On the morning of the great event I found myself, instead of properly censorious, intensely eager for the night to come.  Jerry had been brought secretly to town the day before in a closed machine and was resting under the care of Flynn at Jerry’s own house uptown.  It was at Jerry’s request that Jack Ballard and I stayed away from him, and so the day passed slowly enough in speculations as to the possibility of overtraining and as to Jerry’s ability to stand punishment.  Of his pluck there was no question between us.  Both of us had had too many proofs of it to doubt, but there was always the chance of the unlucky blow early in the battle which might mean defeat where victory seemed the only thing possible.  I believed that Jerry would win.  I think that I actually believed him to be invulnerable.  I knew that Flynn was confident, and that Sagorski, Spatola and O’Halloran had put their money on him.  Of course he would win.  There was no man in the world who could stand up against Jerry when he meant to do a thing.  No one knew better than I what victory meant to Jerry.  Money, championship laurels—­of course they were nothing.  However much or little Marcia’s theories as to the superman meant to Jerry, he was committed to her—­and she, I suspected, to him.  His laurels were in the touch of her rosy fingers, the flash of her dark eyes, the gleam of her small white teeth when she smiled.  Those were his reward, all that he had worked for—­all that he prized.  She expected him to win.  He couldn’t lose.

The day passed slowly.  I visited the gymnasium with Jack.  Flynn was still with Jerry, but confidence reigned.  There was a story going the rounds of the press that Clancy had gone stale, that he had strained a tendon, that he had broken a finger, that his mother had just died.

“Buncombe!” said Jack, who knew the game.  “They want to worry the odds down a bit.  He’s fit as a fiddle.  You can be sure of that.”

The early afternoon papers contained the first hint that Jim Robinson was not what he was supposed to be.  A heading on the sporting page caught my eyes.  I have kept it among my papers and give it verbatim.

    PUGILIST SOCIETY MAN
    JIM ROBINSON, THE HEAVY WEIGHT, A
    MASQUERADER.

I read the type below hurriedly: 

A story is going the rounds that Jim Robinson, the heavyweight, who goes against Sailor Clancy in the principal event at the Garden tonight, is not Robinson at all, but a well-known society man and millionaire.  From the hour when this match was made in May last there has been a mystery attached to the personality of this fighter never before heard of in Fistiana in New York.  Flynn, his backer and trainer, could not be found to deny or affirm the rumor, and his sparring partners at Flynn’s Gymnasium, of course, denied it, but every circumstance, including the size of the purse, now believed to be five thousand dollars, would indicate that Flynn’s Unknown, unless a well-known Westerner in disguise, is a man of more than usual ability—­or else a millionaire sport, bent on enriching the hard-fisted sailor, who thinks he sees a chance of picking up some easy money besides his share of the gate.  Whoever Jim Robinson is, we welcome him cordially.