bread’—except it don’t get given, does it, Daniel? It must be purchased, with coin of the realm. So. It’s time for the Ruffian to be introduced to the wider sporting public. More than that, it’s time to find out what he has for bottom, for he hasn’t been tested yet. I need a man who’ll test his chin. I also need a man who’ll draw the Fancy. And you still have a name—no, don’t be modest, you do. You had a certain little popularity in your day, and there are those who remember. Most of all, I need a story that I can tell. For that’s what it is—beyond the fine old English art of self-defence, and the hearts of oak, it’s the story that draws ’em in. I admit this freely, because we’re old friends, Daniel. It’s always been honest-as-the-livelong-day between us, and I intend to be honest now.”
The shaggy head was cocked to one side, and there was a little smile on that great ugly mug. If fighters weren’t ugly when they started, they were ugly when they’d finished—or more to the point when the game had finished with them. The cauliflower ears, and the flattened nose, and the knots and lumps like boles on a tree trunk. But you could see a kind of nobility in a face like that, if you chose to. Give him credit, Daniel O’Thunder had a kind of nobility.
And now it was time to bring this home.
“Daniel, I’m afraid I must shock you. For whatever you’ve been told about the character of Spragg the Ruffian—whatever rumours you’ve heard about riotous living and addiction to all manner of vice and abandonment—it’s worse. I don’t say that his heart is bad, for few men’s hearts are truly so, not rotten clear through. But he’s fallen into a bad way of living, Daniel. He’s a braggart and a bully and a man of violent outbursts. When you tax him with his duty to his fellow man, he sneers. And when you speak of the Judgement that awaits us all, he laughs in your face—for Daniel, he don’t believe in God. And that,” said I, building towards the very nub of it, “that is the match I want to make, and the story I want to tell. Spragg the atheistic Ruffian, against O’Thunder the evangelist.”
Daniel was silent for a moment, musing. “Preacher O’Thunder, God’s Warrior, that sort of thing?”
“I was thinking,” said I, “of Battling O’Thunder, and his right hand the Hammer of Heaven.”
He moved his jaw a bit, from side to side, as if trying out the feel of it in his mouth. “That’s good,” he admitted. “I have to say, brother, it has a ring.”
“It rings like the bells of St Paul’s.”
And now I played my trump. “Daniel, I’ve spoken to the Ruffian. He says if you can beat him, then he’ll admit that he’s been wrong. He’ll amend his ways, and accept the Lord who is Saviour of us all. So how’s that—eh? How’s that for a story? And more than that, it’s a young man saved from a life of depravity, and snatched clear out of the Devil’s grasp. So let me hear you say no to an opportunity like that.”
“Let me see,” said he, “if I’ve got this straight.”
“Of course you have, Daniel. Dead-straight, for there’s naught that’s crooked in it.”
“You’ve got a young fighter with a rising reputation, but no character to speak of,” Daniel said. “So you’ll cook up this story of yours, and match him against an old warhorse—a decade out of the ring—who’ll go off at odds of ten to one, or higher. The Ruffian gets paid to lose the match, and meantime you’ve wagered everything you’ve got on the old warhorse. But you’re not finished yet. For lo and behold the warhorse has become a celebrated old nag, and more than that he believes he won the fight fair and square—he actually believes he’s rediscovered his youthful powers. So you persuade him to make another match. You match him against the real article, a genuine contender, and spin the story that he’s on his way to the Championship of All England. Then you wager all you’ve got—and more—on the contender. For of course this next fight isn’t a cross—it’s on the up-and-up—and the warhorse is naught but a wind-broke jade on his way to the knacker’s yard. So John Thomas wins a pot of gold, and no one loses at all—excepting for all those who were duped, and wagered the wrong way. And of course the warhorse himself, who had his few remaining wits a-beaten out of him—and his integrity too, which he gave away, just gave it away, for he hadn’t even the sense to put a price on it.”
Well. I made no return for some while, for what can you reply to such cynicism?
“Old friend,” said I at length, “you wound me.”
“John Thomas,” said he, “I know you. Brother, you’d have matched your grandmother against Cribb, if you could have thought of a way to get the old girl up to the line of scratch.”
I began to feel a certain desperation. I needed money badly, for reasons we don’t need to enter into just at present. And this was a solid scheme—the best I’d been able to come up with.
“Look: one fight, against the Ruffian. A purse of twenty guineas to the winner—half to you, half to me. I plan to wager my share on your good self, and I’d urge you to do the same. Ten guineas at ten to one—a hundred guineas—and you use it all for God’s own work. A hundred guineas to feed the poor, or clothe the naked, or whatever holy purpose you prefer. Think of the lives you could save—think of the souls you could save—and then tell me no, that your conscience is too nice, and the Lord don’t want money that was wagered at a prize-fight.”
He looked at me with sadness, and shook his shaggy head. “Just listen to yourself, John Thomas—like Satan himself in the wilderness, tempting Our Lord. Not that I’d ever mistake myself for the One—I hasten to say it—and not that you’re the other. No, you’re not the Devil, brother—just a crafty old sharper with an eye for the main chance and an angle to work, same as you always were.” The smile had faded completely. “And now it’s time for you to leave. Go with my blessing and the assurance that we’re still friends, John Thomas, and always will be, for I bear no malice at all against any man in the world, and certainly none against you. But go at once, brother, before I kick you down the stairs.”
I suspect he’d have done it, too. But suddenly there was a sound of shouting on the street below. A moment later there were footsteps, and then a ragged apparition burst through the door. It was a lad, sixteen perhaps, in scarecrow clothes. He was a printer’s devil, apparently, filthy and stained with ink.
“And here’s Young Joe,” said Daniel warmly, his face lighting up. “Have you finished with our printing, then?”
“I need somewhere to hide oh Cap’n please oh Lord they’re right on my heels!”
He was in a state of pure panic, and Daniel grew dismayed.
“Who’s after you, young Joe?”
There was a rusty brown blossom on the scarecrow’s breast. Daniel’s face began to grey, as if with awful premonition.
“Is that blood, Young Joe?” he said. “It is—that’s blood that’s dried upon your shirt. What’s happened? Are you hurt?”
“I never did what they’re saying! It isn’t true it wasn’t me I’m a good boy Cap’n help me!”
Too late, for more voices were shouting, and more feet thundering up the stairs. A man burst through the door, followed by two Peelers. He pointed and cried out, in triumph and revulsion.
“There he is—the one who done the deed. He butchered that girl like a calf!”
“I didn’t!” the printer’s devil
