“I have been a trifle fastidious, haven’t I?” he murmured, and unconsciously he mimicked Hogarty’s measured accents. “But I hardly believe that any sensitive scruples of mine would annoy me much in this matter. I don’t know but what I’d just as soon squash a snake with a brick, even if I knew it was somebody’s beloved performing pet.
“That, as you say, is your side of the question. As for me––well, every time I remember that popeyed unctuous fat party they called the ‘Judge’ chanting Conway’s innocent childhood, with that big, lonesome kid standing there in the doorway listening and trying to understand, I begin to sizzle. It is time that Conway was licked––and licked right!
“Oh, I’m in on it––I want to be there! But,” he stopped and made a painstaking effort to fit the torn card together again, “but I have an idea that Bolton may be the one to hold out. There are some honest people, you know, who are honest all the time. He 225 might not understand the necessity of––er––a little professional fixing, so to speak.”
“Will he have to be in on it?” Hogarty countered instantly. “Will he? Not to any great extent, he won’t. According to my plan he fights straight. Don’t you suppose I know a straight man when I see one, just as well as you do?
“Here’s the whole thing––just as I’ll put it up to Dennison before it’s dark tonight. It’s Dennison’s own plan, too, in the first place, so he hasn’t any kick coming. We’ll match Bolton against one of the fairly good ones––Lancing, say––in about two weeks. Lancing gets his orders to open up in the sixth round and go down with the punch––and stay down! That’s plain enough, isn’t it? Well, Bolton is fighting under the name of ‘The Pilgrim,’ and you step up the next morning and give him two columns––you hail him as a real one, at last.
“We’ll match him with The Texan then. Conway whipped him back a week or two, but he had his hands full doing it. The Texan––and I ought to know––is open to reason if the figure is big enough to be persuasive. We’ll see to that.
“He gets his orders, too––just as if they were really necessary! About the twelfth he lies down to sleep. Why, it’s so simple it’s real art! I’ll just hold Bolton back until those rounds. I’ll make him take it slow––and then send him in to clean up! Dennison 226 is shy a match right this minute for The Red; they’re all a little doubtful about him. The Pilgrim will be the only logical man in the world to send against him––that is, according to your sporting columns. And Dennison, of course, being on the inside, knows he is really nothing but a dub––knows it is simply a plain open and shut proposition. That is to say––he thinks he knows!”
Jesse Hogarty paused and the corners of his lips twitched back to show his teeth, but not in laughter.
“It’s the same little frame-up that he sent against Boots and me,” he finished. “He ought to be satisfied, hadn’t he? And I’ll have him on the street the next morning––I’ll put him where he’ll be glad to borrow a dollar to buy his breakfast with!”
For a long time they stared back into each other’s face: Hogarty taut at the table side, Morehouse slouched deep in his chair. The latter was the first to break that pregnant silence. He was nodding his head in thoughtful finality when he lifted himself to his feet.