"You – you – made a picture out of our – out of – me?" she gasps.
Whatever else Eddie Duke is, he's game.
"Yeh!" he nods. "And wait till you see it – it's great! Why, you got Pickford lookin' like a amateur, and Adams will be a riot with the girls the minute this movie's released! I wanted to prove to you that the movies ain't got a thing on real life, and I did! Why Adams can sign a contract with me any time he wants. That's makin' good, ain't it? From valet to movie star in five reels – and who put him over? You!!!"
Before Miss Devine can say anything, we hear voices behind us. We're standin' by a high hedge that had been set up for a picture that mornin', and it was Miss Devine that motioned us to keep quiet. The voices on the other side are Adams and De Vronde.
"I've done my share!" De Vronde is sayin'. "I've been sending home – "
"Eighty dollars a month!" cuts in Adams, in that new, cold voice of his. "Eighty dollars a month to your father and mother, and you're making a thousand a week. Eighty dollars a month, and you pay a hundred and fifty for a suit! It's hard for me to call you a brother of mine! Do you know why I whipped that bum the other day? For what he said about you? No! Because I didn't want it thought that the whole family was as yellow as you are! But I'm going to make you game. You're going to turn what money you've hoarded over to Dad."
We're all lookin' at each other – dumb-founded! Even Duke is pale and pop-eyed.
"By the Eternal, Miss Devine," he whispers in her ear. "I swear I didn't know that! It don't happen in real life, eh? Brothers– by the dust of Methuselah!"
De Vronde is speakin', and we bend to listen.
"I can't!" he chokes out. "Why, I'll – "
We hear Adams snort.
"Stop!" he says. "You can make more money than I can and make Ma and Dad comfortable for the rest of their days. I'm going – "
"About that girl – that Miss Devine," De Vronde breaks in, his voice shaking "It's only right that you should know. She's made an ass of you – she and that Duke person! You've been followed about and everything you've done has been recorded by a camera. She had no accident the other day – her ankle wasn't hurt – the horse was sent back with the empty saddle deliberately – they photographed that, too! They had a silly bet of some sort and – "
Miss Devine steps deliberately right around the side of the hedge almost into Adams's arms. He's white and lookin' much like he did the first day he blowed into Film City. The minute he sees her he straightens up.
"How long have you been here?" he clips out.
"I've heard – everything!" she says, lookin' him right in the eye.
Adams runs his hand through his hair, and pulls a look that went through me to the bone. I don't know how it hit Miss Devine.
"And all of this – this – your attitude toward me – the accident – was played to make a picture?" he says.
"Yes!" says Miss Devine. "All except this!" And I hope I never see another movie, if both her arms didn't go around his neck – right out loud in public, too! "All except this!" she repeats. "And, oh, Jack – this is real!!"
"I win a thousand bucks!" pants Duke, draggin' me away – De Vronde blew the minute she appeared on the scene – "I win a thousand bucks!" he says. "And the picture is gonna be a riot! If they was only a good camera man here now for that close up at the finish, eh? Still – I guess that would be too raw!" He looks back where Adams and Miss Devine is posin' for a picture of still life. "And she said this love stuff was the bunk!" he hollers. "Oh, boy!!!!"
CHAPTER VIII
HOSPITAL STUFF
Every time I see a thermometer, a watch, and a egg my temperature aviates to about a hundred and ninety-eight in the shade – and if they's nobody lookin' I bust 'em! I spent two months and eight hundred bucks with that layout once and, oh, lady! – Say! The next time I feel a vacation comin' on, I'm goin' to Russia and holler, "Hooray for the Czar!"
I just been Red-Crossed to within a inch of my life and I'm off that "take-two-once-every-twice, and don't-eat-any-this-or-drink-any-that" stuff! The right cross and the double cross has been little pals of mine for years, and I once got throwed out of school for pullin' that "How to make a maltese cross" thing, but the red one was all new to me up to last month.
They call me a glutton for punishment, but I got – enough!
I can't go in a drug store no more, because the sight of the prescription bar in the rear affects me like strong drink and I even had to lay off peas, because they look like pills.
