clinch." Ponta was struggling to free himself, Joe was holding on. The referee shouted, "Break!" Joe made an effort to get away, but Ponta got one hand free and Joe rushed back into a second clinch, to escape the blow. But this time, she noticed, the heel of his glove was pressed against Ponta's mouth and chin, and at the second "Break!" of the referee, Joe shoved his opponent's head back and sprang clear himself. For a brief several seconds she had an unobstructed view of her lover. Left foot a trifle advanced, knees slightly bent, he was crouching, with his head drawn well down between his shoulders and shielded by them. His hands were in position before him, ready either to attack or defend. The muscles of his body were tense, and as he moved about she could see them bunch up and writhe and crawl like live things under the white skin. But again Ponta was upon him and he was struggling to live. He crouched a bit more, drew his body more compactly together, and covered up with his hands, elbows, and forearms. Blows rained upon him, and it looked to her as though he were being beaten to death. But he was receiving the blows on his gloves and shoulders, rocking back and forth to the force of them like a tree in a storm, while the house cheered its delight. It was not until she understood this applause, and saw Silverstein half out of his seat and intensely, madly happy, and heard the "Oh, you, Joe's!" from many throats, that she realized that instead of being cruelly punished he was acquitting himself well. Then he would emerge for a moment, again to be enveloped and hidden in the whirlwind of Ponta's ferocity. CHAPTER V The gong sounded. It seemed they had been fighting half an hour, though from what Joe had told her she knew it had been only three minutes. With the crash of the gong Joe's seconds were through the ropes and running him into his corner for the blessed minute of rest. One man, squatting on the floor between his outstretched feet and elevating them by resting them on his knees, was violently chafing his legs. Joe sat on the stool, leaning far back into the corner, head thrown back and arms outstretched on the ropes to give easy expansion to the chest. With wide-open mouth he was breathing the towel-driven air furnished by two of the seconds, while listening to the counsel of still another second who talked with low voice in his ear and at the same time sponged off his face, shoulders, and chest. Hardly had all this been accomplished (it had taken no more than several seconds), when the gong sounded, the seconds scuttled through the ropes with their paraphernalia, and Joe and Ponta were advancing against each other to the centre of the ring. Genevieve had no idea that a minute could be so short. For a moment she felt that this rest had been cut, and was suspicious of she knew not what. Ponta lashed out, right and left, savagely as ever, and though Joe blocked the blows, such was the force of them that he was knocked backward several steps. Ponta was after him with the spring of a tiger. In the involuntary effort to maintain equilibrium, Joe had uncovered himself, flinging one arm out and lifting his head from beneath the sheltering shoulders. So swiftly had Ponta followed him, that a terrible swinging blow was coming at his unguarded jaw. He ducked forward and down, Ponta's fist just missing the back of his head. As he came back to the perpendicular, Ponta's left fist drove at him in a straight punch that would have knocked him backward through the ropes. Again, and with a swiftness an inappreciable fraction of time quicker than Ponta's, he ducked forward. Ponta's fist grazed the backward slope of the shoulder, and glanced off into the air. Ponta's right drove straight out, and the graze was repeated as Joe ducked into the safety of a clinch. Genevieve sighed with relief, her tense body relaxing and a faintness coming over her. The crowd was cheering madly. Silverstein was on his feet, shouting, gesticulating, completely out of himself. And even Mr. Clausen was yelling his enthusiasm, at the top of his lungs, into the ear of his nearest neighbor. The clinch was broken and the fight went on. Joe blocked, and backed, and slid around the ring, avoiding blows and living somehow through the whirlwind onslaughts. Rarely did he strike blows himself, for Ponta had a quick eye and could defend as well as attack, while Joe had no chance against the other's enormous vitality. His hope lay in that Ponta himself should ultimately consume his strength. But Genevieve was beginning to wonder why her lover did not fight. She grew angry. She wanted to see him wreak vengeance on this beast that had persecuted him so. Even as she waxed impatient, the chance came, and Joe whipped his fist to Ponta's mouth. It was a staggering blow. She saw Ponta's head go back with a jerk and the quick dye of blood upon his lips. The blow, and the great shout from the audience, angered him. He rushed like a wild man. The fury of his previous assaults was as nothing compared with the fury of this one. And there was no more opportunity for another blow. Joe was too busy living through the storm he had already caused, blocking, covering up, and ducking into the safety and respite of the clinches. But the clinch was not all safety and respite. Every instant of it was intense watchfulness, while the breakaway was still more dangerous. Genevieve had noticed, with a slight touch of amusement, the curious way in which Joe snuggled his body in against Ponta's in the clinches; but she had not realized why, until, in one such clinch, before the snuggling in could be effected, Ponta's fist whipped straight up in the air from under, and missed Joe's chin by a hair's-breadth. In another and later clinch, when she had already relaxed and sighed her relief at seeing him safely snuggled, Ponta, his chin over Joe's shoulder, lifted his right arm and struck a terrible downward blow on the small of the back. The crowd groaned its apprehension, while Joe quickly locked his opponent's arms to prevent a repetition of the blow. The gong struck, and after the fleeting minute of rest, they went at it again--in Joe's corner, for Ponta had made a rush to meet him clear across the ring. Where the blow had been over the kidneys, the white skin had become bright red. This splash of color, the size of the glove, fascinated and frightened Genevieve so that she could scarcely take her eyes from it. Promptly, in the next clinch, the blow was repeated; but after that Joe usually managed to give Ponta the heel of the glove on the mouth and so hold his head back. This prevented the striking of the blow; but three times more, before the round ended, Ponta effected the trick, each time striking the same vulnerable part. Another rest and another round went by, with no further damage to Joe and no diminution of strength on the part of Ponta. But in the beginning of the fifth round, Joe, caught in a corner, made as though to duck into a clinch. Just before it was effected, and at the precise moment that Ponta was ready with his own body to receive the snuggling in of Joe's body, Joe drew back slightly and drove with his fists at his opponent's unprotected stomach. Lightning-like blows they were, four of them, right and left; and heavy they were, for Ponta winced away from them and staggered back, half dropping his arms, his shoulders drooping forward and in, as though he were about to double in at the waist and collapse. Joe's quick eye saw the opening, and he smashed straight out upon Ponta's mouth, following instantly with a half swing, half hook, for the jaw. It missed, striking the cheek instead, and sending Ponta staggering sideways. The house was on its feet, shouting, to a man. Genevieve could hear men crying, "He's got 'm, he's got 'm!" and it seemed to her the beginning of the end. She, too, was out of herself; softness and tenderness had vanished; she exulted with each crushing blow her lover delivered. But Ponta's vitality was yet to be reckoned with. As, like a tiger, he had followed Joe up, Joe now followed him up. He made another half swing, half hook, for Ponta's jaw, and Ponta, already recovering his wits and strength, ducked cleanly. Joe's fist passed on through empty air, and so great was the momentum of the blow that it carried him around, in a half twirl, sideways. Then Ponta lashed out with his left. His glove landed on Joe's unguarded neck. Genevieve saw her lover's arms drop to his sides as his body lifted, went backward, and fell limply to the floor. The referee, bending over him, began to count the seconds, emphasizing the passage of each second with a downward sweep of his right arm. The audience was still as death. Ponta had partly turned to the house to receive the approval that was his due, only to be met by this chill, graveyard silence. Quick wrath surged up in him. It was unfair. His opponent only was applauded--if he struck a blow, if he escaped a blow; he, Ponta, who had forced the fighting from the start, had received no word of cheer. His eyes blazed as he gathered himself together and sprang to his prostrate foe. He crouched alongside of him, right arm drawn back and ready for a smashing blow the instant Joe should start to rise. The referee, still bending over and counting with his right hand, shoved Ponta back with his left. The latter, crouching, circled around, and the referee circled with him, thrusting him back and keeping between him and the fallen man. "Four--five--six--" the count went on, and Joe, rolling over on his face, squirmed weakly to draw himself to his knees. This he succeeded in doing, resting on one knee, a hand to the floor on either side and the other leg bent under him to help him rise. "Take the count! Take the count!" a dozen voices rang out from the audience. "For God's sake, take the count!" one of Joe's seconds cried warningly from the edge of the ring. Genevieve gave him one swift glance, and saw the young fellow's face, drawn and white, his lips unconsciously moving as he kept the count with the referee. "Seven--eight--nine--" the seconds went. The ninth sounded and was gone, when the referee gave Ponta a last backward shove and Joe came to his feet, bunched up, covered up, weak, but cool, very cool. Ponta hurled himself upon him with terrific force, delivering an uppercut and a straight punch. But Joe blocked the two, ducked a third, stepped to the side to avoid a fourth, and was then driven backward into a corner by a hurricane of blows. He was exceedingly weak. He tottered as he kept his footing, and staggered back and forth. His back was against the ropes. There was no further retreat. Ponta paused, as if to make doubly sure, then feinted with his left and struck fiercely with his right with all his strength. But Joe ducked into a clinch and was for a moment saved. Ponta struggled frantically to free himself. He wanted to give the finish to this foe already so far gone. But Joe was holding on for life, resisting the other's every effort, as fast as one hold or grip was torn loose finding a new one by which to cling. "Break!" the referee commanded. Joe held on tighter. "Make 'm break! Why the hell don't you make 'm break?" Ponta panted at the referee. Again the latter commanded the break. Joe refused, keeping, as he well knew, within his rights. Each moment of the clinch his strength was coming back to him, his brain was clearing, the cobwebs were disappearing from before his eyes. The round was young, and he must live, somehow, through the nearly three minutes of it yet to run. The referee clutched each by the shoulder and sundered them violently, passing quickly between them as he thrust them backward in order to make a clean break of it. The moment he was free, Ponta sprang at Joe like a wild animal bearing down its prey. But Joe covered up, blocked, and fell into a clinch. Again Ponta struggled to get free, Joe held on, and the referee thrust them apart. And again Joe avoided damage and clinched. Genevieve realized that in the clinches he was not being beaten--why, then, did not the referee let him hold on? It was cruel. She hated the genial-faced Eddy Jones in those moments, and she partly rose from her chair, her hands clenched with anger, the nails cutting into the palms till they hurt. The rest of the round, the three long minutes of it, was a succession of clinches and breaks. Not once did Ponta succeed in striking his opponent the deadly final blow. And Ponta was like a madman, raging because of his impotency in the face of his helpless and all but vanquished foe. One blow, only one blow, and he could not deliver it! Joe's ring experience and coolness saved him. With shaken consciousness and trembling body, he clutched and held on, while the ebbing life turned and flooded up in him again. Once, in his passion, unable to hit him, Ponta made as though to lift him up and hurl him to the floor. "V'y don't you bite him?" Silverstein taunted shrilly. In the stillness the sally was heard over the whole house, and the audience, relieved of its anxiety for its favorite, laughed with an uproariousness that had in it the note of hysteria. Even Genevieve felt that there was something irresistibly funny in the remark, and the relief of the audience was communicated to her; yet she felt sick and faint, and was overwrought with horror at what she had seen and was seeing. "Bite 'm! Bite 'm!" voices from the recovered audience were shouting. "Chew his ear off, Ponta! That's the only way you can get 'm! Eat 'm up! Eat 'm up! Oh, why don't you eat 'm up?" The effect was bad on Ponta. He became more frenzied than ever, and more impotent. He panted and sobbed, wasting his effort by too much effort, losing sanity and control and futilely trying to compensate for the loss by excess of physical endeavor. He knew only the blind desire to destroy, shook Joe in the clinches as a terrier might a rat, strained and struggled for freedom of body and arms, and all the while Joe calmly clutched and held on. The referee worked manfully and fairly to separate them. Perspiration ran down his face. It took all his strength to split those clinging bodies, and no sooner had he split them than Joe fell unharmed into another embrace and the work had to be done all over again. In vain, when freed, did Ponta try to avoid the clutching arms and twining body. He could not keep away. He had to come close in order to strike, and each time Joe baffled him and caught him in his arms. And Genevieve, crouched in the little dressing-room and peering through the peep-hole, was baffled, too. She was an interested party in what seemed a death-struggle--was not one of the fighters her Joe?--but the audience understood and she did not. The Game had not unveiled to her. The lure of it was beyond her. It was greater mystery than ever. She could not comprehend its power. What delight could there be for Joe in that brutal surging and straining of bodies, those fierce clutches, fiercer blows, and terrible hurts? Surely, she, Genevieve, offered more than that--rest, and content, and sweet, calm joy. Her bid for the heart of him and the soul of him was finer and more generous than the bid of the Game; yet he dallied with both--held her in his arms, but turned his head to listen to that other and siren call she could not understand. The gong struck. The round ended with a break in Ponta's corner. The white-faced young second was through the ropes with the first clash of sound. He seized Joe in his arms, lifted him clear of the floor, and ran with him across the ring to his own corner. His seconds worked over him furiously, chafing his legs, slapping his abdomen, stretching the hip- cloth out with their fingers so that he might breathe more easily. For the first time Genevieve saw the stomach-breathing of a man, an abdomen that rose and fell far more with every breath than her breast rose and fell after she had run for a car. The pungency of ammonia bit her nostrils, wafted to her from the soaked sponge wherefrom he breathed the fiery fumes that cleared his brain. He gargled his mouth and throat, took a suck at a divided lemon, and all the while the towels worked like mad, driving oxygen into his lungs to purge the pounding blood and send it back revivified for the struggle yet to come. His heated body was sponged with water, doused with it, and bottles were turned mouth-downward on his head. CHAPTER VI The gong for the sixth round struck, and both men advanced to meet each other, their bodies glistening with water. Ponta rushed two-thirds of the way across the ring, so intent was he on getting at his man before full recovery could be effected. But Joe had lived through. He was strong again, and getting stronger. He blocked several vicious blows and then smashed back, sending Ponta reeling. He attempted to follow up, but wisely forbore and contented himself with blocking and covering up in the whirlwind his blow had raised. The fight was as it had been at the beginning--Joe protecting, Ponta rushing. But Ponta was never at ease. He did not have it all his own way. At any moment, in his fiercest onslaughts, his opponent was liable to lash out and reach him. Joe saved his strength. He struck one blow to Ponta's ten, but his one blow rarely missed. Ponta overwhelmed him in the attacks, yet could do nothing with him, while Joe's tiger-like strokes, always imminent, compelled respect. They toned Ponta's ferocity. He was no longer able to go in with the complete abandon of destructiveness which had marked his earlier efforts. But a change was coming over the fight. The audience was quick to note it, and even Genevieve saw it by the beginning of the ninth round. Joe was taking the offensive. In the clinches it was he who brought his fist down on the small of the back, striking the terrible kidney blow. He did it once, in each clinch, but with all his strength, and he did it every clinch. Then, in the breakaways, he began to uppercut Ponta on the stomach, or to hook his jaw or strike straight out upon the mouth. But at first sign of a coming of a whirlwind, Joe would dance nimbly away and cover up. Two rounds of this went by, and three, but Ponta's strength, though perceptibly less, did not diminish rapidly. Joe's task was to wear down that strength, not with one blow, nor ten, but with blow after blow, without end, until that enormous strength should be beaten sheer out of its body. There was no rest for the man. Joe followed him up, step by step, his advancing left foot making an audible tap, tap, tap, on the hard canvas. Then there would come a sudden leap in, tiger-like, a blow struck, or blows, and a swift leap back, whereupon the left foot would take up again its tapping advance. When Ponta made his savage rushes, Joe carefully covered up, only to emerge, his left foot going tap, tap, tap, as he immediately followed up. Ponta was slowly weakening. To the crowd the end was a foregone conclusion. "Oh, you, Joe!" it yelled its admiration and affection. "It's a shame to take the money!" it mocked. "Why don't you eat 'm, Ponta? Go on in an' eat 'm!" In the one-minute intermissions Ponta's seconds worked over him as they had not worked before. Their calm trust in his tremendous vitality had been betrayed. Genevieve watched their excited efforts, while she listened to the white-faced second cautioning Joe. "Take your time," he was saying. "You've got 'm, but you got to take your time. I've seen 'm fight. He's got a punch to the end of the count. I've seen 'm knocked out and clean batty, an' go on punching just the same. Mickey Sullivan had 'm goin'. Puts 'm to the mat as fast as he crawls up, six times, an' then leaves an opening. Ponta reaches for his jaw, an two minutes afterward Mickey's openin' his eyes an' askin' what's doin'. So you've got to watch 'm. No goin' in an' absorbin' one of them lucky punches, now. I got money on this fight, but I don't call it mine till he's counted out." Ponta was being doused with water. As the gong sounded, one of his seconds inverted a water bottle on his head. He started toward the centre of the ring, and the second followed him for several steps, keeping the bottle still inverted. The referee shouted at him, and he fled the ring, dropping the bottle as he fled. It rolled over and over, the water gurgling out upon the canvas till the referee, with a quick flirt of his toe, sent the bottle rolling through the ropes. In all the previous rounds Genevieve had not seen Joe's fighting face which had been prefigured to her that morning in the department store. Sometimes his face had been quite boyish; other times, when taking his fiercest punishment, it had been bleak and gray; and still later, when living through and clutching and holding on, it had taken on a wistful expression. But now, out of danger himself and as he forced the fight, his fighting face came upon him. She saw it and shuddered. It removed him so far from her. She had thought she knew him, all of him, and held him in the hollow of her hand; but this she did not know--this face of steel, this mouth of steel, these eyes of steel flashing the light and glitter of steel. It seemed to her the passionless face of an avenging angel, stamped only with the purpose of the Lord. Ponta attempted one of his old-time rushes, but was stopped on the mouth. Implacable, insistent, ever menacing, never letting him rest, Joe followed him up. The round, the thirteenth, closed with a rush, in Ponta's corner. He attempted a rally, was brought to his knees, took the nine seconds' count, and then tried to clinch into safety, only to receive four of Joe's terrible stomach punches, so that with the gong he fell back, gasping, into the arms of his seconds. Joe ran across the ring to his own corner. "Now I'm going to get 'm," he said to his second. "You sure fixed 'm that time," the latter answered. "Nothin' to stop you now but a lucky punch. Watch out for it." Joe leaned forward, feet gathered under him for a spring, like a foot- racer waiting the start. He was waiting for the gong. When it sounded he shot forward and across the ring, catching Ponta in the midst of his seconds as he rose from his stool. And in the midst of his seconds he went down, knocked down by a right-hand blow. As he arose from the confusion of buckets, stools, and seconds, Joe put him down again. And yet a third time he went down before he could escape from his own corner. Joe had at last become the whirlwind. Genevieve remembered his "just watch, you'll know when I go after him." The house knew it, too. It was on its feet, every voice raised in a fierce yell. It was the blood-cry of the crowd, and it sounded to her like what she imagined must be the howling of wolves. And what with confidence in her lover's victory she found room in her heart to pity Ponta. In vain he struggled to defend himself, to block, to cover up, to duck, to clinch into a moment's safety. That moment was denied him. Knockdown after knockdown was his portion. He was knocked to the canvas backwards, and sideways, was punched in the clinches and in the breakaways--stiff, jolty blows that dazed his brain and drove the strength from his muscles. He was knocked into the corners and out again, against the ropes, rebounding, and with another blow against the ropes once more. He fanned the air with his arms, showering savage blows upon emptiness. There was nothing human left in him. He was the beast incarnate, roaring and raging and being destroyed. He was smashed down to his knees, but refused to take the count, staggering to his feet only to be met stiff- handed on the mouth and sent hurling back against the ropes. In sore travail, gasping, reeling, panting, with glazing eyes and sobbing breath, grotesque and heroic, fighting to the last, striving to get at his antagonist, he surged and was driven about the ring. And in that moment Joe's foot slipped on the wet canvas. Ponta's swimming eyes saw and knew the chance. All the fleeing strength of his body gathered itself together for the lightning lucky punch. Even as Joe slipped the other smote him, fairly on the point of the chin. He went over backward. Genevieve saw his muscles relax while he was yet in the air, and she heard the thud of his head on the canvas. The noise of the yelling house died suddenly. The referee, stooping over the inert body, was counting the seconds. Ponta tottered and fell to his knees. He struggled to his feet, swaying back and forth as he tried to sweep the audience with his hatred. His legs were trembling and bending under him; he was choking and sobbing, fighting to breathe. He reeled backward, and saved himself from falling by a blind clutching for the ropes. He clung there, drooping and bending and giving in all his body, his head upon his chest, until the referee counted the fatal tenth second and pointed to him in token that he had won. He received no applause, and he squirmed through the ropes, snakelike, into the arms of his seconds, who helped him to the floor and supported him down the aisle into the crowd. Joe remained where he had fallen. His seconds carried him into his corner and placed him on the stool. Men began climbing into the ring, curious to see, but were roughly shoved out by the policemen, who were already there. Genevieve looked on from her peep-hole. She was not greatly perturbed. Her lover had been knocked out. In so far as disappointment was his, she shared it with him; but that was all. She even felt glad in a way. The Game had played him false, and he was more surely hers. She had heard of knockouts from him. It often took men some time to recover from the effects. It was not till she heard the seconds asking for the doctor that she felt really worried. They passed his limp body through the ropes to the stage, and it disappeared beyond the limits of her peep-hole. Then the door of her dressing-room was thrust open and a number of men came in. They were carrying Joe. He was laid down on the dusty floor, his head resting on the knee of one of the seconds. No one seemed surprised by her presence. She came over and knelt beside him. His eyes were closed, his lips slightly parted. His wet hair was plastered in straight locks about his face. She lifted one of his hands. It was very heavy, and the lifelessness of it shocked her. She looked suddenly at the faces of the seconds and of the men about her. They seemed frightened, all save one, and he was cursing, in a low voice, horribly. She looked up and saw Silverstein standing beside her. He, too, seemed frightened. He rested a kindly hand on her shoulder, tightening the fingers with a sympathetic pressure. This sympathy frightened her. She began to feel dazed. There was a bustle as somebody entered the room. The person came forward, proclaiming irritably: "Get out! Get out! You've got to clear the room!" A number of men silently obeyed. "Who are you?" he abruptly demanded of Genevieve. "A girl, as I'm alive!" "That's all right, she's his girl," spoke up a young fellow she recognized as her guide. "And you?" the other man blurted explosively at Silverstein. "I'm vit her," he answered truculently. "She works for him," explained the young fellow. "It's all right, I tell you." The newcomer grunted and knelt down. He passed a hand over the damp head, grunted again, and arose to his feet. "This is no case for me," he said. "Send for the ambulance." Then the thing became a dream to Genevieve. Maybe she had fainted, she did not know, but for what other reason should Silverstein have his arm around her supporting her? All the faces seemed blurred and unreal. Fragments of a discussion came to her ears. The young fellow who had been her guide was saying something about reporters. "You vill get your name in der papers," she could hear Silverstein saying to her, as from a great distance; and she knew she was shaking her head in refusal. There was an eruption of new faces, and she saw Joe carried out on a canvas stretcher. Silverstein was buttoning the long overcoat and drawing the collar about her face. She felt the night air on her cheek, and looking up saw the clear, cold stars. She jammed into a seat. Silverstein was beside her. Joe was there, too, still on his stretcher, with blankets over his naked body; and there was a man in blue uniform who spoke kindly to her, though she did not know what he said. Horses' hoofs were clattering, and she was lurching somewhere through the night. Next, light and voices, and a smell of iodoform. This must be the receiving hospital, she thought, this the operating table, those the doctors. They were examining Joe. One of them, a dark-eyed, dark-bearded, foreign-looking man, rose up from bending over the table. "Never saw anything like it," he was saying to another man. "The whole back of the skull." Her lips were hot and dry, and there was an intolerable ache in her throat. But why didn't she cry? She ought to cry; she felt it incumbent upon her. There was Lottie (there had been another change in the dream), across the little narrow cot from her, and she was crying. Somebody was saying something about the coma of death. It was not the foreign-looking doctor, but somebody else. It did not matter who it was. What time was it? As if in answer, she saw the faint white light of dawn on the windows. "I was going to be married to-day," she said to Lottie. And from across the cot his sister wailed, "Don't, don't!" and, covering her face, sobbed afresh. This, then, was the end of it all--of the carpets, and furniture, and the little rented house; of the meetings and walking out, the thrilling nights of starshine, the deliciousness of surrender, the loving and the being loved. She was stunned by the awful facts of this Game she did not understand--the grip it laid on men's souls, its irony and faithlessness, its risks and hazards and fierce insurgences of the blood, making woman pitiful, not the be-all and end-all of man, but his toy and his pastime; to woman his mothering and caretaking, his moods and his moments, but to the Game his days and nights of striving, the tribute of his head and hand, his most patient toil and wildest effort, all the strain and the stress of his being--to the Game, his heart's desire. Silverstein was helping her to her feet. She obeyed blindly, the daze of the dream still on her. His hand grasped her arm and he was turning her toward the door. "Oh, why don't you kiss him?" Lottie cried out, her dark eyes mournful and passionate. Genevieve stooped obediently over the quiet clay and pressed her lips to the lips yet warm. The door opened and she passed into another room. There stood Mrs. Silverstein, with angry eyes that snapped vindictively at sight of her boy's clothes. Silverstein looked beseechingly at his spouse, but she burst forth savagely:-- "Vot did I tell you, eh? Vot did I tell you? You vood haf a bruiser for your steady! An' now your name vill be in all der papers! At a prize fight--vit boy's clothes on! You liddle strumpet! You hussy! You--" But a flood of tears welled into her eyes and voice, and with her fat arms outstretched, ungainly, ludicrous, holy with motherhood, she tottered over to the quiet girl and folded her to her breast. She muttered gasping, inarticulate love-words, rocking slowly to and fro the while, and patting Genevieve's shoulder with her ponderous hand. 
38443	----	file was produced from scans of public domain material produced by Microsoft for their Live Search Books site.) Illustration: The Fighter in the outdoor ring. THE CROXLEY MASTER A GREAT TALE OF THE PRIZE RING BY A. CONAN DOYLE Illustration: The Fighter in the outdoor ring. NEW YORK McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO. MCMVII _Copyright, 1907, by McClure, Phillips & Co._ _THE CROXLEY MASTER_ I Mr. Robert Montgomery was seated at his desk, his head upon his hands, in a state of the blackest despondency. Before him was the open ledger with the long columns of Dr. Oldacre's prescriptions. At his elbow lay the wooden tray with the labels in various partitions, the cork box, the lumps of twisted sealing-wax, while in front a rank of empty bottles waited to be filled. But his spirits were too low for work. He sat in silence, with his fine shoulders bowed and his head upon his hands. Outside, through the grimy surgery window over a foreground of blackened brick and slate, a line of enormous chimneys like Cyclopean pillars upheld the lowering, dun-coloured cloud-bank. For six days in the week they spouted smoke, but to-day the furnace fires were banked, for it was Sunday. Sordid and polluting gloom hung over a district blighted and blasted by the greed of man. There was nothing in the surroundings to cheer a desponding soul, but it was more than his dismal environment which weighed upon the medical assistant. His trouble was deeper and more personal. The winter session was approaching. He should be back again at the University completing the last year which would give him his medical degree; but alas! he had not the money with which to pay his class fees, nor could he imagine how he could procure it. Sixty pounds were wanted to make his career, and it might have been as many thousands for any chance there seemed to be of his obtaining it. He was roused from his black meditation by the entrance of Dr. Oldacre himself, a large, clean-shaven, respectable man, with a prim manner and an austere face. He had prospered exceedingly by the support of the local Church interest, and the rule of his life was never by word or action to run a risk of offending the sentiment which had made him. His standard of respectability and of dignity was exceedingly high, and he expected the same from his assistants. His appearance and words were always vaguely benevolent. A sudden impulse came over the despondent student. He would test the reality of this philanthropy. "I beg your pardon, Dr. Oldacre," said he, rising from his chair; "I have a great favour to ask of you." The doctor's appearance was not encouraging. His mouth suddenly tightened, and his eyes fell. "Yes, Mr. Montgomery?" "You are aware, sir, that I need only one more session to complete my course." "So you have told me." "It is very important to me, sir." "Naturally." "The fees, Dr. Oldacre, would amount to about sixty pounds." "I am afraid that my duties call me elsewhere, Mr. Montgomery." "One moment, sir! I had hoped, sir, that perhaps, if I signed a paper promising you interest upon your money, you would advance this sum to me. I will pay you back, sir, I really will. Or, if you like, I will work it off after I am qualified." The doctor's lips had thinned into a narrow line. His eyes were raised again, and sparkled indignantly. "Your request is unreasonable, Mr. Montgomery. I am surprised that you should have made it. Consider, sir, how many thousands of medical students there are in this country. No doubt there are many of them who have a difficulty in finding their fees. Am I to provide for them all? Or why should I make an exception in your favour? I am grieved and disappointed, Mr. Montgomery, that you should have put me into the painful position of having to refuse you." He turned upon his heel, and walked with offended dignity out of the surgery. The student smiled bitterly, and turned to his work of making up the morning prescriptions. It was poor and unworthy work--work which any weakling might have done as well, and this was a man of exceptional nerve and sinew. But, such as it was, it brought him his board and £1 a week, enough to help him during the summer months and let him save a few pounds towards his winter keep. But those class fees! Where were they to come from? He could not save them out of his scanty wage. Dr. Oldacre would not advance them. He saw no way of earning them. His brains were fairly good, but brains of that quality were a drug in the market. He only excelled in his strength; and where was he to find a customer for that? But the ways of Fate are strange, and his customer was at hand. "Look y'ere!" said a voice at the door. Montgomery looked up, for the voice was a loud and rasping one. A young man stood at the entrance--a stocky, bull-necked young miner, in tweed Sunday clothes and an aggressive necktie. He was a sinister-looking figure, with dark, insolent eyes, and the jaw and throat of a bulldog. "Look y'ere!" said he again. "Why hast thou not sent t' medicine oop as thy master ordered?" Montgomery had become accustomed to the brutal frankness of the Northern worker. At first it had enraged him, but after a time he had grown callous to it, and accepted it as it was meant. But this was something different. It was insolence--brutal, overbearing insolence, with physical menace behind it. "What name?" he asked coldly. "Barton. Happen I may give thee cause to mind that name, yoong man. Mak' oop t' wife's medicine this very moment, look ye, or it will be the worse for thee." Montgomery smiled. A pleasant sense of relief thrilled softly through him. What blessed safety-valve was this through which his jangled nerves might find some outlet. The provocation was so gross, the insult so unprovoked, that he could have none of those qualms which take the edge off a man's mettle. He finished sealing the bottle upon which he was occupied, and he addressed it and placed it carefully in the rack. "Look here!" said he turning round to the miner, "your medicine will be made up in its turn and sent down to you. I don't allow folk in the surgery. Wait outside in the waiting-room, if you wish to wait at all." "Yoong man," said the miner, "thou's got to mak' t' wife's medicine here, and now, and quick, while I wait and watch thee, or else happen thou might need some medicine thysel' before all is over." "I shouldn't advise you to fasten a quarrel upon me." Montgomery was speaking in the hard, staccato voice of a man who is holding himself in with difficulty. "You'll save trouble if you'll go quietly. If you don't you'll be hurt. Ah, you would? Take it, then!" The blows were almost simultaneous--a savage swing which whistled past Montgomery's ear, and a straight drive which took the workman on the chin. Luck was with the assistant. That single whizzing uppercut, and the way in which it was delivered, warned him that he had a formidable man to deal with. But if he had underrated his antagonist, his antagonist had also underrated him, and had laid himself open to a fatal blow. The miner's head had come with a crash against the corner of the surgery shelves, and he had dropped heavily onto the ground. There he lay with his bandy legs drawn up and his hands thrown abroad, the blood trickling over the surgery tiles. "Had enough?" asked the assistant, breathing fiercely through his nose. But no answer came. The man was insensible. And then the danger of his position came upon Montgomery, and he turned as white as his antagonist. A Sunday, the immaculate Dr. Oldacre with his pious connection, a savage brawl with a patient; he would irretrievably lose his situation if the facts came out. It was not much of a situation, but he could not get another without a reference, and Oldacre might refuse him one. Without money for his classes, and without a situation--what was to become of him? It was absolute ruin. But perhaps he could escape exposure after all. He seized his insensible adversary, dragged him out into the centre of the room, loosened his collar, and squeezed the surgery sponge over his face. He sat up at last with a gasp and a scowl. "Domn thee, thou's spoilt my necktie," said he, mopping up the water from his breast. "I'm sorry I hit you so hard," said Montgomery, apologetically. "Thou hit me hard! I could stan' such fly-flappin' all day. 