Meanix lasted one round more. His attendants miraculously got him to the vertical position in the half-minute, but he was semiconscious when he lurched out. One eye was closed and the other half blinded with mud and gore. His bloated lips slobbered blood and saliva. In the corner he had spat out two teeth into the slop bucket. One blow finished the fight. A long, low jab in the diaphragm. He doubled forward and plummeted to the mud.
The sponge was tossed in beside him.
CHAPTER 4
The four-square semblance of order ended. One side stake leaned inwards under pressure and a corner post collapsed simultaneously. The ropes slackened and fell and the ring was a thoroughfare. In seconds the only indication of a fight being staged there was the glistening head and shoulders of the Ebony, clear among the umbrellas surrounding him. Altogether larger groups converged on the bookies. Many customers, it seemed, had succeeded in hedging their bets before the result was completely obvious. Professional gamblers, they needed to be as sensitive to the state of a fight as a broker to the stock market.
“Short fight,” commented Cribb, “and small entertainment to it.”
“Fourteen rounds. Fifty-three minutes by my half-hunter,” said Thackeray in confirmation. “Have you ever boxed that long, Henry?”
Jago had not. The brutality of what they had seen appeared to have affected him, for he was deathly pale. “That wasn’t boxing. That wasn’t sport at all.”
“You mean that there’s more footwork in glove fighting?”suggested Thackeray. “I suppose if they put spiked shoes on you and stood you ankle-deep in mud you might go as sluggishly as those two did in the early rounds. You could last an hour of that, couldn’t you?”
Jago shuddered. It could have been from the cool of the evening.
Cribb pulled the collar of the waterproof against his side whiskers and did not even look at Jago. “Three hours,” he said tersely.
“Three hours, Sergeant?” asked Jago.
“The time you should allow for a fist fight, lad. Plenty go to two hours and some have gone to four.”
Jago did not pretend to be an expert on pugilism. He left that to Cribb. No right-minded bobby questioned his sergeant’s authority on any subject.
“What happened to the beaten man?” asked Thackeray. He had been engrossed in pressing rainwater from his beard onto a large linen handkerchief.
“A sharp-eyed detective would have seen,” replied Cribb, equally uncomfortable in the conditions. “If you can manage to bend your waist a fraction, you’ll see him lying where the other man put him.”
“Still there? What’s happened to his attendants?”
“Looking for browns. Some were tossed in after he went down. It’s the only purse Meanix gets tonight. The crowd’s thinning now. Let’s go closer.”
They moved through churned mud where the ringsiders had been and across the fallen ropes to the protected greener square. Only the center patch was black and glutinous. On it lay the Stepney Ox, oblivious to the legs stepping across him. There, too, was one of his seconds, crouching, not to raise him, but to salvage a halfpenny from under his forearm.
“He’s breathing,” observed Jago, with some relief.
“One less for Waterloo Bridge, then,” murmured Thackeray.
Cribb addressed the scavenging second. “When are you returning to London?”
The face turned. It was scarred by years of fist fighting. One eye was sightless, stilled, perhaps, by an opponent’s thumb.
“What’s it to you?”
Cribb produced a coin and held it between finger and thumb above the expanse of Meanix’s back. It was a satisfactory answer.
“Last train. We’ll bring ’im round at the Fox in Rainham. Time enough to spend what we’ve picked up ’ere. Too bloody tight-fisted, this lot are. Don’t give credit for a rousing scrap. Ah! I’m obliged to you, guv.”
The spectators were by now steadily dispersing. Most headed in the direction of Rainham and the railway station. The referee, clearly determined for his own reasons to be first away, was already visible above a distant hedgerow, pedalling his fifty-inch Coventry Perfection dextrously through the rutted lanes towards the Fox and Grapes.
“We’ll go the same way,” Cribb announced. “I’m ready for refreshment.”
They joined the general trek, leaving Meanix and a small entourage. The beaten pugilist had managed to struggle to his feet, and was now wrapped in a horse blanket. The victor and his companion were evidently not joining the group at Rainham. They had already left, walking their horses slowly in the direction from which they had come.
The Fox (no one found it necessary to mention the Grapes as well) was a small inn, conveniently close to Rainham station. Well before the detectives reached there, the influx from London had arrived and begun the process of obliterating their memory of the fight. Cribb edged a passage to the counter with difficulty and ordered three glasses of porter. Thackeray had found a single seat under a window, towards which Cribb moved with the tankards, ducking to avoid an oil lamp slung from a beam.
“Doesn’t look as strong as it might,” he said, accepting the chair, “but any thing's welcome when you’ve got a thirst.”
“Been to th’ fight, ’ave you?”
The speaker was one of a group of eight firmly established around the three sides of the window seat. From the style and dry state of their dress they were the local clientele, alone among those present in not having been at Moat Farm.
Cribb nodded. “You didn’t go, then?”
There were superior smiles all round.
“Standin’ in ’Arrison’s field for an hour or more, watchin’ the Ebony alter a London bruiser’s profile? We got better ways o’ passin’ time, friend.”
“You’re not betting men, then?” inquired Thackeray, to encourage the conversation.
“Bettin’?” The speaker, shrewd behind his grey whiskers, with squirrel-sharp eyes that darted meaningfully around the table before each remark, added, “Bettin’ ain’t part o’ God’s law. And God in ’Is mercy preserves us from temptation by keep in’ down our wages to what we can spend in ’ere. ’Ow long did y’ London man last, then?”
“Fourteen rounds.”
“Hm. Fair showing.” The nodding of heads around the table showed a striking consensus of agreement. “What was the odds before they started?”
“Strongly favouring Meanix,” said Cribb. “If we’d known the black was so handy with his dukes, we’d have made a few pounds tonight.”
“Ebony’s form ain’t broadly known,” agreed the spokesman. “We know ’im round these parts, o’ course. I’m told that if fist fights was still written up in th’ papers, you London folk would’ve ’eard of ’im afore now. Don’t really trouble us, as only Ben there can read, and ’e prefers ’is prayer book to sportin’ news, don’t you, mate?”