The Popular Magazine/Volume 73/Number 4/Ivan's Foe

NCE upon a time a couple of brothers who rejoiced in the family name of Grimm knocked out enough to pay their income tax through the simple medium of throwing together fairy tales to delight a bunch of credulous kiddies. Mr. Father and Mrs. Mother, whose duty; it was to read the bedtime stories to their youngsters, undoubtedly held the strong suspicion that the Grimm boys were either taking it in the wrist or smoking it in a bamboo pipe. That, however, was in the sweet old days and times have changed. Right now there are more fairy tales in any evening newspaper than the enterprising Grimm twins hopped up for the tots and if you’re the least bit skeptical tell me what fairy tale has it on the radio, the photographs they send by wireless, the airplane flights that begin with breakfast in China and end with dinner in Brazil, the machines that give anybody a look at their own interiors and—finish it yourself. Because of this, the yarn of “Jack and the Beanstalk,” “Princess Kind Eyes” and “The Wicked Dwarf” are enough to make the average child throw away its cigarette, yawn and inquire where that stuff was obtained from.

This spicy narrative can’t be properly called a fairy tale even if it reads like one. For the benefit of those who weren’t seated before the first curtain let me present our hero, Prince Charming Scandrel, set the prologue in the Night-and-Day Garage, a twenty-four-hour gyp joint for the cans, and drag on Ivan the Terrible, Moe the Ogre, Winnie the Beautiful and all the rest of the characters that make merry while the plot unfolds.

To begin at the beginning, Ottie had bought the Night-and-Day Garage for a song and a dance. The trap was nearer the East River than the Hudson, had prices like those of a Rialto café private swine list and prospered under the direction of the big clown. Scandrel took to the legalized-highwayman thing like a soldier to gunpowder. Really, the way he could figure an estimate on a repair job was nothing less than remarkable. Ottie could tell how much the cost of overhauling a motor would be by sniffing the fragrance of its burning gas. He decided how much new axles would add up to by merely feeling the upholstery, and a broken rear end was always priced according to the length of the running board.

The ludicrous part of it was that when the arks were given the K. O. and put on the street again they ran like a commuter for an early-morning train!

As the proprietor of a busy garage my boy friend was a laugh. The fact that he knew absolutely nothing about the profession bothered him less than the monthly milk bill does the family cat. Ottie, certain that the thing was as simple as a kindergarten, spent most of his time rushing around doing nothing and ran his mechanics with a heavy hand and foot. An example of his directorship was presented quite vividly one afternoon between Monday and Sunday when I chanced to stop in at the garage office, a chamber that made a telephone booth look like a ballroom, and found the world’s most noted half-wit bawling out a hapless mechanic who listened to every thing he said, a wrench in one hand and an egg sandwich in the other.

This party was worth anybody’s second glance. Not only was he a symphony in grease but wore overalls that could have been coasted on, had ears that resembled sails, a head that came to a point and a witless smile that seemed to tell the world he didn’t know what it was all about and cared less.

“Honest, you’d make a fish seasick!” Scandrel was raving, when I closed the door and entered. “I ought to hit you a kick, you little stiff. The next time there’s a soap convention in town I’m going to attend so I can wash my hands of you. You’re ignorant, your heels are too close to your ankles and you’re a tight connection. Are you listening?”

The mechanic shuffled his feet, took another generous bite out of the sandwich and sighed.

“I hear you. What was you saying?”

“What’s all this?” I inquired, while Ottie reached for a ledger.

“These here ignoramuses, Joe!” he moaned. “I can’t trust none of them out of my sight for more than five minutes, Eastern standard time. They’re trying to shove me into bankruptcy. This frozen knot here—Ivan Mulligan by name—is the dumbest of the lot. He knows more about rattles than Henry Ford and he repairs a mean motor, but he’s got cement looking like skimmed milk for thickness and to make it even all around he’s one of these superstitious monkeys. You talk to him. Ask him why he lets a thirty-one dollar repair job go out for thirteen washers when the amount was plainly wrote on the ticket.”

Mulligan finished his lunch, put a crust of bread in one pocket of his overalls, scratched his ear, took out a bunch of four-leaf clovers, looked at them, put them back and giggled.

“I read the repair tag backward. Anyhow, thirteen is a lucky number and thirty-one ain’t, positively. My old gent was thirty-one years old the day they chased him out of Russia and into Ellis Island. I got a cousin in Brooklyn whose house got burned up in a fire with no insurance on Thirty-first Street and I know a party who got gunned because he had thirty-one dollars in his kick. Should there be thirty-one cars in this here”

“Shut it off!” Ottie yelped. “You and that luck stuff bend me out of shape. You’re proving yourself more absurd than ridiculous. Make your conversation fewer and better; remember that on Saturday your pay envelope will be minus the difference between thirty-one and thirteen and get outside and line them brakes on that Curb Creeper or I’ll knock you so far there won’t be enough gasoline in the world to run a car out to bring you back!”

Ivan Mulligan fingered a chin well paved with cup grease.

“Mister, I forgot to told you that it was on the thirty-first day of three months ago that Moe Morowitz lowbrow crooked my gal off me. Don’t be telling me nothing about thirty-one. It’s a bust and there ain’t even good-luck symbols to hold it off!”

In the act of cuffing him, Scandrel paused, glanced in my direction and lifted a brow.

