Love and Learn (Witwer)/Chapter 5
"Sweet is revenge—especially to women!"
The above remark, which, as I read it over, seems to have all the earmarks of a nasty dig at one of our most popular sexes, was pulled by no less than Lord Byron nearly a hundred years ago. I don't know which of his prolific affairs de heart the boy was trying to get out of when he sneered that one, but I do know that the talented peer said a mouthful!
I'm in a position to O. K. Byron's statement for two excellent reasons: First, I'm a woman; and second, I once had a generous portion of revenge, the saccharin taste of which is in my mouth yet! Please don't get the idea that I'm mean, I'm not, really. As a rule it's all fun to me and I want to see everybody get by. But when some impossible clown like this Grenadier Tompkins gets rosy with me, it's all different! Then I'm positively poison, as I'm sure the Grenadier will be glad to tell you—if he's regained consciousness yet. The last time I saw the perfectly priceless old thing he was reclining at full length on the canvas at the National Sporting Club of jolly old London, as stiff as a head waiter's shirt. I put him there, with some kind assistance from Fighting Paddy Leary.
When he crossed my path, Monsieur Leary was just a nice young fellow who earned an honest living breaking noses. He was just one of a thousand others, with nothing about him that particularly stood out except maybe his ears, which bore a really clever resemblance to overripe cauliflowers. Well, I snatched him out of the mob and made him a king—king of the middleweight boxers!
I hope you won't think I'm in the habit of cuddling up to prize fighters, because nothing could be further from the truth, unless possibly one of Sinbad's travelogues. I'm no fight fan; honestly, I wouldn't trip across the street to see Dempsey versus two gorillas even if they gave the gorillas axes to even things up. In fact I still shudder when I think of Fighting Paddy Leary and Grenadier Tompkins, two young men who might have been useful bookkeepers or something, beating each other into a highly unpalatable Jelly in that London arena while a blood-thirsty crowd cheered them on. Heavens, what animals men are! Still, they're pretty good company.
There's an old saying that familiarity breeds contempt, and I guess the reason the male sex is just a road show to me is because I see so many of the boys daily. Their constant attempts to get familiar with me is what has made me contemptuous—and plenty wary! I learned to say "No!" when I was fifteen. In that way I suppose I've missed plenty of laughs, but then think of the tears I've avoided!
As the result of rescuing Abigail Monkton from the clutches of Oliver Thurston, I won myself five thousand dollars. That kind of money might make Mr. H. Ford giggle, but what it made me do was gasp! It raised my bank account to $5,056.23 and gave me a chance to do something I'd been wanting to do for ages, i.e., take a voyage to Europe. Hazel Killian wanted to shove off, too. Her name was now up in the lights of a Broadway show, but still Hazel doesn't broad-A me, knowing that I can put on a bathing suit and ruin her!
Well, I casually mentioned our contemplated journey abroad to my boy friends, and honestly I was simply buried under a landslide of offers of escort and tickets. Old Mr. Rankin, the retired something or other, who has fifty-six dollars for every German in Berlin and evidently an unfulfilled yearning for each dollar, even tried to ply me with the use of his private yacht. I coldly turned everybody down because I never do that kind of stepping. But Hazel called me a sap for the ages and moaned bitterly when I rejected the private yacht. I carefully described the look in the ancient mariner's fishy eyes when he made his generous proposition and Hazel laughed me off.
"You're dizzy!" she says. "That old Rankin is the real McCoy. I'll bet he's a gentleman and a scholar and that yacht has some well-stocked wine vaults aboard. We'd have the time of our lives without any hats broken or any harm in it at all!"
"He wants to go with us," I gently reminded her.
"I can take care of myself anywhere!" brags Hazel. "And for all you know, he may be just a nice old man who loves company."
"Be yourself!" I sneered. "Listen—I have had to get out and walk from nine million automobiles, Hazel, and I don't propose to get out and walk from a yacht!"
So that was all settled.
About ten days before we went down to the sea in ships I met Fighting Paddy Leary. I was breaking in the girl who was going to try and take my place while I was giving Europe a treat when a broad-shouldered, well-dressed young fellow came over to the switchboard. Really he wasn't bad looking, if you forgot about his battered ears and rather long nose.
