A Black Knife
I woke next morning with an idea in my skull. Personville had only some forty thousand inhabitants. It shouldn’t be hard to spread news. Ten o’clock found me out spreading it.
I did my spreading in pool rooms, cigar stores, speakeasies, soft drink joints, and on street corners—wherever I found a man or two loafing. My spreading technique was something like this:
“Got a match? … Thanks. … Going to the fights tonight? … I hear Ike Bush takes a dive in the sixth. … It ought to be straight: I got it from Whisper. … Yeah, they all are.”
People like inside stuff, and anything that had Thaler’s name to it was very inside in Personville. The news spread nicely. Half the men I gave it to worked almost as hard as I did spreading it, just to show they knew what was what.
When I started out, seven to four was being offered that Ike Bush would win, and two to three that he would win by a knockout. By two o’clock none of the joints taking bets were offering anything better than even money, and by half-past three Kid Cooper was a two-to-one favorite.
I made my last stop a lunch counter, where I tossed the news out to a waiter and a couple of customers while eating a hot beef sandwich.
When I went out I found a man waiting by the door for me. He had bowed legs and a long sharp jaw, like a hog’s. He nodded and walked down the street beside me, chewing a toothpick and squinting sidewise into my face. At the corner he said: