“You know me, old horse,” said Ukridge, sipping luxuriously. “Keen, alert, far-sighted. Brain never still. Always getting ideas—_bing_—like a flash. The other day I was in a pub down Chelsea way having a bit of bread and cheese, and a fellow came in smothered with jewels. Smothered, I give you my word. Rings on his fingers and a tie-pin you could have lit your cigar at. I made enquiries and found that he was Tod Bingham’s manager.” “Who’s Tod Bingham?” “My dear old son, you must have heard of Tod Bingham. The new middle-weight champion. Beat Alf Palmer for the belt a couple of weeks ago. And this bloke, as opulent-looking a bloke as ever I saw, was his manager. I suppose he gets about fifty per cent. of everything Tod makes, and you know the sort of purses they give for big fights nowadays. And then there’s music-hall tours and the movies and all that. Well, I see no reason why, putting the thing at the lowest figures, I shouldn’t scoop in thousands. I got the idea two seconds after they told me who this fellow was. And what made the thing seem almost as if it was meant to be was the coincidence that I should have heard only that morning that the _Hyacinth_ was in.” The man seemed to me to be rambling. In my reduced and afflicted state his cryptic method of narrative irritated me. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said. “What’s the _Hyacinth_? In where?” “Pull yourself together, old horse,” said Ukridge, with the air of one endeavouring to be patient with a half-witted child. “You remember the _Hyacinth_, the tramp steamer I took that trip on a couple of years ago. Many’s the time I’ve told you all about the _Hyacinth_. She docked in the Port of London the night before I met this opulent bloke, and I had been meaning to go down next day and have a chat with the lads. The fellow you found in your rooms is one of the trimmers. As decent a bird as ever you met. Not much conversation, but a heart of gold. And it came across me like a thunderbolt the moment they told me who the jewelled cove was that, if I could only induce this man Billson to take up scrapping seriously, with me as his manager, my fortune was made. Billson is the man who invented fighting.” “He looks it.” “Splendid chap—you’ll like him.” “I bet I shall. I made up my mind to like him the moment I saw him.”