Glendon was bothered by this. His brows contracted in a troubled way, and he made no reply.
“I’ve wanted to meet you for a long time, Mr. Glendon,” Miss Sangster said. “I never interviewed a pugilist before, so if I don’t go about it expertly you’ll forgive me, I am sure.”
“Maybe you’d better start in by seeing him in action,” was the manager’s suggestion. “While he’s getting into his fighting togs I can tell you a lot about him—fresh stuff, too. We’ll call in Walsh, Pat, and go a couple of rounds.”
“We’ll do nothing of the sort,” Glendon growled roughly, in just the way an abysmal brute should. “Go ahead with the interview.”
The business went ahead unsatisfactorily. Stubener did most of the talking and suggesting, which was sufficient to irritate Maud Sangster, while Pat volunteered nothing. She studied his fine countenance, the eyes clear blue and wide apart, the well-modeled, almost aquiline, nose, the firm, chaste lips that were sweet in a masculine way in their curl at the corners and that gave no hint of any sullenness. It was a baffling personality, she concluded, if what the papers said of him was so. In vain she sought for earmarks of the brute. And in vain she attempted to establish contacts. For one thing, she knew too little about prize-fighters and the ring, and whenever she opened up a lead it was promptly snatched away by the information-oozing Stubener.
“It must be most interesting, this life of a pugilist,” she said once, adding with a sigh, “I wish I knew more about it. Tell me: why do you fight?—Oh, aside from money reasons.” (This latter to forestall Stubener). “Do you enjoy fighting? Are you stirred by it, by pitting yourself against other men? I hardly know how to express what I mean, so you must be patient with me.”
Pat and Stubener began speaking together, but for once Pat bore his manager down.
“I didn’t care for it at first—”
“You see, it was too dead easy for him,” Stubener interrupted.
“But later,” Pat went on, “when I encountered the better fighters, the real big clever ones, where I was more—”