Page:The Leather Pushers (1921).pdf/217

 used up all the cheaper help long before. Passin' the lobby of the hotel on my ways back, I'm edging through the jam when out of a taxi piles a couple of guys which has a familiar look. Their backs is to me, but yet they's somethin' about the way one of 'em carries himself that sets me thinkin': I know this guy, who is he? And then as the bell hops run out for their suit cases, this bird turns around and I catch a good square view of his face.

Sweet Mamma—it was Kid Roberts' old man!

At the risk of 'em seein' me, I stopped dead not three feet away and took a good long look. When the other guy started up the steps, the thing was cinched. He was Senator Brewster.

I staggered up against a convenient lamp post and I'd of been there yet, I guess, if a copper hadn't come along and nudged me with his stick. "Take 'at booze away from here," he says. "They're watchin' me pretty clost!"

Still in a trance, I sidled into a taxi and beat it for the camp. Of course, I took it for granted that the old boy had been out to see Kid Roberts and prob'ly made a scene and the like, and I could imagine what shape the Kid was in by now. Think of it, to have a thing like this happen on the very brinks of a championship battle!

Dynamite Jackson is on guard outside the room where the Kid's sleepin', just like I'd left him. He greets me with a dazzlin', gold-toothed grin. "Can 'at white boy fight like he kin sleep," remarks Dynamite, noddin' to the door, "us handles a champeen by to-night!"