"I told you you hadn't grasped it. Nobody grasps it till they've got to live it. You see, it's all a question of time. Now look at it carefully.... I'm not fixed. I'm a constantly moving quantity. For that reason I can't take an ordinary job like anybody else. Oh, I could get one all right. It would be the simplest thing in the world for me to walk into one of these Sandow places, Ince's or Jones's or any of 'em, and say, 'Just pass me a few of those two hundred pound weights,' and scare 'em alive with what I could do. In fact that's the whole situation--I _should_ scare 'em alive. You can't show pupils one man one day and perhaps a different one altogether the next; it isn't decent. Here's a nut for you to crack, George: I'm dead, a ghost. But my appearance is one of the most conspicuous things you ever saw. A man like me can't hide himself. The King or the Prince of Wales might walk down Piccadilly unrecognised, but not an athletic phenomenon like me. So as well as being the loneliest, I'm also one of the most public men living." "So you propose to make money out of athletics?" "Steady; let's take it as it comes. I've thought it all out, and I don't see a single flaw in it. Here's the problem: I want a large sum of money, I want to make it honestly, and if possible instantaneously, that is to say while I'm still stationary. Now how am I to do it?" "You can't do it." "Well, I say I can." "How?" You wouldn't guess in a hundred years what it was he proposed to do. He intended to fight Carpentier. "All in the fraction of a second, George," he said, appealing for my approval. "Knock-out punch for one of these mammoth purses, fix yourself up for life, and then disappear. It's absolutely sound reasoning." "It's the craziest thing I ever heard." "Why?" he asked, his eyes innocently on mine. "It's perfectly feasible." "How would you get the match? Do you suppose any promoter would look at you? Would any champion? Would his manager let him? Remember that championship's a business. Champions make money as long as they're champions and no longer. They take no risks. And part of their business is to sidestep dangerous matches." But he had an answer to that that evidently seemed to him conclusive. His eyes sparkled. "Exactly! That's the very reason I picked Carpentier. Carpentier, man, Georges Carpentier! _He_ isn't a sidestepper! He's the most thoroughgoing sportsman alive! Look at the way he gave that Yorkshire lad his match! Sidestep, that Frenchman? Look here. You know I speak French like a native. Well, I shouldn't in the least mind going straight up to him and putting the whole proposition before him." "That you were out after his championship and incidentally his living?" "Yes, and I jolly well know what he'd do." "So do I. He'd turn you over to Descamps and the negotiations would last a couple of years. That isn't instantaneous."