desire to see. And it
had happened quickly.

The victory failed to raise a second wave of adulation, even a ripple,
in fact. Instead it was received oddly with scarcely any comment at
all. Even the papers had but little to say, and that little
noncommittal. For there were rumors. Devereau and Pig-iron Dunham had
done some preliminary work in anticipation of the worst. And after the
worst had come to be they went to work in earnest.

It was Devereau, Blair's own manager--ex-manager, the day after the Gay
bout--who gave out the interview announcing the severance of business
relations with the champion. There were reasons, he said, but he was
not explicit. He left them veiled at first, purposely obscure.

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