“Moe Morowitz, you say? Do you mean ‘Queensboro Moe’ Morowitz, the lightweight leather pusher who’s been running after Benny Leonard lately?”

Mulligan nodded glumly.

“That’s him—the baby I’m going to get even with if it takes from now until beer and light wines come back!”

“And he stole your girl?” I put in.

“That wouldn’t be anything unusual,” Ottie smirked. “Any guy that will turn a trick like sending out a repair job for thirteen kisses when it’s tagged thirty-one could have his elbows swiped and wouldn’t know it until he sat down to eat. What surprises me is that he ever had a gal. What was the matter with her?”

Asking Mulligan the question was identical with hitting a nervous thoroughbred with a whip. He lost little time in getting started.

Briefly, the mechanic’s cheerful story was along somewhat familiar lines. It seemed that he had lived next door to a Stella Brady, had tumbled in love with her when a child and had grown up beside her. If Ivan was to be believed, this ringer for Eve was the most beautiful creation that had ever blossomed on the East Side. We were informed of the fact he had proposed matrimony once a month for six years and had finally been accepted. Then, so he said, he squandered his life’s savings on a diamond engagement ring, rented an apartment in Astoria and furnished it to the queen’s taste. After that he consulted a crystal gazer, found an auspicious day some two months distant and set about making arrangements to throw a wedding.

Stock stuff.

While waiting for the happy day the fair Miss Brady, at a dance, had become acquainted with Queensboro Moe Morowitz, a neighborhood socker who enjoyed high popularity and who was foot free and fancy loose. The leather pusher, so we gathered, had a charming personality, a collection of classy clothes, money enough to stop a strike and a fast line of gab. The upshot of the meeting was that the incredible Stella, being both fickle and feminine, had, in an absent-minded minute, forgotten the faithful Master Mulligan long enough to run off and change her name from Brady to Morowitz.

It was a sad, sad. story but something about it amused Scandrel.

“Ha-ha!” he laughed. “So Morowitz gloms the rib and gives you a push-out, hey? You poor half-wit, you! What good will revenge do you now when he’s got the moll and they’re tied?”

Ivan made a gesture.

“They done it so quick I couldn’t have chance to think of nothing before, mister. The two of them got married on St. Patrick’s Day and it’s bad luck to hit an East Side boy on an Irish celebration. But listen. Mebbe it’ll take a week, mebbe a month, mebbe a year, but I’ll get him in the end. I’ll show him. I’ll even up!”

“Outside!” Ottie ordered. “You talk like a dime novel and we ain’t got no time to listen to all that jazz. Tear them brakes apart and if you can accidentally knock a hole in the radiator while you’re doing it, so much the better.”

The mechanic picked up his wrench, pulled up his overalls and tottered out.

“So he’s superstitious?” I murmured.

Ottie curled a lip.

“That isn’t the half of it. I don’t mind him hanging a gander’s shoe over the front door, but when he brings in one black cat on Tuesday and has a cellar full of black cats on Friday it’s time to give him the gate. Just a minute now and I’ll be with you. I’ve got to hand Central a telephone call. Er—maybe you’ve heard of this party I’m ringing up—Stephen Fosdick?”

There were few in hilarious Manhattan who didn’t know of Stephen Fosdick and of Fosdick’s sensational rise to prosperity.

In the days of brass foot rails and cracked ice Fosdick, with nothing except two hands, some brushes and a bootblack box, had started cleaning up shoes around Park Row. He had gradually saved enough to start a small factory to manufacture the same paste the shine boys put on your shoes and quickly rub off with a rag. The factory had prospered like a pickpocket at a circus, one factory had meant another, another still another, until Fosdick was reputed to be worth a hot million.

Because of the bootblack business he called his vast New Jersey estate Sunshine Corners, was rumored to be a democratic Republican who wasn’t too proud to be seen in his shirt sleeves, drink his coffee from a saucer or show up at his office with a dinner pail.

“Fosdick, eh?” I murmured.

Ottie came out of the phone book, gave the combination to the operator and grinned crookedly.

“You do ask questions, ain’t it so? Fosdick’s opening a new factory over on the East River and until his own garages are finished he wants to know can he park six of his delivery trucks here at night, how much, why and where. I’ll take him and no mistake there. Just a minute now and I’ll tool you up to the Bronx.”

There had been considerable talk around my uptown gym to the effect that Looie Pitz, the well-known fight manager, had a dark horse under contract that was going to show the Gotham fight fans a new wrinkle in the line of give and take. Pitz, poverty stricken for years, had finally hit a winner in a welterweight wonder that had packed his poke with paper and sent him on a tour of the country. Because of the travel thing nobody around the Bronx had seen or heard from him more than a post card’s worth until he had wired from Chicago that he was due home again.

It was curiosity to learn whom Pitz had signed, how he was making out under the stress and press of wealth and what his plans were that took Scandrel and his usual sneer up to the gym in a car borrowed from those sheltered at his garage. When we reached our destination we found two motors standing at the curb in front of the gymnasium. Both were of the same brand and aroma, and both had cost in the vicinity of six thousand dollars apiece.

As we docked, the door of the second car opened and Looie Pitz, himself, alighted.

“For crying out loud!” Ottie bawled. “The kid himself back from the great souse-West and dressed like an undertaker! Look and laugh, Joe! Ain’t this a darb, I’m inquiring?”

