The Début of Battling Billson - (2)

A wailing cry rose above the din of excited patrons of sport endeavouring to explain to their neighbours how it had all happened. It was the voice of Ukridge mourning over his dead.
    At half-past eleven that night, as I was preparing for bed, a drooping figure entered my room. I mixed a silent, sympathetic Scotch and soda, and for awhile no word was spoken.
    “How is the poor fellow?” I asked at length.
    “He’s all right,” said Ukridge, listlessly. “I left him eating fish and chips at a coffee-stall.”
    “Bad luck his getting pipped on the post like that.”
    “Bad luck!” boomed Ukridge, throwing off his lethargy with a vigour that spoke of mental anguish. “What do you mean, bad luck? It was just dam’ bone-headedness. Upon my Sam, it’s a little hard. I invest vast sums in this man, I support him in luxury for two weeks, asking nothing of him in return except to sail in and knock somebody’s head off, which he could have done in two minutes if he had liked, and he lets me down purely and simply because the other fellow told him that he had been up all night looking after his wife who had burned her hand at the jam factory. Inferanal sentimentalism!”
    “Does him credit,” I argued.
    “Bah!”
    “Kind hearts,” I urged, “are more than coronets.”
    “Who the devil wants a pugilist to have a kind heart? What’s the use of this man Billson being able to knock out an elephant if he’s afflicted with this damned maudlin mushiness? Who ever heard of a mushy pugilist? It’s the wrong spirit. It doesn’t make for success.”
    “It’s a handicap, of course,” I admitted.
    “What guarantee have I,” demanded Ukridge, “that if I go to enormous trouble and expense getting him another match, he won’t turn aside and brush away a silent tear in the first round because he’s heard that the blighter’s wife has got an ingrowing toenail?”
    “You could match him only against bachelors.”
    “Yes, and the first bachelor he met would draw him into a corner and tell him his aunt was down with whooping-cough, and the chump would heave a sigh and stick his chin out to be walloped. A fellow’s got no business to have red hair if he isn’t going to live up to it. And yet,” said Ukridge, wistfully, “I’ve seen that man—it was in a dance-hall at Naples—I’ve seen him take on at least eleven Italians simultaneously. But then, one of them had stuck a knife about three inches into his leg. He seems to need something like that to give him ambition.”
    “I don’t see how you are going to arrange to have him knifed just before each fight.”
    “No,” said Ukridge, mournfully.
    “What are you going to do about his future? Have you any plans?”
    “Nothing definite. My aunt was looking for a companion to attend to her correspondence and take care of the canary last time I saw her. I might try to get the job for him.”
    And with a horrid, mirthless laugh Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge borrowed five shillings and passed out into the night.
    I did not see Ukridge for the next few days, but I had news of him from our mutual friend George Tupper, whom I met prancing in uplifted mood down Whitehall.
    “I say,” said George Tupper without preamble, and with a sort of dazed fervour, “they’ve given me an under-secretaryship.”
    I pressed his hand. I would have slapped him on the back, but one does not slap the backs of eminent Foreign Office officials in Whitehall in broad daylight, even if one has been at school with them.
    “Congratulations,” I said. “There is no one whom I would more gladly see under-secretarying. I heard rumours of this from Ukridge.”
    “Oh, yes, I remember I told him it might be coming off. Good old Ukridge! I met him just now and told him the news, and he was delighted.”
    “How much did he touch you for?”
    “Eh? Oh, only five pounds. Till Saturday. He expects to have a lot of money by then.”
    “Did you ever know the time when Ukridge didn’t expect to have a lot of money?”
    “I want you and Ukridge to come and have a bit of dinner with me to celebrate. How would Wednesday suit you?”
    “Splendidly.”
    “Seven-thirty at the Regent Grill, then. Will you tell Ukridge?”
    “I don’t know where he’s got to. I haven’t seen him for nearly a week. Did he tell you where he was?”
    “Out at some place at Barnes. What was the name of it?”
    “The White Hart?”
    “That’s it.”
    “Tell me,” I said, “how did he seem? Cheerful?”
    “Very. Why?”
    “The last time I saw him he was thinking of giving up the struggle. He had had reverses.”
