Being a champion at anything is a wonderful sensation, but it goes to your head like bootleg. Success has knocked as many fellows cold as failure ever did, what I mean, because you get careless when you get to the top, and you take chances you would never of thought of when you was just one of the mob. You get to thinking you're unvincible, and a guy which figures himself bombproof in any game gives old man Destiny the hystericals! Leading the pack in a race where they's only room for one in front is a exceedingly ticklish position. They's always somebody else coming up with a rush just the way you did, and the fatal mistake of holding that baby too cheaply usually accounts for the fall of the mighty, in the prize ring or in anything else!
After my win over Jimmy Hanley, I passed through the dangerous stage which all winners has got to pass through sooner or later. Some comes out of it champs and some comes out of it tramps. I come out still a champion, but Judy was responsible for that. Gee, what a sap I made out of myself for a while! They's no telling what cuckoo stunts I might of did or where I'd of wound up if Judy hadn't snapped me out of it in time. But still, as she said, the experience I had was necessary to bring me back to earth. The important money I had been taking in, the kick of seeing my name all over the sporting pages, getting offers from movie companies, having people turn to look after me on the street and acting proud to shake my hand—all that coming almost overnight, you might say, was a bit too much for me! I got no chancce to get used to it.
But just as losing every nickel I had on the first horse race I ever bet on in my life cured me of gambling, so did my first bout with Battling Whisky turn me forever from the cup that queers. I at least had brains enough to realize in time that in both drinking and gambling I was putting in far more than I could ever hope to take out—risking my self-respect, Judy, and my future against this thing they call luck and a drink of whisky!
This particular adventure of mine liked to cost me my brand new title. Judy says it was worth it and I got off cheap. I don't know—here's the dope, what do you think?
As I mentioned before, Gunner Slade, light-heavyweight champ of the civilized world, had promised me a fight if I beat Jimmy Hanley. But it was different after the Gunner sees by the cables that I flatten James with a few punches. That one-frame win makes Mr. Slade very thoughtful indeed and he demands a hundred thousand fish—win, lose, or draw—for risking his championship in a scuffle with me. He might as well of asked for the Eyetalian throne! The fight promoters on both sides of the bounding main just giggle at him, and he goes on about his business, beating up them foreign set-ups and perfectly satisfied with everything.
But I ain't satisfied! I want to win the world's championship, box a couple of times for plenty pennies and then step down from the ring—or up—to the business world. That means Judy and Judy means—everything.
So I reversed the usual custom for a champion by hurling challenges at the leading contenders in my division. The sport writers, which had always been nice to me, seems to get quite a kick out of this, and I was on the sporting pages every day as regular as the date line. I got lots of publicity, pleasing to the eye, but not so good as a food!
Well, the time goes on and I don't see no jack in sight. I'm doing about as much business as if I was selling sleighs in Los Angeles, and I'm plenty disgusted. I'm sitting in our office one day talking things over with Judy, when a thought smacks me right in the face. I could of kick myself for not thinking of it before! The purses which the New York promoters was offering me for fights thrills me about as much as it thrills a aviator to go up in a elevator, but this scheme I have suddenly hit on looks like a wow!
In the land of Columbus, Ohio, there was a light heavyweight which from the newspaper reports must be using buzz saws for sparring partners and concrete silos for punching bags. His name in round numbers was Kid Christopher, and he's so tough he rips his clothes to shreds just putting 'em on. Out in far-off Columbus they thought Kid Christopher was the parrot's beak and a better man than I'll ever be. Yet I'm champion in his class and he's failed to challenge me for a quarrel. All right, I'll challenge him!
"Judy," I says, "write a letter to Kid Christopher's manager asking him how much wages he wants for his visible means of support to fight me for the light-heavyweight title."
She raises her beautiful eyebrows in surprise. "But the highest bid from the New York promoters was forty thousand dollars—thirty for you and ten for Christopher," says Judy. "And Christopher has refused that amount. I have the correspondence all here, and"
She starts for the files, but I stop her. "Never mind the letters, Judy," I says. "And never mind the New York promoters. I'm going to promote this fight myself!"
Judy looks at me with these eyes which has been goaling the boys since she's been seven years old.
"What do you mean, Gale?" she asks, plenty interested.
"I'll tell you, Judy," I says. "I been thinking matters over, and I have reached the conclusion that I can use a million the same as a fight promoter can! I got just as much brains and twice the ambition as any of them birds, get me? Why should I go in there and get my head beat off for ten or twenty thousand bucks so's some wise guy promoter can draw down a hundred thousand for himself? Why shouldn't the fighter get the big money for doing his stuff? Who draws the crowd? Who does the fighting? The scrapper! Who gets the money? The promoter! Well, I don't need no promoters. I'll stage my next battle myself and find out for good and all whether they is anything else I can do besides fight, or am I doomed to be a leather pusher for the rest of my natural life!"
By this time Judy is all excited and the skin I'd love to touch is flushed a rosy red.
