Pat, with his hand on the door-knob, paused and turned around.
“To the Academy of Sciences,” he said. “There’s a professor who’s going to give a lecture there on Browning to-night, and Browning is the sort of writer you need assistance with. Sometimes I think I ought to go to night school.”
“But great Scott, man!” exclaimed the horrified manager. “You’re on with the Flying Dutchman to-night.”
“I know it. But I won’t enter the ring a moment before half past nine or quarter to ten. The lecture will be over at nine fifteen. If you want to make sure, come around and pick me up in your machine.”
Stubener shrugged his shoulders helplessly.
“You’ve got no kick coming,” Pat assured him. “Dad used to tell me a man’s worst time was in the hours just before a fight, and that many a fight was lost by a man’s breaking down right there, with nothing to do but think and be anxious. Well, you’ll never need to worry about me that way. You ought to be glad I can go off to a lecture.”
And later that night, in the course of watching fifteen splendid rounds, Stubener chuckled to himself more than once at the idea of what that audience of sports would think, did it know that this magnificent young prize-fighter had come to the ring directly from a Browning lecture.
The Flying Dutchman was a young Swede who possessed an unwonted willingness to fight and who was blessed with phenomenal endurance. He never rested, was always on the offensive, and rushed and fought from gong to gong. In the out-fighting his arms whirled about like flails, in the in-fighting he was forever shouldering or half-wrestling and starting blows whenever he could get a hand free. From start to finish he was a whirlwind, hence his name. His failing was lack of judgment in time and distance. Nevertheless he had won many fights by virtue of landing one in each dozen or so of the unending fusillades of punches he delivered. Pat, with strong upon him the caution that he must not put his opponent out, was kept busy. Nor, though he escaped vital damage, could he avoid entirely those eternal flying gloves. But it was good training, and in a mild way he enjoyed the contest.
“Could you get him now?” Stubener whispered in his ear during the minute rest at the end of the fifth round.
“Sure,” was Pat’s answer.