Love and Learn (Witwer)/Chapter 1
You know really I feel like Eve must have felt when she first opened her eyes in the Garden of Eden—I don't know where to begin! Julius De Haven, my permanent boy friend, claims it was fate that changed him from a gentleman of the chorus to the star part in a Broadway show. Julius is a former graduate of Harvard's college so he ought to know what everything's all about, but I can't give him nothing on that explanation. It wasn't fate that put him across, it was Gladys Murgatroyd, viz, me! That's not my real name, but it's a good one, isn't it? I thought so, too, when I composed it. There's a whole lot more stuff to it than there is to Mary Johnson, the name I was made a present of on my first birthday. Picture stars, actors, prize fighters, authors and people who write books have nom de plumes, so why shouldn't a telephone operator have a nom de switchboard if she wants one?
Gladys Murgatroyd is the name I cook up for myself when I think I'm going to be another Gloria Swanson and goal 'em in the movies. That was after I win first, second and third prize in a beauty contest at my home town, Bountiful, Utah. As far as beauty contests are concerned, why, I figure I'd finish no worse than second in New York, if having the skin you love to touch and that school-girl complexion means anything. Anyways, being elected the best looker in Bountiful gets me a ticket to Los Angeles, but I fail to set the lake ablaze in the picture business. The best I can do for myself is $5 a day as one of the supers in the super-productions and that soon gets more monotonous than monotonous itself. Being one of Solomon's wives today and a dashing young waitress tomorrow gets me kind of dizzy and Hollywood Boulevard is Bunk Avenue to me.
Well, I always was crazy to go to New York, having heard the town so well spoken of by one and all, so as soon as I saved the fare—a mere year—I check out of the movies and set sail for Broadway. I would like to say that I immediately land in a musical comedy and I could say it for that matter but it's a hobby of mine to tell the truth on the slightest provocation. What actually happens is that I get a portfolio as telephone operator at the Hotel St. Moe. While I'm not one of the city's show places I'm getting attention and I bet I could step into the front row of the Follies without causing a laugh!
I guess you know that the telephone switchboard of a big hotel draws more Johns in a fiscal year than a park, a bathing beach, a stage door and a department store combined. These dumbbells have nerve enough to attempt selling celluloid collars in Hades and trying to get rid of 'em is like trying to get rid of double pneumonia! I've been invited to take a ride in every make of auto we both ever heard tell of and I get more lunch invitations daily than the Prince of Wales got when he visited our noble country.
All this thrills me like a drink of water would thrill a drowning man. I'm fed up on what the newspapers leniently calls "mashers," no fooling! Traveling and stationary salesmen, college boys, actors, ball players, bootleggers, lawyers, judges, doctors and what not, ranging in ages from eighteen to eighty, hang around the board all day trying to do themselves some good and as the result us girls take cruel and unusual punishment in habit-forming quantities during the course of the day's labors. Some of these beady-eyed, leering clowns stand there and look at you till you feel you're sitting there in your combination and you'd like to murder 'em! They never get nowhere with me or with any girl that has an ounce of sense, because they hold these auto rides and lunches at too high a rate of exchange.
However, all work and no play is how to get a nervous breakdown, so sometimes I do pastime a little with the yearner sex. Every once in a while I meet one that I just can't resist taking apart to see what makes him go. Like Hurricane Sherlock, for instance.
Mons Hurricane Sherlock was a full-blooded prize fighter and light-heavyweight champion of our popular planet. This was my first experience in toying with gentlemen who make their coffee and cakes through assault and battery and what a shock this entry gave me—warm canine!
In round numbers, the way Hurricane Sherlock darkened my threshold was like thus:
Jerry Murphy is parked against the switchboard one morning, trying to do himself some good as usual. This master mind is the house detective at the St. Moe and a good scout, but he will never cause the world to forget Nick Carter when it comes to gumshoe work. They could shoplift the lobby of this trap and it would be weeks before the news reached Jerry, and in the lobby is where he stands. However, I can't—help bestowing a grain of womanly sympathy on this great big meaningless blah, because he really thinks I'm the clam's overshoes and I never give him a tumble. Anyways, he comes over this day and tells me to give room 1584 a bell. After a minute I pulled out the plug and informed Jerry there was no answer.