Pitz was groomed in a cutaway coat with braided edges that hung on him like a tent. An English bowler was on a level with his eyebrows, he featured a pair of trousers with one leg longer than the other, carried a walking stick thick enough to have ended a dog fight and smoked a cigar that had three bands on it.

Scandrel’s laughter made Pitz color up. He took off his hat, looked at it, put it back and made sure his suspenders were tight all around.

“What’s the matter with me, O’Grady?”

“The matter with you?” Ottie bellowed. “You’re a picture that no artist would want to paint. Look at that coat, Joe, will you? Treat yourself to the legs on them pants, and the shoes! Slant them shoes!”

“Still suffering from chronic dumbness!” Pitz snapped, making a pass at him with the blackthorn. “You’re the kind who wouldn’t give credit to the party who invented electric light. You big sapolio—chuckle at me and I’ll summon an officer.”

“One minute!” I cut in. “This will be enough of that. Inside with you both before somebody rings for the green wagon.”

Upstairs, the reception Pitz received from the studio gang that had never taken the trouble to notice him when he went through life on ten cents, a transfer and a celluloid collar, put him in better humor. He shot his cuffs, turned his back on the still hysterical Ottie and made a break for one corner of the room where a youth who looked somewhat familiar was holding court. As they shook hands I looked the stranger over. He was a tough-looking proposition possessing a face that was his misfortune, a bugle that had evidentally [sic] been Roman before it had been hammered out of shape, a pair of wise eyes, the same number of ears and a chin as square as a soap box. Pitz pried him away and introduced him with a flourish.

“Meet the new lightweight I’m managing now—Queensboro Moe Morowitz, the biggest sensation that’s hit this town since they first took down the swinging doors! This boy is guaranteed fast, so tough he uses a rock for a pillow, as clever as a ventriloquist and has more punch than a bowl of it.”

“Why not?” Morowitz muttered with a shrug. “Tell him how I take punishment and how I stand up under it. But if they’re city fellars don’t bother. I guess they heard of me.”

I expected Ottie, who never tolerated any one with more conceit than himself, immediately to go up in flames. Instead, the big buffoon amazed me by shaking the lightweight’s hand with what passed as high enthusiasm.

“Well, well, well! So you’re Queensboro Moe? Then that big boiler downstairs must be yours. I seen M. M. on the door. Am I right or wrong?”

“That’s my car and I can prove it,” the lightweight shot back. “I did buy it secondhanded but if it’s a stolen job that ain’t my lookout. If the cops can’t stop these crime waves”

“Come out of it!” Ottie hollered, producing one of his cards. “If I’m a flatfoot you’re a tenor and what a heck of a note that would be. Here’s my card. I’m running a clean and honest garage and I don’t expect your patronage—I demand it. Repair jobs are a specialty. Give us a fair trial and be convinced. When will you come in?”

“To-morrow,” was Morowitz’s answer. “Er—Looie and I just come in from Chi together and I ain’t made no garage arrangements yet. I’d rather I should do business with one of my admirers than some gypper who might think I was a lamp and try to trim me. Does Pitz do business with you too?”

“Do I look insane? Put on the pillows, Moe, and step a few frames for the benefit of the crowd.”

The product of the East Side had a sneer for the suggestion.

“Get away with the benefit stuff. I’ve got a date with my wife to take her down to Coney Island to a hot-dog show. Er—can I leave you off somewhere downtown, gentlemen?” he asked Ottie.

“Certainly,” Scandrel replied. “And on the way I’ll tell you all about the garage and how we turn out a repair job. Listen, Joe. Leave that car we come up in stay downstairs at the curb. I’ll send a mechanic over to bring it back to-night.”

“If the street cleaning department don’t beat him to it!” Pitz snickered.

True to his word, Morowitz took his big car to the Night-and-Day Garage the fol lowing afternoon for space with service, but no causalities were reported after a meeting between the lightweight and his superstitious enemy. Ottie, who enjoyed every minute of it, explained that the lubricating oil combined with the grease that Ivan Mulligan wore was a sufficient disguise to keep him from being recognized. A day or two after that a slight hint of the jilted suitor’s feelings was apparent when Morowitz dashed in from the curb, shot his bus up the runway, knocked down two car washers who were doing their best to destroy the paint on a limousine, pulled on the brakes and lighted a cigarette.

“Hey, you!” he shouted at Mulligan. “Give this craft a drink of water, fill the radiator and tighten up that rear fender—it’s noisy. Have it ready in a half an hour. I’ll be around with my wife to get it. And don’t try to push the price up. I’m Queensboro Moe Morowitz, I am. I guess you know me.”

“Yes, I know you,” Ivan mumbled, his itching fingers straying toward a hammer that Ottie promptly came out of the office to take away from him.

Once the box fighter had checked out, Scandrel tried to find out why the carpet tacks he had sprinkled along the runway hadn’t worked, added another two dozen and went back where the six-thousand-dollar car was planted.

“That crook!” Mulligan moaned, burning three of his fingers on the radiator cap. “First he steals my gal off me and then he asks me do I know him? I suppose next he’ll want to know if I’ll be sore if he kisses me.”

“Pipe down!” Ottie hissed. “Snare yourself some common sense. What if he did walk out with your sweetie? There are plenty more fish in the brook.”

“Sure, but I spent all my bait!” Mulligan moaned. “To-night I’ll go by the fortune teller I do business with. Mebbe I got a little luck coming to me that I don’t know nothing about.”

