Psmith, Journalist, P. G. Wodehouse [top 5 ebook reader .txt] 📗

If it was the Table Hill lot, he’d look up Dude Dawson. And so on.”

“And what then?”

“And then the boss would talk it over with his own special partners. Every gang leader has about a dozen of them. A sort of Inner Circle. They’d fix it up among themselves. The rest of the gang wouldn’t know anything about it. The fewer in the game, you see, the fewer to split up the dollars.”

“I see. Then things are not so black. All we have to do is to look out for about a dozen hooligans with a natural dignity in their bearing, the result of intimacy with the main boss. Carefully eluding these aristocrats, we shall win through. I fancy, Comrade Windsor, that all may yet be well. What steps do you propose to take by way of self-defence?”

“Keep out in the middle of the street, and not go off the Broadway after dark. You’re pretty safe on Broadway. There’s too much light for them there.”

“Now that our sleuthhound friend in the taximeter has ascertained your address, shall you change it?”

“It wouldn’t do any good. They’d soon find where I’d gone to. How about yours?”

“I fancy I shall be tolerably all right. A particularly massive policeman is on duty at my very doors. So much for our private lives. But what of the daytime? Suppose these sandbag specialists drop in at the office during business hours. Will Comrade Maloney’s frank and manly statement that we are not in be sufficient to keep them out? I doubt it. All unused to the nice conventions of polite society, these rugged persons will charge through. In such circumstances good work will be hard to achieve. Your literary man must have complete quiet if he is to give the public of his best. But stay. An idea!”

“Well?”

“Comrade Brady. The Peerless Kid. The man Cosy Moments is running for the lightweight championship. We are his pugilistic sponsors. You may say that it is entirely owing to our efforts that he has obtained this match with⁠—who exactly is the gentleman Comrade Brady fights at the Highfield Club on Friday night?”

“Cyclone Al. Wolmann, isn’t it?”

“You are right. As I was saying, but for us the privilege of smiting Comrade Cyclone Al. Wolmann under the fifth rib on Friday night would almost certainly have been denied to him.”

It almost seemed as if he were right. From the moment the paper had taken up his cause, Kid Brady’s star had undoubtedly been in the ascendant. People began to talk about him as a likely man. Edgren, in the Evening World, had a paragraph about his chances for the lightweight title. Tad, in the Journal, drew a picture of him. Finally, the management of the Highfield Club had signed him for a ten-round bout with Mr. Wolmann. There were, therefore, reasons why Cosy Moments should feel a claim on the Kid’s services.

“He should,” continued Psmith, “if equipped in any degree with finer feelings, be bubbling over with gratitude towards us. ‘But for Cosy Moments,’ he should be saying to himself, ‘where should I be? Among the also-rans.’ I imagine that he will do any little thing we care to ask of him. I suggest that we approach Comrade Brady, explain the facts of the case, and offer him at a comfortable salary the post of fighting editor of Cosy Moments. His duties will be to sit in the room opening out of ours, girded as to the loins and full of martial spirit, and apply some of those half-scissor hooks of his to the persons of any who overcome the opposition of Comrade Maloney. We, meanwhile, will enjoy that leisure and freedom from interruption which is so essential to the artist.”

“It’s not a bad idea,” said Billy.

“It is about the soundest idea,” said Psmith, “that has ever been struck. One of your newspaper friends shall supply us with tickets, and Friday night shall see us at the Highfield.”

XIV The Highfield

Far up at the other end of the island, on the banks of the Harlem River, there stands the old warehouse which modern progress has converted into the Highfield Athletic and Gymnastic Club. The imagination, stimulated by the title, conjures up a sort of National Sporting Club, with pictures on the walls, padding on the chairs, and a sea of white shirtfronts from roof to floor. But the Highfield differs in some respects from this fancy picture. Indeed, it would be hard to find a respect in which it does not differ. But these names are so misleading. The title under which the Highfield used to be known till a few years back was “Swifty Bob’s.” It was a good, honest title. You knew what to expect; and if you attended séances at Swifty Bob’s you left your gold watch and your little savings at home. But a wave of anti-pugilistic feeling swept over the New York authorities. Promoters of boxing contests found themselves, to their acute disgust, raided by the police. The industry began to languish. People avoided places where at any moment the festivities might be marred by an inrush of large men in blue uniforms armed with locust sticks.

And then some big-brained person suggested the club idea, which stands alone as an example of American dry humour. There are now no boxing contests in New York. Swifty Bob and his fellows would be shocked at the idea of such a thing. All that happens now is exhibition sparring bouts between members of the club. It is true that next day the papers very tactlessly report the friendly exhibition spar as if it had been quite a serious affair, but that is not the fault of Swifty Bob.

Kid Brady, the chosen of Cosy Moments, was billed for a “ten-round exhibition contest,” to be the main event of the evening’s entertainment. No decisions are permitted at these clubs. Unless a regrettable accident occurs, and one