Page:The Leather Pushers (1921).pdf/87

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

"Great!" he hollers. "Old man, you should have been a press agent. When I become champion and leave the ring to enter business, I'll engage you as publicity man!"

"Yeh?" I sniffs. "Well, that's horrible nice of you—only if you ever win the title I expect to own at least half of that business you're gonna enter!"

I spent the rest of the day chasin' all over the isle of Gotham from the one end to the other tryin' to dig up the necessary dough to put my stunt over. Late that night, as they say in the movies, I had begged, borreyed, and gypped myself a $500 bank roll, and Kid Roberts had met "the most wonderful girl in the world!" or, in the other words, Estelle Van Horn, one of the merry villagers in "The Girl and the Cream Puff." This was the Kid's second attempt to put over a romance with himself as the leadin' man. He made a dozen wild stabs at the thing which drives the poets wild before along come—but we'll get around to that later.

The campaign to make Kid Roberts as popular as matrimony begin with me takin' him down to a swell photographer's and havin' him snapped in half a dozen poses, wearin' ring togs and—a mask. This was nothin' more than a piece of black silk with eyeholes, which fitted over the top of his face, makin' it practically impossible to identify him. Likewise, it was part of my scheme to make him stand out from the mob and get him talked about. Then I started the rounds of the newspaper offices with him.

My story was this: Kid Roberts was a millionaire college guy which refused to give out his real name and wore a mask in the ring so's his high society pals