"Then I'll just bound up and give 'at baby's cave a frisk!" remarks Jerry. "His name's Bartlett—know him?"
"Bartlett?" I says. "No, I don't know him personally, but I've eaten a lot of his pears."
"What d'ye mean you have eat his pears?" asks Jerry, the picture of stupidity. "I don't make you."
"And you never will make me!" I says sweetly. "What has this Mr. Bartlett done which forces you to search his belongings?"
"Say!" says Jerry, snubbing my question while his face brightens up like a full moon, which is what it greatly resembles, "I got you now about this Bartlett and them pears. Ha, ha, ha, 'at's one for the book! You have eat a lot of Bartlett's pears, hey? I'll spring that nifty on the night clerk and"
"And you'll get it all balled up and ask him does he know Mister Sickle," I interrupt. "I'm still waiting to hear what this pear manufacturer done."
"Oh!" says Jerry. "Why, he's got them bellhops run ragged gettin' him Scotch from the corner drug store and if I find over a case in his room I got orders to check him out. He's thirstier than them two Enforcement guys we had here. As Doc Cooey would say, every day in every way he's gettin' wetter and wetter!"
At this critical minute a husky voice rumbles over Jerry's shoulder:
"Kin a man make a phone call here when youse people gits done kiddin' each other?"
I straighten up haughtier than haughty itself, prepared to give this noisy newcomer frostbite with a single glance, and Jerry swings around with a growl. Then an odd thing happens. The manslaughter disappears from Jerry's eyes with comical and magical speed and is replaced by a look of awe. A nervous grin appears on his shaky lips and all of a sudden Jeremiah has no longer got a florid complexion. If I wasn't acquainted with Jerry I would think he was scared. As I am acquainted with him, I knew he was scared.
"'At's—'at's Hurricane Sherlock, the light-heavyweight champ," he says to me in a hoarse whisper, bending over the switchboard. "I—I guess I'll go and see this guy Bartlett about them, now, lemons of his!"
Exit Jerry.
"Who's that dizzy clown?" sneers the stranger and bends over himself for a good look at me.
I returned his glance with usurious interest and noted with pride that 1n two seconds flat he was attempting the difficult feat of swallowing his Adam's apple and his face was flushed a dull red. That shows me I have lost none of my potency as a pulse-quickener, and with that all settled I take stock of my opponent. I see a tall, nobbily dressed young fellow with shoulders like a set of walking beams and a whimsical quirk to his lip, a la Dick Barthelmess. Later, I found out that whimsical quirk was placed there by one Rough House Trainor, who used a right hook for the purpose. However, I have seen worse lookers than Hurricane Sherlock, though I've never hunted for any.
But prize fighters are about as thrilling to me as a lesson in swimming would be to a middle-aged goldfish, so I quickly snapped into it. I didn't care for the gentleman's approach and there is nobody going to push me around, whether they're light-heavyweight champion or dark-heavyweight champion!
"Did you wish a number?" I ask, as cold as a winter's night in dear old Siberia.
Mr. Hurricane Sherlock comes to earth with a start.
"Wam!" he says, half to himself and the other half to me. "What a disturbance you are! Where have I been all your life, good lookin'?"
"If you think that line will get you anything here, you're crazy!" I remark, and on each word is an iceberg so large it would be a menace to navigation. "What number do you want me to give you?"
"Well, let's start with your address," says Hurricane Sherlock, with the goofiest of grins.
"Be yourself, big boy!" I says, getting a bit steamed. "I'm busy. I have no time to play with you. If you don't behave yourself, I'll call the house detective and have you put out!"
"Lady," says my adversary, "you can't have me put out! I ain't never been put out in my life. I ain't never even been knocked off my feet!"
"Yes, yes—go on!" I says, merrily working my plugs. "And where are the jewels now?"
Hurricane Sherlock looks puzzled for a instant and then he grins.
"Say, you're quite a kidder, ain't you?" he says. "Well, I ain't no dumb Isaac either, get me? I'm Hurricane Sherlock—does that mean anything to you?"
"Not a thing!" I says deliberately. "I don't know whether you're a traffic cop or Vice-president of Chili. Do you wish to make a call or don't you?"
