"Then let every man who wants to hear shut up the noise-maker next
to him!"
The advice was taken, so that when he repeated it, his voice penetrated
farther. Again and again he shouted it, and slowly, zone by zone,
the silence pressed outward from the ring, accompanied by a muffled
undertone of smacks and thuds and scuffles as the obstreperous
were subdued by their neighbors. Almost had all confusion been
smothered, when a tier of seats near the ring went down. This was
greeted with fresh roars of laughter, which of itself died away,
so that a lone voice, far back, was heard distinctly as it piped:
"Go on, Glendon! We're with you!"
Glendon had the Celt's intuitive knowledge of the psychology of the
crowd. He knew that what had been a vast disorderly mob five minutes
before was now tightly in hand, and for added effect he deliberately
delayed. Yet the delay was just long enough and not a second too
long. For thirty seconds the silence was complete, and the effect
produced was one of awe. Then, just as the first faint hints of
restlessness came to his ears, he began to speak:
"When I finish this speech," he said, "I am going to fight. I promise
you it will be a real fight, one of the few real fights you have ever
seen. I am going to get my man in the shortest possible time. Billy
Morgan, in making his final announcement, will tell you that it is
to be a forty-five-round contest. Let me tell you that it will be
nearer forty-five seconds.
"When I was interrupted I was telling you that the ring was rotten. It
is--from top to bottom. It is run on business principles, and you all
know what business principles are. Enough said. You are the suckers,
every last one of you that is not making anything out of it. Why
are the seats falling down to-night? Graft. Like the fight game,
they were built on business principles."
He now held the audience stronger than ever, and knew it.
"There are three men squeezed on two seats. I can see that
everywhere. What does it mean? Graft. The stewards don't get any
wages. They are supposed to graft. Business principles again. You
pay. Of course you pay. How are the fight permits obtained? Graft. And
now let me ask you: if the men who build the seats graft, if the
stewards graft, if the authorities graft, why shouldn't those higher
up in the fight game graft? They do. And you pay.
"And let me tell you it is not the fault of the fighters. They don't
run the game. The promoters and managers run it; they're the business
men. The fighters are only fighters. They begin honestly enough, but
the managers and promoters make them give in or kick them out. There
have been straight fighters. And there are now a few, but they don't
earn much as a rule. I guess there have been straight managers. Mine
is about the best of the boiling. But just ask him how much he's got
salted down in real estate and apartment houses."
Here the uproar began to drown his voice.
"Let every man who wants to hear shut up the man alongside of
him!" Glendon instructed.
Again, like the murmur of a surf, there was a rustling of smacks,
and thuds, and scuffles, and the house quieted down.
"Why does every fighter work overtime insisting that he's always
fought square? Why are they called Honest Johns, and Honest Bills,
and Honest Blacksmiths, and all the rest? Doesn't it ever strike you
that they seem to be afraid of something? When a man comes to you
shouting he is honest, you get suspicious. But when a prize-fighter
passes the same dope out to you, you swallow it down.
"May the best man win! How often have you heard Billy Morgan say
that! Let me tell you that the best man doesn't win so often, and
when he does it's usually arranged for him. Most of the grudge fights
you've heard or seen were arranged, too. It's a program. The whole
thing is programmed. Do you think the promoters and managers are in
it for their health? They're not. They're business men.
"Tom, Dick, and Harry are three fighters. Dick is the best man. In
two fights he could prove it. But what happens? Tom licks Harry. Dick
licks Tom. Harry licks Dick. Nothing proved. Then come the return
matches. Harry licks Tom. Tom licks Dick. Dick licks Harry. Nothing
proved. Then they try again. Dick is kicking. Says he wants to get
along in the game. So Dick licks Tom, and Dick licks Harry. Eight
fights to prove Dick the best man, when two could have done it. All
arranged. A regular program. And you pay for it, and when your seats
don't break down you get robbed of them by the stewards.
"It's a good game, too, if it were only square. The fighters would
be square if they had a chance. But the graft is too big. When a
handful of men can divide up three-quarters of a million dollars on
three fights--"
A wild outburst compelled him to stop. Out of the medley of cries
from all over the house, he could distinguish such as "What million
dollars?" "What three fights?" "Tell us!" "Go on!" Likewise there
were boos and hisses, and cries of "Muckraker! Muckraker!"
