The Adventures of Sally, P. G. Wodehouse [interesting novels in english txt] 📗

Sorrow at his inability to oblige shone from every hill-top on the boy's face.

“Don't know of anyone of that name around here,” he said, apologetically.

“But surely...” Sally broke off suddenly. A grim foreboding had come to her. “How long have you been here?” she asked.

“All day, ma'am,” said the office-boy, with the manner of a Casablanca.

“I mean, how long have you been employed here?”

“Just over a month, miss.”

“Hasn't Mr. Kemp been in the office all that time?”

“Name's new to me, lady. Does he look like anything? I meanter say, what's he look like?”

“He has very red hair.”

“Never seen him in here,” said the office-boy. The truth shone coldly on Sally. She blamed herself for ever having gone away, and told herself that she might have known what would happen. Left to his own resources, the unhappy Ginger had once more made a hash of it. And this hash must have been a more notable and outstanding hash than any of his previous efforts, for, surely, Fillmore would not lightly have dismissed one who had come to him under her special protection.

“Where is Mr. Nicholas?” she asked. It seemed to her that Fillmore was the only possible source of information. “Did you say he was out?”

“Really out, miss,” said the office-boy, with engaging candour. “He went off to White Plains in his automobile half-an-hour ago.”

“White Plains? What for?”

The pimpled stripling had now given himself up wholeheartedly to social chit-chat. Usually he liked his time to himself and resented the intrusion of the outer world, for he who had chosen jugglery for his walk in life must neglect no opportunity of practising: but so favourable was the impression which Sally had made on his plastic mind that he was delighted to converse with her as long as she wished.

“I guess what's happened is, he's gone up to take a look at Bugs Butler,” he said.

“Whose butler?” said Sally mystified.

The office-boy smiled a tolerant smile. Though an admirer of the sex, he was aware that women were seldom hep to the really important things in life. He did not blame them. That was the way they were constructed, and one simply had to accept it.

“Bugs Butler is training up at White Plains, miss.”

“Who is Bugs Butler?”

Something of his former bleakness of aspect returned to the office-boy. Sally's question had opened up a subject on which he felt deeply.

“Ah!” he replied, losing his air of respectful deference as he approached the topic. “Who is he! That's what they're all saying, all the wise guys. Who has Bugs Butler ever licked?”

“I don't know,” said Sally, for he had fixed her with a penetrating gaze and seemed to be pausing for a reply.

“Nor nobody else,” said the stripling vehemently. “A lot of stiffs out on the coast, that's all. Ginks nobody has ever heard of, except Cyclone Mullins, and it took that false alarm fifteen rounds to get a referee's decision over him. The boss would go and give him a chance against the champ, but I could have told him that the legitimate contender was K-leg Binns. K-leg put Cyclone Mullins out in the fifth. Well,” said the office-boy in the overwrought tone of one chafing at human folly, “if anybody thinks Bugs Butler can last six rounds with Lew Lucas, I've two bucks right here in my vest pocket that says it ain't so.”

Sally began to see daylight.

“Oh, Bugs—Mr. Butler is one of the boxers in this fight that my brother is interested in?”

“That's right. He's going up against the lightweight champ. Lew Lucas is the lightweight champ. He's a bird!”

“Yes?” said Sally. This youth had a way of looking at her with his head cocked on one side as though he expected her to say something.

“Yes, sir!” said the stripling with emphasis. “Lew Lucas is a hot sketch. He used to live on the next street to me,” he added as clinching evidence of his hero's prowess. “I've seen his old mother as close as I am to you. Say, I seen her a hundred times. Is any stiff of a Bugs Butler going to lick a fellow like that?”

“It doesn't seem likely.”

“You spoke it!” said the lad crisply, striking unsuccessfully at a fly which had settled on the blotting-paper.

There was a pause. Sally started to rise.

“And there's another thing,” said the office-boy, loath to close the subject. “Can Bugs Butler make a hundred and thirty-five ringside without being weak?”

“It sounds awfully difficult.”

“They say he's clever.” The expert laughed satirically. “Well, what's that going to get him? The poor fish can't punch a hole in a nut-sundae.”

“You don't seem to like Mr. Butler.”

“Oh, I've nothing against him,” said the office-boy magnanimously. “I'm only saying he's no licence to be mixing it with Lew Lucas.”

Sally got up. Absorbing as this chat on current form was, more important matters claimed her attention.

“How shall I find my brother when I get to White Plains?” she asked.

“Oh, anybody'll show you the way to the training-camp. If you hurry, there's a train you can make now.”

“Thank you very much.”

“You're welcome.”

He opened the door for her with an old-world politeness which disuse had rendered a little rusty: then, with an air of getting back to business after a pleasant but frivolous interlude, he took up the paper-weights once more and placed the ruler with nice care on his upturned chin.

2

Fillmore heaved a sigh of relief and began to sidle from the room. It was a large room, half barn, half gymnasium. Athletic appliances of various kinds hung on the walls and in the middle there was a wide roped-off space, around which a small crowd had distributed itself with an air of expectancy. This is a commercial age, and the days when a prominent pugilist's training activities used to be hidden from the public gaze are over. To-day, if the public can lay its hands on fifty cents, it may come and gaze its fill. This afternoon, plutocrats to the number of about forty had assembled, though not all of these, to the regret of Mr. Lester Burrowes, the manager of the eminent Bugs Butler, had parted with solid coin. Many of those present were newspaper representatives and on the free list—writers who would polish up Mr. Butler's somewhat crude prognostications as to what he proposed to do to Mr. Lew Lucas, and would report him as saying, “I am in really