# The Popular Magazine/Volume 73/Number 2/Old Father Hubbard

   The prodigal Ottie fattens his own calf.
Old Father Hubbard
By C. S. Montanye Author of “Tips that Pass in the Night,” “Face Value,” Etc.
Ottie Scandrel stages a comeback that no boomerang could have bettered.
THE instigator of that immortal remark, “They never come back!” coyly conceals his identity but the chances are this famous quotation was first delivered by either a landlady, a pawnbroker or the wife of a traveling salesman. In any case the jovial quip is open to suspicion because they do come back—sometimes, as I hope to prove to my own, your and everybody else’s satisfaction.
The records have it that it’s a long, long journey movie actors, pugilists and other celebrities in the public optic have to travel to reach the land of fame and fortune after they have once slipped. In fact the going is so tough there’s plenty alibi for those who totter and fall by the wayside. This spicy narrative has to do with a certain party who made the grade and came all the way back from nowhere at all.
If you haven’t met him before allow me to introduce you to Ottie Scandrel.
Scandrel, a choice sample of idiocy, had built himself up a healthy bank roll, and a reputation of sorts through the years. Mistress Luck had wooed and won him consistently with the result that his own general opinion of his genius and cleverness was extremely ludicrous. Ottie really imagined he could get away with anything from selling the bottling rights to the Pacific to managing the League of Nations and for two years or twenty-four months he clowned successfully and pushed his nonsense over without mishap.
Then when everything was as rosy as could be he dipped into Wall Street, the market promptly dropped for the count and a month after that had stripped him as clean as a bone between the paws of a ravenous setter.
It was a cruel break!
Being broke, however, failed in any way to stunt Scandrel’s egotism or to make him lose an inch of confidence in the most important subject he had anything to do with—himself. He promptly fired the chauffeur, butler and valet who lived with and on him. A gentleman with a beard who was in the secondhand clothing business obtained most of the famous Scandrel wardrobe after Ottie had cuffed him into a fair price, a plumber gave him twelve dollars even for the tin that had four wheels but no brakes and the management took his rooms back at the hotel.
All this accomplished, Ottie came up to the Bronx and took a room at my gym large enough to hold himself, his photographs and his library—five volumes entitled “Press Clippings.”
The two weeks following his financial disaster found the champion of conceit thinking up new stunts to get back to his former money-making status. The first of his bright ideas was to endeavor to interest a firm of hat manufacturers in a dicer he had invented and patented. This was a folding derby guaranteed to foil coat-room boys and theater habitués with heavy feet. The thing failed to click because of the condition of the hardware market and the excessive cost of hinges. Ottie was baffled but not discouraged.
A couple of days later he wandered into the gym one morning, the typical image of wealthy prosperity. The smirk he wore was matches and kerosene so far as Looie Pitz, a little fight manager who loitered around the gym, was concerned. Looie was as fond of Scandrel as a wrong telephone number.
“What did you do—find a quarter in an old pair of pants?” Pitz sneered, getting the smile three ways.
So far as Ottie was concerned the other might have been in any part of Asia.
“I got an idea, Joe,” he said directly to me. “Not an idea—the idea!”
“Treat it well—it’s in a strange place!” Pitz butted in cheerfully. “You and them ridiculous notions of yours—I’m laughing for you! Why don’t you find a job and get acquainted with work? There was a position advertised in the paper this morning for a job that you could fill to perfection.”
“The bottle business?” Scandrel asked with some interest.
“No, down at the gas company!” Pitz snickered, stepping behind me.
“Come, come!” I horned in. “You boys quarrel like next-door neighbors every time you are close together. Cut it out now and shake hands.”
“And take the chance of getting a finger or two crooked?” Ottie yelped. “Be yourself, boy. I didn’t come in here to jab—I come in to gab. Listen. In the middle of the night or about six o’clock this morning when I was asleep I woke up with this here idea I’m telling you about. The stock market might have given me a twist but you know the old saying—you can’t keep a good man in glass houses. Right now I know where there’s a package of money all wrapped up and waiting for me to call around and collect it. What amazes me is that I never thought of it before.”
Pitz laughed.
“A package of money, eh? They’re giving guys gifts of twenty years every day for safe blowing. I always felt that sooner or later your old pals would be running up the river and asking the warden if they could go up and visit with you in your cell!”
“My fist will visit with you on that curiosity you call a chin if you get rosy with me!” Ottie bawled. “If you ever went to the pen to see any of your own relatives it’s an even-money bet that you’d never get out. That map you're wearing is enough to convict you for life. You’re my personal idea of a hundred dollars’ worth of nothing. If you don’t pipe down I'll slap you so hard that it will affect your nieces and nephews. Tell me, do I get order or don’t I get order?”
“Do!” Pitz told him, over my shoulder. “What’s the matter? Don’t you know when I’m joking? It’s all fun!”
We paused to watch one of Looie’s underfed brown hopes climb into the ring for his morning punishment!
“What is this brilliant idea?” I queried.
Giving Ottie a chance to talk was the same as turning a show girl loose in a jewelry store.