"Do you want to hear?" Glendon shouted. "Then keep order!"
Once more he compelled the impressive half minute of silence.
"What is Jim Hanford planning? What is the program his crowd and mine
are framing up? They know I've got him. He knows I've got him. I
can whip him in one fight. But he's the champion of the world. If
I don't give in to the program, they'll never give me a chance to
fight him. The program calls for three fights. I am to win the first
fight. It will be pulled off in Nevada if San Francisco won't stand
for it. We are to make it a good fight. To make it good, each of us
will put up a side bet of twenty thousand. It will be real money, but
it won't be a real bet. Each gets his own slipped back to him. The
same way with the purse. We'll divide it evenly, though the public
division will be thirty-five and sixty-five. The purse, the moving
picture royalties, the advertisements, and all the rest of the drags
won't be a cent less than two hundred and fifty thousand. We'll divide
it, and go to work on the return match. Hanford will win that, and
we divide again. Then comes the third fight; I win as I have every
right to; and we have taken three-quarters of a million out of the
pockets of the fighting public. That's the program, but the money is
dirty. And that's why I am quitting the ring to-night--"
It was at this moment that Jim Hanford, kicking a clinging policeman
back among the seat-holders, heaved his huge frame through the ropes,
bellowing:
"It's a lie!"
He rushed like an infuriated bull at Glendon, who sprang back,
and then, instead of meeting the rush, ducked cleanly away. Unable
to check himself, the big man fetched up against the ropes. Flung
back by the spring of them, he was turning to make another rush,
when Glendon landed him. Glendon, cool, clear-seeing, distanced his
man perfectly to the jaw and struck the first full-strength blow of
his career. All his strength, and his reserve of strength, went into
that one smashing muscular explosion.
Hanford was dead in the air--in so far as unconsciousness may resemble
death. So far as he was concerned, he ceased at the moment of contact
with Glendon's fist. His feet left the floor and he was in the air
until he struck the topmost rope. His inert body sprawled across it,
sagged at the middle, and fell through the ropes and down out of the
ring upon the heads of the men in the press seats.
The audience broke loose. It had already seen more than it had paid to
see, for the great Jim Hanford, the world champion, had been knocked
out. It was unofficial, but it had been with a single punch. Never had
there been such a night in fistiana. Glendon looked ruefully at his
damaged knuckles, cast a glance through the ropes to where Hanford
was groggily coming to, and held up his hands. He had clinched his
right to be heard, and the audience grew still.
"When I began to fight," he said, "they called me 'One-Punch
Glendon.' You saw that punch a moment ago. I always had that punch. I
went after my men and got them on the jump, though I was careful not
to hit with all my might. Then I was educated. My manager told me it
wasn't fair to the crowd. He advised me to make long fights so that
the crowd could get a run for its money. I was a fool, a mutt. I was
a green lad from the mountains. So help me God, I swallowed it as
the truth. My manager used to talk over with me what round I would
put my man out in. Then he tipped it off to the betting syndicate,
and the betting syndicate went to it. Of course you paid. But I am
glad for one thing. I never touched a cent of the money. They didn't
dare offer it to me, because they knew it would give the game away.
"You remember my fight with Nat Powers. I never knocked him out. I had
got suspicious. So the gang framed it up with him. I didn't know. I
intended to let him go a couple of rounds over the sixteenth. That last
punch in the sixteenth didn't shake him. But he faked the knock-out
just the same and fooled all of you."
"How about to-night?" a voice called out. "Is it a frame-up?"
"It is," was Glendon's answer. "How's the syndicate betting? That
Cannam will last to the fourteenth."
Howls and hoots went up. For the last time Glendon held up his hand
for silence.
"I'm almost done now. But I want to tell you one thing. The syndicate
gets landed to-night. This is to be a square fight. Tom Cannam won't
last till the fourteenth round. He won't last the first round."
