American Gun Mystery (3 page)

Curly scowled. His eyes were still on the door through which Kit Horne had vanished. Then Mara’s words took meaning in his brain. “For the love of Pete, Mara,” he grumbled, “can that kind o’ mush, will ya?” His hair was the bane of his life; it lay in cunning ringlets which he had vainly attempted for years to straighten.

The actress rubbed herself gently against his arm. Her eyes went innocently wide. “This is
so
thrilling! All these awful revolvers and things. …Can you shoot ’em, Curly darling?”

He brightened and moved away from her with alacrity. “Can I shoot ’em! Gal, yo’re talkin’ to Dead-eye Dick himself!” Reloading quickly, he flipped his revolver and once more manipulated the catapult. Balls popped into nothingness. The actress squealed with delight, moving closer.

Outside, Kit Horne paused and her eyes were very coldly blue. She heard the
pops!,
the tinkle of breaking glass, Mara Gay’s little squeals of admiration. She bit her lip and dashed off, striding along blindly.

The actress in the armory was saying: “Now, Curly, don’t be so bashful. …” Something predacious came into her lynx eyes; she turned sharply and said to the three men behind her: “Wait outside for me.” They went obediently. She turned back to Curly and smiled a smile famous over the length and breadth of a romantic land, whispering: “Kiss me, Curly dear, oh, kiss me. …”

Curly took a backward step, very noiseless and cautious, like Kit’s, and he lost his grin as his eyes narrowed. She stood very still. “Look here, Mara, aren’t you forgettin’ yourself? I don’t aim to rustle other men’s wives.”

She stepped close to him; she was very close to him now, and her scent filled his nostrils. “You mean Julian?” she said softly. “Oh, we’ve a perfect understanding, Curly. Modern marriage! Curly, don’t look so mad. There are five million men who’d leave their happy homes to have me look at them this way—”

“Well, I ain’t one of ’em,” said Curly coldly. “Where’s yore husband now?”

“Oh, upstairs somewhere with Tony Mars. Curly, please. …”

If the
Colosseum
was the Colossus of sport arenas, its creator Tony Mars was the Colossus of sport promoters. Like Buck Horne, Mars was a living legend; but a legend of quite a different sort. He was the man who had put prize-fighting in the million-dollar class. He was the man who had scrubbed wrestling until it shone—not for ethical reasons but purely as a matter of big business—restoring it to favor with the sportsmen who financed him and the sportsmen who patronized him. He was the man who had punished the Boxing Commission by taking the largest heavyweight prizefight attraction in fistic history out of New York State and staging it in Pennsylvania. He was the man who had popularized ice-hockey, indoor tennis matches, and six-day bicycle races. The
Colosseum
was the culmination of his life’s dream, which had been to build the largest sports arena in the world.

His office was at the peak of that vast structure, and it was made accessible by four elevators—an opportunity for approach not neglected by the hordes of parasites for whom Broadway is peculiarly notorious. And there he sat, far in the reaches of his citadel—Tony Mars; old, wily, swarthy, hook-nosed, a New Yorker born and a New Yorker bred. He was a “sport,” in the most completely praiseworthy sense of the word. He was reputed the easiest man on Broadway for a “touch” and the hardest to put something over on. His derby rested on the bridge of his long nose, his unshined shoes scratched the veneer of his fabled walnut desk, and his two-dollar cigar smouldered between his brown jaws. He regarded his visitor thoughtfully.

The visitor was not unknown to these precincts. Suavely attired, boutonniéred, Julian Hunter was the husband of Mara Gay, but he was not historic for this feat alone; he owned a dozen night-clubs, he was the original playboy of the Main Stem, he was a sportsman with a string of polo ponies and a racing yacht, and above all he was a millionaire. Society opened its doors to him, for he came from society originally. But even society recognized him as something apart from the blue-ribboned herd. He had the pouchy eyes and pink cheeks of the well-massaged but always fatigued man-about-town; but there the resemblance stopped. It was only in the lower—or higher?—strata of the social structure that men acquired the peculiarity which was Julian Hunter’s own: the expressionless face of a wooden Indian. It was the face of the inveterate gambler. In this, at least, he and the man behind the desk were blood-brothers.

Tony Mars said in a throaty bass: “I’ll give it to you straight, Hunter, and you listen to me. As far as Buck is concerned—” He stopped abruptly. His feet crashed to the Chinese rug on the floor. His mouth curved in a disarming smile.

Julian Hunter turned lazily.

A man stood in the doorway—a man all chest and arms and legs. He was a tall man, a very tall man, a very young tall man. Set like strips of fur above his high-cheeked face were blue-black brows; his closely shaved cheeks were blue-black, as were his small bright eyes. This giant smiled, and showed white teeth.