    I proceeded to the White Hart immediately after lunch. The fact that Ukridge was still at that hostelry and had regained his usual sunny outlook on life seemed to point to the fact that the clouds enveloping the future of Mr. Billson had cleared away, and that the latter’s hat was still in the ring. That this was so was made clear to me directly I arrived. Enquiring for my old friend, I was directed to an upper room, from which, as I approached, there came a peculiar thudding noise. It was caused, as I perceived on opening the door, by Mr. Billson. Clad in flannel trousers and a sweater, he was earnestly pounding a large leather object suspended from a wooden platform. His manager, seated on a soap-box in a corner, regarded him the while with affectionate proprietorship.
    “Hallo, old horse!” said Ukridge, rising as I entered. “Glad to see you.”
    The din of Mr. Billson’s bag-punching, from which my arrival had not caused him to desist, was such as to render conversation difficult. We moved to the quieter retreat of the bar downstairs, where I informed Ukridge of the under-secretary’s invitation.
    “I’ll be there,” said Ukridge. “There’s one thing about good old Billson, you can trust him not to break training if you take your eye off him. And, of course, he realises that this is a big thing. It’ll be the making of him.”
    “Your aunt is considering engaging him, then?”
    “My aunt? What on earth are you talking about? Collect yourself, laddie.”
    “When you left me you were going to try to get him the job of looking after your aunt’s canary.”
    “Oh, I was feeling rather sore then. That’s all over. I had an earnest talk with the poor zimp, and he means business from now on. And so he ought to, dash it, with a magnificent opportunity like this.”
    “Like what?”
    “We’re on to a big thing now, laddie, the dickens of a big thing.”
    “I hope you’ve made sure the other man’s a bachelor. Who is he?”
    “Tod Bingham.”
    “Tod Bingham?” I groped in my memory. “You don’t mean the middle-weight champion?”
    “That’s the fellow.”
    “You don’t expect me to believe that you’ve got a match on with a champion already?”
    “It isn’t exactly a match. It’s like this. Tod Bingham is going round the East-end halls offering two hundred quid to anyone who’ll stay four rounds with him. Advertisement stuff. Good old Billson is going to unleash himself at the Shoreditch Empire next Saturday.”
    “Do you think he’ll be able to stay four rounds?”
    “Stay four rounds!” cried Ukridge. “Why, he could stay four rounds with a fellow armed with a Gatling-gun and a couple of pickaxes. That money’s as good as in our pockets, laddie. And once we’re through with this job, there isn’t a boxing-place in England that won’t jump at us. I don’t mind telling you in confidence, old horse, that in a year from now I expect to be pulling in hundreds a week. Clean up a bit here first, you know, and then pop over to America and make an enormous fortune. Damme, I shan’t know how to spend the money!”
    “Why not buy some socks? I’m running a bit short of them.”
    “Now, laddie, laddie,” said Ukridge, reprovingly, “need we strike a jarring note? Is this the moment to fling your beastly socks in an old friend’s face? A broader-minded spirit is what I would like to see.”
    I was ten minutes late in arriving at the Regent Grill on the Wednesday of George Tupper’s invitation, and the spectacle of George in person standing bare-headed at the Piccadilly entrance filled me with guilty remorse. George was the best fellow in the world, but the atmosphere of the Foreign Office had increased the tendency he had always had from boyhood to a sort of precise fussiness, and it upset him if his affairs did not run exactly on schedule. The thought that my unpunctuality should have marred this great evening sent me hurrying towards him full of apologies.
    “Oh, there you are,” said George Tupper. “I say, it’s too bad——”
    “I’m awfully sorry. My watch——”
    “Ukridge!” cried George Tupper, and I perceived that it was not I who had caused his concern.
    “Isn’t he coming?” I asked, amazed. The idea of Ukridge evading a free meal was one of those that seem to make the solid foundations of the world rock.
    “He’s come. And he’s brought a girl with him!”
    “A girl!”
    “In pink, with yellow hair,” wailed George Tupper. “What am I to do?”
    I pondered the point.
    “It’s a weird thing for even Ukridge to have done,” I said, “but I suppose you’ll have to give her dinner.”
    “But the place is full of people I know, and this girl’s so—so spectacular.”
    I felt for him deeply, but I could see no way out of it.