“I’m going back to the ring!” he hollered. “I stepped out of it just when I had the welterweight champeenship being brought to me on a gold platter. Before you say anything—listen. Two years, as a street-car conductor says, can make a change, but that’s with some ordinary bim who don’t know what it’s all about. To me it’s nothing at all. I’m not as good as I formerly was—I’m better. Smacking the half-wits who bother me has kept me right at the top of my form and I’m so tough that I’m thinking of buying a leopard instead of a police pussy. There’s plenty plums in the shape of purses ready and waiting for me and with a few grand in my kick I'll be standing pretty again. I’ll be my own manager, I’ll find a cheap sparring partner—some boy who ain’t afraid of being beaten up for three dollars a week—I'll train in the country where there’s lots of climate and——”
“You big clown!” Pitz interrupted with a touch of hysteria. “If you were worse at your best, imagine what you'll be now. You were the biggest flush that ever climbed between the ropes. The only thing you ever did was to take punishment!”
“And the only thing Napoleon ever did was to burn Russia! I ain’t got a thing but two arms and a couple of hands, hey? And I can’t punch hardly anything! Well, I’m sure of knocking one party cold any day, any week, any month!”
“Indeed, who is that?” Pitz chuckled.
“You!” Scandrel screamed, catching him before he could escape and hooking over a short right that slammed Pitz across the room, knocked down four innocent bystanders and put him to sleep under a camp chair.
So endeth the first lesson!
Back in the brogans of “Battling” Scandrel, Ottie’s first venture was to hunt up a bout and sign for it before beginning any kind of active training. The majority of the beak-bending brigade would have been content to annex a prelim mill first and gradually fight their way back to their former prestige. But not so with my boy friend. Putting reverse English on the bull, he promptly challenged the welterweight champ and only failed to connect because he couldn’t post sufficient forfeit. This failing, Ottie went after the next best bet in the weight division—the contender for the crown. As luck would have it that young man’s manager was ready and willing to draw up the papers and ring in a match-maker who arranged to put the combat on the late September calendar for a purse that won a nod from Ottie.
The name of the party Scandrel was set to duel with was Rex Hubbard, familiarly known to fistic fans as “Old Father” Hubbard. This sobriquet had nothing at all to do with age but had been wished upon the young socker merely because Hubbard was a ring veteran mixed up in weekly scuffles. Hailing from the tamaracks, Hubbard had never been a draw in the port of New York and consequently had staged the majority of his Gettysburgs in the golden West, the effeminate East, the nonsensical North and the funny South. In fact, Rex Hubbard had only fought twice in the big town and wouldn’t have been recognized if he had hired a truck to go down Broadway with a brass band ahead.
Neither Scandrel, myself nor any of the gym prima donnas had ever glimpsed the hustling welterweight.
When articles were signed Hubbard was trekking through upper New Jersey and lower New York with a circus and obtaining frequent leaves of absence to grab off a fight on the side. I had reason to know that he had spent years and a fortune in postage trying to get a bout with Mr. Champ and being laughed off for his pains. The king of the welterweights had told Hubbard to fight some one who meant something and Hubbard’s manager had openly confessed to Ottie that the principal reason they were willing and anxious to meet him was because once Battling Scandrel was knocked for fish, the persistent challenger would then be in a stronger position to pester the champ anew.
Whether it was a grin, a laugh, a sneer or a tear, Ottie’s name had some importance attached to it.
The business of the bout handled through Hubbard’s manager, an Italian whose birth certificate read Izzie Noonan, Scandrel reserved training quarters at a trap known as Dooley’s Lodge located in Perfidious, New Jersey—an address selected because he happened to hear Looie Pitz say it was terrible.
This accomplished he sought my advice on the question of a reasonable sparring partner, allowing me to look at the penciled copy of an advertisement he had made up out of his own head.
It read:
HELP WANTED MALE. Sparring partner for the world’s coming Welterweight Champion. Ambitious young man not too proud to be knocked out occasionally. Salary no object and good future assured. Apply Tucsday morning at ten o'clock. Ask for SCANDREL, O’Grady’s Gymnasium, Bronx.
“If that don’t get ’em,” he said when I had handed his literary chef-d’œuvre a stare, “they run gondolas in the subway. These fashion plates who win their bread money by loafing around here think I’m trying to show off when I tell them I’m financially impoverished. The cheapest any of the clique will work for me is for fifteen dollars a day with lunch money. Pardon me now while I slip down to the newspaper factory and have this masterpiece set up in type. Er—I certainly do miss my motor. Street cars are expensive when you use them like I do. So long and look for me to-morrow morning, Joe.”
The next a.m. proved without question the circulation of the great daily that carried Ottie’s advertisement. The street-cleaning department and the milkmen on duty had just finished watering the neighborhood when the crowd began to appear from every direction. Overgrown boys of fifteen and boys who would never see sixty-five again mingled freely with short ones, tall ones, thin ones, fat ones, smart ones, dumb ones and dumber ones. They blocked the block, they tore down the front door of the gym and had any number of the curious flat dwellers near by ringing up to find out what kind of an accident it was before the police reserves were summoned to maintain order.
