Charlie greeted him with a sour look. He was sore because the Bearcat had kept him and the boys waiting around.

“Thought you was comin’ back in an hour,” growled Charlie. “Hell of a long hour!”

For the first time the Bearcat felt like coming back at Charlie. He was more annoyed than ever before at Charlie’s criticism.

“Had some personal business to ’tend to,” snapped Bearcat, and he turned away to speak to one of the boys. He had as much as told Charlie to mind his own business.

Charlie gave Bearcat a sharp look, and then thought: “He must be tired. I shouldn’t ride him too much.”

Charlie Yates knew the Bearcat inside and out, or up until tonight he had. Every good manager who wishes to make his fighter a winner has got to know the mind as well as the body of his man. A fighter is like a valuable thoroughbred horse, and, like one, has to be stabled, fed and clothed. That’s a manager’s job.

Charlie Yates had seen the possibilities in Bearcat when the latter was just the rawest of raw material, and it was he who had shaped that raw material into the clever, hard-hitting fighter that Bearcat had shown himself to be that night. When the Bearcat was working his way up, drawing money hardly worth mentioning, it was Charlie who had laid out his own cash to feed, clothe, house and pay for the training of Bearcat. And now he was ready to go through hell and a meat-chopper to prevent Bearcat from ruining his career.

Women are, were and always will be the fly in the ointment of every fighter who gives them more than a second’s thought.

Charlie was too shrewd a fellow to allow the joys of the flesh to come between Bearcat and the triumph of championship. For Charlie saw in Bearcat the man to wear the title, and that within a very short time.

IV BABE WORKS HER POINTS

THE BEARCAT accepted the enthusiastic adulation of the boys in the hotel almost with indifference. His mind was on Babe. The remembrance of her kisses was too fresh and the experience too unusual for him to take the matter casually as another man better versed in the ways of woman might have done.

Charlie lit a long cigar and wandered over to the registration desk to chat with the room clerk.

The buzzer on the switchboard signalling an incoming call sounded, and Barney, a young Negro who always wore an expansive grin and at this late hour doubled as elevator and switchboard operator, answered the call. His grin became wider as he turned to the clerk.

“Dey’s a fair voice on de phone askin’ fo’ Mistuh Delaney. Yas suh, a berry sweet voice.”

“Shut up, you!” snapped Charlie, in a half-whisper, and threw a glance over his shoulder at the Bearcat. “Gimme that call.”

“Aw right,” Barney assented, with a chuckle.