Hogarty"s face had lost a little of its inscrutability. He flashed one sharp glance across at Young Denny in the other corner as he stepped back out of the ring and his frown deepened a little after that brief scrutiny. For the boy"s body, squatting there, crouched waiting for the bell, was taut in every sinew, quivering with eagerness.
"You just failed to place "em right, I guess," he rea.s.sured Boots.
"Take a little more time, and get him flush on the bone. You can slow up a little. He isn"t even fast enough to run away from you."
Again Hogarty nodded to the boy called Legs, and again the gong rang.
Five minutes earlier it would have been hard for Bobby Ogden to have explained just what it was which he had half dreamed might lurk in those rippling muscles that bunched and ran beneath Denny"s white skin. For want of a better name he had named it speed. And now, at the tap of the bell, he watched and recognized.
Swift as was Sutton"s savage rush across the canvas, he had hardly left his corner in the ropes before Young Denny was upon him. The boy lifted and sprang and dropped cat-footed in the middle of the ring, hunched of shoulder and bent of knee to meet the shocking impact. It was bewilderingly rapid--terrifyingly effortless--this explosive, spontaneous answer of every muscle to the call of the brain. Just as before, Sutton feinted and saw his opening and swung. Young Denny knew only one best way to fight; he knew only that he had to take a blow in order to give one, and Sutton"s fist shot home against his unprotected chin. He blinked with the shock, just as he had blinked before, and swayed back a little. Sutton had swung hard--he had swung from his heels--and he was still following that blow through when Denny snapped forward again.
It wasn"t a long swing, but it was wickedly quick. From the waist it started, a short, vicious jolt that carried all the boy"s weight behind it, and the instant that Denny whipped it over Sutton"s chin seemed to come out to meet it--seemed almost to lift to receive it.
And then, as his head leaped back, even before his body had lifted from the floor, the boy"s other hand drove across and set him spinning in the air as he fell. He went down sideways, a long, crashing fall that dropped him limp in the corner which he had just left.
For a moment Denny crouched waiting for him to rise. Then he realized that Sutton would not rise again--not for a time. He saw Hogarty leap over the ropes and kneel--saw the boy Legs rush across with ammonia and water--and he understood. Ogden was at his side, pounding him upon the shoulder and shrieking in his ear. His eyes lifted from the face of the fallen man to that of the heliotrope silk-shirted person beside him.
"He"s not really badly hurt, is he?" he inquired slowly. "I--I didn"t hit him--too hard?"
Ogden ceased for a moment thumping him on the back.
"Hurt!" he yelped. "Didn"t hit him too hard! Why, man, he"s stiff, right now. He"s ready for the coroner! Gad--and I was pitying you--I was----"
Young Denny shook him off and crossed and knelt beside the kneeling Hogarty. And at that moment Sutton opened his eyes again and stared dully into the ex-lightweight"s face. After a time recognition began to dawn in that gaze--understanding--comprehension. Once it shifted to Denny, and then came back again. He made several futile efforts before he could make his lips frame the words.
Then, "Amateur," he muttered, and he managed to rip one glove from a limp hand and hurl it from him as he struggled to sit erect.
"Amateur--h.e.l.l! A-a-a-h, Flash, what"re you tryin" to hand me?"
CHAPTER XIV
Denny had begun to get back into his clothes, pausing now and then to dabble tentatively at the freshly broken bruise with the wet towel which Ogden had at last forced him to accept, when the door of the dressing-room opened, and Hogarty stepped briskly inside and closed the door behind him.
The ex-lightweight ignored entirely the covertly delighted grin that lit up Bobby Ogden"s features at his appearance. His own too-pale, too-thin lips were curved in a ghost of a smile; his face had lost all its dangerous tautness, but the greatest change of all lay there in his eyes. Their flaring antagonism had burnt itself out. And when Hogarty spoke it was once more in his smoothly perfect, delightfully measured, best professor-of-English style, for all that his opening remark was couched in the vernacular.
"Mr. Bolton," he began to the boy sitting quiet before him, "it looks as though we would have to hand it to you--which I earnestly desire you to believe I am now doing, with both hands. It may eventually prove that I lost a most valuable a.s.sistant through this morning"s little flurry. I am not quite certain yet as to that as Boots is not sufficiently himself to give the matter judicious consideration.
"He still thinks I crossed him for the entertainment"s sake--which is of little immediate importance. What I did come in for was to listen to anything at all that you may have to tell me. You"ll admit, of course, that while your explanation as to your errand was strictly to the point, it was scarcely comprehensive. My own unfortunate temper was, no doubt, largely the cause of your brevity."
He hesitated a moment, clearing his throat and gazing blankly at the grinning Ogden.
"As Ogden here has of course told you, I"m--well, rather touchy when interrupted at my favorite pastime, and especially so when I am trying to get a few minutes relaxation with a pin-headed person who insists upon playing without watching the board.