"I'll make that call in good time," says Hurricane, "and don't tell me you never heard of me. I'm light-heavyweight champ of the world!"
"That's your own fault," I says. "Sorry, but I can't use you."
Hurricane Sherlock stares at me like he thinks both his kind of cumbersome ears have commenced lying to him.
"You don't wish no part of me—the world's champeen?" he says in amazement. "Say, Cutey, don't be cheatin' yourself! D'ye know I clicked off a hundred thousand smackers in the ring last year?"
"The place to go with that information is the income tax collector," I says. "Why bother me with your business troubles? I have quite a collection of phone numbers here, can I sell you one?"
"Yeah, gimme a pink one," grins Hurricane Sherlock. "And listen, kid—me and you is goin' to see a lot of each other, so you might as well start right in gettin' used to me. I ain't a bad guy when they treat me right—when they don't treat me right, I'm poison. Now give Worth 86753 a bell and make it snappy!"
Honest, I'm so overcome with this fellow's nerve that I can't think of a comeback! I just nodded him to a booth and got him the number. He talked about five minutes to his manager. I know it was his manager because I passed up at least four much more spicier phone conversations to listen in on him. When he come out he tossed a dollar on the switchboard.
"Keep the change and buy yourself a railroad," he says. "I'll be back again tonight and we'll talk about this and that!"
If nerve was money, Hurricane Sherlock would of made Rockefeller look like a public charge, now wouldn't he?
From then on it was a case of try and keep the world's champion light-heavyweight away from my switchboard. I treated him with about the same courtesy a ferret shows to a mouse, but if you think that bothered Hurricane you're crazy! He was what you call insult-proof and sarcasm rolled off his good natured smile like rain off a mallard's back. He soon become as permanent as the East River and he was just about as exciting to me. Furthermore, he murdered all competition, because none of these lobby hounds which ordinarily moored at my board all day trying to promote themselves had any desire to get in a jam with a gentleman who made his living by being light-heavyweight champion of the world.
Well, as the days went by and Hurricane Sherlock continued to hang around me like a tent, I get a new angle on him. I see that while he may not mean anything in my young life, he's plenty important to others.
Prominent people such as heavy business men, high-powered actors, bankers, lawyers, osteopaths and bootleggers who stop at my switchboard to try and get phone calls, look on the light-heavyweight champion with open fascination. Some of them kind of timidly say, "Good afternoon, Hurricane," and when he grudgingly returns a careless nod, why, honest, they almost swoon with joy. Aren't men funny?
But that isn't the half of it. The other girls on the board make no mystery of the fact that they would be more than willing to trade off their sweeties for my great big husky boy friend. A lot of good vamping was showered on Hurricane Sherlock—and wasted, because he had eyes and words for nobody but me. The bellhops, clerks, elevator boys, porters, in fact all the help at the St. Moe give Hurricane attention that would of flattered Julius Cæsar, and they tell me there was a fellow who liked applause. All my box fighting friend has got to do is crook a finger and he gets all the service there is on tap in our hostelry. The funny part of it is that Hurricane Sherlock isn't even stopping at the hotel—he's merely stopping at my switchboard.
And the questions they ask me when they get me away from him! "Did he say anything about his scuffle with Kid Fisher?" "Is he really going to give the Frenchman a chance at his title?" "Ask him is he going to fight Young McWagon?"
Ail this and many more, till they got me dizzy, no fooling! Even the hard-boiled Jerry Murphy, generally annoyingly jealous of every male who throws me a glance, treats Hurricane Sherlock with respectful admiration.
Then I begin to sit up and pay attention to myself. No matter what you may have heard to the opposite, I'm human. Also, I was lonely. This attention Hurricane Sherlock was getting from the mob commences to make an impression on me, in spite of my honest attempts to throw it off. I find myself reasoning that Hurricane Sherlock is not just a fighter, he's a world's champion and that's hard to dismiss with a laugh!
Likewise, Hurricane was far from difficult to gaze at, if you forgot that his nose was the least bit out of true and one of his ears could do with a little overhauling.
Don't get the idea that I was beginning to stumble in love with this large fellow, because I wasn't, though I was the next thing to positive that he was double cuckoo over me. But I was getting tired of going to the movies by myself or just sitting home wishing every night I was off duty. So I finally gave in to Hurricane's pleadings and accepted his urgent invitation to see him fight another highbrow entitled "12-Punch" O'Bernstein.
