The Exit of Battling Billson - (2)

“I’m not going to fight!”
    Mr. Previn’s exuberance fell from him like a garment. His cigar dropped from his mouth, and his beady eyes glittered with sudden consternation.
    “What do you mean?”
    “Rather an unfortunate thing has happened,” I explained. “It seems that this man Thomas is a fellow Ukridge had trouble with at the theatre last night.”
    “What do you mean, Ukridge?” broke in Mr. Previn. “This is Battling Billson.”
    “I’ve told Corky all about it,” said Ukridge over his shoulder as he laced his right shoe. “Old pal of mine.”
    “Oh!” said Mr. Previn, relieved. “Of course, if Mr. Corky is a friend of yours and quite understands that all this is quite private among ourselves and don’t want talking about outside, all right. But what were you thayin’? I can’t make head or tail of it. How do you mean, you’re not goin’ to fight? Of course you’re goin’ to fight.”
    “Thomas was in here just now,” I said. “Ukridge and he had a row at the theatre last night, and naturally Ukridge is afraid he will go back on the agreement.”
    “Nonthense,” said Mr. Previn, and his manner was that of one soothing a refractory child. “He won’t go back on the agreement. He promised he’d play light and he will play light. Gave me his word as a gentleman.”
    “He isn’t a gentleman,” Ukridge pointed out, moodily.
    “But lithen!”
    “I’m going to get out of here as quick as I dashed well can!”
    “Conthider!” pleaded Mr. Previn, clawing great chunks out of the air.
    Ukridge began to button his collar.
    “Reflect!” moaned Mr. Previn. “There’s that lovely audience all sitting out there, jammed like thardines, waiting for the thing to start. Do you expect me to go and tell ’em there ain’t goin’ to be no fight? I’m thurprised at you,” said Mr. Previn, trying an appeal to his pride. “Where’s your manly spirit? A big, husky feller like you, that’s done all sorts of scrappin’ in your time——”
    “Not,” Ukridge pointed out coldly, “with any damned professional pugilists who’ve got a grievance against me.”
    “He won’t hurt you.”
    “He won’t get the chance.”
    “You’ll be as safe and cosy in that ring with him as if you was playing ball with your little thister.”
    Ukridge said he hadn’t got a little sister.
    “But think!” implored Mr. Previn, flapping like a seal. “Think of the money! Do you realise we’ll have to return it all, every penny of it?”
    A spasm of pain passed over Ukridge’s face, but he continued buttoning his collar.
    “And not only that,” said Mr. Previn, “but, if you ask me, they’ll be so mad when they hear there ain’t goin’ to be no fight, they’ll lynch me.”
    Ukridge seemed to regard this possibility with calm.
    “And you, too,” added Mr. Previn.
    Ukridge started. It was a plausible theory, and one that had not occurred to him before. He paused irresolutely. And at this moment a man came hurrying in.
    “What’s the matter?” he demanded, fussily. “Thomas has been in the ring for five minutes. Isn’t your man ready?”
    “In one half tick,” said Mr. Previn. He turned meaningly to Ukridge. “That’s right, ain’t it? You’ll be ready in half a tick?”
    Ukridge nodded wanly. In silence he shed shirt, trousers, shoes, and collar, parting from them as if they were old friends whom he never expected to see again. One wistful glance he cast at his mackintosh, lying forlornly across a chair; and then, with more than a suggestion of a funeral procession, we started down the corridor that led to the main hall. The hum of many voices came to us; there was a sudden blaze of light, and we were there.
    I must say for the sport-loving citizens of Llunindnno that they appeared to be fair-minded men. Stranger in their midst though he was, they gave Ukridge an excellent reception as he climbed into the ring; and for a moment, such is the tonic effect of applause on a large scale, his depression seemed to lift. A faint, gratified smile played about his drawn mouth, and I think it would have developed into a bashful grin, had he not at this instant caught sight of the redoubtable Mr. Thomas towering massively across the way. I saw him blink, as one who, thinking absently of this and that, walks suddenly into a lamp-post; and his look of unhappiness returned.
    My heart bled for him. If the offer of my little savings in the bank could have transported him there and then to the safety of his London lodgings, I would have made it unreservedly. Mr. Previn had disappeared, leaving me standing at the ring-side, and as nobody seemed to object I remained there, thus getting an excellent view of the mass of bone and sinew that made up Lloyd Thomas. And there was certainly plenty of him to see.