"Good morning," he says. "Say, will you git me Columbus eight-six-seven-five-four-three and ask for Mister Vasiloff? V-a-s-i-l-o"
"V like in veal?" I interrupt his spelling.
"No," he says. "Not V like in veal—V like in Vasiloff!"
"What's the difference?" I says.
"Plenty difference," returns the handsome city chap without cracking a smile. "I don't wish no veal!"
"Pick up the marbles, you win!" I laugh. "V like in Vasiloff coming up. Who will I say wants to speak to this Irishman?"
"Fighting Paddy Leary," he says, a bit proudly.
At that I threw the laugh into high. "So your name's Leary, eh?" I says. "Well, I wish I had your nose full of nickels!"
Fighting Paddy returns my grin with interest. "My real name's Herschel Goldstein," he breaks down and confesses. "Now will you throw the voice with the smile into the phone and git me that number, or do I have to bring a note from my parents?"
I shoved in the plug. "Say—what's your racket?" I ask him, just for fun.
"I'm in the glove business, Good-lookin'" he says and hands me a card. So's you'll miss nothing, I want you to see it:
Fighting Paddy Leary
Middleweight Champion of Pike's Peak
"Dieu et mon droit!"
"What does that apple sauce mean at the bottom of the card?" I ask him. "I can't read Persian."
"Oh—'Dieu et mon droit'?" says Fighting Paddy airily. "That's Frog for 'God and my right!' the motto of King Richard the First. I found that part of it out in the Fifth Avenoo lib'ry, where I hang out when I ain't boxin'. I get lots of laughs out of that hokum like 'Hamlet,' 'Three Weeks,' 'The International Cyclopedia' and the like. At the same time I'm educatin' myself, what I mean!"
"Fair enough," I says. "But what has all that got to do with your putting a king's motto on your business card?"
"Well," explains Fighting Paddy seriously. "King Dick's slogan seems to of been made to order for me! I also bank everything on God and my right—my right hook to the button! I don't know what kind of a puncher his highness was with his right, but when I sock 'em they stay socked, don't think they don't. That's a swell dress you got on, Blondie."
"Knowing how to wear your clothes runs in our family," I says. "My uncle on my mother's side was for years the best dressed fellow in the Larimer County almshouse."
"I think you're givin' me a pushin' around," says Fighting Paddy. "How 'bout a little service on that number?"
"They don't answer, King Leary," I tell him.
"Keep ringing' 'em," he says. "Maybe the bell will get on their nerves. And don't think you're kiddin' me with that king business, because before long I'll be a king in my line! If you ever get five minutes to yourself to scan the papers, you might of saw where I stopped Forty-two-Round Hogan over in Jersey just a week ago. Hogan was known far and wide as a glutton for punishment, but he couldn't cope with me. That's one glutton I give indigestion!"
"There's no use of you trying to sell yourself to me, king," I says. "Honestly, I know nothing about prize fighting."
"It ain't hard to learn," says Fighting Paddy. "There's only one rule which amounts to anything—keep' your shoulder blades off the floor. That's all there is to it, but try and do it! What I commenced to say was that by knockin' Forty-two-Round Hogan for a mock orange I get a fight with Grenadier Tompkins, world's middleweight champion. Two years ago I was that egg's sparrin' partner. One day I got sick of lookin' at him and smacked him dead in a trainin' bout. They throwed me out on my ear. A year later I boxed him a fifteen-round draw. I took him too serious, trained too hard and left my fight in the gym. In London it'll be different and"
"In London?" I butt in.
"In London," says Fighting Paddy. "I'm supposed to step twenty frames with the champ at the National Sportin' Club there in less than a month. Til knock him for a loop in a couple of rounds and then I'll be king of the middleweights. I only wish you could be there to see me go!"
"I'll give you a laugh," I says. "Maybe I will see you go! I'll be one of London's show places myself in a couple of weeks. I'm going over with Hazel Killian. Maybe you've heard of her? She's"
"Heard of her?" interrupts Fighting Paddy with a wide grin. "Heard of her? Say—I was dragged up with her over on Tenth Avenoo! Ask her does she remember Nosey Goldstein, whose old man run the delicatessen. Ask her about Chuck Noland and Whitey Schmidt and Guinea Calamari and Mary McCann. We all played around together when we was kids. And say—it's a funny thing, but today every one of us has made their mark. I'm going to be middleweight king, Hazel's a Broadway star, Chuck Nolan's leadin' the National League in pitchin' and Whitey Schmidt's doin' a twenty-year rap in Sing Sing. We all got somewheres!"
