Tommy Black, new heavyweight sensation of the pugilistic world, shut the door softly and stood still, smiling. Behind the smile lurked a killer’s savagery; such an expression, it was said, as Jack Dempsey had worn when he had battered Jess Willard to bleeding pulp in Toledo. The experts deemed this assassin’s instinct, it appeared, essential for the successful pugilist. Tommy Black possessed it with savagery to spare.
He slid, almost slithered, over the rug. He was like a cat on his feet. And then he was in a chair, still smiling, his incredible bulk quiescent as poured steel. “’Lo, Tony, how’s tricks?” His voice was charming. “In town for a day. Doc says I’m getting fine. Knocked off.”
“Tommy, you know Julian Hunter? Hunter, shake hands with the best damned bruiser since the Manassa Mauler.”
Hunter, the dandy, and Black, the man-killer, shook hands; Hunter indolently, Black with the crushing grip of an anaconda. Their eyes touched briefly; then Tommy Black rested quietly in the chair again. Tony Mars said nothing, seeming to be absorbed in the tip of his cigar.
“If you’re busy, Tony, I’ll scram,” said the prizefighter softly.
Mars smiled. “Stick around, kid. Hunter, you too. Mickey!” he bellowed. A burly ruffian stuck his bullet-head into the room. “I’m in conf’rence — can’t see anybody. Get me?” The door clicked shut. Black and Hunter sat without moving or looking at each other. “Now listen, Tommy, about the fight with the champ. That’s why I wired you to come up from training camp if you could.” Mars puffed thoughtfully at his cigar, and Hunter looked bored. “How you feelin’?”
“Who — me?” The fighter grinned and swelled his magnificent chest. “In the pink, Tony, in the pink. I could lick that stumble-bum with one mitt!”
“He used to be pretty good, I hear,” said Mars dryly. “How’s the trainin’ going?”
“Swell. Doc’s got me comin’ around in great shape.”
“Fine. Fine.”
“Got a little trouble gettin’ sparring partners. Busted Big Joe Pedersen’s jaw last week, and it sort of brought out the yellow in the boys.” Black grinned again.
“Yeah. Borchard of the Journal was telling me.” Mars watched the long white ash; suddenly he leaned forward and carefully deposited it in a silver tray on his desk. “Tommy, I think you’re gonna win that fight. You’ll be the new champ if you keep your head.”
“Thanks, Tony, thanks!”
Mars slowly said: “I mean, you ought to win that fight, Tommy.”
There was a windy, stormy silence. Hunter sat very still, and Mars smiled a little.
Then Black raised himself from the chair, scowling fiercely. “What the hell do you mean by that, Tony?”
“Keep you shirt on, kid, keep it on.” Black relaxed. Mars went on in a mild voice. “I’ve heard things around. You know how it is in this racket. They’re always smellin’ frame-ups. Now I’ll talk to you like a Dutch uncle — or maybe like a father because, boy, you need one! That lousy manager of yours would just as soon give you a bum steer and the old double-cross as not. Kid, you’re in the big time. Many a good boy hit the big time, and then the big time hit him because he wasn’t a wise guy. See? You know my rep, Tommy — square. That’s my way. You work my way and we’ll make plenty simoleons together. You don’t work my way—” He stopped as if he had come to the end of his sentence. There was a ringing inevitability about his words that was not entirely absorbed by the Chinese rug and the thick wall-hangings.
He puffed placidly at his cigar.
“Well,” said Black.
“So that’s how it is, Tommy,” said Mars. “There’s a lot of heavy sugar bein’ laid down on you to win. It’s straight sugar — nothin’ crooked about it. On form, strength, youth, record — you’re the comin’ champ. See that you get there. Or if you stop one in the whiskers — an’ don’t kid yourself that the champ’s a pushover — see that you stop it clean. See?”
Black rose. “Hell, I don’t known what’s eatin’ you, Tony,” he said in an injured tone. “You don’t have to go back on me, too! I know what side my bread’s buttered on, believe me!.. Well, glad to’ve met you, Mr. Hunter.” Hunter raised his eyebrows in acknowledgment. “So long, Tony, See you in a couple of weeks.”
“You bet.”
The door closed with a little snick.
“You think,” drawled Hunter, “that the scrap isn’t on the up-and-up, Tony?”
“What I think, Hunter,” said Mars genially, “is nobody’s business but mine. But I’ll tell you one thing: nobody’s stealin’ the gold outa my bridgework.” He stared at Hunter, and Hunter shrugged. “Now,” continued the promoter in quite a different tone, as he replaced his feet on the shining walnut, “to get back to Bucko the Horne, God’s gift to the kids. I’m tellin’ you, Hunter, you’d be passin’ up a swell chance—”
“I can keep my mouth shut, too, Tony,” murmured the sportsman with a smile. “By the way, where does Grant come in on this?”
“Wild Bill?” Mars squinted at his cigar. “What the hell would you expect? Him an’ Buck have been pals ever since Sittin’ Bull took Custer for a ride. Sort of Da-mon and Py-thias business.” Hunter grunted. “Wild Bill’s entitled to his, and I for one aint’ cuttin’ him out of his gravy...”
Wild Bill Grant sat at his desk in the elaborate office placed at his disposal by Tony Mars. It was from this fane that the Delphic words came which moved the whole complex machinery of the rodeo. The desk was littered: cigaret stubs, cigar butts, all dead and cold, were sprawled like fallen soldiers on the edge of the desk’s side, where Grant had deposited them in an unconscious thrift which dated from less prosperous days. The ash-trays, of which there were a half-dozen, were quite clean.
Grant sat his swivel-chair as if it were a horse. His left buttock hung over empty space, and his left leg was stiffly outstretched, so that the whole effect was one of a man riding side-saddle. He was a square, chunky, grizzled old-timer with a walrus mustache and faded gray eyes; the skin of his rough face was brick-red, tough, and seamed and pitted as porous rock. That he was hard as nails was evident from the powerful muscles of his bare forearms and the complete lack of superfluous flesh on his torso. He wore a clumsy bow-tie, and an astonishingly ancient Stetson lay far back on his iron-gray head. This was the Wild Bill Grant who in his youth had been a fighting United States Marshal in the Indian Territory. He was as out of place in the midst of Tony Mars’s shiny office appointments as an Esquimau in a tea-shoppe.
There was a confused mass of papers before him — contracts, bills, orders. He rustled them impatiently, chafing, and reached for a gnawed butt.
A girl came in — pert, trim, artistically cosmetized; genus, New York stenographer. “There’s a gentlem’n wants to see you, Mr. Grant.”
“Waddy?”
“Beg pardon?”
“Puncher — want a job?”
“Yes’r. He says he has a letter for you from Mr. Horne.”
“Oh! Send ’em in, sister.”
She departed with a neat wiggle of her slim hips, and a moment later held the door open for a tall spare poorly dressed Westerner. The visitor stumped in on high cowboy’s heels; they clattered on the border of the floor. His shabby sombrero was in his hand. He wore a tattered, rainwashed old mackinaw, and his boots were down at the heel.
“Come in!” said Grant heartily; he surveyed his visitor with appraising eyes. “What’s this about a letter from Buck?”
There was something the matter with the man’s cleanshaven face, something horribly the matter. The entire left side was brownish purple in color, and puckered and drawn. The purple patch began below the jaw-line and extended to a half-inch above the left eyebrow. A very small spot of purple on the right cheek put a period to what seemed to be the ravages of fire, or acid. He had bad teeth, stained molasses-brown... With a little twitch of his shoulders, Wild Bill Grant looked away.