    Mr. Thomas was, I should imagine, one of those men who do not look their most formidable in mufti—for otherwise I could not conceive how even the fact that he had stolen his seat could have led Ukridge to lay the hand of violence upon him. In the exiguous costume of the ring he looked a person from whom the sensible man would suffer almost any affront with meekness. He was about six feet in height, and wherever a man could bulge with muscle he bulged. For a moment my anxiety for Ukridge was tinged with a wistful regret that I should never see this sinewy citizen in action with Mr. Billson. It would, I mused, have been a battle worth coming even to Llunindnno to see.
    The referee, meanwhile, had been introducing the principals in the curt, impressive fashion of referees. He now retired, and with a strange foreboding note a gong sounded on the farther side of the ring. The seconds scuttled under the ropes. The man Thomas, struggling—it seemed to me—with powerful emotions, came ponderously out of his corner.
    In these reminiscences of a vivid and varied career, it is as a profound thinker that I have for the most part had occasion to portray Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge. I was now to be reminded that he also had it in him to be a doer. Even as Mr. Thomas shuffled towards him, his left fist shot out and thudded against the other’s ribs. In short, in a delicate and difficult situation, Ukridge was comporting himself with an adequacy that surprised me. However great might have been his reluctance to embark on this contest, once in he was doing well.
    And then, half-way through the first round, the truth dawned upon me. Injured though Mr. Thomas had been, the gentleman’s agreement still held. The word of a Thomas was as good as his bond. Poignant though his dislike of Ukridge might be, nevertheless, having pledged himself to mildness and self-restraint for the first three rounds, he intended to abide by the contract. Probably, in the interval between his visit to Ukridge’s dressing-room and his appearance in the ring, his manager had been talking earnestly to him. At any rate, whether it was managerial authority or his own sheer nobility of character that influenced him, the fact remains that he treated Ukridge with a quite remarkable forbearance, and the latter reached his corner at the end of round one practically intact.
    And it was this that undid him. No sooner had the gong sounded for round two than out he pranced from his corner, thoroughly above himself. He bounded at Mr. Thomas like a Dervish.
    I could read his thoughts as if he had spoken them. Nothing could be clearer than that he had altogether failed to grasp the true position of affairs. Instead of recognising his adversary’s forbearance for what it was and being decently grateful for it, he was filled with a sinful pride. Here, he told himself, was a man who had a solid grievance against him—and, dash it, the fellow couldn’t hurt him a bit. What the whole thing boiled down to, he felt, was that he, Ukridge, was better than he had suspected, a man to be reckoned with, and one who could show a distinguished gathering of patrons of sport something worth looking at. The consequence was that, where any sensible person would have grasped the situation at once and endeavoured to show his appreciation by toying with Mr. Thomas in gingerly fashion, whispering soothing compliments into his ear during the clinches, and generally trying to lay the foundations of a beautiful friendship against the moment when the gentleman’s agreement should lapse, Ukridge committed the one unforgivable act. There was a brief moment of fiddling and feinting in the centre of the ring, then a sharp smacking sound, a startled yelp, and Mr. Thomas, with gradually reddening eye, leaning against the ropes and muttering to himself in Welsh.
    Ukridge had hit him on the nose.
    Once more I must pay a tribute to the fair-mindedness of the sportsmen of Llunindnno. The stricken man was one of them—possibly Llunindnno’s favourite son—yet nothing could have exceeded the heartiness with which they greeted the visitor’s achievement. A shout went up as if Ukridge had done each individual present a personal favour. It continued as he advanced buoyantly upon his antagonist, and—to show how entirely Llunindnno audiences render themselves impartial and free from any personal bias—it became redoubled as Mr. Thomas, swinging a fist like a ham, knocked Ukridge flat on his back. Whatever happened, so long as it was sufficiently violent, seemed to be all right with that broad-minded audience.
    Ukridge heaved himself laboriously to one knee. His sensibilities had been ruffled by this unexpected blow, about fifteen times as hard as the others he had received since the beginning of the affray, but he was a man of mettle and determination. However humbly he might quail before a threatening landlady, or however nimbly he might glide down a side-street at the sight of an approaching creditor, there was nothing wrong with his fighting heart when it came to a straight issue between man and man, untinged by the financial element. He struggled painfully to his feet, while Mr. Thomas, now definitely abandoning the gentleman’s agreement, hovered about him with ready fists, only restrained by the fact that one of Ukridge’s gloves still touched the floor.
    It was at this tensest of moments that a voice spoke in my ear. “’Alf a mo’, mister!”
    A hand pushed me gently aside. Something large obscured the lights. And Wilberforce Billson, squeezing under the ropes, clambered into the ring.
