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  Illustration: The Fighter in the outdoor ring.




  THE CROXLEY MASTER

  A GREAT TALE OF THE PRIZE RING

  BY

  A. CONAN DOYLE

  Illustration: The Fighter in the outdoor ring.

  NEW YORK
  McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO.
  MCMVII

  _Copyright, 1907, by McClure, Phillips & Co._




_THE CROXLEY MASTER_




I


Mr. Robert Montgomery was seated at his desk, his head upon his hands,
in a state of the blackest despondency. Before him was the open ledger
with the long columns of Dr. Oldacre's prescriptions. At his elbow lay
the wooden tray with the labels in various partitions, the cork box, the
lumps of twisted sealing-wax, while in front a rank of empty bottles
waited to be filled. But his spirits were too low for work. He sat in
silence, with his fine shoulders bowed and his head upon his hands.

Outside, through the grimy surgery window over a foreground of blackened
brick and slate, a line of enormous chimneys like Cyclopean pillars
upheld the lowering, dun-coloured cloud-bank. For six days in the week
they spouted smoke, but to-day the furnace fires were banked, for it was
Sunday. Sordid and polluting gloom hung over a district blighted and
blasted by the greed of man. There was nothing in the surroundings to
cheer a desponding soul, but it was more than his dismal environment
which weighed upon the medical assistant.

His trouble was deeper and more personal. The winter session was
approaching. He should be back again at the University completing the
last year which would give him his medical degree; but alas! he had not
the money with which to pay his class fees, nor could he imagine how he
could procure it. Sixty pounds were wanted to make his career, and it
might have been as many thousands for any chance there seemed to be of
his obtaining it.

He was roused from his black meditation by the entrance of Dr. Oldacre
himself, a large, clean-shaven, respectable man, with a prim manner and
an austere face. He had prospered exceedingly by the support of the
local Church interest, and the rule of his life was never by word or
action to run a risk of offending the sentiment which had made him. His
standard of respectability and of dignity was exceedingly high, and he
expected the same from his assistants. His appearance and words were
always vaguely benevolent. A sudden impulse came over the despondent
student. He would test the reality of this philanthropy.

"I beg your pardon, Dr. Oldacre," said he, rising from his chair; "I
have a great favour to ask of you."

The doctor's appearance was not encouraging. His mouth suddenly
tightened, and his eyes fell.

"Yes, Mr. Montgomery?"

"You are aware, sir, that I need only one more session to complete my
course."

"So you have told me."

"It is very important to me, sir."

"Naturally."

"The fees, Dr. Oldacre, would amount to about sixty pounds."

"I am afraid that my duties call me elsewhere, Mr. Montgomery."

"One moment, sir! I had hoped, sir, that perhaps, if I signed a paper
promising you interest upon your money, you would advance this sum to
me. I will pay you back, sir, I really will. Or, if you like, I will
work it off after I am qualified."

The doctor's lips had thinned into a narrow line. His eyes were raised
again, and sparkled indignantly.

"Your request is unreasonable, Mr. Montgomery. I am surprised that you
should have made it. Consider, sir, how many thousands of medical
students there are in this country. No doubt there are many of them who
have a difficulty in finding their fees. Am I to provide for them all?
Or why should I make an exception in your favour? I am grieved and
disappointed, Mr. Montgomery, that you should have put me into the
painful position of having to refuse you." He turned upon his heel, and
walked with offended dignity out of the surgery.

The student smiled bitterly, and turned to his work of making up the
morning prescriptions. It was poor and unworthy work--work which any
weakling might have done as well, and this was a man of exceptional
nerve and sinew. But, such as it was, it brought him his board and L1 a
week, enough to help him during the summer months and let him save a few
pounds towards his winter keep. But those class fees! Where were they to
come from? He could not save them out of his scanty wage. Dr. Oldacre
would not advance them. He saw no way of earning them. His brains were
fairly good, but brains of that quality were a drug in the market. He
only excelled in his strength; and where was he to find a customer for
that? But the ways of Fate are strange, and his customer was at hand.

"Look y'ere!" said a voice at the door.

Montgomery looked up, for the voice was a loud and rasping one. A young
man stood at the entrance--a stocky, bull-necked young miner, in tweed
Sunday clothes and an aggressive necktie. He was a sinister-looking
figure, with dark, insolent eyes, and the jaw and throat of a bulldog.

"Look y'ere!" said he again. "Why hast thou not sent t' medicine oop as
thy master ordered?"

Montgomery had become accustomed to the brutal frankness of the Northern
worker. At first it had enraged him, but after a time he had grown
callous to it, and accepted it as it was meant. But this was something
different. It was insolence--brutal, overbearing insolence, with
physical menace behind it.

"What name?" he asked coldly.

"Barton. Happen I may give thee cause to mind that name, yoong man. Mak'
oop t' wife's medicine this very moment, look ye, or it will be the
worse for thee."

Montgomery smiled. A pleasant sense of relief thrilled softly through
him. What blessed safety-valve was this through which his jangled nerves
might find some outlet. The provocation was so gross, the insult so
unprovoked, that he could have none of those qualms which take the edge
off a man's mettle. He finished sealing the bottle upon which he was
occupied, and he addressed it and placed it carefully in the rack.

