Adventure, November 1915 — page 131: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

The Return of Billy Blain shorter the agreement for a prize fight is, the better for every one concerned. , “That calls your bluff!’ he snorted, blot- ting his signature. ‘“‘You’ll’get no adver- tising at our expense. Who'll I make the check out to?” “Mike Dunlop—’fficial stakeholder— same as usual.” 5 Strobinsky wrote out his check and laughed. ‘Better have the blame thing witnessed,” he suggested. : Sweeny called in a nondescript from an outer room, and a moment later Ephraim Strobinski swaggered out, endeavoring to look as if he were amused. He had a vague sensation down in his anatomy of having let himself get caught, although he still believed in two things, one of which was as much a part of him as life itself. He knew that Connolly could beat anybody at the weight, and he believed that Billy Blain would never be induced to fight.. He was not alone in that belief. The nondescript, whose face was an enig- ma and whose clothes and bearing might belong to any of the more conventional call- ings, stood noncommittally until Ephraim was out of hearing. Then his eyes bright- ened and the Itish in him peeped through the stolid mask. ‘What next?” he asked. _ “A real job this time, Casey. Brains, and a close mouth, and determination ought to turn the trick—and there’s money in it. Sign up Billy Blain to fight Mike Con- nolly.” “It can’t be done!” said Casey, without a second’s hesitation. His mouth shut hard. He had stated a bald fact, beyond argument. “See here, I don’t pay a man—not real money, I don’t—to stand here and tell me things can’t be done! I pay you to do ’em —to do what I tell you. Get me? I didn’t hire you to stand on one leg in my office and talk back at me, any more than I got you out o’ that police mess for the sport of doin’ it! I was speculatin’ on your brains. I bought ’em.: Now you think up something © an’ go an’ use ’em. There’s five hundred for yourself the day the fight comes off.” “Now you're talking!” grinned Casey. ‘“D’you care who’s in on it?” “So long as he don’t squeak: before the time and don’t want too much out of it, I don’t. Who are you thinkiag of?” : “Ephraim Strobinski’s cousin Max.” “Ever try to catch a fish with your hands?” asked Sweeny, looking up at him. | “He isn’t easy,” admitted Casey. ‘I'd have to have a thousand for myself.” Sweeny winced. “Seven fifty is the limit!’”’ he said firmly. ‘“You’re on!” eae! Casey closed his face up like a knife, jammed a derby hat down over his ears and went out without another word. II LITTLE Mrs. Billy Blain. had fi 4 reached the point in her develop- ment where she was not always sure, as she had always used to be, that her opinion was right. The machinery-repair- ing shop was busy, and since she kept the books she knew as well as anybody what the profits were; but there were no more “lumps of money” coming in, such as used to fol- low Billy’s thirty-minute battles, and with- out losing one mite of her puritanical dis- like for fighting, in any shape or form, she had come to realize that the fight game is not the only business in which wickedness may lie below, or even on, the surface. Billy’s honesty, which had served him to such good purpose in the ring, stood by him now and helped out his tight-lipped efforts to succeed. Terence O’Hanlon was a far greater expert with machinery than he ever would have been as ring counselor. He could diagnose the symptoms of an engine’s mal- ady, and see through the clauses of a con- tract to the fraud beneath, as he never could have wrestled with a fight promoter’s guile. The partners were doing well enough. But Mrs. Billy knew at last that mere en- vironment can never make respectability or unmake it. She knew that Billy would be honest and determined anywhere, and that not even the fight game could have un- dermined his character. There were times when it came over her in thought-waves, that perhaps a good man in the ring had been more necessary than a 129 mediocre one in the machinery-repairing — business; that a man who knew his trade could do his duty anywhere and under any circumstances. At those times—they usu- ally came when profits had been falling off —she would put her arm round Billy and ask him, “Isn’t this better than the fight mn Ebooks (E(0) (©)