“Morning, Mr. Poe,” he said, his inordinately wide and lipless mouth contorted in a sneer of the utmost contempt Having come face to face with this terrifying figure on only one previous occasion, I had somewhat forgotten the unnerving effect of his intensely ill-favored appearance: of his grotesquely oversized head, his porcine eyes, his thick and flattened nose. His left ear, which had been partially detached during his “rough-and-tumble” with Crockett, had evidently been sewn back on by a particularly unskillful police surgeon and protruded from his head at a bizarre angle—a feature that only added to the sheer ghastliness of his demeanor.

Gazing at me with an expression of utter malice, this appalling figure declared: “You’ve been slipperier to catch than a soaped eel, you damn whey-faced runt. But I reckon I got you now.” And so saying, he took a step in my direction.

There arrives a moment in the existence of every man—even the least pugnacious—when circumstances compel him to unleash those wild, indeed feral, energies that Nature has implanted within the male bosom. Thus it was that when Neuendorf came at me, I instinctively assumed the fighting posture familiar to me from my days as student at the University of Virginia, when my skills as an amateur pugilist won the admiration of the entire student body. Turning in a sideways position, I bent my legs slightly at the knees and—after curling my hands into tightly compacted balls—raised each of my arms at a precise ninety-degree angle, keeping the left somewhat more elevated than the right in accordance with the time-honored tradition of fisticuffs.

I then cleared my throat and declared (in a voice that quavered slightly from the intensity of my emotions): “I am obliged to warn you, Neuendorf, that—though normally averse to violent behavior—I am viewed, by those familiar with my athletic achievements, as a master of the pugilistic arts. Should you rashly persist in this course of action, I shall not hestitate to direct the full, destructive force of my combative abilities upon you.”

The immense monitory impact of this statement—to say nothing of the ferocity of my aspect—brought the ruffian to a sudden, startled halt. Placing his hands upon his hips, he fixed me with a look of sheer malevolence before exclaiming: “Why, you jabbering little bastard. When I get done with you, you’ll wish you was in hell with your back broke.”

In spite of this vicious pronouncement, the villain made no further effort to advance upon me. Very plainly (or so I assumed) he had expected to meet with no resistance and was now reconsidering the prudence of engaging with an adversary so proficient in the pugilistic realm.