Winner Take All Part 9

The adulation had been so overwhelming at first, so whole-hearted and seeming sincere one brief year before. Why, even six months back he could not have stood there thus, a tenth as long, before the copper name-s.h.i.+eld of the Claridge, without collecting about him a fawning, favor-hunting throng so dense, so tenacious, and troublesome to traffic that it would have brought the officer from his place beside the surface-car tracks, caustic-tongued, to investigate and disperse it.

Nor would that officer have ordered them to move on, six months before, once he had discovered what monarch it was who held informal court there. He would have paused for a bluff joke or two himself, a knowing word of importance, before returning to loose his indignation upon some luckless wight of a family man, self-conscious and clumsy in what is known as a tin lizzie.

They had hailed him so noisily, so elatedly, press and public alike.

That the latter had fawned and flattered should have warned him what to expect, later on, but it did not. The greater wonder is that it did not go to his head a little. It seemed it couldn't help but do that.

It had been so sudden. Mediocrity one day, and obscurity.

Mediocrity--and then world's champion, and the fierce white light which beats upon a throne! Of course there had been some to sneer. Here and there one had arisen to point out that Fanchette, the man whom he had whipped in one round, had been but a sh.e.l.l of a man, champion in name only, for a long, long time. They said the victory proved nothing.

They said that Perry Blair had just been lucky, that was all; lucky in being selected as the one least calculated to damage Fanchette after a whole year in which the latter had steadfastly refused to fight. Lucky in having that fox, Devereau, for a manager, cunning enough to decoy Fanchette into the ring.

But in the main they swarmed to his standard. The king was dead. And he had lingered tediously, at that.

The newspapers welcomed Perry avidly. Fanchette as a subject for copy had long been profitless as a sucked orange. Here again was the novelty of newness and a personality of exceeding richness and color.

Or at least so ran report. No crack men had been sent out to cover the affair. That such an astounding thing as the rise of a new champion threatened had been foreseen by few. In the East Perry Blair had been little known and reckoned a third-rater. But those who had been West to see the bout which ended so suddenly brought back fragments which put a nice edge upon the imaginations of the sporting editors. And immediately, when in reality there was no need, had begun the well-known process of gilding the lily.

They featured his out-of-doors life; the romance of the country boy again. They dwelt upon his modesty, his extreme reticence, his hardihood and rigid habit of clean living. They tw.a.n.ged all the strings that had ever sounded before in honor of other champions. And Broadway--that certain ring which can give you off-hand the exact poundage of Nelson when he met Gans, or the fastest time in which the Futurity has ever been run, or the name of the latest female whose intimate measurements have just been declared by one of a half dozen greatest living artists to be a reproach to the Venus de Milo, all without wrinkling its forehead in thought--that portion of Broadway, to use its own expression, ate it up.

And yet when Perry Blair came East an odd thing happened. When he came East and they found that every word which they had read with such approval was the literal truth, and not just the industry of an astute press-agent, they were nonplused. Even suspicious, I believe. And outraged in the end.

It must have been a shock to them to find in Perry Blair a sportsman, when they had expected a dead game sport. They had been waiting to lay at his feet (at a price) the spoils due a conqueror, spoils neither savory nor s.h.i.+ning, but those which other champions had demanded and relished, until they waked to find themselves champion no more. And when Blair ignored these things they distrusted him.

From the outset his reticence, which had been lauded, nettled them. By some obscure process of reasoning it convicted him of conceit, a mean and stingy conceit, unpardonable even among those to whom self-esteem was as natural as the drawing of breath. Eternal poseurs themselves, they adjudged his modesty a pose, yet somehow could not forgive it.

And his decency bred hatred in a few.

The growth of antagonism was too slow, too intricate, to be retraced here. It is effect and not cause with which we are concerned. And one instance alone will serve to show, how finally was wrecked that popularity which had been so swiftly created. One interview between Perry and Devereau explains it well.

The reply which Perry Blair made to the invitation sent him several months after his arrival in Manhattan, by Pig-iron Dunham, is still verbal currency upon the Tenderloin. Conversational small change, to be sure, but still in circulation.

Dunham had bidden him to one of his famous little dinners. Infamous?

Well, it's all in the point of view. Some of them have been spoken of warmly by those who have attended, though guardedly.

Perry Blair was more outspoken.

"Tell Dunham," he directed the messenger who had brought the invitation quite privately, "tell Dunham that if it had to be one or the other I'd chose to dine decently with a four-footed hog, in a trough."