“You’ll have something coming to you that you won’t know nothing about if you don’t get back to work on that chariot!” Ottie promised. “Every time I listen to you my ears hurt me for an hour afterward. Come on inside now, Joe. I think there’s somebody in the office waiting for me.”

There was.

This was a brunet girl with eyes as dark as Easter night, lips as red as paint, though without it, and a certain charm that couldn’t be concealed by the rather shabby little gown she wore. A three-cornered but sadly worn hat was another article of her street apparel, a pair of cracked patent-leather slippers were on her little feet and her pretty hands were as devoid of rings as the telephone of any one looking for charity.

Scandrel, usually the most enthusiastic pursuer of poultry the world had ever rolled an optic at, amazed me by merely glancing at the young lady briefly and coughing slightly.

“What’s on your mind, sister?”

“I’m from Mr. Fosdick’s factory over on the river,” she explained. “This is my lunch hour and Mr. Gorman, the superintendent of the traffic department, requested me to stop in and ask if it would be convenient for you to take six of our trucks to-night.”

At this Scandrel became all business. First he looked at a calendar from which the previous month had not been removed. Then he went to the safe and dipped into three ledgers. After that he consulted the loose-leaf filing index, looked up the petty cash account, helped himself to a glass of water and jotted down a note or two on his cuff.

“Yes,” he said finally, “I think we can accommodate you but I’ll find out for sure in a minute, Cutey.”

“That isn’t my name,” the young lady smiled. “It’s Winifred—Winifred Blake.”

“I’m glad you told me,” Ottie smirked, throwing open the office door. “Hey, Luck,” he hollered at the industrious Ivan, “come here a minute, will you? I want one-two-three words with you.”

The revenge-seeking mechanic dragged up his overalls, removed a quarter of a pound of grease from his chin and shuffled in. I saw him look at Ottie and then at the employee of the Stephen Fosdick factory. Mulligan’s jaw dropped like a white hope, his eyes widened and he gaped witlessly while he nervously produced the foot of a cottontail he carried with him and began to rub it idly.

“This here young lady wants to know can we accommodate six of Fosdick’s delivery trucks, kid. Can we? Have we got room in the back of the pavilion?”

“Absolutely, certainly,” Ivan replied vaguely. “What—what did you say, mister?” he added, coming to himself with a start.

“I’m saying it now—get out!” Scandrel snarled. “You’re as cuckoo as a Swiss bird. It’s all right, Winnie,” he went on, turning back to Dark Eyes. “Tell your boss to gas them around any time to-night and we’ll find room for them. Er—I’ll look ’em over myself, personal. Maybe they’ll need a little repairing. The brakes on some delivery trucks are like women and cigarettes—some smoke and some don’t. You won’t forget to tell him it’s all O. K. here?”

The girl gave Ottie a long look and shook her head.

“No, I won’t forget. Thank you so much for the information. Good-by.”

“Goo’-by!” the voice of Ivan Mulligan mumbled behind us. “Mister, that gal has something about her that reminds me of Stella. Mebbe the way she stands, mebbe the way she walks, mebbe them black eyes of hers.”

“I’ll give you a couple myself if you don’t lay off!” Ottie roared, wheeling around and slapping him. “What are you doing in here when I told you to go out fast? You’re going from terrible to much more so. Beat it before I crack a couple of your ribs!”

“Possibly,” the astonished Mulligan murmured, under his breath, “she’s the dark female the fortune teller meant. I’ll look him up to-night after work and make sure. She’s got a job over in Fosdick’s factory and her name’s Winnie? I can remember that because it’s the same as the noise a horse makes. Mebbe”

He dodged a chair Ottie tossed at him, picked up his wrench and went back to spoil the upholstery in Queensboro Moe Morowitz’s expensive vehicle.

Sheer curiosity if nothing else made me loiter around the establishment for the better part of an hour to see what might ensue when the fickle Stella and Ivan’s enemy appeared on the scene to reclaim the repaired roadster.

“She’ll see through him like glass,” Ottie said when I mentioned the subject. “Trust a skirt to pick a broken heart, grease and all. You can’t beat a woman—and I don’t mean because it’s against the law either. I’ve got a sawbuck that says Stella or Mary or whatever her name is, spies Ivan and recognizes him immediately. Picture the rest. Then Morowitz puts the best one of his feet forward and clouts the nozzle stiff. Is it a gamble with you at even money, Joe?”

I glanced out the office window and saw Mulligan’s complexion.

“I’ll take you for ten and, believe me, you’ll pay up if you lose!”

“As if I never did!” Ottie snarled indignantly.

Twenty more minutes dragged past before Looie Pitz’s new lightweight, wearing his better half on one arm, blew in from the street. One look was enough to reveal the faithless Stella as a person with a mind of her own and a frequent inclination to express it. She was modeled along the same lines as Winifred Blake, had coppery red hair, eyes as black as chips of anthracite and a look as cold as the bill of an Eskimo.

“Don’t miss a minute of this!” Ottie muttered, rubbing his hands. “Look at the pan on that wren. Imagine coming home to that after a hard day’s work with a pick and shovel. If you ever held a quarter out of your pay envelope she’d have private detectives following you to find out what moll you were running around with. Watch ’em now!”