    “You don’t think I could say I had been taken ill?”
    “It would hurt Ukridge’s feelings.”
    “I should enjoy hurting Ukridge’s feelings, curse him!” said George Tupper, fervently.
    “And it would be an awful slam for the girl, whoever she is.”
    George Tupper sighed. His was a chivalrous nature. He drew himself up as if bracing himself for a dreadful ordeal.
    “Oh, well, I suppose there’s nothing to do,” he said. “Come along. I left them drinking cocktails in the lounge.”
    George had not erred in describing Ukridge’s addition to the festivities as spectacular. Flamboyant would have been a suitable word. As she preceded us down the long dining-room, her arm linked in George Tupper’s—she seemed to have taken a liking to George—I had ample opportunity for studying her, from her patent-leather shoes to the mass of golden hair beneath her picture-hat. She had a loud, clear voice, and she was telling George Tupper the rather intimate details of an internal complaint which had recently troubled an aunt of hers. If George had been the family physician, she could not have been franker; and I could see a dull glow spreading over his shapely ears.
    Perhaps Ukridge saw it, too, for he seemed to experience a slight twinge of conscience.
    “I have an idea, laddie,” he whispered, “that old Tuppy is a trifle peeved at my bringing Flossie along. If you get a chance, you might just murmur to him that it was military necessity.”
    “Who is she?” I asked.
    “I told you about her. Flossie, the barmaid at the Crown in Kennington. Billson’s fiancée.”
    I looked at him in amazement.
    “Do you mean to tell me that you’re courting death by flirting with Battling Billson’s girl?”
    “My dear old man, nothing like that,” said Ukridge, shocked. “The whole thing is, I’ve got a particular favour to ask of her—rather a rummy request—and it was no good springing it on her in cold blood. There had to be a certain amount of champagne in advance, and my funds won’t run to champagne. I’m taking her on to the Alhambra after dinner. I’ll look you up to-night and tell you all about it.”
    We then proceeded to dine. It was not one of the pleasantest meals of my experience. The future Mrs. Billson prattled agreeably throughout, and Ukridge assisted her in keeping the conversation alive; but the shattered demeanour of George Tupper would have taken the sparkle out of any banquet. From time to time he pulled himself together and endeavoured to play the host, but for the most part he maintained a pale and brooding silence; and it was a relief when Ukridge and his companion rose to leave.
    “Well!——” began George Tupper in a strangled voice, as they moved away down the aisle.
    I lit a cigar and sat back dutifully to listen.
    Ukridge arrived in my rooms at midnight, his eyes gleaming through their pince-nez with a strange light. His manner was exuberant.
    “It’s all right,” he said.
    “I’m glad you think so.”
    “Did you explain to Tuppy?”
    “I didn’t get a chance. He was talking too hard.”
    “About me?”
    “Yes. He said everything I’ve always felt about you, only far, far better than I could ever have put it.”
    Ukridge’s face clouded for a moment, but cheerfulness returned.
    “Oh, well, it can’t be helped. He’ll simmer down in a day or two. It had to be done, laddie. Life and death matter. And it’s all right. Read this.”
    I took the letter he handed me. It was written in a scrawly hand.
    “What’s this?”
    “Read it, laddie. I think it will meet the case.” I read.
    “‘Wilberforce.’”
    “Who on earth’s Wilberforce?”
    “I told you that was Billson’s name.”
    “Oh, yes.”
    I returned to the letter.
    Wilberforce,—
    “I take my pen in hand to tell you that I can never be yours. You will no doubt be surprised to hear that I love another and a better man, so that it can never be. He loves me, and he is a better man than you.
    “Hoping this finds you in the pink as it leaves me at present,
    “Yours faithfully,
    “Florence Burns.”
    “I told her to keep it snappy,” said Ukridge.
    “Well, she’s certainly done it,” I replied, handing back the letter. “I’m sorry. From the little I saw of her, I thought her a nice girl—for Billson. Do you happen to know the other man’s address? Because it would be a kindly act to send him a post card advising him to leave England for a year or two.”
    “The Shoreditch Empire will find him this week.”
    “What!”
    “The other man is Tod Bingham.”
    “Tod Bingham!” The drama of the situation moved me. “Do you mean to say that Tod Bingham is in love with Battling Billson’s girl?”