    For the purposes of the historian it was a good thing that for the first few moments after this astounding occurrence a dazed silence held the audience in its grip. Otherwise, it might have been difficult to probe motives and explain underlying causes. I think the spectators were either too surprised to shout, or else they entertained for a few brief seconds the idea that Mr. Billson was the forerunner of a posse of plain-clothes police about to raid the place. At any rate, for a space they were silent, and he was enabled to say his say.
    “Fightin’,” bellowed Mr. Billson, “ain’t right!”
    There was an uneasy rustle in the audience. The voice of the referee came thinly, saying, “Here! Hi!”
    “Sinful,” explained Mr. Billson, in a voice like a foghorn.
    His oration was interrupted by Mr. Thomas, who was endeavouring to get round him and attack Ukridge. The Battler pushed him gently back.
    “Gents,” he roared, “I, too, have been a man of voylence! I ’ave struck men in anger. R, yes! But I ’ave seen the light. Oh, my brothers——”
    The rest of his remarks were lost. With a startling suddenness the frozen silence melted. In every part of the hall indignant seatholders were rising to state their views.
    But it is doubtful whether, even if he had been granted a continuance of their attention, Mr. Billson would have spoken to much greater length; for at this moment Lloyd Thomas, who had been gnawing at the strings of his gloves with the air of a man who is able to stand just so much and whose limit has been exceeded, now suddenly shed these obstacles to the freer expression of self, and advancing bare-handed, smote Mr. Billson violently on the jaw.
    Mr. Billson turned. He was pained, one could see that, but more spiritually than physically. For a moment he seemed uncertain how to proceed. Then he turned the other cheek.
    The fermenting Mr. Thomas smote that, too.
    There was no vacillation or uncertainty now about Wilberforce Billson. He plainly considered that he had done all that could reasonably be expected of any pacifist. A man has only two cheeks. He flung up a mast-like arm, to block a third blow, countered with an accuracy and spirit which sent his aggressor reeling to the ropes; and then, swiftly removing his coat, went into action with the unregenerate zeal that had made him the petted hero of a hundred water-fronts. And I, tenderly scooping Ukridge up as he dropped from the ring, hurried him away along the corridor to his dressing-room. I would have given much to remain and witness a mix-up which, if the police did not interfere, promised to be the battle of the ages, but the claims of friendship are paramount.
    Ten minutes later, however, when Ukridge, washed, clothed, and restored as near to the normal as a man may be who has received the full weight of a Lloyd Thomas on a vital spot, was reaching for his mackintosh, there filtered through the intervening doors and passageways a sudden roar so compelling that my sporting spirit declined to ignore it.
    “Back in a minute, old man,” I said.
    And, urged by that ever-swelling roar, I cantered back to the hall.
    In the interval during which I had been ministering to my stricken friend a certain decorum seemed to have been restored to the proceedings. The conflict had lost its first riotous abandon. Upholders of the decencies of debate had induced Mr. Thomas to resume his gloves, and a pair had also been thrust upon the Battler. Moreover, it was apparent that the etiquette of the tourney now governed the conflict, for rounds had been introduced, and one had just finished as I came in view of the ring. Mr. Billson was leaning back in a chair in one corner undergoing treatment by his seconds, and in the opposite corner loomed Mr. Thomas; and one sight of the two men was enough to tell me what had caused that sudden tremendous outburst of enthusiasm among the patriots of Llunindnno. In the last stages of the round which had just concluded the native son must have forged ahead in no uncertain manner. Perhaps some chance blow had found its way through the Battler’s guard, laying him open and defenceless to the final attack. For his attitude, as he sagged in his corner, was that of one whose moments are numbered. His eyes were closed, his mouth hung open, and exhaustion was writ large upon him. Mr. Thomas, on the contrary, leaned forward with hands on knees, wearing an impatient look, as if this formality of a rest between rounds irked his imperious spirit.
    The gong sounded and he sprang from his seat.
    “Laddie!” breathed an anguished voice, and a hand clutched my arm.
    I was dimly aware of Ukridge standing beside me. I shook him off. This was no moment for conversation. My whole attention was concentrated on what was happening in the ring.
    “I say, laddie!”
    Matters in there had reached that tense stage when audiences lose their self-control—when strong men stand on seats and weak men cry “Siddown!” The air was full of that electrical thrill that precedes the knock-out.
