“And the rest of your mob will be swarming in here in a few minutes, too. You can tell them that Sutton is––er––indisposed this morning, and that they’ll have to play by themselves.”
He nodded briefly to Denny and opened the door. But he stopped again before he passed out.
“There’s one other question, Mr. Bolton,” he said over his shoulder. “And please believe that I am not usually so inquisitive. But I’m more than a little curious to know why you did not present this card first––and go through the little informal examination I arranged for you afterward? It would have insured you a far different reception. Was there any special reason, or did you just overlook it?”
Denny dabbed again at the red drop on his chin.
“No, I didn’t exactly forget it,” he stated ponderously. “But, you see, I kind of thought if I just told you first that I wanted to see if I had any chance, you wouldn’t make any allowances for me because I–––”
Hogarty’s second nod which cut him short was the quintessence of crisp satisfaction.
“I understand,” he cut in. “Perfectly! And quite right––quite right!”
The ex-lightweight proprietor was sitting with his chin clasped in both palms, still staring at the half 200 facetious words of introduction which the plump newspaper man had penciled across that card, when the door of the small office in the front of the gymnasium was pushed open a crack, some scant fifteen minutes after his peremptory summons had gone out over the wire, and made him lift his head.
His eyes were filmed with a preoccupation too profound to be dispelled by the mock anxiety upon the chubby round countenance which Morehouse thrust through that small aperture between door and frame, or his excessively overdone caution as he swung the door wider and tiptoed over the threshold, to stand and point a rigidly stubby finger behind him at the trail of nail prints which Young Denny’s shoes had left across the glistening wax an hour or so earlier.
“Jesse,” he whispered hoarsely, “some one has perpetrated here upon the sacred sheen of your floor a dastardly outrage! I merely want you to note, before you start running the guilty one to earth, that I am making my entrance entirely in accordance with your oft-reiterated instructions. I am not he!”