Page:The Leather Pushers (1921).pdf/187

 smokin' had ruined his wind, he was flabby and out of condition, and he didn't give a trout's foot whether he fought Gournet, the guy the English promoter had picked to meet him, or not.

I knew that Dolores Brewster's father would be at the ringside, because the old guy was a blown-in-the-flask fight bug and had promised the Kid he would be there, after seein' him flatten the English champ a few weeks before. Whilst talkin' to us after that brawl Senator Brewster had also let fall the information that he always stopped at the Hotel Crillon when in the city which added "oo-la-la" to our language. So, in a loud and desperate voice I called on a woman for help for the first time in my life. I sit down and wrote a long letter to Miss Dolores Brewster, tellin' her that since her and the Kid fell out he was goin' to Gehenna at a speed which would make a nervous greyhound look like a crippled snail. I explained just what he was doin', just what was at stake, and that I was playin' her as my last card. I also worked in the fact that unless Kid Roberts pulled himself together at once, this French battler would murder him, and the disgrace would bury him, addin' that the Kid's future was in her hands and that a mere note from her with a couple of "dears" and a few mentions of the preposition "love" in it would make everything Jake.

I mailed the above to the Hotel Crillon and give myself up to the art of wishin'.

Well, I run a dead heat with Aladdin, and he had a lamp. The day of the bout no less than Dolores Brewster breezed into Monte Carlo herself! This was beyond