Winner Take All Part 18

"I--I wish you--" Cecille checked herself. She had been about to say I wish you happiness. She meant that, yet clumsily she changed it.

"I wish you luck."

At that Felicity paused.

"Does this hat look all right?"

Cecille nodded. And then she was gone.

So Felicity pa.s.ses. No dark river. No swift oblivion. No agony of remorse. Those who may feel that her history is incomplete, that they have been robbed of their full meed of vindictive satisfaction, I must refer back to an earlier paragraph. And to those who may say, Here is a dangerous departure from the formula for such tales, there is only one honest retort. Felicity isn't a figment of fancy. Felicity's from the life.

Cecille sat quiet after Felicity had gone, until darkness crept into the room. She rose then, mechanically, and prepared and ate some supper.

Later Perry Blair came and she found that pressing as her own problem seemed she could still think first of him. She would not tell him now of Felicity's dereliction. He needed a single mind to face his coming struggle. He would learn of it soon enough.

Later still they went out and walked, till he had only time enough left in which to catch his train. Both of them were silent. Neither felt any inclination to talk. But Cecille's brain had been as uncannily busy as that of one who lies awake throughout a white and sleepless night. And she had believed this bodiless activity to be the process of sound reasoning; she had found some security in the conclusions she had formed.

But when they turned back toward the apartment the whole brilliant structure proved treacherous. It toppled. She was back where she had started, cornered, driven now for time. She couldn't stand it. He would go--and he'd never come back. Never! What was there in it for her?

What was she waiting for?

Play the game? Fight? She knew she wasn't clever like Felicity, but she conceived what she thought was a desperate expedient, nor realized that it was pitifully transparent. There was no elevator in their building.

Perry had a habit of striking matches to light the darker portions of the stairs, though that was silly. She'd told him; she knew every step of the way. But to-night when he struck the first one, she raced ahead.

When it flickered and suddenly went out, she crumpled. At her cry, which brought him swiftly, he found her a little heap upon the stair. Her ankle was doubled beneath her.

"I've twisted it," she said.

She wasn't clever, like Felicity, and yet how simple it was!

He picked her up. He carried her like no weight at all. And she lay very close against him, her head on his crooked elbow, her arms about his neck. They had left a light burning in the box of a sitting-room. And as he entered there Perry Blair, looking down at her delicately parted lips and faintly fatigue-penciled eyes, breathed deeply once, and smiled.

He'd been quickly skeptical; he was certain now. No one who had just twisted an ankle was content and serene as that.

And that was when Perry Blair first saw Cecille Manners--first saw her with seeing eyes. He looked down at her and in that instant learned how infinitely precious and flagrantly bold girlhood like hers could be.

He carried her to a couch. She lay quiet, her eyes still closed. But when, after a glance at his watch, he would have tried to ascertain the extent of the damage, which he knew was no damage at all, she sprang erect, and flamed at him, and struck his hands aside.

"No!" she gasped. "No!"

And then she put her hands upon her face.

"I didn't twist it." Her very voice was dreary. "I just couldn't face it, that was all. I thought maybe, if you carried me upstairs--if once you felt me in your arms--ugh!" She made a sound, a gesture as of nausea. And yet, after a moment, with surprising steadiness:

"Had you just as soon go now? I wish--I wish you'd go."

He gave her her wish so quietly that when she looked again she was surprised not to see him still there. In the lower hall he stopped a moment and stood with his head on one side as a man stands who listens.

He made as if to climb the stairs again, and shook his head. Holliday came first, and he'd have to hurry.

In the box of a sitting-room above Cecille sat and also listened. But she made no move as if to follow. She just half stretched her arms toward the stairway when finally she knew that he was gone.

"Oh!" she cried then. "Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, G.o.d!"

CHAPTER XI

POTS AND PANS!

The rest tells more quickly by far.

A raised, roped platform--two lithe bodies--a pavilion of white faces.

