And they bellered louder’n ever. A fighting man is a fighting man in any langwidge!
* * *
NIGHT OF BATTLE; OR, SHORE LEAVE FOR A SLUGGER
First published in Fight Stories, March 1932. Also published as “Shore Leave For A Slugger”
I’M beginning to believe that Singapore is a jinx for me. Not that I don’t always get a fight there; I do. But it looks, by golly, like a lot of dirty luck is always throwed in with the fight.
Rumination of them sort was in my mind as I clumb the rickety stairs of the Seaman’s Deluxe Boarding House and entered my room, tightly gripping the fifty bucks which constituted my whole wad.
I’d just been down to see Ace Larnigan, manager of the Arena, and had got matched with Black Jack O’Brien for ten rounds or less, that night. And I was wondering where I could hide my roll. I had the choice of taking it with me and getting it stole outa my britches whilst I was in the ring, or leaving it in my room and getting it hooked by the Chino servants from which you couldn’t hide nothing.
I set on my ramshackle bed and meditated, and I had about decided to let my white bulldog, Mike, hold the roll in his mouth while I polished off Black Jack, with a good chance of him swallering it in his excitement, when all of sudden I heered sounds of somebody ascending the stairs about six steps at a jump, and then running wildly down the hall.
I paid no heed; guests of the Deluxe is always being chased into the dump or out of it by the cops. But instead of running into his own room and hiding under the bed, as was the usual custom, this particular fugitive blundered headlong against my door, blowing and gasping like a grampus. Much to my annoyance, the door was knocked violently open, and a disheveled shape fell all over the floor.
I riz with dignity. “What kind of a game is this?” I asked, with my instinctive courtesy. “Will you get outa my room or will I throw you out on your ear?”
“Hide me, Steve!” the shape gasped. “Shut the door! Hide me! Give me a gun! Call the cops! Lemme under the bed! Look out the window and see if you see anybody chasing me!”
“Make up your mind what you want me to do; I ain’t no magician,” I said disgustedly, recognizing the shape as Johnny Kyelan, a good-hearted but soft- headed sap of a kid which should of been jerking soda back home instead of trying to tend bar in a tough waterfront joint in Singapore. Just one of them fool kids which is trying to see the world.
He grabbed me with hands that shook, and I seen the sweat standing out on his face.
“You got to help me, Steve!” he babbled. “I came here because I didn’t know anybody else to go to. If you don’t help me, I’ll never live to see another sunrise. I’ve stumbled onto something I wasn’t looking for. Something that it’s certain death to know about. Steve, I’ve found out who The Black Mandarin is!”
I grunted. This is serious.
“You mean you know who it is that’s been committin’ all these robberies and murders, dressed up in a mask and Chinee clothes?”
“The same!” he exclaimed, trembling and sweating. “The worst criminal in the Orient!”
“Then why in heck don’t you go to the police?” I demanded.
He shook like he had aggers. “I don’t dare! I’d never live to get to the police station. They’re watching for me — it isn’t one man who’s been doing all these crimes; it’s a criminal organization. One man is the head, but he has a big gang. They all dress the same way when they’re robbing and looting.”
“How’d you get onto this?” I asked.
“I was tending bar,” he shuddered. “I went into the cellar to get some wine — it’s very seldom I go there. By pure chance, I came onto a group of them plotting over a table by a candle-light. I recognized them and heard them talking — the fellow who owns the saloon where I work is one of them — and I never had an inkling he was a crook. I was behind a stack of wine- kegs, and listened till I got panicky and made a break. Then they saw me. They chased me in and out among those winding alleys till I thought I’d die. I shook them off just a few minutes ago, and reached here. But I don’t dare stir out. I don’t think they saw me coming in, but they’re combing the streets, and they’d see me going out.”
“Who is the leader?” I asked.
“They call him the Chief,” he said.
“Yeah, but who is he?” I persisted, but he just shook that much more.
“I don’t dare tell.” His teeth was chattering with terror. “Somebody might be listening.”
“Well, gee whiz,” I said, “you’re in bad with ’em already—”
But he was in one of them onreasoning fears, and wouldn’t tell me nothing.
