There was a suppressed murmur of laughter in the background.
Dick heard himself saying, "I can't fight everybody in Eagles. But I can fight you." He drew his staff free of the clip. His heart was hammering wildly; he knew he couldn't defeat Ruell, but there was "nothing else to do. He thought fiercely, if he beats me now, I'll come after him again. And again. I won't let up till he does.
"Since you are so insistent," said Ruell slowly, with his hand on the knob of his stick. "But wait. One last word, before we descend to desperate measures. I like you, young Dick; I knew your father. Though it's all against my judgment, I'll get you a different sort of protector if you like. What do you say to an ambitious upstart who merely wants a following of well-born young men? Bodyguards, flatterers, a little fetching and carrying, a fight now and then, perhaps. Believe me, Dick, I'll be losing my time on the deal, but at least, you won't be wasted. Yes? Shake hands on it?"
Dick hesitated. He could feel his resolution slipping away while Ruell talked; it was hard to nerve himself up again, and his voice came out harsher than he meant. "Put up your stick."
Ruell's face took on that closed, hard look that Dick had seen once before. His eyes glittered under half-closed lids. Behind him, the ring of onlookers drew back a little, with a shuffle of feet. Ruell stepped back with his left foot, bending his knees a little; his right hand, dropped slowly and the stick came up in a blur of motion. Before he had even seemed to touch it, it was leaping in the air between them like a live thing; Dick's staff shuddered in his hand to a series of beats; left, right, left ...
Recovering belatedly, Dick chopped for the shoulder. Ruell parried without seeming to move, feinted high, cut under Dick's guard and thumped him solidly in the ribs. "That's one," he said woodenly. He stepped back on guard.
Dick attacked with fury and skill, and found himself unwillingly dancing through a sort of fencing master's exercise: Ruell parried every blow without countering, or merely leaned out of the way and let the stick whistle through the air. Thwack, thwack, thwack, grunt ... Ruell was making him look ridiculous, as if his best efforts were no more dangerous than a baby's. "Fight!" he grunted, and heard the laughter ripple up around him.
Infuriated, Dick lunged. The elbow-check brought him up short; Ruell parried with a contemptuous tap, closed in and swung a numbing blow to the temple. Dick tottered, dazed and off balance. "That's two," said Ruell dimly, and hit him again in the pit of the stomach. "And that's three."
Dick went down; the spinning floor slapped him hard; he lay where he fell, fighting for breath.
Voices echoed indistinguishably; footsteps jarred the floor under his cheek, and then went away. The iron grip on his chest finally eased a little. The first breath he drew was pure agony, but he had to have it or die.
Somebody lifted his head, which was no help; he struggled weakly, and the hand disappeared. A minute later the hands were back, more of them and rougher -- the first one, he realized dimly, had been a woman's. They hauled him up but he couldn't stand; they got his arms around two brawny necks and dragged or carried him across the floor until, by the echoes, they got to one of the alcoves in the rear wall. They lowered him and laid him out on the sofa; he let them do it; he was feeling too sick even to open his eyes.
"The poor kitten," said a woman's voice. It was a low voice, musical but husky. "Who is he, do you know?"
"Name of Jones," said a man. "Frankie says he's been here almost two weeks without making a connection."
There was a murmur and a gone-away feeling; then footsteps coming back, and somebody put a wet handkerchief over his forehead. "Just leave him, if you ask me," said the man's voice. "You know Ruell."
"Yes, but what's going to happen to him?"
"No use worrying about that, Viv -- nothing much you can do." The man sounded deferential and a little stilted, as if he were saying not what he thought, but what was expected of him.
The woman said, "I could always adopt him myself."
"Viv, you know you can't. You've got six too many people on your list already. Dear, you owe it to yourself to be sensible."
"Oh, I suppose you're right. You usually are, Howie."
Opening his eyes, Dick got a blurred glimpse of a man's red-velvet sleeve and a woman in white -- clouds of white or cream-colored lace, and an enormous white hat. The woman was looking down at him, one gloved hand at her chin; behind her he could see a little group of dark-uniformed slobs.
"Well, at least," she said, "we can take him home and let Dr. Bob look at him. Then we can decide. Saul, run and get a chair."
One of the slobs bowed and said, "Right away, Miz' Demetriou." Dick closed his eyes again, not much caring if he lived or died, and in a few moments he was hazily aware that they were lifting him into a chair-cart. The next thing he knew, he was in a bed somewhere, and a man with gray whiskers was bending over him, exhaling rum. There were silver birds in the dark-blue canopy high overhead. "Ow," he said, turning away from the fingers that prodded his temple.
"Um-hm," the gray-whiskered man remarked, and straightened up with a rustle of silk. "No bones broken. Just a little concussion, maybe; nothing serious. Keep him quiet for a day or two, say, and he'll be all right." He began packing something into a box, looking down with a serious expression, breathing in little grunts.
From the yellow glow of light beyond him, an ironic voice said, "Just a day or two, eh? Viv, I give up."
When he awoke again, he had a little trouble remembering where he was and how he had got there. He sat up, and a girl in yellow came over immediately from the other side of the room. "Feeling better?" she asked, smiling pleasantly, "Like a little breakfast?" She was young and not bad-looking, if you could overlook the green slob-mark in the middle of her forehead.
"No, I'm not hungry." Under the coverlet, he discovered, he was wearing some kind of elaborate sleeping garment with a drawstring throat. He started to swing his legs over the side of the bed, "Just get me my clothes."
The girl looked anxious, and pressed him gently back. "Oh, no, please, Mister Jones. Lady said you must stay in bed until you feel better. Please, now."
His head was throbbing abominably, and he was in no mood to argue. He pushed her out of the way and stood up. His legs were weaker than he had expected. He had to catch onto the bedpost to steady himself.
The slob girl was backing away. "Oh, dear. Miz' Demetriou!"
The door opened and a woman came rustling in with quick, determined steps. "Now, really. Get back in the bed, do you hear?"
Rather than fall and make a spectacle of himself, Dick sat down on the bed. The slob girl helped him put his legs up, and tucked the coverlet around him. "That's all," the woman told her, and sat down gracefully in the bedside chair. "We haven't been properly introduced," she said; her throaty voice dwelt mockingly on the next to last word. "I'm Mrs. Charles Demetriou; you're Mr. Richard Jones: how do you do?"
It was the first chance he had had to see her clearly. She was a slender woman, dressed this morning in a full-skirted violet negligee, with a toque of the same color perched on the brown, glossy waves of her hair. Her face was lean and brown, hollow under the cheekbones; she had great dark eyes, heavy-lidded.
Dick was feeling short-tempered. He only had remembered the conversation he'd heard the day before, but there had been an argument about whether to help him or leave him, he recalled; and anyhow, this woman had been a witness of his humiliation.
"I'm glad to know you," he said shortly. "Nice of you to help out, and so on, but I'm all right now. If you'll just send a message to my body-slob to come and get me -- " When she did not speak, but continued to look at him unsmilingly, he felt uncomfortable enough to add: "I can rest up just as well in my own place. I don't want to seem ungrateful or anything, but -- "