Ukridge Stories - P. G. Wodehouse (e book free reading TXT) 📗

scrap with somebody. Nothing barred,” said Ukridge, musing lovingly on the carefree past, “except biting and bottles.”

“Yes, but, hang it⁠—a professional pugilist!”

“Well, to be absolutely accurate, laddie,” said Ukridge, suddenly dropping the heroic manner and becoming confidential, “the thing’s going to be fixed. Izzy Previn has seen the bloke Thomas’s manager, and has arranged a gentleman’s agreement. The manager, a Class A bloodsucker, insists on us giving his man another twenty pounds after the fight, but that can’t be helped. In return, the Thomas bloke consents to play light for three rounds, at the end of which period, laddie, he will tap me on the side of the head and I shall go down and out, a popular loser. What’s more, I’m allowed to hit him hard⁠—once⁠—just so long as it isn’t on the nose. So you see, a little tact, a little diplomacy, and the whole thing fixed up as satisfactorily as anyone could wish.”

“But suppose the audience demands its money back when they find they’re going to see a substitute?”

“My dear old horse,” protested Ukridge, “surely you don’t imagine that a man with a business head like mine overlooked that? Naturally, I’m going to fight as Battling Billson. Nobody knows him in this town. I’m a good big chap, just as much a heavyweight as he is. No, laddie, pick how you will you can’t pick a flaw in this.”

“Why mayn’t you hit him on the nose?”

“I don’t know. People have these strange whims. And now, Corky, my boy, I think you had better leave me. I ought to relax.”

The Oddfellows’ Hall was certainly filling up nicely when I arrived that night. Indeed, it seemed as though Llunindnno’s devotees of sport would cram it to the roof. I took my place in the fine before the pay-window, and, having completed the business end of the transaction, went in and enquired my way to the dressing rooms. And presently, after wandering through diverse passages, I came upon Ukridge, clad for the ring and swathed in his familiar yellow mackintosh.

“You’re going to have a wonderful house,” I said. “The populace is rolling up in shoals.”

He received the information with a strange lack of enthusiasm. I looked at him in concern, and was disquieted by his forlorn appearance. That face, which had beamed so triumphantly at our last meeting, was pale and set. Those eyes, which normally shone with the flame of an unquenchable optimism, seemed dull and careworn. And even as I looked at him he seemed to rouse himself from a stupor and, reaching out for his shirt, which hung on a nearby peg, proceeded to pull it over his head.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

His head popped out of the shirt, and he eyed me wanly.

“I’m off,” he announced, briefly.

“Off? How do you mean, off?” I tried to soothe what I took to be an eleventh-hour attack of stage-fright. “You’ll be all right.”

Ukridge laughed hollowly.

“Once the gong goes, you’ll forget the crowd.”

“It isn’t the crowd,” said Ukridge, in a pale voice, climbing into his trousers. “Corky, old man,” he went on, earnestly, “if ever you feel your angry passions rising to the point where you want to swat a stranger in a public place, restrain yourself. There’s nothing in it. This bloke Thomas was in here a moment ago with his manager to settle the final details. He’s the fellow I had the trouble with at the theatre last night!”

“The man you pulled out of the seat by his ears?” I gasped.

Ukridge nodded.

“Recognised me at once, confound him, and it was all his manager, a thoroughly decent cove whom I liked, could do to prevent him getting at me there and then.”

“Good Lord!” I said, aghast at this grim development, yet thinking how thoroughly characteristic it was of Ukridge, when he had a whole townful of people to quarrel with, to pick the one professional pugilist.

At this moment, when Ukridge was lacing his left shoe, the door opened and a man came in.

The newcomer was stout, dark, and beady-eyed, and from his manner of easy comradeship and the fact that when he spoke he supplemented words with the language of the waving palm, I deduced that this must be Mr. Izzy Previn, recently trading as Isaac O’Brien. He was cheeriness itself.

“Veil,” he said, with ill-timed exuberance, “how’th the boy?”

The boy cast a sour look at him.

“The house,” proceeded Mr. Previn, with an almost lyrical enthusiasm, “is abtholutely full. Crammed, jammed, and packed. They’re hanging from the roof by their eyelids. It’th goin’ to be a knockout.”

The expression, considering the circumstances, could hardly have been less happily chosen. Ukridge winced painfully, then spoke in no uncertain voice.

“I’m not going to fight!”

Mr. Previn’s exuberance fell from him like a garment. His cigar dropped from his mouth, and his beady eyes glittered with sudden consternation.

“What do you mean?”

“Rather an unfortunate thing has happened,” I explained. “It seems that this man Thomas is a fellow Ukridge had trouble with at the theatre last night.”

“What do you mean, Ukridge?” broke in Mr. Previn. “This is Battling Billson.”

“I’ve told Corky all about it,” said Ukridge over his shoulder as he laced his right shoe. “Old pal of mine.”

“Oh!” said Mr. Previn, relieved. “Of course, if Mr. Corky is a friend of yours and quite understands that all this is quite private among ourselves and don’t want talking about outside, all right. But what were you thayin’? I can’t make head or tail of it. How do you mean, you’re not goin’ to fight? Of course you’re goin’ to fight.”

“Thomas was in here just now,” I said. “Ukridge and he had a row at the theatre last night, and naturally Ukridge is afraid he will go back on the agreement.”

“Nonthense,” said Mr. Previn, and his manner was that of one soothing a refractory child. “He won’t go back on the agreement. He promised he’d play light and he will play light. Gave me his word as a gentleman.”

“He isn’t a gentleman,” Ukridge pointed out, moodily.

“But lithen!”

“I’m going to get out of here as