“You’d never in the world guess,” he said. “And I just don’t dare. I get goose-pimples all over when I think about it. Let me stay with you till tomorrow morning, Steve,” he begged, “then we’ll get in touch with Sir Peter Brent, the Scotland Yard guy. He’s the only man of authority I trust. The police have proven themselves helpless — nobody ever recognized one of that Mandarin gang and lived to tell about it. But Sir Peter will protect me and trap these fiends.”
“Well,” I said, “why can’t we get him now?”
“I don’t know where to reach him,” said Johnny. “He’s somewhere in Singapore — I don’t know where. But in the morning we can get him at his club; he’s always there early in the morning. For heavens’ sake, Steve, let me stay!”
“Sure, kid,” I said. “Don’t be scairt. If any them Black Mandarins comes buttin’ in here, I’ll bust ’em on the snoot. I was goin’ to fight Black Jack O’Brien down at the Arena tonight, but I’ll call it off and stick around with you.”
“No, don’t do that,” he said, beginning to get back a little of his nerve. “I’ll lock the door and stay here. I don’t think they know where I am; and, anyway, with the door locked they can’t get in to me without making a noise that would arouse the whole house. You go ahead and fight Black Jack. If you didn’t show up, some of that gang might guess you were with me; they’re men who know us both. Then that would get you into trouble. They know you’re the only friend I’ve got.”
“Well,” I said, “I’ll leave Mike here to purteck you.”
“No! No!” he said. “That’d look just as suspicious, if you showed up without Mike. Besides, they’d only shoot him if they came. You go on, and, when you come back, knock on the door and tell me who it is. I’ll know your voice and let you in.”
“Well, all right,” I said, “if you think you’ll be safe. I don’t think them Mandarins would have sense enough to figger out you was with me, just because I didn’t happen to show up at the Arena — but maybe you know. And say, you keep this fifty bucks for me. I was wonderin’ what to do with it. If I take it to the Arena, some dip will lift it offa me.”
So Johnny took it, and me and Mike started for the Arena, and, as we went down the stairs, I heered him lock the door behind us. As I left the Deluxe, I looked sharp for any slinking figgers hanging around watching the house, but didn’t see none, and went on down the street.
The arena was just off the waterfront, and it was crowded like it always is when either me or Black Jack fights. Ace had been wanting to get us together for a long time, but this was the first time we happened to be in port at the same time. I was in my dressing-room putting on my togs when in stormed a figger I knowed must be my opponent. I’ve heered it said me and Black Jack looked enough alike to be brothers; he was my height, six feet, weighed same as me, and had black hair and smoldering blue eyes. But I always figgered I was better looking than him.
I seen he was in a wicked mood, and I knowed his recent fight with Bad Bill Kearney was still rankling him. Bad Bill was a hard-boiled egg which run a gambling hall in the toughest waterfront district of Singapore and fought on the side. A few weeks before, him and O’Brien had staged a most vicious battle in the Arena, and Black Jack had been knocked cold in the fifth round, just when it looked like he was winning. It was the only time he’d ever been stopped, and, ever sin
ce, he’d been frothing at the mouth and trying to get Bad Bill back in the ring with him.
He give a snarling, blood-thirsty laugh as he seen me.
“Well, Costigan,” he said, “I guess maybe you think you’re man enough to stow me away tonight, eh? You slant-headed goriller!”
“I may not lick you, you black-jowled baboon,” I roared, suspecting a hint of insult in his manner, “but I’ll give you a tussle your great- grandchildren will shudder to hear about!”
“How strong do you believe that?” he frothed.
“Strong enough to kick your brains out here and now,” I thundered.
Ace got in between us.
“Hold it!” he requested. “I ain’t goin’ to have you boneheads rooin’in’ my show by massacreein’ each other before the fight starts.”
“What you got there?” asked O’Brien, suspiciously, as Ace dug into his pockets.
“Your dough,” said Ace sourly, bringing out a roll of bills. “I guaranteed you each fifty bucks, win, lose or draw.”
“Well,” I said, “we don’t want it now. Give it to us after the mill.”
