Part 19 (1/2)
”Will he have to be in on it?” Hogarty countered instantly. ”Will he?
Not to any great extent, he won't. According to my plan he fights straight. Don't you suppose I know a straight man when I see one, just as well as you do?
”Here's the whole thing--just as I'll put it up to Dennison before it's dark tonight. It's Dennison's own plan, too, in the first place, so he hasn't any kick coming. We'll match Bolton against one of the fairly good ones--Lancing, say--in about two weeks. Lancing gets his orders to open up in the sixth round and go down with the punch--and stay down! That's plain enough, isn't it? Well, Bolton is fighting under the name of 'The Pilgrim,' and you step up the next morning and give him two columns--you hail him as a real one, at last.
”We'll match him with The Texan then. Conway whipped him back a week or two, but he had his hands full doing it. The Texan--and I ought to know--is open to reason if the figure is big enough to be persuasive.
We'll see to that.
”He gets his orders, too--just as if they were really necessary! About the twelfth he lies down to sleep. Why, it's so simple it's real art!
I'll just hold Bolton back until those rounds. I'll make him take it slow--and then send him in to clean up! Dennison is shy a match right this minute for The Red; they're all a little doubtful about him. The Pilgrim will be the only logical man in the world to send against him--that is, according to your sporting columns. And Dennison, of course, being on the inside, knows he is really nothing but a dub--knows it is simply a plain open and shut proposition. That is to say--he _thinks_ he knows!”
Jesse Hogarty paused and the corners of his lips twitched back to show his teeth, but not in laughter.
”It's the same little frame-up that he sent against Boots and me,” he finished. ”He ought to be satisfied, hadn't he? And I'll have him on the street the next morning--I'll put him where he'll be glad to borrow a dollar to buy his breakfast with!”
For a long time they stared back into each other's face: Hogarty taut at the table side, Morehouse slouched deep in his chair. The latter was the first to break that pregnant silence. He was nodding his head in thoughtful finality when he lifted himself to his feet.
”You've got me,” he stated. ”You've got me snared! Not that I give two hoots about what happens to Dennison, mind! I don't--although I must admit that the prospect of his starving to death is a lovely one to contemplate. And I'd die happy, I think, if I could see The Red trimmed, and trimmed with conscientious thoroughness. But those aren't my reasons for going hands with you in this a.s.sa.s.sination.
”I know a hunch when I see one. I ought to, for I've spent the contents of my little yellow envelope often enough trying to make one come true. And I'm in with you, Flash, till the returns are all in from the last district, but it's because I know that there is something more than either of us dream of behind that boy's wanting to meet Conway. He has something on his mind; he wants something, and wants it real bad. And I like him--I liked him right from the beginning--so I'll stick around and help. Maybe I'll find out what it is that's been bothering him, too, before I get through. But I wish I wasn't of such an inquiring turn of mind. It keeps one too stirred up.”
He stopped to grin comically.
”Any objection, now that I've sworn allegiance, Flash, if I go out and present myself?”
Hogarty's whole tense body began to relax, his lean face softened and his eyes lost much of their hardness and glitter as he shook his head in negation.
”That's a little detail of the campaign which I had already a.s.signed to you,” he replied, and the inflection of his voice was perfect. ”Not that I have any fears of his going the way of his forefathers, however, because I haven't. And if my a.s.surance on that point perplexes you, you might ask him to have one drink and watch his eyes when he refuses you.
”But I would like to have you look out for him for a while. If you don't Ogden will--Ogden likes him, too--and he is too frivolous to be trusted.”
Hogarty reached out one long arm and dropped a hand heavily upon Morehouse's shoulder. He was smiling openly now--smiling with a barefaced enjoyment which the plump newspaper man had never before known him to exhibit. And he continued to smile, while he stood there in the open door and watched Morehouse mince on tiptoe across the polished floor to the corner where Ogden was officiously presenting each member of the Monday morning squad of regulars, as they returned from the dressing-rooms, to the big-shouldered boy in black, whose face was so very grave.
Hogarty smiled as he closed his office door, after he had seen Morehouse slip his hand through the crook of Young Denny's arm, in spite of Bobby Ogden's yelp of protest, and clear a way to the outer entrance with one haughty flip of his free hand.
Hours later that same day, when the tumult in the long main room of the gymnasium had hushed and the apathetic Legs and his helper had turned again to their endless task of grooming the waxed floor, Dennison, the manager of Jed The Red, sitting in that same chair which Morehouse had occupied, cuddling one knee in his hands, fairly basked in that same smile. The purring perfection of Hogarty's discourse was enticing. The absurd simplicity of his plan, which he admitted must, after all, be credited to the astuteness of Dennison himself, was more than alluring. But that smile was the quintessence of hypnotic flattery.
It savored of a delightful intimacy which Jesse Hogarty accorded to few men.
CHAPTER XVI
In all that hill town's history no period had ever before been so filled with sensation as was that one which opened with the flight of Judge Maynard's yellow-wheeled buckboard along the main street of Boltonwood to herald the pa.s.sing of the last of the line of men who had given the village its name.
One by one, in bewildering succession, climax after climax had piled itself upon those which already had left the white-haired circle of regulars about the Tavern stove breathless with fruitless argument and footless conjecture.
Old Jerry's desertion from the ranks of the old guard over which the Judge had ruled with a more than despotic tongue, bursting with bomblike suddenness in their midst that very same night which had seen Young Denny's dramatic departure, had complicated matters to an inconceivable degree. For, after all, he was the one member of the circle to whom they had all been unconsciously looking for a comprehensive answer to the question which the Judge's crafty exhibition of the boy's bruised face had created.
He enjoyed what none of the others could claim an absolutely incontestable excuse for visiting the old, weatherbeaten farmhouse on the hill above town--and in his official capacity they felt, too, that he might venture a few tentative inquiries at least, which, coming from any one else, might have savored of indelicacy.