CHAPTER XII

INTRODUCING JIM ROBINSON

Of course, I had made an enemy of the girl and to no purpose. I had felt her physical attraction, and I knew that only by putting myself beyond its pale could I be true to my own convictions as to her venality. She was the kind of woman to whom any man, even such a one as I, is fish for her net. A girl may whet her appet.i.te by coquetry and deprave it by flirtation, setting at last such a value upon her skill at seduction that she counts that day lost in which some male creature is not brought into subjection to her wiles. As I thought over the conversation later in the privacy of my bedroom I began to realize that instead of good I had only done harm. For a warning, such a futile one as I had given would only inflame a girl like Marcia, and the suggestion of danger was just the fillip her jaded tastes required.

It was not long before I had a confirmation of my mistake in judgment.

A week pa.s.sed, a week of alternate joys and depressions for Jerry, during which he spoke little to me of the girl. The night after the dinner at the Manor he had upbraided me for telling Marcia the story of his bout with Sagorski. He had not cared to tell her of that event, he said, because he thought it too brutal for the ears of a girl of her delicate and sensitive nature. The next night he spoke of it again, but this time without reserve. It seemed that Marcia was very much interested in his feats of physical strength and hoped that Jerry would permit her to watch him when he sparred. Of course, he didn"t see why she shouldn"t watch him when he sparred if she was really interested in that sort of thing, but it was curious how he had misjudged her tastes; she seemed so ethereal, so devoted to the gentler things of life, that he had not thought it possible she could care for the rugged art he loved, which at times, as I knew, verged upon the brutal. I mentioned with a smile that there remained in all of us, women as well as men, some relics of the age of stone.

"Of course," he a.s.sented cheerfully, "I knew she wasn"t namby-pamby.

It"s rather nice of her, I think, to take so much interest."

A few days after that Jerry left me and I knew that Briar Hills was closed again.

The events which were to follow came upon me with startling unexpectedness. Scarcely two weeks had pa.s.sed since Jerry"s departure and I had hardly settled back into my routine at the Manor, where I was trying again to take up the lost threads of my work, when a message came over the wire from Jack Ballard asking me to come down to New York to visit him for a few days. I inferred from what he said that he wanted to see me about Jerry, and, of course, I lost no time in getting to the city and to his apartment, where I found him before his mirror, tying his cravat.

"Pope, my boy, I knew you"d come. Just itching for an excuse anyway, weren"t you? But you needn"t look so alarmed. Jerry"s all right. He hasn"t even run off; with a chorus lady or founded a home for non-swearing truckmen."

"Well what _has_ he done?" I asked.

"Not much--merely engaged to become one of the princ.i.p.als in a prize fight in Madison Square Garden."

"Jerry! I can"t believe you."

"It"s quite true. Sit down, my boy. Have you break-fasted yet?"

"Hours ago at the Manor."

"Just reproach! But the early worm gets caught by the bird, you know.

I never get up--"

"Tell me," I broke in impatiently, "where you heard this extravagant tomfoolery?"

"From the extravagant tomfool himself. Jerry told me yesterday. I"m afraid there"s no doubt about the matter. The articles of agreement are signed, the money, five thousand a side, is in the hands of the stakeholder--one Mike Finnegan, a friend of Flynn"s, who keeps a saloon upon the Bowery."

"Preposterous! It hasn"t come out, the newspapers--"

"They"re full enough of it as it is. Jerry"s opponent is a very prominent pug--an aspirant for the heavyweight t.i.tle, no less a one than Jack Clancy, otherwise known as "The Terrible Sailor, Champion of the Navy.""

"But your father--the public--! It will ruin Jerry--ruin him--"

"Wait a bit. Fortunately Jerry"s anonymity has been carefully kept. At Flynn"s gymnasium he"s called Jim Robinson, and it"s as Jim Robinson, Flynn"s wonderful unknown, that he will make his public appearance."

"But a name is a slender thread to hang Jerry"s whole reputation on.

He"ll be recognized, of course. This thing can"t go on. It must be stopped at once," I cried.

"Exactly," said Ballard coolly over his coffee cup. "But how?"

"An appeal to the boy"s reason. He must be insane to do such a thing.

It"s Flynn who"s put him up to this."

"I think not. If I understand Jerry correctly, he urged Flynn to make the match. He"s quite keen about it."

I paced the floor in some bewilderment, trying to think of a reason for Jerry"s strange behavior, but curiously enough the real one did not come to me.

"I can"t imagine how such an ambition could have got into his head," I muttered.

Ballard struck a match for his cigarette and smiled.

"The nice balance of Jerry"s cosmos between the purely physical and the merely mental has been disturbed--that"s all. Liberty has become license and has gone into his muscles. What shall we do about it?

Flatly, I don"t know. That"s what I asked you down to discuss."

I took a turn or two up and down the room.

"Your father--the executors--know nothing of this?"

"Phew! I should say not!"

"They could stop it, I suppose."

"I"m not so sure," he said quietly. "If the boy has made up his mind."

I sank in a chair, trying to think.

"The executors mustn"t know. Jack. We"ll keep the thing quiet. We"ve got to appeal to Jerry."

"That"s precisely the conclusion I"ve reached myself. I"ve asked him to come this morning. He may be in at any moment."

I looked out of the window thoughtfully toward the distant Jersey sh.o.r.e.

"This isn"t like Jerry. He"s a fine athlete and a good sportsman--for the fun he gets out of the thing. But he has too good a mind not to be above the personal vulgarity of such an exhibition as this. His finer instincts, his natural modesty, his lack of vanity--everything that we know of the boy contradicts the notion of a personal incentive for this wild plan. Does he know what he"s doing--what it means--the publicity--?"

"He thinks he"s dodging that. n.o.body knows him in New York except a few fellows at the clubs, he says."

"But has he no consideration for _us_--for _me_?" I cried.

"Apparently his friends haven"t entered into his calculations."

"I repeat, it isn"t like him, Jack. Somebody has put this idea into his head."

I stopped so abruptly that Ballard regarded me curiously.

"Somebody--who?"

I paced the floor with long strides, my fingers twitching to get that pretty devil by the throat. I knew now--it had come in a flash of light--Marcia. Jerry listened now to no one but Marcia; but I couldn"t tell Jack.

"Somebody--somebody at Flynn"s," I muttered.