“There you are—help yourself!” I said to Scandrel when we surveyed the crowd from the window. “How are you going to make a selection and live to talk about it?”
He curled a lip.
“You do ask questions, don’t you? I’m from New Haven—clock me. Hey, you gorillas!” he roared at the seething crowd below. “A little attention. I’m hurling a marked half dollar out the window at you. The one who brings it up to me gets the job! Come on, a little service now!”
With that he flipped a coin out into the center of the mob and the amusement began.
It’s not trifling with the truth to say that no similar and insignificant amount ever purchased the same quantity of action and thrills. Picture a race riot, a lynching, three parades, the public appearance of a renowned photo-drama star and a gang feud and you'll get some slight idea of the free for all that immediately took place, aided and abetted by the local gendarmes and their nightsticks.
Really, it was enough to have made an Irishman turn Polish!
All we could see from the window was a merry-go-round of arms, legs and fists. Total strangers tied into one another with the greatest of enthusiasm. Strange young men went to the cobbles in death grips, elderly gentlemen got back their second youth and the noise of the battle sounded like a boiler factory running wild.
“Snapping turtles!” Ottie guffawed, rubbing his hands. ‘The bozo who comes out of this altogether and with no parts missing will be able to stand anything! Why did I forget to remember to have a crank camera present to wind this up in? Any of them fillum companies would have paid a fortune for this!”
Twenty minutes elapsed before six patrol wagons and three ambulances took care of the overflow and the street was cleared.
Then there came a tap on the door, I opened it and a disheveled stranger marched in, smiling with what face was left to him. He was built like a safe—too tall for a monkey and too short for a man, had as few teeth as possible and couldn’t have been more scratched up if he had spent the night sleeping on sandpaper. He looked us over with his one good glim, dropped a tooth in the trash basket and pulled down his cuffs.
“I win,” the victim of the twenty-minute Château Thierry mumbled, feeling his ears to see if they were still present. “A big tomato kicks me in the nose when I catch the four bits on the bounce. I had to paste him with my left:so I wouldn’t lose the money. So this is where I work? What are the hours?”
Ottie snatched the fatal fifty cents away, pocketed it quickly and laughed.
“Well, you look like a shipwreck and a nervous wreck all in one. And you’ve got a nerve reporting for work without a collar. What’s your name or haven’t you got one?”
“It’s Barney Sapp,” was the answer.
“Mr. O’Grady here will show you where you can wash up so we can recognize you. Before we talk business you’d better run down and see the medico who quacks around the corner. Get him to do a little embroidery on your mug and then come back.”
Sapp made a careless gesture.
“What do you mean—get overhauled? I was brung up in Hell’s Half Acre where they wear brass knuckles instead of diamond rings. And never mind my face—it ain’t yours. I’m here ready to work. When do we begin to commence?”
Intermission.
A week later discovered Scandrel, Sapp and myself in Perfidious, New Jersey. This delightful retreat was just far enough from gay Gotham to be remote and near enough to be convenient. It was a typical rural jump-off where there were hills, dales and scenery. The chauffeur who conveyed us to Dooley’s Lodge met all trains—both of them each week—and had little to say until he had put the engine back in his gocart and kicked the starter.
Then he looked at Ottie.
“So you be the prize fighter Mother Dooley is to take care of, be you?”
Scandrel yawned.
“That’s I’m. Er—I suppose pugs are as rare as champagne out here in the sticks?”
The driver untangled his whiskers from the steering wheel and shifted both the gears and his tobacco cud.
“Waal, not prexactly. Rex Hubbard wuz born around these here parts.”
Ottie nudged me.
“For a fact? Do your bragging now because after the middle of September Rex will be spelling his name with a W in front of the R. And he comes from right around here. I’m glad you told me, I know it now.”
Barney Sapp who had been staring about with excessive interest made himself heard.
“I ain’t seen a tenement house with a fire escape yet. Where do these home-town folks hang out the wash?”
“Impersonate silence or I’ll clout you for a fandango!” Ottie hissed. “Remember what I told you before we sailed. I don’t want you disgracing me with that senseless language you speak. You talk and act like a half-wit so get back in your chair and don’t let me hear from you again.”
“I’m listening,” Sapp mumbled, closing up like a Forty-second Street café.
Dooley’s Lodge was a bad two miles from the village—on a cool day. The building, a larger edition of a match box, would never have given the management of the Ritz-Carlton any pangs of envy, but the real comedy came from the interior rather than the exterior. Once our baggage was thrown in and we piled after it we were introduced to Mother Dooley, a lumbago addict who was more suspicious than a Federal flat foot in a prosperous saloon. She had more complaints than the telephone company, was the widow of a seaman—a former deck hand on a Jersey City ferryboat—had an ache for every day in the week and a daughter known to the neighbors as “Cinderella.”
