The Leather Pushers (1921, G. P. Putnam's Sons)/Round 5
One of the unusually interestin' courses at my college, viz., the University of Experience, is the study of laughter—prob'ly the most abused and powerful single agent for good or bad in the world. They's no doubt that many's the delicate situation has been saved by a well-placed giggle, but far more cases has been shot to pieces by a poorly timed one. A good-natured laugh for the example, has frequently been known to prevent murder, but, on the other hand, billions of guys has been bumped off for no more cause than a single, sneerin' grin. The chuckle is the boob's natural defense and the wise guy's offense, and it's a beaucoup dangerous weapon either way!
But, in mass formation, the humble titter stands alone as a maker or breaker of men! The laugh of the mob has kept Chaplin away from the almshouse and Bryan away from the White House. They guffawed Henry Ford into a fortune and Doc Cook out of one. The Wright brothers was showered with snickers, but they fin'ly made the world fly and the Anti-Saloon League, a long-standin' object of mirth, is fin'ly makin' it dry.
So ridicule is roast duck to some guys and carbolic to others. It's stung thousands of losers into gettin' across and thousands of winners into gettin' the raspberry. I could undoubtlessly trot out a hundred cases of both, but a glance at the daily papers will supply you with much fresher lists than I got. However, boys and girls, if you'll keep your lustrous eyes glued to the followin' pages for a few minutes, I will give you a sensational example of how the jeerin' chortle of a mob queered one of the most shrewdly crooked schemes I ever was framed for, whilst as a box-fight impresario I was endeavorin' to make Kid Roberts reignin' king of the Leather Pushers. After the Kennedy muss, I took the Kid for a dash around the usual heavyweight circuit from Harlem to Frisco, takin' on all corners and always bellerin' for a muss with the champ. The Kid made Annette Kellermanns out of the bulk of his men, and the high divin' which was had on that trip would of caused the extremely fair Ann to give up the swimmin' game in disgust!
Out of twelve guys he went versus with, six of 'em succumbed to the sleepin' sickness in from one to three rounds, three lasted less than a minute, two scraps was stopped to save the Kid from a manslaughter charge; and one bird stayed ten frames and was presented with a draw by a referee which had to be gave aid and succor by the cops immediately after he whispered his decision to the stupefied crowd. The gent which went the limit with the Kid was called Tiger Capato. As they remarked when Roosevelt was a infant, you'll hear more about that guy later.
As we stood to date, we'd had sixteen quarrels and win fourteen by knockouts, and if that ain't a record to get chesty about, then neither was Napoleon's! Also, we'd gathered together numerous shekels and our guarantees now run from $3,000 to $7,000 a fight, accordin' to where it was and with which. Seven thousand berries is interestin' money even to Charley Schwab, and I was satisfied to leave well enough alone and go right back over the trail bouncin' them same babies once more for auld lang sang and, of course, the pennies. But, brother, it was all different with my food card, Kid Roberts. That boy was as full of ambition as Pancho Villa and he wanted the champion now or nobody! He still hated the box-fight game from pit to dome and had swore on several phone books that the minute he win the title and copped one large, juicy purse, he'd leave the ring flat on its back and go in some business. A business, for the example, where, if anybody kept wavin' a dirty towel up and down in front of him, he would at the least have the pleasure of throwin' him out of his office, instead of havin' to sit on a backless stool and like it, as he did now!
How the soever, the champ turned a bevy of deaf ears to our frenzied demands for a crack at his crown and we might as well of tried to pick a fight with a nervous rabbit. In the two years he'd held the title, this cuckoo had fought exactly 901 guys—one set-up which lasted four rounds and 900 movie supers which lasted four reels. He was out on the goldiest gold coast of America, or, to get technical, Los Angeles, Calipickford, makin' a picture labeled "Up from the Gutter and Half Ways Back" or "From Dockhand to Champion!" The screen slave drivers had him sewed up for several months on a chilled-steel contract callin' for a couple of hours' work every sunshiny day at a niggardly pittance of $60,000 cash and 10 per cent of the loot from the film. Likewise he was allowed to wear white flannel pants and make up his eyebrows in the last reel, and the Jane which took off the part of the innocent little damsel he rescued from the Home for Wayward Girls, or the like, was a second Diana.
Now did that bird want to hurl all this overboard, go into heavy trainin' for a coupla months and then get roughed and jostled all over a ring by my young bone crusher? Sweet Spirits of Niter—No!!
But the indignant sport writers come to our assistance and without no preliminary warnin' opened up with their heavy guns on the peacefully inclined heavyweight champion of our present world. All the ways across Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean, them guys begin runnin' pictures of Kid Roberts with his amazin' casualty list alongside of 'em—then they took their typewriters in hand and let the keys run wild!
In the first place, Kid Roberts was always what is known as "good copy" in the newspaper game. Just gaze over the layout again; it'll only take a second. Here was a ex-famous college star who'd entered the prize ring to put his bankrupt father on his feet, who against all the dope was knockin' everybody dead, whose heiress had gave him the gate on the strength of it and who'd fin'ly punched his way to a chance at the world's championship. There we have as much romance, human interest, thrill, and suspense as they was in the French Revolution, as some bird wrote after samplin' one of them new antidotes for prohibition. Was a guy which had did all that to be kept from the happy endin'? Far be it from such!
