Page:The Popular Magazine v72 n1 (1924-04-20).djvu/91

 teria and she told my fortune three ways. She give me terrible news. She says I'm in for a big disappointment, that everything I counted on is going to flop and that I should beware of a dark woman. I suppose that means the colored girl who called. for the laundry yesterday. What'll I do?”

“Did she read your palm?” I inquired.

Pitz put his handkerchief away.

“I never thought of that. “I'll go back and get her to look at it. Maybe I've got some good news on my hands after all!”

He vanished into the tent like a sheik while Ottie and I did a turn into the refreshment section. Here was a soda-water fountain with the customers hanging on three deep, looking for the cracked ice and automatically feeling for the brass rail with their brogans. The first thing we saw after the fizz counter was Miss Lamont making merry over a nut sundae with Master McFinn, who wore a suit that looked as if it had been cut from a livery-stable blanket.

We had hardly lamped the two before we saw Tin Ear O'Brien and the rub-down crew singing their college songs and lifting steins of root beer at a table in a corner. After that the next thing on the ledger was Ottie's heel on my instep.

“Here they come now, Joe! Watch me dish this Jepson baby like Eyetalian spaghetti. He's got more crust than pie—keeping my sweetie out as late as this!”

I looked in the same direction he was staring and perceived the charming Miss Amabel Biggs hanging on the arm of the quiet Jepson, whose smile was that of a puss after a supper of catnip. With hardly a glance in any direction they took the next table to the one held down by a person we recognized immediately as being no less than Tarkington van Riker himself. Miss Biggs slid into a chair but as luck would have it Jepson failed to make the hook above him for his hat and the dicer, slipping out of his hand, hit the wall, bounced off and landed accurately on the head of Dangerous Dave McFinn.

Like lightning McFinn sprang out of his chair, tore the brim from the hat and threw it in the astonished face of the valet.

“You big mockie!” he roared. “You did that on purpose! You can't insult me when I'm with a lady! I never did like you and now I hate you! Put up your dukes. I'm going to give you the cuffing of a lifetime!”

Before any one, Scandrel least of all, could interfere, Tin Ear O'Brien, tearing himself away from his. merry comrades, reached Jepson's side in oue spring and two bounds.

“Sit down, you big stiff!” the ex-welterweight snarled. “When you talk of battling with this boy you're talking about a fight with me! I've got a little hate myself on board! Get back there to your table or I'll knock you cold!”

Wham!

Snapping over a beautiful right hook that would have surely meant curtains if it had landed, McFinn threw himself at O'Brien and quicker than instantly an interesting exhibition of the manly art was in progress.

Screams of alarm mingled with confused cries and a few feminine shrieks, as the two went at it hammer and tongs.

“As the shoemaker said when the boat was sinking—every man to the pumps!” Scandrel bellowed. “Pardon me a minute, Joe. I think I'm needed elsewhere!”

Hurling a dozen or more spectators roughly aside he reached the scene of conflict, tore off his coat and sprang into the heart of it. There were too many people in the way for me to get a robin's-eye view of exactly what transpired. When I got to the front of the crowd it was to find McFinn, Scandrel and Tin Ear O'Brien in a tangle on the floor—one or two of them completely out!

The light-heavyweight, in a sudden silence so profound that the fall of an acorn would have deafened a squirrel, staggered to his feet and reeled over to Jepson, who had been an interested bystander.

“You goofy cake eater!” McFinn mumbled. “I'm going to get you after all!”

The quiet valet removed both hands from his pockets and smiled.

“After,” he corrected amiably, “I get you first!”

Allowing a left-handed sock to glide harmlessly past his handsome head, the young man stepped forward and swung himself—with both hands. The duet of punches might have been helped along by luck and accident combined but both landed and both registered. Without bothering to say good-by to any one present Dangerous Dave McFinn did a somersault over a chair and crumpled up under a table!

“My word!” I heard Tarkington van Riker gasp.

The next climax in the festival of fight