“It would hurt some fighters,” said the boss, “but they’s others that ain’t got nothing to forget. That’s none of my business, though,” he continued. “What’s bothering me is how to keep the public awake till next fall without giving them a championship bout.”
“Too bad you can’t match Burton and Cook,” said Sandy.
The Cook he referred to was Jem Cook, a colored gentleman known as the Black Bull of Biloxi. He had never whipped anyone but his children, he was middle-aged and slow, his “fighting” was in such flagrant violation of all rules that even the referees found fault with it, and yet a large portion of Fistic Fandom, or Moronia, had long regarded him as the logical contender for the title recently wrested from Jack Ryan by Beau Burton, the Student Prince.
“They’s no place you could hold it,” Luke said. “And further and more, Cook is going to fight Teddy Walsh in Buffalo next week and that means good night Cook. Larry Woltz is the referee. He was born in the South and he’ll see that it’s a fair fight even if he has to tape the black boy’s wrists with a pair of handcuffs.”
“How about a series of trials? Make a list of all the heavyweights we can think of, match them up with each other through the winter and spring, and then, whoever comes through, why, he can meet Ryan. And whichever wins between he and Ryan gets the big match with the Beau.”
“Of course that idear has occurred to me,” said Luke. “I guess it’s the only solution. But you know they ain’t three heavies in the country that could knock the ashes off a cigar, and the public don’t like big fellas that can’t hit.”
“Jimmy Donohue can hit.”
“I said big fellas. Donohue claims one hundred and seventy-five pounds, but I bet you could put him and a cow on the scales together and they wouldn’t weigh one-seventy. Suppose I was to let him in the competition and he beat all these hams, why, it would be a joke to match him with Ryan.”
“Well, there was Carpenteer and Dempsey.”
“Carpenteer was a frog and that makes all the difference. Just tell people that So-and-So is champion of France or Paraguay and they’ll break down your gates even if they know the fella had to be brought off the ship in a wheelchair. Get me a guy from some place abroad and I’m all set. I mean any place but England; when you mention an English champ, everybody thinks of Joe Beckett and takes it as a joke. If somebody would spring up in Spain or Greece or somewheres—But as long as none of those birds are in sight, we better begin figuring on what we’ve got here, and then it’ll be a tough job to fix up some preliminary matches for them that ain’t too silly and yet not too dangerous. Who do you suggest?”
“I was thinking of Fitzgerald and Moran.”
Frankie Fitzgerald, a Romanian known as Fitchburg’s Fighting Fool, and Mike Moran, the Malden Murderer, were a pair of 200-pounders who had been seen together in so many New England rings that Dame Rumor whispered they must be betrothed. It was said that on one occasion, three or four years ago, the Murderer, who had got his sobriquet from a childhood practise of stepping on ants, had tripped in a tear in the canvas and sunk to one knee, but the Fighting Fool had restored him to plumb before the astounded referee began to count. This was the only incident remembered by patient eyewitnesses of the couple’s hundred-odd rounds of petting.
“We’ll have to include them because of the general shortage,” said Luke. “But we’ll also have to find somebody for each of them to lick before we dast bring them together again. And that’s going to be quite a chore.”
“Why not have Fitzgerald beat Donohue, and Moran win from Eddie Brock?”
“Donohue and Brock would have to foul them.”
“Well, they wouldn’t mind doing that if it was worth their while. Donohue is really a middleweight and Brock is a welter, and it wouldn’t hurt neither of their reputations to lose to guys that outweighs the entire Notre Dame football squad.”
“All right,” agreed Luke. “We’ll start to work along those lines and hope for the best. But meanw’ile, you watch the papers and if you run acrost any news from abroad that might relieve the situation, remember where you get your pay. And in order so you won’t overlook nothing, I’ll make you a proposition: Find me a foreigner that ain’t absolutely impossible, and I’ll give you a cash bonus of five grand.”
The conference was over and the diminutive Sandy left the office to keep a luncheon engagement with one Mabel Ives, to whom, for no apparent reason, he was paying court. On the way, he thought a great deal about Mabel and very little about his employer’s talk, until suddenly Luke’s last words recurred to him.
“Five grand!” he said to himself. “Why, with that amount of money in one lump, I could marry her without going into debt. I’ll certainly dig him up a wop or an Armenian if I have to comb Newark!”
But such a desperate measure proved unnecessary, thanks to Miss Ives. She insisted on spending the afternoon at the Palace, though Sandy would much rather have gone to a picture theater because picture theaters are dark. (Miss Ives’ style of beauty was shown to its best advantage in the dark, but that wasn’t why Sandy wanted her there.) Anyway, she made him take her to the Palace and it was lucky she did, from Sandy’s astigmatic point of view, for the third number on the bill brought him to the end of his quest, if so brief and inert a search may be dignified by that term.
“Prentiss, Master Ventriloquist” was the title of the act,
