"Hello, Murphy, what have you been doing since the night that Mexican nearly killed me?" asked John, feeling somehow that he owed the second something for the care he had taken of him after he had staggered from the ring, bruised and battered.
"Oh, da same old stuff, da same old stuff," Murphy replied. "Haven't been doin' any more fightin', have ya?"
"No," said John, with a laugh, "the beating the Battler gave me was enough. You know, it's a good man who knows when he has had enough."
"Ya didn't seem to know when ya had enough da night ya mixed it with da Battler," said Murphy. "Ya took a beltin' that night and came up for more as long as ya could."
"Let's step inside; I'll buy you a drink of whatever they have," John invited.
Over steins of near-beer which Murphy drank with a wry face John learned that Battling Rodriguez had fought himself to the top and was now boxing main events at Vernon, at the American Legion stadium in Hollywood and occasionally in San Francisco and San Diego. He told Murphy that he was working on the newspaper, endeavoring to develop himself into a reporter.
They were about to leave and had turned away from the bar when there was a scuffle of feet at the front door. John was startled to see a number of men rush in and form a line across the front of the long room.
It flashed into his head that the men were bandits. One of them, he saw, had a gun in his hand. But this suspicion was quickly routed from his mind when one of the men, apparently the leader, stepped forward and shouted a command:
"Get in the corner, there, you birds, you're pinched," he ordered.