All the food I got durin' the time I become a victim of the Red Cross could have been carried over the Rocky Mountains by a lame ant, and I got a hole in my wrist that can be used as a ash tray from doctors grabbin' it to give my pulse early mornin' workouts and clockin' it over the full course. I was allowed two kinds of milk to drink – hot and cold. The only thing I could get to read was wrote to order on the premises and was all on the same subject, "Shake well before using!"
The whole thing was brought on by two words and Genaro, which was puttin' on this five-reel barbecue called "How Kid Scanlan Won the Title," and take it from me, if the Kid had pulled off in Manhattan some of the stunts he did in that picture, he would have won more than the welterweight title – he'd have won the oil business from Rockefeller the first night!
The two words was "Don't jump!" and Genaro didn't say 'em – if he had, the Kid would never have dove off a cliff and sprained his million-dollar left arm, which triflin' detail caused me to get my mail at a hospital for two months.
It was in the third reel of this picture, which I see by the billboards is liable to thrill the nation, that the thing happened. The Kid is supposed to jump off a cliff to fool the plotters which is tryin' to stop him from winnin' the title. They had picked out two of them cliffs – one of 'em was a drop of three feet and the other was a drop of twenty-one miles, accordin' to Scanlan, who made it and ought to know. Anyhow, it was far enough! They was gonna show a close-up of the high one first and then take a flash of Scanlan leapin' from the little one. The Kid walks to the edge of that high one, looks down and some fat-head camera man points a machine at him and starts turnin' the crank. Genaro was to wave his handkerchief as a signal for the Kid to dive off the little cliff and Scanlan, kinda puzzled, watches him. Just as he's walkin' away from the edge, Genaro blows his nose! The Kid sees the camera man and the handkerchief, and not wantin' to act yellah before the bunch, he – jumps!
A lot of excitement was had by all and Scanlan sprained his arm.
"Ah!" yells Genaro. "She'sa make the greata scene! What you think thisa Meester Scanlan he'sa joomp off wan mountain for art? That'sa real arteeste! He'sa killa himself for maka picture for Genaro! Ah – I embrace heem!"
Miss Vincent begins by faintin'. Then she comes to, throws a rock at a camera man which is takin' a close up of her unconscious, kneels at the Kid's side and kisses him right out loud before everybody. She claims, if he proves to be dead, she'll leave the company flat and have Genaro tried for murder before a judge which had been tryin' for two years to do somethin' for her. They finally carried the Kid up to the hotel, and sent for a doctor which was recommended by Eddie Duke. Accordin' to Eddie, this friend of his had the average doctor lookin' like a drug clerk. Pluckin' people from the grave was his specialty, says Eddie.
I guess they had to wait till this graverobber graduated from college, because it was over a hour before he showed up. He gets out of a buggy that was all the rage about the time Washington was thinkin' of goin' in the army, and the animal that was draggin' it along had been a total failure at tryin' to be a horse. The doc wasn't a day over seventy-five and he was dressed in a hat that must have come with the buggy, a pair of shoes like grandpa used to wear to work and a set of white whiskers. If he had any clothes on, I didn't see 'em. All I seen was them whiskers! I figured, if he had plucked people from the grave, like Eddie Duke claimed, he must have did it after they was dead.
He didn't look very encouragin' to me, but I led him upstairs and into the room where Scanlan was just comin' to and askin' what round it was. Eddie Duke and Miss Vincent was at his bedside, and the rest of the gang was outside the door arguyin' over which was the best undertaker in Frisco. I slipped away to a telephone booth and called up information.
"Gimme the best doctor in California!" I says, flickin' a jitney in the slot.
"For a nickel?" giggles the dame on the other end.
"Stop it!" I says. "I got a man here that's liable to croak any minute – this ain't no time for comedy! Ah – what time do you get off?"
"I never go out with strangers," she says, "but you got a nice voice at that. Where is your friend doin' his sufferin' at?"
"Film City!" I tells her. "And my voice ain't got nothin' on yours. I don't want to give you no short answer, but can I get the doctor now?"
