“Is your father going to speak?”
Wint shook his head. “No,” he said frankly. “Dad’s all right. He’s been absolutely fine. But—he says he wouldn’t know what to say. He’s no speaker, you know.”
“I’ve heard him do very well.”
Wint laughed. “You probably wrote those speeches for him yourself.” And B. B. good-naturedly acknowledged the corn.
“About half past seven?” Wint asked, as he got up to go; and B. B. agreed to the hour, and said he would be there.
When he had left B. B., Wint telephoned the furnace to make sure of Davy Morgan; and Morgan said energetically that he surely would be on hand. “I’ve some few things to say, also,” he declared. “I can talk when they get me mad, Wint. And I’m mad enough, to-day.”
Wint said: “All right; go as far as you like. This is a fight. It’s no pink tea.” And he dropped in on Sam O’Brien. But Sam was not in the restaurant. His underling told Wint the fat man had been out all day.
“He went looking for Jack Routt,” the man explained.
“He found him,” said Wint. “Well, tell Sam I’m counting on him to be at the Rink to-night.”
From the restaurant, he crossed the street to Dick Hoover’s office. Dick and his father were busy, so that Wint was alone for a time. Then he decided people might think he was hiding; so he came downstairs and out to the street again, and went to the barber shop for a haircut. Jim Radabaugh was there; and Jim shifted the bulge in his cheek and shook hands with Wint and said: