One on the Button

by C. S. Montanye

 

One on the Button

By C. S. Montayne

Along the Main Stem, Kid Push, the light-heavy Box Fighter, was as popular with the bunch as mumps with children. The Crust Floppers had the Kid marked as being the bees knees and the cats tonsils. In the roped enclosure he might have been a Terrible Bologna, but on Broadway they rated him as a regular. And most of the Kid's popularity was due to the fem. sex. Women and Kid Push were as close as pepper and salt.

With another face the Kid would have passed in a jam. He packed the smackers, however, and let his money talk for him. When he wasn't pushing the leather he was up on some of the White Light's roofs tossing the Wild Cow and dating some queen who flashed a shape and a pair of pins with a curve to them. The Kid was crazy about legs. In the ring it was the jaw—after hours the stocking supports.

One night early in September Kid-Push was punishing some bootlegger's “see stars” special up at the Midnite Follies. He held down a ringside table and eyed the bunch with a pair of eyes sharp enough to shave with.

Undressed musical comedy always knocked him for an Arabian cuspidor. He liked to see 'em take it off. The more the merrier, as he told his friends. This night, as he contemplated the merry throng, he thought once or twice of his coming combat with the One Punch Jersey Jones, the Pride of Montclair. Jones, to his way of thinking, was a set-up. When the gong tapped for the catastrophe he would step in, smack One Punch on the button and drag down his 60 per cent of the harvest. The Pride of Montclair, as the world knew, had a jaw composed of glass.

“Nothing to it!” the Kid thought idly.

He ruminated pleasantly concerning the coming fracas until the famous number of the Midnite Follies unfolded. This was an ensemble of chorines who sang “Take That Off, Too!” a ballad having to do with pink silk underwear. As the gals came on the Kid lamped a coy little blonde on the left end and sat up straighter. The snapper that took him was a young lady he could not remember as having ever seen before. He stared, blinking.

The girl, young, comely and animated, had a face that drove men to the divorce courts, and a figure that was a soft symphony of warm curves and dazzling white skin. She was featuring a pair of eyes as blue as the laws the reformers were trying to put across, a smile that was as bright as one of the Big Street's electrical signs and a certain swinging, lithe grace that made the Kid feel like a Busy Telephone Wire.

“How long has this been going on?” he asked himself.

When the number was over to a riot of applause the Kid turned to his nearest table mate and begged information.

“The gal in the onion suit,” he pleaded. “What's the title?”

In a few minutes he learned. The one that shook his emotions was a beautiful child who answered to the name of Reba Whittington. She had just signed with the show and the Street didn't appear to know much about her save that she was sweet to look at and had refused to sell the key to her hotel room for a thousand berries cash—an offer made after the Monday night performance by a Westchester millionaire.

“Huh?” Kid Push thought, fingering the six thousand dollar diamond headlight that adorned his twelve dollar cravat. “So that's that, eh? Well, the bigger they come the sooner they slip. I'll just ramble around to the stage door and trade a little lip music with this jane. When I want a frail I get her!”

The stage door man took the Kid's card upstairs to the dressing room. In three minutes he was back.

“Nothing doing, sir,” he stated. “Miss Whittington says to tell you she don't meet men she hasn't been introduced to.”

“Did she say that?” the Kid replied. “Ain't we got merriments. I'll introduce myself. Pardon me while I hold up a wall until she shows.”

At ten minutes of one Reba Whittington appeared, gowned for the street. In her smart little Fifth Avenue frock she drew better than a three-alarm fire. The second the waiting Romeo glimpsed her he stepped over and caught her arm.

“Listen, girlie,” he said, “I don't think you got the name straight. It's Kid Push. I like your looks. Get me? All right then. Let's blow!”

He fell into step beside her. The girl said nothing until they were in the light smitten gully of Forty-second Street.

Then:

“Where you are going?” she asked gently.

“I'm not particular,” he answered. “How about stopping off in some of the class hooferies? I'm a wonderful dancer. And you twist a nasty ankle yourself.”

“I'm sorry,” the girl said in the same tones, “but I'm tired. I'm going home to my hotel.”

“That suits me,” the Kid cooed. “I'll stick like cement.”

She raised her blue eyes to his.

“I'm afraid you don't understand. This is Thursday night. My sweetie always comes to see me on Thursday nights.”

The Kid made a gesture.

“Be yourself, baby! I'd like to meet your John. I'll help entertain him. Come on, let's get home. These bright lights hurt my eyes.”

With a shrug the girl crossed the street, heading for the Hotel Insomnia.

She got into an elevator. So did the Kid. She alighted on the tenth floor. So did the Kid. She unlocked a door and entered a suite. So did the Kid.

“I'm warning you,” she said, when she had switched on a tall floorlamp. “There is sure to be trouble.”

“That's what I thrive on,” was the reply. “Mind if I smoke?”

Without answering the girl entered a bedroom to the left of the chamber, shutting the door after her. The Kid reached for a snipe and polished the big diamond scarf-pin. In five minutes the door opened and the girl was back. She had changed to a softly clinging kimona and had her hair down. It hung in a golden cloud over her sloping shoulders, making her look more child-like and charming than ever.

“That's the spirit!” the Kid crooned. “Come on over to Daddy and split a kiss two ways. Right?”

Her answer was to sit down in a wing chair by the window. The Kid went over and dropped down on the arm of it.

“Don't be upstage,” he pleaded. “Get rid of that Ritz stuff. Try and you know me and you'll find you'll like me. All the gals fall for me. I don't wanna blow about it but I got a lovely disposition. Let's cuddle.”

He was about to take her in his arms when a knock sounded on the door.

“My sweetie,” Reba Whittington breathed. “Now aren't you sorry? Come in!” she said in a louder voice.

The door opened and a man entered. It was gloomy beyond the edge of the lamplight. All the Kid was able to see was the shine of a white dress shirt front.

“Have a chair,” the Kid invited genially, “but don't figure on stayin too late. Me and Reba are just getting acquainted.”

“Is that so?” the caller replied.

“He persisted in coming,” the girl put in.

“You don't tell me?” the new-comer said pleasantly, advancing.

The Kid grinned.

“I'm the persistentist person,” he laughed.

The next instant he wheeled with a growl.

“Look out there now. Not too close or—.”

“Zowie!”

The thud of a flying fist awoke echoes in the silent room. There was a thump, a crash—silence.

The next morning when the Kid awoke it was to find a small bellhop bending over him.

“Gee,” the boy said. “Whatcha doing here? And lookit your necktie—it's all pulled to pieces.”

The Kid slowly fingered the ruined cravat where once a six grand sparkler had reposed.

“Where am I?” he asked, weakly.

The bellhop snickered.

“This here suite was rented by Miss Whittington—the gal that's goaling 'em all over at the Midnite Follies. But she's went. She checked out last night with her husband.”

Kid Push lifted himself another inch from the floor.

“Husband?”

The boy wrinkled his smeller.

“You hear me. Her husband! Some guy. A box fighter and everything. You ought to meet—or did you? He trades wallops under the name of One Punch Jersey Jones, the Pride of Montclair!”