So the young men went at the thing with a will, printin' the actor-champ's somewhat mild record opposite the Kid's and demandin' that he leave the bathin' beauties be and defend his title like a gent and a scholar, or else resign and concede it to the Kid. Half a million bucks wouldn't of bought the publicity we was gettin' every day, and it didn't cost me a pleasant smile. The big, handsome Kid's personality, the air of class his blood and college had gave him, and his willin'ness to fight anybody but the battleship Pennsylvania, put 'em in back of him to a man. They's no squarer shooter or better sport on the earth than your average newspaper guy. Likewise I discovered a long ways back that he's a great guy to have in your corner and a tough one to have off of you. Show him you got the merchandise and he'll drop everything to help you deliver it, but try and slip one over on him and Sweet Mamma—he shakes a nasty ink!
The champ simply grinned at this newspaper barrage, but the guys which had sank their sugar in his movie didn't! Contrary to the layman's opinion, they is several ounces of brains invested in the films, and these birds seen immediately that, unless their boxer star come out of his hole and made a noise like a scrapper, his ten-reeler was due to be a terrible bust. Already advance announcements of it was beginnin' to draw some scattered hisses hithers and yon, and the panic was on!
It's unfortunately true that our dear old hardworkin' U. S. likes to relax every now and then and gets hysterical over them foreign whatnots which comes here to grab off some real dough for a change and then goes back and roasts us to a fare-thee-well. But in spite of this slight weakness, we are far from a nation of come-ons, as many of them patronizin' tourists discovered, after the first wild cheers had died out. We don't care how much we spend for our toys, but we do wanna see 'em go! We insist that our plumbers plumb, our bankers bank, our actors act, and our fighters fight. We allow no guy to stall unless he gets sentenced to Congress—the only cruel and unusual punishment now legal under our punch-drunk Constitution!
Well, after a conference with his manager, press agents, and photoplay magnates, the champ presented the press with a statement in which he claimed he'd be willin' to listen to us on the subject of fisticuffs the minute he laid off elevatin' the screen, or, in the other words, three months. In the mean's while, we wouldst have to dispose of the Hon. Tiger Capato, the only heavy in captivity which Kid Roberts had been unable to make kiss the canvas and recline thereon till the referee had pronounced him dead.
The Kid almost wept for joy when the news reached him that he was gonna get a crack at the world's championship. He tore into our bower at the big-league hotel we was stablin' at now, wavin' a bunch of evenin' papers and grinnin' like a second Fairbanks.
"Six months from now I'll be champion!" he yells, with a slap on my back that loosened four buttons on the front of my vest. "Then one scrap for a couple of hundred thousand and I'm through! I'll throw my title to the pack and let 'em fight it, while I'll—"
"Whilst you'll blow your end of the gate, go broke and come back to the hit-and-run game again!" I butts in. "Listen, young feller, don't feed me none of that desertin'-the-ring-stuff—I was engaged in the gift of pilotin' pugs when you thought a uppercut was a euchre term. Once the heavy money, the thrill of landin' a perfectly timed right cross, the screamin' mob; the bein' constantly in the public's eye, and all the rest of it gets into your arteries, you can't throw it off like a old coat—and that's that! No, sir, son; right up to the time the embalmer says: 'Well, I guess I'll finish this one and then go home!' you'll be tellin' your fellow ghosts that you could of licked the current crop of heavies in the same ring if you hadn't bumped off. Ever hear of a ex-champ that didn't try to stage a comeback, regardless of age or condition? Take a squint at the books—John L., Corbett, Fitzsimmons, Jeff, Bat Nelson, Abe Attell, Young Corbett, Lavigne, McGovern, Gans, Ritchie, Wolgast, Coulon, Papke, and the etc. All of them boys was champs amongst champs and all of 'em was tryin' to crawl out of the pugilistic ash heap back to the calcium for years after they'd been nothin' but a faint memory to the mob!"
"Just a second!" flings the Kid over his shoulder, rippin' off his collar and draggin' out the shavin' apparatus. "There's no comparison between myself and those men, either in boxing ability or—well, let's call it temperament. Without exception, all those fellows you rattled off were born fighters—it was in the blood! They fought for money, of course, but it was principally the sheer love of battle that drove them to crawl through the ropes to kill or get killed, long after their star had set. I am not a born pugilist. I say that without any intent to sneer at what might have been a great game if it could have been kept clean! But it is a genealogical fact that I was born and reared in an entirely different atmosphere. I have no love for professional boxing, and I'm simply using it as a means to an end."
I sit and watched this big blond shavin' for a minute, feastin' my trained orbs on the easy play of ripplin' muscle over them white shoulders which loomed up out of his summer lingerie. A fighter? Say—they was champion wrote all over him, from the heel of his shoe to the roof of his dome! The only thing which spoiled the general effect was his intelligent look.