Halfway over to the motor on which Ivan was putting a few finishing touches, the lightweight’s wife came to a sudden and complete stop.

“What do you mean by bringing me into a disgusting hole like this, Moe?” she demanded angrily. “Look at the grease and dirt and oil! Is this all the respect you have for me? This isn’t fit to bring a pig into!”

Morowitz nervously patted her arm.

“Ssh, baby! It’s all right. This ain’t no time to be talking about pork. Look at the hour we saved by walking down here. It is a little untidy but”

“Untidy!” the girl screamed. “It’s disreputable! I can actually feel the oil oozing through the soles of my shoes! You needn’t bother to get the car for me. I’ll take one that runs on tracks over to Aunt Minnie’s house.”

“Baby, listen!” Morowitz pleaded. “Jump in and in two minutes”

“Don’t you dare to baby me! And take your hand off me! On second thought I’m not even going to Aunt Minnie’s. This has given me a nervous headache. I’m going straight home. And you needn’t try and detain me, either, you bully!”

While Scandrel and myself stopped, stared and listened the girl wrenched her arm away, picked up her skirts and flounced out. She was hardly gone before the temperamental Ivan’s emotions overwhelmed him.

“Ha, ha!” he laughed. “This place ain’t fit for a pig and she ain’t going to Aunt Minnie’s either! Don’t you dare to baby me and you needn’t try and detain me, you bully!”

The sound of Mulligan’s hysterical laughter seemed to freeze the fuming Morowitz to the spot. For at least a round of minutes he glared speechlessly at the superstitious car wrecker before him. Then, yelling like an Indian, he surged forward.

“At whom are you laughing, at whom? Has it got to be that the conversation of a married man and wife ain’t private no longer? I told you that I was Queensboro Moe Morowitz but I guess you didn’t believe it. Now I’ll prove it!”

“You put in a call for an ambulance and I’ll get a crowbar!” Ottie bawled, throwing the telephone at me before leaping for the door.

Twenty steps carried the frothing pugilist across to Mulligan. Morowitz pulled back his right for the Ostermoor jolt but the punch never was delivered for the reason he couldn’t set himself on the grease-finished floor. He slipped and fell directly onto the quick guard that Ivan had thrown up. As misfortune would have it the lightweight brought his chin directly down on the mechanic’s fist and little more was necessary. Spinning around he did a nose dive under a twelve-hundred-dollar sedan, out completely as Ottie and I reached the scene together.

“Did you see that?” Ivan shouted, wildly excited. “I knocked the low life out!”

Like a tiger with its first kill the youth took a punch at both of us, threw his wrench at a startled taxicab owner who had come in to get his rig out for the evening plunder and chased two of his coworkers to the street. To get attention Ottie had to stiffen Mulligan. This done he fished Morowitz out from under the closed car.

“Oy—this is terrible!” the lightweight moaned, once he was on his feet again. “Er—if them newspaper fellars ever hear of this they’ll kid the silk shirt off me. I should croak in a Christian neighborhood. Er—keep this quiet, friends. By me it’s accidental and by you it’s a secret. Here—get yourself a new necktie or something.”

Stopping only to peel two bills from his bank roll and hand them to us, he jumped into the roadster, threw it into reverse and went out the garage with extreme speed.

“Well, I see I lose that bet we made,” Ottie mumbled, peeking at the gift bank note and discovering it was worth ten dollars anywhere. “But you never hear of me welshing on no wagers, Joe. Here—take your money and scratch it off. I’m the prince of good losers, if I do say so myself.”

He handed me the green smacker as Mulligan pulled himself up on the running board of a car, felt the spot on his jaw that had put him on ice and, to ease the ache, tied a handkerchief around his ankle.

“‘What do you mean by bringing me into a disgusting hole like this, Moe?’” he mumbled faintly. “‘This has given me a nervous headache.’ And I knocked him cold with one punch!”

“You’re even now,” I pointed out.

“Yeah—so get back and make a space for Fosdick’s perambulators,” Ottie ordered. “You’re creating a theyater out of my garage. I suppose you’ll be bringing in an orchestra next to give musical comedy. You pasted Morowitz, you got your revenge, so get back to work.”

Ivan checked off his teeth, pulled up his overalls and shook his head dumbly.

“That wasn’t no revenge,” he declared. “When I get him I’ve got to get him in public—I’ve got to show him up in front of a crowd.”

“You’re undoubtedly out of your mind!” Ottie snapped. “Instead of trying to lay this boy you ought to save up your salary and send him a present for stealing that gal away and marrying her!”

To continue.

Mulligan, once he had dropped in to visit his favorite fortune teller and was given a liberal dose of the future, promptly began tripping over to Stephen Fosdick’s shoe-paste factory the minute he had tightened up the last nut of the day, had slid out of his greasy costume and had let one of the car washers spray him with a hose. As the Fosdick layout didn’t lay off until six bells, Ivan had ample time to make himself fascinating for the dark, dreamy eyes of Miss Winifred Blake. How, why, and in what manner he had been able to capture the girl’s attention was a complete mystery but the fact remained that Mulligan had escorted himself in right and was taking the little brunette places after business hours. Twice they passed the garage, Ivan strolling along like Romeo with an eye out for a balcony.

This budding romance vastly amused my egotistical boy friend, who had nothing but a sneer for the mechanic, another for the young lady herself and a couple more for love’s young dream as it was being tenderly unfolded.