This young lady, while not in the slightest danger of compelling Ziegfeld to mail her offers to appear at his playhouse, was healthy, overflowing with personality, had a sense of humor, looks that weren’t so terrible at twilight and like most of the plain janes was as attractive as a magnet.
It developed that Cinderella had often read about Ottie in the Patrolman’s Gazette, knew prize fighting from Z to A and owned up to one blazing ambition. That was to kiss Dooley’s Lodge good-by forever, take a train for merry Manhattan and become a real New Yorker.
We learned that Mother Dooley kept the eye of an eagle trained on her, discouraged all possible and propable suitors and never allowed the girl any more riotous excitement than a movie once a month and a straw ride with some of the town’s Beau Brummels who were as much afraid of matrimony as they were of the sheriff.
From what we learned there was ample reason for the old lady’s surveillance.
Cinderella did the washing, she did the cooking, the cleaning, and she did the housework. As handling a stove and waiting on the table was an impossible feat at the same time, the resort boasted a waitress. This plate breaker was a dusky damsel who wore a No. 9 shoe on one foot and a 12$^1$⁄$_2$ on the other. Her name was Rosalind but that didn’t mean a thing because the day after we blew in and Barney Sapp let his appetite get the better of him Rosalind blew out.
There was material for a dozen musical comedy wows up at Dooley’s Lodge!
In spite of all of the laughs, however, the lair was an ideal place to ready up for a fistic introduction to anybody and Scandrel wasn’t backward about making the most of it. Zeb, the hired man around the place, who was old enough to have boasted acquaintance with Columbus, erected a ring out in the orchard and in his spare time made a gym of the stable for Ottie to step his stuff. The highways were delicious for road work. The air was as bracing as suspenders and dry as a gin mill that had been looked into with a search warrant. The citizens claimed that Perfidious was eleven thousand feet above the sea level. Inasmuch as they failed to mention what sea, nobody saw fit to pick a quarrel on the subject.
We hadn’t been at Dooley’s Lodge more than a week when I noticed that the egotistical Scandrel was walking directly into one of his usual romances. The clever Cinderella was the only youthful member of her sex in the vicinity, Ottie liked the way she talked fight, kidded himself into imagining she was a looker and began praising her eyes, telling her lies and building himself up. The energetic Miss Dooley only had a giggle for this nonsense and stalled him like an automobile with a cracked cylinder. She took all he had to say—which was more than enough, but gave him no more encouragement than the inventor of the telephone got when he first tried to convince the public that the voice with the smile wins.
Scandrel wasn’t alone in his open admiration for the busy girl.
If Cinderella had been on display in a dime museum, Barney Sapp could not possibly have displayed more interest. The toothless sparring partner gaped at her as if she was the last woman left on earth and lost all sense of direction whenever she chanced to glance his way. He colored up like tomato bouillon when she gave him a look, he fell down a flight of stairs once when she said good evening to him on the top landing and he ruined his finger nails whenever Ottie clowned around her.
“Listen, Mr. O’Grady,” the little freak whined, when we were alone on the porch one dark night. “What does a gil usually do when he’s in love—besides jumping off docks? I don’t know how to swim, so that’s out. I read in a book ‘How To Win A Wife Ten Cents A Copy’ that you should get her interested in you first off and ask her questions about art and the like. I asked her if she painted and, honest, I thought for a minute she was going to stab me. This is terrible. I’m losing my appetite every day.”
“You’re speaking of Miss Cinderella?”
He sighed like a furnace flue.
“Who else? I seen particular dames in my day but none of them approached this little nightingale. Every time I look at her I think about rings—not the kind with the ropes but them made out of diamonds. And look. The boss is selling himself sweet. I can see where I’ll have to save money. The gals like to be took places! If I don’t get her in the end there’s Japanese cops on the force!”
For all of Ottie’s mistakes, faults and braggadocio, when it came to his first love—the glove trade—the silly buffoon knew his business and minded it. The system of training he mapped out for himself was drawn up carefully as a set of divorce papers and followed out to the letter. He allowed himself to become acclimated before he started to ready himself, got an accurate line on his wind, his punch and his footwork.
As unhurried as a messenger boy with a rush telegram, Scandrel began to increase the work he had cut out for himself and made Barney Sapp earn his board and lodging. Ottie’s first appearance in the orchard ring was not what might be termed impressive. He was painfully slow, short on almost all of his punches and frequently as wide open as the Moulin Rouge. I obliged as clocker and saw that while Sapp was never able to solve him, a dangerous free swinger like Old Father Hubbard, in a regulation ring, could have stretched him in the first round of any quarrel.
Telling him this was the same as arguing with an usher about a front-row seat.
“I’m slow, you say? I telegraph the raps, do I? Well, Roumania wasn’t built in a day and I’ve got a couple of them ahead of me. Lamp me four weeks from to-morrow and you'll see a horse from a different garage!”
As the morning bouts continued I wondered why Cinderella Dooley never displayed any interest. She never slipped down to see what it was all about and when Ottie gave her a dash of the progress he was making, at the kitchen door, she merely shrugged.