"I wouldst fain differ with thee, Big Guy," I grins, after a while, "on the subject of you not bein' born no fighter and likewise how ill in the abdomen the box-fightin' game makes you. I admit that, from the nursery up to a recent date, you was more used to afternoon tea parties than twenty-four-foot rings and that in your first few brawls you liked to cried your eyes out every time you knocked some bimbo for a goal. But a great change has come to the pass, Kid, and whether you noticed it or not, I don't know, but I did, because I'm gettin' paid to notice everything which is in the slightest way connected with you—get me? I only wish I had a photo to show you of your last coupla quarrels. I'd particularly crave one of the fight with Soldier Gorman at St. Paul—a picture of our meek little college boy gettin' floored in Round One, tearin' out of my arms for Round Two, standin' toe to toe with this near gorilla Gorman, which stood up to it to the extent of fracturin' one of your ribs before he went out cold, whilst teacher's pet, which hates to strike anybody, crouched over him pantin', bloody and snarlin', till I had to drag him back to his little corner! You sick of the game? Kid, prize fightin' is your dish, and a flash at your face when you get hurt tells that part of it to the world!"
He suddenly quit shavin' and swung around on me, with the razor still poised in the air and his face flamin' as red as a oil-well fire where it wasn't lathered. Then that give way to a worried look, as he leaned back against the bureau and laid down the razor.
"Gad!" he says. "Is that a fact? I seem to enjoy this beastly business?"
"Oh, easily that!" I chuckles. "You have took to pushin' leather like Theda Bara took to a camera. And another thing, Kid, you have become one tough baby—praise be Allah! When you're in there tryin' these days, the way you go about your job would make the wildest guy in Borneo swoon away with pure fright!"
Hidin' behind another blush, the Kid give vent to a disgusted little shiver, looks at me kinda funny, and then takes a long view of himself in the mirror, like's he's mullin' over in his mind what I have just told him.
Fin'ly he lets forth a sigh, picks up the razor, and continues on with the shavin'.
"So I'm degenerating into a beast, eh?" he says half to himself whilst he scrapes away viciously. "Well, I'm glad you called my attention to that—though it would be strange indeed if the vapor of sordid, bestial atmosphere surrounding my present—eh—profession, did not slightly tarnish the highly sensitive polish of some generations of refinement. I suppose," he adds, with a short laugh, "when I get out of this infernal game I'll have to spend some time in a finishing school before I'll trust myself to enter a drawing room!"
Slappin' on the bay rum, he was grinnin' again like the kid he was.
"Now about this Tiger Capato, the fellow I have to whip before I meet"—his voice shook a bit with pure, undiluted joy—"before I meet the champion. Are you getting in touch with him?"
For answer I pointed to the bed, which was cluttered with telegrams from every fight club in North America, with the possible exception of the Mexican Senate. We went over 'em together and fin'ly decided the best offer come from New Orleans, the fracas to be held there within a month and to be a fifteen-round rough-house to a referee's decision. That last item give me a giggle. In fifteen rounds Kid Roberts could of licked 850 Tiger Capatos and, as for the decision thing, all we craved was a guy which could count up to "ten" in a loud and melodious voice!
The vulgar financial details of the bout was a $25,000 purse to be split 60-40 and the wire also says that the matchmaker of the club, with Tiger Capato's manager, will meet me at the Claridge in a couple of days, to post appearance forfeits, sign articles, and the like.
I went down to the Claridge, as advertised, and asked for the matchmaker, bein' immediately escorted to a dead fall on the third floor. I just missed qualifying for the morgue when the door is opened by no less than the only enemy Kid Roberts had in the wide, wide world, to wit, Dummy Carney!
The way that baby kept on top of us from the time he first laid a eye on Roberts and started him pushin' leather, till the Kid made his pile and quit, was somethin' remarkable! Dummy couldn't forgive himself for lettin' the Kid get away from him, and he swore he'd never stop tryin' till a scrapper from his stable knocked my infant prodigy cold. Now he stood there with a twisted smile on his thick lips and them beady eyes of his enjoyin' my amazement to the last inch.
Before I can let out a bleat, he grabs me by the arm and yanks me into the room.
"Where's the Kid?" he whispers hoarsely, lookin' around.
"Doin' some road work," I says, still up to my ears in astonishment. "What are you doin' here? Where's Capato's manager and—"
Dummy closes the door and grins. "He's here," he says. "Sit down and take a load off your feet."
"Look here, Dummy," I says, facin' him. "This here's got a wrong look to me! I come here to sign articles with Capato's manager, not to—"
Once again he cuts me off, this time handin' me a cigar. "I'm Capato's manager!" he says coolly.
The cigar tumbled out of my hands on the floor and Dummy sit down and laughed out loud.
"Somethin' of a surprise party, hey?" he sneers. "Well, what's wrong about me buyin' Capato from Eddie Rainey—which is what I done?" He reaches in his pocket and flips me a paper. "There's the contract," he says. "As legal as snowballin' in Iceland. I told you I'd get me a boy which would bounce that cuckoo of yours—and I got him!"
