Merciless Reason Read Online Free PDF Page A

room. An array of bottles was displayed on the shelves behind it, along with the obligatory mirrors. Framed prints of famous boxers were gradually turning yellow on the walls all around the room. Nate pushed his way through the throng to the bar. The proprietor, wearing a white apron, was in the middle of cleaning a glass by spitting in it and wiping it with a rag.
    â€œWhat can I get you?” he asked.
    â€œRonan,” Nate said to him.
    The barman tilted his head towards a door at the back. Nate zig-zagged among the revelers to the door and knocked. It was opened by a bald man with cauliflower ears and no neck.
    â€œI’m looking for Ronan,” Nate told him.
    â€œWho sent you?” the man demanded with a heavy Boston accent.
    Nate paused for just a second. He doubted if a lieutenant in the Royal Navy would be held in high regard in these parts. He took a gamble.
    â€œBushnell, captain of the Odin .”
    â€œHah! Bushnell, is it?” the man barked, his face splitting into a wide grin. “How is the old goat?”
    â€œDead,” Nate told him. “Killed by a sea monster.”
    â€œHad to happen sometime,” the doorman replied with a grunt. “Down the stairs, along the corridor and through the door. Ronan’s down the back, in the tweed jacket. The first bout’s just over. You’ll want to get your money in fast for the next one.”
    Nate passed two more sentries on the way down the corridor. They watched him as he went through, but said nothing. The door at the end of the corridor opened onto a roaring mob of men. There were hardly any women to be seen, but one or two shrill voices were raised among the mass.
    This room was smaller than the last, with all the stink of the front of the building mixed with the iron smell of blood. There was no furniture to be seen among the crowd milling round the center of the floor. Nate squeezed through to the circle of men surrounding the empty space in the middle of the room, where two men were struggling to revive a third. The unconscious man was stripped to the waist, showing an overfed but muscular body covered in red impact marks that would soon become nasty bruises. His face was bloodied and disfigured.
    Standing over them, shaking his fists in the air, was a man who stood about six and a half foot tall, with the shoulders of an ox and arms heaving with muscles. A man in a smart tweed suit was holding up the fighter’s arm and shouting to the crowd in a hoarse Kerry accent.
    â€œâ€¦ Undefeated for more den four years and dis evening, once again, he hes showed you why! Dee greatest fighter in dee North American states! Gintlemen, I give you Pat ‘Dee Axe’ Healy!”
    The mob bellowed their approval and the Axe shook his fists again and roared like a man possessed, loving his victory. Nate waited until the proceedings had died down a little. Another man stepped up and announced the next bout, and in the crowd money began to change hands. Ronan was making for a door at the back of the room. Nate intercepted the man before he reached it.
    â€œMy name’s Jim Hawkins,” he said. “I’m looking for a fight. I hear you pay well.”
    Ronan regarded him closely for a moment, sizing him up. He saw a young man with work-hardened hands and a face weathered by time at sea. And he saw Nate’s eyes, a gaze that lacked … something. Hope, perhaps. Some men came here because their lives were empty, or they were consumed with guilt. They came to be punished. These men did not last long in the ring. But some of the most entertaining fighters were those with nothing to lose—and entertainment was Ronan’s stock and trade.
    â€œYur a little on the willowy side for dis business, led,” he said in a grating Kerry brogue. “What makes yeh think yeh make de cut?”
    â€œDoes it matter if I don’t?” Nate replied.
    â€œNot to you, perhaps. But my customers come here