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 nobody 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 title 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.
When they blowed in that night at seven o'clock, I seen the Kid looks kinda worried, while he's washin' the Golden West off his face and neck, so I ask him how Arthur is comin' along. Scanlan coughs a couple of times and then he says he don't know, because he wasn't able to get over there that afternoon – the first he'd missed since I promised the world's champion girl I'd assist her. While I'm still bawlin' him out, he claims it wasn't his fault, because the car broke down in the middle of California and they had to get towed back.
I will say I was sorry to find out that Miss Vincent wasn't above a little rough stuff! Oh, you ladies!
The next day Genaro suddenly decides to take a scene in the Kid's movie, and as we was under contract we had to stay. The third afternoon, Miss Vincent gets a terrible headache and the Kid has to sit on the hotel porch with her, readin' out loud her press notices from the movie magazines.
I kept out of it, but thinkin' about Arthur and that little nurse over there had me bitin' nails, and the next day I told the Kid if he didn't go out and trade wallops with Arthur, I was through as his pilot. I said that right out loud in front of Miss Vincent, lookin' her right in them famous baby-blue eyes of hers. But you can't figure women – she crossed me and tells the Kid to go and she'd go with him!
We went out in her racin' car, with me ridin' on the runnin' board and thinkin' what a fine thing accident insurance was for a guy of moderate means. By dumb luck we missed crashin' into the scenery along the road and stopped outside the iron gates of the sanitarium. We had hardly got in the office, when from down the hall we heard what sounded like a race riot, and a couple of orderlies goes past us so fast that I didn't believe it could be done, although I seen 'em. The Kid runs down to where the noise was comin' from and I tagged along in the rear, stoppin' with him outside a big two-doored room, where from the sounds that crashed out from inside they was puttin' on a dress rehearsal of a race riot.
While we stood there lookin' at each other, a familiar deep snarlin' voice roars out over the others – they was a scream, too, that made me neck and neck with the Kid as we busted in the locked doors and went sprawlin' inside.
Oh, boy!
A half dozen nurses and two or three doctors is lined up against the wall on the far side, crouchin' back of an operatic table and tryin' to force their bodies through the hard cement. The place looks like a cyclone had hit it, with the walls scraped and scarred and the floor covered with plaster and what not like the show-room of a junk shop. Half on the floor and half on a chair is Miss Woods. I hoped she had only fainted.
In the middle of the room and backin' against the doors is a big, growlin', red-eyed killer that used to be Arthur.
Most of his clothes is torn off where some of them poor little human bein's had tried to hold him, and over his head he's swingin' a iron pole he'd torn from the fancy front gate outside. Each time he swings, he comes nearer that bunch with nothin' between them and Heaven but a white enameled table. He didn't seem to notice Scanlan, who slid almost to his feet, and rightin' himself like a cat, stepped back to size the thing up. Then with a growl, Arthur chops at the operatin' table with the pole and crumbles it like a berry box. The women screamed – I think one of 'em fainted. The doctors spread in front of them, as Arthur raised the pole to finish the job.
And then Scanlan, poppin' up from somewheres, jumps in front of Arthur, his face the color of that busted table, but his body as steady as the Rockies, as he plants himself there before the big guy, swingin' his head back easily before that tremblin' iron pole. The Kid throws his hands up in a fightin' position and dances from one foot to the other lookin' for a openin', like a guy with a pail of water tryin' to put out hell! Arthur hesitates, starin' wildly at the Kid, and then his face begins to change till it's almost human. He looks like he's tryin' to think.
"Come on!" bawls Scanlan – loud, to keep the crack out of his voice. "Come on!" He dances around Arthur and makes a pass at him. "I got some new ones to show you to-day!" he yells. "Hurry up, or we – won't – have – time – to – mix it!"
I remember the head doc told me afterwards it was because the big feller had been doin' that every day – boxin' with the Kid – for so long that it —
But what's that matter now? Arthur dropped that iron pole, put up his hands, grins like a baby and rocks the Kid with a straight left, while them nurses and doctors tumbled out of the room thankin' their different gods. Somebody carried out Miss Woods, too.
I guess Scanlan never battled before like he did in the next ten minutes, because he was fightin' for the biggest purse he ever climbed in a ring for – his life! The big guy smashed him all over the place tryin' for a knockout like the Kid had taught him, crushin' his ribs in the clinches till Scanlan's breathin' cut me to the heart and rainin' wallops on him like a machine gun. Me? Oh, I didn't do much but root for the Kid. Y'see I was beside that operatic table when Arthur lammed it with the pole – some of it kinda glanced off and I stopped it with my head. A game little bantam of a doctor hopped around 'em, as they slewed over the floor, lookin' like a referee – but he was simply tryin' to slip friend Arthur a hypodermic while Scanlan kept him busy.
Finally, the Kid staggers Arthur with a lucky right smash to the chin, and then a half a dozen left and rights to the body cut his size down to where the Kid could put all he had left in one swing – and it's all over. The little doc with the hypo gets busy, and, when we left the room, Arthur was headed for the operatin' pen – his trip havin' been interrupted by the slight excitement Scanlan had stopped!
Well, me and the Kid was hustled upstairs to be fussed over, windin' up, you might say, where we started, in the hospital. After a time Miss Woods comes up and thanks us – at least she made a stab at it and weeps. The operation had been a success, and when Arthur could walk he was gonna reward Miss Woods for her lovin' care by marryin' her, and she looked like she thought that was enough – ain't women a scream?
We was talkin' to the doctor, when Miss Vincent come in – stands in the doorway for a minute lookin' like a swell picture in a punk frame, and comes to the Kid with a yours-for-keeps look in her eyes. Scanlan throws up his head like he's just thought of somethin'.
"Say!" he pipes through the bandages. "I know what that psychological moment thing is now – the doc has just been tellin' me. It seems," he says with a grin. "It seems I pulled one off here this afternoon!"