"Of course, Gale, I'm delighted to know you want to try anything apart from prize fighting," she says. "And maybe if you are successful in promoting this fight, that will be an incentive to you to try promoting bigger things. Just how will you go about it?"
"Well," I says, "first I'll get together with Nate and figure out how much actual cash we'll have to put up for the rent of a arena, Kid Christopher's guarantee, the dough for the preliminary boys, and all that stuff. Then when I get the figures, why, I'll just go out and raise the jack. That's all they is to that!"
Judy smiles. "As easy as that?" she says, kind of doubtful. "I'm not trying to discourage you, Gale, but it seems to me all that will take a lot of money. Where will you get it?"
"Faint heart never won a bank roll!" I grins back at her. "I'll form a pool right here in Drew City among my friends, each one to put in so much, and, after the fight, take down profits according to their investment. They's Mister Brock, Spence, Lem Garfield, Ajariah Stubbs, Knockout Kelly, Nate, Kale Yackley, and plenty more which has got lavish umbrella money hid out for a rainy day. Of course, it's going to take a lot of arguing and before I raise the first ten grand I'll probably be hoarse—but I'll get it and don't think I won't. I got my heart set on this, Judy, and what I set my heart on I generally get!"
I look right at her when I say that, and I ain't thinking of the money I got to raise either. And I guess neither was Judy, because that schoolgirl! complexion suddenly turns crimson and she monkeys with the notes on her typewriter desk for a minute.
"Well, Gale, it's certainly an ambitious effort, but I know you'll be equal to it!" she says finally, and shakes my hand. But she pulls hers away when I act like I never want to let go. "I wish you luck," she adds, "and if you don't let me help in some way, I'll—I'll be real angry!"
I stand as close to her as she'll let me and I'm tingling all over—fighting the idea of putting my arms around her, like I always had to fight that idea when I'm near her!
"Judy," I says, "you keep on being nice to me and you'll be helping a lot! That's all you got to do—just act as if—as if you liked me, even a little. Whenever I think you do—say, I feel they's nothing can stop me! I"
"Of course I like you, Gale," says Judy, calmly shutting me off, as usual. "Now go and start putting your plans into action while you're enthusiastic about them. That's always the best time!"
And she turns back to her typewriter. A polite "Here's your hat, what's your hurry?" Well, as the French says: "alpha beta gamma delta!"
The first snag I hit in my campaign to raise this sugar is no less than Mr. Nathan Shapiro. Before I get half-ways through telling Nate about my scheme to personally promote my clash with Christopher of Columbus, why, Nate throws up his hands and hollers that I'm cuckoo. He's all steamed up. They's a million reasons why I shouldn't think of such a thing, he says, yet when I pin him down he can only name one reason. That's that I ain't got no experience as a fight promoter.
"Nate," I says, "Noah never had no experience with boats, but he sailed a mean ark! Adam never had no experience at nothing and"
"And he got throwed out of the Garden of Eden on his ear!" butts in Nate. "You go boundin' around tryin' to raise any jack in this slab and 'at's what'll happen to us! These yokels is closer than a tie game. They wouldn't give a dime to see Niagara Falls run backward—can you picture 'em givin' you pennies to put into a box fight in New York? Be yourself!"
"I'll bet you five hundred bucks I raise the dough in a week," I says; "money talks!"
"Money may talk in some places," sneers Nate, "but you'll find it deaf and dumb here! I won't make no bet with you, though. You're too lucky for me, kid. Say—if you fell off a dock, you'd come up with a tube of radium in each hand!"
The next time I see Nate, why I ain't got no tube of radium in each hand, but I got enough money in eath hand to buy 'em!
My second interview is with Spence Brock. Spence thinks my scheme is the gnat's elbow and nothing will do but he's got to run me up to his father with it. Mr. Brock listens to my sales talk, asks a few questions about one thing and the other, chews on his always unlit cigar for a minute, cocks a eye at me—and then starts the ball rolling with a check for twenty-five thousand dollars! Spence comes across with a thousand. When I got outside their house I capered around till should anybody of saw me they would of took it for granted I'm crazy—and I am crazy with joy!
Then I begin a house-to-house canvass among the people I know in Drew City. I put everything I got into my selling argument, changing it for almost every person I hit for a contribution, or rather for a investment, as I hope to pay interest which will make the First National Bank's 4 per cent look silly!
I play up to each one's weakness as I know it, show 'em figures on the gate receipts of some carefully selected championship fights, promise I won't take my share of the purse till everybody has got their dough back with a handsome profit, and wind up by showing 'em Mr. Brock's name at the head of the list for that twenty-five grand. They couldn't laugh that off and it generally sold 'em!
