"Oh, no, that wouldn't do at all," says Jarvis. "This must be a genuine match. I'll put up ten to one, five hundred to fifty; and if I stay the five rounds I get the fifty."
"Whe-e-ew!" says I. "It'd be like takin' candy from a kid. I couldn't do it."
Jarvis, he kind of colored up at that, but he didn't go off his nut. "I beg pardon," says he; "but I have an idea, you know, that it wouldn't be so one-sided as you think."
Well, say, I've made lots of easy money off'n ideas just like that, and when it was put up to me as a personal favor to do it, I couldn't renig. It did go against the grain to play myself for a longshot, though; but Jarvis wouldn't listen to anything else, claimin' his weight and reach made it an even thing. So I takes him on, an' we bills the go for the next afternoon.
"I may have to bring up Swifty Joe for a bottle-holder," says I, "an' Swifty ain't just what you'd call parlor broke."
"All the better for that," says Jarvis. "And I'd be much obliged if you'd find another like him for my corner."
Course, there's only one Swifty. He's got a bent-in nose, an' a lop ear, an' a jaw like a hippo. He's won more bouts by scarin' his man stiff than any plug in the business. He'd been a champ long ago, if it wa'n't for a chunk of yellow in him as big as a grape fruit. No, I couldn't match up Swifty. I done the next best thing, though; I sent for Gorilla Quigley, and gets Mike Slattery to hold the watch on us.
Mike gets the hint that this was a swell joint we was goin' to; so he shows up in South Brooklyn evenin' dress—plug hat, striped shirt, and sack coat. I makes him chuck the linen for a sweater; but I couldn't separate him from the shiny top piece. The Gorilla always wears a swimmin' jersey with a celluloid dicky; so he passes muster.
Anyways, when old Knee Pants, the Blenmont butler, sees us lined up at the front entrance, we had him pop-eyed. He was goin' to ring up the police reserves, when Mr. Jarvis comes out and passes us in.
"They're a group of forty-nine per cents.," says I; "but you said you wanted that kind."