Being somewhat more familiar with his narrative technique, Barry slipped a pound note into Bodger's mitt.
"Right," said Bodger, his pump primed. "I come from Queensland, see. Down under. Brisbane, to be exactical. Across the deep and briny."
"Yes," said Doyle. "I do follow you: You're from Australia."
Bodger snapped his fingers, pointed at Doyle, and winked broadly, as if he'd just discovered they were brothers in the same secret lodge. "Eggzac'ly!"
"We understand each other. Do go on, Bodger."
"Right. Fisticuffs, that's my nut, see. Bloodsport. A man wants to strut his stuff among men, let 'im do it wit' his hands as naked as a newborn babe, that's what I say. Done all right by Bodger Nuggins, hadn't it? Champeen of New South Wales and Oceania, light heavyweight."
By way of demonstrating his credentials, as boxers are compulsively wont to do, Bodger threw a punch at Doyle's midsection, pulling it an inch away from sending him to his knees in search of oxygen.
"Mind you," Bodger went on, "this Marquis of Queens-berry ponce, he'd like to put dresses on us bare knucklers, wouldn't he, have us dance about and slap each other with lit'le tea gloves." Unable to resist an additional compulsion to editorialize, Bodger contemptuously hawked a plug of tired tobacco to the floor. "The old ponce wants to watch lit'le girlies fight, why don't he go to St. Edna's Academy for Women and Ponces?"
"I'm sure I don't know," said Doyle. "Regarding Mr. Lansdown Dilks—"
"I'm gettin' 'ere," said Bodger, flexing his muscles ominously. "So the Bodger takes his leave from his old Homestead to have a go in the fight game on this side of the puddle. England. By boat it was. Uh ..."
"The pursuit of your boxing career brought you to London," said Doyle.
"Promised the Bodger a bash at the heavyweight title, these blokes did, but first they wants Bodgkins to fight this other bouff head. You know, like a ..." He went blank. Frozen as if he'd spilled sand in his gears.
"A tune-up fight," said Barry, after a respectful silence.
"Right," said Bodger, thwacking himself in the face again and jolting his mental machinery free from its rut. "Like a tune-up fight. Some drongo. Want to see what Bodger's made of 'fore they puts their precious title on the line. So the Bodger says to them, wot's fair is fair. Never let it be said Champeen Nuggins is a piker: Old Bodger puts on a show, he does, when some right gents lays out a few sponduliacks to catch my action."
"So you had this tune-up fight," said Doyle.
Bodger nodded and squiffed out another squirt of hot juice. "First thing, they tells me the tune-up's not to take place in your stadium, your gamin' hall, or even in your ring, as such. What they do is, see, they takes me to this warehouse like, down by the ribber."
"This was not a legally sanctioned bout," said Doyle, feeling more and more like an interpreter for some idiot prince.
"Not the full quid, no," said Bodger, seeming to comprehend. "But truff be known, we bare knucklers are not unfamiliar wit' the procedure."
"So I take it that once you reached the wharf, these gentlemen introduced you to your opponent," said Doyle patiently.
"Some ponce," snarled Bodger. "Soft. Face like a stunned mullet. Like he's never tussled wit' the gloves off in his life. So we're off: The ponce won't mangle much, but 'e won't lie down neither. No technical know-how. Bodger blinds him with science. Sixty-five rounds we go: His face is a mask of claret. Ask me, his corner should'a skied the towel long about fifty. But it's not my fate they should take the advice of Bodger, was it?"
"Apparently not, no."
"And now we comes to round sixty-sixth. That's why to this day sixty-six is the Bodger's unlucky number."
Bodger took Doyle by his lapels and pulled him closer as his deathless tale built to its thrilling climax. If I hadn't already shaved my mustache, thought Doyle, Bodger's breath would have torched it right off.
"We comes out and touches fives, good sportsman that we were. Then Bodger greets him with a wicked-fair left hook to the liver. The drongo doubles down. Then the Bodger straightens his starch with a Bodger speciaclass="underline" an uppercut to the nozz, a cracklin' good judy settin' him up for the bone-crushin', death-deliverin' grand finale Bodgerific combination to the point of his pozzy that send the wowser airborne. And by the time his head hits the ground, the spirit of man has fled his poncey body."
"He was dead," said Doyle, as agreeably as possible.
"Dead as a duck in a thunderstorm," said Bodger, still holding Doyle close enough to count his back teeth.
"How unfortunate."
"Not for the ponce; he's gone to his reward, 'adn't he? After all that muckabout, it's Bodger who'll have the hard rain fall. In comes the coppers. Manslaughter, they says. Bare knuckles and all, no Marquis of Queensberry, they says. Trial by jury. Fifteen years' hard labor. Hello, Newgate Prison; bye-bye Bodger."
Bodger released Doyle and sent a stream of variegated brown glop ten feet into the air, rattling over the edge of a spittoon in the corner.
"Where I take it," said Doyle, rearranging his clothes, "you at long last make the acquaintance of Mr. Lansdown Dilks."
"Mr. Lansdown Dilks. A hard moke in his physicaliosity, not all that dif'ernt than the Nugger man hisself."
"Somewhat Bodgeresque, you might say," said Doyle.
"A most Bodgerlike top dog indeed," confirmed Bodger. ''All very fine and large to 'ave one such feller in a given coop-up. 'Sonly nature's way. Put two such specimens in the same yard, and wot you's got there is one rumbustrious ruck-us."
"So you quarreled, the two of you, is that what you're saying, Bodger?" said Doyle, with another stab at translation.
"Most violent and frequently," said Bodger, cracking his knuckles: They reported like a rifle volley. "And neither one of these two smug pups ever able to best the better of the other. The first time, Bodgie's not ashamed to say, that the Nuggins ever met his match on either side of the ropes."
"And so you served your time together until the execution of Dilks's sentence."
Bodger's eyebrows knit together again. "Execution."
"Last February. When Dilks passed on."
Bodger's mystification deepened. "Passed on."
"Died. Gone west. Slipped the cable. Hung by the neck," said Doyle, finally losing his patience. "And flights of angels sing him to his rest. Do you mean to say this represents some sort of news to you, Bodger?"
"Not half. Dilksie looked in the pink last time the Bodger clapped eyes on him."
"And when was that, pray?"
"When we gots off the train together—"
"Surely you're mistaken," said Doyle.
"If Bodger means off the train, that's what he'd say, idn't it?" said Bodger, giving vent to no small irritation. "Off the train is what the Bodger means, and off the train is wots 'e's sayin'."
Doyle and Barry exchanged a quizzical look. Barry shrugged: This was fresh embroidery on the story for him as well. "Off the train where?"
"Up north. Yorkshire, like."
"When was this?"
"So happens the Bodger remembers the exactical date, seeing as how it was 'is own bin'day: March the fourth."
"March the fourth of last year?" Doyle was growing more confused with every word the man uttered.
"Say, wot are you, a ponce?"
"Bodger, forgive my thickness," said Doyle. "Are you telling me that you and Dilks took a train to Yorkshire a month after he swung and years before your sentence was due to expire, on March the fourth of last year?"
"Right. Lansdown and me and the others wot signed on."
"Signed on how?"
"Wit' the bloke wot come round the prison."
"Newgate Prison?"
"You catch on fast, don'tcha mate?"
"Please, I'm doing my best to understand: What man was this?"
"Don' know his name. Din't give it, did he?"
"Can you describe him?"