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Then he realized that the referee was holding Young Denny's right hand aloft; that Hogarty, with arms about him, was holding the boy erect. The little mail-carrier heard the ex-lightweight's words, as he edged in beside Morehouse, against the ropes. "A world-beater," he was screaming above the tumult. "I'll make a world-beater of you in a year!"
That same light of savage hope and cruelly calculating enmity, all so strangely mixed with a persistent doubt, which Young Denny had seen flare up in the ex-lightweight's eyes a little while before, back in the dressing-room, began to creep once more across Hogarty's face. "You know how long I've been waiting for one to come along, Chub," he went on, almost hoarsely.
Morehouse sat following him to and fro with his eyes, trying to comprehend each step of this bewildering development which was furthest of all from what he had expected. He had listened with his face fairly glowing with appreciation to the ex-lightweight's account of Denny's coming. It was all so entirely in keeping with what he had already known of him.
And all his skepticism was shot through and through with hate a deadly, patient sort of hatred for someone which was as easy to see as it was hard for the big-shouldered boy to understand. There was craft in the ex-lightweight's bearing a gentleness almost stealthy when he leaned forward a little, as if he feared that the first abrupt move or word on his part would frighten away that timid hope.
Hogarty had a way of telling them just how little they actually amounted to, which, no matter how wickedly it cut, never failed to amuse them. The older generation dared do nothing else, even in the face of the ex-lightweight's scathingly sarcastic admiration of their constantly increasing waist-line or lack of one.
Morehouse sat and fingered that card for a long time in absolute silence a silence that was heavy with embarrassment on his part. He understood, without need of explanation, for whom that chill hatred glowed in the spare ex-lightweight's eyes knew the full reason for it.
Everybody else seemed to understand what had happened everybody but himself. He turned again to the man next him on the bench. Morehouse, too, had been watching the ex-lightweight's deft fingers. "Broken," he groaned. "His right hand is gone." And after what seemed hours Old Jerry realized that Morehouse was cursing hoarsely. In Conway's corner the activity was doubly feverish.
Even since the conference in Hogarty's little office, when he had agreed to the ex-lightweight's plan, it had been vexing him, no nearer solution than it had been that day when he assured Hogarty that there was more behind young Denny's eagerness to meet Jed Conway than the prize-money could account for.
It was of Dennison that the plump newspaper man had been subconsciously thinking ever since he had entered Hogarty's immaculate little office; it was of Dennison that he always thought whenever he saw that bad light kindling in the ex-lightweight's eyes. Dennison was the promoter who had backed Jed The Red from the day when the latter had fought his first fight.
Ogden ceased for a moment thumping him on the back. "Hurt!" he yelped. "Didn't hit him too hard! Why, man, he's stiff, right now. He's ready for the coroner! Gad and I was pitying you I was " Young Denny shook him off and crossed and knelt beside the kneeling Hogarty. And at that moment Sutton opened his eyes again and stared dully into the ex-lightweight's face.
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