    And the next moment it came. But it was not Lloyd Thomas who delivered it. From some mysterious reservoir of vitality Wilberforce Billson, the pride of Bermondsey, who an instant before had been reeling under his antagonist’s blows like a stricken hulk before a hurricane, produced that one last punch that wins battles. Up it came, whizzing straight to its mark, a stupendous, miraculous upper-cut which caught Mr. Thomas on the angle of the jaw just as he lurched forward to complete his task. It was the last word. Anything milder Llunindnno’s favourite son might have borne with fortitude, for his was a teak-like frame impervious to most things short of dynamite; but this was final. It left no avenue for argument or evasion. Lloyd Thomas spun round once in a complete circle, dropped his hands, and sank slowly to the ground.
    There was one wild shout from the audience, and then a solemn hush fell. And in this hush Ukridge’s voice spoke once more in my ear.
    “I say, laddie, that blighter Previn has bolted with every penny of the receipts!”
    The little sitting-room of Number Seven Caerleon Street was very quiet and gave the impression of being dark. This was because there is so much of Ukridge and he takes Fate’s blows so hardly that when anything goes wrong his gloom seems to fill a room like a fog. For some minutes after our return from the Oddfellows’ Hall a gruesome silence had prevailed. Ukridge had exhausted his vocabulary on the subject of Mr. Previn; and as for me, the disaster seemed so tremendous as to render words of sympathy a mere mockery.
    “And there’s another thing I’ve just remembered,” said Ukridge, hollowly, stirring on his sofa.
    “What’s that?” I enquired, in a bedside voice.
    “The bloke Thomas. He was to have got another twenty pounds.”
    “He’ll hardly claim it, surely?”
    “He’ll claim it all right,” said Ukridge, moodily. “Except, by Jove,” he went on, a sudden note of optimism in his voice, “that he doesn’t know where I am. I was forgetting that. Lucky we legged it away from the hall before he could grab me.”
    “You don’t think that Previn, when he was making the arrangements with Thomas’s manager, may have mentioned where you were staying?”
    “Not likely. Why should he? What reason would he have?”
    “Gentleman to see you, sir,” crooned the aged female at the door.
    The gentleman walked in. It was the man who had come to the dressing-room to announce that Thomas was in the ring; and though on that occasion we had not been formally introduced I did not need Ukridge’s faint groan to tell me who he was.
    “Mr. Previn?” he said. He was a brisk man, direct in manner and speech.
    “He’s not here,” said Ukridge.
    “You’ll do. You’re his partner. I’ve come for that twenty pounds.”
    There was a painful silence.
    “It’s gone,” said Ukridge.
    “What’s gone?”
    “The money, dash it. And Previn, too. He’s bolted.” A hard look came into the other’s eyes. Dim as the light was, it was strong enough to show his expression, and that expression was not an agreeable one.
    “That won’t do,” he said, in a metallic voice.
    “Now, my dear old horse——”
    “It’s no good trying anything like that on me. I want my money, or I’m going to call a policeman. Now, then!”
    “But, laddie, be reasonable.”
    “Made a mistake in not getting it in advance. But now’ll do. Out with it!”
    “But I keep telling you Previn’s bolted!”
    “He’s certainly bolted,” I put in, trying to be helpful.
    “That’s right, mister,” said a voice at the door. “I met ’im sneakin’ away.”
    It was Wilberforce Billson. He stood in the doorway diffidently, as one not sure of his welcome. His whole bearing was apologetic. He had a nasty bruise on his left cheek and one of his eyes was closed, but he bore no other signs of his recent conflict.
    Ukridge was gazing upon him with bulging eyes.
    “You met him!” he moaned. “You actually met him?”
    “R,” said Mr. Billson. “When I was comin’ to the ’all. I seen ’im puttin’ all that money into a liddle bag, and then ’e ’urried off.”
    “Good lord!” I cried. “Didn’t you suspect what he was up to?”
    “R,” agreed Mr. Billson. “I always knew ’e was a wrong ’un.”
    “Then why, you poor woollen-headed fish,” bellowed Ukridge, exploding, “why on earth didn’t you stop him?”
    “I never thought of that,” admitted Mr. Billson, apologetically.
    Ukridge laughed a hideous laugh.
    “I just pushed ’im in the face,” proceeded Mr. Billson, “and took the liddle bag away from ’im.”
    He placed on the table a small weather-worn suitcase that jingled musically as he moved it; then, with the air of one who dismisses some triviality from his mind, moved to the door.
    “’Scuse me, gents,” said Battling Billson, deprecatingly. “Can’t stop. I’ve got to go and spread the light.”
    CHAPTER X