What was the use of discussing it? Blair was a fluke champion anyway. Everybody knew that. Chance had made him, chance which had been luckless for Jimmy Montague. Montague, he said, had been selected as the logical man to meet Fanchette, the man whose record entitled him to the choice, long before any word of the proposed match had been given to the public. But Fanchette, after his prolonged inactivity, had demurred at meeting, immediately, so formidable an opponent. So they had selected Blair, merely as a work-out for the title-holder. And the unforeseen had happened. Fanchette had proved to be through. Anyone--anyone could have whipped him. But what about Gay? That was the natural question and they asked it. Blair had disposed of him, also in the first round. But to that Devereau made no answer, no verbal answer, at least. He did not point out that Hughie was a set-up, a second-rater. No, indeed. He shrugged his shoulders--shrugged them almost audibly. "I had nothing to do with it," he said. "Absolutely. Ask Blair about it. I've quit him." Pig-iron Dunham, who paid the bills, and Devereau who was cunning, did just what the latter had promised they would do. In a few short months they put Perry Blair, light-weight champion of the world, out on the sidewalk. It can't be done? It is done every day, in politics. It needs only a practiced hand. For a day or two following Devereau's unsatisfactory laconism nothing developed. And then a bombshell exploded. Hughie Gay made a statement. He took oath, solemn oath (and cheap, too, for it cost Dunham but two hundred dollars), that he had sold out. Blair had realized that he was no champion; he had feared even him, Gay. So before the fight Blair had paid him well to throw it. And he had done so. Thus, you see, they learned logically why Devereau had quit Perry. Devereau was square. Sure! This proved it. You said it! They understood perfectly those eloquent shoulder shrugs now. And they raised a righteous clamor. Perry Blair denied the charge, and offered to meet Gay again, anywhere, for any charity. And they replied, with equal logic, that every reputable club in the country should bar him thenceforth. In a short interview, not as unsatisfactory as Devereau's, Pig-iron Dunham broke a rule and talked for publication. "It is the sort of thing which has given a bad name to a clean and manly sport in this state," he said. "I sincerely trust, however, that all true lovers of the squared circle will put the blame where it belongs." And in the meantime his paid mouthpieces parroted everywhere the words in which they had been drilled. He has no punch at all, they said; he can't hit. He has no science, they said; he is slow as a freight. He has not the fighter's heart. He's yellow--yellow! And that word stuck.