A twenty-minute talk lands Kale Yackley for a five-hundred-buck subscription. My next stop is Ajariah Stubbs. Time put in, one hour ten minutes; result, $2,500. I take Lem Garfield for five hundred; Red Fish has a thousand bucks' worth of faith in me; another grand comes easy from a pool at Nickmeyer's Garage, and that's the way it goes all along the line. Even Judy and her mother insist on having a interest in the thing, and though I don't want them to gamble their money on me, why, they force me to take two hundred.
In three days I have collected a total of forty thousand iron men right in Drew City from people which was willing to back up their belief in me with the greatest proof of friendship they is in the world—money! Believe me, I felt my responsibility and I was proud of it. I couldn't of been such a flop or they'd never take a chance like that on nothing but my word, would they?
Well, when Nate comes back to our office from Buffalo with Knockout Kelly, where Kayo stopped Indian Brown in three rounds, and I tell him what I've done, why, he's speechless. But Nate's never speechless for long! After remarking that if he had my nerve he'd open a sailboat factory on the Sara Desert, he says he'll just toss in ten thousand of his own and Kayo will sweeten the pot with five more.
"Well—I—eh—I was goin' to get a car," begins Kayo.
"Blah!" says Nate. "What do you know about autos? I bet you think a chassey is lingerie! Put him down for five grand," he adds to me. "I'll send a wire to Kid Christopher's pilot offerin' him fifteen thousand for his end and 'at's all he'll get if he cries his eyes out! Let's sit down now and dope out how much jack we'll need to stage this frolic."
So that's what we done. Allowing fifteen thousand for Kid Christopher's guarantee, three or four thousand more for the preliminary bouts, and around fifty thousand for rent of a arena, timekeepers, ticket sellers, ushers, referees, advertising, etc and etc., we get a grand total of about $70,000 for expenses, without counting my share of the purse.
As champion, I'm entitled to at least a third of the gross receipts, and I figure with proper publicity the fight will draw almost a $200,000 gate. With expenses and my share totalling, say $130,000, that leaves seventy thousand profit to go to the people which put up the forty thousand in Drew City, or almost two to one for their money. That's, of course, if everything goes O. K.
Nate glances over the list of investors and he suddenly looks up.
"Does Rags Dempster ever crack anything about 'at ten grand he gypped you out of?" he asks.
"I never see him no more, Nate," I says, "and I'm just as tickled."
"Yeah?" snarls Nate. "Well, I'll make him or his old man come through with 'at jack if it's the last thing I do!"
He gets up and grabs his hat. "Wait here," he says, with a odd smile. "You think you're good as a collector—well, I'm going over and bear down heavy on old man Dempster, and I bet I can make him see his way clear to investin' ten thousand in our fight!"
Nate's gone before I realize that he's going to try and make Rags Dempster's father pay back the ten thousand his sissy son got away from me.
A hour comes and goes and no sign of Nate. Then Judy trips into the office, looking kind of puzzled. She says she didn't know that Nate and Rags was so friendly. I ask her what does she mean and she says she has just saw them going into the office of the Dempster Carpet Factory, arm in arm. It's my turn to look puzzled, and that's what I'm doing when Nate busts in, out of breath and grinning like a hyena.
"I'm what you call a collectin' fool!" He pants, throwing a pink slip of paper down in front of me." There's your ten grand—laugh that off!"
I snatched up the paper and sure enough it's a check for ten thousand, signed by old man Dempster.
"Do you mean to tell me that Mr. Dempster took your word that his son owed me that money?" I says, in amazement.
"No," says Nate. "He took his son's word for it!"
"What on earth made Rags act decently, for once in his life?" butts in Judy.
"This!" says Nate, reaching back on his hip and throwing a ugly-looking automatic on the desk. Judy gasps and edges away. "I meet this Rags on the street," goes on Nate, "and I tell him if he don't come over to his old man with me and promote 'at ten grand I'll cook him! Rags laughs. Then I move close to him and let him feel the gat in my pocket. When he starts to squawk I says make it snappy, or I'll put a hole in him you could drive a truck through. 'At makes Rags see things in a different light, and we wind up in his old man's office. I speak my piece, and, with the gun at his back through my coat, Rags says I'm tellin' the truth. The old boy's burnt up, but he give me the jack when I says my next stop is the newspaper office!"
Nate leans back looking highly satisfied with himself and he's entitled to. He done a good job! But Judy seems worried and thinking about something else.
"You will be careful, won't you, Gale?" she says to me, suddenly. "Rags will be sure to attempt some—some underhanded reprisal for being made to confess to his father."
"I wisht he would," says Nate, pocketing his gun. "All I want is a excuse which will look good to a jury and I'll rub out 'at clown like you rub out a blot!"
Before I can say anything, a messenger boys comes in with a wire from Kid Christopher's manager accepting our terms for a fifteen-round championship brawl, and that drives Rags out of our heads for the time being. But Rags come back and he come back heavy!
A couple days later Spence Brock tells me he was over to New York and who does he run into but Rags, which it lit up like a electric sign. Spence tries to duck, as he likes this baby and pneumonia the same way, but Rags nails him. During the course of the conversation, which Spence says was all one-sided, it comes out that Rags has been gave the air by his father and is working in New York. He's all swelled up like a jump over his job, which is manager in "Louvers," one of the wildest cabarets on Broadway.