“Picture a snapper like her bobbing for Grease-ball,” he giggled. “She must be minus upstairs the same as him.”

“It’s odd,” I murmured. “Miss Blake is decidedly attractive and in the entire history of our acquaintance I’ve never before known you to pass up an opportunity to impress your personality upon some attractive young lady.”

“Banana oil for that jazz, Joe! You’re rapidly approaching the verge of lunacy. What do I want to be bothering with a factory canary for when all I need is a shave and a clean collar to step out and take my pick of the débutantes? I’ve kept away from the orange blossoms too long now to topple for anything short of Fifth Avenue. The gal I wed is one who’s going to have plenty jack and who can support me in the style to which I’d like to be accustomed. So much for that. Where are you bound?”

“Up to the Bronx.”

“Wait until I borrow somebody’s car and I’ll chug you up. And that reminds me. I must ask Harry Water, the head washer, if anybody ever brung back that last truck we borrowed.”

As it was an hour at the gym when Queensboro Moe Morowitz pulled a bout with whatever sparring partners Looie Pitz could bribe to go in against him, we found half of the East Side present when we arrived in the more remote spaces of the Big Town.

“They’re packed in like sardines,” I said.

Ottie snickered.

“Yeah, but sardines are better off because they’re laying down. Ain’t that Looie over there? Trap him and we’ll get away from these bandits before they get to us. I just got three teeth filled with gold and I don’t want to take no unnecessary chances.”

Pitz, to prove he had more than one complete change of raiment, was turned out in a frock coat, a silk tile and another cane. We managed to entice him away from the gym ring and into my private office where Ottie began.

“The—now—coat, Looie. What kind of a coat do you call it—an overcoat?”

“It’s a frock coat,” Pitz explained with some pride.

“Yes, but is it an overcoat?” Ottie insisted. “Do you put a coat over it or under it and if so when?”

“It’s a frock coat!” the little fight manager repeated stubbornly.

“But is it an overcoat, Dummy? I ask you and you tell me the same thing over again.”

“You’ve heard of a frock?” Pitz hissed. “Well, this is a frock coat!”

“That’s different. Why didn’t you say so in the first place?” Scandrel mumbled. “How is that new lightweight terror of yours moving along? You claim that he’s as well known as Little Bo-peep but I don’t see that he’s got any more dates than a cross-eyed gal in a one-horse town. What’s the next scuffle on the book? Tell me lots.”

In reply Pitz produced a letter, opened it and coughed.

“Here’s a fight right here with a chance for a little gravy. I got this letter yesterday. It’s off Steve Fosdick, the wealthy millionaire who makes that stuff they ruin your shoes with on Sunday mornings. Fosdick says that he’s giving a big party and housewarming out at Sunshine Corners, his Jersey estate, at the end of the month as a surprise to his wife. They tell me she’s one of them society dames who’s sick in bed for a week every time she catches Steve with carpet slippers on or red suspenders. In this letter he tells me that he thinks an exhibition bout between Queensboro Moe Morowitz and somebody else will be a crash for the dailies and get him in right with his wife. He wants to know will I be willing to arrange a bout for him for three grand for the night.”

“Three thousand clinkers for an exhibition?” Scandrel chanted, licking his lips. “What do you mean—gravy? That’s a whole steak and not a chance of an error. I bet you sprained an ankle getting to a telegraph office to wire acceptance.”

Pitz smiled sadly.

“Not a chance. I broke this to Moe but he turned me down like an elevator. Benefit and exhibitions to him are the same thing as low tide to a bootlegger. And there ain’t a bit of use of trying to make him change his mind.”

With an exclamation of excitement Scandrel leaped to his feet, threw his cigarette in the trash basket and snapped his fingers excitedly.

“Hold everything! Here’s a bargain for you, Looie. I—er—know more about the plug-uglies than you do. I know how to broadgab with them and make them jump through hoops. If I can compel Morowitz to change his mind will you match him for the exhibition with a jobbie I’ve got down at my garage? This boy is the same weight, religion, color—when he’s washed clean—as Moe and a sweet set-up. I’ll give you a written guarantee that he’s never fought in a ring and is as harmless as a picture book for children. For one third of the graft I’ll fix you up and make Morowitz talk cents. Right?”

Pitz agreed with rapidity and five minutes later we were in the dressing room where the famous lightweight was cooling out after his afternoon’s romp.

“A little attention,” Ottie requested, transfixing him with a glittering orb. “What’s this I hear about you being unwilling to step an exhibition match down at Stephen Fosdick’s big place in New Jersey at the end of the month? Picking on your manager because he’s a little guy, are you? Come on now, tell me something!”

For a long minute Morowitz stared at Ottie and it was a cinch to see that he well remembered the slippery floor of the Night-and-Day Garage and knew that the big clown also recalled it quite vividly.

“Sure, I’m doing the exhibition bout. Er—I was only kidding Looie. Who do I spar with? I ain’t taking no chances with anybody outside my weight class.”

“What’s your boy’s name, Ottie?” Pitz asked, taking the center of the stage.

“Ivan Mulligan.”

“Ivan Mulligan!” Morowitz blinked and straightened up. “This is a fancy! I owe that bird a beating up. The little tramp went and let me steal his-gal off him and marry her. Believe me, I’ll give him a ride!”

