The man seemed to me to be rambling. In my reduced and afflicted state his cryptic method of narrative irritated me.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said. “What’s the Hyacinth? In where?”
“Pull yourself together, old horse,” said Ukridge, with the air of one endeavouring to be patient with a half-witted child. “You remember the Hyacinth, the tramp steamer I took that trip on a couple of years ago. Many’s the time I’ve told you all about the Hyacinth. She docked in the Port of London the night before I met this opulent bloke, and I had been meaning to go down next day and have a chat with the lads. The fellow you found in your rooms is one of the trimmers. As decent a bird as ever you met. Not much conversation, but a heart of gold. And it came across me like a thunderbolt the moment they told me who the jewelled cove was that, if I could only induce this man Billson to take up scrapping seriously, with me as his manager, my fortune was made. Billson is the man who invented fighting.”
“He looks it.”
“Splendid chap—you’ll like him.”
“I bet I shall. I made up my mind to like him the moment I saw him.”
“Never picks a quarrel, you understand—in fact, used to need the deuce of a lot of provocation before he would give of his best; but once he started—golly! I’ve seen that man clean out a bar at Marseilles in a way that fascinated you. A bar filled to overflowing with A.B.’s and firemen, mind you, and all capable of felling oxen with a blow. Six of them there were, and they kept swatting Billson with all the vim and heartiness at their disposal, but he just let them bounce off, and went on with the business in hand. The man’s a champion, laddie, nothing less. You couldn’t hurt him with a hatchet, and every time he hits anyone all the undertakers in the place jump up and make bids for the body. And the amazing bit of luck is that he was looking for a job ashore. It appears he’s fallen in love with one of the barmaids at the Crown in Kennington. Not,” said Ukridge, so that all misapprehension should be avoided, “the one with the squint. The other one. Flossie. The girl with yellow hair.”
“I don’t know the barmaids at the Crown in Kennington,” I said.
“Nice girls,” said Ukridge, paternally. “So it was all right, you see. Our interests were identical. Good old Billson isn’t what you’d call a very intelligent chap, but I managed to make him understand after an hour or so, and we drew up the contract. I’m to get fifty percent of everything in consideration of managing him, fixing up fights, and looking after him generally.”
“And looking after him includes tucking him up on my sofa and singing him to sleep?”
Again that pained look came into Ukridge’s face. He gazed at me as if I had disappointed him.
“You keep harping on that, laddie, and it isn’t the right spirit. Anyone would think that we had polluted your damned room.”
“Well, you must admit that having this coming champion of yours in the home is going to make things a bit crowded.”
“Don’t worry about that, my dear old man,” said Ukridge, reassuringly. “We move to the White Hart at Barnes tomorrow, to start training. I’ve got Billson an engagement in one of the preliminaries down at Wonderland two weeks from tonight.”
“No; really?” I said, impressed by this enterprise. “How did you manage it?”
“I just took him along and showed him to the management. They jumped at him. You see, the old boy’s appearance rather speaks for itself. Thank goodness, all this happened just when I had a few quid tucked away. By the greatest good luck I ran into George Tupper at the very moment when he had had word that they were going to make him an undersecretary or something—I can’t remember the details, but it’s something they give these Foreign Office blokes when they show a bit of class—and Tuppy parted with a tenner without a murmur. Seemed sort of dazed. I believe now I could have had twenty if I’d had the presence of mind to ask for it. Still,” said Ukridge, with a manly resignation which did him credit, “it can’t be helped now, and ten will see me through. The only thing that’s worrying me at the moment is what to call Billson.”
“Yes, I should be careful what I called a man like that.”
“I mean, what name is he to fight under?”
“Why not his own?”
“His parents, confound them,” said Ukridge, moodily, “christened him Wilberforce. I ask you, can you see the crowd at Wonderland having Wilberforce Billson introduced to them?”
“Willie Billson,” I suggested. “Rather snappy.”
Ukridge considered the proposal seriously, with knit brows, as becomes a manager.
“Too frivolous,” he decided at length. “Might be all right for a bantam, but—no, I don’t like it. I was thinking of something like Hurricane Hicks or Rock-Crusher Riggs.”
“Don’t do it,” I urged, “or you’ll kill his career right from the start. You never find a real champion with one of these fancy names. Bob Fitzsimmons, Jack Johnson, James J. Corbett, James J. Jeffries—”
“James J. Billson?”
“Rotten.”
“You don’t think,” said Ukridge, almost with timidity, “that Wildcat Wix might do?”
“No fighter with an adjective in front of his name
