Sherlock Holmes: Work Capitol (Fight Card Sherlock Holmes Book 1) Read online

  FIGHT CARD

  SHERLOCK HOLMES:

  WORK CAPITOL

  A VICTORIAN

  FIGHT CARD STORY

  JACK TUNNEY

  FIGHT CARD SHERLOCK HOLMES: WORK CAPITOL

  e-Book Edition – First Published December 2013

  Copyright © 2013 Andrew Salmon

  Cover Painting: Carl Yonder

  Lettering: David Foster

  This is a work of fiction. Characters, corporations, institutions and organizations mentioned in this novel are either the product of the author's imagination or, if real, used fictitiously without any intent to describe actual conduct.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission from the publisher.

  Fight Card, Fight Card Now, Fight Card MMA, Fight Card Romance, Fight Card Luchadores, Fight Card Sherlock Holmes, and the Fight Card logo © 2010 Paul Bishop and Mel Odom

  * WORK CAPITOL *

  VICTORIAN SLANG:

  A CRIME PUNISHABLE BY DEATH

  AUTHOR NOTE:

  VICTORIAN

  BARE KNUCKLE BOXING

  Boxing has evolved and changed since ancient times and boxing in Victorian times was a different animal than boxing today. In the early 1800s, bare knuckle boxing was king. Earning lavish purses, toasted wherever they went, hired as boxing instructors or bodyguards for the rich aristocracy, who also funded their bouts, bare knuckle fighters (or rawsmen) were the rock stars of the day. Fighters lived fast and hard, spent their fortunes without a thought, usually dying young from drink, the long-term effects of their sport, or from diseases that were beyond medicine at that time. This up and down lifestyle made it common for fighters to know the inside of a debtor's prison or seek work as porters, blacksmiths, and on the docks between fights. Some survived the sport such as John Gully who was elected to Parliament. Most died poor and destitute.

  The fights themselves were raw, brutal affairs until The Pugilistic Club was formed in 1834 as a governing body to regulate fights, make sure fighters were paid, and retained an official ring-maker. This lead to the Prize Ring Rules of 1838 which created some guidelines for bouts, eliminating head butts, hitting or kicking a man when down, and outlawing spiked boots or cleats.

  Stripped to bare chest and britches, a fighter would step into the ring, tie his colors to a corner post, proceed to the middle of the ring. There, a scratch line would drawn in the sawdust, sand, or earth (if the fight was outdoors). The fighters would toe the line and begin fighting until one or both fighters were knocked down. At which point, the scratch (or round) was over, and both fighters had to return to their corner. Rounds lasted until a knockdown, so a single scratch could last from mere seconds to forty-five minutes or longer, depending on the skill of the combatants.

  No stools were provided in the corners, in fact using one was considered a foul. Rather one of the fighter's seconds would go down on one knee, creating a bench for the fighter to sit on to take water from a damp sponge. From the moment a fighter retreated to his corner, he had thirty seconds to return to the scratch line in the center of the ring, toe the line, and resume fighting. If he didn’t (or couldn’t), the fight was declared over and the fighter still standing was the winner. Wrestling throws and grips were also permitted and an integral part of the fight, which were usually refereed by two umpires.

  These fights eventually gave way to the Queensberry Rules of 1867, which instituted three-minute rounds, with a minute's rest in-between, established the standardized ring, and also abolished the thirty-seconds to scratch rule. A downed fighter was counted out backward, from 10 to 1, not like today where the lone referee counts up from 1 to 10.

  The terminology of the ring was also different than it is today. To retreat after sparring was called breaking ground. If a fighter maneuvered to the right or left to gain a strategic advantage, it was referred to as taking ground. Colorful terms were also used to describe various parts of the body. The torso itself was the mark. The nose was often referred to as the smeller, whistler, beak, snorer, sneezer, or proboscis. The mouth was called the oration trap, the tato-trap and, of course, the kisser.