Rags and his dizzy pals used to hang out in this trap, and Spence figures that he got the job on the strength of his acquaintance with the high-stepping bunch from the college. What Rags really is at Louvers, says Spence, is a decoy. Spence also warns me to look out for Rags, as this sapolio blames me for his father making Drew City out of bounds for him. I thank Spence for the tip-off, but I can't see how Rags can do me any harm. Anyways, as he's finished second every time, we've hooked up, why, my idea is that he's got enough.
But Rags is a glutton for punishment! The very next day Constabule Watson drops in the office and asks me and Nate to step over to Judge Tuckerman's court, as the judge wants to see us about our stockselling scheme. Somebody has told the judge, says the constabule confidentially, that we are obtaining money under false pretenses. We both know that the "somebody" is Rags, without being told, so me and Nate just looks at each other and follows the constabule over. On the ways we stop and pick up Lem Garfield, now our official lawyer. Lem gets our case moved up and I tell the judge how I'm trying to stage this fight with Kid Christopher myself, how everybody which puts up a dime is protected by a claim on the gate receipts and all their profits has got to come out before I touch a penny. Then I pass up the subscription list to him and the first thing which meets his eye is "John T. Brock, $25,000." He never looked no farther!
"Ah-ptu!" he says, hitting the cuspidor with marvelous aim and speaking to Lem. "Counselor, your clients is discharged. This here seems perfectly legal, open, and above board to me and such is my rulin'. Anything John Brock has got anything to dew with is suthin' I'd like to git in! Jest put me down for a thousand dollars. Next case!"
So that was all settled.
But our troubles ain't over yet. The New York fight promoters gets red-headed over me turning down their offers and trying to promote my own show. The result is that when Nate goes over to look around for a battle ground they is nothing stirring. The Boxing Commission also gives him a pushing around when he applies for a license and for a while it looks like we are up against a stone wall. Then Mr. Brock come to the rescue again. He's got more influence in New York than the Prince of Wales got in Buckingham's Palace and a few words from him in the right places done the trick. We got a license from the commission and the lease of a ball park for the night of the scrap, just twenty-four hours after I went up to his house with Spence and told him what was what!
Well, with all this stuff out of the way, I went into training for Kid Christopher—Knockout Kelly, Two-Punch Jackson, and Tommy O'Ryan helping condition me, as usual. At nights me and Judy studies over publicity plans with the idea of making a record attendance certain. I want to cook up something new—something which has never been done before in connection with a box fight and which will be a added reason for making everybody want to see me and Kid Christopher do our stuff.
Finally I hit on a idea which Judy thinks is the duck's quack. It's just this—I'm going to have a drawing of ticket numbers ia the ring immediately before the main bout. The holder of the lucky ticket will be gave one thousand bucks cash! There's a nifty which will only cost us another grand and which I figure will win us twenty times that much in extra tickets sold. Just think, for a five-buck bleacher seat, or a twenty-five-buck ringside seat, you got a chance to see the fight and go home a thousand fish to the good! The kid's clever, hey?
We got plenty publicity on this, and don't think we didn't. The results is that tickets begin to sell like rain would sell in Hades, and a couple of weeks before the meelee we are all sold out!
Nate and Judy is in New York one day checking up with the ticket stands and I am sitting in our office alone going over my figures, when a delegation calls on me headed by the last guy I ever expected to see again anywheres—Rags Dempster. Trying to get rid of this bird is like trying to get rid of measles! Besides Rags, they's three other guys—pale, hard-faced, and cold-eyed. I can't help thinking how perfect they'd all look wearing green eyeshades and with a deck of cards in their hands—or, maybe, automatics!
Rags looks around the office, evidently for Judy, and that heats me up to begin with. He greets me with a kind of sickly grin. Then he wants to know did Nate give me the ten thousand. I nod my head, watching the other guys carefully, and wondering what's what.
"Well, we're all squared up, then," says Rags. "Would you mind giving me a receipt—eh—say: 'Received of Maurice Dempster ten thousand dollars.' Sort of make it—eh—regular?"
"Your father's check will be plenty receipt when it comes back from the bank," I says. "I won't give you no receipt which says that you have gave me ten thousand dollars. I might be misunderstood!'
"Do you think I would show it to anyone?" says Rags, trying to act indignant.
"You might lose it," I says, with a sarcastic grin.
"Oh, come on, Galen, act like a human being," says Rags. "You have no kick coming. If we have had a few tilts, why, you've always come out on top, haven't you? Won the fair lady and all that sort of thing!"
"One more mention of the fair lady, Rags," I says, stepping close to him, "and I'll put you on the floor, get me?" I look right at his friends, but they don't crack a word. "They's no use of dragging this conference out, Rags," I go on. "You and me will never be lovers, and we both know it! What d'ye want and who's your friends?"