“Ha!” sneered Ace. “Keep it and get my pockets picked? Not me! I’m givin’ it to you now. You two can take the responsibility. Here — take it! Now I’ve paid you, and you got no kick comin’ at me if you lose it. If the dips get it offa you, that ain’t my lookout.”
“All right, you white-livered land-shark,” sneered Black Jack, and turned to me. “Costigan, this fifty says I lays you like a carpet.”
“I takes you!” I barked. “My fifty says you leaves that ring on a shutter. Who holds stakes?”
“Not me,” said Ace, hurriedly.
“Don’t worry,” snapped Black Jack, “I wouldn’t trust a nickel of my dough in your greasy fingers. Not a nickel. Hey Bunger!”
At the yell, in come a bewhiskered old wharf-rat which exuded a strong smell of trader’s rum.
“What you want?” he said. “Buy me a drink, Black Jack.”
“I’ll buy you a raft of drinks later,” growled O’Brien. “Here, hold these stakes, and if you let a dip get ‘em, I’ll pull out all your whiskers by the roots.”
“They won’t get it offa me,” promised old Bunger. “I know the game, you bet.”
Which he did, having been a dip hisself in his youth; but he had one virtue — when he was sober, he was as honest as the day is long with them he considered his friends. So he took the two fifties, and me and O’Brien, after a few more mutual insults, slung on our bathrobes and strode up the aisle, to the applause of the multitude, which cheered a long-looked-for melee.
The Sea Girl wasn’t in port — in fact, I’d come to Singapore to meet her, as she was due in a few days. So, as they was none of my crew to second me, Ace had provided a couple of dumb clucks.
He’d also give Black Jack a pair of saps, as O’Brien’s ship, the Watersnake, wasn’t in port either.
The gong whanged, the crowd roared, and the dance commenced. We was even matched. We was both as tough as nails, and aggressive. What we lacked in boxing skill, we made up for by sheer ferocity. The Arena never seen a more furious display of hurricane battling and pile-driving punching; it left the crowd as limp as a rag and yammering gibberish.
At the tap of each gong we just rushed at each other and started slugging. We traded punches ‘til everything was red and hazy. We stood head to head and battered away, then we leaned on each other’s chest and kept hammering, and then we kept our feet by each resting his chin on the other’s shoulder, and driving away with short-arm jolts to the body. We slugged ‘til we was both blind and deaf and dizzy, and kept on battering away, gasping and drooling curses and weeping with sheer fighting madness.
At the end of each round our handlers would pull us apart and guide us to our corners, where they wouldst sponge off the blood and sweat and tears, and douse us with ice-water, and give us sniffs of ammonia, whilst the crowd watched, breathless, afeared neither of us would be able to come up for the next round. But with the marvelous recuperating ability of the natural-born slugger, we would both revive under the treatments, and stiffen on our stool, glaring red-eyed at each other, and, with the tap of the gong, it would begin all over again. Boy, that was a scrap, I’m here to tell you!
Time and again either him or me would be staggering on the ragged edge of a knockout, but would suddenly rally in a ferocious burst of battling which had the crowd delirious. In the eighth he put me on the canvas with a left hook that nearly tore my head off, and the crowd riz, screaming. But at “eight” I come up, reeling, and dropped him with a right hook under the heart that nearly cracked his ribs. He lurched up just before the fatal “ten,” and the gong sounded.
The end of the ninth found us both on the canvas, but ten rounds was just too short a time for either of us to weaken sufficient for a knockout. But I believe, if it had gone five more rounds, half the crowd would of dropped dead. The finish found most of ’em feebly flapping their hands and croaking like frogs. At the final gong we was standing head to head in the middle of the ring, trading smashes you couldst hear all over the house, and the referee pulled us apart by main strength and lifted both our hands as an indication that the fight was a draw.
Drawing on his bathrobe, Black Jack come over to my corner, spitting out blood and the fragments of a tooth, and he said, grinning like a hyena, “Well, you owe me fifty bucks which you bet on lickin’ me.”
“And, by the same token, you owe me fifty,” I retorted. “Your bet was you’d flatten me. By golly, I don’t know when I ever enjoyed a scrap more! I don’t see how Bad Bill licked you.”
O’Brien’s face darkened like a thunder-cloud.