Oo la la, I will recall that evening for quite a space! To start with, I had never acted as a witness to a prize fight before in all my young life and you can imagine that I looked forward to this one with plenty excitement. Just what to wear at this carnival of aggravated assault was a problem which gave me no little trouble. I didn't know whether an evening gown or sport clothes were in order and the suggestions made by the jealous ones on the switchboard with me were only comical and not useful. Just what I did wear I don't remember now, you'll have to ask someone who saw me. People who see me usually remember everything about me, if you know what I mean.
Hurricane made me a present of two seats in a ringside box.
"Who are you goin' to take with you, kid?" he asks.
"I don't know," I says thoughtfully, thinking how Jerry Murphy would like to see this fight with me. "Why—does it make any difference who my escort is?"
"No difference at all," says Hurricane grimly. "No difference at all—as long as it ain't a man. Because should you take a man with you, why, they will be a strange guy tryin' to kid his way past St. Peter the next mornin,' that's all!"
So I took the hint and Hazel Killian, my girl friend.
Well, this brawl was lovely and brutal while it lasted, but then six minutes isn't very long. It took Hurricane Sherlock just two boisterous rounds to smite 12-Punch O'Bernstein "for a loop," as Hurricane put it, and a pleasant time was had by all—with the exception of Mons O'Bernstein and Hazel Killian. It was really a beastly evening for both of them! In the second round, Hurricane Sherlock broke his tête-à-tête's ankle with a punch on the jaw and Hazel fainted when Hurricane's nose persisted in bleeding all over everything as the net results of Mons O'Bernstein's earnest efforts before he was executed. Personally, I enjoyed my first prize fight thoroughly, which I hope isn't unladylike. But really, I got quite a thrill when Hurricane waved his glove to me as he left the ring amid the thundering cheers of the big crowd.
Anyhow, Hurricane Sherlock and I got much better acquainted after that evening and one day at lunch he told me the story of his life. I simply can't understand why every man I meet is unable to prevent himself from giving me his unsolicited biography about the third time we see each other, but nevertheless, they do. Honest, it makes me feel like a jury!
However, this day my usually cheerful cave man was all gloomed up. I asked him what was the matter, expecting a non-committal reply, and then I was going to ask him something else. I never got a chance to ask him nothing else for the best part of an hour, as his answer to my first question took that long to pass a given point. I was the given point. Try and keep awake and I'll tell you what he told me.
It seems Hurricane had just returned from a voyage to his boyhood home, East Silo, N. Y., and the visit had practically ruined him. When he was a tot there he was the town joke and they all shoved him around till at the mellow age of sixteen he leaped a freight and left East Silo prostrate on its back. Hurricane's modest plans were to conquer the world and then come back and make East Silo like it.
Well, Hurricane made good! After various ups and downs he renounced the frivolous pleasures of the world and entered the prize ring. He didn't get the nickname "Hurricane" because he was timid, and the first thing you know he had hauled off and won the world's light-heavyweight championship, Hardly a day slips over the horizon that his name isn't in the newspapers, he takes in around a hundred thousand milreis a year, he has offers to fight in London at the National Sporting Club—where the Prince of Wales will shake his hand after he bounces some English heavyweight—and thousands turn out to cheer him every time he fights. In a word, Hurricane Sherlock has done his stuff and he means something!
So back he goes to East Silo, the old home town, figuring that the brass band, the mayor and a welcoming committee of important citizens would joyfully greet him at the station. He expected, and he had a right to expect, that a holiday would be declared, Main Street would be a mass of flags and bunting and speeches would flow like water.
No such thing! Nobody turned a hair when Hurricane Sherlock blew into town. They didn't give him a rumble. Boxing and boxers mean nothing to the natives of East Silo and the older citizens who remembered him told him he ought to be ashamed of himself going around hitting people and why don't he go to work? The village blacksmith stood out from under the spreading chestnut tree long enough to offer the thoroughly enraged Hurricane a job at twenty dollars a week and found. And Hurricane Sherlock is world's light-heavyweight champion. As they say on Tenth Avenue, fawncy that!