"They're your friends too," says Rags, "or, at least, they want to be. Shake hands with Kansas City Yerks, Doc Neil, and Rudy Bernstein. You've heard of them, of course."
Of course I hadn't. I shook hands warily, and Kansas City Yerks clears his throat.
"You got a big thing in this box fight of yours, kid," he says. "A big thing! You ought to click off a couple of hundred grand, easy. How would you like to do it again in a couple of months?"
"What's the big idea?" I says.
"Listen!" butts in the fellow called Doc Neil, pushing Kansas City aside. "You guys waste too much time. Here's the big idea—instead of slapping this Kid Christopher for a Turkish milk can, let him stay the limit. Then in a couple of months you and him do your stuff again and this time it can be level. You can cut his throat when you get him in there the second time, for all we care. Think of the gate you'll draw for this second battle, after this chump has held you even once! Now we been to Christopher and his manager and they're business men, get me? Everything's set there! Don't be afraid that Kid Christopher will try to sneak one over on you; he ain't got brains enough to double-cross nobody. Well, what d'ye say?"
I got plenty to say, but I held back a bit. I'm thinking which one I'll crash first! "Where do you guys come in?" I ask softly.
"There's a laugh!" sneers Bernstein to the others. Then he turns to me, still sneering. "Where d'ye think we come in?" he says. "We make book on the first fight and lay two to one you don't knock Christopher out. You fight a draw—that's where we come in!"
"And here's where you go out—you petty-larcency crooks!" I says.
Then the fun begin. Rags must of saw it coming, because he's the first one out of the room and I hear him clattering down the stairs as I throw Kansas City Yerks after him. Next come Bernstein and then Doc Neil, the only one I hit. He went for his gun and I knocked him cold while his hand was still en route to his hip pocket. So that was that.
Well, as the day of the fight draws near I put in no little time trying to get Judy to see me defend my title. She's never saw me work, and the mere thought of watching a prize fight makes her shudder. "Beastly, inhuman, and degrading," is the way she sizes up the manly art of assault and art and it seems nothing can change her.
"But they's plenty of girls goes to box fights, Judy," I says, "and they seem to get quite a kick out of it too!"
"Everyone to their taste," says Judy scornfully; "and don't say 'theys,' Gale; say 'there are.' Do you know your grammar is growing more atrocious every day? And you are getting a hard, sophisticated expression in your eyes too." She lays her hand on my arm. "Oh, Gale, it's terrible to have to just sit and watch you being coarsened by this constant contact with your rough associates of the ring. It's horrible! You were so nice and clean and—and delightfully naive when you first came to Drew City. Now"
"Now, I'm just a roughneck, I suppose?" I cut in, a bit sore.
"You will certainly be one if you remain in your present profession," she says coldly.
"Well," I says, as cold as her, "I don't guess you want to have nothing to do with a roughneck, so I'll take the air!" I blowed out of the office, fit to be tied.
That afternoon was a eventful one for my sparring partners, it was for a fact!
The next day Nate sees I'm brooding over something, and being too wise to ask questions he just says to knock off training for the day and we'll go to a show in New York, as he don't want me too fine for Kid Christopher. So we go to a musical comedy called "The Girl from Mars." It is more girls than Mars and none of 'em is dressed for a trip to the North Pole, that's a cinch. During the intermission along comes the press agent. He tells Nate that after the show he wants us to come back on the stage and have me pose for a picture with the chorus. He claims this will be a great publicity stunt both for me and the show. I took another look at this half-dressed chorus and I says that's out, but Nate says it's all fun and shuts me up, telling the press agent we'll be there with bells on.
It will be a long time before I forget this novel experience. In the first place, the twenty minutes I stand back there on that stage with about thirty girls crowded around me, none of 'em wearing no more than Eve is supposed to of wore and all of 'em kidding me, is the longest twenty minutes I ever put in in my life! My face is so red the reflection must of lit up the whole theatre, and when the fellow gets done taking the pictures I run right out the stage entrance into the street. In the second place, Judy sees the picture in a New York paper a few days later and gives me no chance to explain. She figures I need that kind of publicity the same way I need another ear, and from then on she only speaks to me when she has to. That's seldom.
According to my contract with Kid Christopher, we both got to finish our training in New York, so a week before the brawl I go over to Lefty Mullen's gym. Nate makes a deal with Lefty and for a charge of twenty-five cents the public at large is allowed the boon of coming to see me work out. Kid Christopher has his camp at Red Oliver's on Forty-seventh Street.
Well, among the daily visitors to my matinées is a girl from this musical comedy called Roma Romaine. When I had that simple picture took, she was next to me on one side, and I remember she put her arm around my neck and that was just one of the many things which gets me embarrassed. Anyways, although Roma is a blonde which would win first, second, and third prize in a beauty contest anywheres, why, I'm blonde-proof and this stuff of her hanging around the camp is applesauce to me. In my opinion, the female race is divided into two classes—Judy Willcox and girls! So I don't give Roma a tumble when she comes around to see me train.