'Twas this here press that cracked my pate for me, and thou art a looky man to be able to boast as thou hast outed me. And now I'd be obliged to thee if thou wilt give me t' wife's medicine." Montgomery gladly made it up and handed it to the miner. "You are weak still," said he. "Won't you stay awhile and rest?" "T' wife wants her medicine," said the man, and lurched out at the door. The assistant, looking after him, saw him rolling with an uncertain step down the street, until a friend met him, and they walked on arm-in-arm. The man seemed in his rough Northern fashion to bear no grudge, and so Montgomery's fears left him. There was no reason why the doctor should know anything about it. He wiped the blood from the floor, put the surgery in order, and went on with his interrupted task, hoping that he had come scathless out of a very dangerous business. Yet all day he was aware of a sense of vague uneasiness, which sharpened into dismay when, late in the afternoon, he was informed that three gentlemen had called and were waiting for him in the surgery. A coroner's inquest, a descent of detectives, an invasion of angry relatives--all sorts of possibilities rose to scare him. With tense nerves and a rigid face he went to meet his visitors. They were a very singular trio. Each was known to him by sight; but what on earth the three could be doing together, and, above all, what they could expect from _him_, was a most inexplicable problem. The first was Sorley Wilson, the son of the owner of the Nonpareil Coalpit. He was a young blood of twenty, heir to a fortune, a keen sportsman, and down for the Easter Vacation from Magdalene College. He sat now upon the edge of the surgery table, looking in thoughtful silence at Montgomery, and twisting the ends of his small, black, waxed moustache. The second was Purvis, the publican, owner of the chief beershop, and well known as the local bookmaker. He was a coarse, clean-shaven man, whose fiery face made a singular contrast with his ivory-white bald head. He had shrewd, light-blue eyes with foxy lashes, and he also leaned forward in silence from his chair, a fat, red hand upon either knee, and stared critically at the young assistant. So did the third visitor, Fawcett, the horsebreaker, who leaned back, his long, thin legs, with their box-cloth riding-gaiters, thrust out in front of him, tapping his protruding teeth with his riding-whip, with anxious thought in every line of his rugged, bony face. Publican, exquisite, and horsebreaker were all three equally silent, equally earnest, and equally critical. Montgomery, seated in the midst of them, looked from one to the other. "Well, gentlemen?" he observed, but no answer came. The position was embarrassing. "No," said the horsebreaker, at last. "No. It's off. It's nowt." "Stand oop, lad; let's see thee standin'." It was the publican who spoke. Montgomery obeyed. He would learn all about it, no doubt, if he were patient. He stood up and turned slowly round, as if in front of his tailor. "It's off! It's off!" cried the horsebreaker. "Why, mon, the Master would break him over his knee." "Oh, that behanged for a yarn!" said the young Cantab. "You can drop out if you like, Fawcett, but I'll see this thing through, if I have to do it alone. I don't hedge a penny. I like the cut of him a great deal better than I liked Ted Barton." "Look at Barton's shoulders, Mr. Wilson." "Lumpiness isn't always strength. Give me nerve and fire and breed. That's what wins." "Ay, sir, you have it theer--you have it theer!" said the fat, red-faced publican, in a thick, suety voice. "It's the same wi' poops. Get 'em clean-bred an' fine, and they'll yark the thick 'uns--yark 'em out o' their skins." "He's ten good pund on the light side," growled the horsebreaker. "He's a welter weight, anyhow." "A hundred and thirty." "A hundred and fifty, if he's an ounce." "Well, the master doesn't scale much more than that." "A hundred and seventy-five." "That was when he was hog-fat and living high. Work the grease out of him, and I lay there's no great difference between them. Have you been weighed lately, Mr. Montgomery?" It was the first direct question which had been asked him. He had stood in the midst of them, like a horse at a fair, and he was just beginning to wonder whether he was more angry or amused. "I am just eleven stone," said he. "I said that he was a welter weight." "But suppose you was trained?" said the publican. "Wot then?" "I am always in training." "In a manner of speakin', do doubt, he _is_ always in trainin'," remarked the horsebreaker. "But trainin' for everyday work ain't the same as trainin' with a trainer; and I dare bet, with all respec' to your opinion, Mr. Wilson, that there's half a stone of tallow on him at this minute." The young Cantab put his fingers on the assistant's upper arm. Then with his other hand on his wrist he bent the forearm sharply, and felt the biceps, as round and hard as a cricket-ball, spring up under his fingers. "Feel that!" said he. The publican and horsebreaker felt it with an air of reverence. "Good lad! He'll do yet!" cried Purvis. "Gentlemen," said Montgomery, "I think that you will acknowledge that I have been very patient with you. I have listened to all that you have to say about my personal appearance, and now I must really beg that you will have the goodness to tell me what is the matter." They all sat down in their serious, businesslike way. "That's easy done, Mr. Montgomery," said the fat-voiced publican. "But before sayin' anything, we had to wait and see whether, in a way of speakin', there was any need for us to say anything at all. Mr. Wilson thinks there is. Mr. Fawcett, who has the same right to his opinion, bein' also a backer and one o' the committee, thinks the other way." "I thought him too light built, and I think so now," said the horsebreaker, still tapping his prominent teeth with the metal head of his riding-whip. "But happen he may pull through; and he's a fine-made, buirdly young chap, so if you mean to back him, Mr. Wilson----" "Which I do." "And you, Purvis?" "I ain't one to go back, Fawcett." "Well, I'll stan' to my share of the purse." "And well I knew you would," said Purvis, "for it would be somethin' new to find Isaac Fawcett as a spoil-sport. Well, then, we make up the hundred for the stake among us, and the fight stands--always supposin' the young man is willin'." "Excuse all this rot, Mr. Montgomery," said the University man, in a genial voice. "We've begun at the wrong end, I know, but we'll soon straighten it out, and I hope that you will see your way to falling in with our views. In the first place, you remember the man whom you knocked out this morning? He is Barton--the famous Ted Barton." "I'm sure, sir, you may well be proud to have outed him in one round," said the publican. "Why, it took Morris, the ten-stone-six champion, a deal more trouble than that before he put Barton to sleep. You've done a fine performance, sir, and happen you'll do a finer, if you give yourself the chance." "I never heard of Ted Barton, beyond seeing the name on a medicine label," said the assistant. "Well, you may take it from me that he's a slaughterer," said the horsebreaker. "You've taught him a lesson that he needed, for it was always a word and a blow with him, and the word alone was worth five shillin' in a public court. He won't be so ready now to shake his nief in the face of everyone he meets. However, that's neither here nor there." Montgomery looked at them in bewilderment. "For goodness sake, gentlemen, tell me what it is you want me to do!" he cried. "We want you to fight Silas Craggs, better known as the Master of Croxley." "But why?" "Because Ted Barton was to have fought him next Saturday. He was the champion of the Wilson coal-pits, and the other was the Master of the iron-folk down at the Croxley smelters. We'd matched our man for a purse of a hundred against the Master. But you've queered our man, and he can't face such a battle with a two-inch cut at the back of his head. There's only one thing to be done, sir, and that is for you to take his place. If you can lick Ted Barton you may lick the Master of Croxley; but if you don't we're done, for there's no one else who is in the same street with him in this district. It's twenty rounds, two-ounce gloves, Queensberry rules, and a decision on points if you fight to the finish." For a moment the absurdity of the thing drove every other thought out of Montgomery's head. But then there came a sudden revulsion. A hundred pounds!--all he wanted to complete his education was lying there ready to his hand, if only that hand were strong enough to pick it up. He had thought bitterly that morning that there was no market for his strength, but here was one where his muscle might earn more in an hour than his brains in a year. But a chill of doubt came over him. "How can I fight for the coal-pits?" said he. "I am not connected with them." "Eh, lad, but thou art!" cried old Purvis. "We've got it down in writin', and it's clear enough. 'Any one connected with the coal-pits.' Doctor Oldacre is the coal-pit club doctor; thou art his assistant. What more can they want?" "Yes, that's right enough," said the Cantab. "It would be a very sporting thing of you, Mr. Montgomery, if you would come to our help when we are in such a hole. Of course, you might not like to take the hundred pounds; but I have no doubt that, in the case of your winning, we could arrange that it should take the form of a watch or piece of plate, or any other shape which might suggest itself to you. You see, you are responsible for our having lost our champion, so we really feel that we have a claim upon you." "Give me a moment, gentlemen. It is very unexpected. I am afraid the doctor would never consent to my going--in fact, I am sure that he would not." "But he need never know--not before the fight, at any rate. We are not bound to give the name of our man. So long as he is within the weight limits on the day of the fight, that is all that concerns any one." The adventure and the profit would either of them have attracted Montgomery. The two combined were irresistible. "Gentlemen," said he, "I'll do it!" The three sprang from their seats. The publican had seized his right hand, the horse-dealer his left, and the Cantab slapped him on the back. "Good lad! good lad!" croaked the publican. "Eh, mon, but if thou yark him, thou'll rise in one day from being just a common doctor to the best-known mon 'twixt here and Bradford. Thou art a witherin' tyke, thou art, and no mistake; and if thou beat the Master of Croxley, thou'll find all the beer thou want for the rest of thy life waiting for thee at the Four Sacks." "It is the most sporting thing I ever heard of in my life," said young Wilson. "By George, sir, if you pull it off, you've got the constituency in your pocket, if you care to stand. You know the outhouse in my garden?" "Next the road?" "Exactly. I turned it into a gymnasium for Ted Barton. You'll find all you want there: clubs, punching ball, bars, dumb-bells, everything. Then you'll want a sparring partner. Ogilvy has been acting for Barton, but we don't think that he is class enough. Barton bears you no grudge. He's a good-hearted fellow, though cross-grained with strangers. He looked upon you as a stranger this morning, but he says he knows you now. He is quite ready to spar with you for practice, and he will come at any hour you will name." "Thank you; I will let you know the hour," said Montgomery; and so the committee departed jubilant upon their way. The medical assistant sat for a little time in the surgery turning it over in his mind. He had been trained originally at the University by the man who had been middle-weight champion in his day. It was true that his teacher was long past his prime, slow upon his feet and stiff in his joints, but even so he was still a tough antagonist; but Montgomery had found at last that he could more than hold his own with him. He had won the University medal, and his teacher, who had trained so many students, was emphatic in his opinion that he had never had one who was in the same class with him. He had been exhorted to go in for the Amateur Championships, but he had no particular ambition in that direction. Once he had put on the gloves with Hammer Tunstall in a booth at a fair, and had fought three rattling rounds, in which he had the worst of it, but had made the prize-fighter stretch himself to the uttermost. There was his whole record, and was it enough to encourage him to stand up to the Master of Croxley? He had never heard of the Master before, but then he had lost touch of the ring during the last few years of hard work. After all, what did it matter? If he won, there was the money, which meant so much to him. If he lost, it would only mean a thrashing. He could take punishment without flinching, of that he was certain. If there were only one chance in a hundred of pulling it off, then it was worth his while to attempt it. Dr. Oldacre, new come from church, with an ostentatious Prayer-book in his kid-gloved hand, broke in upon his meditation. "You don't go to service, I observe, Mr. Montgomery," said he, coldly. "No, sir; I have had some business to detain me." "It is very near to my heart that my household should set a good example. There are so few educated people in this district that a great responsibility devolves upon us. If we do not live up to the highest, how can we expect these poor workers to do so? It is a dreadful thing to reflect that the parish takes a great deal more interest in an approaching glove-fight than in their religious duties." "A glove-fight, sir?" said Montgomery, guiltily. "I believe that to be the correct term. One of my patients tells me that it is the talk of the district. A local ruffian, a patient of ours, by the way, is matched against a pugilist over at Croxley. I cannot understand why the law does not step in and stop so degrading an exhibition. It is really a prize-fight." "A glove fight, you said." "I am informed that a two-ounce glove is an evasion by which they dodge the law, and make it difficult for the police to interfere. They contend for a sum of money. It seems dreadful and almost incredible--does it not?--to think that such scenes can be enacted within a few miles of our peaceful home. But you will realize, Mr. Montgomery, that while there are such influences for us to counteract, it is very necessary that we should live up to our highest." The doctor's sermon would have had more effect if the assistant had not once or twice had occasion to test his highest and come upon it at unexpectedly humble elevations. It is always so particularly easy to "compound for sins we're most inclined to by damning those we have no mind to." In any case, Montgomery felt that of all the men concerned in such a fight--promoters, backers, spectators--it is the actual fighter who holds the strongest and most honourable position. His conscience gave him no concern upon the subject. Endurance and courage are virtues, not vices, and brutality is, at least, better than effeminacy. There was a little tobacco-shop at the corner of the street, where Montgomery got his bird's-eye and also his local information, for the shopman was a garrulous soul, who knew everything about the affairs of the district. The assistant strolled down there after tea and asked, in a casual way, whether the tobacconist had ever heard of the Master of Croxley. "Heard of him! Heard of him!" the little man could hardly articulate in his astonishment. "Why, sir, he's the first mon o' the district, an' his name's as well known in the West Riding as the winner o' t' Derby. But Lor', sir"--here he stopped and rummaged among a heap of papers. "They are makin' a fuss about him on account o' his fight wi' Ted Barton, and so the _Croxley Herald_ has his life an' record, an' here it is, an' thou canst read it for thysel'." The sheet of the paper which he held up was a lake of print around an islet of illustration. The latter was a coarse wood-cut of a pugilist's head and neck set in a cross-barred jersey. It was a sinister but powerful face, the face of a debauched hero, clean-shaven, strongly eyebrowed, keen-eyed, with a huge aggressive jaw and an animal dewlap beneath it. The long, obstinate cheeks ran flush up to the narrow, sinister eyes. The mighty neck came down square from the ears and curved outwards into shoulders, which had lost nothing at the hands of the local artist. Above was written "Silas Craggs," and beneath, "The Master of Croxley." "Thou'll find all about him there, sir," said the tobacconist. "He's a witherin' tyke, he is, and we're proud to have him in the county. If he hadn't broke his leg he'd have been champion of England." "Broke his leg, has he?" "Yes, and it set badly. They ca' him owd K behind his bock, for thot is how his two legs look. But his arms--well, if they was both stropped to a bench, as the sayin' is, I wonder where the champion of England would be then." "I'll take this with me," said Montgomery; and putting the paper into his pocket he returned home. It was not a cheering record which he read there. The whole history of the Croxley Master was given in full, his many victories, his few defeats. "Born in 1857," said the provincial biographer, "Silas Craggs, better known in sporting circles as The Master of Croxley, is now in his fortieth year." "Hang it, I'm only twenty-three," said Montgomery to himself, and read on more cheerfully. "Having in his youth shown a surprising aptitude for the game, he fought his way up among his comrades, until he became the recognized champion of the district and won the proud title which he still holds. Ambitious of a more than local fame, he secured a patron, and fought his first fight against Jack Barton, of Birmingham, in May, 1880, at the old Loiterers' Club. Craggs, who fought at ten-stone-two at the time, had the better of fifteen rattling rounds, and gained an award on points against the Midlander. Having disposed of James Dunn, of Rotherhithe, Cameron, of Glasgow, and a youth named Fernie, he was thought so highly of by the fancy that he was matched against Ernest Willox, at that time middle-weight champion of the North of England, and defeated him in a hard-fought battle, knocking him out in the tenth round after a punishing contest. At this period it looked as if the very highest honours of the ring were within the reach of the young Yorkshireman, but he was laid upon the shelf by a most unfortunate accident. The kick of a horse broke his thigh, and for a year he was compelled to rest himself. When he returned to his work the fracture had set badly, and his activity was much impaired. It was owing to this that he was defeated in seven rounds by Willox, the man whom he had previously beaten, and afterwards by James Shaw, of London, though the latter acknowledged that he had found the toughest customer of his career. Undismayed by his reverses, the Master adapted the style of his fighting to his physical disabilities and resumed his career of victory--defeating Norton (the black), Bobby Wilson, and Levy Cohen, the latter a heavy-weight. Conceding two stone, he fought a draw with the famous Billy McQuire, and afterwards, for a purse of fifty pounds, he defeated Sam Hare at the Pelican Club, London. In 1891 a decision was given against him upon a foul when fighting a winning fight against Jim Taylor, the Australian middle-weight, and so mortified was he by the decision, that he withdrew from the ring. Since then he has hardly fought at all save to accommodate any local aspirant who may wish to learn the difference between a bar-room scramble and a scientific contest. The latest of these ambitious souls comes from the Wilson coal-pits, which have undertaken to put up a stake of £100 and back their local champion. There are various rumours afloat as to who their representative is to be, the name of Ted Barton being freely mentioned; but the betting, which is seven to one on the Master against any untried man, is a fair reflection of the feeling of the community." Montgomery read it over twice, and it left him with a very serious face. No light matter this which he had undertaken; no battle with a rough-and-tumble fighter who presumed upon a local reputation. The man's record showed that he was first-class--or nearly so. There were a few points in his favour, and he must make the most of them. There was age--twenty-three against forty. There was an old ring proverb that "Youth will be served," but the annals of the ring offer a great number of exceptions. A hard veteran, full of cool valour and ring-craft, could give ten or fifteen years and a beating to most striplings. He could not rely too much upon his advantage in age. But then there was the lameness; that must surely count for a great deal. And, lastly, there was the chance that the Master might underrate his opponent, that he might be remiss in his training, and refuse to abandon his usual way of life, if he thought that he had an easy task before him. In a man of his age and habits this seemed very possible. Montgomery prayed that it might be so. Meanwhile, if his opponent were the best man who ever jumped the ropes into a ring, his own duty was clear. He must prepare himself carefully, throw away no chance, and do the very best that he could. But he knew enough to appreciate the difference which exists in boxing, as in every sport, between the amateur and the professional. The coolness, the power of hitting, above all the capability of taking punishment, count for so much. Those specially developed, gutta-percha-like abdominal muscles of the hardened pugilist will take without flinching a blow which would leave another man writhing on the ground. Such things are not to be acquired in a week, but all that could be done in a week should be done. The medical assistant had a good basis to start from. He was 5 feet 11 inches--tall enough for anything on two legs, as the old ring men used to say--lithe and spare, with the activity of a panther, and a strength which had hardly yet ever found its limitations. His muscular development was finely hard, but his power came rather from that higher nerve-energy which counts for nothing upon a measuring tape. He had the well-curved nose, and the widely-opened eye which never yet were seen upon the face of a craven, and behind everything he had the driving force, which came from the knowledge that his whole career was at stake upon the contest. The three backers rubbed their hands when they saw him at work punching the ball in the gymnasium next morning; and Fawcett, the horsebreaker, who had written to Leeds to hedge his bets, sent a wire to cancel the letter, and to lay another fifty at the market price of seven to one. Montgomery's chief difficulty was to find time for his training without any interference from the doctor. His work took him a large part of the day, but as the visiting was done on foot, and considerable distances had to be traversed, it was a training in itself. For the rest, he punched the swinging ball and worked with the dumb-bells for an hour every morning and evening, and boxed twice a day with Ted Barton in the gymnasium, gaining as much profit as could be got from a rushing, two-handed slogger. Barton was full of admiration for his cleverness and quickness, but doubtful about his strength. Hard hitting was the feature of his own style, and he exacted it from others. "Lord, sir, that's a turble poor poonch for an eleven-stone man!" he would cry. "Thou wilt have to hit harder than that afore t' Master will know that thou art theer. Ah, thot's better, mon, thot's fine!" he would add, as his opponent lifted him across the room on the end of a right counter. "Thot's how I likes to feel 'em. Happen thou'lt pull through yet." He chuckled with joy when Montgomery knocked him into a corner. "Eh, mon, thou art comin' along grand. Thou hast fair yarked me off my legs. Do it again, lad, do it again!" The only part of Montgomery's training which came within the doctor's observation was his diet, and that puzzled him considerably. "You will excuse my remarking, Mr. Montgomery, that you are becoming rather particular in your tastes. Such fads are not to be encouraged in one's youth. Why do you eat toast with every meal?" "I find that it suits me better than bread, sir." "It entails unnecessary work upon the cook. I observe, also, that you have turned against potatoes." "Yes, sir; I think that I am better without them." "And you no longer drink your beer?" "No, sir." "These causeless whims and fancies are very much to be deprecated, Mr. Montgomery. Consider how many there are to whom these very potatoes and this very beer would be most acceptable." "No doubt, sir. But at present I prefer to do without them." They were sitting alone at lunch, and the assistant thought that it would be a good opportunity of asking leave for the day of the fight. "I should be glad if you could let me have leave for Saturday, Doctor Oldacre." "It is very inconvenient upon so busy a day." "I should do a double day's work on Friday so as to leave everything in order. I should hope to be back in the evening." "I am afraid I cannot spare you, Mr. Montgomery." This was a facer. If he could not get leave he would go without it. "You will remember, Doctor Oldacre, that when I came to you it was understood that I should have a clear day every month. I have never claimed one. But now there are reasons why I wish to have a holiday upon Saturday." Doctor Oldacre gave in with a very bad grace. "Of course, if you insist upon your formal rights, there is no more to be said, Mr. Montgomery, though I feel that it shows a certain indifference to my comfort and the welfare of the practice. Do you still insist?" "Yes, sir." "Very good. Have your way." The doctor was boiling over with anger, but Montgomery was a valuable assistant--steady, capable, and hard-working--and he could not afford to lose him. Even if he had been prompted to advance those class fees, for which his assistant had appealed, it would have been against his interests to do so, for he did not wish him to qualify, and he desired him to remain in his subordinate position, in which he worked so hard for so small a wage. There was something in the cool insistence of the young man, a quiet resolution in his voice as he claimed his Saturday, which aroused his curiosity. "I have no desire to interfere unduly with your affairs, Mr. Montgomery, but were you thinking of having a day in Leeds upon Saturday?" "No, sir." "In the country?" "Yes, sir." "You are very wise. You will find a quiet day among the wild flowers a very valuable restorative. Had you thought of any particular direction?" "I am going over Croxley way." "Well, there is no prettier country when once you are past the iron-works. What could be more delightful than to lie upon the Fells, basking in the sunshine, with perhaps some instructive and elevating book as your companion? I should recommend a visit to the ruins of St. Bridget's Church, a very interesting relic of the early Norman era. By the way, there is one objection which I see to your going to Croxley on Saturday. It is upon that date, as I am informed, that that ruffianly glove-fight takes place. You may find yourself molested by the blackguards whom it will attract." "I will take my chance of that, sir," said the assistant. On the Friday night, which was the last before the fight, Montgomery's three backers assembled in the gymnasium and inspected their man as he went through some light exercises to keep his muscles supple. He was certainly in splendid condition, his skin shining with health, and his eyes with energy and confidence. The three walked round him and exulted. "He's simply ripping!" said the undergraduate. "By gad, you've come out of it splendidly. You're as hard as a pebble, and fit to fight for your life." "Happen he's a trifle on the fine side," said the publican. "Runs a bit light at the loins, to my way of thinkin'." "What weight to-day?" "Ten stone eleven," the assistant answered. "That's only three pund off in a week's trainin'," said the horsebreaker. "He said right when he said that he was in condition. Well, it's fine stuff all there is of it, but I'm none so sure as there is enough." He kept poking his finger into Montgomery, as if he were one of his horses. "I hear that the Master will scale a hundred and sixty odd at the ring-side." "But there's some of that which he'd like well to pull off and leave behind wi' his shirt," said Purvis. "I hear they've had a rare job to get him to drop his beer, and if it had not been for that great red-headed wench of his they'd never ha' done it. She fair scratted the face off a potman that had brought him a gallon from t' Chequers. They say the hussy is his sparrin' partner, as well as his sweetheart, and that his poor wife is just breakin' her heart over it. Hullo, young 'un, what do you want?" The door of the gymnasium had opened, and a lad about sixteen, grimy and black with soot and iron, stepped into the yellow glare of the oil-lamp. Ted Barton seized him by the collar. "See here, thou yoong whelp, this is private, and we want noan o' thy spyin'!" "But I maun speak to Mr. Wilson." The young Cantab stepped forward. "Well, my lad, what is it?" "It's aboot t' fight, Mr. Wilson, sir. I wanted to tell your mon somethin' aboot t' Maister." "We've no time to listen to gossip, my boy. We know all about the Master." "But thou doant, sir. Nobody knows but me and mother, and we thought as we'd like thy mon to know, sir, for we want him to fair bray him." "Oh, you want the Master fair brayed, do you? So do we. Well, what have you to say?" "Is this your mon, sir?" "Well, suppose it is?" "Then it's him I want to tell aboot it. T' Maister is blind o' the left eye." "Nonsense!" "It's true, sir. Not stone blind, but rarely fogged. He keeps it secret, but mother knows, and so do I. If thou slip him on the left side he can't cop thee. Thou'll find it right as I tell thee. And mark him when he sinks his right. 'Tis his best blow, his right upper-cut. T' Maister's finisher, they ca' it at t' works. It's a turble blow, when it do come home." "Thank you, my boy. This is information worth having about his sight," said Wilson. "How came you to know so much? Who are you?" "I'm his son, sir." Wilson whistled. "And who sent you to us?" "My mother. I maun get back to her again." "Take this half-crown." "No, sir, I don't seek money in comin' here. I do it----" "For love?" suggested the publican. "For hate!" said the boy, and darted off into the darkness. "Seems to me t' red-headed wench may do him more harm than good, after all," remarked the publican. "And now, Mr. Montgomery, sir, you've done enough for this evenin', an' a nine hours' sleep is the best trainin' before a battle. Happen this time to-morrow night you'll be safe back again with your £100 in your pocket." II Work was struck at one o'clock at the coal-pits and the iron-works, and the fight was arranged for three. From the Croxley Furnaces, from Wilson's Coal-pits, from the Heartsease Mine, from the Dodd Mills, from the Leverworth Smelters the workmen came trooping, each with his fox-terrier or his lurcher at his heels. Warped with labour and twisted by toil, bent double by week-long work in the cramped coal galleries, or half-blinded with years spent in front of white-hot fluid metal, these men still gilded their harsh and hopeless lives by their devotion to sport. It was their one relief, the only thing which could distract their mind from sordid surroundings, and give them an interest beyond the blackened circle which inclosed them. Literature, art, science, all these things were beyond the horizon; but the race, the football match, the cricket, the fight, these were things which they could understand, which they could speculate upon in advance and comment upon afterwards. Sometimes brutal, sometimes grotesque, the love of sport is still one of the great agencies which make for the happiness of our people. It lies very deeply in the springs of our nature, and when it has been educated out, a higher, more refined nature may be left, but it will not be of that robust British type which has left its mark so deeply on the world. Every one of these ruddled workers, slouching with his dog at his heels to see something of the fight, was a true unit of his race. It was a squally May day, with bright sun-bursts and driving showers. Montgomery worked all morning in the surgery getting his medicine made up. "The weather seems so very unsettled, Mr. Montgomery," remarked the doctor, "that I am inclined to think that you had better postpone your little country excursion until a later date." "I am afraid that I must go to-day, sir." "I have just had an intimation that Mrs. Potter, at the other side of Angleton, wishes to see me. It is probable that I shall be there all day. It will be extremely inconvenient to leave the house empty so long." "I am very sorry, sir, but I must go," said the assistant, doggedly. The doctor saw that it would be useless to argue, and departed in the worst of bad tempers upon his mission. Montgomery felt easier now that he was gone. He went up to his room, and packed his running-shoes, his fighting-drawers, and his cricket-sash into a handbag. When he came down Mr. Wilson was waiting for him in the surgery. "I hear the doctor has gone." "Yes; he is likely to be away all day." "I don't see that it matters much. It's bound to come to his ears by to-night." "Yes; it's serious with me, Mr. Wilson. If I win, it's all right. I don't mind telling you that the hundred pounds will make all the difference to me. But if I lose, I shall lose my situation, for, as you say, I can't keep it secret." "Never mind. We'll see you through among us. I only wonder the doctor has not heard, for it's all over the country that you are to fight the Croxley Champion. We've had Armitage up about it already. He's the Master's backer, you know. He wasn't sure that you were eligible. The Master said he wanted you whether you were eligible or not. Armitage has money on, and would have made trouble if he could. But I showed him that you came within the conditions of the challenge, and he agreed that it was all right. They think they have a soft thing on." "Well, I can only do my best," said Montgomery. They lunched together; a silent and rather nervous repast, for Montgomery's mind was full of what was before him, and Wilson had himself more money at stake than he cared to lose. Wilson's carriage and pair were at the door, the horses with blue-and-white rosettes at their ears, which were the colours of the Wilson Coal-pits, well known on many a football field. At the avenue gate a crowd of some hundred pit-men and their wives gave a cheer as the carriage passed. To the assistant it all seemed dream-like and extraordinary--the strangest experience of his life, but with a thrill of human action and interest in it which made it passionately absorbing. He lay back in the open carriage and saw the fluttering handkerchiefs from the doors and windows of the miners' cottages. Wilson had pinned a blue-and-white rosette upon his coat, and every one knew him as their champion. "Good luck, sir! good luck to thee!" they shouted from the roadside. He felt that it was like some unromantic knight riding down to sordid lists, but there was something of chivalry in it all the same. He fought for others as well as for himself. He might fail from want of skill or strength, but deep in his sombre soul he vowed that it should never be for want of heart. Mr. Fawcett was just mounting into his high-wheeled, spidery dogcart, with his little bit of blood between the shafts. He waved his whip and fell in behind the carriage. They overtook Purvis, the tomato-faced publican, upon the road, with his wife in her Sunday bonnet. They also dropped into the procession, and then, as they traversed the seven miles of the high-road to Croxley, their two-horsed, rosetted carriage became gradually the nucleus of a comet with a loosely radiating tail. From every side-road came the miners' carts, the humble, ramshackle traps, black and bulging, with their loads of noisy, foul-tongued, open-hearted partisans. They trailed for a long quarter of a mile behind them--cracking, whipping, shouting, galloping, swearing. Horsemen and runners were mixed with the vehicles. And then suddenly a squad of the Sheffield Yeomanry, who were having their annual training in those parts, clattered and jingled out of a field, and rode as an escort to the carriage. Through the dust-clouds round him Montgomery saw the gleaming brass helmets, the bright coats, and the tossing heads of the chargers, the delighted brown faces of the troopers. It was more dream-like than ever. And then, as they approached the monstrous, uncouth line of bottle-shaped buildings which marked the smelting-works of Croxley, their long, writhing snake of dust was headed off by another but longer one which wound across their path. The main-road into which their own opened was filled by the rushing current of traps. The Wilson contingent halted until the others should get past. The iron-men cheered and groaned, according to their humour, as they whirled past their antagonist. Rough chaff flew back and forwards like iron nuts and splinters of coal. "Brought him up, then!" "Got t' hearse for to fetch him back?" "Where's t' owd K-legs?" "Mon, mon, have thy photograph took--'twill mind thee of what thou used to look!" "He fight?