"Right now he is just where I want him. Why, he looks like a pitiful dub if you hold him back. Order him to wait--and it's heart-breaking to watch him suffer. In one month I can teach him all he'll ever need to know about blocking and getting away. And the rest? Well, you'll get a chance to see just what happens when he really goes into action. I tell you it makes you stop and think. "And I don't care what _he_ is fighting for; I don't care what he wants. Pleasure or profit, it's all one to me. It's you I need most right now, Chub. I know you have always been a little particular about soiling your hands. A shady deal never appealed to me so much, either, but I'm not exactly bashful about this one. That part of it will be my own private affair. You handle the publicity end--merely hail Bolton as a comer, when the time is ripe. Are you--are you in on it?" Morehouse thoughtfully scratched his head. "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 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.