The messenger, one of many who believed that Pig-iron Dunham, having ama.s.sed millions in the industry which had given him his name, was a philanthropist in spending it so liberally, thought to have heard wrong. So Perry repeated again for him the message with something added for emphasis. This time he believed his ears and bore it as nearly intact as possible to Dunham. And when, hours later it came word for word to Devereau, the latter turned pale. For many days he had been hearing rumors disturbing to his ideas of managerial authority, but had laid them to jealousy. He believed them now. He sought out Blair.

"Listen!" He plunged strongly in. He thought he knew when to tread softly, when to brow-beat. "Listen, kid! You've pulled a b.o.n.e.r.

A'course I shoulda wised you up earlier about Dunham but I thought you were on. I thought everybody was. But you can't treat Pig-iron this way. Why--why--why he--he's--"

What he had wanted to say was that Dunham, Benevolent Patron of the Street, was not accustomed to having his favors rebuffed so crudely, but he couldn't quite manage it. So he fell back upon earnest repet.i.tion.

"You can't treat him like this!"

"Can't?" asked Perry Blair. "I just have."

Devereau didn't like that tone. He was just discovering a lot of things about his light-weight champion which he didn't like. But he kept his temper. He was famed for that. Famed for his oily smoothness under provocation.

"Sure! Your mistake--and my fault. But it ain't too late to square it," he said. "You just send over word that you'll be pleased to death to be at his dinner, and it'll still be all right. I'll square it.

And don't you worry. You won't be bored. Pig-iron's dinners are--now--well--" He closed an obscene lid. "A good time will be had by all! And Pig-iron will be pleased to have you there. Pig-iron, he likes to entertain the latest celebrities."

Blair's voice made him start.

"He can't entertain me," said Perry. "Not a little bit."

And suddenly with that Devereau was suave no longer. He leaped up and thumped upon a desk. He slitted his pale eyes.

"Say, what d'yuh think you are?" he raved. "Talking to me like that!"

Blair did not attempt to shout him down, and yet he made himself heard.

"Not Pig-iron Dunham's man," he answered. "Nor yet yours. Are you thinking to tell me how I shall talk?"

Devereau could not have told why his rage was so red. Why he hated the other so swiftly. But he mastered his voice. He had seen something like this coming, not so unpleasant, however, or so difficult to handle. He had imagined when the time came they would talk it over, amicably, like good business men. But that was out of the question now. It had always been out of the question, but he'd realized that tardily. But they'd have it out. There could be no better time.

"No?" he drawled. "No?" Sarcasm lent his words a sing-song quality.

"No? Not Dunham's man? Not mine? Well-well! Ha-ha!"

And then, savagely:

"So that's it! It's true, heh? They been trying to tell me so for weeks, all up and down the line, and I been telling 'em they'd got you wrong. The swelled head, is it? But pardon me, Mr. Blair. Who am I to speak thus to the world's champion? Delusions of grandeur, I should say. Pardon my coa.r.s.eness!" Sudden laughter split wide his lips.

"Champion!" he bawled. "World's champion! Oh, my Gawd!"

Perry sat silent and watched him. Little by little he recognized that this was not acting. This was real. He waited and watched.

"So you been followin' the papers, Mr. Blair," chanted Devereau.

Having struck this vein of satire and found it rich he followed it up.

"Full of lovely reading these days, now aren't they?"

That was not so; not as it was meant. Perry had found the columns devoted to himself singularly flat and devoid of interest. There was only one item, in fact, which never failed. Only one which he always read, the daily quotation on livestock. But he kept quiet. His eyes alone were attentive.

"So you've been reading the papers!" Mincingly Devereau went back and picked it up. "Well-well! Ha-ha!" But hard after came again that half-blind, half-incoherent rage.

"Listen, now, you! You listen! Listen, and I'll give you an interview that's never been put on any press."

And he gave it to him, briefly, coldly. He repeated substantially what the carpers had said at the time Perry won the t.i.tle.

"Champion?" he said. "Sure--because I made you champion. Because Fanchette wouldn't a'stepped into the ring with Jimmy Montague, or Jigger Holliday; no, nor even old Kid Fall. I know, believe me I know, because I tried him with all of 'em. Not for the purse that was offered. He wasn't looking to commit suicide at bargain prices.

"But you? He'd take a chance on you. Sure he would. Who the h.e.l.l was Perry Blair, anyway? He knew that Montague'd cut him to pieces.

Holliday'd have tore off his lid. So I swung him to you.

"And why? Because I thought you'd listen to reason. Oh, you don't believe it. Ask Dunham. Are you still such a hick that you don't know he was behind that match? Why, he's behind 'em all--nine tenths of 'em. His bankroll is."

"Whose right hand was it put Fanchette but?" asked Perry mildly.

"Pah!" slurred Devereau. "Pah! I coulda done it myself."