Page:Fighting Back (1924).pdf/360

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a angry bellow, gets off his stool to come to the rescue of his seconds. That was what you might call a illadvised move! Ptomaine curls his lip at the Arabian, then, apropos of nothin', he puts the entire weight of his two hundred odd muscular pounds behind a right swing which clipped his tête-à-tête right on the button. The Arab hit the floor like he fell off the city hall roof and he couldn't of got up had he been called by Gabriel! Cheers which quivered the buildin's foundations greeted Ptomaine's three knockouts and then the attendance stumbled and milled hurriedly to the exits as the blood-thirsty chef leans over the ropes and howls for more victims. The admirin' coppers looked at him and become ungruff as they politely asked him to leave the ring and finish his killin's elsewhere.

"Well, boys—that was the last one!" says Kid Roberts to the sport writers in his dressin' room, whilst Ptomaine is impatiently tryin' to be interviewed. "Regardless of what the future may hold for me, I'm through with the ring forever! I'm retiring an undefeated champion, but I don't want the title. Let the others fight it out for——"

"It makes great copy, Kid!" butts in one of the younger reporters, excitedly. "Your wife at the ringside during your last fight—plenty of human interest and color there, eh?"

"What on earth are you talking about?" asks the Kid, turnin' pale. "My wife is at Albany!"

"Your wife was in a box, four rows back of me!" says the reporter. "D'ye mean to say you didn't know she was here?"