Sally hung up the receiver firmly. She waited eagerly for some minutes, and then footsteps came along the passage. They stopped at her door and the bell rang. Sally ran to the door, flung it open, and recoiled in consternation. “Oh, Ginger!” He had stated the facts accurately when he had said that he was not much to look at. He gazed at her devotedly out of an unblemished right eye, but the other was hidden altogether by a puffy swelling of dull purple. A great bruise marred his left cheek-bone, and he spoke with some difficulty through swollen lips. “It's all right, you know,” he assured her. “It isn't. It's awful! Oh, you poor darling!” She clenched her teeth viciously. “I wish he had killed him!” “Eh?” “I wish Lew Lucas or whatever his name is had murdered him. Brute!” “Oh, I don't know, you know.” Ginger's sense of fairness compelled him to defend his late employer against these harsh sentiments. “He isn't a bad sort of chap, really. Bugs Butler, I mean.” “Do you seriously mean to stand there and tell me you don't loathe the creature?” “Oh, he's all right. See his point of view and all that. Can't blame him, if you come to think of it, for getting the wind up a bit in the circs. Bit thick, I mean to say, a sparring-partner going at him like that. Naturally he didn't think it much of a wheeze. It was my fault right along. Oughtn't to have done it, of course, but somehow, when he started making an ass of me and I knew you were looking on... well, it seemed a good idea to have a dash at doing something on my own. No right to, of course. A sparring-partner isn't supposed...” “Sit down,” said Sally. Ginger sat down. “Ginger,” said Sally, “you're too good to live.” “Oh, I say!” “I believe if someone sandbagged you and stole your watch and chain you'd say there were faults on both sides or something. I'm just a cat, and I say I wish your beast of a Bugs Butler had perished miserably. I'd have gone and danced on his grave... But whatever made you go in for that sort of thing?” “Well, it seemed the only job that was going at the moment. I've always done a goodish bit of boxing and I was very fit and so on, and it looked to me rather an opening. Gave me something to get along with. You get paid quite fairly decently, you know, and it's rather a jolly life...” “Jolly? Being hammered about like that?” “Oh, you don't notice it much. I've always enjoyed scrapping rather. And, you see, when your brother gave me the push...” Sally uttered an exclamation. “What an extraordinary thing it is--I went all the way out to White Plains that afternoon to find Fillmore and tackle him about that and I didn't say a word about it. And I haven't seen or been able to get hold of him since.” “No? Busy sort of cove, your brother.” “Why did Fillmore let you go?” “Let me go? Oh, you mean... well, there was a sort of mix-up. A kind of misunderstanding.” “What happened?” “Oh, it was nothing. Just a...” “What happened?”