Blusteringly, then flatteringly, then coaxingly and at last with the tremolo stop pulled far out, he pleaded with Dan. He painted in glowing colours the middleweight’s comfortable rise from the ranks and the golden future that awaited him under Keegan’s guidance, if only he would have the intelligence to stick to his manager’s tuition and not get fool ideas that he could fight on the square well enough to keep himself warm. He foretold a future of failure and gutter poverty should the fool hold to this suicidal new plan.
To all of which Dan Rorke answered not a word; but sat glumly frowning at the spotty tablecloth and occasionally letting his fidgety hand rest for a second on Jeff’s head. When at last Keegan had run down and was bereft equally of breath and vocabulary and emotion, Dan began to speak. He did not look at the puffingly apoplectic manager, but rambled on as if addressing the hole in his napkin.
“A feller told me once,” he began, “that there’s mighty little a collie dog don’t know. And I’ve seen enough of Jeff, here, to find out that’s so. Jeff c’n tell when I’m blue and when I’m tickled, just by looking at me. It—it’d be funny, wouldn’t it, if he c’d get to telling, by looking at me, that I’m not on the square? A dog with Jeff’s breeding and Jeff’s sense would sure be too high-toned to pal with a crook, if he knowed it. And he knows a lot of things I’d never s’posed a animal c’d know.”
He looked down again at the collie as if for moral support. At the worry in his master’s glance, Jeff’s dark eyes took on a glint of eager concern. He laid one white little forepaw on Dan’s muddy boot, and whined softly, far down in his throat. Thus encouraged, Rorke went on:
“That’s only one end of it. Here’s another: A man’s pretty low down in the list, ain’t he, if he can’t even fight as square as his dog c’n fight? A clean dog’s sure got a right to a clean master. Them folks yesterday was all praising Jeff. They wasn’t praising him so much for licking the big feller as for licking him, clean; and for not fouling when he had a chance to. I c’d see that myself. Well, I sh’d think folks would feel that way about a man that fights clean. Anyhow,” he finished defiantly, “no poor dog’s going to have the right to say he’s a whiter man than what I am. I been thinking it all over. And that’s the answer. I’m off fouling. Like I said.”
For the next twenty-four hours the bungalow and the gym were vibrant with the sounds of argument and vituperation. Keegan exhausted his every battery. And—like most men who think slowly and seldom—Dan Rorke grew more and more firmly set in his queer resolution, the more he discussed it.
Even stolid Bud Curly, his sparring partner and general handy man round the gym, was moved to bewilderment by the once-docile fighter’s firmness in resisting the all-powerful boss.
Only once, in a day and night of abusive exhortation on Red’s part, did Dan lose for an instant his sullen calm. That was when Keegan grumbled:
“It’s all the damn’ dog’s fault. It’s him that’s turned you loony. I’ve got a good mind to shoot him. Then maybe you’ll——”