--he's now't but a half-baked doctor!" "Happen he'll doctor thy Croxley Champion afore he's through wi't." So they flashed at each other as the one side waited and the other passed. Then there came a rolling murmur swelling into a shout, and a great break with four horses came clattering along, all streaming with salmon-pink ribbons. The driver wore a white hat with pink rosette, and beside him, on the high seat, were a man and a woman--she with her arm round his waist. Montgomery had one glimpse of them as they flashed past: he with a furry cap drawn low over his brow, a great frieze coat, and a pink comforter round his throat; she brazen, red-headed, bright-coloured, laughing excitedly. The Master, for it was he, turned as he passed, gazed hard at Montgomery, and gave him a menacing, gap-toothed grin. It was a hard, wicked face, blue-jowled and craggy, with long, obstinate cheeks and inexorable eyes. The break behind was full of patrons of the sport--flushed iron-foremen, heads of departments, managers. One was drinking from a metal flask, and raised it to Montgomery as he passed; and then the crowd thinned, and the Wilson _cortège_ with their dragoons swept in at the rear of the others. The road led away from Croxley, between curving green hills, gashed and polluted by the searchers for coal and iron. The whole country had been gutted, and vast piles of refuse and mountains of slag suggested the mighty chambers which the labor of man had burrowed beneath. On the left the road curved up to where a huge building, roofless and dismantled, stood crumbling and forlorn, with the light shining through the windowless squares. "That's the old Arrowsmith's factory. That's where the fight is to be," said Wilson. "How are you feeling now?" "Thank you. I was never better in my life," Montgomery answered. "By Gad, I like your nerve!" said Wilson, who was himself flushed and uneasy. "You'll give us a fight for our money, come what may. That place on the right is the office, and that has been set aside as the dressing and weighing-room." The carriage drove up to it amidst the shouts of the folk upon the hillside. Lines of empty carriages and traps curved down upon the winding road, and a black crowd surged round the door of the ruined factory. The seats, as a huge placard announced, were five shillings, three shillings, and a shilling, with half-price for dogs. The takings, deducting expenses, were to go to the winner, and it was already evident that a larger stake than a hundred pounds was in question. A babel of voices rose from the door. The workers wished to bring their dogs in free. The men scuffled. The dogs barked. The crowd was a whirling, eddying pool surging with a roar up to the narrow cleft which was its only outlet. The break, with its salmon-coloured streamers and four reeking horses, stood empty before the door of the office; Wilson, Purvis, Fawcett, and Montgomery passed in. There was a large, bare room inside with square, clean patches upon the grimy walls, where pictures and almanacs had once hung. Worn linoleum covered the floor, but there was no furniture save some benches and a deal table with a ewer and a basin upon it. Two of the corners were curtained off. In the middle of the room was a weighing-chair. A hugely fat man, with a salmon tie and a blue waist-coat with bird's-eye spots, came bustling up to them. It was Armitage, the butcher and grazier, well known for miles round as a warm man, and the most liberal patron of sport in the Riding. "Well, well," he grunted, in a thick, fussy, wheezy voice, "you have come, then. Got your man? Got your man?" "Here he is, fit and well. Mr. Montgomery, let me present you to Mr. Armitage." "Glad to meet you, sir. Happy to make your acquaintance. I make bold to say, sir, that we of Croxley admire your courage, Mr. Montgomery, and that our only hope is a fair fight and no favour and the best man win. That's our sentiment at Croxley." "And it is my sentiment also," said the assistant. "Well, you can't say fairer than that, Mr. Montgomery. You've taken a large contrac' in hand, but a large contrac' may be carried through, sir, as any one that knows my dealings could testify. The Master is ready to weigh in!" "So am I." "You must weigh in the buff." Montgomery looked askance at the tall, red-headed woman who was standing gazing out of the window. "That's all right," said Wilson. "Get behind the curtain and put on your fighting-kit." He did so, and came out the picture of an athlete, in white, loose drawers, canvas shoes, and the sash of a well-known cricket club round his waist. He was trained to a hair, his skin gleaming like silk, and every muscle rippling down his broad shoulders and along his beautiful arms as he moved them. They bunched into ivory knobs, or slid into long, sinuous curves, as he raised or lowered his hands. "What thinkest thou o' that?" asked Ted Barton, his second, of the woman in the window. She glanced contemptuously at the young athlete. "It's but a poor kindness thou dost him to put a thread-paper yoong gentleman like yon against a mon as is a mon. Why, my Jock would throttle him wi' one hond lashed behind him." "Happen he may--happen not," said Barton. "I have but twa pund in the world, but it's on him, every penny, and no hedgin'. But here's t' Maister, and rarely fine he do look." The prize-fighter had come out from his curtain, a squat, formidable figure, monstrous in chest and arms, limping slightly on his distorted leg. His skin had none of the freshness and clearness of Montgomery's, but was dusky and mottled, with one huge mole amid the mat of tangled black hair which thatched his mighty breast. His weight bore no relation to his strength, for those huge shoulders and great arms, with brown, sledge-hammer fists, would have fitted the heaviest man that ever threw his cap into a ring. But his loins and legs were slight in proportion. Montgomery, on the other hand, was as symmetrical as a Greek statue. It would be an encounter between a man who was specially fitted for one sport, and one who was equally capable of any. The two looked curiously at each other: a bulldog, and a high-bred, clean-limbed terrier, each full of spirit. "How do you do?" "How do?" The Master grinned again, and his three jagged front teeth gleamed for an instant. The rest had been beaten out of him in twenty years of battle. He spat upon the floor. "We have a rare fine day for't." "Capital," said Montgomery. "That's the good feelin' I like," wheezed the fat butcher. "Good lads, both of them!--prime lads!--hard meat an' good bone. There's no ill-feelin'." "If he downs me, Gawd bless him!" said the Master. "An' if we down him, Gawd help him!" interrupted the woman. "Haud thy tongue, wench!" said the Master, impatiently. "Who art thou to put in thy word? Happen I might draw my hand across thy face." The woman did not take the threat amiss. "Wilt have enough for thy hand to do, Jock," said she. "Get quit o' this gradely man afore thou turn on me." The lovers' quarrel was interrupted by the entrance of a new comer, a gentleman with a fur-collared overcoat and a very shiny top-hat--a top-hat of a degree of glossiness which is seldom seen five miles from Hyde Park. This hat he wore at the extreme back of his head, so that the lower surface of the brim made a kind of frame for his high, bald forehead, his keen eyes, his rugged and yet kindly face. He bustled in with the quiet air of possession with which the ring-master enters the circus. "It's Mr. Stapleton, the referee from London," said Wilson. "How do you do, Mr. Stapleton? I was introduced to you at the big fight at the Corinthian Club, in Piccadilly." "Ah, I dare say," said the other, shaking hands. "Fact is, I'm introduced to so many that I can't undertake to carry their names. Wilson, is it? Well, Mr. Wilson, glad to see you. Couldn't get a fly at the station, and that's why I'm late." "I'm sure, sir," said Armitage, "we should be proud that any one so well known in the boxing world should come down to our little exhibition." "Not at all. Not at all. Anything in the interests of boxin'. All ready? Men weighed?" "Weighing now, sir." "Ah, just as well I should see it done. Seen you before, Craggs. Saw you fight your second battle against Willox. You had beaten him once, but he came back on you. What does the indicator say?--one hundred and sixty-three pounds--two off for the kit--one hundred and sixty-one. Now, my lad, you jump. My goodness, what colours are you wearing?" "The Anonymi Cricket Club." "What right have you to wear them? I belong to the club myself." "So do I." "You an amateur?" "Yes, sir." "And you are fighting for a money prize?" "Yes." "I suppose you know what you are doing? You realize that you're a professional pug from this onwards, and that if ever you fight again----" "I'll never fight again." "Happen you won't," said the woman, and the Master turned a terrible eye upon her. "Well, I suppose you know your own business best. Up you jump. One hundred and fifty-one, minus two, one hundred and forty-nine--twelve pounds difference, but youth and condition on the other scale. Well, the sooner we get to work the better, for I wish to catch the seven o'clock express at Hellifield. Twenty three-minute rounds, with one-minute intervals, and Queensberry rules. Those are the conditions, are they not?" "Yes, sir." "Very good, then, we may go across." The two combatants had overcoats thrown over their shoulders, and the whole party, backers, fighters, seconds, and the referee, filed out of the room. A police inspector was waiting for them in the road. He had a notebook in his hand--that terrible weapon which awes even the London cabman. "I must take your names, gentlemen, in case it should be necessary to proceed for breach of peace." "You don't mean to stop the fight?" cried Armitage, in a passion of indignation. "I'm Mr. Armitage, of Croxley, and this is Mr. Wilson, and we'll be responsible that all is fair and as it should be.' "I'll take the names in case it should be necessary to proceed," said the inspector, impassively. "But you know me well." "If you was a dook or even a judge it would be all the same," said the inspector. "It's the law, and there's an end. I'll not take upon myself to stop the fight, seeing that gloves are to be used, but I'll take the names of all concerned. Silas Craggs, Robert Montgomery, Edward Barton, James Stapleton, of London. Who seconds Silas Craggs?" "I do," said the woman. "Yes, you can stare, but it's my job, and no one else's. Anastasia's the name--four a's." "Craggs?" "Johnson. Anastasia Johnson. If you jug him, you can jug me." "Who talked of juggin', ye fool?" growled the Master. "Coom on, Mr. Armitage, for I'm fair sick o' this loiterin'." The inspector fell in with the procession, and proceeded, as they walked up the hill, to bargain in his official capacity for a front seat, where he could safeguard the interests of the law, and in his private capacity to lay out thirty shillings at seven to one with Mr. Armitage. Through the door they passed, down a narrow lane walled with a dense bank of humanity, up a wooden ladder to a platform, over a rope which was slung waist-high from four corner-stakes, and then Montgomery realized that he was in that ring in which his immediate destiny was to be worked out. On the stake at one corner there hung a blue-and-white streamer. Barton led him across, the overcoat dangling loosely from his shoulders, and he sat down on a wooden stool. Barton and another man, both wearing white sweaters, stood beside him. The so-called ring was a square, twenty feet each way. At the opposite angle was the sinister figure of the Master, with his red-headed woman and a rough-faced friend to look after him. At each corner were metal basins, pitchers of water, and sponges. During the hubbub and uproar of the entrance Montgomery was too bewildered to take things in. But now there was a few minutes' delay, for the referee had lingered behind, and so he looked quietly about him. It was a sight to haunt him for a lifetime. Wooden seats had been built in, sloping upwards to the tops of the walls. Above, instead of a ceiling, a great flight of crows passed slowly across a square of grey cloud. Right up to the top-most benches the folk were banked--broadcloth in front, corduroys and fustian behind; faces turned everywhere upon him. The grey reek of the pipes filled the building, and the air was pungent with the acrid smell of cheap, strong tobacco. Everywhere among the human faces were to be seen the heads of the dogs. They growled and yapped from the back benches. In that dense mass of humanity one could hardly pick out individuals, but Montgomery's eyes caught the brazen gleam of the helmets held upon the knees of the ten yeomen of his escort. At the very edge of the platform sat the reporters, five of them: three locals, and two all the way from London. But where was the all-important referee? There was no sign of him, unless he were in the centre of that angry swirl of men near the door. Mr. Stapleton had stopped to examine the gloves which were to be used, and entered the building after the combatants. He had started to come down that narrow lane with the human walls which led to the ring. But already it had gone abroad that the Wilson champion was a gentleman, and that another gentleman had been appointed as referee. A wave of suspicion passed through the Croxley folk. They would have one of their own people for a referee. They would not have a stranger. His path was stopped as he made for the ring. Excited men flung themselves in front of him; they waved their fists in his face and cursed him. A woman howled vile names in his ear. Somebody struck at him with an umbrella. "Go thou back to Lunnon. We want noan o' thee. Go thou back!" they yelled. Stapleton, with his shiny hat cocked backwards, and his large, bulging forehead swelling from under it, looked round him from beneath his bushy brows. He was in the centre of a savage and dangerous mob. Then he drew his watch from his pocket and held it dial upwards in his palm. "In three minutes," said he, "I will declare the fight off." They raged round him. His cool face and that aggressive top-hat irritated them. Grimy hands were raised. But it was difficult, somehow, to strike a man who was so absolutely indifferent. "In two minutes I declare the fight off." They exploded into blasphemy. The breath of angry men smoked into his placid face. A gnarled, grimy fist vibrated at the end of his nose. "We tell thee we want noan o' thee. Get thou back where thou com'st from." "In one minute I declare the fight off." Then the calm persistence of the man conquered the swaying, mutable, passionate crowd. "Let him through, mon. Happen there'll be no fight after a'." "Let him through." "Bill, thou loomp, let him pass. Dost want the fight declared off?" "Make room for the referee!--room for the Lunnon referee!" And half pushed, half carried, he was swept up to the ring. There were two chairs by the side of it, one for him and one for the timekeeper. He sat down, his hands on his knees, his hat at a more wonderful angle than ever, impassive but solemn, with the aspect of one who appreciates his responsibilities. Mr. Armitage, the portly butcher, made his way into the ring and held up two fat hands, sparkling with rings, as a signal for silence. "Gentlemen!" he yelled. And then in a crescendo shriek, "Gentlemen!" "And ladies!" cried somebody, for indeed there was a fair sprinkling of women among the crowd. "Speak up, owd man!" shouted another. "What price pork chops?" cried somebody at the back. Everybody laughed, and the dogs began to bark. Armitage waved his hands amidst the uproar as if he were conducting an orchestra. At last the babel thinned into silence. "Gentlemen," he yelled, "the match is between Silas Craggs, whom we call the Master of Croxley, and Robert Montgomery, of the Wilson Coal-pits. The match was to be under eleven-eight. When they were weighed just now Craggs weighed eleven-seven, and Montgomery ten-nine. The conditions of the contest are--the best of twenty three-minute rounds with two-ounce gloves. Should the fight run to its full length it will, of course, be decided upon points. Mr. Stapleton, the well-known London referee, has kindly consented to see fair play. I wish to say that Mr. Wilson and I, the chief backers of the two men, have every confidence in Mr. Stapleton, and that we beg that you will accept his rulings without dispute." He then turned from one combatant to the other, with a wave of his hand. III "Montgomery--Craggs!" said he. A great hush fell over the huge assembly. Even the dogs stopped yapping; one might have thought that the monstrous room was empty. The two men had stood up, the small white gloves over their hands. They advanced from their corners and shook hands: Montgomery, gravely, Craggs with a smile. Then they fell into position. The crowd gave a long sigh--the intake of a thousand excited breaths. The referee tilted his chair on to its back legs, and looked moodily critical from the one to the other. It was strength against activity--that was evident from the first. The Master stood stolidly upon his K-leg. It gave him a tremendous pedestal; one could hardly imagine his being knocked down. And he could pivot round upon it with extraordinary quickness; but his advance or retreat was ungainly. His frame, however, was so much larger and broader than that of the student, and his brown, massive face looked so resolute and menacing, that the hearts of the Wilson party sank within them. There was one heart, however, which had not done so. It was that of Robert Montgomery. Any nervousness which he may have had completely passed away now that he had his work before him. Here was something definite--this hard-faced, deformed Hercules to beat, with a career as the price of beating him. He glowed with the joy of action; it thrilled through his nerves. He faced his man with little in-and-out steps, breaking to the left, breaking to the right, feeling his way, while Craggs, with a dull, malignant eye, pivoted slowly upon his weak leg, his left arm half extended, his right sunk low across the mark. Montgomery led with his left, and then led again, getting lightly home each time. He tried again, but the Master had his counter ready, and Montgomery reeled back from a harder blow than he had given. Anastasia, the woman, gave a shrill cry of encouragement, and her man let fly his right. Montgomery ducked under it, and in an instant the two were in each other's arms. "Break away! Break away!" said the referee. The Master struck upwards on the break, and shook Montgomery with the blow. Then it was "time." It had been a spirited opening round. The people buzzed into comment and applause. Montgomery was quite fresh, but the hairy chest of the Master was rising and falling. The man passed a sponge over his head, while Anastasia flapped the towel before him. "Good lass! Good lass!" cried the crowd, and cheered her. The men were up again, the Master grimly watchful, Montgomery as alert as a kitten. The Master tried a sudden rush, squattering along with his awkward gait, but coming faster than one would think. The student slipped aside and avoided him. The Master stopped, grinned, and shook his head. Then he motioned with his hand as an invitation to Montgomery to come to him. The student did so and led with his left, but got a swinging right counter in the ribs in exchange. The heavy blow staggered him, and the Master came scrambling in to complete his advantage; but Montgomery, with his greater activity, kept out of danger until the call of "time." A tame round, and the advantage with the Master. "T' Maister's too strong for him," said a smelter to his neighbour. "Ay; but t'other's a likely lad. Happen we'll see some sport yet. He can joomp rarely." "But t' Maister can stop and hit rarely. Happen he'll mak' him joomp when he gets his nief upon him." They were up again, the water glistening upon their faces. Montgomery led instantly and got his right home with a sounding smack upon the Master's forehead. There was a shout from the colliers, and "Silence! Order!" from the referee. Montgomery avoided the counter and scored with his left. Fresh applause, and the referee upon his feet in indignation. "No comments, gentlemen, if _you_ please, during the rounds." "Just bide a bit!" growled the Master. "Don't talk--fight!" said the referee, angrily. Montgomery rubbed in the point by a flush hit upon the mouth, and the Master shambled back to his corner like an angry bear, having had all the worst of the round. "Where's thot seven to one?" shouted Purvis, the publican. "I'll take six to one!" There were no answers. "Five to one!" There were givers at that. Purvis booked them in a tattered notebook. Montgomery began to feel happy. He lay back with his legs outstretched, his back against the corner-post, and one gloved hand upon each rope. What a delicious minute it was between each round. If he could only keep out of harm's way, he must surely wear this man out before the end of twenty rounds. He was so slow that all his strength went for nothing. "You're fightin' a winnin' fight--a winnin' fight," Ted Barton whispered in his ear. "Go canny; tak' no chances; you have him proper." But the Master was crafty. He had fought so many battles with his maimed limb that he knew how to make the best of it. Warily and slowly he manoeuvred round Montgomery, stepping forward and yet again forward until he had imperceptibly backed him into his corner. The student suddenly saw a flash of triumph upon the grim face, and a gleam in the dull, malignant eyes. The Master was upon him. He sprang aside and was on the ropes. The Master smashed in one of his terrible upper-cuts, and Montgomery half broke it with his guard. The student sprang the other way and was against the other converging rope. He was trapped in the angle. The Master sent in another, with a hoggish grunt which spoke of the energy behind it. Montgomery ducked, but got a jab from the left upon the mark. He closed with his man. "Break away! Break away?" cried the referee. Montgomery disengaged, and got a swinging blow on the ear as he did so. It had been a damaging round for him, and the Croxley people were shouting their delight. "Gentlemen, I will _not_ have this noise!" Stapleton roared. "I have been accustomed to preside at a well-conducted club, and not at a bear-garden." This little man, with the tilted hat and the bulging forehead, dominated the whole assembly. He was like a headmaster among his boys. He glared round him, and nobody cared to meet his eye. Anastasia had kissed the Master when he resumed his seat. "Good lass. Do't again!" cried the laughing crowd, and the angry Master shook his glove at her, as she flapped her towel in front of him. Montgomery was weary and a little sore, but not depressed. He had learned something. He would not again be tempted into danger. For three rounds the honours were fairly equal. The student's hitting was the quicker, the Master's the harder. Profiting by his lesson, Montgomery kept himself in the open, and refused to be herded into a corner. Sometimes the Master succeeded in rushing him to the side-ropes, but the younger man slipped away, or closed and then disengaged. The monotonous "Break away! Break away!" of the referee broke in upon the quick, low patter of rubber-soled shoes, the dull thud of the blows, and the sharp, hissing breath of two tired men. The ninth round found both of them in fairly good condition. Montgomery's head was still singing from the blow that he had in the corner, and one of his thumbs pained him acutely and seemed to be dislocated. The Master showed no sign of a touch, but his breathing was the more laboured, and a long line of ticks upon the referee's paper showed that the student had a good show of points. But one of this iron-man's blows was worth three of his, and he knew that without the gloves he could not have stood for three rounds against him. All the amateur work that he had done was the merest tapping and flapping when compared to those frightful blows, from arms toughened by the shovel and the crowbar. It was the tenth round, and the fight was half over. The betting now was only three to one, for the Wilson champion had held his own much better than had been expected. But those who knew the ringcraft as well as the staying power of the old prize-fighter knew that the odds were still a long way in his favour. "Have a care of him!" whispered Barton, as he sent his man up to the scratch. "Have a care! He'll play thee a trick, if he can." But Montgomery saw, or imagined he saw, that his antagonist was tiring. He looked jaded and listless, and his hands drooped a little from their position. His own youth and condition were beginning to tell. He sprang in and brought off a fine left-handed lead. The Master's return lacked his usual fire. Again Montgomery led, and again he got home. Then he tried his right upon the mark, and the Master guarded it downwards. "Too low! Too low! A foul! A foul!" yelled a thousand voices. The referee rolled his sardonic eyes slowly round. "Seems to me this buildin' is chock-full of referees," said he. The people laughed and applauded, but their favour was as immaterial to him as their anger. "No applause, please! This is not a theatre!" he yelled. Montgomery was very pleased with himself. His adversary was evidently in a bad way. He was piling on his points and establishing a lead. He might as well make hay while the sun shone. The Master was looking all abroad. Montgomery popped one upon his blue jowl and got away without a return. And then the Master suddenly dropped both his hands and began rubbing his thigh. Ah! that was it, was it? He had muscular cramp. "Go in! Go in!" cried Teddy Barton. Montgomery sprang wildly forward, and the next instant was lying half senseless, with his neck nearly broken, in the middle of the ring. The whole round had been a long conspiracy to tempt him within reach of one of those terrible right-hand upper-cuts for which the Master was famous. For this the listless, weary bearing, for this the cramp in the thigh. When Montgomery had sprang in so hotly he had exposed himself to such a blow as neither flesh nor blood could stand. Whizzing up from below with a rigid arm, which put the Master's eleven stone into its force, it struck him under the jaw: he whirled half round, and fell a helpless and half-paralyzed mass. A vague groan and murmur, inarticulate, too excited for words, rose from the great audience. With open mouths and staring eyes they gazed at the twitching and quivering figure. "Stand back! Stand right back!" shrieked the referee, for the Master was standing over his man ready to give him the _coup-de-grâce_ as he rose. "Stand back, Craggs, this instant!" Stapleton repeated. The Master sank his hands sulkily and walked backwards to the rope with his ferocious eyes fixed upon his fallen antagonist. The timekeeper called the seconds. If ten of them passed before Montgomery rose to his feet, the fight was ended. Ted Barton wrung his hands and danced about in an agony in his corner. As if in a dream--a terrible nightmare--the student could hear the voice of the timekeeper--three--four--five--he got up on his hand--six--seven--he was on his knee, sick, swimming, faint, but resolute to rise. Eight--he was up, and the Master was on him like a tiger, lashing savagely at him with both hands. Folk held their breath as they watched those terrible blows, and anticipated the pitiful end--so much more pitiful where a game but helpless man refuses to accept defeat. Strangely automatic is the human brain. Without volition, without effort, there shot into the memory of this bewildered, staggering, half-stupefied man the one thing which could have saved him--that blind eye of which the Master's son had spoken. It was the same as the other to look at, but Montgomery remembered that he had said that it was the left. He reeled to the left side, half felled by a drive which lit upon his shoulder. The Master pivoted round upon his leg and was at him in an instant. "Yark him, lad! yark him!" screamed the woman. "Hold your tongue!" said the referee. Montgomery slipped to the left again and yet again; but the Master was too quick and clever for him. He struck round and got him full on the face as he tried once more to break away. Montgomery's knees weakened under him, and he fell with a groan on the floor. This time he knew that he was done. With bitter agony he realized, as he groped blindly with his hands, that he could not possibly raise himself. Far away and muffled he heard, amid the murmurs of the multitude, the fateful voice of the timekeeper counting off the seconds. "One--two--three--four--five--six----" "Time!" said the referee. Then the pent-up passion of the great assembly broke loose. Croxley gave a deep groan of disappointment. The Wilsons were on their feet, yelling with delight. There was still a chance for them. In four more seconds their man would have been solemnly counted out. But now he had a minute in which to recover. The referee looked round with relaxed features and laughing eyes. He loved this rough game, this school for humble heroes, and it was pleasant to him to intervene as a _Deux ex machinâ_ at so dramatic a moment. His chair and his hat were both tilted at an extreme angle; he and the timekeeper smiled at each other. Ted Barton and the other second had rushed out and thrust an arm each under Montgomery's knee, the other behind his loins, and so carried him back to his stool. His head lolled upon his shoulder, but a douche of cold water sent a shiver through him, and he started and looked round him. "He's a' right!" cried the people round. "He's a rare brave lad. Good lad! Good lad!" Barton poured some brandy into his mouth. The mists cleared a little, and he realized where he was and what he had to do. But he was still very weak, and he hardly dared to hope that he could survive another round. "Seconds out of the ring!" cried the referee. "Time!" The Croxley Master sprang eagerly off his stool. "Keep clear of him! Go easy for a bit," said Barton, and Montgomery walked out to meet his man once more. He had had two lessons--the one when the Master got him into his corner, the other when he had been lured into mixing it up with so powerful an antagonist. Now he would be wary. Another blow would finish him; he could afford to run no risks. The Master was determined to follow up his advantage, and rushed at him, slogging furiously right and left. But Montgomery was too young and active to be caught. He was strong upon his legs once more, and his wits had all come back to him. It was a gallant sight--the line-of-battleship trying to pour its overwhelming broadside into the frigate, and the frigate manoeuvring always so as to avoid it. The Master tried all his ring-craft. He coaxed the student up by pretended inactivity; he rushed at him with furious rushes towards the ropes. For three rounds he exhausted every wile in trying to get at him. Montgomery during all this time was conscious that his strength was minute by minute coming back to him. The spinal jar from an upper-cut is overwhelming, but evanescent. He was losing all sense of it beyond a great stiffness of the neck. For the first round after his downfall he had been content to be entirely on the defensive, only too happy if he could stall off the furious attacks of the Master. In the second he occasionally ventured upon a light counter. In the third he was smacking back merrily where he saw an opening. His people yelled their approval of him at the end of every round. Even the iron-workers cheered him with that fine unselfishness which true sport engenders. To most of them, unspiritual and unimaginative, the sight of this clean-limbed young Apollo, rising above disaster and holding on while consciousness was in him to his appointed task, was the greatest thing their experience had ever known. But the Master's naturally morose temper became more and more murderous at this postponement of his hopes. Three rounds ago the battle had been in his hands; now it was all to do over again. Round by round his man was recovering his strength. By the fifteenth he was strong again in wind and limb. But the vigilant Anastasia saw something which encouraged her. "That bash in t' ribs is telling on him, Jock," she whispered. "Why else should he be gulping t' brandy? Go in, lad, and thou hast him yet." Montgomery had suddenly taken the flask from Barton's hand, and had a deep pull at the contents. Then, with his face a little flushed, and with a curious look of purpose, which made the referee stare hard at him, in his eyes, he rose for the sixteenth round. "Game as a pairtridge!" cried the publican, as he looked at the hard-set face. "Mix it oop, lad; mix it oop!" cried the iron-men to their Master. And then a hum of exultation ran through their ranks as they realized that their tougher, harder, stronger man held the vantage, after all. Neither of the men showed much sign of punishment. Small gloves crush and numb, but they do not cut. One of the Master's eyes was even more flush with his cheek than Nature had made it. Montgomery had two or three livid marks upon his body, and his face was haggard, save for that pink spot which the brandy had brought into either cheek. He rocked a little as he stood opposite his man, and his hands drooped as if he felt the gloves to be an unutterable weight. It was evident that he was spent and desperately weary. If he received one other blow it must surely be fatal to him. If he brought one home, what power could there be behind it, and what chance was there of its harming the colossus in front of him? It was the crisis of the fight. This round must decide it. "Mix it oop, lad; mix it oop!" the iron-men whooped. Even the savage eyes of the referee were unable to restrain the excited crowd. Now, at last, the chance had come for Montgomery. He had learned a lesson from his more experienced rival. Why should he not play his own game upon him? He was spent, but not nearly so spent as he pretended. That brandy was to call up his reserves, to let him have strength to take full advantage of the opening when it came. It was thrilling and tingling through his veins, at the very moment when he was lurching and rocking like a beaten man. He acted his part admirably. The Master felt that there was an easy task before him, and rushed in with ungainly activity to finish it once for all. He slap-banged away left and right, boring Montgomery up against the ropes, swinging in his ferocious blows with those animal grunts which told of the vicious energy behind them. But Montgomery was too cool to fall a victim to any of those murderous upper-cuts. He kept out of harm's way with a rigid guard, an active foot, and a head which was swift to duck. And yet he contrived to present the same appearance of a man who is hopelessly done. The Master, weary from his own shower of blows, and fearing nothing from so weak a man, dropped his hand for an instant, and at that instant Montgomery's right came home. It was a magnificent blow, straight, clean, crisp, with the force of the loins and the back behind it. And it landed where he had meant it to--upon the exact point of that blue-grained chin. Flesh and blood could not stand such a blow in such a place. Neither valour nor hardihood can save the man to whom it comes. The Master fell backwards, flat, prostrate, striking the ground with so simultaneous a clap that it was like a shutter falling from a wall. A yell which no referee could control broke from the crowded benches as the giant went down. He lay upon his back, his knees a little drawn up, his huge chest panting. He twitched and shook, but could not move. His feet pawed convulsively once or twice. It was no use. He was done. "Eight--nine--ten!" said the timekeeper, and the roar of a thousand voices, with a deafening clap like the broadside of a ship, told that the Master of Croxley was the Master no more. Montgomery stood half dazed, looking down at the huge, prostrate figure. He could hardly realize that it was indeed all over. He saw the referee motion towards him with his hand. He heard his name bellowed in triumph from every side. And then he was aware of some one rushing towards him; he caught a glimpse of a flushed face and an aureole of flying red hair, a gloveless fist struck him between the eyes, and he was on his back in the ring beside his antagonist, while a dozen of his supporters were endeavouring to secure the frantic Anastasia. He heard the angry shouting of the referee, the screaming of the furious woman, and the cries of the mob. Then something seemed to break like an over-stretched banjo-string, and he sank into the deep, deep, mist-girt abyss of unconsciousness. The dressing was like a thing in a dream, and so was a vision of the Master with the grin of a bulldog upon his face, and his three teeth amiably protruded. He shook Montgomery heartily by the hand. "I would have been rare pleased to shake thee by the throttle, lad, a short while syne," said he. "But I bear no ill-feelin' again' thee. It was a rare poonch that brought me down--I have not had a better since my second fight wi' Billy Edwards in '89. Happen thou might think o' goin' further wi' this business. If thou dost, and want a trainer, there's not much inside t' ropes as I don't know. Or happen thou might like to try it wi' me old style and bare knuckles. Thou hast but to write to t' iron-works to find me." But Montgomery disclaimed any such ambition. A canvas bag with his share--one hundred and ninety sovereigns--was handed to him, of which he gave ten to the Master, who also received some share of the gate-money. Then, with young Wilson escorting him on one side, Purvis on the other, and Fawcett carrying his bag behind, he went in triumph to his carriage, and drove amid a long roar, which lined the highway like a hedge for the seven miles, back to his starting-point. "It's the greatest thing I ever saw in my life. By George, it's ripping!" cried Wilson, who had been left in a kind of ecstasy by the events of the day. "There's a chap over Barnsley way who fancies himself a bit. Let us spring you on him, and let him see what he can make of you. We'll put up a purse--won't we, Purvis? You shall never want a backer." "At his weight," said the publican, "I'm behind him, I am, for twenty rounds, and no age, country, or color barred." "So am I!" cried Fawcett; "middle-weight champion of the world, that's what he is--here, in the same carriage with us." But Montgomery was not to be beguiled. "No; I have my own work to do now." "And what may that be?" "I'll use this money to get my medical degree." "Well, we've plenty of doctors, but you're the only man in the Riding that could smack the Croxley Master off his legs. However, I suppose you know your own business best. When you're a doctor, you'd best come down into these parts, and you'll always find a job waiting for you at the Wilson Coal-pits." Montgomery had returned by devious ways to the surgery. The horses were smoking at the door, and the doctor was just back from his long journey. Several patients had called in his absence, and he was in the worst of tempers. "I suppose I should be glad that you have come back at all, Mr. Montgomery!" he snarled. "When next you elect to take a holiday, I trust, it will not be at so busy a time." "I am sorry, sir, that you should have been inconvenienced." "Yes, sir, I have been exceedingly inconvenienced." Here, for the first time, he looked hard at the assistant. "Good heavens, Mr. Montgomery, what have you been doing with your left eye?" It was where Anastasia had lodged her protest. Montgomery laughed. "It is nothing, sir," said he. "And you have a livid mark under your jaw. It is, indeed, terrible that my representative should be going about in so disreputable a condition. How did you receive these injuries?" "Well, sir, as you know, there was a little glove-fight to-day over at Croxley." "And you got mixed up with that brutal crowd?" "I _was_ rather mixed up with them." "And who assaulted you?" "One of the fighters." "Which of them?" "The Master of Croxley." "Good heavens! Perhaps you interfered with him?" "Well, to tell the truth, I did a little." "Mr. Montgomery, in such a practice as mine, intimately associated as it is with the highest and most progressive elements of our small community, it is impossible----" But just then the tentative bray of a cornet-player searching for his keynote jarred upon their ears, and an instant later the Wilson Colliery brass band was in full cry with, "See the Conquering Hero Comes," outside the surgery window. There was a banner waving, and a shouting crowd of miners. "What is it? What does it mean?" cried the angry doctor. "It means, sir, that I have, in the only way which was open to me, earned the money which is necessary for my education. It is my duty, Doctor Oldacre, to warn you that I am about to return to the University, and that you should lose no time in appointing my successor." THE END * * * * * Transcriber Notes: page 44 Original: "Montgomery looked askance Replaced: Montgomery looked askance Unchanged: page 60 Original: "Break away! Break away?" cried the referee. retained the ?, perhaps ! intended. page 66 a _Deux ex machinâ_ at so dramatic a moment. perhaps intended Deus - left as clearly printed 