Wasn't he a scream?
"It's funny Hazel never mentioned you to me," I says, when I stopped laughing.
"It'd be much more comical if she did!" says Fighting Paddy. "I guess she wouldn't give me a tumble these days. She's out in front and I'm nowheres—yet. But believe me, I'm proud of that girl, no foolin'. I've watched her leap from the magazine covers to the footlights as tickled as if she was my own sister! I'd sure like to see her before you take that boat ride. Maybe we could frame for the three of us to go places together in London, all bein' Americans alone in that slab. I'll git you a ringside box for my quarrel with Grenadier Tompkins and after I flatten him I'll throw a party which will put a permanent wave in your hair. What d'ye say?"
"Here's your Mister Vasiloff on the wire," I says. "Step into booth number three, please."
"Tell him to cut himself a piece of cake," says Fighting Paddy. "I can talk to that bozo any time! He's the guy manages my apartment houses. D'ye think Hazel will see me?"
"You own apartment houses?" I ask him.
"Absolutely!" says Fighting Paddy carelessly. "Two on West End Avenoo and one on Lenox."
"I'm positive Hazel will see you!" I says.
A couple of nights later I staged a dinner party at one of the popular and costly cabarets so's Fighting Paddy Leary could meet this ex-Tenth Avenue playmate, Hazel Killian.
The party came near being a bust, as the now upstage and milk-fed Hazel at first indignantly denied she had ever resided on Tenth Avenue. Fighting Paddy, however, supplied her with a few facts and figures till she hurriedly shut off his rather intimate reminiscences by admitting it. But she only vaguely remembered him and treated him with exceeding coolness when she learned he was merely a prize fighter. I had tipped Monsieur Leary to work in some mention of his apartment houses in all his speeches and pretty soon it got results. Fighting Paddy's real estate holdings and the possibility of his becoming a world's champion appealed to the beautiful but cold-blooded Hazel, and before she parted from Fighting Paddy that night she agreed to let him call on her in London—if he defeated Mr. Grenadier Tompkins.
Well, Hazel and me finally tripped aboard the good ship Mal de Mer and set forth to dumfound Europe. It was my first sail past the Battery and once aboard the lugger I began to get homesick. However, there were so many things happened on this voyage that the blues had no chance with me. I'll remember that journey when I've forgotten my own name, honestly!
To begin with, there was the merry ship's company which furnished not a few of the guffaws. The next time you go across, check me up on the following and see how many I've missed: The fresh air fiends who briskly promenade the deck from the time they go aboard till they dock on the other side, walking around and around as if it was against the rules not to; the middle-aged ladies who sit in a row of steamer chairs and swap operations; the hardy globe-trotters who think they were on torpedoed ships during the war and retail their alleged adventures with gusto; the patronizing English stewards who cawn't understand anybody not wanting a dish of tea for breakfast and who "Very good!" you to death and "Thank you!" silly; the unhappy and unseaworthy travelers who drape themselves over the rail just as you are passing them en route to the dining salon, sending your appetite scurrying away; the reckless gamblers who enter the pool on the ship's daily run, bribe one of the crew for advance information and get a figure eighty miles away from the right one; the ain't-we-got-fun tourists who drag out all the gadgets for deck-games and play 'em with deadly seriousness, determined to enjoy themselves or die in the attempt; the rush to be placed at the captain's table; the fearful "entertainment" for the benefit of the Seamen's Union or something; the pests who drive the radio operator insane begging to be allowed to listen in; the cold-eyed, pale-faced gentlemen traveling alone and earnestly endeavoring to correct that situation; the necking parties in dark nooks about the deck at night; etc., etc., and even etc.!
