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 simply wants to make sure that Capato will be in the ring up to then! Them guys is leavin' nothin' to chance. They—"

"Oh, stop it!" barks the Kid. "Hang it, man, you get on my nerves with your morbid belief that everyone is crooked! You've got me all upset now with your infernal nagging. Let me alone before I go to pieces and make a spectacle of myself in front of that crowd. If I didn't feel capable of taking care of myself, I wouldn't enter the ring. I'll let Capato stay three or four rounds for his wife's sake, and then go after him. I told that poor, worried little woman I'd do it, and I will. Now shut up!"

Up to the minute we crawled through the ropes he wouldn't budge a scant inch from that.

As a last desperate resort I grabbed hold of a sport writer and spilled the whole story in his doubtin' ears, so that when the fourth round did arrive I'd at the least be able to stop the fight and expose Dummy from the ring. You see, I had it doped out that the guy they'd planted at the switch in the basement would have a certain hour and minute to snap off the lights, and if I could jump into the ring and time my speech properly the house would go dark right at the end of it, provin' that I was tellin' the truth. The sport writer warmed up as I went on with the thing, and ended by tellin' me not to breathe a word of it to anybody else. He says if it was true it would be a whale of a yarn for his paper, and if it wasn't he'd personally see that I got run out of the fight game.

"By the way," I says, "is Capato married?"