60024	----	jingle in the jungle BY ALDO GIUNTA _When even the Fight Commission is in on the plot, and everyone knows that the "fix" is on, when no one will help him, what can a man do--except help himself?_ [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, June 1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Charlie Jingle walked into the long room with the long table and long Commissioners' faces in it. He went to a chair at the head of the table, and sat down, a small man in loose, seedy clothing looking rather lost in a high-backed chair with a regal crest carved in the wood. "You," asked one of the Commissioners, "are Charles Jingle?" Charlie nodded his head, a small nod from a small man sitting in a big man's chair. "You are aware of course ..." began the Commissioner, but Charlie Jingle waved his fingers and cut him off. "Sure, sure, let's can the bunko and get down to cases." "You have been summoned here ..." began the same Commissioner, and Charlie Jingle waved his fingers again. "But I ain't gonna anyway," said Charlie Jingle. The Commissioners stirred, cleared their throats, slid their bottoms with unease on their chairs. "You understand," said the Commissioner, "that your license may be revoked if you insist on being uncooperative?" "Sure," said Charlie Jingle. "I understand." A bulky man, who had been standing at a window with his back to the seated members of the Commission while they talked with Charlie, turned to face them. A man with a heavy, grey face that had no humor in it. Charlie Jingle watched him slowly cross to the table and recognized him as Commissioner Jergen, head of the Fight Commission. "Jingle," said the man in a dry voice, "I'm going to make an example of you if you don't come across. I'm going to smear your name from coast to coast. I'm going to blackball you so hard you won't get a job anyplace, at anything! Get the message?" Charlie Jingle got up from his chair and walked to the door. "This the way out?" he asked. "Hold on!" roared Commissioner Jergen, and Charlie Jingle stopped with his hand on the knob, looking back with polite inquisitiveness at him. "You goddam people think you can pull quick deals on the Public and on the Fight Commission. I'm here to prove you can't!" Charlie Jingle laughed. "You're here to make a big noise, and scare all the scrawny citizens into a confession, Jergen. Don't kid me!" "I suppose you've got too many contacts to be frightened?" "Contacts? No, I don't have a single damn contact. All I got is my two hands, and you already told me I ain't gonna be able to make a livin' with them, so why should I stick around here anymore?" Commissioner Jergen pulled a chair forward. "Siddown, Charlie. Let's talk like reasonable men," he said. Charlie Jingle searched his face for a lie or a trick. Finding none, he went back to the table and sat down. The Commissioner waited a moment, and then said earnestly: "Listen, Jingle. Seventy years ago this country outlawed prize-fighting. It was barbarous, they said. Men shouldn't fight men. Men shouldn't capitalize on other men as if they were animals. Okay. They changed it. Now we got the Pug-Factories. But we also have the same thing that went on before. We have the grifters and the shysters and the fixers operating at full tilt all over the place. There's a few honest guys in the game. I hear you're one of them. All we want is to nail the crooks! We want to bust the Fix Syndicate wide open, get me? Now, if you love the game the way I hear you do--not for the money, but for the smell and the excitement--why won't you help us bust them wide?" Charlie Jingle shook his head. "You got it wrong, Jergen. I know about the fixers. But I never consorted with them. If I did, I could've retired a rich man a long time ago." "Then how about that Saturday night fiasco at the Golum Auditorium? You call that a straight fight?" Charlie Jingle shrugged his shoulders. "All I know is I sent my boy in there. He's a Tank, okay. He's up against the newest fighting machine invented. Okay. He drops him. I'm as much surprised as you. All the odds read against me. I got a rebuilt Tank in the ring. But he flattens one of the flashiest pugs in the business. Sure, I admit, it looks suspicious. Fifteen minutes after the upset, one of the biggest fixers in the game walks into my boy's dressing-room ... But don't forget, I'm the best trainer in the business. I take a chunk of worn out fighting machine and make it over into something that buys me bread and coffee. So maybe I create a freak. How do I know? Maybe I twisted a wire wrong, and my Tank's the toughest thing punching." "You're trying to tell me that fight was on the level, is that it?" "So far as I'm concerned, it's level. So far as you're concerned...." Charlie Jingle shrugged. "How is it you happened to have your boy handy when the other fighter couldn't go on?" asked the Commissioner. "I got my stable a block away from the arena. When I heard about Kid Congo getting smashed up in an auto accident, I called the arena. Before the fight, I had twelve cents in my pocket, a dime of which I used to call the arena. They told me 'Sure, bring him down quick, Charlie'. So there I was...." "So they put your Tank in against the Contender. Just like that?" Jingle snapped his fingers. "Like that." "And Harry Belok had nothing to do with the upset?" "Ask Harry Belok." "Why did he come to see you when the fight was over?" Charlie Jingle laughed. "He come to pay me off...." The Commissioner looked at a sheet of paper on the table in front of him. "Nineteen thousand seven hundred and thirty two dollars worth of pay-off?" Charlie Jingle nodded. "And thirteen cents. You got the thirteen cents down?" "I've got the thirteen cents down. But how come he pays off so much money to somebody's completely broke, Charlie-boy?" "Easy," said Charlie Jingle. "The Tank's end of the purse is four hundred bucks, win or lose. Before the fight, I bet the Tank's end against Harry, at house odds. You figure it up, and see if it don't figure out to the penny." Charlie watched one of the Commissioners scribble quick numbers on a piece of blank paper. In a moment the man looked up, and handed the sheet across to Commissioner Jergen. Jergen looked at it quickly and grunted. "Okay?" asked Charlie Jingle. "Okay," growled Jergen. "When we fight the Champ, I'll send a couple tickets around free. See ya'...." Charlie Jingle went out. * * * * * Charlie Jingle came out of the underground tubes and walked down a block of chipped brick and colored plastic buildings, past picket fences and an empty street. He looked at the street, the pavement--dark, quiet, uncluttered by garbage, devoid of kids. On the roofs of the buildings was a jungle of neatly bent, squarely twisted, staunchly mounted aerials. The kids were under them, behind the picket fences, watching five-foot-square screens that flashed stories and news and the life histories of ring heroes like himself. A nice, clean-cut, handsome actor would act the part of Charlie Jingle, his fights, loves and disappointments, all ending up in one glorious, stirring message. Charlie Jingle made it. From rags to riches in a single swipe.... So can _you_. He stopped in front of Hannigan's Gym, looked up and down the street, and cautiously spat into the gutter. Then he went past the swinging doors into the building's interior. Inside the door, he breathed deep the stale smell of oil and leather that permeated the atmosphere. Opening his eyes, he looked into the flat, grinning face of Emil McPhay. McPhay had been chalking schedules on a blackboard when he spotted the rapt expression of Charlie Jingle's face. "As I live and panhandle!" exclaimed McPhay, his eyes rolling in their fat sockets. "Anybody to see me, Emil?" "Well you know as well as me somebody is, Charlie. The lovin' picture-makin' people 're here. Got a whole staff wit 'em." He leaned close, rolling his eyes shyly. "You gonna give 'em the story of yer bloody life, Charlie?" Charlie strode toward his shop at the back of the gym. "Not unless they make me lead man. And _you_ the leading lady!" He went past a row of smoked-glass doors to the last one with C. JINGLE, TRAINER printed on it, opened it, and went in. As Emil McPhay had said, the room was mobbed with smoking, suntanned Californians. An elegant-looking man rushed forward and jerked his hand up and down. "Glad ... so glad.... Pictures.... Hope.... Contract.... Of course. Your boy.... Mister Jingle.... Famous...." Nobody had called Charlie Jingle mister for ten years. In one night, he'd graduated from flop to mister. He rubbed his fingers together, feeling the sweat on them. His eyes took in the walls painted their flat, drying green, the racks of tools on them, the pictures of great fighting machines all over them, the electrical diagrams, the Reflex-Analyses Patterns mapped out next to each one. Then he lowered his eyes to take in the grinning, smooth-faced men around him, doing nervous things with their faces and hands. He looked at the man in front of him, his mouth flapping open and closed, contorting this way and that, and suddenly Charlie shut his eyes tight, drew in a blast of air, screwed his mouth open, and yelled "Shaddap!" good and loud. There was stunned silence. Charlie looked around at them, at their poised, waiting faces. "Scram!" he yelled, and jerked his finger to the door. Slowly, the suntanned Californians drifted out of the room, watching him closely lest he maul them or loose another violation of the success story at them. One man broke the spell. "Of course, Mister Jingle, one's life history is certainly something to be treasured. Not to be treated lightly. But I assure you we--my company, that is--we will make certain that we adhere to the facts, in our fashion. There will be no unnec--" Charlie Jingle grabbed the man's jacket-front with his left hand, his trouser-seat with the other, and, taking advantage of the man's total unpreparedness, threw him bodily out of the room, in the same motion kicking the door shut so hard, the glass cracked and a piece jumped out of the upper left hand corner. Then Charlie Jingle stormed into his shop, where Tanker Bell awaited him. * * * * * When Tanker saw Charlie come into the room fuming mad, he shut off the reflex-machine and turned to watch him. Charlie Jingle paced back and forth in the room, in the small space between work-bench and wall. Suddenly he stopped, spun savagely to face Tanker. "Well? What the hell you lookin' at?" Tanker Bell grinned. "You, Charlie. I like to watch you when you're mad." "You do, eh?" Tanker watched the rage build up to a good healthy flush on Charlie's skin. "Jeez," Tanker jibed, "you look as red as those beets they sell over in the Old-Methods Market." "Listen you! Just because you dropped that flashy character last night. Don't let it go to your head! You get me sore, by God, I'll have you piled up in the yard along with yesterday's rusty pugs!" Tanker laughed. Charlie Jingle glared at the Tanker a moment, drew a deep breath, snorted it out, and paced twice. Then he faced the Tanker again. "Sorry, kid. They got me goin' today. First the fight commission. Then these soap-peddlers from Hollywood. Sorry I blew off." "How'd it go with the Commission?" "Okay, okay. Jergen knows about me. He's just hungry for a bust, you know? Wants to nail the Fixers." The Tanker took a step toward Charlie. "The Champ call?" he asked, voice trembling. Charlie shook his head in the negative. "Why don't you sucker him, Charlie? Force his hand!" "You want a bout with the Champ?" "Sure! Don't you?" Charlie sat down on the work-bench and pulled the Tanker down next to him. "Listen, Tank. Last night was a freak, you understand? Something happened last night, I don't know what. But you ain't the boy to fight the Champ--My God, boy, you're older than me!" Tanker Bell looked at Charlie, his face puckering like a child's. "No, now wait. Lemme make it clear, Tank," said Charlie Jingle softly. "You'n me been together fourteen years. We've fought in some pretty ancient Tank-towns. We've fought young and old alike, and you know as well as me that it was always an even toss whether or not you would get knocked cold. We're mediocrities, Kid. When I bought you, you'd already seen your best days. Am I right?" Tanker Bell nodded, his head down on his chest. "Look, Tanker, I ain't tryin' to hurt you. I just don't wanna see you get killed!" "Well who said anything about gettin' killed, for God's sake!" bawled the Tanker. "Look at it this way. You've been knocked to pieces a dozen times, and I've gone to work and put you back together a dozen times. I've twisted your wires, re-shaped your reflex plan, doubled your flexibility and your punch-power, co-ordinated and re-co-ordinated you and re-analyzed your nervous-pattern until I've exhausted every possible combination. You're a fighting machine, and a good one, kid. But machines grow old. They get outdated, like me. I'm a Mechanical Engineer. Okay! There's lots of new stuff I don't know that these college kids know. What happens to them? They go to work for Pugilists Inc., inventing new machines with new systems. They got systems that I never dreamed of. Do you know that?" "Well what's that got to do with me fightin' the Champ, for God's sake?" "Everything! They put machines in the ring now that are worth Five Hundred Thousand dollars! They're almost indestructible!" "How come that punk I fought last night wasn't so indestructible, then? How come about that, Charlie?" "I dunno, I dunno. Somethin' musta gone wrong. Maybe he shorted out." "Or _maybe_ for once you hit the _right_ combination, how about that, Charlie? Maybe I'm real ripe, now, after all these years of tankin' around!" "But Tanker! Use your head! The Champ's brand new, spankin' young. He's the newest-styled fighting machine in existence. What chance you think we stand against that?" "Listen. I fought that bum last night with ease, you know that? There I was, just glidin' around him, punchin' him at will--" "Maybe it was an accident! Maybe somethin' went wrong with his system last night...." "And maybe I dropped him on the square, too...." "OKAY!" shouted Charlie Jingle in desperation. "Maybe you did. And maybe, if you go in against the Champ, maybe he'll kill you! Maybe he'll smash you so hard I won't be able to put you together again. You wanna take that chance? Or you wanna settle down nice and quiet in some Pug factory, supervisin' young fighters?" "Naw!" yelled the Tanker. "I wanna take that chance! I want you to get me a fight with the Champ!" "Are you dumb, or what? Don't you know they never come back?" "All I know is this," began the Tanker. "Fourteen years we bin together. Fourteen years you stuck it out and starved it out, workin' with scraps from a junk-heap, with stumble-bums like me who've seen their day. There was times when you went hungry because the junk-heap needed oil, or wiring, or a pattern-analysis, or parts. Now you got something! Now you can be on top! You know damn well you don't want any part of that Hollywood fiasco. You got a crack at _big_ money. You gonna let it go by-the-by because you're afraid a pile of wires might get killed? Naw! We fight, and that's the way it stacks!" "You mean it, don't you, Tanker?" The Tanker said nothing. Charlie Jingle slowly rose, tired in his bones, tired in his joints. "Okay. I'll arrange it. But don't blame me if--" "I won't," said Tanker Bell tightly, and Charlie went out. In the hall, the Hollywood people were still waiting for him. Charlie shouldered past them with a half-spring to his step. * * * * * He sat in the waiting-room of the offices of Pugilists, Inc., on a plush powder-blue lounge chair chewing gum languidly. From time to time he shot a glance at the secretary sitting inside a totally enclosed desk, operating a Mento-Writer Machine, the electrical contact-buttons fixed to her temples. He watched in sleepy fascination as, every so often, she leaned over and pushed the button marked _corrector_, and there would follow an electrical hiss as the tape on the machine slid back, eliminating wrongly-formed thoughts. Charlie knew that somewhere in the room there was machinery observing him, measuring his pulse, emotional balance, probable intelligence, habits, and massing and digesting the general information so that Pugilists, Inc., would know what kind of man they were dealing with, and what approach would be best. Somewhere in this building another machine was probably purring, feeding information from memory-banks, relating all known facts and incidents regarding Charlie Jingle, his birth, environment, social and political connections, moral status, business ethics, and bank account.... Not that Charlie Jingle was so important to them, this he knew. But Pugilists, Inc., kept records and histories of every and any individual having even the remotest connection with the fight game. As Charlie Jingle sat there a smile twitched across his face. Let them figure _that_ out, he thought, and then sank into a reverie. Over in the other part of the room, across the prairie of rug, the secretary Mento wrote efficiently, the machine going ZZZ CLK SSHHHH CLK CLK ZZZZ, hypnotic in it's well-oiled quietness. "Jingle?" Charlie Jingle looked across the room to the secretary. "What?" he asked. "Would you go in please, Mister Jingle?" Charlie followed the direction of the girl's gesture to a panel in the wall. He got up and started to cross suspiciously toward it. As he slowed down, nearing it, he looked back at her, and she smiled and encouraged him on sympathetically toward the doorless wall. Just as Charlie thought _It'd be funny if I break my nose on that goddam wall_ ... the panel swung in quietly. Charlie walked through it into a room. In it there was another veldt of rug, at the far end of which was a bar, a lounge chair, a tremendous sofa, and a low, knee-high table. The walls were decorated with modern paintings in a colorful, tasteful, executive way. Standing near the knee-high table were three men, one distinguished looking, the other two looking as if they'd stepped out of a Young Collegiate Magazine ad. The elegant one crossed to Charlie, his face a big, pleasant, well-groomed smile, hand extended. "Allow me, Mister Jingle. I'm Kort Gassel. These two gentlemen are Jerome Rupp and Eugene White. Would you like a drink, Mister Jingle?" Charlie Jingle shook their hands and sat down, crossing his legs comfortably. "You got gin, Mister ahhh--" "Gassel," said Kort Gassel, and crossed the three feet to the bar. "Soda?" he asked. "Straight," said Charlie Jingle, and watched the other two sit down slowly as Gassel came back with his drink. "That's quite a drink. I know few men who enjoy straight gin, Mister Jingle. It always comes as a surprise when I--" "You gonna give us the fight, Mister Gassel?" interrupted Charlie. "The fight? You mean with Iron-Man Pugg?" "That's right, with Iron-Man Pugg." "Well Mister Jingle. Since you put the matter so straightforwardly. Pugilists Incorporated only owns a small block of stock in Iron-Man Pugg, as you know. Mister Rupp and Mister White here represent the other interests involved. As you must know, Pugilists Incorporated is a large-scale business, designed to function on a large-scale basis. Now, we, the stockholders in Iron-Man Pugg, have thought this thing out. We've come to the conclusion that it would rather--well, embarrass the Company to agree to such a match as you propose." "So you won't fight?" "No, no, Mister Jingle, don't jump to hasty conclusions. I'm trying to explain something to you. It's not simply a matter of matching your--ah--boy against ours. But we _are_ concerned with the overall effect of such a bout. Frankly, our reputation as a manufacturing concern is more important to us than the outcome of any single bout--" "Whadda you say you get to the point?" "Certainly. Tanker Bell, as we understand it, has a fighting history of forty-seven years. Now, I'm afraid we'd be made a laughing-stock if Tanker Bell were set into motion against one of our products." "Especially if he won, is that it?" "Particularly then. But we rest secure in the fact that that outcome is highly improbable, not to state impossible." Charlie Jingle sipped his gin, looking from one face to the other. "So?" he asked, anticipating what was about to come. "Suppose, Mister Jingle, you were offered a price for Tanker Bell, price far in excess of his actual worth. A price big enough to even make it possible for you to perhaps buy a second-rate fighter in good second-class condition." Charlie Jingle closed his eyes and tapped his foot with horny, grease-monkey fingers. In a moment he opened them and slowly took in the three representatives of the champ, Iron-Man Pugg. "Lemme get this straight. You want me to sell Tanker for much more than he's worth because you'd be humiliated at having to put one of your products in the same ring with him?" "Exactly," said Kort Gassel. "But you're sure your boy'd whip him in the ring?" "Well obviously we all know the knockout victory he scored over the Contender was an accident." Charlie Jingle nodded. "_We_ all know it. But there's one guy in the world who don't. You know who? Tanker Bell himself." Kort Gassel laughed. "A robot, Mister Jingle? Surely you must be--" Charlie Jingle shook his head. "Can't do it, boys. I gotta consider the Tanker. You see, Mister Gassel, Tanker thinks he could take your boy. And not only does he wanna take him, but he won't take no for an answer!" "Listen, Jingle, is this some kind of joke? What are you holding out for? A price? When I said I'd make it worth your--" Charlie Jingle shook his head, stubbornly and firmly. "No price, Gassel. Just an agreement-contract." "Listen, you fool, don't you realize what's at stake here? We're big business! We can't afford to play around with lucky independents like you!" "Can't take any chances, huh?" "Exactly that! Can't, and won't!" "Wanna bet?" "If you try to--" Charlie Jingle got up from his seat. "Gassel ... I've been in this racket so long I've got oil in my veins instead of blood, and a Reflex-Pattern Analysis for a brain. I know every angle there is to know. If I want a fight, I'll get one. So don't go try putting your big business pressure on me. I'm too old for college-boy antics." Kort Gassel stared at him for a long, hostile moment. Then his face broke into a smile. "My friend, do you know what you're bucking? These are the offices of Pugilists Incorporated you're in. Don't you realize what that means?" "Sure," said Charlie Jingle. "It means that if Tanker Bell whips Iron-Man Pugg, Charlie Jingle will one day have as big a factory and as many orders for Fighting-Machines as Pug, Inc...." Charlie Jingle crossed the desert of rug toward the exit-panel. "See you at Ring-side, Kids." And he went out. * * * * * Mischa Hannigan, owner and proprietor of Hannigan's Jungle, watched from his tiered office as Hammerhead Johnny put Tanker Bell through his paces in the ring. His eyes travelled from the laboring fighters in the ring to the crowd of spectators standing and sitting around, watching the Tank work. He was smooth and fast, without a kink, stabbing light quick jabs and those murderous body-rights that had stopped the Contender, breaking, the press had said after the fight, the metal rib-cage inside the Contender's body. Mischa Hannigan was happy. After fifteen years of obscurity, his gym was fast-becoming popular again. He had begun to charge admissions again to fans and promoters who were eager to see the Tank at work. Once again during the afternoon workouts there was the hum and roar of spectators, the slap-slur of springing feet on the canvas followed by the booming of fists echoing from rib-cage and jaw-bone structure. There was the smell of money in his gym now, along with the smells of leather and oil. The door behind him opened and Hannigan turned to Charlie Jingle. "'Lo, Charlie." "'Lo, Mish.... How's he look?" "Terrific! If I didn't know him for twenty years, I'd swear he was brand, spankin' new!" Charlie Jingle grunted quietly and walked to the plate-glass window. He looked down at them there in the white-roped square, watched the Tanker attack with a quick-reflex attack, block a flurry of counter-blows, weave under a right-hand smash to the head, and rock Hammerhead Johnny to the ropes with a combination of shoulder-straight jabs to the stomach and a cross-hand right to the chest. A hum of approval and amazement went up from the spectators. "Charlie!" shrieked Mischa Hannigan. "Charlie, did you see that? And that Hammerhead Johnny is supposed to be the most stable Pug in the business. They say he's got magnets in his feet, can't nobody break the contact of--" "Calm down, calm down, it's only practice." "Practice he calls it! If Hammerhead could bust up the Tank, don't you think he would?" "Hammerhead's an old junkpot, Mich, and you know it!" "Old he may be, Charlie, but junkpot he's not. Crafty as a damn president of Pugs, Inc., he is, and everybody in the business knows it. He ranks with the best sparrin' partners in the world, he does." In the ring below something happened that drew a roar of uncontrollable excitement from the crowd. It was over in a flash and nobody saw quite how it happened. Hammerhead Johnny's body described a rigid, dark arc in the air, hovered suspended a second in a completely horizontal position, and then crashed with a hollow boom to the deck. The Hammerhead did not move. "BEGREE!" howled the delighted Mischa Hannigan. "BEGREE, he's knocked him cold!" He began to dance around the room in a jig that shook his frame with every jolt and pirouette. Charlie Jingle laughed. "I'll be dammed! The Tank's really got it! He really has got it!" "Oh, we're rich, we're rich, we're rich!" chanted the hysterical Hannigan, dancing his macabre dance of the human puff-ball. There was a knock at the door and Hannigan, still chanting, danced to the door and opened it. The relaxed puffy flesh drew tight, his back stiffened. Charlie Jingle peered around his girth to see who stood there. Harry Belok, in a black Homburg and a blue pin-stripe suit, stepped smiling into the room, twirling an ebony cane. He doffed his hat, bowing slightly. Behind him a small man slid in next to the wall, his whole body screwed up tightly into his neck. Hannigan, with a pale, sickly smile, shut the door. "If it ain't Harry Belok! Hello, Harry." Harry Belok, smiling, looked straight at Charlie Jingle. "Whadayasay, Hannigan! How's things, Charlie? Long time no see, hah?" Charlie Jingle, with a tightness in his throat, mirrored the sick expression of Mischa Hannigan. He smiled a smile so forced his flesh stretched like a rubber mask out of control. "Hello, Harry. What can I do for you?" "'S this way, Charlie-mo. I just seen your boy work out. I just seen him club the Hammerhead to the deck with the weirdest combination I ever seen. It's somethin' new, he's got. Somethin' original! Know what I mean?" Harry Belok stopped pacing, stopped twirling, to look at Charlie Jingle. Charlie Jingle waited. "Well--I hear around the grapevine that Pugs, Inc., don't relish the thought of givin' your boy a crack at Iron-Man. Is that true, Charlie-mo?" Charlie Jingle shrugged. "It don't mean a thing, Harry. You know that as well as anybody." "Yeah, Charlie-mo. But you know as well as anybody that the Fight Commission has got a rules book as thick as this room. If Pugs, Inc., really wants to, they'll find some kinda statute that disqualifies your boy for the championship. Now, you don't want _that_ to happen, do you?" Charlie Jingle began to feel the heat flushing up behind his eyeballs. "What's the pitch, Harry?" "I think maybe what you ought to do, Charlie-mo, is lemme buy a chunk out of your boy. Then I guarantee you get the match." "What makes you think I don't get the match anyway, Harry?" Harry Belok turned, pointing his stick through the glass to the gym. "Look down there. You see any reporters there? You see any cameras shootin'?" Charlie Jingle did not move, keeping his eyes unblinking on Belok. "Okay. There's no reporters. No press build-up. Pugs, Inc., has put the freeze on. So? What's the point?" "The point," said Harry Belok, tapping Charlie Jingle's chest with the white-tipped stick, "the point, is that you don't get no match from Iron-Man unless you play ball with me!" Charlie Jingle squinted at him through a cloud of brown-blue smoke. "Can't do it, Harry-mo," he said quietly. "You serious?" "Dead serious," said Charlie Jingle. "You get too serious, that's the way you liable to wind up," said Harry Belok through his teeth. He turned and stomped toward the door and went out. The little man against the wall slid out after him. Charlie Jingle walked nonchalantly to the door, hooked his foot behind it, and kicked it shut with a loud slam. Mischa Hannigan took a handkerchief from his pocket, wiping his brow. "You've gone crazy, Charlie. You've gone stark ravin' mad!" Charlie Jingle whirled. "All these years, Mish, I starved and sweated in tank-joints. All these years I broke my back, and nobody lifted a finger except a choice one or two. Now I've got a crack at somethin' good and everybody wants in. Well I don't want them in! I want them to stay clear, and lemme go my own way! Is that crazy?" "But Charlie," moaned Mischa Hannigan. "You can't go laughin' at the Fixer like that! Don't you have enough worries without gettin' killed?" Charlie Jingle looked at him a blank moment and then laughed. He turned, looking toward the ring below. The Tanker was on the Gym floor, looking up. He waved. Charlie turned to Hannigan. "Can you get me the Jawbreaker to spar with Tanker, Mish?" Hannigan sank slowly into his leather chair behind the beat-up, rusting metal desk. He rubbed a patch of rust with his thumb. "Sure. Sure I can get the Jawbreaker. Can you get the match?" "You just watch my dust," said Charlie, and went out. Mischa Hannigan crinkled his nose. He began to feel his asthma coming on. * * * * * "Are you crazy, Jingle?" roared the apoplectic Commissioner Jergen. "I can't get myself wrapped up in ring politics! I'm a fight commissioner, not a goddam promoter!" Charlie took a few steps toward the Commissioner, leveling a finger at him in indictment. "Now you lemme tell you somethin'. You run the fight game, but the only thing you're interested in is your own goddam reputation. The only time you ever get up off your fat keister is when somebody publicly pulls a quick deal that looks phony. Then you roar up from the saddle and start screaming 'foul'--_only_ because it makes you look bad if you don't!" "I can have you cited for contempt--" "I don't give one damn in hell what you can have me cited for! I thought you were one square guy. But all you are is a bloody politician like all the others! You're here to make sure the fight racket gets a fair-deal. Well I'm getting the old freeze-away, and you still sit on your keister and don't do a damned thing!" "You damn midget!" croaked the Commissioner, and Charlie Jingle whirled, fists cocked, his face working up a nice purple color. "What'd you call me, Fatso?" "I called you a damn midget, and if you don't like it, I dare you take a poke at me!" said the Commissioner, and coming around his desk he thrust his jaw out toward Charlie Jingle's cocked fists. Jingle drew his fist back and stopped. Slowly he dropped the cocked hand by his side. "Oh, no! Oh, no you don't! You'd just love me to do it, wouldn't you? A half-hour later I'd lose my license for conduct unbecoming a fight trainer." The Commissioner straightened up slowly, glaring out from under thick grey eyebrows at Charlie Jingle's face. "You think I'd pull _that_?" "Goddam right you'd pull it! For all I know, you may even be working for Pugs, Inc." Fight Commissioner Jergen rocked back on his heels as if he had just taken a blow between the eyes. He sank slowly into his chair, staring in stillborn amazement at Charlie Jingle. "Wait a minute, Charlie. You mean to say--Listen, boy, what's happening to you? You know better than to say something like that to me!" Charlie Jingle suddenly felt a hollowness in his stomach. "I'm sorry, Jergen. I don't know what's the matter with me. This thing's got me sore. They got me goin', and there's nothin' I can do about it. I called the press. I told them that Pugs, Inc. and Tanker Bell had come to an agreement. I even quoted a fight date. I look in the papers the next day. Nothing! They got me sewed up tight. I come here as a last resort.... I'm sorry I shot off my mouth!" Charlie Jingle turned and started out. "Now wait a minute, Charlie...." Charlie Jingle turned. "You see, I know all about these kinds of deals in the game. Have known about them for years. But they keep me shut out because I can't prove anything. If you go to court as a witness, Pugs, Inc. will have fifteen other witnesses. They'll even have a taped recording of your conversation with them, which they juggle and splice to fit their purposes. You'll hear things coming off a tape which you damn well know you didn't say or mean. But you'll have to admit it's your voice; you were there, the other guys in the room were there--and they got you nailed. See what I mean? They're big business. They got it sewed." "You mean there's nothing to do?" "I mean there are ways. All you've got to do is sneak yourself into the public eye. Once that happens, the public asks questions. What happened to Tanker Bell? Why isn't he fighting the Champ? Know what I mean?" "Don't you think they're askin' questions now?" "Sure. But they ain't doin' it en masse. See?" "Yeah," said Charlie Jingle softly. "Yeah. What I gotta do is hit Pugs, Inc. where they ain't got control of the situation. Where they don't have their stooges workin' to keep things quiet." "Now you've got it," said the Commissioner, grinning. "Okay. See you around," said Charlie, and started out. "Take care," warned the Commissioner. But by that time Charlie Jingle was on his way. * * * * * At one o'clock of that afternoon, Charlie Jingle boarded a coast-to-coast rocket. Fifty-five minutes later, at ten fifty-five A.M. West Coast Time, Charlie Jingle set foot on the pavement of Los Angeles' Municipal Rocket-Port, hopped a cab, and got out on the lot of Galaxy Films. His business there took him two hours and twelve minutes, by which time he hopped another cab, was born back to the Rocket-Port, and bought a return ticket on the eastbound Rocket, scheduled for takeoff at five P.M. Charlie found a few hours on his hands. He chose to divert himself at the Jet-Car Races in Culver City. He dropped forty dollars on the first two races, and had just bought another ticket when, as he walked away from the betting window, he saw a familiar profile marking possibilities on a racing sheet with a well-chewed pencil. He nudged up to Rabbit Markey, and in a half-whisper, asked: "Got anything hot today, Jack?" Rabbit Markey looked up with an annoyed frown, blinked, and when Charlie Jingle's face registered, laughed. "'Lo, Charlie? How's things out on the Coast?" "Things," said Charlie, shaking his hand, "are lousy. But they'll get better real fast. How about you, Rabbit? Out of the fights for good?" Rabbit Markey sighed slow and long, nodding his head. "I dumped my whole stable, Charlie, and when I come out here, I figured Jet-Car racing was a clean way to make a buck. So I bought me a Jet outfit. But it's the same tie-up as the fights was." "I can imagine," said Charlie Jingle. "No you can't, neither. For instance, you know who Jet-Cars Incorporated happens to be an affiliate of?" "Wait! Don't tell me. Lemme guess." Charlie shut his eyes. "Pugs, Inc.?" "Bingo," said Rabbit Markey dispiritedly. "You know who makes the drivers for the Jet-Cars?" "Wait! Don't tell me!... Pugs, Inc.?" "Bingo," said Rabbit Markey sadly, and Charlie laughed. "That's the way the bugle blows, eh, Rabbit?" "You know who's got the Commissioner of Jet-Car Races bought out?" went on Rabbit Markey. "Wait! Don't tell--How do you know that, Rabbit?" "Whatsa difference. I know. For sure! I happened to find out. Just like the old Fights Racket, eh, Charlie?" "Yeah," said Charlie Jingle nervously. "Except that nobody's got Jergen bought out." "Hunh?" exclaimed Rabbit Markey. "What I said--nobody's got--" "I heard ya, Charlie. I heard ya the first time. You mean you never heard about Jergen?" "Heard? Heard what?" "Boyo boyo boy! Buddy, you are in the middle of the neatest fix in history. You mean to say you don't know what's happening?" "Fix? What kinda fix, Rabbit?... Are you kidding? I can't even get my boy a fight, and you're talking fix!" "Aw Boyy! Awww Boyyyy are you a dummy! Lissen! Whatta you doin' out here onna Coast?" "Doin'? I'm tryin' to set it up so I can get Tanker a fight, that's what I'm doin'!" "You worked out a deal with some film company, huh?" "That's right. Why?" Rabbit Markey shot a glance to the right of him and one to the left, hunched his shoulders, pulled his trousers up, took Charlie by the lapel, and drew him close to a post. The buzzer sounded outside to announce that the race was within one minute of starting time. "Charlie, you're about to be had. Now you're playin' it the way you was supposed to in the beginning. You was supposed to play ball with the Hollywood boys to begin with. Now you done it. Now the fix is in!" "How the the hell can there be a goddam FIX?" screeched Charlie Jingle. "Tanker's level. Are you kiddin'?" "Sure! Tanker's level! But how about the Contender? How about Hammerhead Johnny? How about Steamroller Jones?" "You're crazy!" shouted Charlie Jingle. "It can't be! How the hell would _you_ know?" "You wanna know how I know? My daughter Marie--you remember her, she was a kid when you seen her--she's a secretary to Mike Bretz, the East Coast Assistant Vice of Pugs, Inc.... She's got the whole map out, from the word go. Pugs, Inc. is puttin' things in your way so that everybody thinks you