Feelin' more at ease, I laid the contract on a table and took up the sport of grinnin' myself.
"Stop makin' me laugh!" I remarks. "Where's the matchmaker for the New Orleans abbattoir that's gonna stage the slaughter of your tramp?"
"Ah-heh!" coughs Dummy, knockin' the ash off his cigar. "Eh—I'm the matchmaker!"
Sweet Mamma!
"You're one terrible busy guy, ain't you?" I sneers, teachin' for my hat and gettin' up. "Well you got nothin' on me—so am I! The next time you wanna frame somebody, Dummy, get further out in the suburbs. I was pullin' off them kinda fights before you had wore out your first rattle. This here's gonna make a swell story for the sport writers to tie into—so long!"
"Sit down and don't be no stupider than you can help!" he snarls. "Did I ever strike you as bein' a hick? I got a business proposition to make you, durin' which time we'll forget our wild love for each other and let bygones be bygones. It's about the last chance we'll get to clean up, no matter if Capato knocks Kid Roberts dead, or vice and versa. The way I look at it, there's fifty thousand for us to split, besides the crack one of us will get at the title. D'ye wanna listen?"
Well, I never claimed to be perfect!
A hour or so later I was on the en route back to my inn, buried in what is known as thought. They was nothin' new in Dummy's "business proposition"—it's bein' pulled off every day and will be pulled off as long as the boob birth rate continues to run sixty to the hour. Unless the admirers of boxin' as a sport go over it with a vacuum cleaner toot sweet and get rid of all the Dummy Carney's which is killin' the game whereever they sit in it, prize fightin' is due to get the raspberry over here as sure as they's a snowflake at the North Pole!
Here was Dummy's layout:
Kid Roberts and Tiger Capato which had already fought one level draw, was to pull off another one in this New Orleans burlesque. Whilst the hippodrome lasted it would be a wow of a scrap—knockdowns, sarcastic conversations, nasty glances, and even a little gore would be squandered if necessary, but, come what may, it was to be a "draw." Everybody, includin' the referee, would see to that part of it! Me and Dummy was to meet by "accident" in the sportin' editor's office of the biggest New Orleans paper before the thing and give that unsuspectin' young gent ten thousand berries apiece to hold, each bettin' that his man would cop by a knockout. This would help murder suspicion, besides gettin' the fight plenty of advertisin'. Twenty thousand bucks may not sound like so much, but laid down on the table before you in fifty-dollar bills it looks like about twenty million. After the boys had "fought" their draw we'd both get back our sugar, of course, and the Kid and Capato was to be present when we collected. The Kid would then make some crack about bein' robbed of the decision and Capato would immediately make a pass at him. Then—wam! They'd both start mixin' it up, and have to be jimmied apart—all this, remember, before the delighted eyes of the sportin' editor. Would that little horseplay smoke up the return bout? Well, what do you think?
On the strength of the above drama the boys would be rematched then and there for a twenty-round open-air bout durin' the Mardy Grass week a month later. The town would be loaded with free-spendin' tourists, and the promoters figured on a fifty-thousand-berry gate if they got the breaks on the weather. This time it would be a up-and-up fight, and may the worst man lose!
Boiled down, the whole proposition was simply the time-worn scheme of drawin' two big crowds instead of one, the fact that the fans which paid their jack to see a fight in the first mill would be gypped not enterin' into the thing at all. New Orleans happened to be Capato's home town, and, as he had knocked a horde of tramps dead down there, he was a heavy local favorite. The prestige he'd gain by holdin' his own for fifteen rounds with the sensational Kid Roberts would boost Capato 100 per cent as a drawin' card, and even if the Kid knocked him kickin' in the second and real fight, he'd still hold most of his followin', who'd point to the showin' of the native son in the first argument and call his defeat in the second a fluke. As I remarked before, there was nothin' new about this public-be-damned burglary; it's bein' done day in day out by such managers and such promoters as would frame their brothers for $1.50—and are doin' their best to send professional boxin' after the late Jack Barleycorn.
Before some enraged promoter, manager, or the etc can jump up and holler that I am not above takin' liberties with the truth, I will mention the case of a well-known Philadelphia lightweight which a short time ago caused a mild sensation by his quick knockouts of all and sundry which could be lured into the ring with him at his home town. This baby has a local followin' which would make Harding think he was a man without friends, and I can recall no better example of the facts I have set forth above than this same native son. So remarkable was this kid's record that out-of-town sport writers, which had only seen him fight by the via of a telegram from his manager after each of his sensational wins, begin mentionin' him as the logical guy to remove the crown from the lightweight champion.
