“When you left me you were going to try to get him the job of looking after your aunt’s canary.”
“Oh, I was feeling rather sore then. That’s all over. I had an earnest talk with the poor zimp, and he means business from now on. And so he ought to, dash it, with a magnificent opportunity like this.”
“Like what?”
“We’re on to a big thing now, laddie, the dickens of a big thing.”
“I hope you’ve made sure the other man’s a bachelor. Who is he?”
“Tod Bingham.”
“Tod Bingham?” I groped in my memory. “You don’t mean the middle-weight champion?”
“That’s the fellow.”
“You don’t expect me to believe that you’ve got a match on with a champion already?”
“It isn’t exactly a match. It’s like this. Tod Bingham is going round the East-end halls offering two hundred quid to anyone who’ll stay four rounds with him. Advertisement stuff. Good old Billson is going to unleash himself at the Shoreditch Empire next Saturday.”