"Look here!" said he turning round to the miner, "your medicine will be
made up in its turn and sent down to you. I don't allow folk in the
surgery. Wait outside in the waiting-room, if you wish to wait at all."

"Yoong man," said the miner, "thou's got to mak' t' wife's medicine
here, and now, and quick, while I wait and watch thee, or else happen
thou might need some medicine thysel' before all is over."

"I shouldn't advise you to fasten a quarrel upon me." Montgomery was
speaking in the hard, staccato voice of a man who is holding himself in
with difficulty. "You'll save trouble if you'll go quietly. If you don't
you'll be hurt. Ah, you would? Take it, then!"

The blows were almost simultaneous--a savage swing which whistled past
Montgomery's ear, and a straight drive which took the workman on the
chin. Luck was with the assistant. That single whizzing uppercut, and
the way in which it was delivered, warned him that he had a formidable
man to deal with. But if he had underrated his antagonist, his
antagonist had also underrated him, and had laid himself open to a fatal
blow.

The miner's head had come with a crash against the corner of the surgery
shelves, and he had dropped heavily onto the ground. There he lay with
his bandy legs drawn up and his hands thrown abroad, the blood trickling
over the surgery tiles.

"Had enough?" asked the assistant, breathing fiercely through his nose.

But no answer came. The man was insensible. And then the danger of his
position came upon Montgomery, and he turned as white as his antagonist.
A Sunday, the immaculate Dr. Oldacre with his pious connection, a savage
brawl with a patient; he would irretrievably lose his situation if the
facts came out. It was not much of a situation, but he could not get
another without a reference, and Oldacre might refuse him one. Without
money for his classes, and without a situation--what was to become of
him? It was absolute ruin.

But perhaps he could escape exposure after all. He seized his insensible
adversary, dragged him out into the centre of the room, loosened his
collar, and squeezed the surgery sponge over his face. He sat up at last
with a gasp and a scowl.

"Domn thee, thou's spoilt my necktie," said he, mopping up the water
from his breast.

"I'm sorry I hit you so hard," said Montgomery, apologetically.

"Thou hit me hard! I could stan' such fly-flappin' all day. 'Twas this
here press that cracked my pate for me, and thou art a looky man to be
able to boast as thou hast outed me. And now I'd be obliged to thee if
thou wilt give me t' wife's medicine."

Montgomery gladly made it up and handed it to the miner.

"You are weak still," said he. "Won't you stay awhile and rest?"

"T' wife wants her medicine," said the man, and lurched out at the door.

The assistant, looking after him, saw him rolling with an uncertain step
down the street, until a friend met him, and they walked on arm-in-arm.
The man seemed in his rough Northern fashion to bear no grudge, and so
Montgomery's fears left him. There was no reason why the doctor should
know anything about it. He wiped the blood from the floor, put the
surgery in order, and went on with his interrupted task, hoping that he
had come scathless out of a very dangerous business.

Yet all day he was aware of a sense of vague uneasiness, which sharpened
into dismay when, late in the afternoon, he was informed that three
gentlemen had called and were waiting for him in the surgery. A
coroner's inquest, a descent of detectives, an invasion of angry
relatives--all sorts of possibilities rose to scare him. With tense
nerves and a rigid face he went to meet his visitors.

They were a very singular trio. Each was known to him by sight; but what
on earth the three could be doing together, and, above all, what they
could expect from _him_, was a most inexplicable problem.

The first was Sorley Wilson, the son of the owner of the Nonpareil
Coalpit. He was a young blood of twenty, heir to a fortune, a keen
sportsman, and down for the Easter Vacation from Magdalene College. He
sat now upon the edge of the surgery table, looking in thoughtful
silence at Montgomery, and twisting the ends of his small, black, waxed
moustache.

The second was Purvis, the publican, owner of the chief beershop, and
well known as the local bookmaker. He was a coarse, clean-shaven man,
whose fiery face made a singular contrast with his ivory-white bald
head. He had shrewd, light-blue eyes with foxy lashes, and he also
leaned forward in silence from his chair, a fat, red hand upon either
knee, and stared critically at the young assistant.

So did the third visitor, Fawcett, the horsebreaker, who leaned back,
his long, thin legs, with their box-cloth riding-gaiters, thrust out in
front of him, tapping his protruding teeth with his riding-whip, with
anxious thought in every line of his rugged, bony face. Publican,
exquisite, and horsebreaker were all three equally silent, equally
earnest, and equally critical. Montgomery, seated in the midst of them,
looked from one to the other.

"Well, gentlemen?" he observed, but no answer came.

The position was embarrassing.

"No," said the horsebreaker, at last. "No. It's off. It's nowt."

"Stand oop, lad; let's see thee standin'." It was the publican who
spoke.

Montgomery obeyed. He would learn all about it, no doubt, if he were
patient. He stood up and turned slowly round, as if in front of his
tailor.

"It's off! It's off!" cried the horsebreaker. "Why, mon, the Master
would break him over his knee."

"Oh, that behanged for a yarn