Then his manager, carried away by the reputation he himself had built up for his meal ticket, matched him with a tough kid from New York—a case-hardened veteran which asked no favors and had stood off the best of 'em. They all looked alike to this boy. It made no difference to him as long as he got his pennies for goin' in and takin' it, or vice and versa. He'd heard all about this Philly marvel with the man-killin' kick in each hand, and it bothered him the same way they worry over the income tax in the almshouse. It took the experienced campaigner about four seconds flat to size up the other bird as a overrated false alarm, and, havin' got that all settled, he panicked the crowd by dumpin' the native son on his ear with the first wallop he tried. Accordin' to newspaper reports, whilst the dumfounded referee (also local talent) was gaspin' forth the count over the flattened gladiator, his hysterical handlers showered him with water—which violation of such rules as the game has brung him to life in time to stall out the round. Now, of course, the water-throwin' thing should have immediately disqualified that baby, and the other kid's manager hollered murder over the foul. He afterward claimed he was waved away and told if his boy didn't go on with the fight he wouldn't get a nickel. In that way the local drawin' card was saved from a one-round knockout which would of cut in half his value to the Philly fight promoters.
Followin' this accident, the Quaker City star went back to knockin' over fourth-rate set-ups as of yore. One night a Philadelphia city official dropped in at the fight club where this boy wonder was astoundin' the natives with his ability to push leather. Again the accounts state that five minutes after the official had shoved his way through the shriekin' mob to the ringside, the "bout" was stopped. Bein' somethin' of a sportsman, this guy had become sickened by the sight of the local marvel deliberately cuttin' up the helpless, frightened, and bleedin' young novice which had been selected for the slaughter by the careful club management. After stoppin' the manslaughter the official walked over to the headliner's corner and warned his manager in anything but drawin'-room terms that unless his boy was more evenly matched in the future he would not let him fight again in Philly.
These two examples, which is a matter of record, show how the local favorite is built up and protected as a drawin' card by a great many fight clubs whose coarse work is responsible for most of the agitation against boxin'.
Although I knew what the Kid's answer would be, I laid Dummy's proposition before him immediately. I wound up by carelessly remarkin' that the extry ducats which was in it for us might be a swell present for his dear old father, and that as far as I was concerned he could use his own judgment about the thing. He give forth a gasp when I told him his old friend Dummy was now handlin' Tiger Capato, but he didn't leap up and shriek for Dummy's gore like I half expected he would when he heard the rest of it. He just come over and patted me on the back with a chuckle.
"Nothing doing, old man!" he says. "Which, of course, is what I know you told that thug. We've somehow managed to escape the stigma of crookedness so far, and we'll go through clean to the finish! I'm going to put Capato away with a punch, if I can, but if he whips me I'll be the first to congratulate him. I realize I've got a big job on my hands this time—this Capato is the fastest man I've faced to date, and he can het, in spite of what you say to the contrary. That clip I got on the jaw in the first round of our previous bout had me dazed for a couple of rounds afterward!"
"Aw, forget it!" I growls. "You was away off form that night—that's all. But I'd like to hand Dummy somethin' myself. Suppose I let him think we're goin' through with this proposition, and then the chances is that this false alarm of his will come in hog fat and out of condition—make me? He'll think the thing is framed and get careless and—"
The Kid shook his head.
"No—we can't do that either!" he says, shuttin' me off. "That's all wrong too. It would mean a step down to Carney's level—a first step that might lead us through the whole vile labyrinth before we could stop. No, this bout will be absolutely square, regardless of the outcome. You had better warn Carney to have his man fit, because, win or lose, Capato will know he has been in a fight, I promise you!"
"But look here, Kid," I says impatiently, "that honest-as-the-day-is-long stuff is O. K. in copy books and the like, but this here's a game where a guy has got to use his head as well as his hands! There's angles to it that you'll prob'ly never get, and, with what we got at stake, we'd be a coupla fine bimbos if we didn't grab every advantage. Another thing, don't you suppose that Dummy Carney is figurin' on crossin' us? D'ye think I fell for that draw thing? That crook's got a coupla aces he ain't played yet, and we got a right to protect ourselves, ain't we?"
The Kid grins and holds up his hands.
"Here's plenty of protection!" he says. "Now let's go to a show and forget about Dummy and his fellow banditti. We'll enter no agreements with him or anyone else. My self-respect is about all I've managed to hold on to, and I wouldn't sacrifice that for the championship itself!"
Can you beat them college guys? Now you can get a idea of how valuable a manager is to one of them babes in arms, hey?
I went to look for Dummy to break the bad news to him, and found he had waited himself away to New Orleans to get things under way for the brawl: but whilst threadin' through Times Square I bump into no less than Jack Easton, the champion's manager. Jacques had unquestionably excavated a joint where they thought the Eighteenth Amendment was a vaudeville act, and he was lit up like Broadway at eight in the p. m. From the welcome he gimme I could of been his father. After we have exchanged the usual lies about how we are makin' out, Jack won't have it no other way but that I step around to his oasis and knock over a powder with him, and I—well, you know how weak the average man is! Besides, I figured here was a good chance to get some inside dope on the champ's condition and the etc. So we duck around the corner to this den of iniquity, and after we have sneaked a couple past our pleasantly surprised tonsils, Jack gets exceedin'ly talkative.
"C'mon!" he says, weavin' back and forth in front of me. "Lesh lap up large quantities of hooch! I'm looser'en a pail of ashes to-day—gonna sign a seventy-five-thousan'—'scuse me—movie contract for the Big Feller in the mornin'."
