CHAPTER XIII
STRANGE BEHAVIOUR OF A SPARRING-PARTNER
1
Sally's emotions, as she sat in her apartment on the morning of her
return to New York, resembled somewhat those of a swimmer who, after
wavering on a raw morning at the brink of a chill pool, nerves himself
to the plunge. She was aching, but she knew that she had done well. If
she wanted happiness, she must fight for it, and for all these months
she had been shirking the fight. She had done with wavering on the
brink, and here she was, in mid-stream, ready for whatever might befall.
It hurt, this coming to grips. She had expected it to hurt. But it was a
pain that stimulated, not a dull melancholy that smothered. She felt
alive and defiant.
She had finished unpacking and tidying up. The next move was certainly
to go and see Ginger. She had suddenly become aware that she wanted very
badly to see Ginger. His stolid friendliness would be a support and a
prop. She wished now that she had sent him a cable, so that he could
have met her at the dock. It had been rather terrible at the dock. The
echoing customs sheds had sapped her valour and she felt alone and
forlorn.
She looked at her watch, and was surprised to find how early it was.
She could catch him at the office and make him take her out to lunch.
She put on her hat and went out.
The restless hand of change, always active in New York, had not spared
the outer office of the Fillmore Nicholas Theatrical Enterprises Ltd. in
the months of her absence. She was greeted on her arrival by an entirely
new and original stripling in the place of the one with whom at her last
visit she had established such cordial relations. Like his predecessor
he was generously pimpled, but there the resemblance stopped. He was a
grim boy, and his manner was stern and suspicious. He peered narrowly at
Sally for a moment as if he had caught her in the act of purloining the
office blotting-paper, then, with no little acerbity, desired her to
state her business.
"I want Mr. Kemp," said Sally.
The office-boy scratched his cheek dourly with a ruler. No one would
have guessed, so austere was his aspect, that a moment before her
entrance he had been trying to balance it on his chin, juggling the
while with a pair of paper-weights. For, impervious as he seemed to
human weaknesses, it was this lad's ambition one day to go into
vaudeville.
"What name?" he said, coldly.
"Nicholas," said Sally. "I am Mr. Nicholas' sister."
On a previous occasion when she had made this announcement, disastrous
results had ensued; but to-day it went well. It seemed to hit the
office-boy like a bullet. He started convulsively, opened his mouth,
and dropped the ruler. In the interval of stooping and recovering it he
was able to pull himself together. He had not been curious about Sally's
name. What he had wished was to have the name of the person for whom she
was asking repeated. He now perceived that he had had a bit of luck. A
wearying period of disappointment in the matter of keeping the
paper-weights circulating while balancing the ruler, had left him
peevish, and it had been his intention to work off his ill-humour on the
young visitor. The discovery that it was the boss's sister who was
taking up his time, suggested the advisability of a radical change of
tactics. He had stooped with a frown: he returned to the perpendicular
with a smile that was positively winning. It was like the sun suddenly
bursting through a London fog.
"Will you take a seat, lady?" he said, with polished courtesy even
unbending so far as to reach out and dust one with the sleeve of his
coat. He added that the morning was a fine one.
"Thank you," said Sally. "Will you tell him I'm here."
"Mr. Nicholas is out, miss," said the office-boy, with gentlemanly
regret. "He's back in New York, but he's gone out."
"I don't want Mr. Nicholas. I want Mr. Kemp."
"Mr. Kemp?"
"Yes, Mr. Kemp."
Sorrow at his inability to oblige shone from every hill-top on the boy's
face.
"Don't know of anyone of that name around here," he said,
apologetically.
"But surely..." Sally broke off suddenly. A grim foreboding had come to
her. "How long have you been here?" she asked.
"All day, ma'am," said the office-boy, with the manner of a Casablanca.
"I mean, how long have you been employed here?"
"Just over a month, miss."
"Hasn't Mr. Kemp been in the office all that time?"
"Name's new to me, lady. Does he look like anything? I meanter say,
what's he look like?"
"He has very red hair."