“I know quite a lot about boxing but I’m not a bit interested,” she confessed. “It’s all right for some one to make it a business if he isn’t good looking and don’t mind having his features changed. Otherwise it’s extremely foolish—particularly when there are so many other ways of making a living.”
“In other words,” Ottie smirked, “you’re advising me to quit the business. Well, possibly I will after I knock this Old Father Hubbard for a Bulgarian velocipede. To change the subject, where are we going this evening?”
Cinderella winked at me.
“I don’t know where you're going this evening but I do know where you're going now. That’s away from here. If my mother catches you chinning with me you'll be looking for a new apartment to-morrow. She’s fierce that way. Young men to her are the same as snakes.”
“Ha, ha!” Ottie guffawed. “Absolutely, I never seen nothing like this before. Get wise to yourself, Attractive. They pay day laborers six dollars an hour for less work than you do and they can have all the company they want when the whistle blows. You might as well know now that like Hercules I’m strong for you. And when I’m strong for a gal nothing stands in my way. Get me?”
“You'll have to excuse me,” Cinderella replied. “I think I hear the kettle beginning to boil.”
If the ambitious daughter of the house didn’t come down to watch Ottie’s daily dozen, Mother Dooley did. The old lady brought her cane down to the ringside and watched every move being made. Scandrel was as pleased as a flapper with-a new cigarette holder until he learned that Mother Dooley’s interest in the proceedings was of another nature. The old lady admitted that she came down merely to see that he didn’t steal any of the peaches or apples hanging around on the orchard fruit trees.
Wham!
While these preliminaries were being staged and Ottie, baffled but not discouraged, tried to put himself across with Cinderella, the subtle Izzie Noonan built up public interest in the scuffle. Hubbard’s manager refused any information as to where his charge was training and gave the sport scribes a line they weren’t reluctant about snapping at. With no other important fracas on Manhattan’s September fight card, they got rid of hot days with some torrid accounts of the welterweight fuss well calculated to send the customers through the turnstiles on the big night.
Reporters began jumping out to Dooley’s Lodge, tramping out to the orchard, with the lady of the house hobbling after them, and hanging around the barn like a lot of livery-stable men. Cameras clicked constantly taking Battling Scandrel in action, out of action and in a dozen other poses. To the brainless Barney Sapp the photo jazz was the same as a saucer of the pasteurized fluid to a hungry kitten. Once he learned that he was to have his picture in the papers trading wallops with Ottie, this nut for the decades had his hair cut, his ring shoes shined and would have hired a Tuxedo if Scandrel hadn’t immediately slapped the idea away.
“This ought to set me in right with that Cinderella pip, Mr. O’Grady,” Sapp confided to me in an idle minute. “It ain’t every one who can have his pitcher in a newspaper—only big bootleggers, high-class crooks and them kind can do it. And that reminds me. I’m getting along swell these days with the gal. Yesterday she give me leave to clean out the kitchen stove, polish it up and get four pails of water for her from the well.”
The day after that rheumatism put Mother Dooley to bed and Cinderella, dispatched to the village pharmacy for some patent remedy, accepted Ottie’s offer to drive her down to the village in one of the Lodge’s cars. I was given a lift for ballast and Ottie, always a terror with a wheel in his lap, kept his heel on the gas until the shopping center of Perfidious was distinguishable through the dust.
“I think,” Miss Dooley murmured, “I’ll go over to Slocum’s drug store. Hen isn’t cut rate but he’s awfully absent-minded and nearly always he gives you too much change. Just turn at the next corner.”
“Right here?” Ottie grinned, when we pulled up in front of a pill factory that was as dusty as a vacuum cleaner. “You ought to see the sickness shops in New York, honey. Nobody ever went in for a nickel’s worth of quinine and come out without buying a bathing suit, a set of Shakespeare, an electric fan or one of these here thermometer bottles that keep coffee hot until drunk. We'll stop off in the big burg when we go on our honeymoon.”
“Will we?” Cinderella Dooley said brightly. “That will be the day before yesterday, won’t it?”
“You don’t seem to be taking as well as usual?” I murmured when we were alone.
“What do you mean—taking? You talk like vaccination!” he growled. “Fair heart never won a fainting lady and a little opposition always suits me fine. Just keep your remarks to yourself. This is my affair.”
With that he helped himself to a snipe, settled back in his seat and began to get comedy out of the village types that passed. Three or four minutes of this went by and then a cream-colored roadster that was almost a city block long and had more brass than a five-and-ten-cent-store jewelry counter pulled into the curb and docked. From it alighted a tall, well-built, handsome youth who did his marketing at a convenient tobacco stand and caused Ottie to lift a brow.
“A classy job, what, Joe? And look at that petrol surry—tasty, hey? Honest, looking at him is like looking in a mirror—once I drop Hubbard and get the winner’s end of the purse. Ah, here comes Cinderella now. We'll check out of here with rapidity. Main Street is funny but it gives me the blues.”
Cinderella Dooley emerged from the drug store and came toward us. As she did so the good-looking stranger sighted her, pulled off his English golf cap and stopped her midway across what masqueraded as a sidewalk.