Not the first round, nor the second, nor the seventh. The intermission which followed it rather, and a crowd grown strangely silent.

Perry Blair went back to his seat at the clang of the bell. Jack English was in his corner, and Hamilton, for he had been unwilling to trust anyone else. And lying back under their hurried, efficient ministrations he looked out upon the banks of faces.

They were tense; it was easy to see that, just as it was easy to sense that theirs was no ordinary tension. And he understood what it meant.

Word had seeped from tier to tier, spread like a drop of ink in a gla.s.s of water, until it had colored the entire ma.s.s. Only a very select few were "in the know" of what that eighth round had been planned to develop, yet they somehow had leavened the whole audience with antic.i.p.ation, by an indefinite word or two.

"The eighth," they were whispering among themselves. "Watch this now; here's where something happens!"

They had hooted Perry as he entered the ring; saluted him with catcalls and a few out-and-out hisses. He'd wondered then if any other champion had ever been saluted in just that fas.h.i.+on before; he'd tried to smile.

He wasn't trying any more.

But Holliday was. Across in his corner Holliday was nodding to his handlers and grinning widely, just as he had grinned all through the fight so far. And so far it had been a mild battle, a showy thing of pretty footwork and flashy boxing. But it hadn't been harmful to either of them. Holliday, it appeared, had been quite content to let it go along that way from round to round, though it was the style of fighting best suited to his opponent. And he had proved himself faster at it, cleverer, than Perry had expected.

Yet it was not Holliday's cleverness, but his bounding, surging strength which compelled his thoughts. Strength like that, which tossed him like a chip in the clinches, was no new thing to him. He'd often been handled that way, with the same ease, by men heavier than himself,--by Jack English, for example. And Holliday was heavier; he knew that he had given away pounds in the weighing in; that there had been crookedness at the scales, but he hadn't tried to prove it. Yet Holliday was stronger even than Jack English, unbelievably stronger. And Perry knew now that he was about to test that strength to the uttermost. Holliday had romped with the roughness of a great puppy; now it was going to be different.

It was going to be the destruction-rush of a young bull.

English too felt what was coming, just as he did; just as did the whole quiet house. English wasn't trying hard to hide his anxiety.

"He's strong," he was saying. "Boy, he's strong! Keep away from him--keep away from him all you can. For if he ever backs you into a corner he's going to knock you dead!"

Perry nodded. He meant to, if he could. He was going to try to keep away. And on the other side of the ring Holliday was talking easily out of the corner of his mouth.

"This guy's no set-up," he was saying. "He's faster than a fool. But kin he hit--that's what I'm wondering. Kin he hit? An' that's what I'm going to find out."

And then the bell, and the whole house leaning forward.

They came slowly from their corners, Holliday bull-necked, compact, a grinning menace, Perry lighter, whiter, sober. The first minute of that round was a repet.i.tion of all those that had gone before; lightning feints, nimble dancing steps, the cautious trickery of antagonists feeling each other out.

And yet the house, contrary to custom, did not grow impatient of such tactics and call loudly for more damaging effort. It waited. A minute and a half pa.s.sed--two minutes--and they were going faster--faster. And then Holliday, grinning into Perry's face, winked broadly and swung wildly with his right. Perry stepped easily inside the blow and put his left to the other's face. It was a light blow, Perry knew that. There was no snap, no sting in it. But immediately Holliday winced as though it had hurt him and for the first time gave ground.

He followed Holliday up. This was the round in which Holliday was to quit, the round upon which Perry had had his mind riveted for weeks. He wondered--had Dunham after all been on the level with his promised crookedness? He followed Holliday up, carefully. And again a wild right swing, a light step inside, a light left to the face. And then Holliday, holding him with disturbing ease in a clinch, pressed his mouth close to Perry's ear.

"Shoot it over, now," he muttered. "Shoot it--don't pull it. It mustn't look too raw. I'm going to open up--start it from the floor!"