“No sort of mill at all, this,” declared Thackeray with a superior air. “They shouldn’t have brought a novice out to face the Londoner. He hasn’t fairly grassed Meanix once.”
“There’s time enough,” Cribb pointed out. “The black’s scarce marked as yet. Meanix has the edge on the pully-hauly work, but it won’t count for much in a fight to the finish. There’s steam in the Ebony.”
Almost in response to this tribute the Negro rose to the referee’s next call and began to counterassault, plainly surprising Meanix. A well-directed left caught the Ox in the throat as he lumbered forward incautiously. A second jab with the same fist split his lip.
“On the ivories!” shouted one of the crowd.
Meanix put the back of his right hand to the bleeding mouth. It was an instinctive movement to check for blood. Unfortunately for him, it left his body unguarded. A lightning blow caught him in the stomach, and he dropped like a stone.
“Beautiful! On the mark!” called the admirer. Now it was the turn of Meanix’s seconds to drag him clear and revive him with sal volatile.
“The mark?” queried Thackeray.
“Point of the stomach. Known as Broughton’s mark,” Cribb explained. “One of the classic punches.”
Meanix had scarcely recovered when the end of the thirty seconds was called. The seconds heaved him upright and pushed him heftily towards his punisher.
“Now we’ll see if there’s any science to the Ebony,” Cribb said, in some excitement. “Any hawbuck fighter can fell a man. It takes class to keep him upright while you dose him.”
Class it was that the Ebony displayed, for the round lasted six minutes, and Meanix was hit with every variety of punch. Some in the crowd delightedly classified each blow in the patois of pugilism: “On the ivories!” “Whisker!” “Liver hit!” “On the mark!” “Peepers!” Others, more materialistic, sought out the bookmakers to cover their losses. The Ebony continued efficiently with his work, concentrating punches on the swollen areas of flesh around Meanix’s eyes and mouth. There was no need now for crude hammer blows; he hit with the cutting edge of the fist, the sharply angled central joints of the clenched fingers, lancing the swellings with a surgeon’s precision in short, swift stabs. When specks of blood showed at five or six points, he stood back to survey the work. Then, as Meanix blundered against the ropes, the Ebony attacked again with harder blows, broadening the incisions to free-flowing gashes, until lines of crimson patterned Meanix’s face and chest. Once Meanix threatened to overbalance, and the Negro hugged him maternally until he was sufficiently stable to take the next volley of blows. They were aimed at the mouth and jowls, which must have been particularly sore, for Meanix actually made a pathetic parrying movement before backing to the nearest corner. There he waited, leaning hard on the corner stake, his open hands raised to protect the wounds on his face. Instead the attack came in a series of cruel blows to the ribs. He bowed in agony, quite open now to an uppercut that would have settled the match. But the Ebony had other plans. He gripped his opponent under the chin and led him like the ox he was claimed to resemble to the centre of the ring. Then with astonishing agility he turned his back on Meanix and upended him over his thigh in a perfect cross- buttock.
Meanix lasted one round more. His attendants miraculously got him to the vertical position in the half-minute, but he was semiconscious when he lurched out. One eye was closed and the other half blinded with mud and gore. His bloated lips slobbered blood and saliva. In the corner he had spat out two teeth into the slop bucket. One blow finished the fight. A long, low jab in the diaphragm. He doubled forward and plummeted to the mud.
The sponge was tossed in beside him.
CHAPTER 4
The four-square semblance of order ended. One side stake leaned inwards under pressure and a corner post collapsed simultaneously. The ropes slackened and fell and the ring was a thoroughfare. In seconds the only indication of a fight being staged there was the glistening head and shoulders of the Ebony, clear among the umbrellas surrounding him. Altogether larger groups converged on the bookies. Many customers, it seemed, had succeeded in hedging their bets before the result was completely obvious. Professional gamblers, they needed to be as sensitive to the state of a fight as a broker to the stock market.
“Short fight,” commented Cribb, “and small entertainment to it.”
“Fourteen rounds. Fifty-three minutes by my half-hunter,” said Thackeray in confirmation. “Have you ever boxed that long, Henry?”
Jago had not. The brutality of what they had seen appeared to have affected him, for he was deathly pale. “That wasn’t boxing. That wasn’t sport at all.”
“You mean that there’s more footwork in glove fighting?”suggested Thackeray. “I suppose if they put spiked shoes on you and stood you ankle-deep in mud you might go as sluggishly as those two did in the early rounds. You could last an hour of that, couldn’t you?”
Jago shuddered. It could have been from the cool of the evening.
Cribb pulled the collar of the waterproof against his side whiskers and did not even look at Jago. “Three hours,” he said tersely.
“Three hours, Sergeant?” asked Jago.
“The time you should allow for a fist fight, lad. Plenty go to two hours and some have gone to four.”
Jago did not pretend to be an expert on pugilism. He left that to Cribb. No right-minded bobby questioned his sergeant’s authority on any subject.
“What happened to the beaten man?” asked Thackeray. He had been engrossed in pressing rainwater from his beard onto a large linen handkerchief.
“A sharp-eyed detective would have seen,” replied Cribb, equally uncomfortable in the conditions. “If you can manage to bend your waist a fraction, you’ll see him lying where the other man put him.”
“Still there? What’s happened to his attendants?”
“Looking for browns. Some were tossed in after he went down. It’s the only purse Meanix gets tonight. The crowd’s thinning now. Let’s go closer.”
They moved through churned mud where the ringsiders had been and across the fallen ropes to the protected greener square. Only the center patch was black and glutinous. On it lay the Stepney Ox, oblivious to the legs stepping across him. There, too, was one of his seconds, crouching, not to raise him, but to salvage a halfpenny from under his forearm.
“He’s breathing,” observed Jago, with some relief.
“One less for Waterloo Bridge, then,” murmured Thackeray.
Cribb addressed the scavenging second. “When are you returning to London?”
The face turned. It was scarred by years of fist fighting. One eye was sightless, stilled, perhaps, by an opponent’s thumb.
“What’s it to you?”
Cribb produced a coin and held it between finger and thumb above the expanse of Meanix’s back. It was a satisfactory answer.
“Last train. We’ll bring ’im round at the Fox in Rainham. Time enough to spend what we’ve picked up ’ere. Too bloody tight-fisted, this lot are. Don’t give credit for a rousing scrap. Ah! I’m obliged to you, guv.”
The spectators were by now steadily dispersing. Most headed in the direction of Rainham and the railway station. The referee, clearly determined for his own reasons to be first away, was already visible above a distant hedgerow, pedalling his fifty-inch Coventry Perfection dextrously through the rutted lanes towards the Fox and Grapes.
“We’ll go the same way,” Cribb announced. “I’m ready for refreshment.”
They joined the general trek, leaving Meanix and a small entourage. The beaten pugilist had managed to struggle to his feet, and was now wrapped in a horse blanket. The victor and his companion were evidently not joining the group at Rainham. They had already left, walking their horses slowly in the direction from which they had come.
The Fox (no one found it necessary to mention the Grapes as well) was a small inn, conveniently close to Rainham station. Well before the detectives reached there, the influx from London had arrived and begun the
