It was a crowded, ill-lighted hall, barn-like in its
proportions, and the smoke-laden air gave a peculiar
distortion to everything. She felt as though
she would stifle. There were shrill cries of
boys selling programmes and soda water, and there
was a great bass rumble of masculine voices.
She heard a voice offering ten to six on Joe Fleming.
The utterance was monotonous—hopeless,
it seemed to her, and she felt a quick thrill.
It was her Joe against whom everybody was to bet.
And she felt other thrills. Her blood was touched,
as by fire, with romance, adventure—the
unknown, the mysterious, the terrible—as
she penetrated this haunt of men where women came
not. And there were other thrills. It
was the only time in her life she had dared the rash
thing. For the first time she was overstepping
the bounds laid down by that harshest of tyrants,
the Mrs. Grundy of the working class. She felt
fear, and for herself, though the moment before she
had been thinking only of Joe.
Before she knew it, the front of the hall had been
reached, and she had gone up half a dozen steps into
a small dressing-room. This was crowded to suffocation—by
men who played the Game, she concluded, in one capacity
or another. And here she lost Joe. But
before the real personal fright could soundly clutch
her, one of the young fellows said gruffly, “Come
along with me, you,” and as she wedged out at
his heels she noticed that another one of the escort
was following her.
They came upon a sort of stage, which accommodated
three rows of men; and she caught her first glimpse
of the squared ring. She was on a level with
it, and so near that she could have reached out and
touched its ropes. She noticed that it was covered
with padded canvas. Beyond the ring, and on
either side, as in a fog, she could see the crowded
house.
The dressing-room she had left abutted upon one corner
of the ring. Squeezing her way after her guide
through the seated men, she crossed the end of the
hall and entered a similar dressing-room at the other
corner of the ring.
“Now don’t make a noise, and stay here
till I come for you,” instructed her guide,
pointing out a peep-hole arrangement in the wall of
the room.
She hurried to the peep-hole, and found herself against
the ring. She could see the whole of it, though
part of the audience was shut off. The ring
was well lighted by an overhead cluster of patent gas-burners.
The front row of the men she had squeezed past, because
of their paper and pencils, she decided to be reporters
from the local papers up-town. One of them was
chewing gum. Behind them, on the other two rows
of seats, she could make out firemen from the near-by
engine-house and several policemen in uniform.
In the middle of the front row, flanked by the reporters,
sat the young chief of police. She was startled
by catching sight of Mr. Clausen on the opposite side
of the ring. There he sat, austere, side-whiskered,
pink and white, close up against the front of the
ring. Several seats farther on, in the same front
row, she discovered Silverstein, his weazen features
glowing with anticipation.
