' the contract. In them days I had a rep
for bein' able to get the money for my athletes that would make Shylock
look like a free spender. Every time one of _my_ boys performed for
the edification of the mob, we got a elegant deposit before we put a
pen to the articles and we got the balance of the dough before we
pulled on a glove. I never left nothin' to chance or the other guy.
That's what beat Napoleon and all them birds! Of course, they was
several people here and there throughout the country which was more
popular than I was on that account, but which would _you_ rather, have,
three cheers or three bucks?

Well, that's the way _I_ figured!

About a month after Scanlan become my only visible means of support, I
signed him up for ten rounds with a bird which said, "What d'ye want,
hey?" when you called him Hurricane Harris, and the next day a guy
comes in to see me in the little trick office I had staked myself to on
Broadway. When he rapped on the door I got up on a chair and took a
flash at him over the transom and seein' he looked like ready money, I
let him come in. He claims his name is Edward R. Potts and that so far
he's president of the Maudlin Moving Picture Company.

"I am here," he says, "to offer you a chance to make twenty thousand
dollars. Do you want it?"

"Who _give_ you the horse?" I asks him, playin' safe. "I got to know
where this tip come from!"

"Horse?" he mutters, lookin' surprised. "I know nothing of horses!"

"Well," I tells him, "I ain't exactly a liveryman myself, but before I
put any of Kid Scanlan's hard-earned money on one of them equines, I
got to know more about the race than you've spilled so far! What did
the trainer say?"

He was a fat, middle-aged hick that would soon be old, and he wears
half a pair of glasses over one eye. He aims the thing at me and
smiles.

"I'm afraid I don't understand what you're talking about!" he says.
"But I fancy it's a pun of some sort! Very well, then, what _did_ the
trainer say?"

I walked over and laid my arm on his shoulder.

"Are you endeavorin' to spoof me?" I asks him sternly. "Or have you
got me confused with Abe Levy, the vaudeville agent? Either way you're
losin' time! I don't care for your stuff myself, and if that's your
act, I wouldn't give you a week-end at a movie house!"

He takes off the trick eye-glass and begins to clean it with a
handkerchief.

"My dear fellow!" he says. "It is plain that you do not u