be a real
crook--and a real one is suspicious of everybody, even of himself."

He lifted one hand and pounded gently upon the polished surface of the
table.

"The old days are done--dead--when a man got his reputation, and a
chance at the big ones simply by fighting his way up from the bottom.
I can give a man a bigger reputation in a week, with five thousand
dollars' worth of real advertising, than he'd be able to get in a
lifetime the old way. And training?----"

He jerked his head over one shoulder toward the dressing-rooms beyond
the closed door.

"Right now he is just where I want him. Why, he looks like a pitiful
dub if you hold him back. Order him to wait--and it's heart-breaking
to watch him suffer. In one month I can teach him all he'll ever need
to know about blocking and getting away. And the rest? Well, you'll
get a chance to see just what happens when he really goes into action.
I tell you it makes you stop and think.

"And I don't care what _he_ is fighting for; I don't care what he
wants. Pleasure or profit, it's all one to me. It's you I need most
right now, Chub. I know you have always been a little particular about
soiling your hands. A shady deal never appealed to me so much, either,
but I'm not exactly bashful about this one. That part of it will be my
own private affair. You handle the publicity end--merely hail Bolton
as a comer, when the time is ripe. Are you--are you in on it?"

Morehouse thoughtfully scratched his head.

"I have been a trifle fastidious, haven't I?" he murmured, and
unconsciously he mimicked Hogarty's measured accents. "But I hardly
believe that any sensitive scruples of mine would annoy me much in
this matter. I don't know but what I'd just as soon squash a snake
with a brick, even if I knew it was somebody's beloved performing
pet.

"That, as you say, is your side of the question. As for me--well,
every time I remember that popeyed unctuous fat party they called the
'Judge' chanting Conway's innocent childhood, with that big, lonesome
kid standing there in the doorway listening and trying to understand,
I begin to sizzle. It is time that Conway was licked--and licked
right!

"Oh, I'm in on it--I want to be there! But," he stopped and made a
painstaking effort to fit the torn card together again, "but I have an
idea that Bolton may be the one to hold out. There are some honest
people, you know, who are honest all the time. He might not
understand the necessity of--