"I got him waitin'," she says. "If I was you, I wouldn't let 'em fill your friend full of dope; fresh air and sunshine's got the druggist beat eighty ways! Good-by, Cutey – gimme a ring after the funeral!"
"This is the Hillcrest Sanitarium," pipes another voice over the wire, very sedate and dignified.
"And this is Johnny Green," I comes back, "manager of Kid Scanlan, the welterweight champ. We've throwed you people a lot of trade. Only a short while ago Scanlan flattened Young Hogan in two rounds, and Hogan was took there from the ring, remember? Well, I want the boss doctor there sent to Film City right away!"
With that begins a argument that went about fifteen minutes, and which I finally win by a shade. It seems it wasn't the regular thing for the head doctor there to answer night bells and so forth, like a ordinary medico, and the goin' was rather tough for awhile. Three or four times, when I was ready to quit, this telephone dame, which was takin' it all in with both ears, cut in with advice and helpful hints till the guy on the other end had enough and says he'll come.
The first thing that met my eye, when I got back to the Kid, was Eddie Duke's friend, the greatest doctor in the world. He was walkin' very fast away from the hotel and mutterin' to himself. I just had time to grab his arm, as he jumps in the buggy and reaches for the whip.
"Will he live, doc?" I asks him.
"Bah!" he snorts, jerkin' away from me. "The ignorant little pup!"
He whales Old Dobbin with the whip and leaves me flat.
I couldn't figure out what the Kid's education had to do with his health, so I beats it upstairs and all but fell over Eddie Duke. He's holdin' one eye and mumblin' somethin' about "roughnecks" and "ingratitude." I kept on through the crowd and into the Kid's room. Scanlan is still on the bed groanin', and beside him is the hotel clerk, thumbin' a almanac.
"Wait!" pants the clerk, as I come in. "I'll have it in a second." He turns over a lot more pages and then he hollers, "Ah! Here we are – what did I tell you? 'First Aid to the Injured.'" He clears his throat and the Kid looks up hopefully. "Number one," reads the clerk. "'First send for a physician!'" He drops the book and dashes for the door. "Don't do nothing till I get back!" he yells.
Scanlan starts to go after him, but moans and falls back on the bed.
"I wish I had a gun!" he snarls. "That big boob has been here fifteen minutes tellin' me all he was gonna do for me as soon as he found it in the book! He – "
"Didn't the doctor do no good?" I butts in, sittin' on the side of the bed.
"Doctor?" says the Kid. "What doctor?"
"Eddie Duke's friend," I tells him. "The old – "
Scanlan leans up on his good arm.
"Listen, Johnny!" he says. "I still got a wallop in my right! Don't kid me now or – "
"What d'ye mean kid you?" I asks him. "Didn't the doctor – "
"Doctor!" he interrupts me, slammin' down the pillow. "If that guy was a doctor, I'm Caruso! He comes in here where I'm practically dyin' and tries to sell me a book!"
"Gimme it all!" I gasps.
"He sits down at the bed," explains the Kid, "and takes a big, black book out of what I figured was his medicine chest. He holds it up and asks me if I see it and I says I did, thinkin' I had passed the first test easy. Then he says he wrote the book himself and it's full of hope and cheer or dope and beer – to tell you the truth, I don't know which it was on account of the pain. Anyhow, I let him get away with it, and he tells me to think of how lucky I actually am alongside of the Crown's Prince of Germany – and then he begins to read from that book! It seems it's a novel about faith bein' stronger than pain. By this time, I seen that he was either nutty or tryin' to kid me, so I cut him off by askin' him when he's gonna fix up my arm. He says he's doin' it now, and when he gets through, he'll leave the book which will be a total of twenty-five bucks. When I come to, I ask him how long he had been a doctor, and he gets sore and claims he's a healer of the Mystic Sliders or somethin' like that, and what do I mean by callin' him a doctor? Then I called him a few other things so's he wouldn't have no kick comin' and gave him the bum's rush out of the room. Eddie Duke starts to moan about me maulin' his friend, and – well, get him to show you his eye!"
The door opens suddenly and Miss Vincent sticks the curls which all the shop girls is copyin' around the side of it.
