"My name is Dawes. Fletcher Dawes," says the gent in the overcoat.
"I could have guessed that," says I. "You look somethin' like the pictures they print of you in the Sunday papers."
"I'm sorry to hear it," says he.
But say, he's less of a prize hog than you'd think, come to get near—forty-eight around the waist, I should say, and about a number sixteen collar. You wouldn't pick him out by his face as the kind of a man that you'd like to have holdin' a mortgage on the old homestead, though, nor one you'd like to sit opposite to in a poker game—eyes about a quarter of an inch apart, lima bean ears buttoned down close, and a mouth like a crack in the pavement.
He goes right at tellin' what he wants and when he wants it, sayin' he's a little out of condition and thinks a few weeks of my trainin' was just what he needed. Also he throws out that I might come up to the Brasstonia and begin next day.
"Yes?" says I. "I heard somethin' like that over the 'phone."
"From Corson, eh?" says he. "He's an ass! Never mind him. You'll be up to-morrow?"
"Say," says I, "where'd you get the idea I went out by the day?"
"Why," says he, "it seems to me I heard something about——"
"Maybe they was personal friends of mine," says I. "That's different. Anybody else comes here to see me."