What Hurricane wants to do, he explains as the waiter brings on the nourishment, is to pull off some stunt that will make the citizenry of East Silo realize just what he means in the world of art and science. He craves to do something to show 'em that a world's champion boxer is of more importance in civilized communities where they read the newspapers than arms are important to a jockey. In other words, what can Hurricane Sherlock do to knock East Silo for a row of Patagonian milk cans?
While I am mulling over the above apple sauce, Hurricane carefully cuts off the best part of the steak for himself and sadly remarks that what he has told me is only about half of his woes. I says to save the other half for our next conclave, and thus encouraged Hurricane goes right on with his funeral dirge.
It seems his own folks don't understand him either. When he first began to make important money, he tells me, delivering the last of the hash-browned potatoes to his own plate, he brought his people on to New York and set them up in a home in the Bronx which would make Nero's palace look like a deserted barn.
Hurricane dwells on this home as well as in it—he furnished me with the prices on everything connected with it from the furnace to the roofing. Considerable residence, as he describes it, and one a millionaire should be tickled to get his mail at, but still Hurricane's folks pick on him. Like the East Silo knockers, they think prize fighting is out of order and that Hurricane should go into business, now that he's got $4.75 for every wave in Tampa Bay. The way they look at it, he could buy a garage, or a chain of orangeade stands or start an opposition elevated railroad or something, but he most certainly should get out of the ring and become a solid businessman. Until he does, even his own folks are off him and he hasn't seen 'em for months, he wound up.
"Don't tell me any more, you'll have me crying my eyes out," I says, toying with a yawn. "Why unload all this on poor little me?"
Hurricane Sherlock gulps a couple of times and leans over the table.
"I'll tell you why I'm givin' you the lowdown on matters," he says, as serious as a fire in a powder mill. "I been catchin' your stuff at that telephone switchboard for weeks now, and believe me, kid, you're the buffalo's beard! The nifties you toss at them he-flappers which tries to make you, the wise cracks you pull day in and day out—well, all that sells me the idea that if anybody can help me, you're the baby. I'm just a big dumbbell which don't know nothin' at all except how to keep 'em from gettin' up off the canvas, but you pack more brains than they ever seen at Yale, get me? Won't you please be a pal and help me knock them yokels up in East Silo for a trip?"
Honest, I have to smile, he's so earnest. He seems to be hanging on my answer like it means life and liberty to him. There's something pathetic about this big kid sitting opposite me, who has money and fame and merely—wants his home town to admit it. I'm no Miss Fix-it, but the idea of helping another member of the male sex solve a puzzle fascinates me. But Hurricane's getting restless.
"Are you goin' to throw me down?" he asks anxiously, for all the world like an eight-year-old kid asking mamma for marble money.
"No," I says suddenly. "I'm not! I'll think this over and you drop into the St. Moe in a couple of days. I feel sure I'll have cooked up a scheme by that time which will make East Silo act like you're Napoleon the next time you enter the portals of the town!"
"You're immense!" says Hurricane. "Put me acrost in that slab and you can write your own ticket on what I'll do for you!"
So far Hurricane had kept in line whenever we were out together. What I mean is, he never even mentioned the preposition "love." That's a thing for which IT was thankful. I sympathized with Hurricane and could take him as a friend—but that's all!
Well, when Hurricane Sherlock next appeared on the scene I was all set for him. I had given his case plenty of due consideration and I think I had the answer.
"Have they ever seen you fight in East Silo, Hurricane?" I ask him.
"No," says Hurricane. "Them hicks ain't saw a scuffle since the Civil War!"
"Great!" I says, and I'm really overjoyed, for now I know Hurricane's problem is childishly easy. In fact, it's no problem at all.
"Hurricane," I continue, "they have laughed you off in East Silo because they haven't got the proper angle on you. If they could only see you knock out an opponent and hear the frenzied cheers as you leave the ring, they'd go crazy over you and crazy over themselves for having turned out such a product as you in East Silo!"
Hurricane Sherlock looks pensive.
"That's a good thought, Cutey," he says finally. "But it's also a plain case of no can do. They don't allow boxin' in East Silo."
That slows me up for a minute—but only for a minute.
"Where do you fight next?" I ask him.