“Come in, Tommy, come in!” said Tony Mars heartily. “Alone? Where’s that nickel-nursing manager of yours?”

Tommy Black, new heavyweight sensation of the pugilistic world, shut the door softly and stood still, smiling. Behind the smile lurked a killer’s savagery; such an expression, it was said, as Jack Dempsey had worn when he had battered Jess Willard to bleeding pulp in Toledo. The experts deemed this assassin’s instinct, it appeared, essential for the successful pugilist. Tommy Black possessed it with savagery to spare.

He slid, almost slithered, over the rug. He was like a cat on his feet. And then he was in a chair, still smiling, his incredible bulk quiescent as poured steel. “’Lo, Tony, how’s tricks?” His voice was charming. “In town for a day. Doc says I’m getting fine. Knocked off.”

“Tommy, you know Julian Hunter? Hunter, shake hands with the best damned bruiser since the Manassa Mauler.”

Hunter, the dandy, and Black, the man-killer, shook hands; Hunter indolently, Black with the crushing grip of an anaconda. Their eyes touched briefly; then Tommy Black rested quietly in the chair again. Tony Mars said nothing, seeming to be absorbed in the tip of his cigar.

“If you’re busy, Tony, I’ll scram,” said the prizefighter softly.

Mars smiled. “Stick around, kid. Hunter, you too. Mickey!” he bellowed. A burly ruffian stuck his bullet-head into the room. “I’m in conf’rence—can’t see anybody. Get me?” The door clicked shut. Black and Hunter sat without moving or looking at each other. “Now listen, Tommy, about the fight with the champ. That’s why I wired you to come up from training camp if you could.” Mars puffed thoughtfully at his cigar, and Hunter looked bored. “How you feelin’?”

“Who—me?” The fighter grinned and swelled his magnificent chest. “In the pink, Tony, in the pink. I could lick that stumble-bum with one mitt!”

“He used to be pretty good, I hear,” said Mars dryly. “How’s the trainin’ going?”

“Swell. Doc’s got me comin’ around in great shape.”

“Fine. Fine.”

“Got a little trouble gettin’ sparring partners. Busted Big Joe Pedersen’s jaw last week, and it sort of brought out the yellow in the boys.” Black grinned again.

“Yeah. Borchard of the
Journal
was telling me.” Mars watched the long white ash; suddenly he leaned forward and carefully deposited it in a silver tray on his desk. “Tommy, I think you’re gonna win that fight. You’ll be the new champ if you keep your head.”

“Thanks, Tony, thanks!”

Mars slowly said: “I mean, you
ought
to win that fight, Tommy.”

There was a windy, stormy silence. Hunter sat very still, and Mars smiled a little.

Then Black raised himself from the chair, scowling fiercely. “What the hell do you mean by that, Tony?”

“Keep you shirt on, kid, keep it on.” Black relaxed. Mars went on in a mild voice. “I’ve heard things around. You know how it is in this racket. They’re always smellin’ frame-ups. Now I’ll talk to you like a Dutch uncle—or maybe like a father because, boy, you need one! That lousy manager of yours would just as soon give you a bum steer and the old double-cross as not. Kid, you’re in the big time. Many a good boy hit the big time, and then the big time hit him because he wasn’t a wise guy. See? You know my rep, Tommy—square. That’s my way. You work my way and we’ll make plenty simoleons together. You don’t work my way—” He stopped as if he had come to the end of his sentence. There was a ringing inevitability about his words that was not entirely absorbed by the Chinese rug and the thick wall-hangings.

He puffed placidly at his cigar.

“Well,” said Black.

“So that’s how it is, Tommy,” said Mars. “There’s a lot of heavy sugar bein’ laid down on you to win. It’s straight sugar—nothin’ crooked about it. On form, strength, youth, record—you’re the comin’ champ. See that you get there. Or if you stop one in the whiskers—an’ don’t kid yourself that the champ’s a pushover—see that you stop it clean. See?”

Black rose. “Hell, I don’t known what’s eatin’ you, Tony,” he said in an injured tone. “You don’t have to go back on me, too! I know what side my bread’s buttered on, believe me! …Well, glad to’ve met you, Mr. Hunter.” Hunter raised his eyebrows in acknowledgment. “So long, Tony, See you in a couple of weeks.”

“You bet.”

The door closed with a little snick.

“You think,” drawled Hunter, “that the scrap isn’t on the up-and-up, Tony?”