Then she commences to phone me at the hotel we're stopping at, can you imagine that? This gets me very much annoyed and it gets Nate suspicious. Nate thinks Roma has been hired by them gamblers which wanted me to fake my fight with Kid Christopher and the whole thing is a plot to get me in some kind of a jam so's I won't be right for the bout. But I laugh at Nate and tell him that stuff only happens in books. If I had only knew what was really going to happen, I would of finished my training in Egypt!
This goofy press agent for "The Girl from Mars" comes around again to see me and Nate one day, and he's all excited. He claims he has cooked up another publicity stunt which will get me and his show columns in the newspapers free of charge. He wants me to stand for a story that me and this Roma is engaged! We don't have to get engaged, though we can for all he cares, but just faking it will get the results, he says. Roma is willing, how about me? I let forth a whinny of rage and I tell him that if he ever puts anything like that in the paper about me, why, he had better be in Africa when the paper comes out!
The day before I fight Kid Christopher I nearly faint when I pick up the New York "Whirl" and see a picture of me and Roma Romaine on the front page. She is wearing a bewitching smile and some beads, and she's got her arm around my neck. I am practically dumfounded, as I never had no pictures took with her alone. Looking closer, I see that this photo has been cut out of the big picture with me surrounded by the chorus of "The Girl from Mars." But that ain't all. Underneath it says:
Not Engaged to Roma Romaine of
"Girl from Mars," But—!
Says Six-Second Smith
Well, the day of the big battle I get the final blow which goals me. It's a short letter from Judy congratulating me on my "conquests in New York!" and giving two weeks' notice that she's leaving her job as our stenographer. They's eighty-five dollars' worth of ice on each word, and it's signed "Judith Willcox," instead of the usual "Judy." I'm what you call panic-stricken, no fooling, because if I lost Judy it would of set me back ten years in my battle to be a success and made the next ten twice as hard!
I grab up the phone and manage to get her at our office in Drew City by dumb luck. The minute her thrilling voice comes over the wire, I beg her to wait till I have knocked Kid Christopher dead and I will fully explain all that stuff in the papers about me and Roma Romaine. Her answer is to hang up the receiver!
That is one fearful day for me, I'll tell the world! Nate is busy looking after the arrangements at the arena, Spence is in Drew City, and Knockout Kelly is down at Brighton Beach with Mary Ballinger. So I got nobody to tell my troubles to and nowheres to look for sympathy except in the dictionary. I got till ten o'clock that night to step into the ring with Kid Christopher, and I duck the training camp early in the afternoon, wandering around New York like a lost Airedale.
Along around six o'clock I am standing in the usual jam at Forty-second Street and Broadway when somebody taps me on the arm. I turn around, tickled silly to meet anybody I know, and I gaze into the sparkling eyes of Roma Romaine.
"Snap out of it—you look as if you had just lost your best friend!" she smiles, shaking my arm.
"You're a wonderful guesser," I says gloomily, thinking of Judy. "That's just what I have done!"
Lots of guys passing turns for another flash at her. She was easy to look at and no mistake. But, Judy!
"I was just going to get something to eat," I continued, for want of something to say, "Would you wish to come with me?"
"What could be sweeter?" says Roma, hooking her arm in mine. "Let's go!"
After I asked her I'm sorry I did, in a way, but my main idea in taking her to supper is to talk to her. She's a girl—maybe she can wise me up on what to do to square things with Judy. I ask Roma where does she want to eat, and she picks out Louvers and I'm in this trap and sitting at a table with her before I remember it's where Rags Dempster is working. I know if he sees me there with a girl, he won't be able to tell Judy fast enough. In those days I was very fluent at getting out of the frying pan into the fire!
Well, that was the first time I had ever been in a cabaret in my life and unless I am drugged and dragged in it will be my last! The place is crowded to the doors and they's a good hundred dancing. The jazz music, the dancers, the revue which is mostly girls with less on than the costumes of Roma's show, the French dishes, the famine prices on the bill of fare, dozens of sporting men I don't know recognizing me and coming over to our table to wish me luck that night in my scuffle with Kid Christopher—all this stuff commences to go to my head. Looking around this weird place, hardly listening to Roma's chatter, I get a awful kick out of the beautiful women, the soft lights, the guys in dress suits, and this and that, but still I have a feeling that this would be a good place for me to get away from and stay away from!
Roma gets a bit steamed up over the fact that I am not paying her enough attention, and when I call her "Judy" a couple of times by mistake she goes right up in a blaze. She says she could be sitting there with a millionaire instead of me if she wanted to, and while I feel like telling her I will trade seats with the first millionaire she sees, why, I manage to cool her off. She don't have to go on the stage till half past nine so she's taking her time with her dinner, but I gulp everything down because what I crave to do is leave!