Personally, I got all fed up on the bounding main right after we passed Sandy Hook. For the next twenty-four hours I was a total loss and: no hospital in the wide, wide world contained an inmate any sicker than me, really! The man who first said "See America First!" was probably the same kind of a sailor that I am. I'm satisfied Mr. Columbus was a marvel and that everybody in the navy is a hero. On the other hand, Hazel took to the sea like a porpoise and kept so irritatingly well and radiant that she got me red-headed. No matter how much the boat rolled, it never rolled so much that Hazel missed a meal, and when it was stormy she had 'em served in our cabin, where merely looking at the terrific array of food drove me to the great outdoors to—eh—meditate.
The first of a succession of sixty-four carat thrills came the third day out, just when I was beginning to recover from a life on the ocean wave. Hazel flounced into our cabin while I was dolling up to go on deck and take the voyagers' attention away from the deep blue sea.
"Hold everything!" she says breathlessly. "You'll never guess who's on board this boat."
"Fighting Paddy Leary!" I guessed promptly.
"No," says Hazel, "but the fellow he's going to fight is here—Grenadier Tompkins!"
"Well, what do you want me to do—get hysterical?" I says. "Where did you pick up all this scandal?"
"On deck," says Hazel, sitting down and reaching for my lipstick. "Where you ought to be, getting the nice salt air instead of sitting in this stuffy two-by-four like a she-hermit. Not only is the middleweight champion in our midst, but we've also got a flock of movie actors aboard. This Grenadier Tompkins is working in a picture they're filming right on the ship. I've met the director—a swell fellow—and Delancey Gregory, the star, and some of the girls, and"
"You've been having lots of fun while I've been under cover, haven't you?" I butt in sarcastically.
"I always do," returns Hazel coolly, penciling her really lovely eyebrows. "The director, Gordon Daft—you've heard of him—thinks I'm just the type and wants me in his next big feature. He's sure I'll photograph wonderfully. He's so intelligent, Gladys! I told him you had some picture experience and he wants us both to appear in the film they're making here on the boat. Isn't that wonderful?"
"No, it isn't!" I says testily. "And if you think I'm going to work as a movie extra on my vacation, you're crazy! If I was you I'd keep away from that director. He's trying to put over a fast one!"
"Do you think anything is on the level?" demands Hazel.
"Yes," I says. "A billiard table."
Nevertheless, Hazel insisted on taking me out on deck and introducing me to Gordon Daft, the director, Grenadier Tompkins and Delancey Gregory, the star. We also met the girls, who grew a bit chilly towards us when Mr. Daft enthusiastically remarked that the three most beautiful things he ever saw in his life were the Yosemite Valley, Hazel and me. Delancey Gregory butted in to say that the director was unduly boosting the Yosemite. Grenadier Tompkins, high-cheek-boned, broken-nosed, sullen and swarthy, sneered at both of 'em and looked at me with ravenous eyes that never left me while I was on the deck.
Well, the combined pleadings of Hazel and her new found boy friend, Mr. Daft, swept away my objections to working on my vacation and we appeared in several scenes of the picture as atmosphere. As a matter of fact, I rather enjoyed the experience, which was very interesting as well as profitable and helped break up the monotony of the trip. The only thing I didn't like was Grenadier Tompkins, middleweight champion of the globe. He was positively impossible, honestly!
For some unknown reason this English exponent of the noble art of felonious assault considered himself irresistible, a regular Mephistopheles amongst the ladies, and only in the privacy of my cabin could I turn around without bumping into him. I liked him and carbolic the same way and practically told him so, but thinly veiled insults rolled off the Grenadier like raindrops off oil. Really, the more I saw of the world's middleweight champion the more I hoped Fighting Paddy Leary would assassinate him, and I guess that was the only thing Hazel and I ever agreed on.
One day on deck when the modest Grenadier had told me for the twentieth time with reference to Fighting Paddy that he intended to "bash the blighter's fyce in!" I interrupted with a yawn. "You won't have a chance to bash anybody's fyce in, old dear, after Fighting Paddy Leary hits you—you'll be too busy!"
"Busy?" says the Grenadier. "Busy at what, may I arsk?"
"Busy picking splinters out of your shoulder blades!" I says sweetly.
He was fit to be tied and gave me a glare that sunburnt my nose—but that didn't stop his chasing me.
