"Here!" I says. "I don"t know if this is the right one or not, but let"s try it out on my knee, eh?"
I seen he didn"t make me, so I explains about the nerve test I seen where some of the guys throwed out their legs when hit, and some of "em didn"t. He gimme the laugh then, and tells me to look out of the window. I did and they"s a terrible crash in back of me, but I kept lookin" out like he told me. Then he says all right, I can turn around, and, when I did, I see the book case has fell over on the floor. He claims if I had been nervous, I would have jumped eighty feet when it crashed down and as they is nothin" the matter with me, I might as well be on my way. Well, I was up against it--but only for a minute. That last crack of his gimme an idea. I makes a leap across the floor, grabs my heart and starts to shake and shiver like a b.u.m in one of them "Curse of Drink" productions.
"What"s the matter?" he calls out.
I looks wildly around the room, and I seen a fly upside down on the window-sill tryin" to get to its feet.
"Oh!" I says. "I"m so nervous, doc, I"m shakin" like a c.r.a.p-shooter.
D"ye see that fly? Well, it must have fell off the window just then--it gimme an awful shock--y"know that sudden noise and--"
He throws up his hands.
"Come!" he tells me. "I"ll a.s.sign you to a room."
That"s how I come to get mixed up with the Red Cross.
Pretty soon they had the Kid"s arm better than it ever was, but as they was still workin" on his nerves, we stuck around at the sanitarium.
We"re both on a diet, which meant that at each meal-time we was fed about enough food to nourish a healthy infant about a half hour old.
The general idea of the stuff was along nursery lines, too--milk, eggs and baby fodder, three times a day. I was O.K. when I went in there, but in a couple of weeks I was the prize patient on account of them meals. They tell me I raved one night and bellered for a rattle, and Scanlan made the nurse tell him all about Jack the Giant Killer and Old Mother Hubbard. The place must have been run by a guy who believed in lettin" the dumb animals live, because you couldn"t have got a piece of meat in there, if you begged "em for it till you was black in the face.
You could have milk and eggs or eggs and milk--that was the limit!
One mornin" the orderly forgets himself and asks me what I want for breakfast. I thought they had let down the bars at last, and I all but jumped out of the bed.
"Gimme a steak, French fried potatoes, coffee and hot rolls," I says.
"Have the potatoes well done and the steak rare."
"Rave on," he answers me. "Do you want the eggs boiled, fried or scrambled? Ain"t there no particular way you like "em?"
"Not no more!" I groans, and falls back on the sheets.
The only bright spot in the whole thing was Miss Woods, the nurse that caused me to enter the place. She used to come in every mornin" and make me play a thermometer was a lollypop and I held the thing in my mouth while she took my temperature and pulled a clock on my pulse.
Then the orderly would come in and take the fruit friends had left for me, and I"d be all set for the day. When I kicked about the food, Miss Woods claimed I ought to be tickled to get eggs to eat, because they was very expensive on account of the late war. I says I didn"t know they had been fightin" with eggs in Europe, and she laughs and says I"m delicious. She brought me in a book to read and on the cover it"s all about the nights of Columbus. I didn"t even open the thing, because what kind of nights could Columbus have had--they was nothin" doin" in them days. She asks me what my occupation was and says maybe she could arrange so"s I could work at it while I was there to keep my mind off things. I says I _dared_ anything to keep my mind off of her, and she kinda frowns; so"s to brighten things up I says before I come there I had been a deck steward on a submarine, and it gets a laugh. Then she says I looked like a bookkeeper, and I didn"t know whether that was a boost or a knock, so I pa.s.sed it off by sayin" I had a chance to be that when young, but had to give it up because I couldn"t stand the smell of ink.
After we have kidded like that for a while, I admits bein" Kid Scanlan"s manager, and with that she suddenly runs to the door and closes it tight. She comes back on tip-toes, leans over the bed lookin" at me for a minute and then she asks me very soft would I do somethin" for her. I had got as far as offerin" to dive off the Singer Buildin" into a bucket of water, when she cuts me off and tells me to listen to her as they wasn"t much time.
She asked me had I ever noticed a big, husky, black-haired guy out in the exercise yard. I said I had. I remembered a big whale of a man, with the face of a frightened kid, walkin" up and down, up and down, all day long. Every now and then he"d stop and pick up a pebble or a handful of dirt and take it to one side where he"d examine it for half an hour. Then he"d throw it away and start that sentry thing again.
Well, she said, this bird had been down to South America where he had discovered some kind of a mineral that had made him very rich and some kind of a fever that had made him very sick. He was at the sanitarium so"s the doctors could keep a eye on him, the bettin" bein" about seven to five that he would go nutty, if some excavatin" wasn"t done immediately on his dome. A operation will save him, but his parents won"t think of it, and there you are. When she stopped, I told her that whilst I never had performed no operations before, beyond once when I pulled a loose tooth of Scanlan"s between the second and third round of a fight, I would get somebody to sneak me in some tools and get to work on the big guy the first chance I got. She give a little squeal and says that wasn"t what she wanted me to do, gettin" pale and prettier every minute. I seen I pulled a bone, so I asks her to come right out with it and whatever she said I"d do it or break a leg.
"Then when Mr. Scanlan takes his exercise every day with the boxing gloves and punching bag," she says, "get him to persuade Arthur to join him. Arthur would do it for him quicker than he would for me or any of the doctors. He thinks we are all in league against him and he admires Mr. Scanlan--I"ve read it in his face as he watches him out in the yard. Arthur himself was a noted athlete before he went to South America. He might even box with Mr. Scanlan. That would lessen the tension on his mind and we might get him to see that an operation is--Oh! Will you do it?" she breaks off suddenly, grabbin" my hand.
