The Prince and Betty, P. G. Wodehouse [ebook reader for pc TXT] 📗

rejoined Bat, justly incensed. "Who's de little squirt, Mr. Maude?"

John waved his hands.

"Gentlemen, gentlemen," he said, "why descend to mere personalities? I ought to have introduced you. This is Mr. Renshaw, our editor. These, Mr. Renshaw, are Bat Jarvis and Long Otto, our acting fighting editors, vice Kid Brady, absent on unavoidable business."

The name stung Mr. Renshaw to indignation, as Smith's had done.

"Brady!" he shrilled. "I insist that you give me a full explanation. I go away by my doctor's orders for a vacation, leaving Mr. Smith to conduct the paper on certain clearly defined lines. By mere chance, while on my vacation, I saw a copy of the paper. It had been ruined."

"Ruined?" said John. "On the contrary. The circulation has been going up every week."

"Who is this person, Brady? With Mr. Philpotts I have been going carefully over the numbers which have been issued since my departure—"

"An intellectual treat," murmured John.

"—and in each there is a picture of this young man in a costume which I will not particularize—"

"There is hardly enough of it to particularize."

"—together with a page of disgusting autobiographical matter."

John held up his hand.

"I protest," he said. "We court criticism, but this is mere abuse. I appeal to these gentlemen to say whether this, for instance, is not bright and interesting."

He picked up the current number of Peaceful Moments, and turned to the Kid's page.

"This," he said, "describes a certain ten-round unpleasantness with one Mexican Joe. 'Joe comes up for the second round and he gives me a nasty look, but I thinks of my mother and swats him one in the lower ribs. He gives me another nasty look. "All right, Kid," he says; "now I'll knock you up into the gallery." And with that he cuts loose with a right swing, but I falls into the clinch, and then—'"

"Pah!" exclaimed Mr. Renshaw.

"Go on, boss," urged Mr. Jarvis approvingly. "It's to de good, dat stuff."

"There!" said John triumphantly. "You heard? Mr. Jarvis, one of the most firmly established critics east of Fifth Avenue stamps Kid Brady's reminiscences with the hall-mark of his approval."

"I falls fer de Kid every time," assented Mr. Jarvis.

"Sure! You know a good thing when you see one. Why," he went on warmly, "there is stuff in these reminiscences which would stir the blood of a jellyfish. Let me quote you another passage, to show that they are not only enthralling, but helpful as well. Let me see, where is it? Ah, I have it. 'A bully good way of putting a guy out of business is this. You don't want to use it in the ring, because rightly speaking it's a foul, but you will find it mighty useful if any thick-neck comes up to you in the street and tries to start anything. It's this way. While he's setting himself for a punch, just place the tips of the fingers of your left hand on the right side of the chest. Then bring down the heel of your left hand. There isn't a guy living that could stand up against that. The fingers give you a leverage to beat the band. The guy doubles up, and you upper-cut him with your right, and out he goes.' Now, I bet you never knew that before, Mr. Philpotts. Try it on your parishioners."

"Peaceful Moments," said Mr. Renshaw irately, "is no medium for exploiting low prize-fighters."

"Low prize-fighters! No, no! The Kid is as decent a little chap as you'd meet anywhere. And right up in the championship class, too! He's matched against Eddie Wood at this very moment. And Mr. Waterman will support me in my statement that a victory over Eddie Wood means that he gets a cast-iron claim to meet Jimmy Garvin for the championship."

"It is abominable," burst forth Mr. Renshaw. "It is disgraceful. The paper is ruined."

"You keep saying that. It really isn't so. The returns are excellent. Prosperity beams on us like a sun. The proprietor is more than satisfied."

"Indeed!" said Mr. Renshaw sardonically.

"Sure," said John.

Mr. Renshaw laughed an acid laugh.

"You may not know it," he said, "but Mr. Scobell is in New York at this very moment. We arrived together yesterday on the Mauretania. I was spending my vacation in England when I happened to see the copy of the paper. I instantly communicated with Mr. Scobell, who was at Mervo, an island in the Mediterranean—"

"I seem to know the name—"

"—and received in reply a long cable desiring me to return to New York immediately. I sailed on the Mauretania, and found that he was one of the passengers. He was extremely agitated, let me tell you. So that your impudent assertion that the proprietor is pleased—"

John raised his eyebrows.

"I don't quite understand," he said. "From what you say, one would almost imagine that you thought Mr. Scobell was the proprietor of this paper."

Mr. Renshaw stared. Everyone stared, except Mr. Jarvis, who, since the readings from the Kid's reminiscences had ceased, had lost interest in the proceedings, and was now entertaining the cats with a ball of paper tied to a string.

"Thought that Mr. Scobell—?" repeated Mr. Renshaw. "Who is, if he is not?"

"I am," said John.

There was a moment's absolute silence.

"You!" cried Mr. Renshaw.

"You!" exclaimed Mr. Waterman, Mr. Asher, and the Reverend Edwin T. Philpotts.

"Sure thing," said John.

Mr. Renshaw groped for a chair, and sat down.

"Am I going mad?" he demanded feebly. "Do I understand you to say that you own this paper?"

"I do."

"Since when?"

"Roughly speaking, about three days."

Among his audience (still excepting Mr. Jarvis, who was tickling one of the cats and whistling a plaintive melody) there was a tendency toward awkward silence. To start assailing a seeming nonentity and then to discover he is the proprietor of the paper to which you wish to contribute is like kicking an apparently empty hat and finding your rich uncle inside it. Mr. Renshaw in particular was disturbed. Editorships of the kind to which he aspired are not easy to get. If he were to be removed from Peaceful Moments he would find it hard to place himself anywhere else. Editors, like manuscripts, are rejected from want of space.

"I had a little money to invest," continued John. "And it seemed to me that I couldn't do better than put it into Peaceful Moments. If it did nothing