“What I think, Hunter,” said Mars genially, “is nobody’s business but mine. But I’ll tell you one thing: nobody’s stealin’ the gold outa
my
bridgework.” He stared at Hunter, and Hunter shrugged. “Now,” continued the promoter in quite a different tone, as he replaced his feet on the shining walnut, “to get back to Bucko the Horne, God’s gift to the kids. I’m tellin’ you, Hunter, you’d be passin’ up a swell chance—”

“I can keep my mouth shut, too, Tony,” murmured the sportsman with a smile. “By the way, where does Grant come in on this?”

“Wild Bill?” Mars squinted at his cigar. “What the hell would you expect? Him an’ Buck have been pals ever since Sittin’ Bull took Custer for a ride. Sort of Da-mon and Py-thias business.” Hunter grunted. “Wild Bill’s entitled to his, and I for one aint’ cuttin’ him out of his gravy. …”

Wild Bill Grant sat at his desk in the elaborate office placed at his disposal by Tony Mars. It was from this fane that the Delphic words came which moved the whole complex machinery of the rodeo. The desk was littered: cigaret stubs, cigar butts, all dead and cold, were sprawled like fallen soldiers on the edge of the desk’s side, where Grant had deposited them in an unconscious thrift which dated from less prosperous days. The ash-trays, of which there were a half-dozen, were quite clean.

Grant sat his swivel-chair as if it were a horse. His left buttock hung over empty space, and his left leg was stiffly outstretched, so that the whole effect was one of a man riding side-saddle. He was a square, chunky, grizzled old-timer with a walrus mustache and faded gray eyes; the skin of his rough face was brick-red, tough, and seamed and pitted as porous rock. That he was hard as nails was evident from the powerful muscles of his bare forearms and the complete lack of superfluous flesh on his torso. He wore a clumsy bow-tie, and an astonishingly ancient Stetson lay far back on his iron-gray head. This was the Wild Bill Grant who in his youth had been a fighting United States Marshal in the Indian Territory. He was as out of place in the midst of Tony Mars’s shiny office appointments as an Esquimau in a tea-shoppe.

There was a confused mass of papers before him—contracts, bills, orders. He rustled them impatiently, chafing, and reached for a gnawed butt.

A girl came in—pert, trim, artistically cosmetized; genus, New York stenographer. “There’s a gentlem’n wants to see you, Mr. Grant.”

“Waddy?”

“Beg pardon?”

“Puncher—want a job?”

“Yes’r. He says he has a letter for you from Mr. Horne.”

“Oh! Send ’em in, sister.”

She departed with a neat wiggle of her slim hips, and a moment later held the door open for a tall spare poorly dressed Westerner. The visitor stumped in on high cowboy’s heels; they clattered on the border of the floor. His shabby sombrero was in his hand. He wore a tattered, rainwashed old mackinaw, and his boots were down at the heel.

“Come in!” said Grant heartily; he surveyed his visitor with appraising eyes. “What’s this about a letter from Buck?”

There was something the matter with the man’s cleanshaven face, something horribly the matter. The entire left side was brownish purple in color, and puckered and drawn. The purple patch began below the jaw-line and extended to a half-inch above the left eyebrow. A very small spot of purple on the right cheek put a period to what seemed to be the ravages of fire, or acid. He had bad teeth, stained molasses-brown. …With a little twitch of his shoulders, Wild Bill Grant looked away.

“Yes’r.” The man’s voice was husky, hoarse. “Buck an’ me, we’re old bunkies, Mr. Grant. Punched long-horns down Texas way twenty year’ ago. Buck, he don’t forget his pals.” He fumbled in a pocket of the mackinaw and brought out a rather crushed envelope; this he handed to Grant, and then stared at the showman anxiously.

Grant began to read: “‘Dear Bill: This is Benjy Miller, an old friend. Needs a job. …’” There was more; Grant read the note through. Then he tossed it on his desk and said: “Have a seat, Miller.”

“Shore nice of you, Mr. Grant.” Miller sat down on the edge of a leather chair, cautiously.

“Cigar?” There was pity in Grant’s eyes; the man made a pitiable figure. Although his hair was sandy in color, untouched by gray, he was undoubtedly past middle age.

Miller’s mouth opened in a brown grin. “Now, that’s shore friendly, Mr. Grant. Don’t mind if I do.”

Grant tossed a cigar across the desk; Miller sniffed it and put it in the breast pocket of his mackinaw. Grant pressed a button on the side of his desk; the stenographer came in again. “Get Dan’l Boone in here, youngster. Hank Boone.”

She looked blank. “Who?”

“Boone, Boone. Sawed-off waddy who’s always drunk. You’ll find him jawin’ around somewhere.”