got a real thing in the Tank. They're helpin' you get a build-up, you see, as if they wanted to freeze you out. When you finally break through the freeze-out one way or the other, they're gonna have one hellofa drawing-card! Get it now, Charlie?" Charlie Jingle walked away from Rabbit Markey, went some twenty paces, kicked a dent in a refuse-chute, and walked back. "I don't believe it!" whispered Charlie Jingle hoarsely. "I don't believe it!" The bugle blew outside. Rabbit Markey looked at Charlie, looked at his ticket, and started toward the race-track. Charlie Jingle caught his arm. "Wait a minute, Rabbit." Rabbit Markey shook his head. "I already said enough to float me in blood, Charlie. Now lemme go and watch the bloody no-good fixed races." "No, Rabbit. Tell me more. Tell me who else is swingin' this deal?" "Don't you know?" "Harry Belok?" Rabbit Markey nodded. "Jergen?" asked Charlie Jingle with bated breath. Rabbit Markey nodded his head. "How they do it? Tinker with the Fighters?" "You ever see Hammerhead get knocked off his feet?" "I don't get it--they lemme buy my own way into the news, is that it? I think I'm perfectly legitimate. So does everybody else in the game. What then?" "Then a story breaks someplace about the way Pugs, Inc. tried not to give you a fight. Everything looks like Pugs, Inc. is scared stiff of you because you can ruin them. Big build-up. Even Jergen goes to bat, confesses he tried to help you get the fight. Everybody's sore as hell at Pugs, Inc. They force a fight, Tanker goes in--and gets slaughtered. See?" Charlie Jingle felt his guts deflate in a rush. "Yeah," he said, dead-toned. "I see." "What you gonna do?" "I dunno. I got it set up with Galaxy Films to be waitin' in New York Rocket-Port with cameras. Couple of friends of mine are gonna fake a shootin' with me when I get there. Guess I've got no choice. I'll have to go through with it now." "Okay now," said Rabbit Markey. "Now lemme go and get ulcers over the cars." He gave Charlie his hand and they shook slowly. "Take care, kid--and thanks." "Nahhh! Forget it! Forget you even saw me here! But don't forget what I told you. Harry Belok's got friends in LA, too. I got racing-ulcers, but I don't mind bein' alive with them. You get me?" Charlie Jingle nodded again, and Rabbit Markey walked out into the roar of the Jet-Races. Charlie Jingle looked down at the ticket in his hand, ripped it in two, and let the pieces flutter to the floor. Outside, he hailed a cab. To board the Eastbound Rocket would have been to play into the very hands of his enemies. And he needed time to think--to figure his way out of the fix that had been planned for him. Perhaps by avoiding the Rocket trip, he would avoid the pre-planned shooting, the filming of which was also pre-set, and so avoid the press, and whatever consequent notoriety would follow the whole affair at the Rocket-Port. So he hired a car and started to drive East. * * * * * There arose a great hue and cry at the disappearance of Charles Jingle, who had been a registered, scheduled passenger on the Eastbound Rocket. What had happened to him? What mystery cloaked his disappearance? Galaxy Films made it known that Charles Jingle suspected an attempt on his life. Why? asked a conscientious columnist. Who might have reason enough to threaten the life of a Robot-Trainer? Mischa Hannigan, innocently and in a moment of anger at what he thought must be vengeful murder, stated that attempts had been made to intimidate Charles Jingle into selling out Tanker Bell. Who had done so? Mischa Hannigan would not say, though hinting darkly that a "well-known fixer" was at the bottom of it. The Press probed deeper into the mystery. What about Charles Jingle's property, Tanker Bell? Was it so valuable that the proprietor should be murdered for not parting with it? If it was, why had there been no offer of a match from the Champion? It was then that some bright reporter conceived the idea of questioning the Fight Commission as to its views on the shamefully clandestine affair. What had it to say? Nothing, was the reply. The bright reporter launched an attack on the Commission. The fight public wanted to know what the Fight Commission thought its function was, if not to expose underground tactics in the game? Commissioner Jergen addressed the citizenry via television. He admitted that Charles Jingle had been to see him. He admitted he was unable to move due to a lack of tangible evidence. He would not name the parties accused by Charles Jingle because there was no real evidence at this date. He would further investigate the situation, using every resource at his command. When Charlie Jingle arrived in New York two days later the lid was off the town. Everyone was fuming at what had been perpetrated against him. Everyone understood why he had come into town unobtrusively. What Charlie Jingle had sought to avoid had happened anyway. The play was in motion. There was no stopping it. He watched the day-to-day developments in a state of paralyzed horror. It was a nightmare in which he was the principal, and yet, the bystander, the spectator. He had no choice but to follow. Rabbit Markey had shown him the truth, so that all things now had a double meaning, a reality and an unreality, another dimension, another depth. When the press came to question him, Charlie fought the only way he knew. He denounced Pugs, Inc. as cheats, liars, and fixers. He denounced Commissioner Jergen, Harry Belok, the press, the Hollywood people, the prize-fight game, and the public in an attempt to break the whole business wide open. But everyone understood. "Mister Jingle is justified in his bitterness," said a reporter. "Of course Charlie's sore. He's got a right to be sore!" said Commissioner Jergen. "A horrible injustice. We were concerned over our reputation," said Kort Gassel of Pugs, Inc. "The guy deserves a break!" said the fight public. And Hollywood said, "We don't understand what prompted this unwarranted attack." So there it was. Charlie Jingle spoke the truth, but nobody believed him. Tanker Bell was granted a match. The fix was in. As a last resort, Charlie Jingle refused to let the Tanker fight. An uproar went up from the public. It was a matter of ethics. Tanker Bell was now their champion. He was the embodiment of everyman against the Organization, against injustice. Tanker Bell _must_ fight! It was then that Charlie Jingle understood. This was not simply a fight. This was part of a long-range plan to bring the public man to heel. This was part of a scheme to break the mass-individual spirit, because if Everyman stood with Tanker Bell as the champion of independant justice, and Tanker Bell were beaten--so would the public-independent spirit be. But Charlie Jingle had his hands tied. * * * * * On the day of the fight, Charlie Jingle corralled the Tanker in the workshop and ordered the amazed Tanker to lie down on the work-bench for a "tune up". The Tanker protested. "You crazy, Charlie? Whuffor? I never felt so good in my life!" "Don't gimme any arguments, Tank. Stretch out and shuddup." "But Charlie...." "Stretch out, for God's sake!" "What you gonna do?" "Re-vamp you. I'm gonna run the tapes on the bout with the Contender, and stuff your memory banks with tapes on every fight was ever had with a Pugs, Inc. product. Then I'm gonna run tapes on Hammerhead Johnny. I'm gonna key up your reflex-pattern to the point where you'll be operating so fast your joints are liable to break down in the ring." Tanker stared at him, open-mouthed. "What for? Will you please tell me that? _What for?_" "After I've fed you the tapes on the Contender and Hammerhead, you'll know, if those goddam memory-computers of yours ain't so rusty they can still work." "You tryin' to teach me somethin' I don't know?" "That's right." "Why can't you just tell me?" "If you figure it out yourself, you won't like it any more than if I told you; but you'll know it the hard way." "What a hellofa way to teach me somethin'! Jazzin' me up! My co-ordination is perfect, analysis-system is workin' like a voodoo charm, and you wanna jazz me up! It's like committin' suicide!" Something in the Tanker's face changed, quickly and suddenly, as if a diamond-bright idea exploded inside his steel-plated head. "Charlie?" Charlie Jingle looked up from his assortment of tools. "What?" "Is this a fix?" Charlie Jingle looked at him, the flush of anger brightening his eyes. "Is that a joke, Tanker?" "No, Charlie. A question." "Stretch out," said Charlie Jingle gruffly. "Answer me first, Charlie. Is it?" "Whatta you think?" "I dunno," said the Tanker, stretching out slowly. "You really wanna win that fight, kid?" asked Charlie Jingle, sad and tender. "You know I do!" "Trust me then, hah?" The Tanker laughed, stretching out on the bench. The light glittered cold on the smooth worn steel of the tools in Charlie Jingle's hands. * * * * * When the first Mechanical Pugilist was made, the Fight Commission made a number of demands. First, through each robot's sight-mechanism, it was established that each machine should be equipped with cameras by which they would record the activity of their opponent in the ring. If a foul was committed which had escaped the judges, the proof would thereby be recorded on the camera-tapes, which could easily be confiscated by the Fight Commission. Secondly, there was a co-ordination system in each machine which could not be slackened without a noticeable difference in the conduct of the fighter, thus acting as a safeguard against the Trainer-Owner's voluntarily slowing their fighters down for illegal purposes. However, there were ways to slow a pug down. There were circuit-shorting devices, reflex-sabotaging devices, analysis-pattern disturbances, muscle-flexibility tensions--all of which cut down the fighter's efficiency to some degree. The trick, of course, was to do so without exposure, since all fighters were examined moments before they entered the ring, and were subject to further investigation if the Judges deemed a fight suspiciously under expectation-level. The machines then were constructed, so that, in essence, they were totally 'honest', and every part in them was recorded in a master plan, filed with the Fight Commission, so that nothing could be added, and certainly, nothing be subtracted from them, since their balance depended completely on very essential parts. They were also constructed so that they had their weakness-points in exactly the same places men had theirs. If a machine struck hard enough and exactly enough on the point of its opponent's jaw, it would jar wires and electrical contacts badly enough to stop its operational function--thus the "knockout". To all intents and purposes the fighting machine was constructed as much along human lines as was possible, even to the point of corruptibility. They all had a desire to be great fighting machines, and to go down in the annals of fight history. They were, each and every one, made for the purpose of practicing a deadly, brutal art by which men could sublimate the brutality that nested like a sleeping tiger in their own persons. Provision had even been made for the sight of flowing blood. The tough rubber skin that made the robots appear human contained the red oil that lubricated the steel "innards", and if the rubber skin split the more the bloodthirsty members of the audience were satisfied. What Charlie Jingle did, when he operated on the Tanker, was what might be called, in human terms, "over-conditioning" him. He tightened and sped his reflexes, shortened the length of his wires so that electrical responses had shorter distances to travel, sped up his Analysis-Pattern, hyper-toned his muscle-flexibility, and generally made him a nervous wreck. Then, as a final touch, he ran the tapes he had promised to run, striving to bring the truth to the Tanker. * * * * * "How do you feel?" asked Charlie as he watched Tanker Bell sit up, his face twitching. "Like a damn screwball!" said the Tanker. "Did you get the message?" "Yeah. Hammerhead never fought like the way he fought me in his life! Wha'd they do to him?" "Fixed him," said Charlie Jingle soberly. "The Contender too?" "Well you saw the tapes. They're all stuck away in that memory bank of yours. Whatta you think?" Tanker nodded, his head jerking up and down uncontrollably. "Fixed him too. But I don't get the picture yet. Do you, Charlie?" "Sure, I get it. The night I called the Arena to match you against the Contender because Kid Congo got squashed in that accident, they had a fix workin' between them. Kid Congo was supposed to upset the Contender, see? But they must've both been fixed a little to fool the Judges. So there's this accident, see? This throws the whole plan into a panic--Congo's out, it's too late to un-fix the Contender. If the Auditorium puts in a fighter who's strictly legitimate, everybody will know it was a fixed. I call. They figured I had a Tank, maybe you'd look pretty bad in there, and nobody would know the difference. Okay, what happens? You nail the Contender, because, after all, you ain't that bad--does it figure?" "Boy! Does it!" said the Tanker, his head jerking. "Why can't you go to the authorities, Charlie?" "Because this fix is piled a mile high, Tanker, in all directions." "Whadda you mean?" "I mean I can't go to the Commission." "What we gonna do? Just get belted around?" "We got no choice," said Charlie Jingle with a shrug. "The hell we ain't! If you think I'm gonna go into a ring and get mauled, you're off your rocker!" "We can't call the bout off," said Charlie Jingle dejectedly. "Well who said anything about callin' it off?" shouted Tanker. "I did the best I could! I tuned you up. I timed you. I jazzed you up good--" "But you _still_ don't think we can beat that Iron-Man Pugg!" "That's right." "So whattam I supposed to do when I go inter the ring tonight? Throw down my hands and give it up?" "You do what I did. Do your best." "Alla while knowin' I don't stand a chance?" "If I did it, you can do it." "You know what you don't have, Charlie? You don't have faith!" Charlie Jingle snorted in disgust. "Who hatched you? Some preacher?" "No, no, that's the truth, and you know it!" "The truth," roared Charlie Jingle in a white rage, "The truth is that everything's a lie! The truth is that everything's fixed from the word go, from the bottom up and the top down. That's the goddam truth for you!" Tanker shook his head stubbornly. "Boy, you sure are singin' a different song, all of a sudden. I dunno what the hell happened to you, but you don't even sound like yourself!" "Okay! Okay! Wait and see when they klobber you with it tonight, Tank, my boy! Wait and see when it hits you square between the eyes." The Tanker leaped up from the bench, jerking his fists in the air uncontrollably. "I'll murder him!" "No you won't. Listen, I been fighting against fixes and fixers all my life, Tanker. I never believed, and I never wanted to believe, that they had it sewed away, that the big operators had us tucked away into their pockets. Now I'm convinced! They sold me their dirty bill of goods. I'm sewed in with the rest of them." The Tanker shook his fist under Charlie Jingle's face. Oil had drained from his system up into his face and head, lubricating his head-mechanisms as protection from strain, as his head-parts were being overworked. His "skin" looked blotchy. "Charlie! After this is over, I want quits with you! You hear me? I want quits!" "Suits me fine," said Charlie Jingle. "I'll bet--" began Tanker Bell, "--I'll bet you ain't even gonna bet on me! Are you?" "Sure! I'm gonna bet a thousand on you in the open market. Then what I'm gonna do is let Hannigan bet five thousand for me on the sly on the Champ. That way, at least I'll come out with somethin'." "Even Belok's better than you! At least he's got guts enough to fix fights. You ain't even got guts enough to fight one!" Charlie Jingle walked to the door. "You better rest up," he said, and swung the door open. "Don't worry about me," said the Tanker. "I can take care of myself!" Charlie Jingle looked at him a moment, a cloud of inexpressible something in his eyes. "See you later," he said quietly, and shut the door. * * * * * Charlie Jingle strode, shoulder to shoulder with Tanker Bell, down the long cluttered corridor of Golum Auditorium toward the roped ring. There swelled, to either side of them, the surging roar of the crowd, and it seemed to Charlie that the sound lifted the bitterness of his expression from his face and floated it forcibly toward the rafters overhead, for all to see, and to know that Charlie Jingle had given up the good fight, Charlie Jingle was tired, had been had, was through, inside and out. The fix was in. There was no way to stop it. That was the way the bugle blew. They climbed into the ropes and the roar of the crowd boomed and grew, electric with the mood and feel of battle. Swiftly Charlie disrobed the Tank, sat him on a stool, and looked over at the Champion's corner. Iron-Man Pugg was already seated. On his face, as on Tanker's, there was the brooding look of combat, of dead-sure certainty that he, and he alone would win. And Charlie felt a jolt of sick depression in his stomach, because he knew it was true. The robot-referee came into the ring, and the crowd immediately hushed. A dime-sized microphone on an almost invisible wire dropped down from the batteries of overhead lights (this was more in the line of tradition than need, since the robot-referee had a built-in mike of his own), and the referee held up his hands for complete silence. The crowd shushed itself to a murmer, and the referee went through his introductory piece. After each fighter had received the crowd's roar of approbation, the referee signalled for them to come to the center. They went back to their corners. Charlie shook the robe from the Tanker's back as a hum of excitement charged through the crowd. The buzzer sounded and the fighters rose, ready. Charlie stepped through the ropes, slapped Tanker on his back. "Do your best, Tank." The Tanker looked at him, face grim and solitary, shut away from Charlie. "My best ain't enough, Charlie. I'll do more than my best." Charlie Jingle was about to say something else when the bell banged away. He scooped the stool out of the ring and watched the Tanker shuffle into center to meet the Champion. * * * * * Thirty rounds of fighting is tough work. Even for machines. Thirty rounds of fighting, at five minutes per round, is one hundred and fifty minutes, two and a half hours, of solid, shattering labor. A machine overheats the way a man does under constant stress. It's joints expand, its lubricant thins, things begin to stick, friction wears parts. While a fight-machine's body works against time, its opponent pounds it, jars it, jolts it. Wires loosen. Gears slip. Tubes shatter. The machine slows, becomes gawky. Its timing is a split second off. Its flexibility, its speed, are worn down. When its pattern-analysis system becomes damaged, it cannot decipher the feints, the systems and combinations of its opponents' strategy. An eye is shattered, and the Trainer replaces it, since he carries a spare pair. The same one is smashed again, and he cannot replace it, because the Commission only allows a single replacement during a fight. Its "skin" is split and the colored oil flows, the life-blood of the machine. The Trainer is allowed one vulcanizing skin repair job per bout. If it happens again, the fighter must go on, fighting against the time when the loss of oil will endanger his operating efficiency. Sometimes the machines strike each other with such deadly impact, they dent the inner frame-work of the body, putting strains on a section of wiring or electrical tubing. Then the damaged machine must fight defensively to protect its weakened section. The offender will work out elaborate punch-patterns to trick the defender into somehow thinking he understands the aim of each pattern of punches and where the final concentration will be. And suddenly, with uncanny craftiness, the offender switches its attack to an unexpected area. This is the function of the pattern-analysis system in each fighter. To map, plan, digest the opponent's habits of fighting, then compute them, set up a given system of punches itself which will clutter the opponent's memory banks, and then radically change the mode of attack and system of fighting. The process is mathematically complex. It is the process of the human brain operating at high speed. The first fifteen rounds of fighting are generally devoted toward "faking" patterns. Each fighter labors to out-fox the other. In a sense, the first fifteen rounds of fighting are preliminary. They give the fight fans an opportunity to warm up to what is coming. Then it begins. The lightning-fast pace shifts, becomes slower. The fighters seem to be gliding through water. Then one unleashes an attack, sets an impossibly fast pace. The game has started.... * * * * * Charlie Jingle gripped the edge of the ring hard, digging his hands into the canvas, straining and twisting in tortured anguish with every slashing blow that struck the Tanker. He watched the two fighters weave, jerk, dart--bodies and arms flashing blurs, smashing blows one to the other in sequences that were too complex for the eye to follow in detail. He groaned, cursed, hoped, bellowed, roared and screamed along with two thousand nine hundred and seventy four other human beings in the arena. The round was the twenty-sixth. This was the stretch. The final, ineradicable stretch. The bell banged away and the fighters parted under the glare of the lights, dancing away from each other to their corners. Charlie shot the stool into the ring and went through the ropes. Tanker dropped like a chunk of hot lead onto the stool. "How do you feel, boy? How do you feel?" prompted Charlie, pumping the cooling-fluid into Tanker's insides. "Hot," rasped the Tanker. "Hot as hell." "Want me to throw in the towel?" asked Charlie, working fast, working the pump up and down quickly. "No, goddamit. Wrap it around your eyes if you can't take it." Charlie worked the body, stimulating the free flow of oil through the system. "How'm I doin'?" asked the Tanker grudgingly. "Well at least you're still in there." "By God, Charlie! Fighting Machines ain't supposed to be too emotional, but if anybody gets me sorer than you do so help me, I'll murder him!" Charlie Jingle worked the body fast, checked the heated joints for too much strain. "Favor the right. The elbow's gettin' creaky. And save the fight for the Champ. You'll need it." The buzzer sounded, Charlie shoved his tools through the ropes onto the edge of the deck, climbed out, and holding onto the edge of the stool, he said, "Watch his Three-Six combo. He's gonna angle for your jaw pretty soon." Tanker turned, looking down at him. "You don't trust me at all, do you?" The bell banged and quickly Tanker was on his feet, moving in his curious, side-long motion. * * * * * By the end of the twenty-seventh, Tanker came back to his corner lame. The Champ had dented his forehead. "How is it?" asked Charlie Jingle. "Fine," said Tanker thickly. "It's fine." There was a slur to his voice, which tipped off what was beginning to happen. Tanker's co-ordination system had been damaged. "He's crackin' down, now. He's got all his power behind them punches. You can see it when he pivots." "Yeah? Well _I_ kin feel it when he punches," said the Tanker. Charlie pumped him up with cooling fluid, worked his body. In the pit of his stomach was a sickness, a feeling of helplessness because Tanker's trouble was not where he could reach it, now. Now it was inside. "He's gonna knock your head off, this one, Tank. You got a dent in it." "I know I got a goddam dent. You don't hafta tell me." Charlie put his gear out of the ropes. "I told you it was a fix. Don't blame me for nothin'." "Yeah. You wash your hands of it. Just like that guy in the whuddayacall...." "Bible," said Charlie Jingle. "Yeah," said Tanker. The bell sounded and he sprang to his feet. * * * * * At the end of the twenty-eighth, Tanker was dragging his feet, hanging on by a thread of will, except of course that there was no will in a fighting machine except the mechanistic desire to be a great fighting-machine. "He'll nail you this one," said Charlie Jingle. "Thass what you think," challenged Tanker. "That's what I know. The fans are already going to the windows to collect their bets." "Yeah? They got another guess com--Why ain't you collectin'?" "I gotta stick it out, you know that!" "You mean to say you really bet on Iron Man?" "Sure," said Charlie Jingle, pulling a ticket out of his shirt pocket. "See?" Tanker bent close, scrutinizing the ticket. He looked up into Charlie's face, his own blotchy with color. "Five thousand dollars you bet on that bum?" Charlie Jingle laughed. "He don't look like no bum from where I am." The buzzer sounded, drowning out the string of curses the Tanker loosed at him. Charlie calmly shoved his equipment out of the ring. "Make it look good right to the end, you hear?" The bell banged. Tanker Bell got up slowly, moving in a clumsy waddling gait toward the Champion, arms hanging like stiffened lead weights by his sides, head bulled forward, shoulders hunched. He did not spring, did not dance. He shuffled forward, shoulders rocking from side to side. Iron-Man Pugg saw the stance of the beaten fighting-machine. He knew the dead-locked expression in the face, knew the shuffling, springless walk that indicated that the opponent was cold, was dead on his feet, jammed away inside, locked and frozen. But there was always the suspicion of trickery in him when he saw it. He danced in lightly, speared the Tanker's head with a long series of jabs, chopped away at his mid-section, and then, as if he himself were absolutely cocksure, lowered his guard just a fraction of an inch out of the Tanker's reach. Nothing happened. The Tanker moved toward him, dead on his feet, arms limp. The Champion had to blast him back with a murderous right to prevent a head-on, chest-on collision. The Tanker staggered back, wobbled, his knees threatened to unflex and buckle, then the built-in instinct to go on picked him up, and he straightened. Iron Man could hear, behind and around him, the swelling roar of the crowd. He knew it was for him. He had won. A hard, good fight. He had won. It remained now for him to put the trimmings on the package. Artfully he flirted in and around the Tanker, jabbing him lightly, ripping powerful right-hand shots to his head, toying with him. The crowd was roaring for blood. They wanted the finish. The Champion moved forward, wound up. He started his famous knockout sequence of punches, landing the first and second carefully, playing to his audience so that they could see what was happening and appreciate from the beginning what was about to happen. The Champion was enjoying himself. He worked with flash and flourish, and the crowd began to love it. Then Tanker Bell came alive. The Champion was first to see the expression of his face, and a split-second before it happened, he knew he had been tricked. He would forever remember that expression. It was almost human. It was an expression of hatred. Of murderous, long-controlled rage, diabolical and lethal. Tanker Bell ripped a blow to his jaw so well-set, so precise, so accurate, that when the Champion's head snapped back, the cable at the back of his neck broke. The Champion fell over on his back, striking the deck like fallen thunder. The Champion was not only 'out'--he was 'dead'. There was a great, still silence in the arena as Tanker Bell strode back to his corner. It was as if the air, and sound, and people had been frozen. The Referee came to his senses first, stood over Iron-Man, and counted, with long strokes of the arm. At the last stroke, chaos broke loose. Fans and officials swarmed into the ring. The spectators roared. But Tanker Bell had eyes for one single human being in that arena. Charlie Jingle. When he turned, Tanker saw Charlie Jingle doubled over the ropes, laughing. A reporter pulled Tanker to the middle of the ring before he could get to Charlie. While they quizzed him and prodded him, Charlie Jingle remained doubled over the ropes in a violent fit of hysteria. Finally they drew Charlie Jingle into the circle at ring-center. Had he had any doubts that Tanker would win? "Never!" Did he know that Tanker was faking toward the last? Certainly, came the laughing reply. How much money had he bet on his fighter? Ten thousand dollars, came the uproarious reply, and Tanker Bell bellowed, "He's a liar! He never bet a thing!" The Press was astonished. The Officials perked up their suspicious noses. What did Tanker Bell mean? "Ask him!" accused the glaring Tanker. Did Charlie Jingle have the bet ticket with him? After all, Mister Jingle--news. Charlie Jingle, laughing, with a flourish, produced a ticket from his shirt pocket. Tanker Bell stared at it, goggle-eyed. What would Charlie Jingle do with the money from the proceeds? "Ruin Pugs, Inc.," said Charlie Jingle. "Me and a California Rabbit are goin' into business together. Ruinin' Pugs, Inc." "Psychology," growled the Tanker. "The bum used his goddam psychology on me." What was Tanker Bell referring to? "Leave him alone," said Charlie Jingle, putting his arm around Tanker's shoulders. "Can't you see he's punch-happy?" 
55948	----	THE ABYSMAL BRUTE BY JACK LONDON Author of "The Call of the Wild," "The Sea Wolf," "Smoke Bellew," "The Night Born," etc. NEW YORK THE CENTURY CO. 1913 THE ABYSMAL BRUTE I Sam Stubener ran through his mail carelessly and rapidly. As became a manager of prize-fighters, he was accustomed to a various and bizarre correspondence. Every crank, sport, near sport, and reformer seemed to have ideas to impart to him. From dire threats against his life to milder threats, such as pushing in the front of his face, from rabbit-foot fetishes to lucky horse-shoes, from dinky jerkwater bids to the quarter-of-a-million-dollar offers of irresponsible nobodies, he knew the whole run of the surprise portion of his mail. In his time having received a razor-strop made from the skin of a lynched negro, and a finger, withered and sun-dried, cut from the body of a white man found in Death Valley, he was of the opinion that never again would the postman bring him anything that could startle him. But this morning he opened a letter that he read a second time, put away in his pocket, and took out for a third reading. It was postmarked from some unheard-of post-office in Siskiyou County, and it ran: Dear Sam: You don't know me, except my reputation. You come after my time, and I've been out of the game a long time. But take it from me I ain't been asleep. I've followed the whole game, and I've followed you, from the time Kal Aufman knocked you out to your last handling of Nat Belson, and I take it you're the niftiest thing in the line of managers that ever came down the pike. I got a proposition for you. I got the greatest unknown that ever happened. This ain't con. It's the straight goods. What do you think of a husky that tips the scales at two hundred and twenty pounds fighting weight, is twenty-two years old, and can hit a kick twice as hard as my best ever? That's him, my boy, Young Pat Glendon, that's the name he'll fight under. I've planned it all out. Now the best thing you can do is hit the first train and come up here. I bred him and I trained him. All that I ever had in my head I've hammered into his. And maybe you won't believe it, but he's added to it. He's a born fighter. He's a wonder at time and distance. He just knows to the second and the inch, and he don't have to think about it at all. His six-inch jolt is more the real sleep medicine than the full-arm swing of most geezers. Talk about the hope of the white race. This is him. Come and take a peep. When you was managing Jeffries you was crazy about hunting. Come along and I'll give you some real hunting and fishing that will make your moving picture winnings look like thirty cents. I'll send Young Pat out with you. I ain't able to get around. That's why I'm sending for you. I was going to manage him myself. But it ain't no use. I'm all in and likely to pass out any time. So get a move on. I want you to manage him. There's a fortune in it for both of you, but I want to draw up the contract. Yours truly, PAT GLENDON. Stubener was puzzled. It seemed, on the face of it, a joke--the men in the fighting game were notorious jokers--and he tried to discern the fine hand of Corbett or the big friendly paw of Fitzsimmons in the screed before him. But if it were genuine, he knew it was worth looking into. Pat Glendon was before his time, though, as a cub, he had once seen Old Pat spar at the benefit for Jack Dempsey. Even then he was called "Old" Pat, and had been out of the ring for years. He had antedated Sullivan, in the old London Prize Ring Rules, though his last fading battles had been put up under the incoming Marquis of Queensbury Rules. What ring-follower did not know of Pat Glendon?--though few were alive who had seen him in his prime, and there were not many more who had seen him at all. Yet his name had come down in the history of the ring, and no sporting writer's lexicon was complete without it. His fame was paradoxical. No man was honored higher, and yet he had never attained championship honors. He had been unfortunate, and had been known as the unlucky fighter. Four times he all but won the heavyweight championship, and each time he had deserved to win it. There was the time on the barge, in San Francisco Bay, when, at the moment he had the champion going, he snapped his own forearm; and on the island in the Thames, sloshing about in six inches of rising tide, he broke a leg at a similar stage in a winning fight; in Texas, too, there was the never-to-be-forgotten day when the police broke in just as he had his man going in all certainty. And finally, there was the fight in the Mechanics' Pavilion in San Francisco, when he was secretly jobbed from the first by a gun-fighting bad man of a referee backed by a small syndicate of bettors. Pat Glendon had had no accidents in that fight, but when he had knocked his man cold with a right to the jaw and a left to the solar plexus, the referee calmly disqualified him for fouling. Every ringside witness, every sporting expert, and the whole sporting world, knew there had been no foul. Yet, like all fighters, Pat Glendon had agreed to abide by the decision of the referee. Pat abided, and accepted it as in keeping with the rest of his bad luck. This was Pat Glendon. What bothered Stubener was whether or not Pat had written the letter. He carried it down town with him. What's become of Pat Glendon? Such was his greeting to all sports that morning. Nobody seemed to know. Some thought he must be dead, but none knew positively. The fight editor of a morning daily looked up the records and was able to state that his death had not been noted. It was from Tim Donovan, that he got a clue. "Sure an' he ain't dead," said Donovan. "How could that be?--a man of his make that never boozed or blew himself? He made money, and what's more, he saved it and invested it. Didn't he have three saloons at the one time? An' wasn't he makin' slathers of money with them when he sold out? Now that I'm thinkin', that was the last time I laid eyes on him--when he sold them out. 'Twas all of twenty years and more ago. His wife had just died. I met him headin' for the Ferry. 'Where away, old sport?' says I. 'It's me for the woods,' says he. 'I've quit. Good-by, Tim, me boy.' And I've never seen him from that day to this. Of course he ain't dead." "You say when his wife died--did he have any children?" Stubener queried. "One, a little baby. He was luggin' it in his arms that very day." "Was it a boy?" "How should I be knowin'?" It was then that Sam Stubener reached a decision, and that night found him in a Pullman speeding toward the wilds of Northern California. II Stubener was dropped off the overland at Deer Lick in the early morning, and he kicked his heels for an hour before the one saloon opened its doors. No, the saloonkeeper didn't know anything about Pat Glendon, had never heard of him, and if he was in that part of the country he must be out beyond somewhere. Neither had the one hanger-on ever heard of Pat Glendon. At the hotel the same ignorance obtained, and it was not until the storekeeper and postmaster opened up that Stubener struck the trail. Oh, yes, Pat Glendon lived out beyond. You took the stage at Alpine, which was forty miles and which was a logging camp. From Alpine, on horseback, you rode up Antelope Valley and crossed the divide to Bear Creek. Pat Glendon lived somewhere beyond that. The people of Alpine would know. Yes, there was a young Pat. The storekeeper had seen him. He had been in to Deer Lick two years back. Old Pat had not put in an appearance for five years. He bought his supplies at the store, and always paid by check, and he was a white-haired, strange old man. That was all the storekeeper knew, but the folks at Alpine could give him final directions. It looked good to Stubener. Beyond doubt there was a young Pat Glendon, as well as an old one, living out beyond. That night the manager spent at the logging camp of Alpine, and early the following morning he rode a mountain cayuse up Antelope Valley. He rode over the divide and down Bear Creek. He rode all day, through the wildest, roughest country he had ever seen, and at sunset turned up Pinto Valley on a trail so stiff and narrow that more than once he elected to get off and walk. It was eleven o'clock when he dismounted before a log cabin and was greeted by the baying of two huge deer-hounds. Then Pat Glendon opened the door, fell on his neck, and took him in. "I knew ye'd come, Sam, me boy," said Pat, the while he limped about, building a fire, boiling coffee, and frying a big bear-steak. "The young un ain't home the night. We was gettin' short of meat, and he went out about sundown to pick up a deer. But I'll say no more. Wait till ye see him. He'll be home in the morn, and then you can try him out. There's the gloves. But wait till ye see him. "As for me, I'm finished. Eighty-one come next January, an' pretty good for an ex-bruiser. But I never wasted meself, Sam, nor kept late hours an' burned the candle at all ends. I had a damned good candle, an' made the most of it, as you'll grant at lookin' at me. And I've taught the same to the young un. What do you think of a lad of twenty-two that's never had a drink in his life nor tasted tobacco? That's him. He's a giant, and he's lived natural all his days. Wait till he takes you out after deer. He'll break your heart travelin' light, him a carryin' the outfit and a big buck deer belike. He's a child of the open air, an' winter nor summer has he slept under a roof. The open for him, as I taught him. The one thing that worries me is how he'll take to sleepin' in houses, an' how he'll stand the tobacco smoke in the ring. 