"Well, Jack, go to it," I says. "You better take them movie guys whilst the takin' is good, because next year I'll be handlin' a champion!"
"Humph!" he mutters. "You're gonna han'le—gonna han'le shamp, heh? Stop kiddin' yourself, stop kiddin'—'scuse me, mush have caught the hecups from that—that bartender there. What was I tryin' to say? Oh, Kid Robersh. Well, say, they's as mush chance Kid Robersh bein' shampeen as they ish of me becomin' total 'stainer! Howsh Kid Robersh gonna be shamp if he don't never under no circumstances get a chance at the title? Ansher me that, heh?"
I commenced to smell large quantities of rats in this drunken talk, especially after Dummy Carney's proposition, so I quietly lead Monsieur Jack Easton into the back room and sit down at a table with him. When I left him sprawled out there, gettin' the bartender nervous with his snores some time later, I was on the verge of hydrophobia, and I think if Dummy Carney had come along then I would of took a chance and croaked him for luck!
It set me back seven rounds of drinks, or, in the other words, $14, to find out that Dummy had framed me and the Kid like Delia framed Samson. There wasn't gonna be no "draw" decision at New Orleans. There wasn't gonna be no second fight, and the champ wasn't gonna ever meet Kid Roberts if he could help it! The half-plastered Easton let all that fall from his silly-lookin' face some time between the fifth and sixth shot of grain alcohol, when he couldn't even recall who I was. The big tramp which held the title didn't want no part of Kid Roberts—what he wanted to do was to meet Tiger Capato, which same he figured would be a spread for him. Therefore, Capato was to put the Kid away in the battle of New Orleans and kill off our claims to a championship mill. The knockout was to come in Round Four, by the way.
In order to guarantee my boy goin' out, Carney and the yeggs which run this particular club had decided to pull one of the rawest stunts known to a game which packs more tricks than Houdini ever seen. This one has been staged dozens of times out in the bushes, but very rarely on the Big Time. It's usually pulled to allow a beaten man a few extry minutes to recover, but I never heard of it bein' used for the purpose Dummy Carney had figured it for against Kid Roberts.
Exactly at the end of the first minute's boxin' in Round Four every light in the clubhouse would suddenly grow dim and then go out for ten seconds! Kid Roberts, knowin' nothin' about this, would be as much startled as the crowd—certainly he'd falter in his stride, drop his hands and prob'ly step back to wait for light. But Tiger Capato, havin' nothin' else but this "accident" in his mind for weeks, would be prepared. The first slight dimmin' of the glare about the ring was to be the tip-off to him, and he'd start one from the floor just as it went black. It was a hundred to one he'd connect, and when the lights immediately flashed up again, Kid Roberts would be as cold as a pawnbroker's eye, and that guy which pulled the switch in the basement would be several blocks away from there and still travelin'. Then the announcer was to jump into the ring, calm the crowd by explainin' that it was simply a case of a fuse blowin' out, and order the quarrel started again at once! Now, even if the Kid was in any condition to get to the middle of the ring, he'd be a dazed mark for Capato then. The guys close to the ropes would of seen Capato start a wallop, and their opinion would be divided over the thing in the excitement. Many would claim that, as neither boy could of known that a fuse was gonna blow out, the break was as fair for one as the other, and Capato had simply been lucky, or clever, enough to beat the Kid to the punch. The rest of the mob wouldn't know what it was all about, but they'd see the Kid on the floor, and that would be ample. Remember, it was Tiger Capato's home town!
As to this "lights out" stuff, any sportin' editor can supply names and dates of duplicates of the above sportsmanlike trick from his files to such gentle readers which is now grinnin' and callin' it impossible.
Well, as the time drawed near for the fight, I got crazier every day. I was afraid to tell Carney I'm wise to his plant for fear he'd call the bout off altogether and give the champ the excuse he was lookin' for to duck a battle with us. To make it worse, when I told the Kid what I'd found out, he laughed his head off and refused to believe it!
"Your mind has been preying on Dummy Carney for so long you'd believe anything!" he chortles. "Why, the thing's too preposterous to give a passing thought. Besides, you say yourself that your source of information was a drunken man, and you know an intoxicated person usually has a wonderful imagination. Not even a Carney would dare attempt anything as glaringly trooked as that—personally, I think the champion's manager has been joshin' you!"
Sweet Papa!
Any doubts I might of had about it myself was all wiped away in New Orleans a few hours before the clash, when word comes to our room that a lady has got to see Kid Roberts on a matter of life and death. I could of choked the bell hop silly which brung up that sensational news because the damosels had been poison to the Kid up to date, and here on the brinks of the biggest fight in his career a Jane has got to butt in!
"Nothin' stirrin'!" I shouted to the boy. "Git outa here and close that door!" Me and a coupla handlers had the Kid flat on the bed, givin' him a final body massage.
"Here—just a minute!" pipes Roberts, sittin' up with a jerk. "Let's see what this is. I do not know why any lady should want to see me now, but if it's as important as that—" He reaches for a bath robe. "Have the lady come up!" he tells the wide-eyed boy.