"Never seen him in here," said the office-boy. The truth shone coldly
on Sally. She blamed herself for ever having gone away, and told herself
that she might have known what would happen. Left to his own resources,
the unhappy Ginger had once more made a hash of it. And this hash must
have been a more notable and outstanding hash than any of his previous
efforts, for, surely, Fillmore would not lightly have dismissed one who
had come to him under her special protection.
"Where is Mr. Nicholas?" she asked. It seemed to her that Fillmore was
the only possible source of information. "Did you say he was out?"
"Really out, miss," said the office-boy, with engaging candour. "He
went off to White Plains in his automobile half-an-hour ago."
"White Plains? What for?"
The pimpled stripling had now given himself up wholeheartedly to social
chit-chat. Usually he liked his time to himself and resented the
intrusion of the outer world, for he who had chosen jugglery for his
walk in life must neglect no opportunity of practising: but so
favourable was the impression which Sally had made on his plastic mind
that he was delighted to converse with her as long as she wished.
"I guess what's happened is, he's gone up to take a look at Bugs
Butler," he said.
"Whose butler?" said Sally mystified.
The office-boy smiled a tolerant smile. Though an admirer of the sex,
he was aware that women were seldom hep to the really important things
in life. He did not blame them. That was the way they were constructed,
and one simply had to accept it.
"Bugs Butler is training up at White Plains, miss."
"Who is Bugs Butler?"
Something of his former bleakness of aspect returned to the office-boy.
Sally's question had opened up a subject on which he felt deeply.
"Ah!" he replied, losing his air of respectful deference as he
approached the topic. "Who is he! That's what they're all saying, all
the wise guys. Who has Bugs Butler ever licked?"
"I don't know," said Sally, for he had fixed her with a penetrating gaze
and seemed to be pausing for a reply.
"Nor nobody else," said the stripling vehemently. "A lot of stiffs out
on the coast, that's all. Ginks nobody has ever heard of, except Cyclone
Mullins, and it took that false alarm fifteen rounds to get a referee's
decision over him. The boss would go and give him a chance against the
champ, but I could have told him that the legitimate contender was K-leg
Binns. K-leg put Cyclone Mullins out in the fifth. Well," said the
office-boy in the overwrought tone of one chafing at human folly, "if
anybody thinks Bugs Butler can last six rounds with Lew Lucas, I've two
bucks right here in my vest pocket that says it ain't so."
Sally began to see daylight.
"Oh, Bugs--Mr. Butler is one of the boxers in this fight that my brother
is interested in?"
"That's right. He's going up against the lightweight champ. Lew Lucas
is the lightweight champ. He's a bird!"
"Yes?" said Sally. This youth had a way of looking at her with his head
cocked on one side as though he expected her to say something.
"Yes, sir!" said the stripling with emphasis. "Lew Lucas is a hot
sketch. He used to live on the next street to me," he added as clinching
evidence of his hero's prowess. "I've seen his old mother as close as I
am to you. Say, I seen her a hundred times. Is any stiff of a Bugs
Butler going to lick a fellow like that?"
"It doesn't seem likely."
"You spoke it!" said the lad crisply, striking unsuccessfully at a fly
which had settled on the blotting-paper.
There was a pause. Sally started to rise.
"And there's another thing," said the office-boy, loath to close the
subject. "Can Bugs Butler make a hundred and thirty-five ringside
without being weak?"
"It sounds awfully difficult."
"They say he's clever." The expert laughed satirically. "Well, what's
that going to get him? The poor fish can't punch a hole in a
nut-sundae."
"You don't seem to like Mr. Butler."
"Oh, I've nothing against him," said the office-boy magnanimously.
"I'm only saying he's no licence to be mixing it with Lew Lucas."
Sally got up. Absorbing as this chat on current form was, more
important matters claimed her attention.
"How shall I find my brother when I get to White Plains?" she asked.
"Oh, anybody'll show you the way to the training-camp. If you hurry,
there's a train you can make now."
"Thank you very much."
"You're welcome."
He opened the door for her with an old-world politeness which disuse had
rendered a little rusty: then, with an air of getting back to business
after a pleasant but frivolous interlude, he took up the paper-weights
once more and placed the ruler with nice care on his upturned chin.