'Tis a terrible thing, that smoke, when you're fighting hard an' gaspin' for air. But no more, Sam, me boy. You're tired an' sure should be sleepin'. Wait till you see him, that's all. Wait till you see him." But the garrulousness of age was on old Pat, and it was long before he permitted Stubener's eyes to close. "He can run a deer down with his own legs, that young un," he broke out again. "'Tis the dandy trainin' for the lungs, the hunter's life. He don't know much of else, though, he's read a few books at times an' poetry stuff. He's just plain pure natural, as you'll see when you clap eyes on him. He's got the old Irish strong in him. Sometimes, the way he moons about, it's thinkin' strong I am that he believes in the fairies and such-like. He's a nature lover if ever there was one, an' he's afeard of cities. He's read about them, but the biggest he was ever in was Deer Lick. He misliked the many people, and his report was that they'd stand weedin' out. That was two years agone--the first and the last time he's seen a locomotive and a train of cars. "Sometimes it's wrong I'm thinkin' I am, bringin' him up a natural. It's given him wind and stamina and the strength o' wild bulls. No city-grown man can have a look-in against him. I'm willin' to grant that Jeffries at his best could 'a' worried the young un a bit, but only a bit. The young un could 'a' broke him like a straw. An' he don't look it. That's the everlasting wonder of it. He's only a fine-seeming young husky; but it's the quality of his muscle that's different. But wait till ye see him, that's all. "A strange liking the boy has for posies, an' little meadows, a bit of pine with the moon beyond, windy sunsets, or the sun o' morns from the top of old Baldy. An' he has a hankerin' for the drawin' o' pitchers of things, an' of spouting about 'Lucifer or night' from the poetry books he got from the red-headed school teacher. But 'tis only his youngness. He'll settle down to the game once we get him started, but watch out for grouches when it first comes to livin' in a city for him. "A good thing; he's woman-shy. They'll not bother him for years. He can't bring himself to understand the creatures, an' damn few of them has he seen at that. 'Twas the school teacher over at Samson's Flat that put the poetry stuff in his head. She was clean daffy over the young un, an' he never a-knowin'. A warm-haired girl she was--not a mountain girl, but from down in the flat-lands--an' as time went by she was fair desperate, an' the way she went after him was shameless. An' what d'ye think the boy did when he tumbled to it? He was scared as a jackrabbit. He took blankets an' ammunition an' hiked for tall timber. Not for a month did I lay eyes on him, an' then he sneaked in after dark and was gone in the morn. Nor would he as much as peep at her letters. 'Burn 'em,' he said. An' burn 'em I did. Twice she rode over on a cayuse all the way from Samson's Flat, an' I was sorry for the young creature. She was fair hungry for the boy, and she looked it in her face. An' at the end of three months she gave up school an' went back to her own country, an' then it was that the boy came home to the shack to live again. "Women ha' ben the ruination of many a good fighter, but they won't be of him. He blushes like a girl if anything young in skirts looks at him a second time or too long the first one. An' they all look at him. But when he fights, when he fights!--God! it's the old savage Irish that flares in him, an' drives the fists of him. Not that he goes off his base. Don't walk away with that. At my best I was never as cool as he. I misdoubt 'twas the wrath of me that brought the accidents. But he's an iceberg. He's hot an' cold at the one time, a live wire in an ice-chest." Stubener was dozing, when the old man's mumble aroused him. He listened drowsily. "I made a man o' him, by God! I made a man o' him, with the two fists of him, an' the upstanding legs of him, an' the straight-seein' eyes. And I know the game in my head, an' I've kept up with the times and the modern changes. The crouch? Sure, he knows all the styles an' economies. He never moves two inches when an inch and a half will do the turn. And when he wants he can spring like a buck kangaroo. In-fightin'? Wait till you see. Better than his out-fightin', and he could sure 'a' sparred with Peter Jackson an' outfooted Corbett in his best. I tell you, I've taught'm it all, to the last trick, and he's improved on the teachin'. He's a fair genius at the game. An' he's had plenty of husky mountain men to try out on. I gave him the fancy work and they gave him the sloggin'. Nothing shy or delicate about them. Roarin' bulls an' big grizzly bears, that's what they are, when it comes to huggin' in a clinch or swingin' rough-like in the rushes. An' he plays with 'em. Man, d'ye hear me?--he plays with them, like you an' me would play with little puppy-dogs." Another time Stubener awoke, to hear the old man mumbling: "'Tis the funny think he don't take fightin' seriously. It's that easy to him he thinks it play. But wait till he's tapped a swift one. That's all, wait. An' you'll see'm throw on the juice in that cold storage plant of his an' turn loose the prettiest scientific wallopin' that ever you laid eyes on." In the shivery gray of mountain dawn, Stubener was routed from his blankets by old Pat. "He's comin' up the trail now," was the hoarse whisper. "Out with ye an' take your first peep at the biggest fightin' man the ring has ever seen, or will ever see in a thousand years again." The manager peered through the open door, rubbing the sleep from his heavy eyes, and saw a young giant walk into the clearing. In one hand was a rifle, across his shoulders a heavy deer under which he moved as if it were weightless. He was dressed roughly in blue overalls and woolen shirt open at the throat. Coat he had none, and on his feet, instead of brogans, were moccasins. Stubener noted that his walk was smooth and catlike, without suggestion of his two hundred and twenty pounds of weight to which that of the deer was added. The fight manager was impressed from the first glimpse. Formidable the young fellow certainly was, but the manager sensed the strangeness and unusualness of him. He was a new type, something different from the run of fighters. He seemed a creature of the wild, more a night-roaming figure from some old fairy story or folk tale than a twentieth-century youth. A thing Stubener quickly discovered was that young Pat was not much of a talker. He acknowledged old Pat's introduction with a grip of the hand but without speech, and silently set to work at building the fire and getting breakfast. To his father's direct questions he answered in monosyllables, as, for instance, when asked where he had picked up the deer. "South Fork," was all he vouchsafed. "Eleven miles across the mountains," the old man exposited pridefully to Stubener, "an' a trail that'd break your heart." Breakfast consisted of black coffee, sourdough bread, and an immense quantity of bear-meat broiled over the coals. Of this the young fellow ate ravenously, and Stubener divined that both the Glendons were accustomed to an almost straight meat diet. Old Pat did all the talking, though it was not till the meal was ended that he broached the subject he had at heart. "Pat, boy," he began, "you know who the gentleman is?" Young Pat nodded, and cast a quick, comprehensive glance at the manager. "Well, he'll be takin' you away with him and down to San Francisco." "I'd sooner stay here, dad," was the answer. Stubener felt a prick of disappointment. It was a wild goose chase after all. This was no fighter, eager and fretting to be at it. His huge brawn counted for nothing. It was nothing new. It was the big fellows that usually had the streak of fat. But old Pat's Celtic wrath flared up, and his voice was harsh with command. "You'll go down to the cities an' fight, me boy. That's what I've trained you for, an' you'll do it." "All right," was the unexpected response, rumbled apathetically from the deep chest. "And fight like hell," the old man added. Again Stubener felt disappointment at the absence of flash and fire in the young man's eyes as he answered: "All right. When do we start?" "Oh, Sam, here, he'll be wantin' a little huntin' and to fish a bit, as well as to try you out with the gloves." He looked at Sam, who nodded. "Suppose you strip and give'm a taste of your quality." An hour later, Sam Stubener had his eyes opened. An ex-fighter himself, a heavyweight at that, he was even a better judge of fighters, and never had he seen one strip to like advantage. "See the softness of him," old Pat chanted. "'Tis the true stuff. Look at the slope of the shoulders, an' the lungs of him. Clean, all clean, to the last drop an' ounce of him. You're lookin' at a man, Sam, the like of which was never seen before. Not a muscle of him bound. No weight-lifter or Sandow exercise artist there. See the fat snakes of muscles a-crawlin' soft an' lazy-like. Wait till you see them flashin' like a strikin' rattler. He's good for forty rounds this blessed instant, or a hundred. Go to it! Time!" They went to it, for three-minute rounds with a minute rests, and Sam Stubener was immediately undeceived. Here was no streak of fat, no apathy, only a lazy, good-natured play of gloves and tricks, with a brusk stiffness and harsh sharpness in the contacts that he knew belonged only to the trained and instinctive fighting man. "Easy, now, easy," old Pat warned. "Sam's not the man he used to be." This nettled Sam, as it was intended to do, and he played his most famous trick and favorite punch--a feint for a clinch and a right rip to the stomach. But, quickly as it was delivered, young Pat saw it, and, though it landed, his body was going away. The next time, his body did not go away. As the rip started, he moved forward and twisted his left hip to meet it. It was only a matter of several inches, yet it blocked the blow. And thereafter, try as he would, Stubener's glove got no farther than that hip. Stubener had roughed it with big men in his time, and, in exhibition bouts, had creditably held his own. But there was no holding his own here. Young Pat played with him, and in the clinches made him feel as powerful as a baby, landing on him seemingly at will, locking and blocking with masterful accuracy, and scarcely noticing or acknowledging his existence. Half the time young Pat seemed to spend in gazing off and out at the landscape in a dreamy sort of way. And right here Stubener made another mistake. He took it for a trick of old Pat's training, tried to sneak in a short-arm jolt, found his arm in a lightning lock, and had both his ears cuffed for his pains. "The instinct for a blow," the old man chortled. "'Tis not put on, I'm tellin' you. He is a wiz. He knows a blow without the lookin', when it starts an' where, the speed, an' space, an' niceness of it. An' 'tis nothing I ever showed him. 'Tis inspiration. He was so born." Once, in a clinch, the fight manager heeled his glove on young Pat's mouth, and there was just a hint of viciousness in the manner of doing it. A moment later, in the next clinch, Sam received the heel of the other's glove on his own mouth. There was nothing snappy about it, but the pressure, stolidly lazy as it was, put his head back till the joints cracked and for the moment he thought his neck was broken. He slacked his body and dropped his arms in token that the bout was over, felt the instant release, and staggered clear. "He'll--he'll do," he gasped, looking the admiration he lacked the breath to utter. Old Pat's eyes were brightly moist with pride and triumph. "An' what will you be thinkin' to happen when some of the gay an' ugly ones tries to rough it on him?" he asked. "He'll kill them, sure," was Stubener's verdict. "No; he's too cool for that. But he'll just hurt them some for their dirtiness." "Let's draw up the contract," said the manager. "Wait till you know the whole worth of him!" Old Pat answered. "'Tis strong terms I'll be makin' you come to. Go for a deer-hunt with the boy over the hills an' learn the lungs and the legs of him. Then we'll sign up iron-clad and regular." Stubener was gone two days on that hunt, and he learned all and more than old Pat had promised, and came back a very weary and very humble man. The young fellow's innocence of the world had been startling to the case-hardened manager, but he had found him nobody's fool. Virgin though his mind was, untouched by all save a narrow mountain experience, nevertheless he had proved possession of a natural keenness and shrewdness far beyond the average. In a way he was a mystery to Sam, who could not understand his terrible equanimity of temper. Nothing ruffled him or worried him, and his patience was of an enduring primitiveness. He never swore, not even the futile and emasculated cuss-words of sissy-boys. "I'd swear all right if I wanted to," he had explained, when challenged by his companion. "But I guess I've never come to needing it. When I do, I'll swear, I suppose." Old Pat, resolutely adhering to his decision, said good-by at the cabin. "It won't be long, Pat, boy, when I'll be readin' about you in the papers. I'd like to go along, but I'm afeard it's me for the mountains till the end." And then, drawing the manager aside, the old man turned loose on him almost savagely. "Remember what I've ben tellin' ye over an' over. The boy's clean an' he's honest. He knows nothing of the rottenness of the game. I kept it all away from him, I tell you. He don't know the meanin' of fake. He knows only the bravery, an' romance an' glory of fightin', and I've filled him up with tales of the old ring heroes, though little enough, God knows, it's set him afire. Man, man, I'm tellin' you that I clipped the fight columns from the newspapers to keep it 'way from him--him a-thinkin' I was wantin' them for me scrap book. He don't know a man ever lay down or threw a fight. So don't you get him in anything that ain't straight. Don't turn the boy's stomach. That's why I put in the null and void clause. The first rottenness and the contract's broke of itself. No snide division of stake-money; no secret arrangements with the movin' pitcher men for guaranteed distance. There's slathers o' money for the both of you. But play it square or you lose. Understand? "And whatever you'll be doin' watch out for the women," was old Pat's parting admonishment, young Pat astride his horse and reining in dutifully to hear. "Women is death an' damnation, remember that. But when you do find the one, the only one, hang on to her. She'll be worth more than glory an' money. But first be sure, an' when you're sure, don't let her slip through your fingers. Grab her with the two hands of you and hang on. Hang on if all the world goes to smash an' smithereens. Pat, boy, a good woman is ... a good woman. 'Tis the first word and the last." III Once in San Francisco, Sam Stubener's troubles began. Not that young Pat had a nasty temper, or was grouchy as his father had feared. On the contrary, he was phenomenally sweet and mild. But he was homesick for his beloved mountains. Also, he was secretly appalled by the city, though he trod its roaring streets imperturbable as a red Indian. "I came down here to fight," he announced, at the end of the first week. "Where's Jim Hanford?" Stubener whistled. "A big champion like him wouldn't look at you," was his answer. "'Go and get a reputation,' is what he'd say." "I can lick him." "But the public doesn't know that. If you licked him you'd be champion of the world, and no champion ever became so with his first fight." "I can." "But the public doesn't know it, Pat. It wouldn't come to see you fight. And it's the crowd that brings the money and the big purses. That's why Jim Hanford wouldn't consider you for a second. There'd be nothing in it for him. Besides, he's getting three thousand a week right now in vaudeville, with a contract for twenty-five weeks. Do you think he'd chuck that for a go with a man no one ever heard of? You've got to do something first, make a record. You've got to begin on the little local dubs that nobody ever heard of--guys like Chub Collins, Rough-House Kelly, and the Flying Dutchman. When you've put them away, you're only started on the first round of the ladder. But after that you'll go up like a balloon." "I'll meet those three named in the same ring one after the other," was Pat's decision. "Make the arrangements accordingly." Stubener laughed. "What's wrong? Don't you think I can put them away?" "I know you can," Stubener assured him. "But it can't be arranged that way. You've got to take them one at a time. Besides, remember, I know the game and I'm managing you. This proposition has to be worked up, and I'm the boy that knows how. If we're lucky, you may get to the top in a couple of years and be the champion with a mint of money." Pat sighed at the prospect, then brightened up. "And after that I can retire and go back home to the old man," he said. Stubener was about to reply, but checked himself. Strange as was this championship material, he felt confident that when the top was reached it would prove very similar to that of all the others who had gone before. Besides, two years was a long way off, and there was much to be done in the meantime. When Pat fell to moping around his quarters, reading endless poetry books and novels drawn from the public library, Stubener sent him off to live on a Contra Costa ranch across the Bay, under the watchful eye of Spider Walsh. At the end of a week Spider whispered that the job was a cinch. His charge was away and over the hills from dawn till dark, whipping the streams for trout, shooting quail and rabbits, and pursuing the one lone and crafty buck famous for having survived a decade of hunters. It was the Spider who waxed lazy and fat, while his charge kept himself in condition. As Stubener expected, his unknown was laughed at by the fight club managers. Were not the woods full of unknowns who were always breaking out with championship rashes? A preliminary, say of four rounds--yes, they would grant him that. But the main event--never. Stubener was resolved that young Pat should make his debut in nothing less than a main event, and, by the prestige of his own name he at last managed it. With much misgiving, the Mission Club agreed that Pat Glendon could go fifteen rounds with Rough-House Kelly for a purse of one hundred dollars. It was the custom of young fighters to assume the names of old ring heroes, so no one suspected that he was the son of the great Pat Glendon, while Stubener held his peace. It was a good press surprise package to spring later. Came the night of the fight, after a month of waiting. Stubener's anxiety was keen. His professional reputation was staked that his man would make a showing, and he was astounded to see Pat, seated in his corner a bare five minutes, lose the healthy color from his cheeks, which turned a sickly yellow. "Cheer up, boy," Stubener said, slapping him on the shoulder. "The first time in the ring is always strange, and Kelly has a way of letting his opponent wait for him on the chance of getting stage-fright." "It isn't that," Pat answered. "It's the tobacco smoke. I'm not used to it, and it's making me fair sick." His manager experienced the quick shock of relief. A man who turned sick from mental causes, even if he were a Samson, could never win to place in the prize ring. As for tobacco smoke, the youngster would have to get used to it, that was all. Young Pat's entrance into the ring had been met with silence, but when Rough-House Kelly crawled through the ropes his greeting was uproarious. He did not belie his name. He was a ferocious-looking man, black and hairy, with huge, knotty muscles, weighing a full two hundred pounds. Pat looked across at him curiously, and received a savage scowl. After both had been introduced to the audience, they shook hands. And even as their gloves gripped, Kelly ground his teeth, convulsed his face with an expression of rage, and muttered: "You've got yer nerve wid yeh." He flung Pat's hand roughly from his, and hissed, "I'll eat yeh up, ye pup!" The audience laughed at the action, and it guessed hilariously at what Kelly must have said. Back in his corner, and waiting the gong, Pat turned to Stubener. "Why is he angry with me?" he asked. "He ain't," Stubener answered. "That's his way, trying to scare you. It's just mouth-fighting." "It isn't boxing," was Pat's comment; and Stubener, with a quick glance, noted that his eyes were as mildly blue as ever. "Be careful," the manager warned, as the gong for the first round sounded and Pat stood up. "He's liable to come at you like a man-eater." And like a man-eater Kelly did come at him, rushing across the ring in wild fury. Pat, who in his easy way had advanced only a couple of paces, gauged the other's momentum, side-stepped, and brought his stiff-arched right across to the jaw. Then he stood and looked on with a great curiosity. The fight was over. Kelly had fallen like a stricken bullock to the floor, and there he lay without movement while the referee, bending over him, shouted the ten seconds in his unheeding ear. When Kelly's seconds came to lift him, Pat was before them. Gathering the huge, inert bulk of the man in his arms, he carried him to his corner and deposited him on the stool and in the arms of his seconds. Half a minute later, Kelly's head lifted and his eyes wavered open. He looked about him stupidly and then to one of his seconds. "What happened?" he queried hoarsely. "Did the roof fall on me?" IV As a result of his fight with Kelly, though the general opinion was that he had won by a fluke, Pat was matched with Rufe Mason. This took place three weeks later, and the Sierra Club audience at Dreamland Rink failed to see what happened. Rufe Mason was a heavyweight, noted locally for his cleverness. When the gong for the first round sounded, both men met in the center of the ring. Neither rushed. Nor did they strike a blow. They felt around each other, their arms bent, their gloves so close together that they almost touched. This lasted for perhaps five seconds. Then it happened, and so quickly that not one in a hundred of the audience saw. Rufe Mason made a feint with his right. It was obviously not a real feint, but a feeler, a mere tentative threatening of a possible blow. It was at this instant that Pat loosed his punch. So close together were they that the distance the blow traveled was a scant eight inches. It was a short-arm left jolt, and it was accomplished by a twist of the left forearm and a thrust of the shoulder. It landed flush on the point of the chin and the astounded audience saw Rufe Mason's legs crumple under him as his body sank to the floor. But the referee had seen, and he promptly proceeded to count him out. Again Pat carried his opponent to his corner, and it was ten minutes before Rufe Mason, supported by his seconds, with sagging knees and rolling, glassy eyes, was able to move down the aisle through the stupefied and incredulous audience on the way to his dressing room. "No wonder," he told a reporter, "that Rough-House Kelly thought the roof hit him." After Chub Collins had been put out in the twelfth second of the first round of a fifteen-round contest, Stubener felt compelled to speak to Pat. "Do you know what they're calling you now?" he asked. Pat shook his head. "One Punch Glendon." Pat smiled politely. He was little interested in what he was called. He had certain work cut out which he must do ere he could win back to his mountains, and he was phlegmatically doing it, that was all. "It won't do," his manager continued, with an ominous shake of the head. "You can't go on putting your men out so quickly. You must give them more time." "I'm here to fight, ain't I?" Pat demanded in surprise. Again Stubener shook his head. "It's this way, Pat. You've got to be big and generous in the fighting game. Don't get all the other fighters sore. And it's not fair to the audience. They want a run for their money. Besides, no one will fight you. They'll all be scared out. And you can't draw crowds with ten-second fights. I leave it to you. Would you pay a dollar, or five, to see a ten-second fight?" Pat was convinced, and he promised to give future audiences the requisite run for their money, though he stated that, personally, he preferred going fishing to witnessing a hundred rounds of fighting. And still, Pat had got practically nowhere in the game. The local sports laughed when his name was mentioned. It called to mind funny fights and Rough-House Kelly's remark about the roof. Nobody knew how Pat could fight. They had never seen him. Where was his wind, his stamina, his ability to mix it with rough customers through long grueling contests? He had demonstrated nothing but the possession of a lucky punch and a depressing proclivity for flukes. So it was that his fourth match was arranged with Pete Sosso, a Portuguese fighter from Butchertown, known only for the amazing tricks he played in the ring. Pat did not train for the fight. Instead he made a flying and sorrowful trip to the mountains to bury his father. Old Pat had known well the condition of his heart, and it had stopped suddenly on him. Young Pat arrived back in San Francisco with so close a margin of time that he changed into his fighting togs directly from his traveling suit, and even then the audience was kept waiting ten minutes. "Remember, give him a chance," Stubener cautioned him as he climbed through the ropes. "Play with him, but do it seriously. Let him go ten or twelve rounds, then get him." Pat obeyed instructions, and, though it would have been easy enough to put Sosso out, so tricky was he that to stand up to him and not put him out kept his hands full. It was a pretty exhibition, and the audience was delighted. Sosso's whirlwind attacks, wild feints, retreats, and rushes, required all Pat's science to protect himself, and even then he did not escape unscathed. Stubener praised him in the minute-rests, and all would have been well, had not Sosso, in the fourth round, played one of his most spectacular tricks. Pat, in a mix-up, had landed a hook to Sosso's jaw, when to his amazement, the latter dropped his hands and reeled backward, eyes rolling, legs bending and giving, in a high state of grogginess. Pat could not understand. It had not been a knock-out blow, and yet there was his man all ready to fall to the mat. Pat dropped his own hands and wonderingly watched his reeling opponent. Sosso staggered away, almost fell, recovered, and staggered obliquely and blindly forward again. For the first and the last time in his fighting career, Pat was caught off his guard. He actually stepped aside to let the reeling man go by. Still reeling, Sosso suddenly loosed his right. Pat received it full on his jaw with an impact that rattled all his teeth. A great roar of delight went up from the audience. But Pat did not hear. He saw only Sosso before him, grinning and defiant, and not the least bit groggy. Pat was hurt by the blow, but vastly more outraged by the trick. All the wrath that his father ever had surged up in him. He shook his head as if to get rid of the shock of the blow and steadied himself before his man. It all occurred in the next second. With a feint that drew his opponent, Pat fetched his left to the solar plexus, almost at the same instant whipping his right across to the jaw. The latter blow landed on Sosso's mouth ere his falling body struck the floor. The club doctors worked half an hour to bring him to. After that they put eleven stitches in his mouth and packed him off in an ambulance. "I'm sorry," Pat told his manager, "I'm afraid I lost my temper. I'll never do it again in the ring. Dad always cautioned me about it. He said it had made him lose more than one battle. I didn't know I could lose my temper that way, but now that I know I'll keep it in control." And Stubener believed him. He was coming to the stage where he could believe anything about his young charge. "You don't need to get angry," he said, "you're so thoroughly the master of your man at any stage." "At any inch or second of the fight," Pat affirmed. "And you can put them out any time you want." "Sure I can. I don't want to boast. But I just seem to possess the ability. My eyes show me the opening that my skill knows how to make, and time and distance are second nature to me. Dad called it a gift, but I thought he was blarneying me. Now that I've been up against these men, I guess he was right. He said I had the mind and muscle correlation." "At any inch or second of the fight," Stubener repeated musingly. Pat nodded, and Stubener, absolutely believing him, caught a vision of a golden future that should have fetched old Pat out of his grave. "Well, don't forget, we've got to give the crowd a run for its money," he said. "We'll fix it up between us how many rounds a fight should go. Now your next bout will be with the Flying Dutchman. Suppose you let it run the full fifteen and put him out in the last round. That will give you a chance to make a showing as well." "All right, Sam," was the answer. "It will be a test for you," Stubener warned. "You may fail to put him out in that last round." "Watch me." Pat paused to put weight to his promise, and picked up a volume of Longfellow. "If I don't I'll never read poetry again, and that's going some." "You bet it is," his manager proclaimed jubilantly, "though what you see in such stuff is beyond me." Pat sighed, but did not reply. In all his life he had found but one person who cared for poetry, and that had been the red-haired school teacher who scared him off into the woods. V "Where are you going?" Stubener demanded in surprise, looking at his watch. Pat, with his hand on the door-knob, paused and turned around. "To the Academy of Sciences," he said. "There's a professor who's going to give a lecture there on Browning to-night, and Browning is the sort of writer you need assistance with. Sometimes I think I ought to go to night school." "But great Scott, man!" exclaimed the horrified manager. "You're on with the Flying Dutchman to-night." "I know it. But I won't enter the ring a moment before half past nine or quarter to ten. The lecture will be over at nine fifteen. If you want to make sure, come around and pick me up in your machine." Stubener shrugged his shoulders helplessly. "You've got no kick coming," Pat assured him. "Dad used to tell me a man's worst time was in the hours just before a fight, and that many a fight was lost by a man's breaking down right there, with nothing to do but think and be anxious. Well, you'll never need to worry about me that way. You ought to be glad I can go off to a lecture." And later that night, in the course of watching fifteen splendid rounds, Stubener chuckled to himself more than once at the idea of what that audience of sports would think, did it know that this magnificent young prize-fighter had come to the ring directly from a Browning lecture. The Flying Dutchman was a young Swede who possessed an unwonted willingness to fight and who was blessed with phenomenal endurance. He never rested, was always on the offensive, and rushed and fought from gong to gong. In the out-fighting his arms whirled about like flails, in the in-fighting he was forever shouldering or half-wrestling and starting blows whenever he could get a hand free. From start to finish he was a whirlwind, hence his name. His failing was lack of judgment in time and distance. Nevertheless he had won many fights by virtue of landing one in each dozen or so of the unending fusillades of punches he delivered. Pat, with strong upon him the caution that he must not put his opponent out, was kept busy. Nor, though he escaped vital damage, could he avoid entirely those eternal flying gloves. But it was good training, and in a mild way he enjoyed the contest. "Could you get him now?" Stubener whispered in his ear during the minute rest at the end of the fifth round. "Sure," was Pat's answer. "You know he's never yet been knocked out by any one," Stubener warned a couple of rounds later. "Then I'm afraid I'll have to break my knuckles," Pat smiled. "I know the punch I've got in me, and when I land it something's got to go. If he won't, my knuckles will." "Do you think you could get him now?" Stubener asked at the end of the thirteenth round. "Anytime, I tell you." "Well, then, Pat, let him run to the fifteenth." In the fourteenth round the Flying Dutchman exceeded himself. At the stroke of the gong he rushed clear across the ring to the opposite corner where Pat was leisurely getting to his feet. The house cheered, for it knew the Flying Dutchman had cut loose. Pat, catching the fun of it, whimsically decided to meet the terrific onslaught with a wholly passive defense and not to strike a blow. Nor did he strike a blow, nor feint a blow, during the three minutes of whirlwind that followed. He gave a rare exhibition of stalling, sometimes hugging his bowed face with his left arm, his abdomen with his right; at other times, changing as the point of attack changed, so that both gloves were held on either side his face, or both elbows and forearms guarded his mid-section; and all the time moving about, clumsily shouldering, or half-falling forward against his opponent and clogging his efforts; himself never striking nor threatening to strike, the while rocking with the impacts of the storming blows that beat upon his various guards the devil's own tattoo. Those close at the ringside saw and appreciated, but the rest of the audience, fooled, arose to its feet and roared its applause in the mistaken notion that Pat, helpless, was receiving a terrible beating. With the end of the round, the audience, dumbfounded, sank back into its seats as Pat walked steadily to his corner. It was not understandable. He should have been beaten to a pulp, and yet nothing had happened to him. "Now are you going to get him?" Stubener queried anxiously. "Inside ten seconds," was Pat's confident assertion. "Watch me." There was no trick about it. When the gong struck and Pat bounded to his feet, he advertised it unmistakably that for the first time in the fight he was starting after his man. Not one onlooker misunderstood. The Flying Dutchman read the advertisement, too, and for the first time in his career, as they met in the center of the ring, visibly hesitated. For the fraction of a second they faced each other in position. Then the Flying Dutchman leaped forward upon his man, and Pat, with a timed right-cross, dropped him cold as he leaped. It was after this battle that Pat Glendon started on his upward rush to fame. The sports and the sporting writers took him up. For the first time the Flying Dutchman had been knocked out. His conqueror had proved a wizard of defense. His previous victories had not been flukes. He had a kick in both his hands. Giant that he was, he would go far. The time was already past, the writers asserted, for him to waste himself on the third-raters and chopping blocks. Where were Ben Menzies, Rege Rede, Bill Tarwater, and Ernest Lawson? It was time for them to meet this young cub that had suddenly shown himself a fighter of quality. Where was his manager anyway, that he was not issuing the challenges? And then fame came in a day; for Stubener divulged the secret that his man was none other than the son of Pat Glendon, Old Pat, the old-time ring hero. "Young" Pat Glendon, he was promptly christened, and sports and writers flocked about him to admire him, and back him, and write him up. Beginning with Ben Menzies and finishing with Bill Tarwater, he challenged, fought, and knocked out the four second-raters. To do this, he was compelled to travel, the battles taking place in Goldfield, Denver, Texas, and New York. To accomplish it required months, for the bigger fights were not easily arranged, and the men themselves demanded more time for training. The second year saw him running to cover and disposing of the half-dozen big fighters that clustered just beneath the top of the heavyweight ladder. On this top, firmly planted, stood "Big" Jim Hanford, the undefeated world champion. Here, on the top rungs, progress was slower, though Stubener was indefatigable in issuing challenges and in promoting sporting opinion to force the man to fight. Will King was disposed of in England, and Glendon pursued Tom Harrison half way around the world to defeat him on Boxing Day in Australia. But the purses grew larger and larger. In place of a hundred dollars, such as his first battles had earned him, he was now receiving from twenty to thirty thousand dollars a fight, as well as equally large sums from the moving picture men. Stubener took his manager's percentage of all this, according to the terms of the contract old Pat had drawn up, and both he and Glendon, despite their heavy expenses, were waxing rich. This was due, more than anything else, to the clean lives they lived. They were not wasters. Stubener was attracted to real estate, and his holdings in San Francisco, consisting of building flats and apartment houses, were bigger than Glendon ever dreamed. There was a secret syndicate of bettors, however, which could have made an accurate guess at the size of Stubener's holdings, while heavy bonus after heavy bonus, of which Glendon never heard, was paid over to his manager by the moving picture men. Stubener's most serious task was in maintaining the innocence of his young gladiator. Nor did he find it difficult. Glendon, who had nothing to do with the business end, was little interested. Besides, wherever his travels took him, he spent his spare time in hunting and fishing. He rarely mingled with those of the sporting world, was notoriously shy and secluded, and preferred art galleries and books of verse to sporting gossip. Also, his trainers and sparring partners were rigorously instructed by the manager to keep their tongues away from the slightest hints of ring rottenness. In every way Stubener intervened between Glendon and the world. He was never even interviewed save in Stubener's presence. Only once was Glendon approached. It was just prior to his battle with Henderson, and an offer of a hundred thousand was made to him to throw the fight. It was made hurriedly, in swift whispers, in a hotel corridor, and it was fortunate for the man that Pat controlled his temper and shouldered past him without reply. He brought the tale of it to Stubener, who said: "It's only con, Pat. They were trying to josh you." He noted the blue eyes blaze. "And maybe worse than that. If they could have got you to fall for it, there might have been a big sensation in the papers that would have finished you. But I doubt it. Such things don't happen any more. It's a myth, that's what it is, that has come down from the middle history of the ring. There has been rottenness in the past, but no fighter or manager of reputation would dare anything of the sort to-day. Why, Pat, the men in the game are as clean and straight as those in professional baseball, than which there is nothing cleaner or straighter." And all the while he talked, Stubener knew in his heart