    “No. He’s never seen her!”
    “What do you mean?”
    Ukridge sat down creakingly on the sofa. He slapped my knee with sudden and uncomfortable violence.
    “Laddie,” said Ukridge, “I will tell you all. Yesterday afternoon I found old Billson reading a copy of the Daily Sportsman. He isn’t much of a reader as a rule, so I was rather interested to know what had gripped him. And do you know what it was, old horse?”
    “I do not.”
    “It was an article about Tod Bingham. One of those damned sentimental blurbs they print about pugilists nowadays, saying what a good chap he was in private life and how he always sent a telegram to his old mother after each fight and gave her half the purse. Damme, there ought to be a censorship of the Press. These blighters don’t mind what they print. I don’t suppose Tod Bingham has got an old mother, and if he has I’ll bet he doesn’t give her a bob. There were tears in that chump Billson’s eyes as he showed me the article. Salt tears, laddie! ‘Must be a nice feller!’ he said. Well, I ask you! I mean to say, it’s a bit thick when the man you’ve been pouring out money for and watching over like a baby sister starts getting sorry for a champion three days before he’s due to fight him. A champion, mark you! It was bad enough his getting mushy about that fellow at Wonderland, but when it came to being soft-hearted over Tod Bingham something had to be done. Well, you know me. Brain like a buzz-saw. I saw the only way of counteracting this pernicious stuff was to get him so mad with Tod Bingham that he would forget all about his old mother, so I suddenly thought: Why not get Flossie to pretend that Bingham had cut him out with her? Well, it’s not the sort of thing you can ask a girl to do without preparing the ground a bit, so I brought her along to Tuppy’s dinner. It was a master-stroke, laddie. There’s nothing softens the delicately-nurtured like a good dinner, and there’s no denying that old Tuppy did us well. She agreed the moment I put the thing to her, and sat down and wrote that letter without a blink. I think she thinks it’s all a jolly practical joke. She’s a light-hearted girl.”
    “Must be.”
    “It’ll give poor old Billson a bit of a jar for the time being, I suppose, but it’ll make him spread himself on Saturday night, and he’ll be perfectly happy on Sunday morning when she tells him she didn’t mean it and he realises that he’s got a hundred quid of Tod Bingham’s in his trousers pocket.”
    “I thought you said it was two hundred quid that Bingham was offering.”
    “I get a hundred,” said Ukridge, dreamily.
    “The only flaw is, the letter doesn’t give the other man’s name. How is Billson to know it’s Tod Bingham?”
    “Why, damme, laddie, do use your intelligence. Billson isn’t going to sit and yawn when he gets that letter. He’ll buzz straight down to Kennington and ask Flossie.”
    “And then she will give the whole thing away.”
    “No, she won’t. I slipped her a couple of quid to promise she wouldn’t. And that reminds me, old man, it has left me a bit short, so if you could possibly manage——”
    “Good night,” I said.
    “But, laddie——”
    “And God bless you,” I added, firmly.
    The Shoreditch Empire is a roomy house, but it was crowded to the doors when I reached it on the Saturday night. In normal circumstances I suppose there would always have been a large audience on a Saturday, and this evening the lure of Tod Bingham’s personal appearance had drawn more than capacity. In return for my shilling I was accorded the privilege of standing against the wall at the back, a position from which I could not see a great deal of the performance.
    From the occasional flashes which I got of the stage between the heads of my neighbours, however, and from the generally restless and impatient attitude of the audience I gathered that I was not missing much. The programme of the Shoreditch Empire that week was essentially a one-man affair. The patrons had the air of suffering the preliminary acts as unavoidable obstacles that stand between them and the head-liner. It was Tod Bingham whom they had come to see, and they were not cordial to the unfortunate serio-comics, tramp cyclists, jugglers, acrobats, and ballad singers who intruded themselves during the earlier part of the evening. The cheer that arose as the curtain fell on a dramatic sketch came from the heart, for the next number on the programme was that of the star.
    A stout man in evening dress with a red handkerchief worn ambassadorially athwart his shirt-front stepped out from the wings.
    “Ladies and gentlemen!”
    “’Ush!” cried the audience.
    “Ladies and gentlemen!”
