k.

After we have kidded like that for a while, I admits bein' Kid
Scanlan's manager, and with that she suddenly runs to the door and
closes it tight. She comes back on tip-toes, leans over the bed
lookin' at me for a minute and then she asks me very soft would I do
somethin' for her. I had got as far as offerin' to dive off the Singer
Buildin' into a bucket of water, when she cuts me off and tells me to
listen to her as they wasn't much time.

She asked me had I ever noticed a big, husky, black-haired guy out in
the exercise yard. I said I had. I remembered a big whale of a man,
with the face of a frightened kid, walkin' up and down, up and down,
all day long. Every now and then he'd stop and pick up a pebble or a
handful of dirt and take it to one side where he'd examine it for half
an hour. Then he'd throw it away and start that sentry thing again.

Well, she said, this bird had been down to South America where he had
discovered some kind of a mineral that had made him very rich and some
kind of a fever that had made him very sick. He was at the sanitarium
so's the doctors could keep a eye on him, the bettin' bein' about seven
to five that he would go nutty, if some excavatin' wasn't done
immediately on his dome. A operation will save him, but his parents
won't think of it, and there you are. When she stopped, I told her
that whilst I never had performed no operations before, beyond once
when I pulled a loose tooth of Scanlan's between the second and third
round of a fight, I would get somebody to sneak me in some tools and
get to work on the big guy the first chance I got. She give a little
squeal and says that wasn't what she wanted me to do, gettin' pale and
prettier every minute. I seen I pulled a bone, so I asks her to come
right out with it and whatever she said I'd do it or break a leg.

"Then when Mr. Scanlan takes his exercise every day with the boxing
gloves and punching bag," she says, "get him to persuade Arthur to join
him. Arthur would do it for him quicker than he would for me or any of
the doctors. He thinks we are all in league against him and he admires
Mr. Scanlan--I've read it in his face as he watches him out in the
yard. Arthur himself was a noted athlete before he went to South
America. He might even box with Mr. Scanlan. That would lessen the
tension on his mind and we might get him to see that an operation
is--Oh! Will you do it?" she breaks off suddenly, grabbin' my hand.