Delancey Gregory, the movie star, also favored me with his kind attention, and I must say that in his case I didn't seek police protection. The tall and distinguished looking Delancey was as handsome as they come in his sex, and while not exactly as brilliant a conversationalist as Will Rogers or Georgie B. Shaw, he at least knew what it was all about, was an easy dancer and fond of his mother. He wasn't a bit unpalatable, really. Being wild to crash into pictures, Hazel grew plenty friendly with the director and the four of us murdered many an hour in the braw bright moonlight nights on the deck. Grenadier Tompkins watched us sullenly with narrowed eyes and threatening mutterings, all of which Hazel thought were funny. I was worried, honestly. I saw a climax rapidly approaching and I don't like climaxes in which I figure!
The name of the movie they were assembling aboard ship was "Love and Passion"—a pleasing change from the usual suggestive titles, wasn't it? Anyhow, Grenadier Tompkins and Delancey Gregory were supposed to box in it, with Delancey knocking the world's middleweight champion out. I don't have to tell you they were plying the Grenadier with very important money to get him to agree with the author of that scenario!
Well, this soul-stirring fight was rehearsed dozens of times daily on the deck and dozens is a thrifty use of the descriptive. It was real thrilling to watch, too, don't think it wasn't! The Grenadier was no actor, he was a fighter, and he had a bad habit of losing all thought of the drama at the sound of the bell. The result of the champion's being unable to forget his art was that the director had to watch him carefully lest he get too enthusiastic in the big fight scene. Whenever the fun began to wax too fast and furious, the leading man would cast a panic-stricken glance at the director, who would roar "Cut!" through his megaphone—that being the signal to stop the action.
Well, that little word "Cut!" was the one thing that Grenadier Tompkins thought was wrong with the movies, he told me bitterly when he cornered me on deck one night while we're waiting for the dinner bugle. He moaned that all he heard from morning to night was that bellowed "Cut!" It was fastening on what nerves he had and driving him triple cuckoo. He eats, drinks and sleeps the word. Walking along the deck, he will halt instantly and mechanically when some practical joker bawls "Cut!" Dressing, he'll stop and stand rigid; eating, he'll drop knife and fork; and any word that would make the Grenadier drop his knife while he was eating must certainly be engraved on his brain.
May Allah be praised, as they say in Yonkers, that I remembered all that—later!
The night before our noble vessel parked at Southampton there was a formal dance in the grand salon, and that gave me and Hazel a chance to make most of the other girls aboard wish they had come over by rail, or at least kept off a boat containing two such well filled evening gowns as we displayed. The sturdy menfolk flocked around us like Ethiopians flock around a crap game, and I'll bet many a married man had to exercise some ingenuity in the bedtime story he gave friend wife after the ball was over! I danced with Delancey Gregory practically all night and that seemed to work our old friend Grenadier Tompkins into one of those cold furies you read about. Really, two or three times I thought the English athlete was going to prove he was a champion right on the ballroom floor, and finally, to avoid a fox pass, I gave him one waltz. A waltz was all I'd trust him with after the way his eyes devoured me. You can't do much batting out of turn in a waltz!
Well, the Grenadier and I have scarcely started to glide over a floor that would have delighted Maurice when right from behind us comes a sharp command "Cut!" Grenadier Tompkins blinked, instantly stopped dancing and his high-salaried arms fell from around my shrinking form as if he'd been shot. Before he can recover himself I am being whirled away in the embrace of the grinning Delancey Gregory. Honestly, I had to laugh—the whole thing was much funnier than it sounds. To think that the Grenadier had actually become such a slave to that oft repeated word that he'd even stop dancing with me when someone hollered it at him! Before the jam closed in around us I got one glimpse of his rage-contorted face—it was as white as Delancey's dress shirt and it made me very thoughtful.
The next morning, our last aboard the ship, Grenadier Tompkins did his stuff!
The long and carefully rehearsed fight between Delancey Gregory and the Grenadier was "shot," but you'll never see it in the picture. While it lasted it exceeded the director's wildest hopes for action, as he afterwards gasped, but the finish was exceedingly different from the one written in the scenario. With murder in his heart, behind every crushing, cruel blow, behind every panting snarl from lips drawn back over his ragged teeth, Grenadier Tompkins gave poor Delancey Gregory an unmerciful beating in an almost unbelievably short space of time. Oh, it was terrible, really! Delancey was no cake-eater and stood up to it manfully when he realized what was happening, but he was just a movie actor and Grenadier Tompkins was a professional prize fighter—a champion. Honestly, my blood boils even now when I think of it! This English brute broke Delancey's classic nose, split his ear, blacked his eyes and otherwise disfigured him before the stunned director snapped out of it and stopped the Grenadier as a bullet would stop him with a frantically roared "Cut!"