    A Voice: “Good ole Tod!” (“Cheese it!”)
    “Ladies and gentlemen,” said the ambassador for the third time. He scanned the house apprehensively. “Deeply regret have unfortunate disappointment to announce. Tod Bingham unfortunately unable to appear before you to-night.”
    A howl like the howl of wolves balked of their prey or of an amphitheatre full of Roman citizens on receipt of the news that the supply of lions had run out greeted these words. We stared at each other with a wild surmise. Could this thing be, or was it not too thick for human belief?
    “Wot’s the matter with ’im?” demanded the gallery, hoarsely.
    “Yus, wot’s the matter with ’im?” echoed we of the better element on the lower floor.
    The ambassador sidled uneasily towards the prompt entrance. He seemed aware that he was not a popular favourite.
    “’E ’as ’ad an unfortunate accident,” he declared, nervousness beginning to sweep away his aitches wholesale. “On ’is way ’ere to this ’all ’e was unfortunately run into by a truck, sustaining bruises and contusions which render ’im unfortunately unable to appear before you to-night. I beg to announce that ’is place will be taken by Professor Devine, who will render ’is marvellous imitations of various birds and familiar animals. Ladies and gentlemen,” concluded the ambassador, stepping nimbly off the stage, “I thank you one and all.”
    The curtain rose and a dapper individual with a waxed moustache skipped on.
    “Ladies and gentlemen, my first imitation will be of that well-known songster, the common thrust—better known to some of you per’aps as the throstle. And in connection with my performance I wish to state that I ’ave nothing whatsoever in my mouth. The effects which I produce——”
    I withdrew, and two-thirds of the audience started to do the same. From behind us, dying away as the doors closed, came the plaintive note of the common thrush feebly competing with that other and sterner bird which haunts those places of entertainment where audiences are critical and swift to take offence.
    Out in the street a knot of Shoreditch’s younger set were hanging on the lips of an excited orator in a battered hat and trousers which had been made for a larger man. Some stirring tale which he was telling held them spell-bound. Words came raggedly through the noise of the traffic.
    “——like this. Then ’e ’its ’im another like that. Then they start—on the side of the jor——”
    “Pass along, there,” interrupted an official voice. “Come on, there, pass along.”
    The crowd thinned and resolved itself into its elements. I found myself moving down the street in company with the wearer of the battered hat. Though we had not been formally introduced, he seemed to consider me a suitable recipient for his tale. He enrolled me at once as a nucleus for a fresh audience.
    “’E comes up, this bloke does, just as Tod is goin’ in at the stage-door——”
    “Tod?” I queried.
    “Tod Bingham. ’E comes up just as ’e’s goin’ in at the stage-door, and ’e says ‘’Ere!’ and Tod says ‘Yus?’ and this bloke ’e says ‘Put ’em up!’ and Tod says ‘Put wot up?’ and this bloke says ‘Yer ’ands,’ and Tod says ‘Wot, me?’—sort of surprised. An’ the next minute they’re fightin’ all over the shop.”
    “But surely Tod Bingham was run over by a truck?”
    The man in the battered hat surveyed me with the mingled scorn and resentment which the devout bestow on those of heretical views.
    “Truck! ’E wasn’t run over by no truck. Wot mikes yer fink ’e was run over by a truck? Wot ’ud ’e be doin’ bein’ run over by a truck? ’E ’ad it put across ’im by this red-’eaded bloke, same as I’m tellin’ yer.”
    A great light shone upon me.
    “Red-headed?” I cried.
    “Yus.”
    “A big man?”
    “Yus.”
    “And he put it across Tod Bingham?”
    “Put it across ’im proper. ’Ad to go ’ome in a keb, Tod did. Funny a bloke that could fight like that bloke could fight ’adn’t the sense to go and do it on the stige and get some money for it. That’s wot I think.”
    Across the street an arc-lamp shed its cold rays. And into its glare there strode a man draped in a yellow mackintosh. The light gleamed on his pince-nez and lent a gruesome pallor to his set face. It was Ukridge retreating from Moscow.
    “Others,” I said, “are thinking the same.”
    And I hurried across the road to administer what feeble consolation I might. There are moments when a fellow needs a friend.
    CHAPTER IV