"It's the doctor!" she whispers.
"Say!" pipes the Kid, grabbin' a pillow. "That old guy is game, eh?"
"A fightin' fool!" I agrees.
But this time a tall, solemn-lookin' guy breezes into the room and stares at me and the Kid with the same warm friendliness that a motorcycle cop regards a boob tryin' out a new auto. I figured he was the bird I had ordered by 'phone, and hit 1000 on the guess. He leans over the Kid, prods him around a bit, and then goes over him like he had lost somethin' and thought maybe he'd find it there. Then he straightens up and grunts.
"Hmph!" he says. "This man is a nervous wreck! Completely run down – needs rest and diet. I have my car outside and can take him over to the sanitarium, if – are you a relative?"
"His manager," I explains. "How about the arm, doc?"
"Nothing!" he says. "Wrenched – that's all. Come – help him downstairs, I'll wait."
I took out a five-case note.
"What do we owe you, doc?" I asks him, hopin' for the best.
"My consultation fee is fifty dollars!" he says, without battin' an eye.
I staggered back against the bureau.
"Every time you see me it's gonna set me back fifty?" asks the Kid, with tears in his voice.
The doc gives him a cold nod.
"Couldn't I take some treatment by mail?" pipes Scanlan, hopefully.
"Cease!" I says, takin' out the old checkbook. "What's your name, doc?"
"James," he says, "J. T. James."
"What's the J stand for?" I asks, shakin' out the pen.
"Jesse!" butts in Scanlan. "Heh, doc?"
"Do you mean to insinuate that I'm robbing you?" says the doc, frownin' at him.
"No," says the Kid, takin' the check from me and handin' it to him, "I don't blame a guy for tryin', but – "
I shut him off and dragged him downstairs before they was any hard feelin's. We climbed in the doctor's bus and at the Kid's request, Miss Vincent come along with us. Then we went after the road record between Film City and the Hillcrest Sanitarium. I guess this doctor was born with a steerin' wheel in his hand, because we took some corners on that trip that would have worried a snake, and when he threw her in high, we breezed along so swift we could have made a bullet quit. Finally, we come to a great big buildin' all hedged off with an iron fence and if you've ever seen a souvenir post card with "Havin' a fine time. Wish you were here," on it, you know what it looked like.
The doctor tells me and Miss Vincent to wait in the office, and he goes out with the Kid. In about fifteen minutes he's back and calls me over to a desk. They's a long piece of paper there and he says to sit down and fill it out, but, after one flash at it, I asked him could I take it home to work over, because my fountain pen was better on sprints than long distance writin' and this looked like a good two-hour job. He gives me another one of them North Pole stares and remarks that if the thing ain't filled out at once, the Kid won't be admitted to the sanitarium.
"He's in now, ain't he?" I comes back.
"Yes!" he snaps. "And he'll be out, if that paper isn't drawn up instantly!"
Miss Vincent giggles and hisses in my ear.
"They say the child is in London!" she pipes. "Sign that paper, curse you! We are in his power!"
Well, I seen I had to do a piece of writing so I grabbed up that paper and let the fountain pen go crazy. I give the Kid's entire name, where he was born, what his people did to fool the almshouse, what was his mother's maiden name and why, whether he went to church or Billy Sunday, was he white and could he prove it, who started the war and a lot of bunk like that. The guy who doped out the entrance examinations for that hospital must have been figurin' on how many he could keep out. When I run out of ink, I took out a copy of the Sportin' Annual, tore off the Kid's record and pasted it at the bottom of the page.
"How's that?" I asks, passin' it over.
"Very well," he says, glancin' at it. "Mister Scanlan is in room 45. That will be one-fifty – a hundred and fifty!"
"The price," I says, gettin' dizzy. "Not your weight!"
"That's the price," he tells me. "A hundred and fifty a week."
"I'm afraid the old bankroll is too weak," I says, – "too weak for that, anyhow. Drag the Kid out of that bridal suite and let him sleep in the hall. I'll – "
"Why, the idea!" butts in Miss Vincent. "You let him stay where he is, doctor. The money will be paid."
