ressed Anthony Fry.

"If that little wheeze had the pep of a dead mosquito," said Johnson
Boller disgustedly, "he'd take that big stiff when his hands are up like
that and slip him an uppercut that would freeze him solid!"

Anthony Fry's intellectual features relaxed in a faint smile.

"He's had several chances, hasn't he?" he mused.

"Several? He's had fifty! He gets three a minute and--well, look at
that!"

"Yes, he missed another opportunity then, didn't he?" said Anthony.
"Curious!"

Johnson Boller's cigar rolled to the other side of his mouth and he
hunched down farther in his chair.

"And nine more rounds of it to go!" he sighed.

Anthony Fry merely smiled more pensively and nodded, removing his
nose-glasses and tapping his teeth reflectively--and, among other
things, causing the red-faced, partially alcoholized trio behind them in
Box B to wonder what he was doing at a prize fight anyway.

As externals go, there was some ground for the wonder. Anthony Fry at
forty-five was very tall, very lean in his aristocratic way, and very,
very dignified, from the crown of his high-held head to the tips of his
toes. In dress he was utterly beyond criticism; in feature he was thin,
austere, and impressive. At first glance one might have fancied him a
world-famous surgeon or the inscrutable head of the Steel Trust, but the
fact of the matter was that Anthony, these fifteen years gone, had
inherited Fry's Imperial Liniment, with all that that implied.

It implied a good deal in the way of income, yet even among his friends
Anthony did not care to have the liniment phase of his quietly elegant
existence dwelt upon too insistently. Not that he regarded the
business--run by a perfect manager and rarely visited--as a secret shame
exactly, but unquestionably Anthony would have preferred that his late
father and his two dead uncles, when starting their original pursuit of
wealth, had corraled the world's diamond supply or purchased Manhattan
Island at a bargain.

Just now, perhaps, Anthony's more striking features were emphasized by
the nearness of Johnson Boller, one of his few really intimate friends.

Johnson Boller's age was just about the same, but there the similarity
between them stopped short.

Johnson Boller was plump, one might almost say coarse. Where Anthony
walked with slow dignity, Johnson swaggered. Where Anthony spoke in a
measured undertone and smiled frigidly, Johnson thumped out the words
and laughe