12 Sports Aces, May 1943 — page 52: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

50 | 12 SPORTS ACES : OO meee eres Dan One eee De st PD Ae HB te Be OE BE Om Dd Re RO A Int Bet She DO her ee hehe gl he took?” Tim McCarty cut in. “it adds up. Benson would get some nice publicity fer that ham-and-egger he’s giving a build-up and he’d cook your goose. Any- thing Nazi is poison right now and— well, Benson controls the Chronicle, too. That explains the angle of me being sent with Alders to get anything interesting.” The young professor ran his fingers through his hair. “Tt is utterly fantastic,” he said, “but somehow {1 feel it is true. If it is, Mr. Benson and Battler Alders are going to jearn that they have started something!” / CHAPTER Iii OUR months after that night, young Matty Rourke sat in a dressing room of a small fight club. He was a magnif- icent specimen of finely trained athlete, the product of weeks of sweat, work and | a driving determination that forced his mind and body to absorb fistie teaching like a sponge. He had found his birth certificate in the box Terry Brian left, and he’d found more. There were yellowed clippings and a faded closely spaced letter Terry Brian had written many years before. It began: “Someday you will read this, Matty, and know what a snivelling fear-ridden coward Il am. Maybe someday I’ll even get up courage to tell you myself.. ”’ The letter had told how Terry Brian had got wind of someone who knew how killer Birk really had met death, Terry had nosed around and he must have come ~ glése beeause on a night two days before the trial, he was seized in a room where he’d been decoyed by a promise of locat- ing the man he sought, and beaten half ‘te death. Then he had been dumped into a freight car and when he came to con- sciousness, he was in the hospital in a city 2 thousand miles distant. He’d hovered for weeks at the point of death. After he recovered sufficiently, he’d returned East, located Mrs. Reurke, . and they’d taken up the trail of the man ‘berry was sure could clear Mat Rourke. But again he had been beaten and this time he was warned that if he didnt get the hell ont of there and stay out, he would be killed. ry’s nerve. Mrs, Rourke was taken ill; and he fied with her and Mat Rourke’s boy to # farm in a midwestern state. The ietter had ended: “J can’t tell you the name of the man who could clear your father’s name, I only know that there was such a man. i have always had the hunch that Ben Benson knows more about the dirty frame-up of Mat Rourke than he admits. “Your mother’s last words were for me te raise you se you would never know the rottenness of the fight game which ruined your father, and 1 have respected her re- quest, Maybe I have been wrong. Matty. | Maybe it is best that you know. Certain it is that you can be as proud of your dad as any son because Mat Rourke was inno- cent of any crime...” Mathew Rourke went back to Ruxford after reading that setter. He showed the letter to Spike Babb and Tim Me@arty, said quite simply: “I need help. You are a boxing coach, Mr. Babb, you used to be a fighter I want you to teach me to fight. B. J. Bensen is backing Battler Alders, you say, and Il am going to get at them. My career as a teacher is ruined and aside from that, I am determined to root up evidence that will clear my father’s name. I nave fig- ured out that the most feasible way to get at Benson and Alders is through the box- ing ring.” Spike Babb and Tim McGarty tad worked with the youngster. After a week, “You're a natural, doc. I threw some feather in my time and I’ve seen all the best. You*ve got what it takes. You need smoothing, experience, but you’ve got it, i'm climbing on your wagon right now.” Spike Babb said, ““‘Why wouldn’t he be a natural? Mat Rourke’s kid couldn’t be — anything else. And that right the Jad’s got! By Judas, I ain’t seen nothin’ like it since Mat Reurke himself4” Young Matty Rourke thought of all this there in the dressing room. His face was tense and set and the lips of his wide Gomichbooks (E©)