Then who comes along but Rags Dempster, loaded to the guards. His first remark is to glance at his own Tuxedo and tell me that he's got a good mind to put me out, because everybody is supposed to wear evening clothes in Louvers at night. I pay no attention to him till he starts to kid Roma. Then I get up and quietly take him by the lapel of his coat. I says if he is at our table by the time I sit down I will get up again and throw him through the big plate-glass window which looks out on Broadway. Rags moves along.
After a while Roma says let's have a drink. I says I don't drink, and I don't know no place to get it. This makes Roma laugh out loud, and she calls over the waiter, ordering a highball as open and above board as if Prohibition was April Fool. She says she won't drink alone, so I tell the grinning waiter to bring me a plain ginger ale. He brung the ginger ale along in a mug instead of a glass, and after I have a couple of 'em I'm satisfied it's the best ginger ale I ever tasted. I ask the waiter what brand it is, and the waiter grins heavy.
"'At's the real McCoy you got there, brother," he says. "Comes right down from Canada!"
"I thought it must be imported ginger ale," I says. "Let's have some more!"
Well, I have plenty drinks of this Canadian ginger ale, and I commence to feel better every minute. My troubles and worries has dropped away like magic and to tell you the truth I never forgot that in a few hours I am going to step into a ring and defend my title. I am having lots of fun and I feel like dancing, which is funny, when you take into consideration that I can't dance a stroke and never could or wanted to till that night.
I have no more than got out of my chair, when somebody grabs my arm and flops me back into it. It's Nate, and his face is as white as a sheet.
"You big stiff!" he says to me, "Have you went cuckoo? D'ye know they's twenty-five thousand people out there at the ball park waiting to see you fight Kid Christopher in less'n three hours?"
"Who's Kid Chris-Christopher?" I grins, and I'm kind of dizzy in my nut. Roma has slipped away into the crowd somewheres.
"Holy mackerel," whispers Nate, "you're lit up like a church! D'ye think you can get it through your skull 'at Rags Dempster and this Jane has framed you? They got you soused so's you either can't show up to fight Kid Christopher, or you'll be a mark for him if you do. You have tossed away your title and throwed down your friends by this night's work, fellah!"
I don't seem to be able to get what he's talking about.
"Blah!" I says. "I can lick Kid Chris-s-opher with"
"If you can lick Christopher to-night, then I can lick that Rocky Mountains!" snarls Nate. "What will Mister Brock and Miss Willcox and all them guys in Drew City think of you now? You'll be about through there, after to-night!"
"Nate," I says, "I'm awful sleepy! . . ."
The next thing I remember I am back of Ajariah Stubbs's soda fountain, and Judy is sitting at the counter with Rags. I hit Rags with the ice pick and Constabule Watson rushes in to arrest me. We struggle all over the place and then . . . I open my eyes and there's Nate, scuffling around a room with me. From down below comes the familiar music of a jazz band and the sounds of clinking glasses and chatter. But the miracle is over in the corner of the room, watching me with wide-open eyes which shows signs of heavy weeping—Judy!
"What—how—" I begins, kind of dazed.
"Shut up and listen to me!" snaps Nate, clapping a hat on my head. "I got a taxi comin' here, and you got forty-five minutes to get into the ring with Kid Christopher. You got a bun on downstairs, and I couldn't do nothin' with you. We tried to get you to go to bed and you put four waiters on the floor! So I took a long chance and sent for Miss Willcox. Spence Brock rushed her up here a hour ago in his racin' car, and he's at the police station now, squarin' a pinch for speedin'. When Miss Willcox got here she talked you into bein' yourself, and after I give you a dozen cold showers she made you lay down, You've had about a hour's sleep. Boy, if you ever forget this girl for what she done for you to-night, you and me is through for life! C'mon, now, let's go!"
I choke and try to thank Judy, but she turns away from me and walks out the door. Gee, I felt rotten—terrible! I'd made a disgrace of myself before Judy, took a chance with the money of my friends in Drew City which trusted me, and showed a weakness which I'd be the first to sneer at in the next guy. Right then and there I made myself certain promises regarding booze, and I have kept them promises to this day. All the ways to the ball park I can only think of Judy's hurt face and wet eyes. Well, I'll never do nothing to make her cry again, so help me!
The mob is dying with impatience, and they set up a cheer which shook the stars when I climb through the ropes that night, a half hour late. I am far from clearheaded, but I'm in there to put up the battle of my life—win or lose! Kid Christopher is a tough looking baby with "I can take it!" wrote all over him. I watch him with about the same kind of feelings Abel must of had while waiting for Cain to leave his corner. I am just aquiver with nerves, but the papers says after the fight I was "cool, calm, and workmanlike" from the minute I entered the ring.