Before I could say anything, the door opens and in comes the dame that poses for all the magazine covers, dressed like a nurse. I never was much on describin' – I probably wouldn't have got ten people to watch the battle of Gettysburg if I'd have been the press agent – but this was the kind of dame that all the wealthy patients fall in love with in the movies – yeh, and out of 'em! The little white cap on top of her head looked like a dash of whipped cream on a peach sundae, and if you wouldn't have blowed up the city hall for the smile she sent around the room, I feel sorry for you. She crosses over and, in passin' me, she begs my pardon and threw that smile into high.
A hundred and fifty a week, eh? Well – I dives in my inside pocket.
"May I have your check, Mister – eh – ah – " pipes the doc.
"Green," I helps him out, "Johnny Green. Can you have a check? You said it!" I sits down and writes one out.
"Why this is for three hundred dollars!" he busts out, lookin' at it.
"Even so, brother," I grins, stealin' a slant at the Venus de California. "That's for me and the Kid. Gimme a room next to his and – "
"Do you think this is a hotel?" he frowns at me.
"I should care!" I tells him. "Let me in – that's all I want!"
With that the nurse remarks that the Kid is ready to see us, so me and Miss Vincent folleys her down the hall and she opens a door and calls in.
"Visitors, Mister Scanlan!"
"Yeh?" pipes the Kid in a show-em-the exit voice. "Ah – can I have a drink of – ah – water?"
"Certainly," she says. "I'll bring it now."
"Don't rush it!" says the Kid. "It might curdle! Wait till the attendance falls off a bit!"
She laughs – and Miss Vincent didn't.
"Oho!" whispers the pet of the movies. "Like that, eh?"
We go in the room, and there's Scanlan layin' in the whitest bed I even seen in my life and lookin' about as miserable as a millionaire's nephew on the day his uncle dies. There's about three hundred pillows under his head and neck, his arm is all bandaged up and beside the bed is a table with a set of flowers on it.
And then there was that nurse!
"Pretty soft!" I says.
The Kid grins and then twists around to Miss Vincent and groans.
"Does it hurt much, you poor dear?" she says.
"I wonder how I stand it!" pipes the Kid, keepin' his face from me.
"Can I get you anything?" she asks him after a minute.
"Well," answers the Kid, "if I did want something we could send Johnny for it." He looks at me meanin'ly. "Go out and git the right time!" he tells me. "And while you're at it – take lots of it!"
I went outside and closed the door. I remembered bein' in a hospital once, where they was examinin' guys for nerves, and one of the tests was hittin' 'em in the knee with a book and watchin' if their legs flew out. I don't remember the name of the book, but I figured on takin' a chance. I breezed out to the desk in the hall and filled out one of them entry blanks about myself, and then I dug up the doctor.
"Doc," I says, "I wish you'd gimme the East and West, there's somethin' the matter with my nerve. I know you can fix me up, if anybody can, because you got so much yourself."
"Just what is the East and West?" he asks me.
"Why, look me over!" I explains. "I wanna see what I need or should get rid of."
He leads me in a little room to one side, and goes over me like a lawyer lookin' for a clause in a contract he can bust. He looks at my tongue till it begin to quiver from exposure to the air; he clocks my pulse at a mile, two miles and over the jumps; he stuck a telephone like you see in the foreign movies over my heart and listened in on the internal gossip for twenty minutes; he walloped me on the chest with the best he had and made me sing a song called "Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah!" Then he shakes his head and tells me to put on my coat.
"You're one of the healthiest specimens I ever examined!" he says. "There's absolutely nothing the matter with you."
"Well, that's certainly tough, doc," I tells him, "because I sure want to win one of them rooms like Scanlan has. I – wait a minute!" I hollers, gettin' a flash. "You didn't gimme the book test!"
I hops over to the desk and grabs up a book off it. It was a big thick one called "Paralysis to Pneumonia," and was written by a couple of Greeks named "Symptoms and Therapeutics." I never heard of the thing before, and I wished it had been "Uncle Tom's Cabin" or somethin' like that, but I took a chance.
"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 bum 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 crap-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 assign 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 passed 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 boob – 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 – "