that the forthcoming fight with Henderson was not to be shorter than twelve rounds--this for the moving pictures--and not longer than the fourteenth round. And he knew, furthermore, so big were the stakes involved, that Henderson himself was pledged not to last beyond the fourteenth. And Glendon, never approached again, dismissed the matter from his mind and went out to spend the afternoon in taking color photographs. The camera had become his latest hobby. Loving pictures, yet unable to paint, he had compromised by taking up photography. In his hand baggage was one grip packed with books on the subject, and he spent long hours in the dark room, realizing for himself the various processes. Never had there been a great fighter who was as aloof from the fighting world as he. Because he had little to say with those he encountered, he was called sullen and unsocial, and out of this a newspaper reputation took form that was not an exaggeration so much as it was an entire misconception. Boiled down, his character in print was that of an ox-muscled and dumbly stupid brute, and one callow sporting writer dubbed him the "abysmal brute." The name stuck. The rest of the fraternity hailed it with delight, and thereafter Glendon's name never appeared in print unconnected with it. Often, in a headline or under a photograph, "The Abysmal Brute," capitalized and without quotation marks, appeared alone. All the world knew who was this brute. This made him draw into himself closer than ever, while it developed a bitter prejudice against newspaper folk. Regarding fighting itself, his earlier mild interest grew stronger. The men he now fought were anything but dubs, and victory did not come so easily. They were picked men, experienced ring generals, and each battle was a problem. There were occasions when he found it impossible to put them out in any designated later round of a fight. Thus, with Sulzberger, the gigantic German, try as he would in the eighteenth round, he failed to get him, in the nineteenth it was the same story, and not till the twentieth did he manage to break through the baffling guard and drop him. Glendon's increasing enjoyment of the game was accompanied by severer and prolonged training. Never dissipating, spending much of his time on hunting trips in the hills, he was practically always in the pink of condition, and, unlike his father, no unfortunate accidents marred his career. He never broke a bone, nor injured so much as a knuckle. One thing that Stubener noted with secret glee was that his young fighter no longer talked of going permanently back to his mountains when he had won the championship away from Jim Hanford. VI The consummation of his career was rapidly approaching. The great champion had even publicly intimated his readiness to take on Glendon as soon as the latter had disposed of the three or four aspirants for the championship who intervened. In six months Pat managed to put away Kid McGrath and Philadelphia Jack McBride, and there remained only Nat Powers and Tom Cannam. And all would have been well had not a certain society girl gone adventuring into journalism, and had not Stubener agreed to an interview with the woman reporter of the San Francisco "Courier-Journal." Her work was always published over the name of Maud Sangster, which, by the way, was her own name. The Sangsters were a notoriously wealthy family. The founder, old Jacob Sangster, had packed his blankets and worked as a farm-hand in the West. He had discovered an inexhaustible borax deposit in Nevada, and, from hauling it out by mule-teams, had built a railroad to do the freighting. Following that, he had poured the profits of borax into the purchase of hundreds and thousands of square miles of timber lands in California, Oregon, and Washington. Still later, he had combined politics with business, bought statesmen, judges, and machines, and become a captain of complicated industry. And after that he had died, full of honor and pessimism, leaving his name a muddy blot for future historians to smudge, and also leaving a matter of a couple of hundreds of millions for his four sons to squabble over. The legal, industrial, and political battles that followed, vexed and amused California for a generation, and culminated in deadly hatred and unspeaking terms between the four sons. The youngest, Theodore, in middle life experienced a change of heart, sold out his stock farms and racing stables, and plunged into a fight with all the corrupt powers of his native state, including most of its millionaires, in a quixotic attempt to purge it of the infamy which had been implanted by old Jacob Sangster. Maud Sangster was Theodore's oldest daughter. The Sangster stock uniformly bred fighters among the men and beauties among the women. Nor was Maud an exception. Also, she must have inherited some of the virus of adventure from the Sangster breed, for she had come to womanhood and done a multitude of things of which no woman in her position should have been guilty. A match in ten thousand, she remained unmarried. She had sojourned in Europe without bringing home a nobleman for spouse, and had declined a goodly portion of her own set at home. She had gone in for outdoor sports, won the tennis championship of the state, kept the society weeklies agog with her unconventionalities, walked from San Mateo to Santa Cruz against time on a wager, and once caused a sensation by playing polo in a men's team at a private Burlingame practice game. Incidentally, she had gone in for art, and maintained a studio in San Francisco's Latin Quarter. All this had been of little moment until her father's reform attack became acute. Passionately independent, never yet having met the man to whom she could gladly submit, and bored by those who had aspired, she resented her father's interference with her way of life and put the climax on all her social misdeeds by leaving home and going to work on the "Courier-Journal." Beginning at twenty dollars a week, her salary had swiftly risen to fifty. Her work was principally musical, dramatic, and art criticism, though she was not above mere journalistic stunts if they promised to be sufficiently interesting. Thus she scooped the big interview with Morgan at a time when he was being futilely trailed by a dozen New York star journalists, went down to the bottom of the Golden Gate in a diver's suit, and flew with Rood, the bird man, when he broke all records of continuous flight by reaching as far as Riverside. Now it must not be imagined that Maud Sangster was a hard-bitten Amazon. On the contrary, she was a gray-eyed, slender young woman, of three or four and twenty, of medium stature, and possessing uncommonly small hands and feet for an outdoor woman or any other kind of a woman. Also, far in excess of most outdoor women, she knew how to be daintily feminine. It was on her own suggestion that she received the editor's commission to interview Pat Glendon. With the exception of having caught a glimpse, once, of Bob Fitzsimmons in evening dress at the Palace Grill, she had never seen a prizefighter in her life. Nor was she curious to see one--at least she had not been curious until Young Pat Glendon came to San Francisco to train for his fight with Nat Powers. Then his newspaper reputation had aroused her. The Abysmal Brute!--it certainly must be worth seeing. From what she read of him she gleaned that he was a man-monster, profoundly stupid and with the sullenness and ferocity of a jungle beast. True, his published photographs did not show all that, but they did show the hugeness of brawn that might be expected to go with it. And so, accompanied by a staff photographer, she went out to the training quarters at the Cliff House at the hour appointed by Stubener. That real estate owner was having trouble. Pat was rebellious. He sat, one big leg dangling over the side of the arm chair and Shakespeare's Sonnets face downward on his knee, orating against the new woman. "What do they want to come butting into the game for?" he demanded. "It's not their place. What do they know about it anyway? The men are bad enough as it is. I'm not a holy show. This woman's coming here to make me one. I never have stood for women around the training quarters, and I don't care if she is a reporter." "But she's not an ordinary reporter," Stubener interposed. "You've heard of the Sangsters?--the millionaires?" Pat nodded. "Well, she's one of them. She's high society and all that stuff. She could be running with the Blingum crowd now if she wanted to instead of working for wages. Her old man's worth fifty millions if he's worth a cent." "Then what's she working on a paper for?--keeping some poor devil out of a job." "She and the old man fell out, had a tiff or something, about the time he started to clean up San Francisco. She quit. That's all--left home and got a job. And let me tell you one thing, Pat: she can everlastingly sling English. There isn't a pen-pusher on the Coast can touch her when she gets going." Pat began to show interest, and Stubener hurried on. "She writes poetry, too--the regular la-de-dah stuff, just like you. Only I guess hers is better, because she published a whole book of it once. And she writes up the shows. She interviews every big actor that hits this burg." "I've seen her name in the papers," Pat commented. "Sure you have. And you're honored, Pat, by her coming to interview you. It won't bother you any. I'll stick right by and give her most of the dope myself. You know I've always done that." Pat looked his gratitude. "And another thing, Pat: don't forget you've got to put up with this interviewing. It's part of your business. It's big advertising, and it comes free. We can't buy it. It interests people, draws the crowds, and it's crowds that pile up the gate receipts." He stopped and listened, then looked at his watch. "I think that's her now. I'll go and get her and bring her in. I'll tip it off to her to cut it short, you know, and it won't take long." He turned in the doorway. "And be decent, Pat. Don't shut up like a clam. Talk a bit to her when she asks you questions." Pat put the Sonnets on the table, took up a newspaper, and was apparently deep in its contents when the two entered the room and he stood up. The meeting was a mutual shock. When blue eyes met gray, it was almost as if the man and the woman shouted triumphantly to each other, as if each had found something sought and unexpected. But this was for the instant only. Each had anticipated in the other something so totally different that the next moment the clear cry of recognition gave way to confusion. As is the way of women, she was the first to achieve control, and she did it without having given any outward sign that she had ever lost it. She advanced most of the distance across the floor to meet Glendon. As for him, he scarcely knew how he stumbled through the introduction. Here was a woman, a WOMAN. He had not known that such a creature could exist. The few women he had noticed had never prefigured this. He wondered what Old Pat's judgment would have been of her, if she was the sort he had recommended to hang on to with both his hands. He discovered that in some way he was holding her hand. He looked at it, curious and fascinated, marveling at its fragility. She, on the other hand, had proceeded to obliterate the echoes of that first clear call. It had been a peculiar experience, that was all, this sudden out-rush of her toward this strange man. For was not he the abysmal brute of the prize-ring, the great, fighting, stupid bulk of a male animal who hammered up his fellow males of the same stupid order? She smiled at the way he continued to hold her hand. "I'll have it back, please, Mr. Glendon," she said. "I ... I really need it, you know." He looked at her blankly, followed her gaze to her imprisoned hand, and dropped it in a rush of awkwardness that sent the blood in a manifest blush to his face. She noted the blush, and the thought came to her that he did not seem quite the uncouth brute she had pictured. She could not conceive of a brute blushing at anything. And also, she found herself pleased with the fact that he lacked the easy glibness to murmur an apology. But the way he devoured her with his eyes was disconcerting. He stared at her as if in a trance, while his cheeks flushed even more redly. Stubener by this time had fetched a chair for her, and Glendon automatically sank down into his. "He's in fine shape, Miss Sangster, in fine shape," the manager was saying. "That's right, isn't it, Pat? Never felt better in your life?" Glendon was bothered by this. His brows contracted in a troubled way, and he made no reply. "I've wanted to meet you for a long time, Mr. Glendon," Miss Sangster said. "I never interviewed a pugilist before, so if I don't go about it expertly you'll forgive me, I am sure." "Maybe you'd better start in by seeing him in action," was the manager's suggestion. "While he's getting into his fighting togs I can tell you a lot about him--fresh stuff, too. We'll call in Walsh, Pat, and go a couple of rounds." "We'll do nothing of the sort," Glendon growled roughly, in just the way an abysmal brute should. "Go ahead with the interview." The business went ahead unsatisfactorily. Stubener did most of the talking and suggesting, which was sufficient to irritate Maud Sangster, while Pat volunteered nothing. She studied his fine countenance, the eyes clear blue and wide apart, the well-modeled, almost aquiline, nose, the firm, chaste lips that were sweet in a masculine way in their curl at the corners and that gave no hint of any sullenness. It was a baffling personality, she concluded, if what the papers said of him was so. In vain she sought for earmarks of the brute. And in vain she attempted to establish contacts. For one thing, she knew too little about prize-fighters and the ring, and whenever she opened up a lead it was promptly snatched away by the information-oozing Stubener. "It must be most interesting, this life of a pugilist," she said once, adding with a sigh, "I wish I knew more about it. Tell me: why do you fight?--Oh, aside from money reasons." (This latter to forestall Stubener). "Do you enjoy fighting? Are you stirred by it, by pitting yourself against other men? I hardly know how to express what I mean, so you must be patient with me." Pat and Stubener began speaking together, but for once Pat bore his manager down. "I didn't care for it at first--" "You see, it was too dead easy for him," Stubener interrupted. "But later," Pat went on, "when I encountered the better fighters, the real big clever ones, where I was more--" "On your mettle?" she suggested. "Yes; that's it, more on my mettle, I found I did care for it ... a great deal, in fact. But still, it's not so absorbing to me as it might be. You see, while each battle is a sort of problem which I must work out with my wits and muscle, yet to me the issue is never in doubt--" "He's never had a fight go to a decision," Stubener proclaimed. "He's won every battle by the knock-out route." "And it's this certainty of the outcome that robs it of what I imagine must be its finest thrills," Pat concluded. "Maybe you'll get some of them thrills when you go up against Jim Hanford," said the manager. Pat smiled, but did not speak. "Tell me some more," she urged, "more about the way you feel when you are fighting." And then Pat amazed his manager, Miss Sangster, and himself, by blurting out: "It seems to me I don't want to talk with you on such things. It's as if there are things more important for you and me to talk about. I--" He stopped abruptly, aware of what he was saying but unaware of why he was saying it. "Yes," she cried eagerly. "That's it. That is what makes a good interview--the real personality, you know." But Pat remained tongue-tied, and Stubener wandered away on a statistical comparison of his champion's weights, measurements, and expansions with those of Sandow, the Terrible Turk, Jeffries, and the other modern strong men. This was of little interest to Maud Sangster, and she showed that she was bored. Her eyes chanced to rest on the Sonnets. She picked the book up and glanced inquiringly at Stubener. "That's Pat's," he said. "He goes in for that kind of stuff, and color photography, and art exhibits, and such things. But for heaven's sake don't publish anything about it. It would ruin his reputation." She looked accusingly at Glendon, who immediately became awkward. To her it was delicious. A shy young man, with the body of a giant, who was one of the kings of bruisers, and who read poetry, and went to art exhibits, and experimented with color photography! Of a surety there was no abysmal brute here. His very shyness she divined now was due to sensitiveness and not stupidity. Shakespeare's Sonnets! This was a phase that would bear investigation. But Stubener stole the opportunity away and was back chanting his everlasting statistics. A few minutes later, and most unwittingly, she opened up the biggest lead of all. That first sharp attraction toward him had begun to stir again after the discovery of the Sonnets. The magnificent frame of his, the handsome face, the chaste lips, the clear-looking eyes, the fine forehead which the short crop of blond hair did not hide, the aura of physical well-being and cleanness which he seemed to emanate--all this, and more that she sensed, drew her as she had never been drawn by any man, and yet through her mind kept running the nasty rumors that she had heard only the day before at the "Courier-Journal" office. "You were right," she said. "There is something more important to talk about. There is something in my mind I want you to reconcile for me. Do you mind?" Pat shook his head. "If I am frank?--abominably frank? I've heard the men, sometimes, talking of particular fights and of the betting odds, and, while I gave no heed to it at the time, it seemed to me it was firmly agreed that there was a great deal of trickery and cheating connected with the sport. Now, when I look at you, for instance, I find it hard to understand how you can be a party to such cheating. I can understand your liking the sport for a sport, as well as for the money it brings you, but I can't understand--" "There's nothing to understand," Stubener broke in, while Pat's lips were wreathed in a gentle, tolerant smile. "It's all fairy tales, this talk about faking, about fixed fights, and all that rot. There's nothing to it, Miss Sangster, I assure you. And now let me tell you about how I discovered Mr. Glendon. It was a letter I got from his father--" But Maud Sangster refused to be side-tracked, and addressed herself to Pat. "Listen. I remember one case particularly. It was some fight that took place several months ago--I forget the contestants. One of the editors of the "Courier-Journal" told me he intended to make a good winning. He didn't hope; he said he intended. He said he was on the inside and was betting on the number of rounds. He told me the fight would end in the nineteenth. This was the night before. And the next day he triumphantly called my attention to the fact that it had ended in that very round. I didn't think anything of it one way or the other. I was not interested in prize-fighting then. But I am now. At the time it seemed quite in accord with the vague conception I had about fighting. So you see, it isn't all fairy tales, is it?" "I know that fight," Glendon said. "It was Owen and Murgweather. And it did end in the nineteenth round, Sam. And she said she heard that round named the day before. How do you account for it, Sam?" "How do you account for a man picking a lucky lottery ticket?" the manager evaded, while getting his wits together to answer. "That's the very point. Men who study form and condition and seconds and rules and such things often pick the number of rounds, just as men have been known to pick hundred-to-one shots in the races. And don't forget one thing: for every man that wins, there's another that loses, there's another that didn't pick right. Miss Sangster, I assure you, on my honor, that faking and fixing in the fight game is ... is non-existent." "What is your opinion, Mr. Glendon?" she asked. "The same as mine," Stubener snatched the answer. "He knows what I say is true, every word of it. He's never fought anything but a straight fight in his life. Isn't that right, Pat?" "Yes; it's right," Pat affirmed, and the peculiar thing to Maud Sangster was that she was convinced he spoke the truth. She brushed her forehead with her hand, as if to rid herself of the bepuzzlement that clouded her brain. "Listen," she said. "Last night the same editor told me that your forthcoming fight was arranged to the very round in which it would end." Stubener was verging on a panic, but Pat's speech saved him from replying. "Then the editor lies," Pat's voice boomed now for the first time. "He did not lie before, about that other fight," she challenged. "What round did he say my fight with Nat Powers would end in?" Before she could answer, the manager was into the thick of it. "Oh, rats, Pat!" he cried. "Shut up. It's only the regular run of ring rumors. Let's get on with this interview." He was ignored by Glendon, whose eyes, bent on hers, were no longer mildly blue, but harsh and imperative. She was sure now that she had stumbled on something tremendous, something that would explain all that had baffled her. At the same time she thrilled to the mastery of his voice and gaze. Here was a male man who would take hold of life and shake out of it what he wanted. "What round did the editor say?" Glendon reiterated his demand. "For the love of Mike, Pat, stop this foolishness," Stubener broke in. "I wish you would give me a chance to answer," Maud Sangster said. "I guess I'm able to talk with Miss Sangster," Glendon added. "You get out, Sam. Go off and take care of that photographer." They looked at each other for a tense, silent moment, then the manager moved slowly to the door, opened it, and turned his head to listen. "And now what round did he say?" "I hope I haven't made a mistake," she said tremulously, "but I am very sure that he said the sixteenth round." She saw surprise and anger leap into Glendon's face, and the anger and accusation in the glance he cast at his manager, and she knew the blow had driven home. And there was reason for his anger. He knew he had talked it over with Stubener, and they had reached a decision to give the audience a good run for its money without unnecessarily prolonging the fight, and to end it in the sixteenth. And here was a woman, from a newspaper office, naming the very round. Stubener, in the doorway, looked limp and pale, and it was evident he was holding himself together by an effort. "I'll see you later," Pat told him. "Shut the door behind you." The door closed, and the two were left alone. Glendon did not speak. The expression on his face was frankly one of trouble and perplexity. "Well?" she asked. He got up and towered above her, then sat down again, moistening his lips with his tongue. "I'll tell you one thing," he finally said "The fight won't end in the sixteenth round." She did not speak, but her unconvinced and quizzical smile hurt him. "You wait and see, Miss Sangster, and you'll see that editor man is mistaken." "You mean the program is to be changed?" she queried audaciously. He quivered to the cut of her words. "I am not accustomed to lying," he said stiffly, "even to women." "Neither have you to me, nor have you denied the program is to be changed. Perhaps, Mr. Glendon, I am stupid, but I fail to see the difference in what number the final round occurs so long as it is predetermined and known." "I'll tell you that round, and not another soul shall know." She shrugged her shoulders and smiled. "It sounds to me very much like a racing tip. They are always given that way, you know. Furthermore, I am not quite stupid, and I know there is something wrong here. Why were you made angry by my naming the round? Why were you angry with your manager? Why did you send him from the room?" For reply, Glendon walked over to the window, as if to look out, where he changed his mind and partly turned, and she knew, without seeing, that he was studying her face. He came back and sat down. "You've said I haven't lied to you, Miss Sangster, and you were right. I haven't." He paused, groping painfully for a correct statement of the situation. "Now do you think you can believe what I am going to tell you? Will you take the word of a ... prize-fighter?" She nodded gravely, looking him straight in the eyes and certain that what he was about to tell was the truth. "I've always fought straight and square. I've never touched a piece of dirty money in my life, nor attempted a dirty trick. Now I can go on from that. You've shaken me up pretty badly by what you told me. I don't know what to make of it. I can't pass a snap judgment on it. I don't know. But it looks bad. That's what troubles me. For see you, Stubener and I have talked this fight over, and it was understood between us that I would end the fight in the sixteenth round. Now you bring the same word. How did that editor know? Not from me. Stubener must have let it out ... unless...." He stopped to debate the problem. "Unless that editor is a lucky guesser. I can't make up my mind about it. I'll have to keep my eyes open and wait and learn. Every word I've given you is straight, and there's my hand on it." Again he towered out of his chair and over to her. Her small hand was gripped in his big one as she arose to meet him, and after a fair, straight look into the eyes between them, both glanced unconsciously at the clasped hands. She felt that she had never been more aware that she was a woman. The sex emphasis of those two hands--the soft and fragile feminine and the heavy, muscular masculine--was startling. Glendon was the first to speak. "You could be hurt so easily," he said; and at the same time she felt the firmness of his grip almost caressingly relax. She remembered the old Prussian king's love for giants, and laughed at the incongruity of the thought-association as she withdrew her hand. "I am glad you came here to-day," he said, then hurried on awkwardly to make an explanation which the warm light of admiration in his eyes belied. "I mean because maybe you have opened my eyes to the crooked dealing that has been going on." "You have surprised me," she urged. "It seemed to me that it is so generally understood that prize-fighting is full of crookedness, that I cannot understand how you, one of its chief exponents, could be ignorant of it. I thought as a matter of course that you would know all about it, and now you have convinced me that you never dreamed of it. You must be different from other fighters." He nodded his head. "That explains it, I guess. And that's what comes of keeping away from it--from the other fighters, and promoters, and sports. It was easy to pull the wool over my eyes. Yet it remains to be seen whether it has really been pulled over or not. You see, I am going to find out for myself." "And change it?" she queried, rather breathlessly, convinced somehow that he could do anything he set out to accomplish. "No; quit it," was his answer. "If it isn't straight I won't have anything more to do with it. And one thing is certain: this coming fight with Nat Powers won't end in the sixteenth round. If there is any truth in that editor's tip, they'll all be fooled. Instead of putting him out in the sixteenth, I'll let the fight run on into the twenties. You wait and see." "And I'm not to tell the editor?" She was on her feet now, preparing to go. "Certainly not. If he is only guessing, let him take his chances. And if there's anything rotten about it he deserves to lose all he bets. This is to be a little secret between you and me. I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll name the round to you. I won't run it into the twenties. I'll stop Nat Powers in the eighteenth." "And I'll not whisper it," she assured him. "I'd like to ask you a favor," he said tentatively. "Maybe it's a big favor." She showed her acquiescence in her face, as if it were already granted, and he went on: "Of course, I know you won't use this faking in the interview. But I want more than that. I don't want you to publish anything at all." She gave him a quick look with her searching gray eyes, then surprised herself by her answer. "Certainly," she said. "It will not be published. I won't write a line of it." "I knew it," he said simply. For the moment she was disappointed by the lack of thanks, and the next moment she was glad that he had not thanked her. She sensed the different foundation he was building under this meeting of an hour with her, and she became daringly explorative. "How did you know it?" she asked. "I don't know." He shook his head. "I can't explain it. I knew it as a matter of course. Somehow it seems to me I know a lot about you and me." "But why not publish the interview? As your manager says, it is good advertising." "I know it," he answered slowly. "But I don't want to know you that way. I think it would hurt if you should publish it. I don't want to think that I knew you professionally. I'd like to remember our talk here as a talk between a man and a woman. I don't know whether you understand what I'm driving at. But it's the way I feel. I want to remember this just as a man and a woman." As he spoke, in his eyes was all the expression with which a man looks at a woman. She felt the force and beat of him, and she felt strangely tongue-tied and awkward before this man who had been reputed tongue-tied and awkward. He could certainly talk straighter to the point and more convincingly than most men, and what struck her most forcibly was her own inborn certainty that it was mere naïve and simple frankness on his part and not a practised artfulness. He saw her into her machine, and gave her another thrill when he said good-by. Once again their hands were clasped as he said: "Some day I'll see you again. I want to see you again. Somehow I have a feeling that the last word has not been said between us." And as the machine rolled away she was aware of a similar feeling. She had not seen the last of this very disquieting Pat Glendon, king of the bruisers and abysmal brute. Back in the training quarters, Glendon encountered his perturbed manager. "What did you fire me out for?" Stubener demanded. "We're finished. A hell of a mess you've made. You've never stood for meeting a reporter alone before, and now you'll see when that interview comes out." Glendon, who had been regarding him with cool amusement, made as if to turn and pass on, and then changed his mind. "It won't come out," he said. Stubener looked up sharply. "I asked her not to," Glendon explained. Then Stubener exploded. "As if she'd kill a juicy thing like that." Glendon became very cold and his voice was harsh and grating. "It won't be published. She told me so. And to doubt it is to call her a liar." The Irish flame was in his eyes, and by that, and by the unconscious clenching of his passion-wrought hands, Stubener, who knew the strength of them, and of the man he faced, no longer dared to doubt. VII It did not take Stubener long to find out that Glendon intended extending the distance of the fight, though try as he would he could get no hint of the number of the round. He wasted no time, however, and privily clinched certain arrangements with Nat Powers and Nat Powers' manager. Powers had a faithful following of bettors, and the betting syndicate was not to be denied its harvest. On the night of the fight, Maud Sangster was guilty of a more daring unconventionality than any she had yet committed, though no whisper of it leaked out to shock society. Under the protection of the editor, she occupied a ring-side seat. Her hair and most of her face were hidden under a slouch hat, while she wore a man's long overcoat that fell to her heels. Entering in the thick of the crowd, she was not noticed; nor did the newspaper men, in the press seats against the ring directly in front of her, recognize her. As was the growing custom, there were no preliminary bouts, and she had barely gained her seat when roars of applause announced the arrival of Nat Powers. He came down the aisle in the midst of his seconds, and she was almost frightened by the formidable bulk of him. Yet he leaped the ropes as lightly as a man half his weight, and grinned acknowledgment to the tumultuous greeting that arose from all the house. He was not pretty. Two cauliflower ears attested his profession and its attendant brutality, while his broken nose had been so often spread over his face as to defy the surgeon's art to reconstruct it. Another uproar heralded the arrival of Glendon, and she watched him eagerly as he went through the ropes to his corner. But it was not until the tedious time of announcements, introductions, and challenges was over, that the two men threw off their wraps and faced each other in ring costume. Concentrated upon them from overhead was the white glare of many electric lights--this for the benefit of the moving picture cameras; and she felt, as she looked at the two sharply contrasted men, that it was in Glendon that she saw the thoroughbred and in Powers the abysmal brute. Both looked their parts--Glendon, clean cut in face and form, softly and massively beautiful, Powers almost asymmetrically rugged and heavily matted with hair. As they made their preliminary pose for the cameras, confronting each other in fighting attitudes, it chanced that Glendon's gaze dropped down through the ropes and rested on her face. Though he gave no sign, she knew, with a swift leap of the heart, that he had recognized her. The next moment the gong sounded, the announcer cried "Let her go!" and the battle was on. It was a good fight. There was no blood, no marring, and both were clever. Half of the first round was spent in feeling each other out, but Maud Sangster found the play and feint and tap of the gloves sufficiently exciting. During some of the fiercer rallies in later stages of the fight, the editor was compelled to touch her arm to remind her who she was and where she was. Powers fought easily and cleanly, as became the hero of half a hundred ring battles, and an admiring claque applauded his every cleverness. Yet he did not unduly exert himself save in occasional strenuous rallies that brought the audience yelling to its feet in the mistaken notion that he was getting his man. It was at such a moment, when her unpractised eye could not inform her that Glendon was escaping serious damage, that the editor leaned to her and said: "Young Pat will win all right. He's a comer, and they can't stop him. But he'll win in the sixteenth and not before." "Or after?" she asked. She almost laughed at the certitude of her companion's negative. She knew better. Powers was noted for hunting his man from moment to moment and round to round, and Glendon was content to accede to this program. His defense was admirable, and he threw in just enough of offense to whet the edge of the audience's interest. Though he knew he was scheduled to lose, Powers had had too long a ring experience to hesitate from knocking his man out if the opportunity offered. He had had the double cross worked too often on him to be chary in working it on others. If he got his chance he was prepared to knock his man out and let the syndicate go hang. Thanks to clever press publicity, the idea was prevalent that at last Young Glendon had met his master. In his heart, Powers, however, knew that it was himself who had encountered the better man. More than once, in the faster in-fighting, he received the weight of punches that he knew had been deliberately made no heavier. On Glendon's part, there were times and times when a slip or error of judgment could have exposed him to one of his antagonist's sledge-hammer blows and lost him the fight. Yet his was that almost miraculous power of accurate timing and distancing, and his confidence was not shaken by the several close shaves he experienced. He had never lost a fight, never been knocked down, and he had always been so thoroughly the master of the man he faced, that such a possibility was unthinkable. At the end of the fifteenth round, both men were in good condition, though Powers was breathing a trifle heavily and there were men in the ringside seats offering odds that he would "blow up." It was just before the gong for the sixteenth round struck that Stubener, leaning over Glendon from behind in his corner, whispered: "Are you going to get him now?" Glendon, with a back toss of his head, shook it and laughed mockingly up into his manager's anxious face. With the stroke of the gong for the sixteenth round, Glendon was surprised to see Powers cut loose. From the first second it was a tornado of fighting, and Glendon was hard put to escape serious damage. He blocked, clinched, ducked, sidestepped, was rushed backward against the ropes and was met by fresh rushes when he surged out to center. Several times Powers left inviting openings, but Glendon refused to loose the lightning-bolt of a blow that would drop his man. He was reserving that blow for two rounds later. Not in the whole fight had he ever exerted his full strength, nor struck with the force that was in him. For two minutes, without the slightest let-up, Powers went at him hammer and tongs. In another minute the round would be over and the betting syndicate hard hit. But that minute was not to be. They had just come together in the center of the ring. It was as ordinary a clinch as any in the fight, save that Powers was struggling and roughing it every instant. Glendon whipped his left over in a crisp but easy jolt to the side of the face. It was like any of a score of similar jolts he had already delivered in the course of the fight. To his amazement he felt Powers go limp in his arms and begin sinking to the floor on sagging, spraddling legs that refused to bear his weight. He struck the floor with a thump, rolled half over on his side, and lay with closed eyes and motionless. The referee, bending above him, was shouting the count. At the cry of "Nine!" Powers quivered as if making a vain effort to rise. "Ten!