you had to be a distant relative to a hick called
William the Conqueror, who I hear was light heavy-weight champ in days
of old. If you checked up all right on them little details, they took
a vote on you. If you was lucky, you got a letter in a few weeks later
sayin' your application was bein' considered and you might get in, but
not to bank on it, because they was havin' trouble connectin' up your
grandfather with the rest of the family tree, it bein' said around that
he made his money through work.

That was the place Kid Scanlan wanted to bust into!

One night he gets all dressed up like a horse in one of them soup and
fish layouts, and he hires a guy to drive him over to the Golden West
Club in that second-hand A. G. F. he had. I will say the Kid went into
the thing in a big way, payin' seventy-five bucks for a dress suit and
ten more for the whitest shirt I ever seen in my life. He sends in
eight berries for a hack-driver's hat and seven for a pair of tan
shoes. Then he climbs into his bus and tells the driver, "Let's go!"
Before he pulled out, he told me they was so many guys belonged to the
thing that he figured he could mix around for a few minutes without
anybody gettin' wise that he wasn't a regular member, if he could only
breeze past the jobbie on the door.

And outside of the shoes, which I thought was a trifle noisy, the Kid
sized up like any of the real club members I had seen, except his chest
wasn't so narrow and he had an intelligent look.

Well, he blowed in about twelve o'clock and come up to the rooms we had
at the hotel in Film City. He stands in the middle of the bedroom,
takes off this trick silk hat, and, puttin' everything he had on the
throw, he pitched it into the bathtub. He slammed that open-faced coat
in a corner and in a minute it was followed by them full-dress pants.
The gleamin' white shirt skidded under the bed, neck and neck with the
shoes. I didn't say a word while he was abusin' them clothes, but I
was so happy I felt like cheerin', because they was somethin' in the
Kid's face I hadn't seen there since we hit the movies. The last time
I had caught him lookin' like that was when One-Punch Ross had dropped
him with a left hook, just before the Kid won the title. When the Kid
got to his feet that there look was on his face and two seconds later
he was welterweight champion of the world and points adjacent.

He inserts himself into his pyjamas and then he swings around