There is a timid knock at the door in a few minutes, and in comes said lady. She's a thin, little, kinda woreout dame, but very soothin' to the eyes at that. Her first bomb is that she will see Kid Roberts alone or not at all, and she seems terrible worked up. Without a word to us the Kid bows, opens the door to the sittin' room of this suite, ushers her in, and follows, closin' the door before I could make a move.
The conference lasts about ten minutes, durin' which time I died about seven times and cussed myself to death seven more for lettin' the Kid get out of my sight! The mysterious female goes right to the hall door, shakes the Kid's hand, makes him a present of a soulful glance, and blows.
"Well, what the—" I begins.
"That," says the Kid very solemnly, "that—was Tiger Capato's wife! A very sweet, wholesome little woman and the mother of four children. She—eh—ah—she is afraid—well, she—this may sound absurd to you, but it didn't to me, not with the pathetic eagerness she told it! She had a dream last night in which she saw Capato—her husband—knocked out. As I say, you will smile, but, nevertheless, that woman is convinced that Capato is going to lose. I—ah—wish I were as certain!" he adds, with a short laugh. "However, she has asked me to do her a favor, which, under the circumstances, I could not well refuse. I—"
"For God's sake, what have you promised her, Kid?" I bawls, grabbin' him.
"Don't get excited!" he says, movin' away irritably. "As she explains it, Capato is married and has children. Prize fighting is his profession—it's the only thing he has ever done or can do well enough to make a living. He's a big favorite in this town, and a quick defeat would hurt his value to the clubs here to a great extent. Capato's wife simply wants me to allow him to make some kind of a showing for a few rounds—I tell you, she is as certain that he will ultimately lose as I am of my name! She sat there and repeated it over and over in a dull, toneless voice, with the fatalistic calm that is peculiar to the superstitious. You do not understand her type—I do. So, therefore, I will—"
"You'll knock Capato dead with the first punch if you can, or you'll leave the ring on a shutter!" I howls, dancin' around him. "You big fathead, don't you see now that Jack Easton's dope was right? They got that lights-out stunt framed for the fourth round, and she simply wants to make sure that Capato will be in the ring up to then! Them guys is leavin' nothin' to chance. They—"
"Oh, stop it!" barks the Kid. "Hang it, man, you get on my nerves with your morbid belief that everyone is crooked! You've got me all upset now with your infernal nagging. Let me alone before I go to pieces and make a spectacle of myself in front of that crowd. If I didn't feel capable of taking care of myself, I wouldn't enter the ring. I'll let Capato stay three or four rounds for his wife's sake, and then go after him. I told that poor, worried little woman I'd do it, and I will. Now shut up!"
Up to the minute we crawled through the ropes he wouldn't budge a scant inch from that.
As a last desperate resort I grabbed hold of a sport writer and spilled the whole story in his doubtin' ears, so that when the fourth round did arrive I'd at the least be able to stop the fight and expose Dummy from the ring. You see, I had it doped out that the guy they'd planted at the switch in the basement would have a certain hour and minute to snap off the lights, and if I could jump into the ring and time my speech properly the house would go dark right at the end of it, provin' that I was tellin' the truth. The sport writer warmed up as I went on with the thing, and ended by tellin' me not to breathe a word of it to anybody else. He says if it was true it would be a whale of a yarn for his paper, and if it wasn't he'd personally see that I got run out of the fight game.
"By the way," I says, "is Capato married?"
"No!" says the sport writer, scribblin' away. "Why?"
"Nothin'!" I groans and staggered over to the Kid.
There was all smiles in Tiger Capato's corner when I fin'ly went across to examine his bandages, and Carney greets me with a chuckle. I suddenly leaned down and stuck my face right up to his ear.
"You pull them lights and eighty-seven coppers will be in this corner, you rat!" I snarls.
For just a fraction of a second Dummy drawed back and whitened, and then he showed he had missed his trade by not becomin' a actor.
"What's the idea—are you scared crazy?" he says. "What's this stuff about lights?"
I says nothin', but turned my undivided attention to Kid Roberts. The boy was a bundle of raw nerves—bouncin' up and down on his stool, slappin' his hands together with a quick, jerky movement, and bitin' his mps as he stared out at the yellin' crowd. Then the announcer called over to us to come to the center for a flashlight pose, but you couldn't hear a word over the din. Say—they was hangin' from the rafters, sittin' on each other, millin' all over the newspaper guys at the ringside, and pourin' in the doors which the coppers was fightin' to close. Out in the street some more thousands swarmed around waitin' to hear even some noise from inside and try to judge how the battle was goin' by that. The announcer called to the Kid again, got no action, and motioned to the time-keeper to get busy. That baby slams the gong for silence and—the Kid hears this bell, leaps off the stool, and was half-way across the ring, both hands workin', before we could grab him!
