Well, when I gets things all in shape I gives out word to some of those gents, and before I'd been runnin' a fortnight I'd booked business enough to see that I'd struck it right. What's the use monkeyin' with comers when you can take on men that's made their pile? They're a high-toned lot, too, and they don't care what it costs, so long as I keeps 'em in shape. Some of 'em don't put on the mitts at all, but most of 'em works up to that. Now there was Mr. Gordon. Sure, Pyramid Gordon. But I'll have to tell you about the game he stacks me up against. I'd had him as a reg'lar for about a month--Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays, from five to six--and he was just gettin' so he knew what real livin' was, when somethin' breaks loose down on the street that makes him forget everything but the figures on the tape. So he quits trainin'. About ten days later he drops in one afternoon, with fur on his tongue, and his eyes lookin' like a couple of cold fried eggs. "Are you comin' or goin', Mr. Gordon?" says I. "Where, Shorty?" says he. "Hospital," says I. He grinned a little, the kind of grin a feller wears when he's bein' helped to his corner, after the count. "I know," says he; "but when you've been sitting for two weeks on a volcano, Shorty, wondering whether it would blow you up, or open and let you fall in, you're apt to forget your liver." "It ain't apt to forget you, though," says I. "Shall we have a little session right now?" And then he springs his proposition. He'd got to go to Washington and back inside of the next two breakfasts, and he wanted me to go along, some on account of his liver, but mostly so's he could forget that he was still on the lid. His private car was hitched to the tail of the Flyer, and he had just forty-five minutes to get aboard. Would I come? "If I'm wiped out by the time we get back," says he, "I'll make you a preferred creditor." "I'll take chances on that," says I. They did do the trick to Pyramid once, you know; but they'd never got him right since. They had him worried some this time, though. You could tell that by the way he smiled at the wrong cues, and combed his deacon whiskers with his fingers. They're the only deacon whiskers I ever had in the Studio. Used to make me nervous when I hit 'em, for fear I'd drive 'em in. But he's dead game, Pyramid is, whether he's stoppin' mitts, or buckin' the Upright Oil push. So I grabs a few things off the wall, and we pikes for the ferry. "Where's the other parties?" says I, when I'd sized up the inside of the Adeline. There was room enough for a minstrel troupe. "We're to have it all to ourselves, professor," says he. "And it's almost time for us to pull out; there's the last Cortlandt-st. boat in."