Kid Christopher has evidently been tipped about the shape I'm in, because he goes right after my body, leaving my jaw for future reference. He could hit, too, don't think he couldn't! He pounds me heavy in the first round, and I don't seem able to keep him away. His best punch is a left hook to the stomach, and at the end of round one my stomach is a raw red and pumping like a bellows. The papers says I only landed one clean blow in that frame—a stiff right swing to the head before the bell. I don't even remember that one, but I remember the customers razzed me and holler for me to fight when I run to my corner and Nate emptied the water bucket on me.
I took plenty of punishment in the second round, my first dose of booze having ruined my timing and generalship. Getting more confidence every minute, Kid Christopher shifts his attack to my head, and a sizzling straight left opens a-old cut over one of my eyes, drenching me with gore. Then Christopher sails into me in earnest, ripping both hands to the wind but my mind's beginning to clear and I drove him to a clinch with two torrid rights to the jaw which brought the mob to its feet, howling. While we're clinched, Christopher whispers to me that my trunks is slipping off. A old trick, but I fell for it! I drop my hands to my belt mechanically, and quick as a flash Christopher uppercut me with his right and I hit the mat with a thud.
I watched the referee's rising and falling arm, not being able to hear the count over the roar of the crowd, and at "eight" I got up and back-pedalled till my dizzy head cleared. Then Christopher caught me flush on the mouth with a right hook, and I turn my head to drop a tooth which is of no further value to me. He hit me pretty low twice in this round, and Nate bellered "Foul!" But the referee warns Nate to keep quiet and says nothing at all to Kid Christopher. The gong finds us in a clinch, with Christopher, one arm free, punishing me about the body. He's a good boy, this Christopher, and I'd liked to of fought him again.
"Come on and fight, you cake eater!" snarls. Kid Christopher, coming out for the third round with visions of the light-heavyweight title clouding his judgment. I spun him half-ways around with a right to the heart and stung him with lefts and rights to the head till he's glad to clinch. On the break, Christopher plants a hard left to my body, and I counter with another right to the heart which hurt. I seen it in his face.
Then he begins a rally and we stand toe to toe and slug till outside the ring is a maniac's convention! The blood from the cut over my eye bothers me considerably. Although Nate had sewed it up between the second and third round, Christopher opens it again during this slugfest in mid-ring.
At the bell I am getting up from a clean knockdown without waiting for the count. I'm so groggy I start for Christopher's corner by mistake and the crowd roars when the referee has to steer me to my own. Unless I got a lucky break, it looked like my brand-new title was going to change hands right in that ring!
The break come between the third and fourth rounds when Nate, desperately sponging me off while Kayo Kelly holds the ammonia under my nose, tells me that Judy is out in front! I sit up so straight I knock the ammonia bottle out of Kayo Kelly's hand. I thought Judy had went right back to Drew City when I left Louvers for the ring, and here she's watching me—watching me take a proper pasting in the first fight she's ever saw me in, and, for all I know, the last fight she'll ever go to again! Well, I guess that was what I needed—something like that to sweep the last remaining cobwebs from my brain, snap me into it, and make me realize that no matter what had happened, I'm still a champion!
I come out for round four, loaded for bear. Christopher neatly blocks a wicked left hook to the jaw and stung me witha right to the nose. A right swing sends him into a clinch, but I push him off, measure him with a left to the mouth, and as he danced away under instructions from his corner, I sunk a right in his mid-section which didn't do him a bit of good. He then tried hooking his right, but I beat him to the punch with a perfectly timed swing which dropped him on his haunches in his own corner. He leaned on one elbow and gazed goofily at the yelling crowd till the referee reached "nine." Then he got up, shaky and all at sea.
I left his left lead go over my shoulder, stepped in close, and hooked my right flush to his jaw with everything I had in stock behind the punch. "That's the business!" I hear Nate howl as Kid Christopher crashes to the canvas, face down. His legs twitches a couple of times before he straightens out flat, and he never moved again till he was counted out and I help carry him to his corner.
Nate and me fought our ways through the cheering crowd to the main box office, where Spence has come around with Judy. She's a little pale, but her eyes is like a couple of sapphires, only with more sparkle, and a deeper blue.
"Are you hurt, Gale?" she says anxiously, laying her little hand on my arm.
"No," I says. "That was just a work-out! Listen—even a murderer gets a trial, Judy. Will you let me take you home and explain matters?"
"We can pay them people in Drew City a good two to one for their money," says Nate, looking up from the box-office figures, "and still have a bank roll left which no greyhound in the world could jump over!"
"Oh, I'm so glad, Gale," says Judy. "I knew you'd make good! And you fought such a splendid, courageous, uphill fight against that beast! I"
"Kid Christopher ain't no beast, Judy," I says. "He's a stiff puncher and a nice fellow, but to-night wasn't his night. Maybe it ain't my night either! Judy, if you give me the air, I'm going to leave Drew City and"
"I think we had better get started," butts in Judy—and when she blushes she'd drive you crazy. "It'll take us an hour to drive there, you know."
"It'll take us two hours to-night, Judy," I says. "I got a lot to say."
It took us four hours!