“Well, well, Cinderella herself or they play tennis on billiard tables. I was hoping to encounter you. We——”
Our landlady’s only child gave him a happy smile and then, as if suddenly remembering something, darted a startled look in our direction before continuing the conversation in whispers.
“So he’s one of them pastry pioneers!” Ottie mumbled. “Good clothes or shabby clothes, he better have a care how familiar he gets with Cutey. I'll give him a bust in the eye and say, ‘This is for nothing at all’ with the greatest of pleasure, I guarantee that I will!”
A few more words and then Miss Dooley came down to the curb.
“Meet one of my boy friends, Harry Nichols. We haven’t seen each other in quite a while so I know you won’t be angry if he takes me for a little ride in his new car. Oh, yes. And you can tell ma that Hen Slocum is getting her dope bottled up and that I’ll bring it home as soon as it’s ready. Goo’-by.”
With that she stepped into the lemon-meringue roadster, shook a day-day and moved, leaving Ottie to breathe fast.
“That’s a hot one, Joe. First she makes a fall guy and then a liar out of me! I'll bet when she was a kid and they asked her what kind of a doll she wanted she said ‘twins.’ And that mockie’s name is Harry Nichols—give me a loan of your pencil while I write this down on my cuff. The next time I meet Nichols Ill change his name to pennies! Hand him a ladder and I suppose he’ll think he’s Romeo!”
With the Scandrel-Hubbard bout only some nine days distant, any one witnessing Ottie in action was destined to immediately get down, hook, line and sinker, on Hubbard. Scandrel had made a valiant attempt to come all the way back but the total results were anything but satisfying. He was well whittled down, he was tightened up, but those two years away from the roped inclosure had gotten in their deadly work. The truth of the matter was that Ottie was painfully slow, his punches lacked the old steam, snap and judgment, his footwork was similar to that of a clog dancer with a sprained ankle and while he was able to show a flash with Barney Sapp at the receiving end of it in a two-or-three-round-exhibition mill, any of the smite clan had only to watch it and know that with a fast, aggressive battler like Hubbard, he didn’t appear to have a chance in the world.
A reflection of these sentiments was to be found in sporting circles and among the betting fraternity who made the sockers a specialty. With them the welterweight contender was an overwhelming favorite, while Ottie was held so cheaply in their esteem that any price was offered against his chances of winning, with few takers. You had only to write your own ticket and the handbook men let it go at that; but this, of course, was all under the blankets so far as the public was concerned.
If the papers were to be believed both Hubbard and Scandrel had attained the highest peak of physical perfection and were ready to tear into each other and supply the battle of the century!
Realizing what the wise opinion was pleased Ottie the same as a knock for Constantinople would a Turk, Looie Pitz ran out for a week-end, gave the comeback marvel a taste of inside gossip and fried him to a turn. For two days after Pitz had left for the Bronx with some Perfidious money to plant on Old Father Hubbard, conversation with Ottie was as scarce as oratory in a deaf-and-dumb academy. He said little, he ate little and he worked off his ill humor when the hapless Barney Sapp tottered out to take it in the orchard.
Really, the punishment the little stiff received should have been brought to the direct attention of the S. P.C. A. Ottie took the greatest delight in tearing him to tatters for the benefit of the newspaper gallery before he rocked him to sleep with a two-fisted lullaby. Each morning I half expected Sapp to pass out as cold as chopped ice and each morning he fooled me by coming back and standing up to another battle that would have commanded attention from the marines.
It was brutal though comical until sympathy overpowered me and I drew Sapp around one corner of the barn to give him the benefit of some kindly advice.
“Listen, Brainless,” I said seriously. “Ottie Scandrel is a friend of mine but there are other limits besides the twelve-mile one which even friendship oversteps. In case you don’t know it I feel it’s my duty to tell you that you’re not being treated right. You're not getting a square deal. You don’t have to be a chopping block as long as you have a mouth and know how to use it. Tell him to raise your wages or tone down the knuckle music. You'll soon be treated as gentle as Mary’s lamb if you give him the idea you’re all washed up. Understand?”
The emigrant from Hell’s Half Acre snickered.
“’At’s all right with me, Mr. O’Grady. I don’t mind a little pushing around. I was born tough and I was brung up tough. I should get forward with the boss when I haven’t drew down ten cents of my salary and I got over thirty dollars coming to me right now. How do I know he wouldn’t gate me without paying a dime?”
“That wouldn’t be a calamity,” I stated. “That would be a stroke of luck.”
Sapp fingered an ear—the better one.
“Mebbe, but I ain’t taking no chances on losing this job and getting tripped back to Twelfth Avenoo. I stick around where Cinderella is and as long as I got her to look at what’s a K. O. at ten bells every morning, or even a pair of broken ribs?”
“You're apparently on the verge of complete imbecility,” I snapped. “The girl doesn’t even know you exist.”
He nodded carelessly.
“But there ain’t no law against advertising, is there? Cinderella wants to get away from here and strike the island straight in the electric lights. Right here I want to tell you that I’ve got plans like anything——”
“What good are plans with thirty dollars to back them up?” I interrupted.