"Madison Square Garden, on the fifteenth," says Hurricane. "I'm supposed to step fifteen frames with a boloney by the name of Ignorant Eddie Biff. I'll smack him dead in a round!"
"Good!" I says. "Now, what you want to do is to make up a party of, say, twenty-five of the most influential citizens of East Silo. Get the mayor, the big banker, the political boss and people like that. Pay all their expenses to New York and back and get them ringside boxes at the fight. When they see you knock out this Mr. Biff and hear that crowd go wild over you, they'll realize that maybe Lincoln was a great man in his day, but you are the man for the ages now!"
I wound up as enthusiastic as a three-headed cat in a creamery, but Hurricane shakes his head doubtfully.
"They may be somethin' to that layout of yours, kid," he says, "but what you are losin' track of is the fact that it would set me back about a grand to bring them jobbies down from East Silo to see me step with this Ignorant Eddie Biff. I wouldn't spend a thousand bucks on them babies if it was a felony not to do it!"
"Very well," I says scornfully. Then I hereby officially wash my hands of you and your troubles. Figure things out in your own way, I'm through! You poor fish, you should be willing to spend a million dollars if it will set you right in your home town. What's a mere thousand to you?"
"My right eye!" says Hurricane.
But he interrupts before I get a chance to bear down on him.
"If you actually think that bringin' them saps down to see me work will do me some good, I'll bring 'em down," he says. "Anything you say is kayo with me, kid, unless you tell me good by!"
Which is as near as Hurricane had yet come to making love to me.
Well, the large night finally arrives when Hurricane Sherlock is to massacre Ignorant Eddie Biff for the edification of his former townsmen of East Silo, N. Y. Among those present was me, of course, at Hurricane's urgent invitation. He had scrupulously attended to the details of my plan to make him a big fellow in his home town. I instructed him to have twenty-five representative citizens of East Silo at the ringside—Hurricane had fifty! I looked 'em over with interest, having no trouble in picking 'em out. They couldn't of made me believe they had come from anywheres else but East Silo if they swore different on a stack of—phone books.
The noisy crowd, the glare of the lights, the gory—preliminary bouts and the general atmosphere of suppressed excitement—all brand new to the delegation from Hurricane's home town—gets under their skins a bit. But they're still openly skeptical of the importance of Hurricane Sherlock. Sitting behind 'em, I get that from snatches of their conversation, none of which is complimentary to the light-heavyweight champion of the world.
Promptly at ten p.m. Hurricane Sherlock climbs through the ropes to change all that.
A wild burst of applause greets my boy friend and I gaze at the jury from East Silo, prepared to see them clapping their hands off and beaming with civic pride. Instead of that, their hands are idle at their sides and there's a sneer on each and every face. While Ignorant Eddie Biff is hopping through the ropes to the accompaniment of a dead silence, I remember that it must of cost Hurricane a thousand dollars to bring these ten-minute eggs down from East Silo to see him ruin Eddie, but I figure that it will be a bargain if it puts him over in his home town. Then I sit back to enjoy the fracas.
The bell rang for the first round and amid a hush of expectancy Hurricane Sherlock danced lightly out from his corner with a contemptuous sneer for his plainly nervous vis-à-vis. Hurricane then peered through the tobacco smoke drifting over the ropes like he's looking for somebody. Finally, his gaze rested on my excited face and he brightened up. Evidently I was who he was looking for. I fluttered my handkerchief, Hurricane turns his head and waves back a careless glove to me. As his head turned Ignorant Eddie Biff darted forward with the spring of a panther, smashed his right glove against Hurricane's chin, and—the fight was over!
Hurricane Sherlock, light-heavyweight champion of the world, has been knocked out with a single punch! Not only that, but he has spent a thousand dollars to bring his enemies down from East Silo to see it!
O sole mia!
Well, for a minute the big crowd just sat there dazed. They couldn't seem to put any faith in what their bulging eyes showed them—Hurricane Sherlock prostrate on the floor as cold as a winter breeze, five seconds after the bell for the first round. Whoever in that vast audience blinked an eye didn't see the fight at all!