“Don’t mention that egg to me,” he snapped. “I can’t figger it out myself. You hit me tonight a lot harder’n he ever did. I’d just battered him clean across the ring, and he was reelin’ and rockin’ — then it happened. All I know is that he fell into me, and we in a sort of half-clinch — then bing! The next thing I knowed, they was pourin’ water on me in my dressin’-room. They said he socked me on the jaw as we broke, but I never seen the punch — or felt it.”
“Well,” I said, “forget it. Let’s get our dough from old Bunger and go get a drink. Then I gotta go back to my room.”
“What you turnin’ in so soon for?” he scowled. “The night’s young. Let’s see if we can’t shake up some fun. They’s a couple of tough bouncers down at Yota Lao’s I been layin’ off to lick a long time—”
“Naw,” I said, “I got business at the Deluxe. But we’ll have a drink, first.”
So we looked around for Bunger, and he wasn’t nowhere to be seen. We went back to our dressing-rooms, and he wasn’t there either.
“Now, where is the old mutt?” inquired Black Jack, fretfully. “Here’s us famishin’ with thirst, and that old wharf-rat—”
“If you mean old Bunger,” said a lounger, “I seen him scoot along about the fifth round.”
“Say,” I said, as a sudden suspicion struck me, “was he drunk?”
“If he was, I couldn’t tell it,” said Black Jack.
“Well,” I said, “I thought he smelt of licker.”
“He always smells of licker,” answered O’Brien, impatiently. “I defies any man to always know whether the old soak’s drunk or sober. He don’t ack no different when he’s full, except you can’t trust him with dough.”
“Well,” I growled, “he’s gone, and likely he’s blowed in all our money already. Come on; let’s go hunt for him.”
So we donned our street clothes, and went forth. Our mutual battering hadn’t affected our remarkable vitalities none, though we both had black eyes and plenteous cuts and bruises. We went down the street and glanced in the dives, but we didn’t see Bunger, and purty soon we was in the vicinity of the Deluxe.
“Come on up to my room,” I said. “I got fifty bucks there. We’ll get it and buy us a drink. And listen, Johnny Kyelan’s up there, but you keep your trap shut about it, see?”<
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“Okay,” he said. “If Johnny’s in a jam, I ain’t the man to blab on him. He ain’t got no sense, but he’s a good kid.”
So we went up to my room; everybody in the house was either asleep or had gone out some place. I knocked cautious, and said, “Open up, kid; it’s me, Costigan.”
They wasn’t no reply. I rattled the knob impatiently and discovered the door wasn’t locked. I flang it open, expecting to find anything. The room was dark, and, I switched on the light. Johnny wasn’t nowhere to be seen. The room wasn’t mussed up nor nothing, and though Mike kept growling deep down in his throat, I couldn’t find a sign of anything suspicious. All I found was a note on the table. I picked it up and read, “Thanks for the fifty, sucker! Johnny.”
“Well, of all the dirty deals!” I snarled. “I took him in and perteckted him, and he does me outa my wad!”
“Lemme see that note,” said Black Jack, and read it and shook his head. “I don’t believe this here’s Johnny’s writin’,” he said.
“Sure it is,” I snorted, because I was hurt deep. “It’s bad to lose your dough; but it’s a sight worse to find out that somebody you thought was your friend is nothing but a cheap crook. I ain’t never seen any of his writin’ before, but who else would of writ it? Nobody but him knowed about my wad. Black Mandarins my eye!”
“Huh?” Black Jack looked up quick, his eyes glittering; that phrase brung interest to anybody in Singapore. So I told him all about what Johnny had told me, adding disgustedly, “I reckon I been took for a sucker again. I bet the little rat had got into a jam with the cops, and he just seen a chance to do me out of my wad. He’s skipped; if anybody’d got him, the door would be busted, and somebody in the house would of heered it. Anyway, the note wouldn’t of been here. Dawggonit, I never thought Johnny was that kind.”
“Me neither,” said Black Jack, shaking his head, “and you don’t figger he ever saw them Black Mandarins.”
“I don’t figger they is any Black Mandarins,” I snorted, fretfully.
Delphi Works of Robert E. Howard (Illustrated) (Series Four) Page 196