Sapp lowered his voice to a confidential pitch.
“Listen and I'll tell you something, pal. The day of the big fight I’m drawing every jit that I got coming to me. I got plans how to use it. I run that much into a few grand, wait until Mother Dooley is took down with another attack and do a slip-out with Fascinating. Before the big strike last winter I held the license of first-class plumber and if I do say so myself I stop a cruel leak. The job’s a pipe and I certainly solder a mean joint. Well, that’s that. I’m going out in the cornfield now.”
“What for—to get yourself a couple of regular ears?”
The most abused sparring partner in existence had a sneer for my question.
“No, it’s this way. I stand behind the stacks down near the fence and, without being seen, I can look straight into the kitchen window where Cinderella does a potato-peeling matinée every afternoon. To-morrow she promised me that I can hoe the garden and paint the chicken houses out yonder. ’By.”
What could you do with a tin-head like that?
The same evening at dinner the fifth dark-town waitress in charge of the plate department since Rosalind and shoes had checked out, handed in her resignation because of overwork and underpay. Spurning the tearful offers of both Ottie and Sapp to buttle, Miss Dooley did the tray act herself in between sessions at the stove and if the samples on the bill of fare were somewhat chilly nobody protested.
““Ma’s going to get a new girl next week,” Cinderella told us. “The employment agency has promised to send out some one who will stay this time.”
“Paste her if you want her to stick!” Sapp mumbled.
“Who asked you to solve the servant problem?” Ottie cut in with a growl. “You’re a Barney by name, by looks and nature. Take the choice of a beating here and now or shut your mouth shut. Make me?”
“I’m listening,” Sapp muttered.
The pride of the kitchen brought in the celery and Ottie gave her a paralyzing smile.
“I hear them tell how your ma’s confirmed to her room again, baby. That means you’re programmed for a walk down to the drug store, yes? You'd better have company to protect you—me. I'll help you with the dishes and then we'll do the walk together.”
“That’s really awfully kind of you,” Cinderella replied sweetly, “but I have already arranged for an escort.”
“The big tramp who stopped you on the sidewalk the other day?” Ottie jeered.
Miss Dooley put something on her tray and showed her teeth in a dazzling smile.
“My, aren’t you the good guesser! If you ever give up being a prize fighter you can hang out a sign and solve riddles for a living.”
“Ha, ha!”? Barney Sapp giggled when the girl made a smiling exit. ‘You don’t get her—I don’t get her——”
“Vou don’t get her but you get this!” Ottie hollered, taking his elbow out of the spinach in order to push a fast left across that ended Sapp’s hilarity abruptly and put him under the table. “So it’s Nichols again, Joe,” he went on, licking his lips. “We'll see about that a little later to-night. The gamblers can get comedy out of me but this mockie with his clothes and his car couldn’t ride me with a saddle. I’ll give him something to think about besides the gal to-night. That’s a positive vow!”
It was!
When Ottie showed up for breakfast and walked down to the shade of the old apple trees with me the next morning, his horn was an inch or so out of true, his left glim was as black as the back of a street kid’s neck and at least a dollar’s worth of plaster was artistically scattered around the face that would have dismayed a young ladies’ boarding school.
I looked him over with some curiosity.
“So the worm has accomplished his proverbial turning? What did Barney hit you with—the bureau?”
Ottie glanced in the direction of the barn and curled a lip.
“Er—what did Sapp hit me with? This wasn’t him. Don’t be getting nosey now because information with me is as tight as money with you.”
A week later we returned to Gotham, pulling into the Only Town around noon and proceeding directly to the Seventh Avenue fight club where the Scandrel bout was carded for the same night. There Ottie weighed in, gave a nod to the reporters, looked vainly for the appearance of Rex Hubbard and finally went back to the Bronx where he passed the balance of the afternoon arguing with Sapp about what salary was due the sparring partner. They decided to split the fifteen cents under discussion, Ottie paid in full and the other rushed away, all smiles.
“That’s the last of that bolognie,” Scandrel yawned, when I observed Sapp disappearing around the corner. “You'll notice I don’t fit a handkerchief to my eyes. Before I forget it, listen to this: I just found out the little dumb-bell had tumbled for Cinderella. Ain’t that hilarious?”
“You furnished some hilarity yourself,” I reminded him.
“Did I? After to-night you'll see a big change in that direction too. Remember we didn’t give up our rooms yet at Mother Dooley’s. There’s a reason for that. To-night’s scuffle is going to change a lot of things besides the outline of this Hubbard baby’s mug. You'll be surprised.”
Every one was.
Seven o’clock the same evening found us within the portals of the smoke house where a two-man Bunker Hill in the form of a preliminary was going along nicely. There was a crowd in the street and a larger one inside.
Ottie was the first to enter the ring and was given a generous ovation from a crowd that evidently believed in the truth of all the news that was fit to print—on the sporting page. He tested the ropes, rubbed his ring shoes in the resin box and went to his corner where I officiated as chief second and the other pail carriers from the gym were ready.