Then with a roar like Niagara Mr. Pandemonium took charge and the panic was on. The cash customers who paid to see a long hard battle are fit to be tied and they yell their heads off with rage. Hundreds who had bet on Hurricane Sherlock become maniacs. They had nothing on me! Look at the terrible thing I have done to the now ex-light-heavyweight champion. By waving my handkerchief at him I got him knocked out, and by trying to help him I have brought his worst enemies there to see it!
Assisted by a couple of cops I managed to fight my way out a side exit to a taxi and I'm whisked home to spend a horrible sleepless night. All I can think of is what plans Hurricane Sherlock will make with regard to my disposal when he recovers from the sleeping sickness on that canvas. I certainly have gummed things up for your life and I don't mind telling you that I'm scared stiff!
I spent a lot of time the next morning arguing with myself as to whether or not I'd better stay away from the Hotel St. Moe till Hurricane Sherlock forgot what I had innocently did to him. But then I thought if I staved away till he forgot that I'd have to stay away 200 years, so I decided I might as well go in, face him and be done with it. So that's what I did.
That morning was a fearful one for me, honestly it was! Every time I'd look up I'd expect to see Hurricane Sherlock towering over the board with first degree murder in each eye. The phone service at the St. Moe is at no time nothing to boast of, no more than it is in any other hotel, but that morning even my warmest admirers meowed about the way I treated their innocent requests for numbers. It was really a case of try and get a sensible answer from me, that's all!
Well, up till noon my unfortunate knight had not put in an appearance and I'm commencing to breathe normally again. As I'm going out to lunch I'm thinking is it possible that poor Hurricane is still slumbering on the floor of that ring from that horrible blow Ignorant Eddie Biff presented him with?
At that moment my heart stops beating for one terrible second. I have bumped square into Hurricane Sherlock in the lobby of the hotel!
Honestly, I'm almost hysterical with pure fright and I gazed wildly around for assistance. I'm really afraid Hurricane may do me bodily harm! But to my dumbfounded astonishment, he's smiling and looks happier than happy itself. I feel I must say something or I'll scream, so I begin to stammer condolences. Still smiling happily, Hurricane cuts me off.
"That kayo was the best thing could of happened to me, kid," he says cheerily. "I would of got it sooner or later anyways—they all do. I don't care nothin' no more about what them yokels from East Silo thinks about me, either. What does them sapolios know? Say—up in that slab they think alligator pears will bite you!"
"I—I'm afraid I'll have to hurry on," I says, crazy to get away. "I'm going to lunch and I must be back in"
"That punch last night knocked me out of the ring into a swell taxi business and now I'm all jake with my folks," goes on Hurricane calmly. "You're goin' to eat, hey? Well, come on up to my home and chow with us. My folks will be crazy to see you—I told 'em plenty about you, kid!"
I tried to duck this invitation, but no chance. So to avoid attracting undue attention by an argument in the crowded lobby, I got into a taxi with Hurricane Sherlock, bound for his home. In view of what had just happened, I felt I owed him something!
All the way up in the cab Hurricane raved about what a swell family he has, but to tell you the truth I scarcely heard him. I had just about decided that Mr. Hurricane Sherlock has lost his attraction for me, now that he's no longer a champion—which had really been the only thing thrilling about him to me. What's bothering me is how to break the sad news to him. I am picturing in my mind the scene which is going to take place in his home. He's taking me up to meet his folks, undoubtedly wanting his dear old father and mother to see the lady of his choice and get their O. K. before he asks me will I quit the telephone switchboard to accept a position as his bride.
Honestly, I felt awfully sorry for him. I know it's going to be terribly tragic. He might even break down and cry like a baby when he sees all his plans go to smash. But I can't help it—Hurricane Sherlock is out as far as I'm concerned. Why, I wouldn't dream of marrying him!
Well, we arrive at Sherlock's home. Hurricane asks me to wait in the parlor till he brings in his folks. The coming ordeal has got me so nervous that I've just about bitten my nails away. While he's in the next room I rehearse to myself the way I'll break the news to him. "I'm very sorry, Mister Sherlock," I'm going to say, kindly, "but I never thought of you in that way. I can't marry you, bu"
Just then Hurricane bounces into the room, half dragging a kind of plain-faced young lady who has two very dirty-faced kids hanging to her apron.
"Meet the wife!" grins Hurricane to me. "And the rest of my folks. Hey, Joey and Goldie, say hello to the lady!"