Stubener was puzzled. It seemed, on the face of it, a joke--the men
in the fighting game were notorious jokers--and he tried to discern
the fine hand of Corbett or the big friendly paw of Fitzsimmons in
the screed before him. But if it were genuine, he knew it was worth
looking into. Pat Glendon was before his time, though, as a cub, he
had once seen Old Pat spar at the benefit for Jack Dempsey. Even then
he was called "Old" Pat, and had been out of the ring for years. He
had antedated Sullivan, in the old London Prize Ring Rules, though
his last fading battles had been put up under the incoming Marquis
of Queensbury Rules.
What ring-follower did not know of Pat Glendon?--though few were
alive who had seen him in his prime, and there were not many more
who had seen him at all. Yet his name had come down in the history
of the ring, and no sporting writer's lexicon was complete without
it. His fame was paradoxical. No man was honored higher, and yet
he had never attained championship honors. He had been unfortunate,
and had been known as the unlucky fighter.
Four times he all but won the heavyweight championship, and each
time he had deserved to win it. There was the time on the barge, in
San Francisco Bay, when, at the moment he had the champion going,
he snapped his own forearm; and on the island in the Thames,
sloshing about in six inches of rising tide, he broke a leg at
a similar stage in a winning fight; in Texas, too, there was the
never-to-be-forgotten day when the police broke in just as he had
his man going in all certainty. And finally, there was the fight in
the Mechanics' Pavilion in San Francisco, when he was secretly jobbed
from the first by a gun-fighting bad man of a referee backed by a small
syndicate of bettors. Pat Glendon had had no accidents in that fight,
but when he had knocked his man cold with a right to the jaw and a
left to the solar plexus, the referee calmly disqualified him for
fouling. Every ringside witness, every sporting expert, and the whole
sporting world, knew there had been no foul. Yet, like all fighters,
Pat Glendon had agreed to abide by the decision of the referee. Pat
abided, and accepted it as in keeping with the rest of his bad luck.
This was Pat Glendon. What bothered Stubener was whether or not Pat
had written the letter. He carried it down town with him. What's
become of Pat Glendon? Such was his greeting to all sports that
morning. Nobody seemed to know. Some thought he must be dead, but none
knew positively. The fight editor of a morning daily looked up the
records and was able to state that his death had not been noted. It
was from Tim Donovan, that he got a clue.
"Sure an' he ain't dead," said Donovan. "How could that be?--a man of
his make that never boozed or blew himself? He made money, and what's
more, he saved it and invested it. Didn't he have three saloons at the
one time? An' wasn't he makin' slathers of money with them when he
sold out? Now that I'm thinkin', that was the last time I laid eyes
on him--when he sold them out. 'Twas all of twenty years and more
ago. His wife had just died. I met him headin' for the Ferry. 'Where
away, old sport?' says I. 'It's me for the woods,' says he. 'I've
quit. Good-by, Tim, me boy.' And I've never seen him from that day
to this. Of course he ain't dead."
"You say when his wife died--did he have any children?" Stubener
queried.
"One, a little baby. He was luggin' it in his arms that very day."
"Was it a boy?"
"How should I be knowin'?"
It was then that Sam Stubener reached a decision, and that night found
him in a Pullman speeding toward the wilds of Northern California.