"Will I?" I says, holdin" on to that hand. "If Scanlan don"t box him, I"ll take him on myself!"
"Oh, thank you--thank you!" she whispers, "I--"
"That"s all right!" I cuts her off. "Is--ah--is the big fellow any relation to you?"
She blushed. Yeh--and I looked at her, forgettin" a lot of things about both of us that didn"t quite match--and wished! I got everything I had together for one good try, bein" handicapped by the fact that I still had her hand and that room was goin" around like a top. And then, poor b.o.o.b--I looked down at the hand I didn"t have, wonderin" why she didn"t answer me--and saw the answer on one finger. The darned cold, glitterin" thing seemed to sneer at me. I felt like I"d stopped one with my chin, and somethin" went outa me that ain"t back yet.
What? Well, a guy can hope, can"t he?
Say! That ring must have cost five hundred bucks--it was a pip!
I grabbed a drink of that darned milk to steady myself, and I seen from the way she looked at me that she got me.
"I see!" I says, lettin" go of the hand that belonged to friend Arthur.
"He--and he went to South America, eh?"
"Listen!" she whispers, bendin" over. "You know now what this means to me. If you"ll help me, I"ll do anything for you! Why--"
I sat up in bed and grabbed her hand again.
"Anything?" I asks her.
She looks out the window, gets pale and grits her teeth. You could see she wished she hadn"t said it, but she was game and was standin" pat.
"Anything!" she says.
"Then for the love of heaven!" I shoots out, "get me a piece of meat!
This egg and milk thing is drivin" me nutty!"
She wheeled around so quick the scared look was still on her face, and for a minute we both just looked. Then she give a kinda nervous little laugh, grabbed both my hands, squeezed "em like a man--and blew!
Oh, boy! I ain"t no hard loser but--
Well, it wasn"t no trick at all to get big Arthur to box with the Kid.
He took to it like a chorus girl does to a telephone and what puzzled me was why none of them fifty dollar doctors hadn"t thought of it before. I guess it was because they was n.o.body there husky enough to handle him by themselves, because Arthur packed a wallop in each hand that meant curtains, if it landed. Behind that was six-foot-two of bone and about two hundred and forty pounds of muscle.
The Kid labored with him like a mother with a baby. He taught him how to duck, feint, jab, uppercut, swing, stall, rough in the clinches, everything he knew, and Arthur learned awful quick. So quick that we had to cut the bouts down to twenty minutes each, because the big guy didn"t _know_ and he was _tryin"_ with every punch!
The doctors told Scanlan to talk operation to him, and the Kid tried it once. Arthur stopped boxin" and looked at him so reproachful that Scanlan refused to mention it again. He said he looked just like a kid that come down Christmas mornin" and found no tree.
Finally, me and the Kid packed up and kissed the sanitarium good-by, but every afternoon at three we went over and Scanlan put on the gloves with Arthur for a while, because I had give my word to his girl.
Arthur got so he lived all the rest of the day and night lookin"
forward to three o"clock in the afternoon. He snarled at the doctors, cuffed the orderlies, didn"t know Miss Woods from the iron gate that kept him in there, but the minute Scanlan breezed into the yard with the gloves his face would be one big smile.
This went on for three months--and then Miss Vincent stepped into the thing.
She wanted to know where the Kid was goin" every afternoon at three o"clock, and like a simp, I told her the whole story. She thanks me with a odd look that I didn"t get till that night, when the Kid comes tearin" in to our room at the hotel and slams the door. When he gets where he can make his tongue do like he asks it, he says it"s all off between him and Miss Vincent. By usin" some judgment and four hours of time I find out that Miss Vincent thinks this stuff about the Kid boxin" Arthur is a lot of bunk and the Kid was really goin" back to the sanitarium every day to see Miss Woods. She has give that nurse the once over and then used some woman"s arithmetic which makes two and two equal nine, get me? Well, one word led to another, and finally she tells him if he don"t cut the sanitarium out, she"s off him for life.
That"s a bad way to handle Scanlan. He"s Irish and--you know!
He told her we give our word and he was gonna box Arthur till they remodeled Arthur"s skull, no matter what happened. Then Miss Vincent gets sensible and weeps. In a minute the Kid is on his knees, and she shows more sense than usual by chasin" him at that point. At the bottom of the stairs, Scanlan calls up and asks if he can kiss her good night. She tells him it"s too late now, he has missed the psychological moment.
That last was what had the Kid up in the air. He didn"t know what it meant, except that it was a cinch she wasn"t wishin" him good luck.
That psychological thing was past me, too. I looked it up in the dictionary, and it was there all right, but it could have been in Russia as far as I was concerned, because the way it described it was over my head. The Kid finally puts it right up to Miss Vincent, and she tells him to find out for himself.
"Go over to that trick sanitarium of yours, and ask Miss Woods," she tells him scornfully. "Maybe _she_ can tell you what it means!"
But at two o"clock, when the Kid is leavin" for his daily maulin" bee with big Arthur, she comes along in her racin" car and asks him to go to Los Angeles with her. The Kid stalls and says he"s just about got time to get over and give the South American entry a workout, although he"d rather take the ride with her than defend his t.i.tle against a one-armed blind man. She frowns for a minute, and then she smiles and says hop in with her and she"ll drive him over to the sanitarium.