--and out!" cried the referee. He caught Glendon's hand and raised it aloft to the roaring audience in token that he was the winner. For the first time in the ring, Glendon was dazed. It had not been a knockout blow. He could stake his life on that. It had not been to the jaw but to the side of the face, and he knew it had gone there and nowhere else. Yet the man was out, had been counted out, and he had faked it beautifully. That final thump on the floor had been a convincing masterpiece. To the audience it was indubitably a knockout, and the moving picture machines would perpetuate the lie. The editor had called the turn after all, and a crooked turn it was. Glendon shot a swift glance through the ropes to the face of Maud Sangster. She was looking straight at him, but her eyes were bleak and hard, and there was neither recognition nor expression in them. Even as he looked, she turned away unconcernedly and said something to the man beside her. Powers' seconds were carrying him to his corner, a seeming limp wreck of a man. Glendon's seconds were advancing upon him to congratulate him and to remove his gloves. But Stubener was ahead of them. His face was beaming as he caught Glendon's right glove in both his hands and cried: "Good boy, Pat. I knew you'd do it." Glendon pulled his glove away. And for the first time in the years they had been together, his manager heard him swear. "You go to hell," he said, and turned to hold out his hands for his seconds to pull off the gloves. VIII That night, after receiving the editor's final dictum that there was not a square fighter in the game, Maud Sangster cried quietly for a moment on the edge of her bed, grew angry, and went to sleep hugely disgusted with herself, prize-fighters, and the world in general. The next afternoon she began work on an interview with Henry Addison that was destined never to be finished. It was in the private room that was accorded her at the "Courier-Journal" office that the thing happened. She had paused in her writing to glance at a headline in the afternoon paper announcing that Glendon was matched with Tom Cannam, when one of the door-boys brought in a card. It was Glendon's. "Tell him I can't be seen," she told the boy. In a minute he was back. "He says he's coming in anyway, but he'd rather have your permission." "Did you tell him I was busy?" she asked. "Yes'm, but he said he was coming just the same." She made no answer, and the boy, his eyes shining with admiration for the importunate visitor, rattled on. "I know'm. He's a awful big guy. If he started roughhousing he could clean the whole office out. He's young Glendon, who won the fight last night." "Very well, then. Bring him in. We don't want the office cleaned out, you know." No greetings were exchanged when Glendon entered. She was as cold and inhospitable as a gray day, and neither invited him to a chair nor recognized him with her eyes, sitting half turned away from him at her desk and waiting for him to state his business. He gave no sign of how this cavalier treatment affected him, but plunged directly into his subject. "I want to talk to you," he said shortly. "That fight. It did end in that round." She shrugged her shoulders. "I knew it would." "You didn't," he retorted. "You didn't. I didn't." She turned and looked at him with quiet affectation of boredom. "What is the use?" she asked. "Prize-fighting is prize-fighting, and we all know what it means. The fight did end in the round I told you it would." "It did," he agreed. "But you didn't know it would. In all the world you and I were at least two that knew Powers wouldn't be knocked out in the sixteenth." She remained silent. "I say you knew he wouldn't." He spoke peremptorily, and, when she still declined to speak, stepped nearer to her. "Answer me," he commanded. She nodded her head. "But he was," she insisted. "He wasn't. He wasn't knocked out at all. Do you get that? I am going to tell you about it, and you are going to listen. I didn't lie to you. Do you get that? I didn't lie to you. I was a fool, and they fooled me, and you along with me. You thought you saw him knocked out. Yet the blow I struck was not heavy enough. It didn't hit him in the right place either. He made believe it did. He faked that knockout." He paused and looked at her expectantly. And somehow, with a leap and thrill, she knew that she believed him, and she felt pervaded by a warm happiness at the reinstatement of this man who meant nothing to her and whom she had seen but twice in her life. "Well?" he demanded, and she thrilled anew at the compellingness of him. She stood up, and her hand went out to his. "I believe you," she said. "And I am glad, most glad." It was a longer grip than she had anticipated. He looked at her with eyes that burned and to which her own unconsciously answered back. Never was there such a man, was her thought. Her eyes dropped first, and his followed, so that, as before, both gazed at the clasped hands. He made a movement of his whole body toward her, impulsive and involuntary, as if to gather her to him, then checked himself abruptly, with an unmistakable effort. She saw it, and felt the pull of his hand as it started to draw her to him. And to her amazement she felt the desire to yield, the desire almost overwhelmingly to be drawn into the strong circle of those arms. And had he compelled, she knew that she would not have refrained. She was almost dizzy, when he checked himself and with a closing of his fingers that half crushed hers, dropped her hand, almost flung it from him. "God!" he breathed. "You were made for me." He turned partly away from her, sweeping his hand to his forehead. She knew she would hate him forever if he dared one stammered word of apology or explanation. But he seemed to have the way always of doing the right thing where she was concerned. She sank into her chair, and he into another, first drawing it around so as to face her across the corner of the desk. "I spent last night in a Turkish bath," he said. "I sent for an old broken-down bruiser. He was a friend of my father in the old days. I knew there couldn't be a thing about the ring he didn't know, and I made him talk. The funny thing was that it was all I could do to convince him that I didn't know the things I asked him about. He called me the babe in the woods. I guess he was right. I was raised in the woods, and woods is about all I know. "Well, I received an education from that old man last night. The ring is rottener than you told me. It seems everybody connected with it is crooked. The very supervisors that grant the fight permits graft off of the promoters; and the promoters, managers, and fighters graft off of each other and off the public. It's down to a system, in one way, and on the other hand they're always--do you know what the double cross is?" (She nodded.) "Well, they don't seem to miss a chance to give each other the double cross. "The stuff that old man told me took my breath away. And here I've been in the thick of it for several years and knew nothing of it. I was a real babe in the woods. And yet I can see how I've been fooled. I was so made that nobody could stop me. I was bound to win, and, thanks to Stubener, everything crooked was kept away from me. This morning I cornered Spider Walsh and made him talk. He was my first trainer, you know, and he followed Stubener's instructions. They kept me in ignorance. Besides, I didn't herd with the sporting crowd. I spent my time hunting and fishing and monkeying with cameras and such things. Do you know what Walsh and Stubener called me between themselves?--the Virgin. I only learned it this morning from Walsh, and it was like pulling teeth. And they were right. I was a little innocent lamb. "And Stubener was using me for crookedness, too, only I didn't know it. I can look back now and see how it was worked. But you see, I wasn't interested enough in the game to be suspicious. I was born with a good body and a cool head, I was raised in the open, and I was taught by my father, who knew more about fighting than any man living or dead. It was too easy. The ring didn't absorb me. There was never any doubt of the outcome. But I'm done with it now." She pointed to the headline announcing his match with Tom Cannam. "That's Stubener's work," he explained. "It was programmed months ago. But I don't care. I'm heading for the mountains. I've quit." She glanced at the unfinished interview on the desk and sighed. "How lordly men are," she said. "Masters of destiny. They do as they please--" "From what I've heard," he interrupted, "you've done pretty much as you please. It's one of the things I like about you. And what has struck me hard from the first was the way you and I understand each other." He broke off and looked at her with burning eyes. "Well, the ring did one thing for me," he went on. "It made me acquainted with you. And when you find the one woman, there's just one thing to do. Take her in your two hands and don't let go. Come on, let us start for the mountains." It had come with the suddenness of a thunder-clap, and yet she felt that she had been expecting it. Her heart was beating up and almost choking her in a strangely delicious way. Here at least was the primitive and the simple with a vengeance. Then, too, it seemed a dream. Such things did not take place in modern newspaper offices. Love could not be made in such fashion; it only so occurred on the stage and in novels. He had arisen, and was holding out both hands to her. "I don't dare," she said in a whisper, half to herself. "I don't dare." And thereat she was stung by the quick contempt that flashed in his eyes but that swiftly changed to open incredulity. "You'd dare anything you wanted," he was saying. "I know that. It's not a case of dare, but of want. Do you want?" She had arisen, and was now swaying as if in a dream. It flashed into her mind to wonder if it were hypnotism. She wanted to glance about her at the familiar objects of the room in order to identify herself with reality, but she could not take her eyes from his. Nor did she speak. He had stepped beside her. His hand was on her arm, and she leaned toward him involuntarily. It was all part of the dream, and it was no longer hers to question anything. It was the great dare. He was right. She could dare what she wanted, and she did want. He was helping her into her jacket. She was thrusting the hat-pins through her hair. And even as she realized it, she found herself walking beside him through the opened door. The "Flight of the Duchess" and "The Statue and the Bust," darted through her mind. Then she remembered "Waring." "'What's become of Waring?'" she murmured. "'Land travel or sea-faring?'" he murmured back. And to her this kindred sufficient note was a vindication of her madness. At the entrance of the building he raised his hand to call a taxi, but was stopped by her touch on his arm. "Where are we going?" she breathed. "To the Ferry. We've just time to catch that Sacramento train." "But I can't go this way," she protested. "I ... I haven't even a change of handkerchiefs." He held up his hand again before replying. "You can shop in Sacramento. We'll get married there and catch the night overland north. I'll arrange everything by telegraph from the train." As the cab drew to the curb, she looked quickly about her at the familiar street and the familiar throng, then, with almost a flurry of alarm, into Glendon's face. "I don't know a thing about you," she said. "We know everything about each other," was his answer. She felt the support and urge of his arms, and lifted her foot to the step. The next moment the door had closed, he was beside her, and the cab was heading down Market Street. He passed his arm around her, drew her close, and kissed her. When next she glimpsed his face she was certain that it was dyed with a faint blush. "I ... I've heard there was an art in kissing," he stammered. "I don't know anything about it myself, but I'll learn. You see, you're the first woman I ever kissed." IX Where a jagged peak of rock thrust above the vast virgin forest, reclined a man and a woman. Beneath them, on the edge of the trees, were tethered two horses. Behind each saddle were a pair of small saddle-bags. The trees were monotonously huge. Towering hundreds of feet into the air, they ran from eight to ten and twelve feet in diameter. Many were much larger. All morning they had toiled up the divide through this unbroken forest, and this peak of rock had been the first spot where they could get out of the forest in order to see the forest. Beneath them and away, far as they could see, lay range upon range of haze-empurpled mountains. There was no end to these ranges. They rose one behind another to the dim, distant skyline, where they faded away with a vague promise of unending extension beyond. There were no clearings in the forest; north, south, east, and west, untouched, unbroken, it covered the land with its mighty growth. They lay, feasting their eyes on the sight, her hand clasped in one of his; for this was their honeymoon, and these were the redwoods of Mendocino. Across from Shasta they had come, with horses and saddle-bags, and down through the wilds of the coast counties, and they had no plan except to continue until some other plan entered their heads. They were roughly dressed, she in travel-stained khaki, he in overalls and woolen shirt. The latter was open at the sunburned neck, and in his hugeness he seemed a fit dweller among the forest giants, while for her, as a dweller with him, there were no signs of aught else but happiness. "Well, Big Man," she said, propping herself up on an elbow to gaze at him, "it is more wonderful than you promised. And we are going through it together." "And there's a lot of the rest of the world we'll go through together," he answered, shifting his position so as to get her hand in both of his. "But not till we've finished with this," she urged. "I seem never to grow tired of the big woods ... and of you." He slid effortlessly into a sitting posture and gathered her into his arms. "Oh, you lover," she whispered. "And I had given up hope of finding such a one." "And I never hoped at all. I must just have known all the time that I was going to find you. Glad?" Her answer was a soft pressure where her hand rested on his neck, and for long minutes they looked out over the great woods and dreamed. "You remember I told you how I ran away from the red-haired school teacher? That was the first time I saw this country. I was on foot, but forty or fifty miles a day was play for me. I was a regular Indian. I wasn't thinking about you then. Game was pretty scarce in the redwoods, but there was plenty of fine trout. That was when I camped on these rocks. I didn't dream that some day I'd be back with you, YOU." "And be a champion of the ring, too," she suggested. "No; I didn't think about that at all. Dad had always told me I was going to be, and I took it for granted. You see, he was very wise. He was a great man." "But he didn't see you leaving the ring." "I don't know. He was so careful in hiding its crookedness from me, that I think he feared it. I've told you about the contract with Stubener. Dad put in that clause about crookedness. The first crooked thing my manager did was to break the contract." "And yet you are going to fight this Tom Cannam. Is it worth while?" He looked at her quickly. "Don't you want me to?" "Dear lover, I want you to do whatever you want." So she said, and to herself, her words still ringing in her ears, she marveled that she, not least among the stubbornly independent of the breed of Sangster, should utter them. Yet she knew they were true, and she was glad. "It will be fun," he said. "But I don't understand all the gleeful details." "I haven't worked them out yet. You might help me. In the first place I'm going to double-cross Stubener and the betting syndicate. It will be part of the joke. I am going to put Cannam out in the first round. For the first time I shall be really angry when I fight. Poor Tom Cannam, who's as crooked as the rest, will be the chief sacrifice. You see, I intend to make a speech in the ring. It's unusual, but it will be a success, for I am going to tell the audience all the inside workings of the game. It's a good game, too, but they're running it on business principles, and that's what spoils it. But there, I'm giving the speech to you instead of at the ring." "I wish I could be there to hear," she said. He looked at her and debated. "I'd like to have you. But it's sure to be a rough time. There is no telling what may happen when I start my program. But I'll come straight to you as soon as it's over. And it will be the last appearance of Young Glendon in the ring, in any ring." "But, dear, you've never made a speech in your life," she objected. "You might fail." He shook his head positively. "I'm Irish," he announced, "and what Irishman was there who couldn't speak?" He paused to laugh merrily. "Stubener thinks I'm crazy. Says a man can't train on matrimony. A lot he knows about matrimony, or me, or you, or anything except real estate and fixed fights. But I'll show him that night, and poor Tom, too. I really feel sorry for Tom." "My dear abysmal brute is going to behave most abysmally and brutally, I fear," she murmured. He laughed. "I'm going to make a noble attempt at it. Positively my last appearance, you know. And then it will be you, YOU. But if you don't want that last appearance, say the word." "Of course I want it, Big Man. I want my Big Man for himself, and to be himself he must be himself. If you want this, I want it for you, and for myself, too. Suppose I said I wanted to go on the stage, or to the South Seas or the North Pole?" He answered slowly, almost solemnly. "Then I'd say go ahead. Because you are you and must be yourself and do whatever you want. I love you because you are you." "And we're both a silly pair of lovers," she said, when his embrace had relaxed. "Isn't it great!" he cried. He stood up, measured the sun with his eye, and extended his hand out over the big woods that covered the serried, purple ranges. "We've got to sleep out there somewhere. It's thirty miles to the nearest camp." X Who, of all the sports present, will ever forget the memorable night at the Golden Gate Arena, when Young Glendon put Tom Cannam to sleep and an even greater one than Tom Cannam, kept the great audience on the ragged edge of riot for an hour, caused the subsequent graft investigation of the supervisors and the indictments of the contractors and the building commissioners, and pretty generally disrupted the whole fight game. It was a complete surprise. Not even Stubener had the slightest apprehension of what was coming. It was true that his man had been insubordinate after the Nat Powers affair, and had run off and got married; but all that was over. Young Pat had done the expected, swallowed the inevitable crookedness of the ring, and come back into it again. The Golden Gate Arena was new. This was its first fight, and it was the biggest building of the kind San Francisco had ever erected. It seated twenty-five thousand, and every seat was occupied. Sports had traveled from all the world to be present, and they had paid fifty dollars for their ring-side seats. The cheapest seat in the house had sold for five dollars. The old familiar roar of applause went up when Billy Morgan, the veteran announcer, climbed through the ropes and bared his gray head. As he opened his mouth to speak, a heavy crash came from a near section where several tiers of low seats had collapsed. The crowd broke into loud laughter and shouted jocular regrets and advice to the victims, none of whom had been hurt. The crash of the seats and the hilarious uproar caused the captain of police in charge to look at one of his lieutenants and lift his brows in token that they would have their hands full and a lively night. One by one, welcomed by uproarious applause, seven doughty old ring heroes climbed through the ropes to be introduced. They were all ex-heavy-weight champions of the world. Billy Morgan accompanied each presentation to the audience with an appropriate phrase. One was hailed as "Honest John" and "Old Reliable," another was "the squarest two-fisted fighter the ring ever saw." And of others: "the hero of a hundred battles and never threw one and never lay down"; "the gamest of the old guard"; "the only one who ever came back"; "the greatest warrior of them all"; and "the hardest nut in the ring to crack." All this took time. A speech was insisted on from each of them, and they mumbled and muttered in reply with proud blushes and awkward shamblings. The longest speech was from "Old Reliable" and lasted nearly a minute. Then they had to be photographed. The ring filled up with celebrities, with champion wrestlers, famous conditioners, and veteran time-keepers and referees. Light-weights and middle-weights swarmed. Everybody seemed to be challenging everybody. Nat Powers was there, demanding a return match from Young Glendon, and so were all the other shining lights whom Glendon had snuffed out. Also, they all challenged Jim Hanford, who, in turn, had to make his statement, which was to the effect that he would accord the next fight to the winner of the one that was about to take place. The audience immediately proceeded to name the winner, half of it wildly crying "Glendon," and the other half "Powers." In the midst of the pandemonium another tier of seats went down, and half a dozen rows were on between cheated ticket holders and the stewards who had been reaping a fat harvest. The captain despatched a message to headquarters for additional police details. The crowd was feeling good. When Cannam and Glendon made their ring entrances the Arena resembled a national political convention. Each was cheered for a solid five minutes. The ring was now cleared. Glendon sat in his corner surrounded by his seconds. As usual, Stubener was at his back. Cannam was introduced first, and after he had scraped and ducked his head, he was compelled to respond to the cries for a speech. He stammered and halted, but managed to grind out several ideas. "I'm proud to be here to-night," he said, and found space to capture another thought while the applause was thundering. "I've fought square. I've fought square all my life. Nobody can deny that. And I'm going to do my best to-night." There were loud cries of: "That's right, Tom!" "We know that!" "Good boy, Tom!" "You're the boy to fetch the bacon home!" Then came Glendon's turn. From him, likewise, a speech was demanded, though for principals to give speeches was an unprecedented thing in the prize-ring. Billy Morgan held up his hand for silence, and in a clear, powerful voice Glendon began. "Everybody has told you they were proud to be here to-night," he said. "I am not" The audience was startled, and he paused long enough to let it sink home, "I am not proud of my company. You wanted a speech. I'll give you a real one. This is my last fight. After to-night I leave the ring for good. Why? I have already told you. I don't like my company. The prize-ring is so crooked that no man engaged in it can hide behind a corkscrew. It is rotten to the core, from the little professional clubs right up to this affair to-night." The low rumble of astonishment that had been rising at this point burst into a roar. There were loud boos and hisses, and many began crying: "Go on with the fight!" "We want the fight!" "Why don't you fight?" Glendon, waiting, noted that the principal disturbers near the ring were promoters and managers and fighters. In vain did he strive to make himself heard. The audience was divided, half crying out, "Fight!" and the other half, "Speech! Speech!" Ten minutes of hopeless madness prevailed. Stubener, the referee, the owner of the Arena, and the promoter of the fight, pleaded with Glendon to go on with the fight. When he refused, the referee declared that he would award the fight in forfeit to Cannam if Glendon did not fight. "You can't do it," the latter retorted. "I'll sue you in all the courts if you try that on, and I'll not promise you that you'll survive this crowd if you cheat it out of the fight. Besides, I'm going to fight. But before I do I'm going to finish my speech." "But it's against the rules," protested the referee. "It's nothing of the sort. There's not a word in the rules against ring-side speeches. Every big fighter here to-night has made a speech." "Only a few words," shouted the promoter in Glendon's ear. "But you're giving a lecture." "There's nothing in the rules against lectures," Glendon answered. "And now you fellows get out of the ring or I'll throw you out." The promoter, apoplectic and struggling, was dropped over the ropes by his coat-collar. He was a large man, but so easily had Glendon done it with one hand that the audience went wild with delight. The cries for a speech increased in volume. Stubener and the owner beat a wise retreat. Glendon held up his hands to be heard, whereupon those that shouted for the fight redoubled their efforts. Two or three tiers of seats crashed down, and numbers who had thus lost their places, added to the turmoil by making a concerted rush to squeeze in on the still intact seats, while those behind, blocked from sight of the ring, yelled and raved for them to sit down. Glendon walked to the ropes and spoke to the police captain. He was compelled to bend over and shout in his ear. "If I don't give this speech," he said, "this crowd will wreck the place. If they break loose you can never hold them, you know that. Now you've got to help. You keep the ring clear and I'll silence the crowd." He went back to the center of the ring and again held up his hands. "You want that speech?" he shouted in a tremendous voice. Hundreds near the ring heard him and cried "Yes!" "Then let every man who wants to hear shut up the noise-maker next to him!" The advice was taken, so that when he repeated it, his voice penetrated farther. Again and again he shouted it, and slowly, zone by zone, the silence pressed outward from the ring, accompanied by a muffled undertone of smacks and thuds and scuffles as the obstreperous were subdued by their neighbors. Almost had all confusion been smothered, when a tier of seats near the ring went down. This was greeted with fresh roars of laughter, which of itself died away, so that a lone voice, far back, was heard distinctly as it piped: "Go on, Glendon! We're with you!" Glendon had the Celt's intuitive knowledge of the psychology of the crowd. He knew that what had been a vast disorderly mob five minutes before was now tightly in hand, and for added effect he deliberately delayed. Yet the delay was just long enough and not a second too long. For thirty seconds the silence was complete, and the effect produced was one of awe. Then, just as the first faint hints of restlessness came to his ears, he began to speak: "When I finish this speech," he said, "I am going to fight. I promise you it will be a real fight, one of the few real fights you have ever seen. I am going to get my man in the shortest possible time. Billy Morgan, in making his final announcement, will tell you that it is to be a forty-five-round contest. Let me tell you that it will be nearer forty-five seconds. "When I was interrupted I was telling you that the ring was rotten. It is--from top to bottom. It is run on business principles, and you all know what business principles are. Enough said. You are the suckers, every last one of you that is not making anything out of it. Why are the seats falling down to-night? Graft. Like the fight game, they were built on business principles." He now held the audience stronger than ever, and knew it. "There are three men squeezed on two seats. I can see that everywhere. What does it mean? Graft. The stewards don't get any wages. They are supposed to graft. Business principles again. You pay. Of course you pay. How are the fight permits obtained? Graft. And now let me ask you: if the men who build the seats graft, if the stewards graft, if the authorities graft, why shouldn't those higher up in the fight game graft? They do. And you pay. "And let me tell you it is not the fault of the fighters. They don't run the game. The promoters and managers run it; they're the business men. The fighters are only fighters. They begin honestly enough, but the managers and promoters make them give in or kick them out. There have been straight fighters. And there are now a few, but they don't earn much as a rule. I guess there have been straight managers. Mine is about the best of the boiling. But just ask him how much he's got salted down in real estate and apartment houses." Here the uproar began to drown his voice. "Let every man who wants to hear shut up the man alongside of him!" Glendon instructed. Again, like the murmur of a surf, there was a rustling of smacks, and thuds, and scuffles, and the house quieted down. "Why does every fighter work overtime insisting that he's always fought square? Why are they called Honest Johns, and Honest Bills, and Honest Blacksmiths, and all the rest? Doesn't it ever strike you that they seem to be afraid of something? When a man comes to you shouting he is honest, you get suspicious. But when a prize-fighter passes the same dope out to you, you swallow it down. "May the best man win! How often have you heard Billy Morgan say that! Let me tell you that the best man doesn't win so often, and when he does it's usually arranged for him. Most of the grudge fights you've heard or seen were arranged, too. It's a program. The whole thing is programmed. Do you think the promoters and managers are in it for their health? They're not. They're business men. "Tom, Dick, and Harry are three fighters. Dick is the best man. In two fights he could prove it. But what happens? Tom licks Harry. Dick licks Tom. Harry licks Dick. Nothing proved. Then come the return matches. Harry licks Tom. Tom licks Dick. Dick licks Harry. Nothing proved. Then they try again. Dick is kicking. Says he wants to get along in the game. So Dick licks Tom, and Dick licks Harry. Eight fights to prove Dick the best man, when two could have done it. All arranged. A regular program. And you pay for it, and when your seats don't break down you get robbed of them by the stewards. "It's a good game, too, if it were only square. The fighters would be square if they had a chance. But the graft is too big. When a handful of men can divide up three-quarters of a million dollars on three fights--" A wild outburst compelled him to stop. Out of the medley of cries from all over the house, he could distinguish such as "What million dollars?" "What three fights?" "Tell us!" "Go on!" Likewise there were boos and hisses, and cries of "Muckraker! Muckraker!" "Do you want to hear?" Glendon shouted. "Then keep order!" Once more he compelled the impressive half minute of silence. "What is Jim Hanford planning? What is the program his crowd and mine are framing up? They know I've got him. He knows I've got him. I can whip him in one fight. But he's the champion of the world. If I don't give in to the program, they'll never give me a chance to fight him. The program calls for three fights. I am to win the first fight. It will be pulled off in Nevada if San Francisco won't stand for it. We are to make it a good fight. To make it good, each of us will put up a side bet of twenty thousand. It will be real money, but it won't be a real bet. Each gets his own slipped back to him. The same way with the purse. We'll divide it evenly, though the public division will be thirty-five and sixty-five. The purse, the moving picture royalties, the advertisements, and all the rest of the drags won't be a cent less than two hundred and fifty thousand. We'll divide it, and go to work on the return match. Hanford will win that, and we divide again. Then comes the third fight; I win as I have every right to; and we have taken three-quarters of a million out of the pockets of the fighting public. That's the program, but the money is dirty. And that's why I am quitting the ring to-night--" It was at this moment that Jim Hanford, kicking a clinging policeman back among the seat-holders, heaved his huge frame through the ropes, bellowing: "It's a lie!" He rushed like an infuriated bull at Glendon, who sprang back, and then, instead of meeting the rush, ducked cleanly away. Unable to check himself, the big man fetched up against the ropes. Flung back by the spring of them, he was turning to make another rush, when Glendon landed him. Glendon, cool, clear-seeing, distanced his man perfectly to the jaw and struck the first full-strength blow of his career. All his strength, and his reserve of strength, went into that one smashing muscular explosion. Hanford was dead in the air--in so far as unconsciousness may resemble death. So far as he was concerned, he ceased at the moment of contact with Glendon's fist. His feet left the floor and he was in the air until he struck the topmost rope. His inert body sprawled across it, sagged at the middle, and fell through the ropes and down out of the ring upon the heads of the men in the press seats. The audience broke loose. It had already seen more than it had paid to see, for the great Jim Hanford, the world champion, had been knocked out. It was unofficial, but it had been with a single punch. Never had there been such a night in fistiana. Glendon looked ruefully at his damaged knuckles, cast a glance through the ropes to where Hanford was groggily coming to, and held up his hands. He had clinched his right to be heard, and the audience grew still. "When I began to fight," he said, "they called me 'One-Punch Glendon.' You saw that punch a moment ago. I always had that punch. I went after my men and got them on the jump, though I was careful not to hit with all my might. Then I was educated. My manager told me it wasn't fair to the crowd. He advised me to make long fights so that the crowd could get a run for its money. I was a fool, a mutt. I was a green lad from the mountains. So help me God, I swallowed it as the truth. My manager used to talk over with me what round I would put my man out in. Then he tipped it off to the betting syndicate, and the betting syndicate went to it. Of course you paid. But I am glad for one thing. I never touched a cent of the money. They didn't dare offer it to me, because they knew it would give the game away. "You remember my fight with Nat Powers. I never knocked him out. I had got suspicious. So the gang framed it up with him. I didn't know. I intended to let him go a couple of rounds over the sixteenth. That last punch in the sixteenth didn't shake him. But he faked the knock-out just the same and fooled all of you." "How about to-night?" a voice called out. "Is it a frame-up?" "It is," was Glendon's answer. "How's the syndicate betting? That Cannam will last to the fourteenth." Howls and hoots went up. For the last time Glendon held up his hand for silence. "I'm almost done now. But I want to tell you one thing. The syndicate gets landed to-night. This is to be a square fight. Tom Cannam won't last till the fourteenth round. He won't last the first round." Cannam sprang to his feet in his corner and cried out in a fury: "You can't do it. The man don't live who can get me in one round!" Glendon ignored him and went on. "Once now in my life I have struck with all my strength. You saw that a moment ago when I caught Hanford. To-night, for the second time, I am going to hit with all my strength--that is, if Cannam doesn't jump through the ropes right now and get away. And now I'm ready." He went to his corner and held out his hands for his gloves. In the opposite corner Cannam raged while his seconds tried vainly to calm him. At last Billy Morgan managed to make the final announcement. "This will be a forty-five round contest," he shouted. "Marquis of Queensbury Rules! And may the best man win! Let her go!" The gong struck. The two men advanced. Glendon's right hand was extended for the customary shake, but Cannam, with an angry toss of the head, refused to take it. To the general surprise, he did not rush. Angry though he was, he fought carefully, his touched pride impelling him to bend every effort to last out the round. Several times he struck, but he struck cautiously, never relaxing his defense. Glendon hunted him about the ring, ever advancing with the remorseless tap-tap of his left foot. Yet he struck no blows, nor attempted to strike. He even dropped his hands to his sides and hunted the other defenselessly in an effort to draw him out. Cannam grinned defiantly, but declined to take advantage of the proffered opening. Two minutes passed, and then a change came over Glendon. By every muscle, by every line of his face, he advertised that the moment had come for him to get his man. Acting it was, and it was well acted. He seemed to have become a thing of steel, as hard and pitiless as steel. The effect was apparent on Cannam, who redoubled his caution. Glendon quickly worked him into a corner and herded and held him there. Still he struck no blow, nor attempted to strike, and the suspense on Cannam's part grew painful. In vain he tried to work out of the corner, while he could not summon resolution to rush upon his opponent in an attempt to gain the respite of a clinch. Then it came--a swift series of simple feints that were muscle flashes. Cannam was dazzled. So was the audience. No two of the onlookers could agree afterward as to what took place. Cannam ducked one feint and at the same time threw up his face guard to meet another feint for his jaw. He also attempted to change position with his legs. Ring-side witnesses swore that they saw Glendon start the blow from his right hip and leap forward like a tiger to add the weight of his body to it. Be that as it may, the blow caught Cannam on the point of the chin at the moment of his shift of position. And like Hanford, he was unconscious in the air before he struck the ropes and fell through on the heads of the reporters. Of what happened afterward that night in the Golden Gate Arena, columns in the newspapers were unable adequately to describe. The police kept the ring clear, but they could not save the Arena. It was not a riot. It was an orgy. Not a seat was left standing. All over the great hall, by main strength, crowding and jostling to lay hands on beams and boards, the crowd uprooted and over-turned. Prize-fighters sought protection of the police, but there were not enough police to escort them out, and fighters, managers, and promoters were beaten and battered. Jim Hanford alone was spared. His jaw, prodigiously swollen, earned him this mercy. Outside, when finally driven from the building, the crowd fell upon a new seven-thousand-dollar motor car belonging to a well-known fight promoter and reduced it to scrapiron and kindling wood. Glendon, unable to dress amid the wreckage of dressing rooms, gained his automobile, still in his ring costume and wrapped in a bath robe, but failed to escape. By weight of numbers the crowd caught and held his machine. The police were too busy to rescue him, and in the end a compromise was effected, whereby the car was permitted to proceed at a walk escorted by five thousand cheering madmen. It was midnight when this storm swept past Union Square and down upon the St. Francis. Cries for a speech went up, and though at the hotel entrance, Glendon was good-naturedly restrained from escaping. He even tried leaping out upon the heads of the enthusiasts, but his feet never touched the pavement. On heads and shoulders, clutched at and uplifted by every hand that could touch his body, he went back through the air to the machine. Then he gave his speech, and Maud Glendon, looking down from an upper window at her young Hercules towering on the seat of the automobile, knew, as she always knew, that he meant it when he repeated that he had fought his last fight and retired from the ring forever. THE END