Winner Take All Part 20

The bell! Holliday certainly was polite. He'd come all the way across the ring in one leap to meet him. Saved him staggering miles and miles toward the other corner. And thud! The roof--but it wasn't a thud. It was a crash--a tinny clangor. Shouldn't have a tin pail--might have cut himself. He got up, and promptly ran into something and sat down again.

It was easier to think, however, in that position. Tin! Tin! A tin roof? That sounded more like it. Only it wasn't tin; it was--it was--

"Got it!" he shouted--he thought he shouted, while men thought he was coughing blood. "Got it! Got it! Solved!"

And now that he knew the answer he could put his mind on this fight.

What round? The eighteenth? They'd lost count probably, but anyway it had gone far enough. He'd finish it now. He had hardly hit Holliday at all; he'd hit him now. Where was he? He groped, and then he found him; found him by the simple process of noting from which quarter Holliday's last blow came. Right there in front of him, standing there and measuring him and driving it into his unprotected face.

It must look queer to the crowd, him not keeping his guard up or anything. They'd think he was letting Holliday knock him out. He'd better get it over with; he was consumed with eagerness, anyhow, to tell Hamilton and English the joke about the roof, the joke which was on himself.

So he swayed with the next blow and rocked lightly back. He'd sit down no more. He swayed with the next one, but this time he snapped forward, glove and arm and shoulder. This time, on the rebound, he put all he had into it; and that after all was what a champion really was: A guy who had something always left to call on, a guy who could shoot it all, when the crisis came.

And even Holliday must have been unwary and fooled and thought he was out standing up. For this time he did not miss. Nor did the floor rise.

Nor Holliday. Tough on Holliday. Solved!

He allowed the referee to hold aloft his hand; good referee,--square. He fell out of the ring--clumsy!--and pa.s.sed down miles and miles of aisle between pale faces. What were _they_ goggling at? Of course he was a little cut up and bruised; what did they expect? He'd taken some punishment. They'd say now, he supposed, that he had no skill.

But they drew back and looked away, or dropped their eyes; they acted almost shamed. Well, some of them had been mistaken; they'd called him yellow. He wanted to stop and tell 'em it was not so, but he couldn't spare the time just now. He had to hurry to his dressing-room and tell Hamilton and English the joke,--this joke at his own expense.

English had an idea apparently that he was helping him, holding him up.

Well, he wasn't. He'd bet it was fourteen feet from his neck to his ankles. But the joke--had they closed the door? Then listen!

"The roof! I thought it was the roof that fell on me! Can you beat that? First a brick roof--then a tin one--" He thought it was laughter which doubled him up.

"And do you know what it really was?" He gave them ample time but received no answer. So he shouted it aloud; he thought he shouted:

"Not the roof at all! Not brick--not even tin! Pots and pans! Pots and pans! Aluminum! Dozens! A whole set of 'em!"

He thought it was laughter which doubled him up; then found he was deathly sick. Was this the floor he was lying upon, or a table? Because if it was the floor he'd have to get up; he didn't know whether he could make it again or not but he'd be a game guy and try. They were holding him? All right, let it go at that. Holliday'd not got up either. He could see Holliday just as plain--just as clear!--unconscious on the canvas. Then the fight must be over--he was glad of that . . .

He came to crying weakly.

CHAPTER XII

WINNER TAKE ALL

His first conscious thought was of his great need to go to her quickly, yet he waited several days to give his marked face time to heal, Hamilton and Jack English waiting with him. And at length, on the way north, he shyly opened his heart to them; he told them of his plan. Because he was urgent about it, and more than a little panicky, they promised they would see him through with it; when they parted at Grand Central it was to be for only an hour or two.

"You'll not fail me?" he asked anxiously.

Hamilton made game of him, a little.

"We'll be there," he answered. "Where's your nerve, man? We'll be there with our hair in a braid."

"We'll be there," echoed English soberly. "We'll be in your corner."

He very nearly missed her; and yet afterward she always insisted that she was sure he would come, even in that last minute while she stood looking about to be certain that she had overlooked nothing in the apartment which she could no longer have afforded to keep even had she wanted to.

Therefore her start at his appearance upon the threshold did not equal his surprise at the sight of her dressed for traveling, her belongings already packed.

For it fairly demoralized him. Like every good tactician he had coped with as many details as could be handled in advance, but against this moment his preparation had been none too thorough. Desperately, once or twice, he had tried to drill himself for it, practicing a line or two which he hoped he could remember.

"I'm not her kind; I'm different from what she is," he had told himself, "and I will tell her that. But I'll tell her, too, that I'll not _stay_ different any longer than it can be helped. I am no dunce; I'll learn to be her kind."

But, slipping away too happily into thoughts of how different she was from everyone else in the whole world, beyond that he had not found it easy to go. None too steadily he had decided to rely upon inspiration.

And now at the sight of her in a scant blue suit and tiny hat, bag in hand before him, every last syllable of his rehearsals basely failed him.

He looked from her inquiring eyes to the stripped room. She believed she understood that survey.

"Felicity's gone," she said in a voice that he hardly recognized as her own. "She went with Dunham, the afternoon of the day you left for the South. I did not tell you then because--"

It seemed too obvious, so she left it unsaid.

At that he reddened and was a little ashamed and humbler than ever at heart. But he'd not thought of Felicity for weeks; he'd never thought of her like this.

"Oh," was all he could manage. "Oh. And you--?"

She thought she understood his blankness.

"I was just going myself."

"Where?" He was suddenly afraid that it was too late for his plan,--that it had always been too late.

"I don't know," she answered. "Home, maybe--where I used to live. It doesn't much matter--anywhere."

Her eyes had not once left his face. And now he saw that they were as changed as her voice. He would have said, had they been other than hers, that they were bitter; no, not bitter; sardonic and mocking. Temporarily like Felicity's. And she must be very tired, judging from her voice, even more tired and wan than she looked.

The phrases which he had rehea.r.s.ed deserted him treacherously.

"Then--then, why not come with me?" he labored over it. "I've a drawing-room on the Lake Sh.o.r.e on the five o'clock. I knew about Felicity; that wasn't why I came back. I came because I thought maybe we could go out--you and I--and look around together."

He knew it was a poor thing of weak words and not what his inarticulate heart would have uttered. Yet he was not prepared for her reception of it.

She laughed up into his face, a hard little, crisp little laugh.

"Why not?" she said. "Why not?"

And when he took her in his arms and kissed her it was not as he had dreamed it would be. Her body was slack, her lips not merely pa.s.sive but cold against his own. His heart heavy for reasons which he could not name, he set her quickly free.

"I'll be back for you, then, at three," he said. "Will you be ready?"

As casually, it came to him, just as calmly he might have discussed his plan with any man.

"At three," she repeated. "I'll be ready."

He left her, not as happy as when he had sped up the stairs; left her demoralized now. In the interlude before his return she sat motionless, her mind a tumult of doubt.