“But you know who he is, don’t you?” asked the other, wonderingly.
“Don’t know and don’t care!” was Mr. Tridge’s reckless reply. “I shall expect to learn ’oo ’e is at the inquest, any way.”
“You don’t know who he is?” gasped the stout gentleman, and then he patted Mr. Tridge’s shoulder again, but this time it was commiseratingly. “Why, that’s Ted Burch—you know, the Ted Burch! ‘Toff’ Burch, the Swindon Slogger!”
“What?” squealed Mr. Tridge. “A—a—a prize-fighter?”
“Middleweight champion of—”
“But—but I thought ’is name was Jevvings?”
“So it is, pro tem.,” returned his informant. “He’s stopping here nem. con., doing a little quiet training for a match he’s got next month against Billy Traske, of Birmingham, and—”
Mr. Tridge did not await further instruction concerning Mr. Edward Burch. He had passed through the door with extreme celerity and was already cantering passionately in pursuit of Mr. Horace Dobb. Speedily catching up with his quarry, Mr. Tridge seized him and charged him with the blackest of treachery towards an unsuspecting friend. Mr. Dobb, but slightly stirred by the accusation, obliquely admitted its truth by regretting that Mr. Tridge should so soon have learnt the truth about Mr. Burch.
“But—but what did you want to play me a trick like that for?” roared Mr. Tridge.
“Why, because you’d never else ’ave dared to do what you did,” calmly replied Mr. Dobb. “You said yourself you’d ’ave nothing whatever to do with prize-fighters. That’s why I ’ad to take all the trouble to make up all that yarn I told you about Jevvings being a wild young chap of this town. Otherwise I’d never have brought you up to the scratch.”