The roar of the mob hung fire for a minute, and then, as they took in the situation, a yell of laughs comes boomin' across the ring till it seemed to rattle the buildin'. Like the Kid, the crowd was on edge, nervous—almost hysterical—and the Kid's mistakin' that bell for the beginnin' of the fight busted the tension. But the effect of that tornado of hee-haws on Kid Roberts was as sudden as it was remarkable. He turned and faced the mob, pale as two dollars worth of skimmed milk, and from the look he give 'em I thought for a second he was gonna jump over the ropes and go to the mat with the entire attendance! His lips curled away from his flashin' white teeth in a snarl like a bad-tempered wolf's, and the steady glare in his eye caused friend announcer, which he wasn't even lookin' at, to step hurriedly aside. In a instant I seen one chance in a million to crab Dummy's frame-up and crab it to the royal families taste. The way he was geared up then, Kid Roberts could of licked the League of Nations, and my job was to keep him that way for two more minutes! Keep him tight strung to that cold, blood-cravin', murderin' rage before he could let down, think of Capato's "wife," or—
I grabbed his arm, let out one of them high-pitched, nerve-gratin' guffaws, holdin' my side with my free hand. "Why, you big boob!" I shrieks. "D'ye hear them babies givin' you the laugh? The thing's gonna be a farce! Ha, ha, ha, ha! My Gawd, I've handled some boneheads, but you win the garage! Sweet Mamma—you won't have to knock Capato dead; he'll die laughin'!"
"You too, eh?" he bites off through his set lips, and sends me head over heels through the ropes with a push. I must have took a funny fall, because off goes the mob into a fresh spasm, and Capato acted as laugh leader. They was still holdin' their ribs when the bell clanged for real; the newspaper guys, havin' made ample notes of all this stuff, settled back to watch a long, tough fight—when, before the clang has died out, Kid Roberts is plungin' into Tiger Capato's corner. The Tiger ain't had time to take the grin off his face, but the Kid took it off with a left jab that spun Capato around like a top and left a jagged, scarlet streak. There was no laughin' now—just a continuous roar, like a billion tons of coal goin' down a tin chute into a empty cellar. Shiftin' his headlong attack without a wasted motion, the Kid pinned the dumfounded Capato against the ropes in his own corner and begins shootin' lefts and rights to the body with the steady rap, rap, rap, rap of a steam riveter. This guy they called the Tiger never got a chance to set before he was half-ways out on his feet. A newspaper guy next to me, callin' the punches to his telegraph operator, give it up in disgust and switches to: "In the first two minutes Kid Roberts belted Capato with everything but the club's franchise."
The frantic shrieks from his handlers stirred Capato into tryin' desperately to duck, dodge, cover up, or dive into a clinch, to escape the hurricane of leather that bounced him off the ropes and back again, but he might as well of tried to stop a grizzly's charge with a pez shooter. A terrific left to the stomach doubled him up like a match stick in its last glow, and, as his rollin' head fell forward, a right swing connected with acrunchin' plop! Dead to the world, Tiger Capato slid along the lower rope, sagged there for a second, and then slid like a sack of flour under it and down almost in Dummy Carney's shakin' arms. The Kid stepped back and threw up his head.
"Laugh at that, you fools!" he roared, and walked to his corner in the nearest thing to silence I ever met in a fight club. Then the mob got its second wind, and they must of heard 'em in Los Angeles and figured another quake had arrived.
It took about five minutes for the crowd to get sane enough to even start for the doors, and it took about fifty cops to keep 'em out of the ring. The Kid's color had come back, and he's interested only in gettin' my word that I didn't get hurt when he dumped me through the ropes, and that I ain't off of him. He must of apologized ninety times at the least!
"By Gad, I need a keeper!" he says, still grippin' my hand. "I—I must have lost my head completely when that crowd gave me the laugh!" He give a shiver. "Ten thousand of them laughing at me—imagine, sitting there and jeering as if I were some sort of clown!" He blazed up again for a instant and then looks kinda shamefaced. "Darn it all," he says, shakin' his head, "I've broken my promise to Capato's wife—I said I'd let him stay, but that laugh drove everything out of my head but—"
"Shut up!" I howls, crazy with joy. "You done a beaucoup job."
A little guy shoves his way over to us. It's the sportin' editor I had told about Dummy's attempt to frame us. He looks sore.
"Say!" he growls, "what kind of a thing were you tryin' to put over on me with that double-crossin' pipe dream of yours? Of all the weird yarns I ever heard, that leads the league! You New York guys must think everybody that don't live within subway distance of Times Square is a hick, hey? So they was gonna job that man-eater of yours in the fourth round—just like a movie, eh? Villain in the cellar at the switchboard and everything else. Shame on you!" he says, waggin' his finger at me and pullin' out his watch. "I must have had a wisp of hay in my mouth when you come along. Let's see now, the slaughter started at 10 p. m. on the dot, end it's now pretty near twenty after—ten-nineteea, to be correct—so that your conspirator in the basement, not knowin' that the party's all over, wid be throwin' off that switch in about a minute—which would have been shortly after the start of the fatal fourth round. Then the fiendish Tiger Capat—"
He never finished the rest of that because, without no warning, every light in the place went out!