But the damage had been done and it would be many weeks before Delancey Gregory could go on with the picture. Grenadier Tompkins took leave of us with a snarling: "You arsked for h'action, you blighters, h'and you got it!"
Really, I could have been given thirty years at hard labor for what I thought of Mr. Grenadier Tompkins after that exhibition of sportsmanship! Hazel was as burnt up as I was and we talked about hardly anything else all the way up to London, in those little trick trains that look like something you'd bring home to Sonny for Xmas. A couple of medicos fixed up the battered leading man and the company came up to King George's home town with us, all of us fussing over Delancey and making him as comfortable as it's possible for anyone to be with a sirloin steak over each eye. Darn it, I liked the way he took it! Not a whine out of him; he was just sorry the picture would have to be held up. Mr. Daft, the director, kept swearing he'd murder Grenadier Tompkins in cold blood, and all of a sudden while he was madly raving, a scheme to get even with the middleweight champion struck me like a flash. It was a daring plan, and, yes, a crazy one—but I was satisfied if it was successful it would mark Grenadier Tompkins "Paid!"
I took Mr. Daft away from the others and told him about it. He didn't say a word for a full minute, and then he suddenly slapped my knee, immediately apologizing—oh, he was all right.
"Gladys," he says, "what you are doing answering phone calls in a hotel, I don't know, but it's your own business and I won't bother you with foolish questions. Personally, I think your scheme is absolutely insane—but I also think it's just about insane enough to work!"
Be patient.
Me and Hazel had been in dear old London just about long enough to lose a fortune trying to tell a shilling from a half-crown when we came back to our hotel one day from a sight-seeing excursion to find a note from no less than Fighting Paddy Leary. Inside the note were two ringside tickets for his championship bout with Grenadier Tompkins at the National Sporting Club the following night. Honestly, I must show you that note. Look:
I'm fighting this mug on three days traneing in this slab after a brutal ride on the ocean, but I'll take him just the same. Hope you had a good trip over and aint forgot your promise to let me pay you a call. These is the best ducats I could promote. They're ringside and you kids is got to doll up. They wear the old soup and fish at the fights over here, kin you beat that? Wishing myself the best of luck.
- Yours,
Fighting Paddy Leary
Quick work and equally fast money got Mr. Daft a ringside seat next to ours, and they were as close as you could get without actually being in the ring itself. We were what you might call sitting pretty. Taking Fighting Paddy's etiquette hint, we were dolled up within an inch of our lives, as was everybody else, for that matter. There were no more people present than there are in Boston, and I question seriously if I'll ever be in such good company again as I was at that prize fight. All around us was Duke This and Lord That, and not ten feet away in a box was the Prince of Wales.
Honestly, that noted and likable young gentleman simple panicked Hazel! My charming girl friend could see nothing else. She just sat there, her eyes mucilaged on the boy like a starving collie outside a butcher shop.
"So that's the Prince of Wales?" she murmurs. "Well, he's certainly a cute kid! I wish he'd give us a tumble—they say he craves American girls."
That irritated me. "Listen, young lady," I says, "it wouldn't do him any good if he did give me a tumble, because I wouldn't go out with him any more than I would with any stranger, prince or no prince!"
"Good for you!" says Mr. Daft.
"So you wouldn't step out with the Prince of Wales, heh?" sneers Hazel. "Apple sauce!"
Further discussion along these lines was interrupted by the entrance of Grenadier Tompkins and his retinue of attendants. The Grenadier received a polite reception—the customers don't go in for the vocal display at the National Sporting Club of London like they do at the Bowery A. C. It just isn't done, old bean! Then our athlete, Fighting Paddy Leary, looking pale and serious, entered the ring. There were plenty fans from the colonies present besides us and they gave Fighting Paddy a welcoming yell that must have shaken the Tower of London and certainly shook the dignity of the Londoners. I saw many a reproving frown.