One hour and twenty minutes after that we were back in the garage again. Scandrel tore Mulligan away from the transmission on a motor, threw him into a corner and explained the proposition in detail.

“Will I fight Moe in public?” the mechanic cried. “Does a violin make music? That’s all I want to do—make a monkey out of him before a lot of people. I’ll fight him and I’ll lick him for nothing!”

“Er—that ain’t exactly necessary,” Ottie giggled. “Just to show you I got your interest at heart I’ll give you five dollars out of my own pocket whether or not you win, lose or draw. Pardon me while I call up Moe’s manager and tell him to go ahead with the necessary arrangements.”

“And pardon me,” Ivan broke in, “while I comb my hair and get ready to keep a date with Winnie. Such a girl—you ain’t got no idea. She won’t tell me where she lives at but she’s got a grand disposition. Last night she said I reminded her of a character in a book.”

“A parsnip in a cook book!” Ottie laughed. “You remind me of the same thing!”

Fully familiar with the fact that Mulligan had no more chance with Morowitz in the ring than a lame man would have of winning a relay race, Scandrel allowed Ivan to do his training under the cars that were towed in to be overhauled. Looie Pitz dropped down several times to look his lightweight’s set-up over, was satisfied the mechanic was no more dangerous than pastry and at length the day before the housewarming party at Sunshine Corners came along with Mulligan shuffling into the office of the garage to beg for a holiday.

“You want a day off?” Scandrel echoed. “What do you do—lay awake at night thinking up these funny sayings?”

Mulligan looked at me and sighed.

“Listen, gentleman. First of all I got to stop in and see my fortune teller about the fight to-morrow night. For six dollars cash or two for ten dollars he tells me he’ll fix it so I win easy. In the afternoon I want I should show Winnie the animals in Central Park. She’s getting half a day off. Leave me go and I’ll work on the night shift after dinner.”

“That’s fair enough,” Scandrel admitted, after thinking it over. “But nothing doing on the zoo. With them ears of yours I ain’t taking no chances!”

This is what occurred.

Arriving at Sunshine Corners the following evening in the classiest limousine Ottie could pick out of the garage, we were met at the front door of the villa by a servant whose powdered wig, swallow-tail coat and black-silk knickerbockers overpowered Ivan with hilarity.

“You ain’t got the manners of a cow in a parlor!” Ottie snarled, cuffing him twice. “Get in order, Dizzy. Don’t you know a footman when you see one?”

“A footman?” Mulligan panted. “Well, he’d better not try to kick me!”

Displaying considerable concern over the valise that held the ring paraphernalia and the gloves he had been made a present of the previous week, Mulligan was conducted off to a subterranean billiard chamber to dress while a butler led us into a lounge room and turned us over to the self-made Stephen Fosdick, himself. The shoe-shine king turned out to be an undersized little tomato with a weather-beaten countenance and a browbeaten manner. He put on the shoes he had taken off to rest his feet and handed us each a cigar and a nervous handshake.

“This is a little surprise party for the wife as much as a housewarming,” he explained. “I know my daughter will eat it alive because she has funny ideas about money and people putting on airs, but I’m a little worried about how the missus will take it. Florine, the wife, has got ideas of her own. If either of you are married you can understand.”

“I’m still in business for myself but I get you anyway,” Scandrel assured him. “Don’t worry a thing. As long as there’s a chance to gossip the ladies will enjoy themselves.”

“Why shouldn’t Mrs. Fosdick like it?” I inquired.

“Well, I sent out the invitations myself and I didn’t ask none of her friends,” our host explained. “The bunch up to-night are all business acquaintances of mine—the customers who buy stuff off us. I had D. S. N.—dress suits necessary—printed on every card but I forgot that a lot of the boys can’t read English. Let’s go down to the sunken garden. I’d better stay around there in case Florine sinks me.”

The full significance of what Fosdick told us became more apparent when we exchanged the villa for the outside garden. There, disporting themselves with carefree abandon, were at least ninety per cent of all the proprietors of bootblack stands in Manhattan. Really, it looked like a festival day in Naples. Not only were the Italian gardens full of shine artists, but the majority of them had brought along their wives and children and the kiddies were picking flowers, paddling in the marble fountain and having the time of their lives while six or eight of the villa’s staid serving staff circulated among them with silver trays and high complexions.

“The wife,” Fosdick explained, “ate out to-night with some of her tony friends over on Park Avenue, New York. But she’ll be in later. Ah—how does this look to you?”

Ottie patted him on the back, straightened his necktie and pulled down his vest for him.

“It’s the candy! If your wife likes children you’re in while she’s still out. Look at that little monkey over there breaking branches off that tree. What could be cuter?”

The millionaire owner of the establishment left us and a couple of minutes later Looie Pitz dropped anchor, plastered to the brow in an assortment of evening clothes which he claimed had taken his tailors three months to design and six months to stitch together.

“They’ve set up the ring in the grand ballroom,” he explained, once Ottie got through giggling. “I’ve just now examined it and Tex Rickard himself couldn’t have done a better job. I’m told the fight goes on at ten sharp so they can take the ring apart and dance on the floor afterward. Moe’s putting on his ring togs. I hope he lets your boy stay the limit so Fosdick won’t think we’re short changing him. Shall we take a walk around the grounds together?”

“And have some one see you with me and think that I’m a friend of yours?” Ottie grunted. “You got more ideas than a flapper in a jewelry store. Me and Joe are going inside to see how our hustling mechanic is getting along. I hope he don’t steal nothing and get a bad reputation.”