  Blood was a welcome sight at fights and a host of terms were used to describe it as a fighter drew the claret, opened a fresh tap, drew the home-brewed, drew the cork, drew the juice, or drew the crimson, to name a few.

  When a fighter retired from boxing, a benefit was usually held by the Fancy (the brethren of the boxing ring), a celebration to raise money for the fighter to put towards life outside the ring. Since heavy drinking was something the majority of rawsmen had in common, most bought pubs and ran them until they died or lost them through bad business management. Some did prosper, living well into old age though such cases were the exception, not the rule.

  Queen Victoria's reign spelled the beginning of the end of organized bare knuckle boxing. As the 1800s progressed, the perception of boxing as a worthwhile sport waned. People moved on to other pursuits until, gradually, boxing lost its mass public appeal, royal patronage and the support of influential figures in society.

  This time period also saw the rise of gloved boxing as an alternative to the bloody contests of the past. Gloves protected a fighter's hands, allowing him to throw more punches, whereas rawsmen had to be more judicial in their attacks for fear of damaging their hands. As a result, gloved boxing was seen as more exciting.

  However, bare knuckle boxing did not disappear. It continued in the shadows, becoming more and more corrupt and dangerous along the way. Relegated to seedy clubs or attics, gypsy camps, the Navy, and canal workers, the fights continued. The bouts were no-holds barred, primal affairs controlled by the criminal element as the 1900s loomed. For fans, it became a sport one did not talk about in unfamiliar company, a guilty, gritty pleasure practiced amongst a tight-knit fraternity throughout the decades since the glory days. And so it remains to this day.

  FIGHT CARD

  SHERLOCK HOLMES:

  WORK CAPITOL

  FIRST SCRATCH

  From the outset, my dear friend, Sherlock Holmes acquiesced to my desire to be the chronicler of our adventures on the condition we both be in agreement as to the cases to be written up. To this end, Holmes would frequently veto the presentation of any case where brawn was as necessary to a satisfactory conclusion of the matter at hand as was his not inconsiderable brain.

  He held the public needed to see him purely as a consulting detective lest he be hounded by every Tom, Dick and Harry approaching him under the misconception Holmes, or myself, were common thugs for hire.

  From a professional standpoint, this made sense, and it was no great concession for me to agree to those terms. As Holmes earned his living through his wits and his uncanny deductive abilities, it was logical these be at the forefront of public perception.

  The tales I have seen published to date have not entirely shied away from the physical abilities Holmes possessed. Rather, they bear slight testimony to what my friend was capable of in our younger days. That said, there are amongst the many hundreds of cases we investigated, a great many which required literal blows along with metaphorical strikes in the cause of justice.

  My notebooks are full of such cases and, with my good friend having settled into his retirement, his resolve has softened likewise, and he has raised no objection to my recounting the adventures in question.

  I half-believe the air of apathy he feigns concerning the matter. Note, I say I half
-believe – I know my friend well and I am most aware of how he treasures the force he has been for the greater good, and the reputation he has earned in that regard. However, his labors are behind him for the most part and professional appearances do not have to be as rigidly adhered to as in the past.

  With this in mind, I have sifted through my notes for those matters not yet put before the public, which required the full range of my friend's abilities. As I have prefaced my intentions, leaving no room for misinterpretation, I shall begin the narrative of this early adventure.

  It was the evening of December 21st, in the year 1884, when I received the message from Holmes asking me to meet him at Alison's Rooms in Camden Town. A benefit was being held for a bruiser who was being given a fitting send-off by the Fancy. Holmes, no stranger to fisticuffs, had been invited to pay his respects by way of participating in an exhibition bout with the guest of honor.

  Holmes was not one to give freely of his time, and it was my contention he accepted the invitation to the benefit solely for the opportunity it afforded him to test his pugilistic skills. In the cases we had investigated, we frequently stepped into the paths of louts eager to impose their will through physical means, but such encounters were questions of fighting prowess against wild, brute force. Tests of character and mind to be sure, but hardly the same as going up against a fighter by trade with long experience of the prize ring.