The next minute a few faint cheers sounded for one who was known only by reputation to the majority of those in the hall and Old Father Hubbard in a hem-stitched bath robe appeared. He was tall, well built and sun tanned. One look was enough to open Ottie’s mouth so far his tonsils were displayed. His own amazement, however, was no greater than mine for it needed only a brief glance to recognize the contender.
Fightdom knew him as Old Father Hubbard but to us he was only Harry Nichols from that dear Perfidious, New Jersey!
Hubbard, in an opposite corner, was gaping in open stupefaction. His expression was curious to say the least but there was no time to try and get an inkling of what was going on in his mind, for the referee began his usual patter, the crowd impatiently requested action and the usual regulations of bandage examining, introductions and announcements were hurried through.
The gong!
Old Father Hubbard shot out of his corner as if touched off by dynamite. Battling Scandrel was equally as rapid and they clashed in the center of the ring, breaking out with an assortment of punches that put the crowd on its feet and kept it there until the mill was over.
Standing toe to toe they slugged away like a couple of steam drillers busy working on a tough piece of rock. Scandrel was short with a hook to the head but registered with a left to the mouth and Hubbard clicked with three in a row to the ribs that must have hurt but didn’t stop the Scandrel offensive. Two lightning jabs on Ottie’s part earned him a hook on the jaw that laid him for the count of four.
He was on his feet without waiting to get the full benefit of the toll, rushed in swinging and by sheer strength hurled Hubbard back against the ropes. The welter contender came through with a flurry of left jabs and right hooks that had the ringside seats screaming for a clean K. O. but he didn’t chalk up another knockdown and a right to the heart threw him into a clinch.
The referee tore them apart, Ottie left-handed Hubbard across the ropes, spilled him and then missing a left lead received a right cross to the jaw that rocked him down to his heels. It looked like the pallbearers sure for Scandrel but his handsome young Opponent was too eager and Ottie was too cute to be tucked away by trickery.
Veteran though he was, Rex Hubbard desperately tried for a knock-out and hammered away while Ottie covered up, retreated and—waited. His chance came when he had backed almost into his corner and the round was in its last minute.
A wild jab and a wilder hook left Hubbard wide. Like a streak of lightning Ottie ripped through a straight right to the stomach that brought the other’s guard all the way down and left Hubbard’s jaw as exposed as Gibraltar but not half so rugged. A wicked left that made a flush connection with the peak of it and which had back of it every ounce of energy the hard-breathing, mumbling, sneering Ottie possessed, was the anesthetic that sent his opponent into the hazy realms of dreamland.
Old Father Hubbard collapsed like a broken umbrella and thousands of knowing citizens who only laid wagers on inside information failed to eat regularly for a number of weeks!
It took fifteen minutes to get Ottie through the raving mob who wanted a piece of him as a souvenir and at least five more in the dressing room to wring an explanation from him.
“Why shouldn’t I win easy?” he grunted. “The minute I seen that baby step into the ring wearing that ridiculous kimono of his I knew he was a blank cartridge. Why? Because I waited for him on the porch up at the Lodge the night he come back from the drug store with Cinderella. When Hubbard gave his straw skimmer a tip and left her I met him down by the old mill stream. Yes, he gave me the murky lamp and a steel ring he wore made the scratches but I knocked him as cold as the water in the brook. Do it once, do it again—why not? I knew I had him tied when I seen him and he knew it when he seen me. That’s why he gambled everything to beat me to the mattress punch. Well, that’s past history now, as Napoleon used to say to his favorite stenographer, and I’ve got enough fish in my share of the purse to last a lot of Fridays. Er—now—we'll run out to Perfidious to-morrow and get our baggage. I’ll meet you there. Right?”
It was toward six o’clock the following evening when the gay young blade with the beard and the tobacco cud rolled me up to Dooley’s Lodge and some three minutes later when I discovered Ottie surrounded by honeysuckle, whistling like a humming bird.
“So,” I began, mentally measuring his smile, “congratulations are in order. Tell me, where is Cinderella?”
Ottie let the melody escape and moved his shoulders.
“That’s what her mother is offering a two-dollar reward to find out. It seems that Cinderella turned down our friend Rex and beat it to New York to get married to some plumber who has been paying her close attention. She had the old lady on long distance and I understand this unknown party who is doing a bridegroom bet thirty-six dollars on me at about five hundred to one to win by a clean knock-out in the first frame. He must have known about the way I punch, hey?”
I stared.
“But that doesn’t explain your carefree indifference. What legal right have you to be happy about this?”
Scandrel glanced in the direction of the dining room down the porch and gave me a nudge.
“You’ll see the reason when we go in to feed, Joe. She’s as blond as a gold watch chain, has a voice like a victrola and eyes that kill you dead. I hear she’s straight out of a burlesque show that got stranded in Patterson and is playing waitress here just to pick up enough car fare to get back to Columbus Circle. Er—I don’t know her name yet but come on inside and I'll introduce you.”
Another Montanye story in the next issue.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1948, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 75 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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