Cannam sprang to his feet in his corner and cried out in a fury:
"You can't do it. The man don't live who can get me in one round!"
Glendon ignored him and went on.
"Once now in my life I have struck with all my strength. You saw that
a moment ago when I caught Hanford. To-night, for the second time,
I am going to hit with all my strength--that is, if Cannam doesn't
jump through the ropes right now and get away. And now I'm ready."
He went to his corner and held out his hands for his gloves. In the
opposite corner Cannam raged while his seconds tried vainly to calm
him. At last Billy Morgan managed to make the final announcement.
"This will be a forty-five round contest," he shouted. "Marquis of
Queensbury Rules! And may the best man win! Let her go!"
The gong struck. The two men advanced. Glendon's right hand was
extended for the customary shake, but Cannam, with an angry toss of
the head, refused to take it. To the general surprise, he did not
rush. Angry though he was, he fought carefully, his touched pride
impelling him to bend every effort to last out the round. Several
times he struck, but he struck cautiously, never relaxing his
defense. Glendon hunted him about the ring, ever advancing with the
remorseless tap-tap of his left foot. Yet he struck no blows, nor
attempted to strike. He even dropped his hands to his sides and hunted
the other defenselessly in an effort to draw him out. Cannam grinned
defiantly, but declined to take advantage of the proffered opening.
Two minutes passed, and then a change came over Glendon. By every
muscle, by every line of his face, he advertised that the moment
had come for him to get his man. Acting it was, and it was well
acted. He seemed to have become a thing of steel, as hard and
pitiless as steel. The effect was apparent on Cannam, who redoubled
his caution. Glendon quickly worked him into a corner and herded and
held him there. Still he struck no blow, nor attempted to strike,
and the suspense on Cannam's part grew painful. In vain he tried to
work out of the corner, while he could not summon resolution to rush
upon his opponent in an attempt to gain the respite of a clinch.
Then it came--a swift series of simple feints that were muscle
flashes. Cannam was dazzled. So was the audience. No two of the
onlookers could agree afterward as to what took place. Cannam ducked
one feint and at the same time threw up his face guard to meet another
feint for his jaw. He also attempted to change position with his
legs. Ring-side witnesses swore that they saw Glendon start the blow
from his right hip and leap forward like a tiger to add the weight
of his body to it. Be that as it may, the blow caught Cannam on the
point of the chin at the moment of his shift of position. And like
Hanford, he was unconscious in the air before he struck the ropes
and fell through on the heads of the reporters.
Of what happened afterward that night in the Golden Gate Arena,
columns in the newspapers were unable adequately to describe. The
police kept the ring clear, but they could not save the Arena. It was
not a riot. It was an orgy. Not a seat was left standing. All over the
great hall, by main strength, crowding and jostling to lay hands on
beams and boards, the crowd uprooted and over-turned. Prize-fighters
sought protection of the police, but there were not enough police to
escort them out, and fighters, managers, and promoters were beaten
and battered. Jim Hanford alone was spared. His jaw, prodigiously
swollen, earned him this mercy. Outside, when finally driven from the
building, the crowd fell upon a new seven-thousand-dollar motor car
belonging to a well-known fight promoter and reduced it to scrapiron
and kindling wood.
Glendon, unable to dress amid the wreckage of dressing rooms, gained
his automobile, still in his ring costume and wrapped in a bath robe,
but failed to escape. By weight of numbers the crowd caught and held
his machine. The police were too busy to rescue him, and in the end
a compromise was effected, whereby the car was permitted to proceed
at a walk escorted by five thousand cheering madmen.
It was midnight when this storm swept past Union Square and down upon
the St. Francis. Cries for a speech went up, and though at the hotel
entrance, Glendon was good-naturedly restrained from escaping. He
even tried leaping out upon the heads of the enthusiasts, but his
feet never touched the pavement. On heads and shoulders, clutched at
and uplifted by every hand that could touch his body, he went back
through the air to the machine. Then he gave his speech, and Maud
Glendon, looking down from an upper window at her young Hercules
towering on the seat of the automobile, knew, as she always knew,
that he meant it when he repeated that he had fought his last fight
and retired from the ring forever.