of adhesive for that cut. It looks as bad
as though a horse had kicked him there.

"And the rest of your mob will be swarming in here in a few minutes,
too. You can tell them that Sutton is--er--indisposed this morning,
and that they'll have to play by themselves."

He nodded briefly to Denny and opened the door. But he stopped again
before he passed out.

"There's one other question, Mr. Bolton," he said over his shoulder.
"And please believe that I am not usually so inquisitive. But I'm more
than a little curious to know why you did not present this card
first--and go through the little informal examination I arranged for
you afterward? It would have insured you a far different reception.
Was there any special reason, or did you just overlook it?"

Denny dabbed again at the red drop on his chin.

"No, I didn't exactly forget it," he stated ponderously. "But, you
see, I kind of thought if I just told you first that I wanted to see
if I had any chance, you wouldn't make any allowances for me because
I----"

Hogarty's second nod which cut him short was the quintessence of crisp
satisfaction.

"I understand," he cut in. "Perfectly! And quite right--quite right!"

The ex-lightweight proprietor was sitting with his chin clasped in
both palms, still staring at the half facetious words of introduction
which the plump newspaper man had penciled across that card, when the
door of the small office in the front of the gymnasium was pushed open
a crack, some scant fifteen minutes after his peremptory summons had
gone out over the wire, and made him lift his head.

His eyes were filmed with a preoccupation too profound to be dispelled
by the mock anxiety upon the chubby round countenance which Morehouse
thrust through that small aperture between door and frame, or his
excessively overdone caution as he swung the door wider and tiptoed
over the threshold, to stand and point a rigidly stubby finger behind
him at the trail of nail prints which Young Denny's shoes had left
across the glistening wax an hour or so earlier.

"Jesse," he whispered hoarsely, "some one has perpetrated here upon
the sacred sheen of your floor a dastardly outrage! I merely want you
to note, before you start running the guilty one to earth, that I am
making my entrance entirely in accordance with your oft-reiterated
instructions. I am not he!"

For all the change which it brought about in Hogarty's face that
greeting might have been left unspoken