Fighting Paddy's first act was to peer anxiously around until he saw us, and then a broad grin lighted up his face. Hazel gave him a brief mechanical smile, then her eyes went right back to the royal box. I fluttered my handkerchief encouragingly and Mr. Daft, all excited, called "Knock him stiff, kid!"
Fighting Paddy nodded back, very serious again.
"Doesn't he look determined?" I whispered, nudging Hazel.
"TH say he does!" she says with a sigh. "And just think—some day he'll be King of England!"
Mr. Daft laughed outright and I gave her up in disgust.
Well, the movie cameras that were to film the championship fight are set up around the ring, the scowling Grenadier Tompkins and the equally scowling Fighting Paddy Leary are introduced, a bell rings—and the panic is on!
I'll never forget that first round, and Grenadier Tompkins will never forget the second. Honestly, for three minutes the champion did everything to poor Fighting Paddy Leary but stick a knife in him, and I sat on the edge of my seat biting my lips and seeing again through moist eyes this burly Englishman battering Delancey Gregory aboard the ship. Fighting Paddy hit the floor either eight or twenty-seven times, and according to the screaming Mr. Daft and the rest of our countrymen present most of the blows that put him there were exceedingly foul. Even some of the Englishmen sitting around us were saying in conversational tones, "I say, fight fair, Grenadier!" or "Mister Referee, that was a bit low!" Twice Fighting Paddy stopped falling long enough to file personal complaints with the referee, but he got no service at all!
When Paddy staggered to his corner at the end of the first round, really, he looked like the wreck of the Hesperus. His seconds worked over him frantically, while the Americans kept up a continual din, mostly howls at the referee, who paid not the slightest attention. In the midst of this confusion I happened to glance at the royal box in time to see the Prince whisper to one of his companions. The man nodded, bowed, got up and came over to the referee. There was a short confab and then that official walked over to Grenadier Tompkins and spoke most earnestly to him. What he said I don't know, but he was evidently laying down the law and they listened very respectfully. This little incident brought some rousing cheers from the Americans for Mr. Wales.
"Did you see that?" says Mr. Daft excitedly. "The Prince has told that yegg referee to warn Tompkins about fouling. Say—the Prince is a real guy!"
"Of course he's a real guy," says Hazel, like she and the Prince were playmates. "Didn't I always say he was?"
The gong for the second round sent Fighting Paddy staggering to the middle of the ring, badly hurt but still game. There was no quit in any way connected with him, but that first round beating and those foul blows had ruined him. Grenadier Tompkins began pounding him again from where he left off before, and Fighting Paddy slowly gave ground, feebly pawing at the cruelly grinning Grenadier, until they were both up against the ropes right over where we were sitting.
That is what I had been waiting for since this carnival of assault and battery began! I nudged Mr. Daft and he nodded nervously but understandingly. Fighting Paddy missed a couple of desperate blows, and the horrible crunch of the Grenadier's fists against his face and body could be heard to the farthest corner of the place. Honestly, it looked all over but the shouting, and Paddy gazed despairingly down at us above the Grenadier's shoulders. The Grenadier hit Paddy with one glove and pulled back the other for the finishing glow. I felt it was now or never!
"Do your stuff!" I hissed in Mr. Daft's ear. Mr. Daft yanked a small megaphone from under his coat and took a deep breath.
"Cut!" he roars.
As Shakespeare once remarked, that was the most unkindest cut of all! Grenadier Tompkins stopped short at the familiar command in the familiar voice. The clicking of the cameras about the ring seemed to come to his ears for the first time. Mechanically he dropped his arms. The entire crowd was now on its feet, yes, dignified English and all, howling itself hoarse. Wam! The amazed but delighted Fighting Paddy Leary swung a terrible blow at the champion's jaw. It knocked Grenadier Tompkins as cold as thirty-eight dollars' worth of frosted chocolate, and if they hadn't swept him up he'd be there yet!
On the way back to our hotel, after Hazel had witnessed the Prince of Wales shake Fighting Paddy Leary's hand and she had agreed to dine with the new king of the middleweights the following night, I asked her what she thought of the fight and its sensational finish.
Hazel yawns sleepily.
"I thik," she says, "the Prince of Wales is certainly one swell looking fellow!"