  The fight would be a scientific match up of blackened gloves – the aim being for the fighters to strike only at the face with gloves dusted with soot. At the end of three rounds, the pugilist with the least soot upon his face would be given the verdict.

  These were not the days of Trafalgar and Waterloo, when a boxing match between champions of note became a national affair with tens of thousands in attendance and the nation holding its collective breath. Bare-knuckle boxing was illegal, and the law saw nothing wrong with its practitioners leaving the life for more honest pursuits. The official stance on the back room exhibitions, which usually accompanied the send off, was a matter of some contention. A blind eye was often turned, but not always.

  The heavy snow blanketing the city could not deter my rendezvous at Alison's. Something of a fight enthusiast myself, I was not about to miss out on the benefit. My driver certainly did not appreciate the snow shrouding the roadway while frosting his rough topper and the shoulders of his greatcoat.

  With the storm sweeping the streets clean of pedestrians who might want a cab, the fare he carried promised some income on this dismal night. No doubt this was the motivating factor in the stillness of his tongue to any complaint as we made our way.

  Wheels muffled in the virgin drifts, our arrival at Alison's went unheralded. The muffling effect of the snow hardly mattered. The raucous clamour undulating from the room behind the tavern abutting the lodgings would have obliterated our approach had we signaled our intentions with artillery. I scarcely heard the brougham depart after stepping down and turning my back on it.

  Assuming the pub staff had fallen prey to the siren song of the fight, abandoning their stations within the establishment, I tromped through the drift at the side of the building to find the back room fairly throbbing with noise. Golden light blazed through the uncurtained windows, giving the powdery snow around the room the appearance of sand churned by dozens of eager boots into a pock-mocked jumble.

  If not for the cold wind at my cheeks and the layers about me I'd have thought I was back in Afghanistan.

  Between the top of the door and the cement frame ran a gap of an inch. Heat emanating from the room was melting the snow covering the lintel, creating a waterfall in miniature.

  Thus did I go from the dark of a winter's night to bright desert day, only to be drenched momentarily in the freezing downpour as I opened the door and hurriedly crossed the threshold. Stepping inside was no small feat as the press of humanity in the place presented a soft, though unyielding barrier to my progress. The result was a good soaking from the melting snow as I wedged myself through a gap no wider than my walking stick.

  The room was stifling, the noise a solid thing. Smoke from cigarettes, cigars, pipes, candles and a coal fire had replaced all of the oxygen in the low space. I was instantly overcome by the miasma of odours topped with the reek of sweat, ale and myriad exhalations.

  A smile stretched across my lips as I plunged into the mass of bodies. A good cigar, good comrades, and good spirits – these had been the wants that sustained me during arid wartime, and it was invigorating to revisit a den specializing in all three.

  Beer appeared in my fist as though by a conjurer's trick. It splashed down my throat almost as quickly, only to be replaced by another. I used a candle, in the center of a dish on a teetering shelf near the door, to light a cigar and steeled myself to the task of working through the crowd to reach the boxing ring.

  Judicious applications of elbows and a stout shoulder now and again were sufficient to part the curtain of flesh before me. My progress was marked by a convivial good-fellowship, mostly due to high spirits as the crowd had been imbibing for hours prior to my arrival.

  Finally, I found myself as close to the ring as I was likely to get. An enormous man, with a hat titled perilously back on his close-cropped skull, had drawn a crowd of gamblers frantic to place money down on every aspect of the bout. I could but snatch glimpses between the forest of wildly gesticulating limbs, but the sound of leather striking flesh was unmistakable.

  "Pop 'im on the snorer," someone in the crowd bellowed over the din. "That'll turn on the tap most likely!"

  "Break 'is oration trap," spat another.

