Page:The Leather Pushers (1921).pdf/24

 Reed knockin' him dead with a punch, they wouldn't let Loughlin in a fight club now if he had a ticket! I'm gonna shove off for New York, and you better come along with me. The way they been breakin' for me, I gotta good mind to get outa the fight game altogether and turn square!"

Dummy begins to clear his throat and rub his hands together for a minute, and then suddenly he turns to me and lowers his voice:

"We kin grab a rattler outa here to-night," he says. "Stick around for a couple minutes, and you'll git a flash at the next heavyweight champion of the world and joints west! That's if he shows up," he adds.

"You certainly have become a pig for punishment, Dummy!" I grins. "Who's this guy?"

"Kane Halliday!" he whispers like he was sayin' "The Sheriff of Shantung!" or the like. "How 'bout that?"

"It don't mean nothin' in my young life," I says. "How d'ye play it?"

"You never heard tell of Kane Halliday?" he gasps like his ears is both liars. "The big, now, football star, the weights thrower, the—the—runner, the—ah—what they call a roundabout athalete? You know, one of them bimbos which flings a wicked spear and hurls a mean hammer and that there stuff, get me? Why, they claim this baby beat Harvard and the other college all by himself!"

"That ain't my fault," I yawns. "And I can't identify the body yet."

"Was bein' stupid cold, you'd be zero!" snarls Dummy. "Why, the papers was full of this guy!"