"But you spoke of wanting an opportunity of--er--entering the game professionally. I"m not admitting you"re a world-beater, understand--or anything like that! You"ve just succeeded in putting away a man who was as formidable as the best of them, five years ago. And five years isn"t today, by any means. I"ve been looking for a real possibility to appear for so long that I"ve grown exceedingly sensitive at each fresh failure. And yet--and yet, if you did have the stuff----!"
Again he stopped and Denny, watching, saw the proprietor"s face glow suddenly with a savage sort of exultation. His eyes, half-veiled behind drooping lids that twitched a little, went unseeingly over the boy"s head as though they were visualizing a triumph so long antic.i.p.ated that it had become almost a lost hope. Again that promise of something ominous blackened the pupils--something totally dangerous that harmonized perfectly with the snarl upon his lips.
Hogarty"s whole att.i.tude was that of a man who wanted to believe and yet who, because he knew that the very measure of his eagerness made him doubly easy to convince, had resolved not to let himself accept one spurious proof. And all his skepticism was shot through and through with hate--a deadly, patient sort of hatred for someone which was as easy to see as it was hard for the big-shouldered boy to understand.
There was craft in the ex-lightweight"s bearing--a gentleness almost stealthy when he leaned forward a little, as if he feared that the first abrupt move or word on his part would frighten away that timid hope.
"I believe that you said some one sent you. You--you did not mention the name?"
Denny leaned over and picked up his coat from a chair beside the bench, searching the pockets until he found the card which the plump, brown-clad newspaper man had given him. Without a word he reached out and put it in Hogarty"s hands.
It bore Jesse Hogarty"s Fourteenth Street address across its face.
Hogarty turned it over.
"Introducing the Pilgrim," ran the caption in the cramped handwriting of Chub Morehouse"s stubby fingers. And, beneath, that succinct sentence which was not so cryptic after all:
"Some of them may have science, and some of them may have speed, but after all it"s the man who can take punishment who gets the final decision. Call me up, if this ever comes to hand."
Very deliberately Hogarty deciphered the words, lifted a vaguely puzzled face to Young Denny, who waited immobile--and then returned again to the card. He even nodded once in thorough appreciation of the t.i.tle which Morehouse had given the boy; he smiled faintly as he remembered Denny as he had stood there in the entrance of the big room, a short while before, and realized how apt the phrase was. Then he began to whistle, a shrill, faint, monotonous measure, the calculating glitter in his eyes growing more and more brilliant.
"So!" he murmured thoughtfully. "So-o-o!"
And then, to Denny:
"Was there--did he make any comment in particular, when he gave you this?"
The boy"s eyes twinkled.
"He--made several," he answered. "He said that there was a man at that address--meaning you--that would fall on my neck and weep, if I happened to have the stuff. And he warned me, too, not to think that Jed The Red fought like a school boy, just because he was a second-rater--because he didn"t, nothing like that!"
Hogarty laughed aloud. That sudden, staccato chuckle was almost startling coming from his pale lips. It hushed just as quickly as it had begun.
"Jed The Red, eh?" he reiterated softly, and he began tapping the card with his fingertips. "I see, or at least I am commencing to get a glimmer of those possibilities which Mr. Morehouse may have had in mind. And now I think the one best thing to do would be to call him up, as he has here requested. As soon as you finish dressing Ogden here will show you the rest of the works, if you"d care to look around a little. It is entirely likely that we shall want to talk with you directly."
He wheeled abruptly toward Ogden who had been listening without a word, the broad grin never leaving his lips. It was the silk-shirted boy to whom Hogarty addressed the rest of that sentence.
"And you," he said, and his voice shed with astounding completeness all its syllabled nicety. "You try to make yourself useful as well as pestilential. Get him a bit of adhesive for that cut. It looks as bad as though a horse had kicked him there.
"And the rest of your mob will be swarming in here in a few minutes, too. You can tell them that Sutton is--er--indisposed this morning, and that they"ll have to play by themselves."
He nodded briefly to Denny and opened the door. But he stopped again before he pa.s.sed out.
"There"s one other question, Mr. Bolton," he said over his shoulder.
"And please believe that I am not usually so inquisitive. But I"m more than a little curious to know why you did not present this card first--and go through the little informal examination I arranged for you afterward? It would have insured you a far different reception.
Was there any special reason, or did you just overlook it?"
Denny dabbed again at the red drop on his chin.
"No, I didn"t exactly forget it," he stated ponderously. "But, you see, I kind of thought if I just told you first that I wanted to see if I had any chance, you wouldn"t make any allowances for me because I----"
Hogarty"s second nod which cut him short was the quintessence of crisp satisfaction.
"I understand," he cut in. "Perfectly! And quite right--quite right!"
The ex-lightweight proprietor was sitting with his chin clasped in both palms, still staring at the half facetious words of introduction which the plump newspaper man had penciled across that card, when the door of the small office in the front of the gymnasium was pushed open a crack, some scant fifteen minutes after his peremptory summons had gone out over the wire, and made him lift his head.