At ten o’clock exactly the guests were seated in the camp chairs some undertaker had supplied, a regulation referee and timekeeper were on the spot and a half dozen New York newspaper reporters wandered about, missing nothing and enjoying everything. Fosdick climbed into the ring, made a short speech in which he stated that he hoped every one would enjoy the bout and after that Scandrel with his chest out and Ivan Mulligan and seconds in tow entered and seated the mechanic in the proper corner.

As much at home as a tramp in a straw-lined freight car, Mulligan sat down and remained seated until Pitz with Queensboro Moe Morowitz and their chorus boys awoke cheers by a dramatic appearance and made the roped inclosure. As they entered it the former admirer of the perfidious Stella Brady jumped up and shook a fist wildly.

“I got you now, you lowlife, you dumber!” he shrieked, to the intense amusement and pleasure of the spectators. “You should never look your mother in the face again. She won’t recognize you after to-night!”

Morowitz promtly [sic] showed his dentistry.

“Who’s a dumber? My mother won’t recognize me but there ain’t a camera made that will take a picture of you! You’re going to try and kill me but I’m going to murder you!”

Ottie in one corner and Pitz in the other finally managed to restore some kind of order. The gong clanged a dozen times or more, an announcer delivered the Gettysburg Address, the ring was cleared with difficulty and a few minutes later the battle was on.

Sweet Rosie O’Grady!

Like two wounded leopards, goaded beyond all restraint, Morowitz and Mulligan met and clashed directly in the center of the ring. The lightweight idol of the East Side had possibly planned his attack but the etiquette of fisticuffs against the jabbing, swinging, snarling and kicking Ivan was as valueless as a blank check. From a sparring match with a few punches tossed in for good measure the affair immediately deteriorated into something one degree lower than a water-front brawl.

In a whirlwind of disorder both went to the mat—lashing out with both fists, squirming and panting epithets. As they went down the crowd got up and the gong clanged futilely. Ottie climbed through the ropes at one corner while the dismayed and alarmed Looie Pitz did the same thing at the other end of the ring. Both, with the aid of the referee, the timekeeper and six of the Fosdick servants pried them apart and dragged each back to his respective stool.

“Foul! Foul!” Pitz protested, trying to make himself heard above the tumult.

“Sit down! You craz’ wid de heat!” a swarthy gentleman in the first row of chairs roared up at him. “For ten-a cents I steek you wid a knife!”

The bell ended some of the confusion and before the ring could be properly cleared Morowitz and Mulligan were up and at it once more. The lightweight, in an admirable endeavor to end the two-man Port Arthur, set out to knock his wife’s former suitor for an immediate goal. Morowitz missed with a left to the head, was short with a right to the body in his excitement and before he could cover up it was all over. Ivan’s right glove slapped up against his chin with incredible force. The mechanic’s left glove went straight to the plexus and Queensboro Moe Morowitz went down on his face as if he had been hit with a sledge hammer!

“I got him—the crook, the loafer!” Mulligan panted, placing a triumphant foot on the shoulders of his fallen enemy. “It cost me ten dollars down at the fortune teller’s but I got my money’s worth!”

The dazed Ottie managed to get his mouth shut while some one practiced first aid on the stricken Looie Pitz.

“What do you mean, it cost you ten dollars?” Scandrel demanded.

Mulligan grinned crookedly.

“I’m telling you. The fortune teller had a couple of good-luck horseshoes—one for six dollars—two for ten. He said if I bought them I couldn’t lose. I’ve got one in each glove here and, gentleman, I win!”

Approach that if possible.

The next development in the evening’s entertainment happened hard on the rubber heels of this remarkable dénouement. The expensive draperies over the main doorway of the grand ballroom were flung back an instant later and a stout woman who wore a diamond dress and enough bracelets to take a trainload of yeggs up the Hudson, appeared, took in the scene with a stupefied gaze and opened her mouth.

“What does this mean, Stephen?”

Fosdick, trying hard to smile, stood and coughed.

“A little surprise party, my dear. Some of my old business customers dropped in and we’ve just finished a highly interesting example of the manly art. As soon as the ring is taken down we’ll dance and”

His wife helped herself to another look.

“Customers!” she screamed, fainting on the spot.

Stephen Fosdick looked at us and shook his head.

“That was Florine,” he explained colorlessly. “Something told me she wasn’t going to be pleased. Now we’ll have to get her up to her room. Where’s my daughter?”

“Right here, dad!”

A soft, well-remembered voice from the rear wheeled us around and the next watch tick found us staring at the self-styled Miss Winifred Blake who had pushed her way down the aisle.

“Daughter?” Scandrel hollered. “Don’t let yourself be deceived, Mr. Fosdick. That gal ain’t your daughter no more than she’s mine! She’s trying to get away with something because she works in your factory over on the East River!”

The attractive brunette cast a languishing glance at Ivan Mulligan and then another at us.

“Oh, dad knows all about that,” she explained. “You see, I have ideas of my own and I’ve always wanted to be loved for myself and not for father’s money. I persuaded him to let me take a position in the new factory so I could meet a plain man of the masses and be courted as a working girl and not as an heiress. Ivan, darling, take off those funny boxing gloves, come down here and let me introduce you to your future father-in-law.”

And they lived happily ever after!