  These and like exclamations were soon drowned out as a unified roar suddenly erupted from the crowd and subsided just as quickly. This told me one of the fighters was upon his back, which produced a visible easing of the tense group. With this pause in the action, men broke ranks for more ale and my way to the ring was clear. I seized the moment.

  Arriving ringside, I found to my dismay it was Sherlock Holmes who was picking himself up from the dusty floor of the ring.

  The knockdown had brought the first scratch to an end and both men had withdrawn to their respective corners – Holmes somewhat more tardily than his opponent. They stood bare-chested, sweat streaming down their torsos. Both indulged in a wipe, and then washed their mouths out. There were no designated seconds or bottle men, so the fighters made their ablutions themselves.

  I got my first look at Angus McMurdo. He was a short, deep-chested man with a protruding face and twinkling, yet distrustful, eyes. Offsetting his somewhat diminished stature were two massive, square, fists dangling from arms resembling tree trunks. He had a quick smile and brayed comments for those who had gathered to see him off on his new life outside the ring.

  I made my way to Holmes's corner and greeted my friend.

  "Ah, Watson, capital!" said he.

  "How are you getting on?" I asked, shouting to be heard.

  Holmes smiled with bloodied teeth. "His uppercut landed faster than I had anticipated and now I bear his mark." He indicated the black smudge across his chin like the beginnings of a beard. A similar stain was on his right cheek as well. "No matter," he continued. "We danced around a mite, broke ground when necessary, but all to our purpose. I invite you to observe."

  Not another word did he direct my way. One of the two umpires called time at the end of the thirty-second respite and Holmes approached the scratch line.

  As they began, I could see the lessons of the first scratch working on the two men. McMurdo, being the shorter of the pair, kept his distance for the moment. The black marks about his face and neck betrayed the earlier mistake of assuming Holmes, being an amateur, was ill-suited for the match.

  They were opposites of style as well. Holmes was in classic stance, erect, head very slightly thrown back, mouth tightly closed. Left foot planted firmly to accept his main weight, right foot back, the heel slightly raised from the canvas with only the ball of the foot touching.

  The
veracity and ferocity of his lean, muscled frame indicated purpose not reflected in his eyes. For Holmes had adopted that singular somnolent, heavy-lidded gaze I had come to recognize as betraying intense concentration on his part.

  Standing toe to toe with his opponent at the scratch line, it appeared as if Holmes was drowsily recalling some prior event scrolling past his mind's eye. Nothing could be further from the truth.

  McMurdo held a similar stance, though his head was tucked down against his neck, and his thick arms moved constantly like a clockwork mechanism.

  Holmes had the benefit of height and reach in the end, which left McMurdo no choice but to close for the purpose of in-fighting. He did so warily, though with the confidence of his years in the prize ring.

  Holmes fought through these attempts, though neither fighter landed to any great advantage. Holmes broke ground, retreating just out of the range of McMurdo's jab before stepping in again. He kept from being cornered by the seasoned fighter with the swift action of his feet, taking ground to the right when not retreating and nullifying McMurdo's punishing right arm.

  After a minute or so of wary sparring for wind, the veteran fighter, having learned he could not overpower his opponent by brute strength and skill, opted to match wits with Holmes instead.

  This was not a wise course of action.

  The implications of which were felt immediately. Up until McMurdo broke ground, Holmes had been on the defensive, picking his spots and striking effectively. Well into the second scratch, McMurdo was convinced Holmes had adopted this reactionary stance due to inexperience. He was thus shocked when Holmes launched a devastating attack, catching the professional fighter off guard.

  Holmes pegged away merrily on his opponent’s nose and left cheek. McMurdo raised his guard to protect his face as there was no danger of blows to the body. Experience soon held sway and capital exchanges followed. Holmes landed two more straight lefts, then was forced to take ground to the right as McMurdo drove a right at his chin. This set the tone for the remainder of the scratch.